A Doctor for Young Democracies

By DAVID AIKMAN/WASHINGTON Allen Weinstein

Q. So many of the leaders of the world's new emerging democracies are people who, in one way or another, have had their lives profoundly affected by the dictatorships they are replacing. Is this pattern natural? Necessary? Useful?

A. It is useful in important therapeutic ways. It is useful to have leaders such as Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel, Poland's Lech Walesa, the Philippines' Corazon Aquino, Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro, who have all suffered directly, in order to deal with the challenge of change for a society at that moment. There is an extraordinary burden that ordinary people endure when they recognize, perhaps after decades of having been submissive, slavelike, that freedom calls for a different set of imperatives, for a certain capacity for individual decision, judgment and action. I also think it's rather important, for the creation of a strong civic culture, for there to have been some type of civic protest or movement that in the worst days of dictatorship bore witness to more humane values. I do not know of any society that will survive as a democracy that does not possess in some fashion or other that sort of civic culture.

Q. Is there anything that could cause a reversal of the democratic revolution in Eastern Europe?

A. In its underlying directions, no. But in the pace and processes of change, I suppose that a great danger in virtually all the East European countries is the trauma of the transition to a market economy. How can it be done in a way that does not leave a large percentage of the population so frustrated and bitter about the slow pace that they turn to more undemocratic leaders at the extremes? Think about the general situation. How often, in the history of the world, do you have so many simultaneous revolutions occurring, with people who are trying to change their political and economic structures and cultural norms, all simultaneously? They have precious little time to rest and focus on any of these matters.

Q. Do you see a danger of Eastern Europe being embroiled in ancient ethnic hatreds?

A. 1991 is not 1914. There exists a political, economic and cultural Europe with institutional underpinnings -- the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Commission on Human Rights and other institutions -- to which grievances can be and have been brought. Even in the Soviet Union, putting aside tragedies like the Armenian-Azerbaijani strife, the recent rapprochement between Yeltsin and his eight republican leader-colleagues and Gorbachev, however temporary it may be, suggests that people have begun to recognize a more pluralistic political culture than had existed a year ago.

Q. Can these positive trends be reversed by a determined show of will?

A. No, no, absolutely not. One must recognize, I suppose, as Arthur Schlesinger once said about the American Civil War, that history is not a redeemer promising to solve all problems in time. The situation could get worse in every one of these countries. And keep in mind another element here, the Andy Warhol line about everyone being a celebrity for 15 minutes. Well, Eastern Europe has had its 15 minutes. But you can't tear the Berlin Wall down a second time.

Q. One of the staples of thrillers in the past two decades has been the idea of a secret Nazi order waiting to move back into place in Germany . . .

A. . . . Right, Sir Laurence Olivier as the world's ultimate dentist.

Q. Is there any possibility of a similar kind of wicked network of ex- communist intelligence agents plotting to destroy democracy?

A. In some of these countries the changes that have occurred have been so recent that there are undoubtedly groups within the intelligence community waiting their turn, looking for ways to influence events. But this concept of some disgruntled outfit out there in the backwoods -- well, we have them in Idaho, after all, our own sort of neo-Nazis and survivalists waiting for their moment.

Q. Obviously, there is a need to protect free and open societies from people dedicated to destroying them. But is there some formula for a government that would make it strong enough to protect itself from subversion, but not so strong that it becomes oppressive?

A. I think oversight by a society's elected officials is absolutely critical. In the U.S. there is both presidential and congressional oversight. In the case of some of the newer democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, there is barely adequate oversight. President Zhelyu Zhelev of Bulgaria himself has complained that he doesn't know whether the KGB is still active in Bulgaria.

One secret weapon that citizens in emerging democracies have is transparency, a consistency between what they say in private and what they pronounce in public. It really knocks the socks off any paranoid intelligence officer who is waiting for that conspiracy to emerge in private. It has been a source of amazement to me how quickly the fear of arbitrary authority has disappeared throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

Q. You have been invited to examine Bulgaria's official archives in connection with the attempted assassination of the Pope in 1981. Why do you feel it is so important for the Bulgarians, a decade later, to pursue the question of their possible involvement?

A. It is not so important to know the truth or falsity of any specific theory of the case -- the Bulgarian connection, or KGB connection, or Turkish mafia connection, or any other. I think it is important to know what can be known, given the fact that the Pope, arguably the most important religious figure in the 20th century, might have been snuffed out even before he began his most important work. It is an inquiry for history. President Zhelev recognizes that the inquiry into the attempted assassination of the Pope is really part of a broader inquiry into Bulgaria's history of the past 50 years, at least as far as the role played by the intelligence services. When a Communist deputy in the Bulgarian National Assembly attacked my friend Zhelev, saying "Why can't we just turn the page?" Zhelev replied, "Absolutely. But first we must read it."

Q. What would be the impact if it turned out that there was a KGB smoking gun indicating links between Moscow and Sofia in this assassination attempt?

A. There are relatively few smoking guns in history. I think at this point all I would care to say is that we will try to take the evidence as far as it will carry us. And given the limitations of evidence, it may not carry us all the way we would like to go.

Q. Is Africa going democratic?

A. The whole political climate in Africa has been affected by the issues of democratization and the changeover from state-dominated economies to mixed- market economies. You have profound problems in places like Zaire and Kenya, but the continent is on the move in the direction of where the West has been.

Q. Why does there seem to be a much greater resistance to the idea of a civic culture with democratic political values in the Arab world than in, say, black Africa?

A. Partly because of the strength of the Arab hereditary monarchies or the military regimes or one-party regimes that have replaced them, partly the extraordinary range of internal conflicts within the region, partly the tug of Islamic fundamentalism. But even in a country like Iran, you see a remarkable range of disagreement that has internalized pluralism. There are patterns emerging that create a kind of rough balance between more or less secular forces, even within the Islamic framework of the country. You are finding a similar evolution in Jordan.

Kuwait offers an opportunity, but I'm not certain that Kuwaitis may not be in the process of missing it. Now is the time when they should be restructuring their constitution, developing some kind of representative assembly and providing for other mechanisms, including media dissent, that allow a safety valve for the expression of discontent without shooting those in power. I realize they have very pressing economic and other problems. But I've never known a society in the history of the world where the quest for bread and the quest for freedom were necessarily in conflict with the quest for some type of economic stability. In most countries, at the most basic level, ordinary people want both. People cannot afford not to have a democracy. It is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

Q. What do you make of the current debate on American college campuses over "political correctness"? How does this mesh with democratic values?

A. What worries me is the narrowing of discourse on a number of university campuses, the narrowing in the range of philosophical perspectives, the abandonment of the masterworks of Western civilization.

Q. But how do you account for the fact that when so much of the world is embracing the idea of freedom, some university faculties in the largest Western democracy are promoting exactly opposite values?

A. Irving Howe once called a certain type of faculty member a "gorilla with tenure." You can confront the arguments for political correctness on campus, but the struggle has to be constant. There will always be people who try to enforce a lazy intellectual position. The best antidote would be to expose the holders of those views to what a real dictatorship is like and what happens to people when a set of ideas is enforced.

Q. How did you get into this business?

A. I first organized a citizens' group, including Soviet dissidents in exile, that went to Madrid in 1980 for the human rights follow-up to the Helsinki agreement. In 1983 I coordinated a study group that led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy, of which I was the first president. But I resigned to go into the "private sector" ((to work)) on democracy. I felt -- and feel -- more comfortable designing programs than giving out money.