monuPSTEINEPART 2

WHAT

HAPPENED?

RB: Welcome to our “virtual” panel discussion. I was fortunate enough to interview these very special individuals who would otherwise have never met to discuss the fall of communism in Europe, its roots, and its consequences. Many books have been written on this subject but so far nobody has attempted to connect all the dots in trying to paint the big picture of this event. I believe that our discussion will help to do just that. Let’s start with a question that has troubled me for a long time: Why nobody talks about the collapse of communism in Europe? It looks like there is no interest at all in examining what really happened. Why doesn’t anybody care?

Joseph Douglass:

Why doesn’t anybody talk about the end of communism? Does anybody care about it? I think that a different approach is not so much that they don’t care about it but that they are relieved it ever took place. And now that they are relieved about it they can stop worrying about it and forget about it. One of the most interesting aspects in that regard that I found was the reaction of varied conservative political followers to the death, or alleged death, of communism. Many of them were very strong anti-communists. They understood the duplicity, which resides inherently within the communist system, yet they were among the first people who wanted to go out and champion the success of their own strategy in bringing about the demise of communism. I have not seen one of them ever stop to wonder what really triggered its demise and self-destruction. Because what bureaucracy ever self-destructs? It is particularly true in the case of communism, because if there is one thing that communism is noted for, particularly in the Soviet Union, it’s centralized planning. They never do anything that seems at odds with the plan.  So if they are going to self-destruct then there must be a plan behind it. But none of the former anti-communists in academia and in the government that I have seen have ever asked: “Was there a plan, or wasn’t there?” This was very carefully orchestrated and obviously was designed from within. We even had indication that something was coming. For example, one of the most notable spokesman for the Soviet system, professor Georgi Arbatov1, had written a number of articles which appeared in the Western press, in which he said: “We are going to do terrible things to you. We are going to take away your threat“. And these comments came a year before the system really started to self-destruct. And the question in my mind has always been: “Well, why?“ Obviously it was planned. What was the plan? Yet it was something that even the most ardent anti-communists don’t want to address. Rather, (the attitude was): “communism is dead, let’s applaud and take credit.” And that seems to be the way it progressed.

RB: So, how would you describe the end of communism? What happened?

Andelo Codevilla: 

In the United States during the 1980’s, there was a debate about whether or not the Soviet Union was going to be reformed. Most, especially on the left, the so-called “right thinking” people in this country, thought that the Soviet Union was going to reform. Indeed, President Bush staked his presidency on the idea that Gorbachev was a reformer and that he would, and could, change the Soviet Union into something like the West. Others, including myself, and most certainly such wise men as Richard Pipes2 and Robert Conquest3, fully expected that the Soviet Union would die some day. We didn’t expect it would happen so soon. We fully expected it could die or perhaps that it might live on to cause us a great deal more trouble. We certainly excluded the possibility that it could reform. We believed that it would live and die as Stalin4 and Lenin5 set it up but that it could not reform.

Robert Gates:

I think that the process of reform under Gorbachev was intended to adapt to a new world and to a new level of competition. However, one problem that arose was the economy. While Gorbachev was prepared to dismantle the Stalinist economic bureaucracy that had been built in the 1930's, he didn't know what to put in its place. And so one of the results was a steady decline of the Soviet economy during the entire time he was in charge to the point when it essentially fell apart. The other mistake he made was that he had little understanding of real sources of Soviet power in the Communist Party. When he took away the fear, he took away the terror and allowed for brotherly dialogue. As a result, all the frustration and anger of nationalities outside and even within Russia exploded.  And so in my book I refer to Gorbachev as the author of a law of unattended consequences. He intended to modernize the Soviet Union, to make the Communist Party more responsive to the people, and to get rid of the bureaucracy and an economy that was holding back growth. But because he didn't realize, didn't know, what to replace that economic bureaucracy with, he remained a communist to the very end. And so he couldn’t enact the semi-market reforms that have taken place in China and elsewhere and that's why the economy collapsed.  So there was a process of internal collapse in the Soviet Union. But the pressure for him to begin that process of reform and change, I think, was from the outside. Not from the inside. But then it began the process of internal disintegration that accumulated at its own pace.

Tennent Bagley:

When Perestroika started I was, of course, deeply influenced by my own experience with KGB officers who had defected to the West and became our allies and friends and helpers.  One thing they all agreed on was that if fear was lifted from the Soviet people ever, even in a small way, the end of the regime was close. It could not subsist without genuine fear. Fear has been generated by the KGB and its surrogate organizations throughout Soviet society, which has made sure that nobody thinks differently or has wrong contacts, let alone plots against the regime or proposes change. The word dissident was for people who thought otherwise. This was a danger. And my sources, or my friends, all felt that without this fear, without this system being intact, the Soviet regime would be doomed. When Perestroika came they saw it as the end of the Soviet regime. They thought it was inevitable. I was more skeptical. They were right and I was wrong and certainly it didn’t take very long, only about five, six, seven years for the regime to fall. I think that Perestroika was an attempt to preserve the Soviet regime and it was ill considered because the Soviet regime could not have been preserved, except through the position of fear and terror. These words are not an overstatement for what we are talking about.

Ludvík Žifčák:

The system that was in place at that time was over 40 years old and needed a change. Everybody felt that. People in the communist party felt that, people in the military felt that, everyone felt that. Of course nobody was thinking about changes, which would transform the political system, changes meant to replace people at the top of the government.

Many people think or believe that in 1989 there was a mass national uprising. Based on what I did, or where I worked, I am convinced that there was no uprising at all. One political system was just replaced by another political system, with help from other elements, of course. It’s hard to find out today who wrote the script but it definitely wasn’t written in America. America just jumped on the bandwagon at the end. So the script was most likely written in the East.

Oleg Gordievsky:

The communist system was not a viable system. You can't direct a whole growing economy from just one group of people. Only a free economy is viable.  So the more the Soviet Union got bigger and more sophisticated, the more difficult it was to exist as a viable economic system. Apart from that, Moscow, the Kremlin, spent nearly 50% of the national income on the military so the country was drained of resources. That's why in the 70's and 80's it was clear that the communist system, if nothing was done, would collapse. And it collapsed. It didn’t collapse like a castle made of cards. The right circumstances were needed. And these circumstances were plentiful.  Firstly, there was the low price of oil in the early 80's. Secondly, there was the very impressive military program under President Reagan. Reagan started the SDI program, or Strategic Defense Initiative6, which was intended to protect against missiles in space. It was an extremely expensive system.  So when the Soviet specialists looked at it they said: “We can't compete with the Americans now. We need to do something. Let's try some reforms. Then they started reforms, very weak reforms, to improve the Soviet Union. Not to dissolve it, not to release Eastern Europe, but only to improve the communist system. The Reforms acquired a momentum of their own and eventually led to the collapse of the Eastern European countries and then, three years later, the Soviet Union.

Jeff Nyquist:

The short version is, the communist system in the Soviet Union and other countries, Warsaw Pact countries, involved a controlled opposition. It was very important under communism that they controlled people who were opposing the regime. They could eliminate some people, they could put some people in prison, but they had to make sure they could lead a kind of opposition themselves. And what happened in those countries was that they realized that they could lead the opposition to power and create false democracies under control of the KGB. Now people can debate to what extent this actually worked. I had defectors, people who defected after the changes, telling me that there was definitely a plan that maybe didn’t go exactly the way they expected it to go. But in essence, the origin of the changes that led to the collapse of communism was Moscow. It was planned many, many years in advance and they brought it off. That’s the explanation of the changes. It wasn’t a spontaneous uprising of the people to sweep the communist regime away. That was never going to happen.

Petr Cibulka:

The so-called “Privatization Revolution” in Czechoslovakia was, in reality, the privatization coup d'état of KGB, GRU, and their Czech and Slovak associates. That’s all that can be said about the Velvet Revolution7.

Ion Pacepa:

The KGB played a much bigger—and largely unknown—role in the history of the Kremlin. Behind a facade of Marxism, the KGB quietly took precedence over the original tools of ideology, and became the rulers’ main instrument for running the country. Only a handful of people who were working in extremely close proximity to the top Soviet bloc rulers knew that the Communist Party ended up playing no greater role in the Soviet Union than did Lenin's embalmed corpse in the Kremlin mausoleum.

Vladimir Bukovsky:

