Iran's Revolution Enters a New Stage

When I first began commenting on the Iranian election I  argued that the Polish experience in 1980-1 and then 1988-9 offered a useful comparison.  That was already getting doubtful yesterday, but is most definitely true after the violence reported today.  Today's crackdown appears to have been bloodier than anything that happened when Jaruzelski declared martial law.  Nor does it seem likely that Mousavi and Khamenei will be able to sit down at a round table and work things out.  All that remains applicable is that Iran's economy is a mess and cannot be used as a basis for buying off the people as part of a post crackdown normalization process.  Interestingly as this was beginning to become clear, Andrew Sullivan posted a comment drawing parallels with the Revolution that ousted Slobodan Milosevic.  When I first began considering possible comparisons, I did think of that Serbian Revolution, but dismissed it for reasons that seemed good at the time, but do not now.  I will say though that the apparatus behind the Iranian Revolution is much deeper than it was in Serbia, where once Milosevic was toppled the infrastructure that had supported him fell apart fairly quickly.  That does not seem to be happening in Iran.  Indeed the resistance put up by the regime is a reminder that it has considerable support to draw on, though whether that support is sufficient to keep Khamenei and Ahmadinejad in power seems doubtful though how long the battle of wills that has now come into the open will last is an open question.

Will this Revolution in Iran be Self-Limiting?

Revolutions all too often get out of hand, and for those who see them as necessary for change, but wish to avoid the extremism that so often takes hold the desire to limit the revolution's goals has been always been strong.  In the 1970s, Adam Michnik articulated this idea most directly, when he proposed that any revolution that took place in Poland would have to be self-limiting in order not to provoke a Soviet invasion.  (This was a reason why the Solidarity agreement of August 1980 explicitly acknowledged the leading role of the Polish United Worker's Party for example.)  Remarkably, even when the threat of a Soviet invasion disappeared, all the European revolutions of 1989 did not get out of hand.  (Even in Romania, where things turned violent, the revolution was more or less ended with the removal and subsequent execution of the Ceaucescus from power, though arguably for less noble reasons than the faith Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians put in liberal democracy.) The so-called color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia have likewise managed to avoid the trap of revolutionary radicalization.  The question now is whether those who have joined the Green movement behind Mousavi will be satisfied with a rerun election, providing its  clearly and accurately reflects the sense of the electorate that Ahmadinejad could not have won last Friday's poll and now given his intransigence, the removal of Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme leader.  

The limited original goals of the Mousavi campaign, and his strong credentials as a supporter of the revolution, as well as several leading supporters were clearly aimed to promote reform rather revolution.  Even now the call for a fair vote embarrassing as it is to those in power is in line with the demands of other recent revolutions.  Nonetheless, the situation is already precarious, and every move Khamenei makes seems to make the complete rethinking of Iran's constitution plausible.  Consider that for the past several days we have been told that Rasfanjani has been lobbying other members of the Council of Experts, who choose the Supreme Leader, to revoke Khamenei's mandate and choose someone more in line with the people.  Yet let us assume that this is true, and that Rasfanjani is successful.  Nothing Khamenei has done so far has suggested he would acknowledge and act on the Council's decision.  Thus,  the Council would lose credibility as a source of power.  By the same token, deciding not to act  is hardly going to endear the Council to supporters of the the Green movement. (Indeed, though I am no Iran hand, it seems quite likely that this calculation can explain the hard-line tone of  Khamenei's speech at Friday's prayers today, especially when one considers the soft line taken towards Rasfanjani (Hat-tip Nico at the Huffington Post.).   

If such brinksmanship convinces Rasfanjani and the other currently dissident leadership that carrying on with protests is too risky he has won an important battle.  Yet, he will not necessarily have won the war even if the current unrest fades away.  At that point, though few thinking critics of the current regime will believe in the possibility of reforming the Islamic Republic.  From that point on all efforts will be put on a complete overthrow of the existing regime, and thus a far more radical revolution sometime down the road.   If Rafsanani, Mousavi, Karoubi, Khatami and others stand firm though it seems less and less clear to me whether the main institutions of the Islamic Republic will survive even long enough for alternative permanent or quasi-permanent structures are created to replace them.  Everyday Khamenei continues to support Ahmadinejad the question of how much change will satisfy the desires and interests of those who are currently lining up behind Mousavi grows more complicated.  A quick disavowal of the originally proclaimed Ahmadinejad victory a couple of days ago would have kept that question fairly simple and could conceivably even been sufficient that Khamenei remained in his current position.  Now the answers to the question of how much change is enough is growing by the day, creating the key phenomenon that creates radicalization -- hundreds of thousands of people united in what they are against, but not necessarily in agreement about the solution.   This will reach its most extreme conditions if Khamenei and his allies successfully repression of the current challenge by brute force. 

