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Remember, remember the Seventeenth of November… with apologies to Guy Fawkes

Today is the 16th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution or of the day when it all ‘officially’ started on Friday 17th November, 1989 at a demonstration in Prague. (There was one in Bratislava the day before but did not get initially much recognition.)

It was the death of a student, beaten by the Secret Police (or not so secret police), at the Prague demonstration that day that has pushed the students and actors across the country to articulate political demands, go on strike and start protesting in the streets daily. The theories behind this ‘final straw’ are many and varied – some argue the murdered ‘student’ was an agent provocateur who meant to start the ball rolling and enabled the powers-to-be orchestrate a peaceful, if not just, demise of the communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Time will tell the real story, I am here to remember mine.

At the time, 17th of November 1989 did not feel any special – there were some demonstrations before and usually were thinly spread around various anniversaries of dissident occassions. There was no indication that this is to be any different. With a flurry of activity from the dissidents, barely reported by the media and as usual, with more details broadcast by the heavily jammed Voice of America or Radio Free Europe.

velvet_revolution.jpg

I was then a teenager, with a twist – I knew that I had no control over my future and that I faced two choices only. In order to blend in, accept the evil around me in exchange for a semblance of a ‘normal’ life. Or follow in my parents’ footsteps and forsake all that is considered good and rewarding in a healthy society, such as higher education, travel, even family and potentially freedom. I may have been very young but, alas, not young enough to be blind to the full horrors of such life. After all I had seen those around me living with similar decisions. As it happens, that choice was not real – having been part of the dissident movement, I was weighted, marked and tagged as the enemy of the state. I belonged to the dark forces undermining the society – a phrase so beloved of the communist media.

I remember the nervous elation of the ‘now or never’ moment, as we walked to the main square to meet thousands of others who felt the same. It was a powerful sensation to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people knowing that they are there for the same reason – an experience unprecedented in a fractured and diseased society under communism.

It was not until Monday, 27th of November, when the two-hour general strike took place, that we were sure that tanks will not be rolled out to face us. This was not without reason as on November 23rd the army declared its readiness. To do exactly what, we dared not speculate. At demonstrations between the two dates the list of those supporting the General strike was read out. There was a sense of profound relief when workers from a factory appeared on that list. We knew then that the communists had lost the propaganda war and a loud cheer reverberated across the square.

But the fight was not truly over until December 10th, when the first federal government since 1948 was appointed that did not have the Communist majority. We went to the streets once more, most of us looking for and looking forward to the sensation of true solidarity that had already started to fade. And the rest is history…

I find that my memories lack the nostalgia compulsory for any survivor of such social and political upheavals. My life has certainly changed beyond recognition as a result of the 1989 events, nevertheless I find it very hard to get dewy-eyed about my ‘revolutionary credentials’. I do treasure the experience of seeing thousands upon thousands of individuals come together in a collective action that has changed the world around them. That was genuine no matter whether it was sparked off by manipulation or whether what followed in the aftermath was far less heroic.

82 comments to Remember, remember the Seventeenth of November… with apologies to Guy Fawkes

  • Chris Harper

    I was living in London at that time. I remember driving home from work and listening to the news of the demonstrations on Radio 4 while my eyes stung with unshed tears.

    I was proud simply to share my humanity with these people.

  • Bernie

    Adriana this was another great piece from you. As I’m sure I’ve said before I’d love to see more from you on some of the history you were a part of.

  • Verity

    Powerful piece.

  • Joshua

    Adriana this was another great piece from you. As I’m sure I’ve said before I’d love to see more from you on some of the history you were a part of.

    Second that.

    Unfortunately, I think I missed the Velvet Revolution as it was happening. I was in junior high at the time – and I remember watching the Berlin Wall come down, but for some reason what really sticks with me from that period is the Romanian Revolution. That’s what I remember most vividly watching on TV and reading in the papers. I think this is probably because after growing up in the 80s , doing the bomb drills, raised on (hey! no bones about it – I was young!) and Wargamesand all that – I guess I never really expected it to end with so little blood. No disrespect to the blood spillt over the years, of course, but for the Warsaw Pact nations’ governments to just resign? It wasn’t what most of us expected.

