Feature Article

Untold story of 1989

The Catholic Church and the collapse of Communism

The dramatic collapse of Communism has been extensively analysed, but recent accounts have notably ignored the significant role played by the Churches, and in particular the contribution made by John Paul II in uniting people peacefully around a common objective.

It has been a year of anniversaries, culminating this autumn when the great and the good gathered to commemorate the fall of Communism. Yet the commentaries and reminiscences, however stirring, have also been selective, often revealing as much about current prejudices as about what really happened 20 years ago. The region’s Churches, in particular, which played a key role in 1989, appear to have been expunged from the accounts just as the victims of Stalin were airbrushed out of photographs.

The BBC’s continuous account, 1989: Day by Day, presented by Sir John Tusa, recalled Mikhail Gorbachev’s ground-breaking visit to the Vatican on 1 December, but otherwise barely mentioned Church involvement. Meanwhile, though a spate of books has appeared on the year’s events, only Victor Sebestyen’s Revolution 1989: the fall of the Soviet Empire gives a proper account of the part played by Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church.

Some selectiveness may be understandable. The collapse of Communist rule, some argue, could be traced to systemic faultlines and a false view of mankind which were present from the very beginning. When attempts are made to retrace its final overthrow, most analyses highlight economic stagnation, ideological meltdown, Western pressure and imperial overstretch. They point to a chain of intended and unintended consequences which spiralled into a full-scale meltdown.

Yet the preoccupation with single key events, the high politics of 1989, also distorts reality, by passing over the process of maturation which made them possible. This is top-down history, a mix of realpolitik and celebrity told from establishment perspectives. In reality, the revolutions were made not by regime politicians and opposition leaders, but by ordinary people who gathered in their thousands to turn ideas into real events. It was in this “people power”, the mobilisation of hearts and minds, that the Church’s contribution was made. Ignoring it distorts the truth and looks like crude revisionism.
Some church leaders have taken issue with the 1989 anniversaries. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who was based in the Communist German Democratic Republic as Bishop of Berlin, has criticised the commemorations for focusing only on the final step in his country’s reunification, without mentioning “the 999 steps taken earlier”, in which Christians provided a “biblical testimony of non-participation”.

“Throughout these years, Christians formed a living protest against this inhuman system,” the cardinal told Germany’s Catholic news agency, KNA, this October. “Yet in the many declarations, speeches, interviews and books appearing for the twentieth anniversary, the Church’s role is being evaluated and covered only very superficially. We must hope everything experienced by the mass of often nameless, lonely people will be written about and documented, people who positively influenced society with their suffering and helped bring about the changes through unspectacular resistance along the way.”

Whatever one may think of church controversies after 1989, no serious historian in Eastern Europe would question the critical role of the Catholic Church – and, to a lesser extent, of Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist communities – during the final stages of Communist rule, in helping sustain opposition and give it moral certainty.

This was most evident in Poland, where the Church maintained demands for pluralism and accountability when the Solidarity movement was crushed under martial law, and vital sanctuary to myriad independent groups and social initiatives. In 1989, the Polish Church was represented in all key negotiations, mediating and guaranteeing their outcome at the request of both sides. The Round Table accords, which paved the way for a peaceful transition to democracy, might have happened without the Church. But they would have proved a lot harder to negotiate without the Church’s authority.
In neighbouring Czechoslovakia, the persecuted Church spawned a network of underground groups, which expanded in the mid-1980s into mass protests with the backing of Cardinal Frantisek Tomasék, something the country’s small, isolated human-rights groups could never have achieved. Practising Catholics such as Vaclav Benda played key roles in the Charter 77 movement, and helped forge joint aims and values with liberal and ex-Marxist dissidents. So did influential Catholic priests such as the Jesuits Josef Zverina and Frantisek Lizna. Bishop Václav Maly, jailed and beaten for his human rights work, sat at Vaclav Havel’s side in talks with the Communist regime during the Velvet Revolution.

In Lithuania, the underground Chronicle of the Catholic Church was the Soviet Union’s longest-running samizdat. In Hungary, Catholic base communities formed a key element of the nascent civil society emerging in the 1980s. In Romania, where the Winter Revolution was sparked by the arrest of a Calvinist pastor, László Tokés, much-harassed Greek Catholic priests and laity had been secretly active for decades. When violence flared, a Catholic archbishop, Ioan Robu, spoke of “the presence of God on the streets”, of “a faith which has lived on, through concealment and humiliation, and is now expressing itself in simple, open words and deeds”.

Some East Europeans saw 1989 as a triumph for the spirit of defiance shown in earlier national uprisings. They also detected a major shift in the Church’s position. In contrast to bloody revolts of previous centuries, the Church had unequivocally welcomed the new spring tide of human emancipation. But it had tried to give the ideals of 1989 a deeper Christian interpretation beyond secular political dimensions, while cautioning against an uncritical acceptance of Western norms and standards.

Behind all of this stood the epic figure of John Paul II, who had brought millions into the streets, keeping them united and peaceful around a clearly articulated set of objectives, and setting out the moral and spiritual parameters of a reunited Europe – as the analogy put it, “breathing with both lungs”. However one describes it, there can be no doubt John Paul II’s influence far outstripped that of any secular figure in his homeland, and extended in powerful ways to other countries, too. He was a catalyst for forces already emerging by the 1980s. But he also helped direct them with an acute understanding of power politics.

The Pope knew agreements with Communist regimes were worthless unless backed up by powerful pressure. He was also aware that Christians lacked the strength to exert this pressure by themselves, and had to find common ground with other “people of goodwill”. Above all, he grasped that the modern world functioned not through governments but through people – people whose creative, revolutionary energies could be mobilised to break through the barriers of power and ideology. Having shunned social movements in the past, the Church now saw them as a creative force, natural allies of the Church in the godly cause of human rights and social justice.

Ironically, the centrality of religious faith was understood by Communist leaders. Poland’s Communist strongman, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, has recorded how the Pope’s teachings had far-reaching consequences by “reawakening hopes and expectations of change”.

Mikhail Gorbachev has praised John Paul II for contributing to his own “understanding of Communism”, acknowledging that the end of Communist rule would have been “impossible” without him.

It seems to have posed trickier problems in the West. Journalists and commentators, many from non-conformist backgrounds, never overcame their innate disdain for the Catholic Church, especially in Poland, while academics and politicians, trained to see religion as outdated and irrelevant, never understood how it could have played a role.
Twenty years on, the incomprehension seems greater than ever. While all commentators agree on the historic dimensions of 1989, and on the great expansion of freedom and democracy which the year unleashed, few assigns a serious role to the Church or the Pope. Russianists stress the role of Gorbachev and his “new thinking”, US enthusiasts Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, supporters of the European Union the part played by the continent’s institutions.

In Eastern Europe, nationalists focus on popular rebelliousness, left-wing politicians on reform Communists, and liberal elites on dissidents. The lawyers and economists in power in the region today generally played little part in the 1989 events, and have also provided their own version, playing up its technocratic and structural aspects.

These factors were all necessary; but they were not sufficient in themselves to explain how a nuclear-armed empire, garrisoned with a million troops, crumbled in the space of months with barely a shot fired in anger.