Well, there are many theories as to what happened. Some of them are official. A kind of popular wisdom would tell us that people were fed up and used the opportunity given to them by the policies of Gorbachev to move further than was visualized in the Kremlin. It's all true, except there were some other factors which normally are not discussed. And if you try discussing them in the West, they look at you with disbelief.  Namely, that it was planned in Moscow by the end of 1988 to change the hard line communist regimes in Eastern Europe and to find a replacement for them of a more liberal variety. It never went further then an idea of finding some local Gorbachevs and placing them in power. But it was nevertheless done, as it was a popular revolution--not just pulled off from Moscow. It would itself antagonize the population. At least it looked like local initiative. If not an outright revolution, at least some kind of internal development brought it up. That's on one hand. On the other hand, of course, critical to all of Eastern European and Central European changes was Germany. And it was decided very early in Gorbachev's presidency that the unification of Germany would be the next move provided that unification would happen on their terms rather then on the conditions of the West.  Namely, Germany should become demilitarized, socially democratic, out of NATO, and practically in hands of the Soviet Union. That was the original plan. Of course, reality introduced some corrections into this plan. The Initial stages of the implementation of the project were quite successful as far as they concerned replacing and removing hard line leaders in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as well as some other countries. It wasn't very difficult to achieve. Moscow traditionally appointed these guys and had all the influences and trusted people in the ruling circles. So it was not very difficult and the scenario was a kind of fake revolution. The whole plan went wrong in the second stage when they wanted to replace these leaders with their own chosen candidates. And that didn't happen anywhere except Romania. In Romania they wanted Iliesku8 and Iliesku came to power. In other countries they meant for someone else to take power. They didn't endorse the presidency of Václav Havel9, or whoever was in Hungary, non-communist governments and so on. On the other hand, initially the scenario in Poland was quite successful. The Round Table agreement was very good for communists. It would leave them in the hands of some 65% of the legislative power and a lot of administrative power. But at the same time, even in Poland, the communists were rapidly losing control.  The senate elections were a disaster for communists. They got what they agreed on in the round table agreement – 65 percent of legislation - but it didn't look like it would last for long and was not a guarantee to them for total control. So they were complaining that they were losing ground very quickly. What we had there was a runaway operation conducted from Moscow, which brought changes much more radical then what was visualized by the planners. Essentially, they lost control in most of the countries to a large degree. That, of course, backfired again and had ramifications in the Soviet Union itself. The tendencies for separation inspired by a number of examples in Eastern Europe became really unbearable for the center. And pretty soon the Soviet Union would have more or less the same scenario as Eastern Europe.  Communists tried to retain power and there were people trying to pull them out. The separation of the Baltic states became inevitable. The attempted coup in 1991, to our knowledge, was not a coup. It was actually the decision of the leadership to introduce the marital law in Poland. But there was a lot of disagreement between them on how to do it. Gorbachev didn't want to be perceived as the one doing it. He wanted it to be done in his absence in order to not spoil his shining image in the West. Of course, without the commander in chief, the army didn't do it. From what we are told, the KGB wasn't as decisive as it should have been. The whole scene actually collapsed in three days, ridiculously quickly. So after that it was only a matter of time. The other Republics definitely wanted independence, and the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991. That's all the result of their own operation, of their own attempt to modernize the communist system and salvage socialism as much as they could manage. History proved them wrong. Socialism turned out to be impervious to reform. You can cancel it, you can scrap it, but you can't reform it.  You cannot restructure it. And the whole system as it was build by Stalin in Europe did not put up with that kind of internal pressure.

Robert Gates:

I think Gorbachev evolved over time. I think that when he took power that was exactly where he was; maintaining Soviet power, maintaining the power of the communist party. He had some ideas for modest changes in the economy but the problem is that, as the modest measures he tried to take failed, he would then take further measures and was drawn into a process of accelerating change that I don't think he had any anticipation he would do when he became the General Secretary and President of the Soviet Union. I think this was an evolutionary process for Gorbachev, as the things he was trying to do revitalizing the Soviet Union were failing, he would take more and more far reaching steps until he suddenly found himself very far down the road of reform. (Note, so far the paragraph has essentially stated the same thing twice.  Find a way to pare down) I don't think he had a plan or strategy that would move him from where he started as Andropov's and Suslov's10 protégé to the fairly radical reformer he eventually became. I think that it was an evolutionary process for him that was accelerated by failure.

RB: So, in contrary to the official version people were told by the Media, can we say that the end of communism was set up?

Jeff Nyquist:

I don’t think it was a spontaneous event. I think this much can clearly be said. We got testimony from various countries that the communists themselves, the leadership of these countries, including Gorbachev himself were the authors of these changes. The KGB and the secret police were involved in these changes in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, if not in all the countries that changed at a time. So when we look closely at these events, whether it be through the book Andrej Kordiesku wrote about Romania, testimony of the Solidarity11 that is coming out of Poland, or statements of people I know in the Czech Republic, we see that in each of these countries revolutions were planned in advance, arrangements had been made by the KGB, the communists, and by structures that existed and ruled the country.  This was even true in East Germany. They were changing their formation. The communist block was not a success. Neither was the Warsaw Pact or the Soviet Emporium. So they had to change their formation in order to get the things they needed, which were basically technology, money, and freedom to trade more with other countries because they were restricted. Being the enemy of the free world, communist countries suffered a lot of barriers. There were barriers put up against what they wanted to do. It is very difficult to function on many levels when other countries are suspicious of your activity. So it got away from these suspicions and the West was perfectly glad to claim victory in the Cold War. But did the secret structures of the communist system go away? Did they give up their goal? No. Clearly you can see that the activities of former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, are sinister. And what he does diplomatically, economically and in terms of the internal politics of Russia is also sinister. People are noticing this. But is anybody really going to change the West and say OK the new Cold War is ignited, this guy is dangerous? Maybe these communist structures are re-emerging now and we have a new trend, we have a new problem? I don’t think so. I don’t think anybody has the courage to go that route. At least not yet.

Vladimir Bukovsky:

Well, the changes were very well prepared in advance. There were some contingency plans, preparations of second and third echelons, leaders, and elites. It was done slowly, starting at the end of the 70's, and through the 80's, particularly under Jury Andropov. The whole plan was worked out then, Gorbachev was not one of its creators. He was not a mastermind. He was chosen as the most likely fellow to implement them. He looked good on television. He was young. He could speak without paper, without reading. He was a smooth operator, but he was not a father of the whole plan. The plan came to him, it was handed to him from the previous Soviet leadership. And of course this plan would visualize all sorts of scenarios and was implemented in the beginning of 90's, particularly from 1990-91.A lot of these things were going on underground with power structures, secret police, and things like that involved. A huge amount of capital was being pumped out of confident safety deposits to somewhere abroad in order to be used later for coming back. Much of it was actually lost in the process because we don't know who was in charge of it, you know. Not all the money remained under control.  There was a lot of embezzlement and corruption. But as far as one can judge, the bulk of it apparently still remains at the disposal of this top nomenclature. It was what they called in Russia, and I suppose in Eastern Europe, a soft landing. It wasn't a crash, it was a soft landing. It was well prepared, which allowed the nomenclature to retain its position and to come back a few years later.

RB: What motivated Soviets to even start this process?

Vladimir Bukovsky:

Well, by the end of the 70's they saw their policies in shambles. The policy of détente12 was a complete fiasco, a complete collapse. It didn't work. It backfired on them both in terms of human rights and in terms of external problems such as the crises in Poland, and Afghanistan. These things combined to make the policy of détente impossible. They actually found themselves in isolations a result of the crackdown in Poland and the occupation of Afghanistan. So they had to rethink the whole thing. They had to find a better solution, a more convincing, more lasting, more influential solution in order to spread their influence throughout Europe in a peaceful way. At the same time, at the beginning of the 80's they realized they were in a deep economic crisis. The fact was, their economic base was too small for their political ambitions. Their ambitions were global. Maintaining friendly regimes in Angola, Cuba, and Vietnam, not to mention Afghanistan and so on, became an unbearable burden for them. They knew that they also had to do something to adjust their economic production; their economic development. Of course, they never even considered abandoning socialism as a concept. All the adjustments were supposed to be within the system and within the framework of socialism13. They hoped to achieve a certain agreement with the West on so-called regional conflicts to prevent from being toppled by its forces and to freeze the situation into some kind of local détente or something like that. They also needed urgently to stop the arms race. That was the other burden on the economy that they couldn't sustain anymore. During the early period when the West was rearming, the Soviets followed suit because they were scared of losing their military advantage in the world. . However, economically they were incapable of doing that, particularly when the idea of "Star Wars", or Strategic Defense Initiative, came along. They suddenly realized that it' was not just a matter of money. Technologically, they would not be able to copy it. That was scary for them. If that was reality, the massive army that they had accumulated in Europe just to threaten the world into obedience would have no effect anymore. They would not be capable of delivering enough force to generate fear and détente. That was the main reason behind their strategic thinking. That's why they had to change a lot of things, not only in their foreign policy, but also inside the Soviet Union to modernize it economically and make it more productive.

Jeff Nyquist:

I think that Stalin’s system was ultimately doomed. It was built on very harsh repression, the elimination of people, and the secret police watching everybody. This created a very tense atmosphere. In the long run it wasn’t sustainable. I mean, you see what happened in North Korea. The more isolated the nation, the more rigid the totalitarianism. North Korea became more and more backwards.  It can’t even feed itself. We know that many, many countless numbers starved to death in North Korea back in 1990’s. Russia was faced with the same problem under Stalin, and communist China under Mao14. These regimes needed to change in order to open themselves to the West to get money, to open trade, and to get the kind of things they needed to survive. And as long as Russia was ruled by the hard-line type of Stalinism present in the Cold War, they couldn’t do that. After Stalin died, one of the things Khrushchev15 and other leaders wanted to talk about was peaceful coexistence. They wanted things to soften. They wanted the Cold War to soften not because they didn’t want to destroy America, but because they needed money, trade, and technology. They needed to keep up and they couldn’t do it with their insulated system. They had to be plugged into the world market somehow. And so Khrushchev had his peace coexistence, Brezhnev16 had détente, and Gorbachev had his Perestroika and Glasnost17. Repeatedly, they were returning to the very same theme; they were the good guys, they wanted to have more capitalism, they wanted to have a conversation with the West, they wanted to loosen things up. It wasn’t because they were giving up their goals as communists. It was because they needed to have resources and technology to continue to compete on both a military and economic level.

RB:

Let me ask this. How much is reality different from what the public is served by the media?

Tennent Bagley:

How different is what the public sees when compared to what is actually going on?

There is always an aspect of it that isn’t known because it is not interesting, except to technicians and specialists like those who are in professional positions. There isn’t, in my opinion, an easy way to say what is and what isn’t real, what is or isn’t known. There is a conspiracy theory on almost everything from the death of President Kennedy to many other things, and I personally think that the truth is hidden almost everywhere. Still, the idea that there is some master plan and some wicked hand pushing this kind of deception and pushing this kind of other reality is something that I personally reject until I see the evidence. Now, in the case of the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, there surely was a cause? That was not known. And in the cases of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and certainly Poland, things were not as clear-cut as it may seem in the newspapers. There was a different truth in this respect, and that’s the truth that was so well hidden that I don’t know if it ever will come out fully. In whose interest was the change of the government in Eastern Europe? Sure, it’s easy to say that the Soviet regime wanted to keep their Eastern European Empire, but did it or did it not see the handwriting on the wall and see the need to accommodate to changes regardless of whether they wanted to or not. In that respect there is a possibility that they were planning for this inevitable future and using it to preserve their own power, their own money, and to continue the corruption they were already living under with the current communist regime. And to continue, if you like, in the possession of power, from now on it would have to be a secret power and the power of money, not the power of government possession. In general, there is a different truth in most cases. I think everyone knows that from his or her own personal experiences. Things are not always what they appear to be. That’s obviously what I am talking about.