Andrew Sullivan still sees the events in Iran as leading to a limited revolution that ends tyranny because the demands are still limited and grounded in the existing traditions of the Islamic Republic.  For the sake of minimal chaos, I hope that optimism is borne out as Khamenei refuses to budge.  There are some real reasons to worry though.  First, Mousavi may be an effective governor, but he is, at least in Gary Sick's knowledgeable view lacking in charisma, something I have heard about Karoubi as well.  In short, if and when Khamenei and his allies are pushed out of power, they may not last long in the post-revolutionary environment, especially if charismatic figures emerge during the coming struggle, as may well happen.  Another sign of the growing options that seem to be opening up in the minds of Iranians is a return to secularism.  Yesterday a secular patriotic song "Ey Iran" was song publicly see Nico at The Huffington Post 6/19 12:21 AM).

None of this means that protestors won't be satisfied with a more limited agenda, or that even if the revolution takes a more radical turn it will not still create more flexible political structures that help maintain political stability.

Finally, coming back to my post of two days ago, I note that the eminent journalist Robert Fisk seemed to make it clear today that he does not think what has happened so far is a revolution, though it seems to go against his headline yesterday that fear was gone from the streets. Conceivably his assessment today is right, especially if now that tomorrow's planned demonstration has been not been granted permission to go ahead, and hence will be illegal, only a small number of die-hard Mousavi supporters show up.  Frankly though from what I have observed so far from my admittedly distant perch in New York I am doubtful that will happen.  As Juan Cole notes today, Khamenei and his allies do not appear to have gotten their head around the fact that this is a bottom up movement rather than one directed by Mousavi and Karoubi.  There are already martyrs to the cause of greater freedom, and they will be remembered again in a month's time and then at 40 days too.  Sadly, there I fear there will likely be more tomorrow.  

Returning to Ryszard Kapuściński's _Shah of Shahs_

Ryszard Kapuściński, who died last year, was an extraordinarily 

gifted journalists. So much so that he became known in the 

West for his coverage of events, especially in Africa, even 

though he was (until 1981) a member of the Polish United 

Workers' Party and reported under the strictures of the Polish 

Press Agency (PAP).  

His specialty was revolutions, and in 1979 the revolution of the moment was in Iran, which he recounted in his book The Shah 

of Shahs (1983), which again seems pertinent given what is 

going on in Iran right now, not just because it is about Iran, but 

because it gets at the anatomy of revolutions more effectively 

than any book I know. For example he reminds us that a 

revolution is not just a large political event it is one experienced by individuals, who when faced with the threat of the violence 

by authorities suddenly change their standard behavior by not 

being afraid.  At the same time, even as revolutions are about 

high ideals, individual expectations about the meaning of change are also far more mundane, like an expectation of a better job or new shoes.  Finally, he points out that when revolutions succeed there is all too often a lack of practical vision, or helplessness 

among the supporters, which makes revolutions vulnerable to 

suppression by the powers that be on the one hand and hijacking by zealots acting in the name of the new revolutionary order on 

the other.  (My paraphrases do not do justice to Kapuściński's 

presentation of these points, so if you haven't check out the 

book).

In as much as Kapuściński was writing about a successful 

revolution, the explicit story is how the Iranian Revolution 

came about, and more obliquely how how the Islamic 

radicals ended up taking power. Yet implicit throughout the 

book is a story of what happened in Poland in the 1970s that 

led to the Solidarity revolution of 1980-81, and the 

disorganization among Solidarity's supporters (though I hasten 

to add, not necessarily its more realistic leadership) that created

conditions that made the proclamation of Martial Law possible 

without widespread active resistance.

As I write, it is very much unclear whether supporters of reform 

in Iran have the power to turn anger at the stolen election, for 

which a very knowledgeable observer has shown there is ample 

empirical evidence, can be turned into a successful revolution.  

Juan Cole (link above) seems to think Mousavi's experience of 

the aftermath of the 1979 Revolution makes him unlikely to be 

ready and willing to lead an outright rebellion. At the same 

time, the hard-liners who are backing Khamenei cannot shut 

down cell phones and internet access for very long without 

disrupting the lives of their supporters. What is more the

prospect of a serious and organized rebellion once 

communications blackouts are lifted may yet lead more 

pragmatic conservatives to find dealing with Mousavi preferable 

to continuing to back Mousavi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah 

Khamenei. That result would then be akin to the Polish 

roundtable talks which were provoked by the Polish Communist 

leaders' decision that talking to Walesa and Co. was better than 

facing the radical leaders of the wave of strikes in the Spring of 

1988. At the same time, Mousavi should not be confused with 

Walesa, who lead a reform movement from the outside. If there 

is a comparable figure, it is probably Alexander Dubcek, who 

had been an insider and leader, but as a link to the reform

movement of Prague Spring was useful to the leaders of the 

Velvet Revolution, but then easily discarded, a fate that could

befall Mousavi if his opponents hold off on dealing with him

too long. But that is the optimists scenario, at least for those 

on the west. The alternative is the path chosen by the Chinese 

in 1989, hoping that support in the countryside and relative 

lack of awareness of what supporters of Mousavi really want 

will allow a the crackdown to be successful, but then 

Ahmadinejad and Khamenei do not have the same positive 

record on economic development to fall back on.