    Which is, of course, precisely why it’s so extraordinary. Here’s to all the brave souls who made it possible!!!

  • Joshua

    Seems I missed another tag. “Red Dawn” was the other 80s pop-Cold War movie referenced.

  • Cato

    I remember cheering at the good news and staying home to get the latest news! I felt elated!

    After I made some anti-communist remarks, my socialist history teacher sneered at me that I should not view the people of the east bloc states as the enemy, I told her:

    “Of course not. I welcome the people fleeing the socialist states with open arms.” 🙂

  • Ted Schuerzinger

    I was visiting my Bavarian relatives in the summer of 1989, and my abiding memory watching the evening news was of average East Germans who had invaded the West German embassies in Prague (and Budapest if memory serves) and set up tent cities.

    Seeing that, I have no respect for the people who want to give Gorbachev any credit for the events of 1989.

  • I would love to read more of what you went through at that time, second the comment somebody else made.

    It was a very moving time all told, good to be reminded, thanks.

  • rosignol

    Seeing that, I have no respect for the people who want to give Gorbachev any credit for the events of 1989.

    I don’t give him credit for the uprisings.

    I do give Gorbachev credit for them being all but bloodless. Heaven knows if someone more like Lenin, Stalin, or any of the other ghouls had been in charge at the time, things would have turned out very, very differently.

  • Apology accepted 🙂

    I remember that time well. I was in Berlin criss-crossing the border seeing dissidents – who didn’t seem completely sure it was for real until the Wall actually got breached.

    I borrowed a pick-axe to help out and still have the concrete evidence of communist tyranny on my bookshelf.

  • Luniversal

    ALL the so-called revolutions behind the old Iron Curtain were phoney: just pseudo-events, putsches staged by ambitious elements of the commie bureaucracy so they could be first in the queue for positions of privilege and privatised assets after the changeover. Even the most violent, in Romania, was essentially directed by elements of the ancien regime who realised Ceaucescu was a busted flush.

    The Velvet Revolution was as artificial as any. But then so was the state in which it occurred; maybe that’s why Czechoslovakia never fought very hard for anything, even its own post-communist integrity. In 1942 the Czech workers were getting on well enough with the Nazis that agents had to be parachuted in to kill Heydrich. Even then, the Czechs continued to be docile– no Warsaw Uprising for them! A German army surrendered intact in 1945. Prague was never bombed, which is why it can now coin it as a location for period dramas, and good luck to it.

    The great Eastern European tradition of theatrical ‘uprisings’ grinds on in more primitive nation states further east. One year on, the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine has proved to be another put-up job, with old and new rulers cutting deals and the godmother of the revolutionaries helping herself to the public purse:

    http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2005/11/17/67909.html

    Revolution is outdated romantic bollocks: a delusion for the unwashed which Britain, the world’s most sophisticated polity, grew out of 300 years ago.

    ‘Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss’. The bosses always win– so what if the faces change? Real change happens slowly, stealthily, largely uncontrollably and outwith the creaky impostures of politics. Knives and forks matter more than drums and trumpets. The captains and the kings depart but the shopkeeper soldiers on, bless him.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Luni, I would not be nearly so airily dismissive as you about the changes wrought in the former Soviet Empire. Some of the countries that were in decline were, in retrospect – hindsight is so easy – on the way down. It still took a lot of guts to stand up to the authorities at the time, which is why the likes of Vaclev Havel rank high in my estimation.

  • Joshua

    Even the most violent, in Romania, was essentially directed by elements of the ancien regime who realised Ceaucescu was a busted flush.

    In fact, that is more obviously the case in Romania than in any of the others. Iliescu et al had been scheming it for years – possibly even since the 70s.

    But I don’t think you should be so quick to write the little man out of politics. Whatever the cause of the Velvet Revolution, it still took guts to go out on the square and face arrest, government persecution (which is a bit nastier in socialist regimes than in our countries) and possibly violence from the riot police – especially given how hopeless the protest likely seemed at the time. Protesting behind the Iron Curtain is not the same thing as walking down Broadway with a “Cheney Eats Babies” shirt on.