Angelo Codevilla:

Reality in Russia and Eastern Europe is, of course, vastly different. Beginning with the kind of people, the kinds of expectations that are there. For example, we look at the map and see that the countries surrounding Russia are independent. Well, they are legally independent, but the reality, which very few people in America realize, is that almost no Russians conceive the independence of Ukraine as being legitimate. They simply regard these places as rough runaway provinces that sooner or later will be brought back to the Russian Empire. That is simply one of many, many realities. They also don’t realize that the economy that developed in the post-Soviet space is not really free and bears a lot of resemblance to the old Soviet economy. Namely, that like the old Soviet economy, it has very little to do with production to the satisfaction of consumers but rather has everything to do with the appropriation of advantages for those in power for their own wealth, and the perpetuation of their own power. It is not about the production and satisfaction of consumers but rather about the gain of power and the appropriation of privileges.

RB: Well, did the West win the Cold War or not?

Jeff Nyquist:

You have to ask why the West was silent and went about its business without that much concern for the hundred million that died under communism18. The West is involved in consumption, in its own life; its own world. The other world, the world of totalitarian countries, is something we have no deep emotional or intellectual interest or connection to. So the West, in a sense, is its own world as the East is its own world. And, you know, with their nuclear weapons and with our nuclear weapons aimed at each other, it wasn’t going to come to war. And in this country, people lived as if the war was not going to come. They just lived for the moment. We didn’t build bomb shelters, we didn’t prepare, and now we believe it worked out for the best. Communism has collapsed. And we don’t want to scrutinize how that collapse happened or who really was behind it. We don’t want to look at it too closely because it’s just like the good news. It makes us feel good and lets the stock market rise and lets the peace dividend be invested in something we really care about. I think that is where we’re coming from in the West.

I don’t think anybody won it. I think it’s still going on. The United States lost the Vietnam War, lost South-East Asia, basically failed to stop communism in Africa, actually stopped it from emerging in Venezuela, but now it’s gaining strength in South America. How can you say that the Cold War was won? I don’t see any victory here except the one that was proclaimed in Moscow. ‘OK, the Russians said you won, we give up.’ Did that really happen? Is that really a believable thing? I mean people, do millions of communists worldwide just say, you know, we are not communists anymore, we believe in capitalism? I don’t think they have changed their beliefs. I think they have just told us they changed their beliefs because it’s more convenient and it’s easier for them to do what they want to do that way. And besides, communism is just a word. Get rid of the word. Let’s put it this way, Charles Manson19 was let out of prison and moved into your neighborhood. He changes his name to Charlie Brown. You can call him anything you want, John Smith; he still will be Charles Manson. It’s easy to change the name but it’s not easy to change the character of the person or a group of people who carried that name. They changed the name of KGB to FSB. Does that mean that the character of the KGB has been changed? Probably not. There are always changes in people but changes in character are always slow and gradual. And so when you look at changes in Eastern Europe, that’s the way we have to look at it. Did the inner character, did the sort of secretive structures that governed these countries change, are they gone, did they disappear? Are those things still there? Their character is to control, and their control continues. And I think if you look at each of the countries in Europe you will find that that control is still there and people will tell you that if you put the camera in front of them and they are brave enough to say it.

Vladimir Bukovsky

No, I don't think so. I don’t think the West won. I mean, I don't personally feel like a winner. I can't even go back to Russia as a tourist. They don't give me a visa. What happened is a kind of half way victory. It stopped too early.  It’s almost like the war with Iraq. The first war with Iraq20. They stopped three days too early and left Saddam Hussein21 in power. So more or less the same happened here. Although official communist structures went out, a lot of the nomenclature remained in power, particularly the KGB and its agents. And through that they would more and more openly control political life, public life, and businesses. There were a lot of operations going on on the part of secret services everywhere in the old Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in order to infiltrate itself into positions of power, administrative or legislative, into businesses, and even in organized crime. So the control has never been lost entirely. The party and its ideology disappeared. They were just canceled by history. There was no need for them. But a lot of elements of the former system survived, particularly the power of the nomenclature. Later, within a few years, they felt sufficiently confident to come to the forefront and we finally had the reemergence of the communist power in most of the Eastern European countries and Russia. It actually came in the shape of KGB power, the worst possible scenario. So that's the result of unfinished business. Communism was never conclusively destroyed, and it was never condemned in some kind of court, some kind of Nuremberg Tribunal or something like that. It was just wounded. It lost a lot of positions, but it didn't disappear. And the West is definitely not among the winners.

Jay Epstein:

Well, the real question is if the "Cold War" was the right description of the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union that followed WW2.  I don't think it was a war at all.  I think it was a series of psychological efforts to throw the other side off balance through the threat of war.  But I don't think it was what we call a war.  I think it had many, many facets, many fronts, and … who won it?  At this point I think the United States ended up winning it.

RB: Were we duped?

Angelo Codevilla:

I think the Soviet Union and the KGB, for a long period of time preceding WW2 used their alliances with Germany to create the deceptive image of Soviet intentions, especially in Eastern Europe, that the occupation there was defensive, as opposed to trying to install different regimes.  I think they did succeed in that deception. I think that the point of the Soviet deception came from the fact that they were communists. Communists in the Marxist sense. What they were trying to do was bring back a new state. Economic development for the world.  Moving from feudalism to capitalism and now moving to socialism.  That, let's say, was the deception Lenin was committed to.  By the time Stalin took over there was very little effort at anything other than power.  There was very little Marxism or socialism in the Soviet Union.  And the Soviet Socialist Union of Republics, it wasn't socialist, it wasn’t Soviet, it was a union, it was a dictatorship, and there were no Republics.  You know, the Soviet deception may have worked up until the 1960's or 70's, but after awhile anyone who visited the Soviet Union, whether it was Eastern European officials or Chinese officials, even North Korean officials realized that there wasn't a socialist utopia there.  It was represented by a rather poorly run economy without dedicated people and without any real ideology.  So at this point I think I want to talk about the late 1980's. Soviet leadership decided that the cost of maintaining the deception that they were utopian Socialists or Marxists was actually costing them more than trying for another form of power.  And I think the original Glasnost was an idea to create a liberal capitalist state with a large state ownership, a place not all that different from Germany or France.  Now the question is if that got out of control and they wound up with a revolution that occurred under Yeltsin that they didn't expect.  Or did they control it through the entire period?  I think that remains to be seen by what emerges under Putin.

RB: Why did the public never get what really happened, and simply believe that it was a revolution by people?

Jay Epstein:

The successful deception often depends on telling people what they want to hear.  Now, when you tell American politicians and American elected officials "You won the Cold War", it's a message they want to hear.  Why should they question it?  Why should Ronald Reagan question it?  Why should George Bush question it?  They can now take credit for it.  So it wasn't in anyone’s interest to question it, and they also believed it, that's what makes the deception.  A woman tells a man "I love you, you are handsome, you are brilliant", why should a man question it?  And so with Glasnost, and with the issue of Gorbachev moving the Soviet Union from a hard line ideological enemy committed to something called communism to a more flexible, pragmatic society much more like that which existed in Northern Europe it was accepted.

RB: How much was the fall of communism a surprise for the United States?

Bill Gertz:

In the case of the Soviet Union, the US intelligence community was taken by surprise. And this highlights the flow of our analytical capability. Basically, we have seen numerous intelligence failures over the years. The Iraqi weapons of mass distraction being one, the intelligence failure of September 11 being another, but the collapse of the Soviet Union was not anticipated by our intelligence agencies. To the contrary, the Intelligence assessments at that time in the late 80’s and early 90’s totally misjudged the severe problems that were plaguing the Soviet Union and ultimately when Gorbachev came to power and tried to tweak the system it ultimately came crashing down despite the wrong analysis of our intelligence information.

Robert Gates:

I went to the President in July and asked authority from him to establish very secret, very small working groups to begin the contingency planning for the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was two and half years before it actually happened. And the leader of that group from the National Security Council staff was Condoleezza Rice22. So, even two and half years ahead of the collapse, we were already planning for it.  And it helped us a lot when the collapse actually happened. The notion that the collapse of the Soviet Union came as a surprise to CIA23 or the American Government I think is completely wrong and it can be easily documented to show that. 

RB: You didn't buy what Gorbachev was saying?

Robert Gates:

I think that my comments about not taking his comments seriously regarding the new thinking were when he first came to office and began talking about Perestroika and new thinking and so on. The truth is that for the first couple of years he was in power he talked a lot about new thinking but we didn't see anything in consequence on the ground in terms of either the economy or the politics or the amount of money they were pushing into the third world. The truth is that in the mid- eighties, in 1985-86, the Soviets actually increased the amount of money they were sending to places like Central America and Africa and increased the intensity of their campaign in Afghanistan.  So, there was a lot of talk about new thinking around that time but not much was happening on the ground. We began to see some of that for the first time in economic measures he started taking in 1987. And I think two events in 1988 that made a big difference in taking him seriously were, first of all, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which clearly was irreversible at that point and second his speech at the UN in December 1988 when he elaborated specific kinds of units that would be withdrawn from Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe. We acknowledged in the intelligence community that he in fact did that, that he would significantly impact their ability to wage war against NATO, and that these were very real changes.  But I would say that until 1987-88, at least in the arena of politics and their behavior internationally, we didn't see much change.