Bronislaw Geremek (1932-2008)

As I was checking Gazeta Wyborcza this week I noticed several remembrances of Bronislaw Geremek, and discovered I had entirely missed his death in a car accident in July.   I didn't know the man, but in a blog dedicated to history and East Central Europe, Geremek's life deserves comment because he is that rarity, an historian who became an influential politician, but even before coming to adulthood he became wrapped up in history, as a Jewish boy who was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 along with his mother, and sheltered by Stefan Geremek who ultimately married Bronislaw's mother and became his adopted father.  As such, Bronislaw Geremek exemplified the fact that despite the near annihilation of Poland's large Jewish community during World War II it was not quite so ethnically homogenous as Polish nationalists imagined, even after the anti-semitic campaigns of 1968 when most of Poland's remaining Jews were forcibly asked to leave.  

Sometime in the 1980s when I began my love affair with Poland and Solidarity I learned about Geremek as a leading intellectual advisor/member of Solidarity and that he was an historian who had specialized in medieval France.  His focused on social economic history, which fit in with the post-WWII Marxist pre-requisites, but was not really new Poland as the annals school had already been influential in interwar Poland.   To be honest, I never read his stuff as my academic interests took me in a different direction, but while working as a teaching assistant for a leading medieval historian, I saw one of Geremek's books on her bookshelf and we talked briefly about it and she clearly respected his work.

Like other Polish intellectuals and scholars coming of age immediately after World War II, Geremek joined the Polish United Workers Party.  Despite his Jewish heritage, he does not appear to have been chased out of the Party during the anti-semitic campaign of early 1968, but resigned later that year following the Polish cooperation in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.  His path to becoming a political figure in his own right however occurred during the turbulent 1970s when intellectuals and workers began to find common ground. Geremek himself founded the Society of Scholarly lectures, which revived the tradition of the underground flying university of wartime Poland, from which he became an advisor to the Solidarity trade union in 1980, and eventually a participant in the 1989 roundtable talks that laid the groundwork for the transition from Communist rule.  In the new environment Geremek became an active leader of a series of economically liberal centrist parties along with another leading.  When the Law and Justice party tried to impose more rigorous disclosure of politicians' contacts with the Communist era secret police in 2007 , Geremek refused.  As such he will remain a hero of those of us who valued truth and human rights.

   

Remembering the Polish Strikes that Ended Communism

The end of August saw the 28th anniversary of the accords setting up Solidarity and ending 1980 strikes at the shipyards in Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin.  It also marked the 20th anniversary of the last wave of strikes before the leadership of the Polish United Workers Party moved to initiate roundtable talks with the Solidarity opposition.  The 1988 strikes have always been overshadowed by the events of 1980-81 and the end phase of Communist rule in early 1989.  Yet without those strikes the end of Communism in Eastern Europe might not have had a model for the orderly transfer of power from Communism to democratic opposition, which made the revolutions of 1989 so successful and peaceful.  

Nonetheless, incorporating the 1988 strikes into the official narrative of the transition from Communist rule to democracy in Poland has proven difficult.  According to Gazeta Wyborcza while over 2000 people are known to have participated in the 1988 strikes, only 41 people were recommended for presidential recognition for their efforts.  President Kaczynski, however, only ended up honoring 17 (of which only 3 were on the list of known 1988 strikers). It is unclear why the president was so stingy about recognizing he veterans of the 1988 strikes, although the 1988 strikers did not have the same kind of organizational backing as the 1980 strikers.  In fact the old Solidarity leadership was nearly as surprised by the strikes as the government, and had little direct influence on the 1988 strikers.

Having experienced the events of 1980-81, the 1988 strikers were radicalized, and ready to challenge authority in ways the Solidarity leadership of 1980-81 would not have done.  Realizing that the government began to reach out to the established solidarity leadership rather than risk dealing with more uncompromising 1988 strikers, and the solidarity leadership reciprocated.  That tactical decision has put the 1988 strikers in a state of limbo ever since.  Not only were they were unrepresented at the roundtable talks, they did not have a chance to develop as a cohesive group through the common experience of persecution.

Ironically, given the Kaczynski twins disenchantment with the roundtable compromises, one would think they would be eager to champion the radicalism of the 1988 strikers.  Yet, clearly they do not quite know what to do with a group that made their own decisions rather than deferring to the traditional Solidarity opposition. 

The Irony of the US-Polish Missile Defense Agreement

For years the Bush administration rigorously maintained that the plan for a U.S. defense shield base in Poland should not concern Russia, because the base was not intended to threaten Russian missiles, but was to counteract a possible missile launch by Iran.  Poles were sufficiently divided on the US plan that negotiations dragged on and on, despite the fact that Poles are generally deeply pro-American.  Polish opponents of the plan pointed to two key points: first,  the desire not to antagonize Russia unduly; and second, the fact that Poles bear no grudge against Iran.   Then came the crisis in the Caucuses, two weeks ago and within days the Polish premier Donald Trusk finalized the missile defense agreement with the U.S. much to the delight of the Bush administration.  That agreement only reinforced the view that the missile defense system is in fact seen as a way to challenge Russia, and the rhetoric about Iran merely a fig-leaf, not that such a gap between rhetoric and behavior is anything new for the Bush administration.