    However – I wholeheartedly agree with you on two points.

    (1) The “Orange Revolution” was a lot of overhyped nonsense, and I’m glad to see our press starting to get over it. The Ukraine is the Korea of Eastern Europe.

    (2) Real change comes slowly from the accumulated workings of local economy – yes.

    I would only add that there is a sense in which even a flawed romantic interpretation of revolution is useful, however. If people generally believe these things are possible, then government has to handle them more carefully.

  • Euan Gray

    Whilst it may be uncharitable and unfashionable to say it, I think the reality is that the east European “revolutions” were nothing so much as the failure of extant governments in the face of the withdrawal of backing from the occupying power. Gorbachev’s declaration that Soviet troops would not be made available to suppress unrest in the DDR was the trigger event, and that came about because of the failure of politico-economic reform in the USSR, which in turn came about because of the need to devote vast expenditure to the military in response to huge American increases in military spending & the failure to see this could not be done within the Marxist-Leninist system without large scale oppression a la Josif Vissarionovich.

    It was ultimately less the victory of the people than the failure of the government.

    EG

  • rosignol

    Euan, the way you say that makes me wonder if you think it was a bad thing…

  • Johnathan Pearce

    rosignol, no, I think Euan has a genuine point rather than engaging in cynical realpolitik. It was said by the French writer Alexis de Toqueville in his study of the old Ancien Regime that a regime is often at its most vulnerable when it tries to reform and when expectations get stirred.

    There is no doubt that the Soviet Empire was a lot more rotten and brittle than we realised at the time. Once people in eastern Europe realised that the Russkies lacked the will and means to put down revolts, the Soviet Empire was doomed.

    All that said, it takes guts to face down an empire, which is why I thought Luniversal downplays the role of protesters too much.

  • Andrej Hlinka

    Luniversal is full of tinfoil cap conspiracy shit once again. He is a kind of ass who cannot tell the difference between the petty indignities of modern statism and the tyranny of totalitarianism and so interprets history through the distorting lens of his own small world view.

  • It was ultimately less the victory of the people than the failure of the government.

    Of course Euan thinks it is a bad thing. Why give credit to the people who pushed the old regime over? Better to just think it dropped dead of its own accord because otherwise it might start giving people ideas above their station!

  • Euan Gray

    Of course Euan thinks it is a bad thing

    No, I don’t.

    Why give credit to the people who pushed the old regime over?

    Because it wasn’t them wot done it, that’s why.

    The communist regimes of the eastern bloc were disintegrating from within, and the reason for that is that they were dependent on Russian military and economic assistance which was no longer available. Russian economic assistance became a problem in the 1980s as the effects of the stagnation of the 1970s coupled with a need to massively increase defence spending in response to America doing the same seriously hurt the Soviet economy – whilst America was spending nearly 10% of GDP on the military, Russia was spending nearly 30% and still couldn’t keep up. Military assistance became a problem following the loss of confidence in Afghanistan. The political will to assert Russian authority in the occupied states was absent, partly as a result of dire economic problems and also the pernicious effects on the USSR of the program of glasnost.

    People power only works when the regime is tottering. Contrast the late 80s “revolutions” with the uprisings of the 1950s and 60s – then, people were shot and the regimes continued, perhaps with a few personnel changes. That’s what happens when people power hits the reality of a strong and confident state. By the 80s, the people faced a weak and fearful state which knew it had no recourse to serious Russian support – result, collapse.

    Closer to today, look at the failure of rotting regimes in the Ukraine and Georgia, but contrast that with the survival of the determined regime in Kyrgyzstan (for now, of course).

    EG

  • Paul Marks

    A very good posting.

  • Euan Gray

    Of course, Kyrgyzstan should be with Georgia and the Ukraine, and the surviving regime should be Uzbekistan.