Jay Epstein:

Yes, but not only that. The Soviet Union pulled back from Eastern Europe.  It brought down the wall in Berlin.  You know, in the strategic thinking, in the Western strategic thinking, Germany was a crucial point of geopolitical balance.  So it was assumed that the Soviet Union would never give up its hold on Germany and what became known as Poland, what was once also a part of Germany.  It was considered the most strategically important area.  But what was forgotten is all those lessons in geopolitics that came out of WW1 when tanks and large armies moved back and forth.  Was Germany really strategically important?  Why was it strategically important?  What was actually strategically important was the control of crucial resources like oil and gas. And food like wheat, corn, and soybeans.  Russia really didn't give up control in these areas.  It gave up control of areas that were very expensive for them to maintain a political authority over.

RB: Mr.Gates, you mentioned that in your last meeting with Kryuchkov you felt that Gorbachev was off and that something was coming.

Robert Gates:

By my third meeting with Kryuckov24 things were very interesting. The first meeting was in the restaurant in Washington DC, the second meeting was in the safe house, the KGB safe house in Moscow, where we had a lavish dinner, just the two of us and our interpreters, and the third meeting was in his office at Lubyanka. It was quite clear that Kruyckov, who had embraced the reforms that Gorbachev was undertaking in 1986 and 1987, by 1989 and 1990 had become quite hostile. He felt that the pace of reform was going far too fast and it was danger to the system. And I told both President Bush25 and secretary Baker26 after the third meeting that I think Gorbachev now has an enemy in his own house. And in fact it was Kruyckov who would later lead the coup attempt.

Vladimir Bukovsky:

The West never understood the Soviet system as such. Well, when I say that I mean mainstream politicians, media, and academics. Of course, the left, left leaning parties and organizations, they did understand it much better, but they perceived them as allies and they would never disclose the true essence of it but they would at least understand compared to the central conservative forces that never understood what the Soviet system was about. It's very difficult to understand for someone who never lived there. To imagine that the whole country could be run according to some kind of a dogma, every nut and bolt of it, and governed by this dogma generated a century ago by some kind of obscure German philosopher. It's so alien to the western psyche. I mean, they don't believe in ideologies and they don't live by any ideologies. They don't understand ideologies. If you talk to politicians, they are all pragmatic. They believe that everything is negotiable. And to explain to them that in the Soviet policy, in Soviet decision-making, nothing is negotiable really, and it’s for them to enforce their own approach and their own opinions, they will not believe you. Most of them, even the brightest politicians, have some doubts about it. So they didn't understand. They didn’t understand the essence of the system. They never understood why it is inherently aggressive and therefore during the whole period of the Cold War they tried to tie up Soviet aggression with all sorts of bizarre agreements as if a piece of paper could ever stop that monster. For instance, consider the arms control agreement, which had no meaning except giving the advantage to Soviet sites, or all kinds of "good intention" agreements, God knows what. That was all nonsense and it just reflected the degree of ignorance in the Western political class regarding the Soviet system.  Therefore, if they didn't understand the time of Brezhnev or Khrushchev or Stalin, it was much harder to understand during the Gorbachev period when everything was changing. Everyday there was something happening. It was done quite deliberately to stun and confuse by suddenly admitting the crimes which they denied for fifty years. And that was itself perceived by the West as a great change. It wasn't any change, it was common knowledge that they committed these crimes except for the fact that they never admitted it. That was a very skilful game with public opinion. And it was, of course, very confusing for Western observers. Within some groups of agents of influence it was very easy to manipulate the West during this time of confusion so they would all believe nonsense, incredible nonsense; to believe that there was a struggle between reformers and conservatives in the Politburo and the leadership. And if something bad happened it would be automatically described as an influence of conservative forces and if something good happened it would always be ascribed to reformers in the Politburo.  And that was complete nonsense. The Politburo couldn't operate this way. The Politburo always had unity. All the decisions they had taken were unanimous and they couldn't have any split and never did. When that occurred it would end up in expulsion or execution during Stalin's time when someone deviated… So, that alone was an incredibly skillful disinformation technique. I remember when Gorbachev ordered the massacre of people in Tbilisi in 1989. The world was scared that conservative forces had taken over; ‘it's dangerous, what will happen to Gorbachev now?’ So he suddenly became the best hope and they supported him even as the Soviet system was collapsing. They supported him with a huge amount of money. Some 45 billion dollars were given to Gorbachev by the West in non-tied loans and credits over seven years of his time in power. They would support him diplomatically. They would oppose any opposition forces in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.  They would try to put pressure on some nationalistic forces in Eastern Europe and other Republics in the Soviet Union They would try to restrain them and make them more agreeable with the Soviet center. That was done by the West simply because they believed that Gorbachev was the best option they had. The worst scenario would be a destabilization. They were afraid of destabilization in the Soviet Union probably more than they were afraid of the Third World War. So that was a complete misconception. They never understood what was going on in the Soviet Union. In September of 1991 President Bush came to Ukraine, to Kiev, and made his famous speech. He appealed to Ukrainians not to separate from the Soviet Union. He said that the United States would never recognize the Ukraine and so on and so forth. Of course within a month Ukraine voted in the referendum to separate. That was indeed incredibly stupid but they were loyal to the agreement with Gorbachev. They believed Gorbachev gave them the best option.

Oleg Gordievsky:

Gorbachev had one advantage. He was younger that the rest. So eventually the very old Politburo had no choice but to appoint Gorbachev as the General Secretary. The General Secretary had a group of civilian advisers who were more or less progressive, progressive on the communist scale. And the KGB also wanted to have an improvement in the Soviet Union.  He won the power struggle and in two years he didn't know what to do. But then in 1987 his civilian advisers suggested some reforms to him to improve the Soviet Union. He started these reforms and slowly they took on a momentum of their own and in the end Gorbachev reluctantly agreed to abolish Paragraph #6 of the Soviet Constitution, which gave the monopoly of power to the communist party. Immediately, Russia was covered with different political parties, groups, movements, and organizations. It was like a stream around 1991 and that stream focused around Boris Yeltsin because Yeltsin hated Gorbachev. It was his vendetta and Gorbachev's vendetta against Yeltsin and vice versa. Yeltsin won the power struggle in the Soviet Union. To get power he technically had to dissolve the Soviet Union. When he dissolved the Soviet Union and took power, he formed the new government in 1991-92, the government that consisted of democratic elements.  They started very useful, democratic economic and political reforms. So Gorbachev was not really an outstanding man.  But the circumstances, and his civilian advisers in the Central Committee27 gave him advice, which became useful for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Jeff Nyquist:

You know, Gorbachev was the protégé of Yuri Andropov who was the head of KGB. Gorbachev basically became friends with Andropov when he was the governor of Sevastopol. Andropov used to vacation there and he got to know Gorbachev. He was the agriculture minister and then he automatly became the head of the Soviet Union and the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The important thing about Gorbachev is that he initiated this Perestroika. He was the liberal. He was Alexander Dubcek28 of Russia. He made it all credible. He made changes believable. He led the way. But all the time these changes were coming from the KGB site. It is Very interesting that he was the KGB’s choice to be head of the country. It was interesting what Foreign Minister Andrej Gromyko29 said when speaking on behalf of making Gorbachev the leader of the Soviet Union. He said that this was smiling Michael Gorbachev. He had teeth of iron or teeth of steel, I forgot exact wording, but it’s like ‘this is a tough guy that’s going forward.’

RB: What was the White House thinking?

Robert Gates:

Well, the administration was divided in its assessment of what was going on in the Soviet Union but unified in what we were going to do about it. I think it's fair to say that Secretary of Defense Cheney30, deputy Secretary of State Eagleburger31, Condi Rice and I all felt that reforms were going to fail and that Gorbachev was presiding over a process he couldn't control. Until fairly well into the process we also saw that much of what he had done was reversible had he been replaced by somebody else. And so we were more skeptical that his reforms would work. However, we did not at all disagree with the approach that the President and secretary Baker and Brent Scowcroft advocated which was to get a deal with them. And we had to interact with these folks so we could help manage this process from the West. There was no disagreement on managing the process of collapse. We wanted to manage the relationship in a way that contributed to the continuing change in the Soviet Union and there was no disagreement in the administration on that.  I was very pessimistic from the beginning regarding the belief that Gorbachev's economic reforms would work. There was too much information coming to the CIA about what the consequences of his changes were in terms of manufacturing, in terms of research and development, and everything else. And there was a sort of new plan every six months so he could continue to tear up the bureaucracy in terms of trying to find something that would work. And each time he did that the situation got worse. Where he went farther than I anticipated was in his political changes and his willingness at the very end to actually end the monopoly of the communist party on politics in the Soviet Union. And I would acknowledge that I was more pessimistic on that and I did not think that he would go as far as he did. But I think in terms of the administration as whole. During my confirmation hearings in 1991 there was a lot of allegations that the Soviet Union was about to collapse, and there was an acquisition from the democratic side, democratic senators, that the CIA had overestimated the Soviet threat. And I think as we look back and dissect what was going on in the Soviet Union, the level of resources they devoted to the military, and the quality of much of their military in those days, I don't think we exaggerated at all. One of the examples that was brought home to me by one of the arms control people was when the INF treaty was implemented and Soviets had to destroy their SS 20s. They launched virtually almost all of those SS 20s, they withdrew from Eastern Europe, and they didn't have a single launch failure. We did not have that good of a record when we withdrew our medium range missiles.

RB: But at the end you called it a joyless victory.

Robert Gates:

The reason I called it a joyless victory is that there wasn't any parade like there was on VE or VG day. Again, it was part of Bush's desire not to create attention or take any action that would cause the military or the intelligence services in Russia to react in some way.  We were trying to move on to a new relationship with first the Soviet Union and then Russia and it was Bush's view that we had to downplay the magnitude of what just happened. I think we were all in agreement with that strategy and thought that some of those in Congress who had advocated a much more strident desertion of victory were mistaken in terms of our future relationship with the Russians. So I think it was both in terms of the context and the way that the Cold War ended but also the need to continue trying to develop a new kind of relationship with the Russians, who had just suffered an extraordinary historical humiliation. Bush thought it was very smart, very wise to take a very low-key approach to the end of the Cold War. I think he was right.

