Previous perspectives

By Dr. Jiri Valenta and Leni Valenta

Just before Christmas, something remarkable happened. The same day saw the deaths of the leaders of two countries that once had similar political systems. One was democrat Vaclav Havel, a former playwright turned dissident, turned president of Czechoslovakia, turned the Czech Republic. The other was Kim Jong Il, of communist North Korea, a nuclear power and global pariah.

In Czechoslovakia, there were several days of mourning, as well as worldwide tributes to Havel for his humanity and courage, and to the Czech Republic as one of the most successful post-communist nations of Eastern Europe. Something not noted was that one of Havel’s first trips abroad was to Nicaragua. A year after Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista vanguard, pro-Leninist regime in Nicaragua was defeated in a 1989 election, Havel came to encourage Nicaragua’s continued democratization.

Havel also supported the democratic movement in Cuba. As head of a Czech think tank at that time under former Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier, I assisted in Czechoslovakia’s decision to cease representing Cuban interests in the United States. We worked closely with the Cuban exile community in the U.S., and after Havel’s December 1990 meeting with Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Czech subsidies to Cuba were eased. In 1999, Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Palous backed a United Nations Human Rights Commission decision to condemn Castro’s persecution of dissidents. It passed by one vote. Meanwhile, Havel re-established traditional Czech ties with the fellow democratic nation of Israel.

On the same day that Havel passed away, the mourning of the “Dear Leader” in North Korea reached the same Olympian heights of frenzied mourning that accompanied the death of Stalin in 1953. Amid the breast-beating and shirt-tearing, the world shuddered as a new, untried young leader took his beleaguered country’s helm. Like Stalin, Kim Jong Il denied human rights to his people, starving them while militarizing and nuclearizing his regime, and ringing them with an iron. Witnessing the mass hysteria leads one to the definition of consummate evil as such brutal and dictatorial control over the lives of others that, ironically, one is worshipped like a God.

As the new year begins, one can reflect on a post-communist world divided in varying degrees between two extremes. Two decades ago, when Russia faced the crisis of communism, the hope in the free world was a gradual movement towards the paradigm of capitalism, prosperity and democracy. Since that time, we have indeed seen the successful, democratic transformation of many Eastern European countries and former Soviet republics. But we have also seen the emergence of various hybrids of post-communism, the most prominent example being Russia. There, Vladimir Putin has largely aborted the democratic transition begun by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, while seeking to restore the empire. China has retained communist orthodoxy complemented by the successful market reforms of state capitalism. The Ukraine has regressed from a short burst of freedom to authoritarianism, while Byelorussia still treads the Stalinist dark path.

Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere, with the discrete advice of communist Cuba and the dinero of Venezuela, Ortega has subverted the instruments of Nicaraguan democracy to the ends of permanent power and authoritarian populism. During Russia’s brutal 2008 war with democratic Georgia over the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, among the few countries in the world that overtly supported Russia were Venezuela and Nicaragua.

As 2012 begins, the world now faces the global crisis of capitalism, coupled with the U.S.’ exhaustion from fighting two wars abroad. With many countries – including the Arab world, Russia and even the U.S. – seething and bubbling with social unrest, the future has become a Damocles sword. Yet unrest can cut both ways, for good or ill.

I thus recall words from a 1970 Havel play: “It’s disgusting!” two of his characters lament. “The nation is governed by scum! Bowing and fear … nobody’s coming to our rescue.” 

At that time, no one anticipated that Havel’s Charter 77 dissidents would ever take power. But they did. Indeed, Havel’s characters were proven wrong by Havel’s presidency. Thus going forward, the irrepressible, not-to-be-denied human will to affect that rescue is what we must bear in mind.

Newly settled in Costa Rica with his playwright wife, Leni, Dr. Jiri Valenta is a long-standing member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. Among his published works are “Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia” and “Conflict in Nicaragua.” See more at www.jvlv.net.

Correction: Jiri and Leni Valenta’s website originally was written incorrectly.