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2003:12 Hierarchy as a Strength and Weakness of Communist Rule

Martin Hájek (ed.)

This volume is comprised of the papers that were presented at the seminar “Hierarchy as a Strength and Weakness of Communist Rule”, which was held on 11-12 September 2003 at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. The general purpose of the seminar was to reveal and interpret, in so far as possible without misrepresentation or bias, the procedures on which communist rule of society was based at the end of the 1980s. The papers delivered at the seminar and presented here in this volume can be divided into three thematic groups. The first group is made up of investigations into the methods and strategies of communist rule in general. This refers mainly to the legal framework of this rule, how it fits among the modern forms of government, which are able only with difficulty to separate the political from the economic and which often feature all-encompassing planning ambitions. This group of papers also covers the issue of the character of the rules and orders in “really existing” socialism. The second group is made up of papers devoted to analysing the form of rule at the highest level, the district level and the local level. The final and concluding section is comprised of two papers dealing with the subject of communist rule and individual and collective memory.

Introduction
The mirror of normalisation did not tell the truth about the communist regime. Nor did the transition-period mirror of the Velvet Revolution and the ensuing transformation present a realistic portrait of communist rule. The seminar “Hierarchy as a Strength and Weakness of Communist Rule” attempted to offer truer images of communist rule. The authors believe that it is possible to study some of the key features of modern rule in the communist regime and that the knowledge that can be gained from this will help facilitate a better preparedness and understanding for the battle against the institutionalised irresponsibility that accompanies modern rule.
The main subject of the seminar developed out of one of the goals of the research project “The Legacy of Communist Rule”. That aim was to conduct a sociological study of Czech real socialism that could as much as possible without distortion or bias describe and theoretically pinpoint the procedures lying behind communist control over society (the process of implementing its leading role) at the end of the 1980s. This kind of description was intended to serve as a starting point for the study of the kind of possible shapes the post-revolution persistence of these forms of rule can take.
The authors were interested in the role hierarchies played in the relatively stable institutional functioning of Czech real socialism at the end of the 1980s. They defined government and rule as the execution of authority and otherwise acquired power in hierarchical relationships. In this way the government hierarchically permeates the whole of society from the top down. The application of democratic centralism and the procedures of nomenclature administration rendered hierarchies – despite the declared egalitarianism – at once a means and an end of communist rule. After November 1989, without the Communist Party occupying its exclusive position, these could no longer be applied in their “totality”. Nonetheless, an entire series of indicators suggest that the methods and procedures of rule introduced at an earlier time have, just like a variety of other forms of institutionalised irresponsibility, successfully managed to adjust to meet the new circumstances and are able with relative ease to colonise the newly introduced constitutional forms of rule. The authors believe that this is caused by the fact that communist rule was founded on specific forms of controlling what were originally constitutional institutions, which in the new circumstances could come in useful for a variety of different interest groups. Communism was the place to learn how to rule undemocratically while preserving the façade of democracy.
The seminar was held on 11-12 September 2003 in the main building of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague, just prior to the conclusion of the grant project (no. 403/01/1564). It served mainly three purposes: it was intended to contribute to furthering international co-operation; to contribute to a critical evaluation of mainly the theoretical work resulting from the project; and to no less a degree to contribute to an open discussion of issues relating to communist rule, which it turn would serve to deepen and specify the summary interpretation of the described methods of rule in Czechoslovak real socialism.
The seminar contributions in this presented in this volume could be loosely divided into three thematic groups. The first group was made up of papers dealing with the general subject of the methods and strategies of communist rule. Jiří Kabele demonstrates how the socialist legal framework provided a support to the execution of state power primarily through the weakening of the importance ascribed to rules-laws and through the considerable strengthening of the significance of sub-legal norms and unwritten rules. There thus emerged an environment that could guarantee the “legal” assertion of the leading role of the Communist Party. Tomáš Holeček describes the commissioning of Party tasks at the regional level of communist government. He underlines some characteristic features of this process, e.g. the repeated issuing of orders to do that which is obligatory anyway, which in the author’s view is a feature common to modern forms of rule in general. Lubomír Mlčoch examines the inverted executive pyramid in the economies of real socialism. The core of his argument is the idea that “the exaggerated ambitiousness of the social experiment in planning and running an entire economy and society led to the inoperativeness of the ‘executive pyramid’ and at a certain stage in the evolution of the system also to the rise of the contradictory – but also actually self-preserving – forces in the inverted ‘executive pyramid’”. Petr Kohútek focuses on the issue of the intertwining of political and economic dimensions of conduct, describing the strategies of the distribution and acquisition of means on the basis of a particular example. Using research studies drawn from the past and the present he draws a parallel between the past strategies used to acquire money “from the state” and today’s strategies of acquiring financial resources from European funds. Jiří Kabele concludes the discussion of the subject of methods and strategies of communist rule with his analysis of communist orders and regulations. Hooking up in part to his previous study in these pages he points to a typical feature of communist orders – the neglect of certain procedural specifications of the relationships within the hierarchy and the space that consequently emerges and is defended for asserting democratic centralism and the communist nomenclature administration.
The second group of texts is devoted to analyses of the strategies of communist government at different levels in the hierarchy. Martin Hájek argues that communist rule at the highest level was actually a double rule – over the Party and society – wherein the attempt to control both at the same time often presented the highest leadership with dilemmas difficult to resolve. For example, the purge in the Party leadership signified also a direct and indirect purge in the highest state organs and vice versa; to do one without the other was simply not possible. Zdena Vajdová focuses on the gradual transformations that the communist rule went through at the district level. This is demonstrated for example by the amount and kind of participants in various Party meetings or the stylistic transformation of speeches and discussion contributions. The role of local and metropolitan national committees and their position in the system of government in real socialism is described by Lukáš Valeš. He discovered that “they were exceptional both in terms of their legal standing, their capacity even to integrate citizens in local administration who otherwise were outside the political structure at that time, and primarily in terms of their material pragmatism in managing districts and towns”. In the author’s view this political pragmatism of the national committees expressed itself fully particularly towards the end of the communist regime. Two other contributions focus on rule and communists in Slovakia. Simon Smith reveals several tendencies in the regime of local rule, which appeared in connection with the new way in which the central and marginal space was organised. The main areas with the dominant industrial enterprises had a tendency to accept the “instrumental” regime, while “organic” regimes were characteristic for the peripheral areas. Nonetheless, according to the author the development of certain areas was still dependent on position within the administrative hierarchy. Josef Kandert examined the position and government of communists in traditional village communities. In his paper he provides a detailed and ethnographically researched description of the structure of the villages studied and the role of the communists within them. He claims that the community was always divided into two rival cliques competing for power, while at the same time it was possible for communists to be represented in both of them.
The concluding section of the volume contains two texts dealing with the relationship between communist rule and collective and individual memory. Françoise Mayer bases her paper on a study of five published testimonies given by former communist functionaries. The author shows how complex and, in the post-communist field, unique a situation the former prominent figures of the communist regime in this country found themselves in and how this is projected in their statements. The author attempts to show how through this testimony, which often takes the form of justifications, we can learn more about the system of political and social values of the people behind them. The essay by Jiřina Šiklová stems from an analysis of the personal past of those who have forgotten or are trying to forget that they sustained communist rule if by no other means then at least by dutifully filling in of cadre questionnaires. The text presents various forms of these “self-evaluations” and their overlooked consequences.
Keywords
Communist rule, real socialism, hierarchy, communist party