RB: Let’s back up a bit. What was the role of the KGB in this process?

Vladimir Bukovsky:

The KGB was an internal part of Gorbachev's Perestroika. For example, all Western parts of the operations they were running came back to the KGB. In 1985 when it was already known in circles that Gorbachev would become the General Secretary, the KGB launched a huge campaign in the West presenting him as a great liberal reformer. God knows why. There was a massive campaign in the Western press orchestrated by the KGB. KGB activity was dramatically increased here in the run up until 1985and after that when Gorbachev was nominated. They were very instrumental in a massive disinformation campaign trying to present the policy of Perestroika and Glasnost as reforms for democracy and not as an aberration for salvaging the regime. And they succeeded.  Most politicians and public policymakers in the West actually believed it. It was very difficult to prove to them this was not the case. So the KGB was quite instrumental, in a sense central, in the promotion of new policies including Gorbachev's policies abroad, and at the same time became quite central in introducing and implementing these policies inside the country. As the crisis increased and progressed, and they tried somehow to switch from a command method of governing to manipulating methods of governing inside of the Soviet Union, hundreds, if not thousands KGB officers were called back from foreign countries, particularly those with experience in manipulating public opinions, and were introduced at all levels of the government and legislative system in the Soviet Union.  They became central. They were the people who knew how to manipulate public opinion. They knew how to control through manipulation rather than through intimidation so they suddenly became very visible within the Soviet Union.

RB: What about Andropov himself. How important was his role in this process?

Vladimir Bukovsky:

What was Andropov's role in the beginning? Andropov was one of the fathers of these changes. I mean, even before he became the General Secretary in 1982 he already started to encourage certain think tanks to work out alternative scenarios by the end of the 70's. This began in a structural sense with foreign policy and later continued in the economic fields. Most of what Gorbachev was trying to implement was worked out theoretically under Andropov in different think tanks patronized by either KGB or Central Committee International Departments or both. The economic things were worked out together with some Western economists of left wing persuasion and socialists. It all happened in Austria in a certain research center created by the KGB specifically to be far away from the Soviet Union so as not to irritate some ideologists in the Politburo. And not only that, Andropov was engaged in training the next generation of elite, creating it. Second echelon, third echelon, it was very tightly echelonized. We still have some politicians coming to the forefront, who were prepared under Andropov. That's still happening. I would imagine a lot of what happened in Eastern Europe was worked out during that time in different research centers. Gorbachev himself admitted that in one meeting when someone blamed him that the reform program Perestroika was badly thought out, he said "That's not true comrades! When I came to power there were a hundred and two massive research papers formulating what should be done." So he admitted he was not the father of that. It was prepared. And who was presiding over that preparation? Andropov.

Oleg Gordievsky:

No, Andropov had nothing do with it. Against all the claims of the West that Andropov was somebody—a reformer, or a progressive--that's total nonsense.  He was the most reactionary and most dangerous member of the Politburo. And when he was appointed he was already a very sick man. He was attached to a kidney dialysis machine. He was not the head of the Soviet Union.  He admitted to his friends that he didn’t know how to reform the Soviet Union. Then he died. As to the fact that he was a Head of KGB, he was one of the most brutal people there.  He introduced a mental asylum, putting his political opponents into it He started concentration camps for political protesters.  Andropov is really nothing to speak of.  He was a deeply reactionary figure.

Ion Pacepa:

In discussing Andropov’s legacy, Western historians usually recall his brutal suppression of political dissidents, his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and his pressure on the Polish regime to impose martial law. But the leaders of the Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the father of the Soviet bloc’s new era of political influence designed to save communism from economic failure by making communist dictators popular in the West. “The only thing the West cares about is our leaders,” Andropov told me in 1972, when the Kremlin decided to make Ceausescu32 a success in the West as a dress rehearsal for pulling off the same trick with the ruler in the Kremlin. “The more they come to love him, the better they will like us.” It was as simple as that. Andropov came up with the idea to convince the West that communist rulers admired Western democracy and wanted to emulate it. “Let the gullible fools believe you want to perfume your communism with a dab of Western democracy, and they will clothe you in gold,” Andropov instructed me. Once on the Kremlin throne, the cynical chairman of the KGB rushed his intelligence machinery into introducing him to the West as a "moderate" communist and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and the music of Beethoven. I knew Andropov well. He was none of the above.

Tennent Bagley:

Andropov? It would be quite clear from information I learned myself after the Cold War ended, and I did have contacts with large number of Eastern intelligence and counter intelligence officers on purpose, in order to solve some of the problems that were nagging me during my career and still are nagging me after the Cold War and long after retiring from CIA. But in this case I can only say what I heard or what impression I got from several people I talked to in the East: that Andropov was perhaps the key figure in developing the KGB from the mid-sixties till his retirement, his death. As head of their Communist Party in the Soviet Union, he was certainly the key figure in a campaign of terror and diversion. He was the key figure in any long range planning for operations to survive inevitable changes in Eastern Europe. I know of no one who was more influential and manipulative or powerful than Andropov. Certainly not Gorbachev. Gorbachev was more a creature of Andropov then Andropov of Gorbachev.

RB: Casey was reluctant to involve the CIA in Eastern Europe. Does it mean that CIA actions there were very limited?

Robert Gates:

Again the concern was, even in the Reagan's administration, but especially in Bush's administration, not to do anything if discovered to interrupt this process. So there was a very real concern that if the CIA got involved and would be seen, and if Soviets would discover that the CIA was actively supporting Solidarity for example, that they would use that to discredit Solidarity in the eyes of the Poles and to say that it was just a foreign tool.  I think that Casey33 actually was perhaps one of the first to perceive that these changes were important and that it was vital to let the internal dynamics go forward without giving an excuse that would allow them to be interrupted. He was concerned that the CIA actions in Poland might be discovered and then discredit Solidarity. The fact is, beginning in the period of 1984-86 the CIA did in fact began to provide more and more help to Solidarity, mainly in the form of communication equipment, printing presses, and things like that. They were engaging in covert action to try and help move things along if you will. I thing we were more comfortable at this point partly because the Western European services were involved in their own activities, and AFL/CIO34 was involved in supporting Solidarity. The Vatican was also involved in supporting the Poles. So there were enough actors at that point that I think the decision was that it would be OK to proceed.

RB: Mr. Bukovsky, you got access to transcripts of negotiations in Malta from confidential files in Gorbachev’s library. What really happened in Malta? Can you summarize it?

Vladimir Bukovsky:

The Malta35 summit meeting I remember very well because nothing was reported of what was agreed there. And of course people took it as a sign of some kind of a deal behind the scenes. They believed that Malta was some kind of a replica of Jalta36. That was a saying at that time. That it was a second Jalta. In a sense it was, but no agreement was actually signed at the end of the Malta summit. Gorbachev simply told Bush that he was going to change regimes in Eastern Europe completely, that it was already happening and of course Bush could see it was happening, and that he would allow Eastern European countries to go their own way. He would not apply force but he seriously asked the United States and Western allies not to get involved. Not to stir up trouble there because it was a very fragile, very delicate transition period. "We will do it, don't worry, but don't get involved. Don't spoil it.” And Bush promised not to get involved. So it was, in a sense, something like Jalta, some kind of division of influence in a sense. However, it was not as clear-cut as it was in Jalta. In Jalta it was actually shaped, or made in the shape of an agreement. But in Malta they didn't sign any agreement. It was all verbal. And indeed everything Bush then did would be completely in support of Gorbachev. He was a very loyal ally until the end.

RB: So, Bush gave Gorbachev a free hand?

Vladimir Bukovsky:

Yes, because Gorbachev promised democratic changes. He said ‘he will do it.’ He will give them more independence, they will be democratic, and there will be reforms there. He simply asked that the U.S. wouldn’t scare it off. ‘Don't change the balance.’ And for Bush, who never understood what was going on in the Soviet Union thought that was the best deal if the Russians were going to change the system themselves.  Why should America be involved? Let them do it. That's how he understood it. He didn’t understand the fact that it could be changed in many different ways and with different degree of maintaining control in hands of the nomenclature. He was not knowledgeable enough to understand what might happen. 

Robert Gates:

Basically it was a manifestation I think of Bush’s experience and his instincts.  It was his initiative to push for a meeting as early as possible with Gorbachev. It was his instinct to try and serve as a bridge. It was Bush's idea, for example, to visit Poland in the summer of 1989 as Poland began to move toward significant change.  It was his idea to have both Jaruzelsky37 and Lech Walesa38 to a lunch at the US Embassy. As I recall, it was the first time the two of them were ever in a setting like that together. And it was that kind of effort on Bush's part that I described in the book as him greasing the skids on which the communists were removed from power. And it seemed like he would do the latter with Gorbachev by not forcing the issue or pace and letting these things evolve internally in Eastern Europe before facilitating them by treating the outgoing leadership with some measure of respect, at least superficially. I think he created an environment in which it was easier to slide these people from power and allow reformers to take their place. These were Bush's instincts. And when he felt that things were entering a rough path, it would be his initiative to suggest that it was time to place a phone call to Gorbachev or to one of the European leaders.

I don't think that it was a matter of trying to get in front of a parade that had already left. I think it was a matter of asking how do you manage this process in a way that allows the internal development to proceed while trying to lay the concerns of the communists still in power in all of these countries while denying them any reason to interrupt what was going on. As long as there was no specific event, no crisis, there really was nothing that the hard-liners and the states could rally around.  And I think Bush's instincts were to figure out how we would keep the Soviet Union at bay while Eastern Europe began to move toward independence. So it really was the recognition of the magnitude of what was happening in Eastern Europe and trying to figure out a way to ensure that those events would continue without Soviet intervention or without intervention of the military troops of the communist regimes in those states. I think it was more a matter of figuring out how to manage this process and keep the Soviet Union and hard-liners from taking action that would interrupt what was going on. That was really the core of our strategy during that period.