    EG

  • Euan and Luniversal – the latter being more of benighted cynic than the former – I’m the last person to say that dissident movement had much impact on developments throughout the Soviet Union Empire. From my own experience I know the powerlessness, the sweaty fear and the utter lack of romanticism of the underground.

    I was doing two things here: remembering the anniversary of an event that has changed the direction of my life so profoundly that it still occassionaly takes my breath away. As a direct consequence I am here writing on Samizdata.net.

    Secondly, I was drawing attention to those individuals who sacrifices were more real than any of you can imagine. They will always deserve the respect as there was nothing artificial about their giving up everything for their convictions. They saw that the world around them was evil and stood up (in their own helpless ways) to the communist monstrosity.

    Even I have very little claim to such respect compared to those who actually lived it for decades. You are both are guilty of not seeing the real moments of glory and humanity for all those people, which was certainly there during the handful of days that started on 17th November.

  • Chris Harper

    Yea Adriana,

    You tell em girl.

    Standing up to a proven murderous totalitarian regime takes a level of guts I am not sure I possess, regardless of how rotten its internal supports may have become over the years.

    These people thought they were risking their lives, and with a different throw of the dice they would have been.

    Nothing, absolutely nothing, can diminish my admiration for them.

  • Euan Gray

    I don’t wish to denigrate the bravery of those who protested, but one should try not to get all misty-eyed about it – the reality is that these states were disintegrating anyway.

    The real glory and humanity is, in the case of Czechoslovakia, arguably in the 1968 Prague Spring where people were actually tortured and shot by a powerful and confident imperial state which cared nothing for them. There’s a world of difference between that and demonstrating against a tottering regime on its last legs, although I do completely ackowledge that it takes courage to stand up to a dictatorial state however weak it may be.

    EG

  • Zdenek

    Euan’s position seems confused to me. Is the claim that the regime would have disintegrated even if there was no dissent/protest. Or is he saying that economic etc. rot was an important causal factor in explaining why the “revolution ” occured ?
    The second claim is not very interesting and no one is really denying that economic woes etc. played an important role , after all this is captured ” velvet”.
    So he is probably commited to the first claim i.e. the stronger one. But this view is very hard to defend. There is no reason why the regime in the absence of dissent etc. could not simply go on and on and continue inflicting suffering on people.
    Final thought : Euan view looks like Marxist reductionism doesnt it ?

  • Richard Easbey

    if there’s one thing that EG excels at, it’s finding the dark cloud around the silver lining.

  • Michael Farris

    “The communist regimes of the eastern bloc were disintegrating from within, and the reason for that is that they were dependent on Russian military and economic assistance which was no longer available.”

    This is almost kind of right, except that economic assistance when eastward to the Soviet Union and not from the Soviet Union to Czechoslovakia, Poland etc. In many ways, Central European countries were classic colonies, exploited for economic gain of the home power.

    And, the regimes no longer saw themselves as the vanguard of the future who needed to win over the people, wait out the stubborn and put down active resisters (still remotely possible in the 50’s after WWII the new socialist governments did have more popular support for a number of years than is now generally remembered). but, alll available evidence was that by the late 70’s the regimes were more or less marking time until Something Happened. They’d put down really open rebellion, but noticeably with less widespread violence than in most ‘democratic’ African or Latin American governments even today.

    Finally, several Somethings Happened in 1989. The Tianmen square massacre which disgusted even the leaders of many Eastern Bloc regimes, and the roundtable discussions in Poland leading to elections, Hungary giving refugee status to ethnic Hungarians fleeing Romania (an unheard of breach of socialist courtesy at the time) weakened borders leading to “green border” emigration from East Germany (thru Czechoslovakia and Hungary). And Gorbachev saying he wasn’t going to use the Red Army to keep other countries in line (an act of tremendous courage and integrity) was the final nail in the coffin of many of those regimes.

    Two things made the fall of 1989 possible. The long term resistance of people to socialist exploitation (all hail black marketeers and underground printers!) and the fact that by the 80’s the regimes (as bad as they were) were neither ideological fanatics or harrdc0r3* kleptocrats but to some measure patriots who prefered to step down than spill blood on a wide scale.

