In Europe, History Repeats Itself

By MICHAEL MANDELBAUM

When dizzying change sweeps the world, foreign-policy experts often turn to history to find precedents for the headlines. They want to reassure themselves that there is nothing entirely new under the sun and perhaps even to find clues to the future. The current upheavals in Eastern Europe have inspired comparisons to another revolutionary year in European history. In recent weeks former presidential National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Columbia University historian Fritz Stern, and editorial writers in the New York Times and Boston Globe have drawn parallels between 1989 and 1848.

The Springtime of Nations, as the 1848 events were known, was a chain reaction of democratic revolutions that erupted against the autocratic rule of hereditary monarchs and in favor of democracy. It began in Paris and spread south to Italy and east to Poland. Crowds gathered in major European cities, including Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Vienna demanding an end to the regimes imposed on them three decades earlier by the victorious kings, emperors and statesmen in the great European war that Napoleon Bonaparte unleashed.

In 1848 as in 1989, men with little or no political experience were suddenly thrust into positions of leadership. Then as now, the European uprisings fanned the flames of nationalism and raised what came to be known as "the German question" -- the possibility that all Germans would unite in one state. In 1848 the widely despised symbol of the old order was the aged Austrian Chancellor, Klemens von Metternich. His flight from Vienna touched off the kind of rejoicing that greeted the opening of the Berlin Wall this November.

But the revolutions of 1848 failed. The leaders of the uprisings fell out among themselves, and the forces of conservatism managed to regain control. Autocrats in Austria and Prussia revoked constitutions they had granted under popular pressure, and Bonaparte's flamboyant nephew, Louis Napoleon, became dictator of France.

There are, however, important and auspicious differences between 1848 and 1989. In 1848 multinational empires dominated Europe. The revolutionaries wanted to dismember them, but could not agree on where the new boundaries should be drawn. Such questions as how far Germany should extend and whether there should be an independent Poland provoked heated debate and considerable bloodshed well into the 20th century. Now they have been settled. At issue this year is not the location of Europe's borders but simply whether Communist or democratic governments should exercise power within them.

In the mid-19th century the great powers opposed the upsurge of democracy. Czar Nicholas I of Russia, for example, sent an army to Hungary to crush the revolt there. By contrast, this year's revolutionaries have had the tacit blessing, and sometimes the explicit encouragement, of the Czar's successor as the most powerful man in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev. By what he has done -- and, perhaps more important, by what he has refrained from doing -- the Soviet leader has made possible the astonishing events of this year.

No less significant has been the restraint of the European revolutionaries themselves. In 1848 armed mobs and soldiers waged pitched battles. The enduring image of that year was the barricade, often stained with blood. This year citizens have also taken to the streets, but the demonstrations in Eastern Europe have been peaceful. The symbols of 1989 are hand-lettered banners, candles, flowers and, in Prague, jingling key chains. So far there have been no Molotov cocktails exploding in city squares or Communist functionaries swinging from lampposts. In East Germany the protesters have barely mentioned the Soviet Union, and they have been careful not to advocate leaving the Warsaw Pact. Such forbearance not only is essential to avoid provoking Soviet intervention but also suggests that the revolutionaries of 1989 possess the patience and ingenuity that will be necessary to build democratic political institutions and make the painful transition from planned to market economies.

Their discipline and sophistication may also mean that the nature of revolution is undergoing a revolution. By coincidence, Karl Marx published (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto in 1848. The events of that year helped inspire the tradition that now bears his name. Marxist revolution came to mean conspiratorial elites forcibly seizing power and reshaping society to their own purposes. The consequences have been political oppression, economic backwardness, rampant militarism and moral ruin.

In the streets of Eastern Europe this year, a different revolutionary tradition has replaced the old one. With its respect for nonviolence and the rule of law, and even a degree of forgiveness for those who have abused power, it is the tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Lech Walesa. If that spirit is sustained, this year's events, unlike those of 1848, could lead to the establishment of stable, durable and peaceful democracies.