RB: Well that may be an interesting strategy, looking at it from the outside perspective, but people living in Eastern Europe under Soviet domination may see it very differently. Lets bring some people into this discussion who were actually living through this process and experienced it from inside.

PART 3

THE CZECH ANGLE

RB: Mr.Cibulka, you were actively involved in the dissident movement and jailed five times for your anti-communist activities. Did you know what was really going on at the time you were signing the Charter 77 document? After all, many signatories of Charter 77 were former communists.

Petr Cibulka:

No. I had no idea what was going on. When Charter 771 was founded it was difficult to find anybody to sign it and nobody asked if those who were signing it were members of the communist party in the past. In addition to that, being among the youngest who signed Charter 77, we didn’t know who the others were. I didn’t remember those old Bolsheviks from the 1950’s-1960’s. I signed Charter 77 in prison in 1978. When I got out three years later in 1981 many years had passed and I didn’t know many of the signatories after all. And you are right in saying that everybody who remembered those people, what they did in the 1950’s - 1960’s, had to have been shocked. The majority of the people who initiated Charter 77, two thirds or three quarters, were former communists. Today, I believe that Charter 77 was initiated by Soviet intelligence, probably by the GRU2 with help from the KGB. All analyses of KGB, GRU, and the Soviet Army concluded that the Soviet Union couldn’t remain a World Super Power in the 21st century if it retained the communist ideology. That’s why the intelligence apparatus and the military tried to change the regime in such a way that it would become economically lucrative and they would stay in power. I have information stating that the primary intelligence service outside of the Soviet Union was GRU. Simply said, military intelligence GRU dominated everywhere the Soviet Army set foot in.

RB: So when did you start to suspect that something was not right?

Petr Cibulka:

I was released from prison 10 days after the November 17 (1989) demonstration and during the first couple of weeks I believed that the changes were for real. But it took me just a few weeks to realize that the changes were just cosmetic, a changing of the scenery. I realized that power would remain in the hands of the communists and that the communists didn’t need to worry about losing anything. From that point I started to critically evaluate the situation, and as I descended deeper into it I realized that everything was just a game for the public, and not just for the local public but mostly for the West.

RB: How did you come to this revelation?

Petr Cibulka:

The fact that this was not a Revolution but another communist swindle was something that I realized very easily. When I brought up my opinion in the Civic Forum3 that communists should leave their positions in the government and should be replaced by active opponents of communism such as political prisoners, etc., I was accused of being an extremist. The revolutionary Civic Forum instead fighting communism started to fight me and others who asked for a real de-nazification of communist Czechoslovakia instead of fighting communism itself. This was quite a healthy confrontation and it opened my eyes. When revolutionaries, the official revolutionaries attacked us, political prisoners instead of communists, I realized that everything was different.

RB: So what actually happened?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Many people think or believe that in 1989 there was a mass uprising of the nation. From what I did, or where I worked, I am convinced that there was no uprising at all. One political system was replaced by another political system with help from other elements.

RB: Who wrote the script?

Ludvík Žifčák:

It’s hard to find out today who wrote the script but it definitely wasn’t written in America. America just jumped on the bandwagon at the end. So the script was most probably written in the East. The system that was in place at the time was over 40 years old and needed change. Everybody felt that. People in the communist party felt that. People in military felt that. Everyone felt that. Of course, nobody was thinking about changing the political system. It was meant to replace people at the top of the government.

RB: So, how did it end?

Ludvík Žifčák:

That depends on who you ask. It didn’t end well for us (communists). For those in the opposition it probably ended the way they wanted. Today, if I were to talk for the division I was working for (StB)4 then I would have to say that the failure wasn’t our fault. The failure was caused by political elements that were holding all decision-making powers in their hands.

RB: What kind of people rose to power?

Petr Cibulka:

The last two years before the revolution, new people popped up in in Charter 77, people we didn’t see before. And these people later took the leading positions in the movement. I believe that these people were agents of the KGB, GRU, and secret police who led the so-called anti-communist revolution. And we can say, more or less, that these same people are controlling the situation in this country to this day. Despite the new generation that is coming up now and new cadres that are entering the game of politics, power in the Czech Republic is still in the hands of the group that took power after the 1989 revolution.

When Charter 77 was founded, I saw it as a great opportunity to resist the communist oppression, to build resistance against the Soviet occupation, and to inspire the nation to change the status quo. I was waiting many years for this chance to come — Charter 77 and the cultural underground where I was involved as well. After many years in these dissident groups I realized that the majority of the people there only pretended to be dissidents. They were acting in opposition to the regime, but 90 percent of them never really intended to fight communism. Still, all these people took over leading positions after the November 17 revolution. And because of these people, not a single communist criminal faced a court of law to be tried for crimes committed against innocent people.

For example, according to data from the Ministry of Justice, by 1990, 270,000 people in Czechoslovakia were sentenced by communist courts to a total of one million years in prison and were eligible for reparation. Behind each of these 270,000 political prisoners were a few, sometimes more then few, communist criminals responsible for the prosecution. But to this day, none of these criminals were charged and tried in a court of law! So this is what the anti-communist revolution of the KGB and GRU looked like. And I must add that if there is anyone here today who was repeatedly interrogated, accused, tried in courts, and sentenced for political statements, it’s me. I was jailed five times during the communist regime and half a year ago I was sentenced again for publishing the name of one StB agent. So this is the state of freedom in the post-communist Czech Republic.

Ludvík Žifčák:

Charter 77 became the best-known example of a political group where the most involved members were politicians expelled from the communist party after 1968. And there were other groups as well. Later, around 1975 to be exact, the communist party, through the StB, intelligence, and counter intelligence, started to build its own so called “dissident groups” and used them to infiltrate groups like Charter 77, Democratic Initiative, etc. So, in other words, by 1988 the majority of the so-called “democratic elements” or anti-communist elements operating in Czechoslovakia were manipulated by the communist secret police.

RB: To what extent were they aware of being manipulated?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Well, they suspected that they were being manipulated but they didn’t have the resources and capability to find out who was manipulating them and how they were doing it. Of course, they knew that STB agents had infiltrated them, but at that time they had no ability to find out who those agents actually were. Once in a while there were some leaks, but even then they were unable to prove that the person they suspected to be an agent actually was an agent. So, these groups knew they were being infiltrated but had no idea who among them was actually working for the intelligence or counter intelligence services.

Vladimír Hučín:

I signed Charter 77 in 1986 after being released from prison. After the 1989 revolution I was nominated by the Confederation of Political Prisoners5 and KAN6 to serve in the newly created Intelligence apparatus FBIS7. Before that, I was elected by the Civic Forum to be the Chairman of the Civic Committee, the body in charge of cleaning up the police apparatus and ridding it of people who participated in past communist crimes. In 1991 I started working at the Federal Department of FBIS in Olomouc and worked my way up to the position of Captain. I specialized in left-wing extremism and terrorism. My idea was that the new BIS should be a “watch dog of democracy”. But when I got access to documents from STB archives, I discovered how many people from Charter 77 were involved with StB and how many agents STB had in this group. That was a big disappointment for me.

RB: Mr. Cibulka, after the revolution you published the names of all STB agents and their collaborators in a list known as “Cibulka’s Files”8, right?

Petr Cibulka:

We published a list of communist StB officers and collaborators in 1992, parts of it actually we published in 1991. The last big record, containing the names of 20,000 StB officers, we published in 1999. But these records are far from being complete. The records were thoroughly sorted out before we got them and they don’t include intelligence, military intelligence, and counter intelligence agents. The names of these people were not made public and probably never will be. So, we published everything we could. However, today I believe that we were deceived. They simply needed to get rid of the competition and released files containing names of people who could stand in the way of privatizing government property and putting it in the hands of former communists and secret police. I believe that the Russians were behind this leak of information to get rid off their competition in the Czech StB. 

I believe that the archives were altered months before the November 17 revolution and the most prospective potential leaders, those who run the political scene today, came from this confidential group of science/technology intelligence. Only Moscow knows who they are. They have enough compromising materials on them and can manipulate them.

RB: Mr.Doskocil, do you want to say something about the destruction of the StB archives?

František Doskočil:

Documents were systematically destroyed. It wasn’t done in one place. Files were transported to incinerators and also all employees of the Communist Party Bureau were instructed to take documents home and burn them. My wife worked in the StB archives and she told me that long before the revolution started, documents were sorted out, packed in containers, and taken away. Some documents from archives were packed and transported to the airport to be taken out of the country, in the Soviet Union. The purging of archives, along with the overall strategy of the communist party, wasn’t erratic. Everything was planned and worked out in advance. It was done on purpose. Documents regarding the People’s Militia9 were liquidated first. Today, nobody can ever find out how many former militia members are on the boards of banks and corporations. Our intelligence knew about the deadlines set for the regime to collapse. In May 1989, the Interior Ministry received a document describing the timetable for ending the current regime in Czechoslovakia that was supposedly created by the CIA. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was informed about it in June. The critical dates in the document were August 21, October 28, November 17, and February 28 of 1990.  These were the last possible dates for the coup d'état. This means that the Communist Party wasn’t surprised at all; they were ready for it. They were ready half a year before Václav Havel declared at the Venceslav Square that “The Communists are gone, they gave power to us”.

Pavel Žáček:

After the revolution in November 1989, the StB continued monitoring the activities of Western intelligence agencies such as the CIA. This intensive pursuit was focused on searching for potential future collaborations with Western intelligence agencies. The big question remains: how does all of this correlate with Aldrich Ames10? This pursuit continued even after Václav Havel became the President. Evidently this information didn’t end up on the President’s desk, but was instead passed quickly to the Soviets probably via the Soviet Embassy in Prague or a courier.