    Yes, some scoundrels of the old system managed to thrive in the new system, but I think this was a small price to pay for a mostly peaceful transition.

    *thank you spam filters

  • Chris Harper

    Many years ago, about 1986/7 I think, I was at a nice middle class party in Camberwell. There was a Russian there and we started talking about what was happening and what was going to happen.

    Most of the people there, these being English middle class, were full of admiration for Gorby, convinced that he knew exactly what to do to reform communism and make it work. There was just me and Demitri, the only person with experience of communism there, who held out. Our position was communism was unreformable, and any attempt to do this was bound to end in failure; it had to be scrapped instead. Further, Gorby had no idea what he was doing and had to go before the whole thing collapsed. You can imagine how we were treated by these proto Nu Lab types. After all, what the fuck does a Russian know about how his country works?

    Twenty years later, Euan and Luny sound just like that lot.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Chris Harper, good point. Remember how Reagan was derided in the early 80s by the chattering classes for having the balls to predict that the Soviet Empire was headed for the “ash-heap of history?”.

    What a truly great man Reagan was, even if he was some distance from being a libertarian in office.

  • Luniversal

    But Reagan sat back and waited. He didn’t intervene to help the fall of communism along like a ‘muscular liberal’.

    ‘Revolutions’ are bogus spectacles with the mob as extras. A few may get killed in crowd scenes if the assistant directors aren’t doing their job. Too bloody bad. I don’t admire anyone for being a sucker. Keep your head down– whoever comes out on top will always need a loaf of bread and a shovel to clear up the muck. Leave the photo-ops to daft students, you’ve got a family to feed.

    Libertarians of all people ought to have grown out of this posturing about heroes and martyrs. It’s only the sharp end of the general delusion that politics changes things. Politics are symbolic underwritings of what has already changed. Luckily we mart Brits are cottoning on and ceasing to join parties or bother about voting. The game is almost up for ‘democracy’. Verdict: death by disillusion.

    Chris Harper: I couldn’t have cared less at any point whether Gorbachev stayed in power or not. Why should I? And how much difference has 15 years of ‘liberation’ and kleptocracy made to the poor bloody average apolitical Russian?

    Be like most Czechs: sit tight and say nowt. This is the country that gave us the Good Soldier Schweik, a far more admirable character than the vainglorious Vaclav Havel.

  • J

    An intersting discussion. One poster says

    “The Ukraine is the Korea of Eastern Europe.”

    Fascinating because I assume he means North Korea, whereas most people think Korea refers to South Korea. Or is he suggesting that Ukraine leads Europe in ship building and playing computer games? Who knows.

    Of course Luniversal and Euan are right in saying that people (well, libertarians) get misty eyed and romantic about these uprisings, and that one should respect those who keep their heads down and feed their families. And yet when lefties get misty eyed and romantic about barn owls and Alaskan wildernesses, the libertarians start going on about the need for ornery oil workers and lumberjacks to feed their families. Funny old world.

    To me (born 1973) the Cold War was as fake as the Bond films in which I learned about it. There never was a Red Menace. Andropov was as much of a threat as Khamenei is now. Some distant dictator. I’m glad the communist regimes fell. It never really occured to me that they wouldn’t, although I can see their citizens might have felt otherwise. I remember meeting the newly liberated from East Germany and Poland in university, and apart from a few amusing stories they were just as dull or interesting as anyone else. They had no aura of resistance, no special appreciation of their freedom. Just as happy to sleep, drink, and smoke dope as any other students I knew.

    Me, personally – I can’t wait for Tibet to gain independence. It’ll never happen. China is no better, in no way, than the USSR of the 1980’s. But everyone’s pretty quiet about it. No support for Tibet. No-one complaining about ethnic cleansing in Kashgar. Occasional criticism about Taiwan getting upitty again.

    Someone from one of the post-communist countries, tell me – now that you have tasted freedom, do you value it more than the freedom of others? Do you support your fellow enslaved in Tibet, or do you trade with China?

