A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 Book

This is another of the books I read in graduate school that I hope I will one day have time to really read properly. From what I could tell from my hurried skimming (now several years ago), it is excellent. Kennedy discusses the "Fall of Communism" from the inside, not from the point of view of the wielders of power, but from that of the many seemingly powerless dissidents who had worked in isolation for years until Glasnost changed the rules of the game. Because he had been there as a student at the time, some degree of autobiography (and certainly bias) creeps in, but it remains a fascinating portrait of free thinking and rebellion within a "totalitarian" system.

Kennedy describes the region as "Central Europe:" meaning, essentially any former Communist state that wasn't integrated into post-USSR Russia, including both those which were Republics of the USSR (Ukraine, Lithuania) and those which were nominally autonomous satellites (Poland, East Germany). This is a wide range, but his focus is actually a much narrower and more centralized area - primarily Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, with some mention of Romania, Ukraine, and other regions of Yugoslavia. "Belarus," "Moldova," "Estonia," and "Bulgaria" (among others) are completely absent from the index. Within this region, he identifies five strands or traditions of dissent and resistance: reformism within the Party, the advocates of "civil society" like Vaclav Havvel, the churches, the counter-culture, especially that surrounding punk and jazz, and nationalist opposition. These all came together, he argues, during the 1980s, to give rise to Solidarity in Poland, and to inspire movements of dissent throughout the region. But, given the Soviet reaction to the overtly political movement of Solidarity, activists once again had to shift tactics to "Konkretny," or concretism, which entailed a pragmatic yet hopeful approach which disguised or avoided overt political statements. Instead, they brought attention to the contradictions or weaknesses of the existing regimes without proposing clear alternatives.

The result was a mish-mash of bizarre and often opposing groups working together in an atmosphere Kennedy describes as "carnivalesque." Temperance advocates jostled with drunken punks, nationalists and pacifists marched together, religious believers spoke alongside atheistic intellectuals, and the whole thing seemed more focused on how the world didn't make sense than on any sense-making explanatory approach. As things spun more out of control for the regime, creativity among the dissidents became more pronounced and the use of humor emphasized as the best answer to stifling seriousness. Costumes and street theater were popular tactics. People spoke of having the police join in with events, rather than fighting them (this rarely worked). While the bureaucrats tried to control production, more and more people took back their lives, at least for a while.

Kennedy's view of this period is, as I said above, probably biased by his own experiences with these groups and his own political affinities. Still, this is a very interesting and useful look at the ways in which people within an oppressive atmosphere can manifest their freedom, whether or not these manifestations were ultimately responsible for the collapse of the regimes in power or whether they were sustainable ways to run societies after the collapse. What the book really shows is the range of possibilities available for people who claim their agency, and that is ultimately what any good revolution is all about.