František Doskočil:

The StB continued to function for quite a long time, even after it was disbanded. In January 1990 many StB people were still working in the counter-intelligence center and, having access to secret files, were helping others to get rid of their past and infiltrate the new system. That was the main objective of communists in the Interior Ministry and they handled it well. In February 1990, 1500 former StB officers were approved to stay and continue work. On March 27, 1990 Minister Sacher11 asked for more officers to be call back to work. I was arrested by StB agents in February 21, 1990 and detained in the Ruzyne and Pankrac prisons for seven and a half months. I was never charged or tried. In the end, I was pardoned by President Havel under the condition that I keep silent for ten years. Without signing that special condition I wouldn’t be released.

Pavel Záček:

The StB was functioning very effectively all the time. They infiltrated all regional opposition groups. They managed to place their agents in the top leadership positions of regional groups in the Civic Forum and recruited new agents within Czech’s Civic Democratic Party12 and Social Democratic party13. There were no documents found about how this operation was run, but documents about these new agents recruited inside the newly formed Social Democratic Party and other organizations, like Obroda14 for example, exist. General Lorenc15 managed to destroy tens of thousands of document files within seven days. There are documents proving without any doubt that the StB was helping Marian Calfa16, the person that Ladislav Adamec17 put in the post of Premier, and who, in the end, offered the presidency to Václav Havel. Adamec’s secret meetings with Mejstrik18 in Klementinum always took place at midnight, and other secret meetings with Václav Havel were organized and secured by the StB. It’s interesting that the air courier, which intelligence services used between Prague and Moscow, was active until April 1990. Intelligence information was still flowing to Moscow during Václav Havel’s presidency and ended only after it was leaked to the media that Interior Minister Sacher was negotiating an agreement with the KGB about future collaborations. After this incident, the daily flights of the courier to Moscow stopped.

František Doskočil:

I believe that the StB in Czechoslovakia was under the direct control of the KGB. No agent was signed up without KGB approval. I know this from documents I was able to get just four years ago (in 2002). They (KGB) were checking the background of all employees in foreign trades, in the Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, and all other individuals who traveled abroad.

Pavel Žáček:

Unfortunately, files about agents working with the KGB were completely destroyed. The total destruction of these archives was the biggest operation of the StB.

František Doskočil:

I personally believe that Interior Minister Alois Lorenc was a puppet following KGB instructions. You will never find any document referring to the KGB. They are always referred to in documents as “our Soviet friends”19. These links were huge and they continue today.  These people knew each other and I believe that, long after the revolution, after Václav Havel became the President and disbanded the StB, all efforts were focused on keeping StB people in positions of power or allowing them to infiltrate new political parties and organizations. What amazed me was how easy it was for communist party officials and members to acquire positions in the civic Forum. I believe that the goal of the Civic Forum was to go through the period of change quietly and to make sure nothing that would endanger their future careers could be found in the archives.

Pavel Žáček:

In talking about the StB as one of the supporting pillars of the regime, it could be described as a “little sister” of the KGB, copying it in every way. They were aware of the regime crisis and were documenting all the changes. So far, based on the documents found in the archives, it’s not possible to prove that the STB was already informed by early 1989 about the upcoming regime change. On the other hand, big changes were already happening at that time at the top level in intelligence services as part of the reorganization process that started in 1988. They fully succeeded in upholding power in the hands of the Communist Party. Regardless of the voices of some radicals like John Bok, whom Czech society only later realized to be correct, the Communist Party wasn’t dismantled. Its position was strongly re-instituted in the 1990 elections when communists got many more votes then expected.

John Bok:

I believe that Charter 77, even founded with clean minds of Václav Havel and Mr. Patocka20, that the first moment, the impulse, didn’t come from their heads. And who was involved in this? Jiri Diensbier21, who I think was a high-ranking agent because he was working for the First Division of STB, which is foreign intelligence. He was a correspondent in the UN during the communist regime. When there was the big massacre of the communist party in Indonesia, he was there writing about it. He was angry when I said to him that he was an agent and he wanted me to apologize. I said no, take me to the court and I will prove it, fuck you! And this person became the first Foreign Minister of this country after the fall of communism.

Vladimír Hučín:

When I was the Chairman of the Civic Committee I found out that high ranking officials, including well known representatives of dissent like Tomas Hradilek22, were pushing hard to make sure that there would be no effort to save any documents. These documents were being burned or moved to the Soviet Union at that time. Using a revolver with three bullets, I personally attempted to rob a car belonging to the People’s Militia that was transporting archive documents to the military airport. I managed to save these documents.  I believe if there were more of us we could have saved a big portion of the STB archives and stopped its liquidation. I was surprised that well known dissident Tomas Hradilek, who later became the Interior Minister of the Czech Republic, was so intensely involved in preventing any actions that would stop this liquidation of STB archives. I became a suspect on November 17. The revolution was not what it seemed. There is more going on behind the scenes and dissidents are part of the political game of assuring immunity to communist criminals. They are helping them survive to keep their positions in the government and economic sector. It was a bitter discovery for me. I got access to archival documents where I saw the names of judges working for StB, and, consequently, how the StB rigged court proceedings. I thought that by uncovering these documents I had achieved something good. But when my superior Jan Princ23 (Václav Havel’s protégée) found out about it, I was immediately taken off the case. Then I realized that his job (Jan Princ) was to cover up those who shouldn’t be there, those from the old nomenclature.

RB: What can be said about the privatization process?

Petr Cibulka:

The privatization24 was an even bigger fraud then the anti-communist revolution. When the word came out in 1990 that all government property will be privatized, they promised that all citizens of Czechoslovakia, all 15 million of them, will have an opportunity to participate in the process of privatization. At the end of the privatization it became clear that practically all government property was privatized by communists, especially those from the communist nomenclature, such as STB officers and agents. It’s unknown how many KGB and GRU agents this includes. But really what we saw was the monopoly privatization of the economy by these communist structures. Communists became capitalists and anti-communists became the proletariat. This is what privatization in the Czech Republic was all about. And when you look at how privatization went on in other communist countries, including the Soviet Union, you find out that it followed the same scenario. Only communists, KGB, GRU, and members of the local secret police privatized. Nobody else. They say that Dusan Triska25 was the father of privatization, but nobody talks about the fact that he was an elite agent of the StB.

RB: Didn’t plans for privatization come from the Prognosis Institute?

Ludvík Žifčák:

The Prognosis Institute26 put together the group of people that later, after 1989, ended up in the top government positions. People like Václav Komarek27, Milos Zemanm28, Václav Klaus29, and many others were actually gray figures behind the preparation for changes in Czechoslovakia. First of all, they were the ones who, immediately in 1989, were telling the public how everything should be done. And when we look at the genesis of these people, we can see that most of them who later manipulated the public opinion were in fact former members of the communist party.

RB: What can be said about the “FOND Z”(Folder Z)?

Petr Cibulka:

The so called “Fond Z”30 was created shortly after November 17. It actually existed before, but at this time the names of elite opposition people were added to it because the vast majority of them were agents of different intelligence agencies. This “Fond Z” contained the names of the highest representatives within the anti-communist opposition and was initiated by Interior Minister Richard Sachr, who, according to available information, was also a KGB agent. Nobody but him had access to this file.

RB: But then this file was sealed and disappeared, right?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Yes, this initiative came from Jan Ruml31. Jan Ruml was one of very close colleagues of Václav Havel. As a Deputy Interior Minister, he ran the Ministry of the Interior after 1989. He ordered not only the sealing of all files about dissidents, but also moved them to an undisclosed location. This action was executed by Mr. Langos32.

Petr Cibulka:

I personally believe that Václav Havel is one of those included in the “Fond Z”. There are some documents regarding him that we published in the #30 issue of the Uncensored News33 in 1992. For example, in 1964, Václav Havel found an anti-communist flyer in his mailbox and, as a good socialist citizen, took this flyer to the county branch of KSC and they passed it on to StB. StB then contacted Václav Havel and visited him at home. During a friendly conversation, an StB officer asked Havel who among his friends could write such a document and he named many of his friends and relatives. So I think that when Václav Havel was later chosen to be the leader of the 1989 anti-communist revolution, he was, considering this previous experience as an informant, just the right person that the KGB and GRU could count on 100% and never be let down.

RB: Ok, lets talk for a moment about Václav Havel.

Jaromír Štětina:

I believe that Václav Havel‘s biggest mistake was that he didn’t use the authority and position he had at the time to outlaw the Communist Party. But after the battle though, every soldier is a general.

John Bok:

I like Václav Havel He is a very unusual person, but he is very naïve about many things. He is a person of compromises. He never was a fighter. In his whole life Václav was responsible only for himself. He couldn’t even imagine being responsible for somebody else. He never helped anyone in his life. And if you don’t have this disposition, how are you going to be a leader? The leader must be responsible. Václav had the vision. That’s fine, that’s OK. I am still his defender on that. But he quickly became very friendly with communists like Calfa and Adamec. I didn’t want to be friends with them. I wanted them to go to hell. One night, Havel was waiting for Pavel Landovsky34 in‚ the “Na Zabradli“ theater. Landovsky came very late and when we were leaving Michal Kocab35 suddenly showed up saying “Václav, I have a very important message for you. Very important information“. He was trying to pull Václav aside so I couldn’t hear them. And Václav said “Listen Michal, if John can’t hear what you want to tell me, I don’t want to hear it. Go on”. And Kocab said, “You know, I have just come from the Soviets. They have nothing against you becoming president“.

Later that night we were climbing the stairs in Václav’s house. Being a heavy smoker, he was moving slowly and when we got to the second floor he stopped and said, “You know John, I am afraid that we will wake up and find ourselves in the Ruzyne prison“. Even at that time he was taking it all as a dream. This is what I was trying to explain by saying that Václav was a person who lived his life like he was inside one of his plays. So it’s not so simple when people are angry and blaming him today, saying that he changed over time. He didn’t change at all, that’s nonsense. He is the same person he always was. People didn’t know him at all.