  • Luniversal, you fucktard (and I use that word liberally as the only person who can edit it is me or Perry) would you sacrifice everything you have, your career, future, freedom and possibly your life because you believe in something that only handful of people around you can see!?

    No matter what geo-political realities or your warped theories, none of this makes a slightest difference to the individual courage to stand up to a regime every day and pay the price. There is a whole spectrum misery between being killed or tortured and living under communism without any ‘visible’ damage. It’s death by other means, slow, ugly and unglamorous.

    Also, I am not talking about “most Czechs” (btw, there were Slovaks as well), I am talking about those who did what you obviously couldn’t as you do not have even basic grasp of what actually was going on in those countries.

    And next time, I am not going to be so polite.

  • Euan Gray

    There is no reason why the regime in the absence of dissent etc. could not simply go on and on and continue inflicting suffering on people.

    Strangely enough, they tend not to do this. Weak and feeble regimes often don’t last long, although there are exceptions such as the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. What seems to happen on a pretty regular basis is that the regime implodes as a result of internecine warfare or is taken over by a clique of more determined people. Interestingly, the USSR suffered the first fate but China managed to escape it and has taken on the second.

    Without popular protest, the eastern regimes would not have lasted much longer. The demise of the old guard rulers coupled with the economic disintegration would virtually guarantee that. The same thing was happening in Russia – the oligarchs of the 90s were the Komsomol business leaders of the 80s, as that organisation became principally an politico-economic network rather than an instrument of ideological indoctrination.

    The note about economic benefit passing east to Russia is incorrect. The economic and military burden on the USSR of maintaining the eastern regimes was crippling, and it was most certainly not done for the sake of enriching the USSR. If you look at a map of the world centred on the USSR, you see a country ringed by actual or potential enemies. The east European states (BTW, they would be technically protectorates, not colonies) were a strategic buffer intended to protect Russia from western invasion. This costs money, it doesn’t bring it in.

    I think the comment on a western perception that Gorbachev was going to somehow rescue the USSR and make communism work is also in error. As someone finishing his education in the People’s Republic of Scotland in the early 80s, the shaky nature of Soviet economic “strength” and less fearful apprehension of their true military prowess was common currency, and I can’t recall ever meeting or hearing anyone around that time who thought the USSR was in any way the wave of the future. I think this is some form of retrospective urban myth that has grown up to meet the need for some illustration of how brain-dead the English patrician classes are. I recall my father saying several times that the USSR would never see the 21st century, and he died in 1981. He certainly wasn’t the only one around that time saying the same thing.

    EG

  • Euan Gray

    I can’t wait for Tibet to gain independence

    I suppose whether or not that would be a good thing would depend on the type of government they manage to get themselves. I’d assume a return to the isolationist theocracy they had before the Chinese occupation wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial…

    EG

  • Felicia

    Someone from one of the post-communist countries, tell me – now that you have tasted freedom, do you value it more than the freedom of others? Do you support your fellow enslaved in Tibet, or do you trade with China?

    Do we trade with China? Hell yeah! (Because, obviously, Romania not trading with China would probably bring down the entire Chinese economy and put an end to Tibet’s suffering.) Not only do we engage in this shameful business of free trade, we’re also offering free realestate to the CIA for all its unconventional intel gathering needs. And we eat babies. Although that’s nowhere near as bad as actually digging this Capitalism shtick.

  • Joshua

    ‘Revolutions’ are bogus spectacles with the mob as extras. A few may get killed in crowd scenes if the assistant directors aren’t doing their job. Too bloody bad. I don’t admire anyone for being a sucker.

    You’re posting on a site co-edited by someone who lived through it and stood up to it. Would it kill you to adopt a less contemptuous tone?

    Not to mention – it is simply a fact that the “extras” often do get killed. Conveniently enough for you, the revolutions under discussion went off without much bloodshed (although – see Romania). But I don’t think you’ll find too many other examples of that kind of thing happening in history. Bloodless revolutions are hardly the norm.

