What is the role of former dissidents in current political life?
A number of political scientists, sociologists, historians and other academics gathered earlier this week at an international conference in Prague to discuss what democracy means in Europe. The conference was organized by the French Social Science Research Centre and tried to tackle questions like: how important is it to vote? What forms of political representation are most democratic? One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was on the role played by former dissidents in the current political life of those EU member countries that were previously under totalitarian rule.
"Vaclav Havel in the former Czechoslovakia was a great symbol - a philosopher king - the dissident who became the president. That was the great moment. The fact that he lasted as president for 13 years in a way gave the apparent illusion that the dissidents were still there, that they were still in charge of politics. But that was really a deception, because in actual fact the dissidents have left the stage very early on; in Poland in 1993, in the Czech Republic in 1992 when the Civic Movement was defeated in the elections. Almost everywhere they either disappeared from politics or as individuals continued in a variety of parties but without actually carrying on with the legacy of the previous period."
According to Jacques Rupnik former dissidents did not succeed in active politics because they were not ready to conform to a system based on political parties.
"They were not best equipped to carry on politics as party politics - politics as a struggle for power. They had the democratic political culture but they didn't have the structure, they didn't have the party machine. Those who succeeded ironically in the politically game were often the former Communist parties which quite successfully won elections in a number of Central and East European Countries."
Polish sociologist Marek Ziolkowski, confirms this, but he adds that a lot of Polish dissidents still influence politics as journalists or civil society activists.
"Due to some stupid mistakes made by the post-solidarity parties the communists regained power as early as 1993. Now our government is created by the former communists. Naturally there is the Left Alliance, nevertheless the dissidents are not in the government but they are still rather visible especially in the media and in some elite groups. They are visible in the social discourse."
Marek Tomin, who moved in Czech dissident circles before 1989 says the situation in the Czech Republic, is quite similar.
"Being a dissident is not a profession and it never has been a profession. The dissidents always had all kind of professions from being manual workers to scholars, academics and philosophers. Most of the dissidents who signed for example Charter 77 have gone back to doing what they would have been doing all their lives if the state hadn't interfered. So a lot of the dissidents have gone back to academia, back to writing books, journalism, some have gone back to politics."
Jacques Rupnik agrees that the role of former dissidents has been mainly to bring new impulses to political debate, to formulate ideas for trans-European dialogue - a process that continues to be important with EU enlargement.
"All these movements were creating impulses, asking questions, formulating a certain strong thesis that had an echo in Western Europe. Unfortunately that debate got somewhat lost after 1989. We had freedom, we could travel, we could exchange, we could meet at conferences but somehow there was not a real trans-European debate. Now that enlargement has taken place we realize this is a great weakness. As we see; the public is not interested, the public does not understand, there is the question about the referendum, about the constitution. So in a way the message of the dissidents is still relevant and some of them still play a part in trying to call attention to the European legacy of the dissident movement."