Stanislav Milota:

On December 3, 1989 I accompanied Václav Havel to a secret meeting with KGB agents. The meeting was organized by Michal Horacek36 and Michal Kocab. Shortly before leaving for this meeting, Frantisek Janouch37 came to me and handed me a small tape recorder to record the conversation. We went to what was apparently the safe house, an apartment on Manesova Street. There were five people in the room: Václav Havel, myself, two Russian speaking KGB agents, and an old man acting as the translator. The conversation was dragging on and nothing of substance was being said. I didn’t pay too much attention to it anyway, being preoccupied with thoughts of the recorder in my pocket. Then, some 30 minutes into the meeting, my recorder started to beep. Trying to save this embarrassing situation, I pretended that it was my pager, excused myself, and quickly ran out of the room. I was so pissed off. I dumped the recorder into the toilet, flushed it, and ran out of the building. I didn’t return to the meeting.

RB: Did it ever come to mind that perhaps Janouch gave you this recorder on purpose? That the KGB needed to talk to Havel face to face alone and this was the only way to get rid of you?

Stanislav Milota:

Now that you mention it, I will have to live with this thought for the rest of my life.

Pavel Žáček:

It’s not surprising that there was a contact. What was in the play, only Russian archives can tell today. The question is if Václav Havel was able, in that situation, to understand what they actually wanted from him. I think that the Civic Forum understood that the Soviets would not intervene and that this information was passed to Havel through a personal contact.

RB: To what degree did Václav Havel know he was being manipulated?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Václav Havel definitely knew he was being manipulated because he was in contact with counter-intelligence agents very often. Václav Havel had his personal file in the 2nd Directorate of StB. It was actually the cover file. Václav Havel was pushed in the direction to become one of the leading personalities of the dissident movement. Of course, later it came out that he, perhaps unwillingly or maybe willingly, worked with the StB, which was indirectly pushing him toward the position he was designated to take in the future.

RB:

Mr.Hucin, you were arrested by your own people in 2001! Tell us about it.

Vladimír Hučín:

My investigation led me closer and closer to believing that the Communist Party was connected with groups of extremist leftist and supported their activities. As I kept pushing this evidence to my superiors, my situation in BIS got worse. One day, Frantisek Bublan38 (Interior Minister) came to me and handed me a document, signed by him personally, specifically excluding me from further investigation of these terrorist activities. Another funny operation was the buying out of a book about Jan Kavan39. He was once the coordinator of intelligence services. This time he was running for political office in Prostejov County and we (BIS) got the order to buy as many copies of the book from bookstores as possible. I was against it and made my opinion very clear to everyone. That was during the time when we were tracking people working for the Iraq Embassy. These employees were supplying money to people in radical left-wing movements, like Ludvik Zifcak for example, to publish anti-American literature. I was not allowed to continue this investigation, which I considered to be important, and I am very troubled by the fact that Jiri Lang40 is now at the top of the BIS. This man, now in charge of counter-intelligence, was personally responsible for the fact that the bombing attacks in Prerov were never investigated. When I was interrogated by this man in the year 2000, he got very upset when I brought up the name of Colonel Jan Murcenko who, as the leader of the SNB in 1989, actively participated in the liquidation of the anti-communist movement in the past. Today he is one of the executives at the prestigious police academy in Holesov. It seems laughable to me that these people are in charge of the war on terrorism today. Anyway, I was under surveillance since the end of 1999, shortly after the CSSD (Social Democratic Party) got to power. However, open attacks on me came in 2000. I was tailed, my phone was wiretapped as well as the phones of my friends. Then, in March 2001, I was arrested. I spent one year in jail. The trial dragged on for four years till 2006. Most of the time it was closed to the public. In the end I was acquitted of all charges.

RB: President Václav Havel was well known for his generous amnesties but he didn’t intervene in your case.

Vladimír Hučín:

Václav Havel disappointed me specifically by allowing people who created a lot of damage into the security apparatus and into the justice system. Václav Havel surrounded himself with dissidents who were in no way qualified to do their jobs and because of their lack of qualifications they caused a lot of damage. On a personal level, Václav Havel didn’t intervene in my case regardless of petitions by people who supported me. He practically gave the green light to those criminals to arrest me and start the prosecution against me. He had the opportunity to read my file and see that all the charges against me were trumped up but he did nothing. It was only later that I realized that Havel’s and my activities were in two different dimensions. When I was in jail I didn’t have the luxury to write “Letters to Olga”41, and other things as Václav Havel had. I was in the worst prisons of that time, such as Minkovice42 for example, and I was lucky to stay alive and survive that ordeal. Václav Havel was treated very differently in prison. I found that out much later. Václav Havel was, as the saying goes, “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king”. But many years passed before we realized this and we paid dearly for it with many painful experiences. It was a brutal awakening.

Ludvík Žifčák:

Right, Václav Havel was living under completely different conditions than other inmates during his incarceration in Ostrava-Hermanovice Prison. He was allowed to receive gifts and enjoyed preferential treatment. After all, it is well known now that there was a car from one Embassy waiting to pick him up when he was released from this prison to take him directly to the Embassy. So, Václav Havel was a one of a kind prisoner.

RB: Mr.Žifčák, you became famous because of your role in the November 1. 1989 demonstration in Prague, which jump-started the so-called Velvet Revolution. Can you tell us about it?

Ludvík Žifčák:

The purpose of the operation was clear; to create an explosive situation which would later lead to an atmosphere suitable for the replacement of top leaders inside the leadership of the communist party.

RB: Who’s idea was that?

Ludvík Žifčák:

It is hard to say today where the idea came from. It definitely didn’t come from the CIA. This operation was organized in the East. That means from the Soviet Union.

RB: Did everything go according to plan?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Speaking for the people who worked with me, I believe that the operation was executed perfectly according to plan. Unfortunately, the political side of the operation was butchered. It didn’t bring the expected results.

RB: What exactly was your role in all this?

Ludvík Žifčák:

I was the intelligence officer with orders to create and organize a fake dissident group. It was called the Independent Student Organization. This organization became fundamental in organizing the November 17th operation and the students’ demonstration in general. This organization was charged with infiltrating other dissident groups and developing contacts with their leaders throughout the whole of Czechoslovakia, groups like Charter 77, Democratic Initiative, Host, and so on. This objective was achieved. This organization’s final task was to bring the November 17 demonstration to Narodni Trida.

RB: Did you really fake the incident of the dead student stabbed by police?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Well, there was a whole story prepared, prepared in advance. The story had to be believable. You can’t just send news out that somebody died. You need a foundation. The situation was rigged in such a way that myself along with people working with me on Narodni Trida were surrounded by many personalities from Charter 77 to eyewitness the whole action. The whole story had to be based in “reality”. It had to be believable43.

RB: So, what physically happened?

Ludvík Žifčák:

There was a confrontation, physical contact with the riot police, and the body of a man on the ground. Other things happened around it that would support the whole fable of the story. The body was then transported to the hospital Na Frantisku.

RB: And that dead body was you?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Well, yes of course it was me.

RB: How do you feel about the whole thing today?

Ludvík Žifčák:

I find it quite ironic that I am probably the only living man on Earth who has had his own memorial where thousands of people come each November to honor my “death”. I had a false passport, false ID, and a one-way airplane ticket to leave Czechoslovakia after this operation was over. Everything was set, but then, unfortunately, I didn’t get the order to leave the country. So till today I have this fake passport and the ticket to Moscow in my possession.

RB: Well, what went wrong? What do you think should have happened??

Ludvík Žifčák:

After the November 17 demonstration, other steps were supposed to follow; political steps. The meeting of the executive section of the communist party Politburo was going to meet and some high-ranking officials would step down.  The so-called hard-core center of the communist party would take the lead and replace some “fossil” party members. Some security operations were scheduled to help stabilize the situation in Czechoslovakia. What does that actually mean? Something similar to what happened in Poland. The opposition would be arrested within 24 hours and the militia and the army would restore order in the streets. The whole situation could be stabilized in favor of the communist party within 3-4 days. The fact that it didn’t happen reflects the fact that the political resolution failed.

RB: So, from your perspective, the idea of the “people power” uprising is absurd, right?

Ludvík Žifčák:

Of course. There were no conditions for the revolution at the time. People were unhappy and pointed at problems within society, but these problems were not so big. People wanted free travel and a plural society. They wanted a political system with more political parties involved, not just the communist party. These problems could be easily fixed. It could all be resolved by the Communist Party Politburo quickly passing new legislation and creating a few new laws. The situation could be settled without changing the political system. The situation wasn’t ripe for any revolution. After all, later, in 1990, President Václav Havel himself admitted that he didn’t want get rid of the socialist system. That was said just after the revolution. According to the last public opinion poll taken in 1989-90, only 12 percent of the population wanted to change the political system. That means that 88 percent of people wanted to keep the present system. They just wanted some cosmetic adjustments to it.

RB: As a communist, you admit that all this was cooked up in Moscow?

Ludvík Žifčák:

All this was, of course, cooked up in the Soviet Union. However, it is important to point out who the cooks were. There were what I would call somewhat “healthy forces” in the Soviet Union representing the path of the strong Soviet Union, and on the other side “pro-American” forces represented by Gorbachev. They wanted to use Perestroika to install democratic regimes in the former communist countries. As a result, the year 1989 became the crossroad where these two groups collided. The Communist party in Czechoslovakia, but also communists in Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary for example, believed that the Soviet Union would support them. When the system started to collapse and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said, “It’s your problem” they felt betrayed.

Jaromír Štětina:

After a few years it became clear that the term “the fall of communism” didn’t reflect reality. The excitement didn’t last for long and I would say that now we are in a state of disillusionment. With help from politicians, the communists are bouncing back. Another form of  ‘hidden’ communism is revealing itself lately. I call it neo-communism. The term that Václav Havel uses, post-communism, seems to me like something that already ended.  But it didn’t end. The revolution wasn’t finished.