    Not to mention – your advice to keep one’s head down doesn’t exactly square with the belief that revolutions are controlled affairs. It does sort of beg the question what the “new bosses” would need to persecute their “extras” over if mobs have no independent power to change things. Which is it? Can you participate with impunity (because after all, it’s only a show), or is there actually something going on at these cast calls?

  • Jacob

    “The note about economic benefit passing east to Russia is incorrect.”

    Only half way incorrect. In 1945, when the USSR conquered Eastern Europe they shipped evrything they found there back to Russia, goods, raw materials, factories, gold, everything. That is what kept them going for a while. Later, in the 1970-80ies – there was nothing left to rob, but there was never a flow of money from the USSR to support East Europe. If I remember correctly, even the upkeep of the Russian army in Eastern Europe was paid for by the locals.

    About the revolutions – saying that the regimes were rotten, and were going to fall anyway is hindsight. At the time, the rotten regime in the USSR has been dragging itself along for 70 years already, and though many knew it was rotten, nobody knew when and how it was going to collapse.

    The demostrators did not know for sure that the regime was falling, or that it would go without a fight. They took a tremendous, and courageous risk, and surely were instrumental in hastening the collapse of the regime.

  • Chris Harper

    ‘Revolutions’ are bogus spectacles with the mob as extras. A few may get killed in crowd scenes if the assistant directors aren’t doing their job. Too bloody bad. I don’t admire anyone for being a sucker.”

    And this statement demonstrates the Samizdata belief that the individual matters? How?

    Stupidity may be a capital offense, but placing your life on the line on order to allow your children, family, friends and the strangers over the other side of the country to have a decent hope in theirs is anything but stupid. It is one of the highest expressions of humanity I can think of.

    As far as whether people care about their freedom? Doesn’t matter. Once you have had it for a few decades it becomes the sea in which you swim, the air which you breath; you only become aware of it when it is not there any more. Who goes around being thankful that there is an atmosphere? I don’t, I accept its presence without thinking about it and just get on with my life. So it is, for most people, with freedom.

  • Midwesterner

    Would the people saying that morally hollow, financially derelect regimes fall without assistance or opposition please explain that to the gov of N Korea. They don’t seem to have gotten the message. For several decades now, they haven’t gotten the message.

  • Chris Harper

    Ok, how do we know that a regime is rotten, hollow and ripe to fall? That is easy.

    Just get out there and demonstrate. If the regime falls it is rotten, hollow and ripe for it and would have fallen anyway and you are just a patsy for the new regime. If, on the other hand, you and all your mates get turned into road kill by the tanks then the regime is still strong and viable and you were just a patsy in some sort of internal power struggle.

    QED

    In either case it is clear that only a fool would claim that there was any personal courage on your part. After all, hindsight tells us that whatever happened was determined by that darling concept of the Marxists, historical inevitablism.

  • Old Jack Tar

    I suppose whether or not that would be a good thing would depend on the type of government they manage to get themselves. I’d assume a return to the isolationist theocracy they had before the Chinese occupation wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial…

    You really are a sickening creature. Communists really aren’t that bad, eh? I truly despise you, Sir. Your empty pompous words are just an apologia for horrors you lack the wit to truly comprehend.

  • veryretired

    There are some people here who are vainglorious, and way too full of themselves for no discernable reason, but their names aren’t Havel.

  • Chris Harper

    Oh dear, do we have to get personal?

    Oftimes there are things said which which I find questionable, but attacking the sayer does nothing to refute what has been said.

  • zdenek

    without popular protest,the eastern regimes would not have lasted much longer.The demise of old guard rulers coupled with the economic desintegration would virtually guarantee that.

    Euan this is not an argument but only a restatement of your original contraversial claim that in the Czech case popular dissent was a kind of epiphenomenon ( causally insignificant ). Maybe you are correct but what is your argument for this view; no good to simply restate the contraversial claim over and over. The only thing I see that can work for you is your comparisons with Russia but this is weak because the analogy is bad.
    Please can you justify your view that the Czech etc. popular opposition was causally redundant.

  • Euan Gray

    Would the people saying that morally hollow, financially derelect regimes fall without assistance or opposition please explain that to the gov of N Korea

    Firstly, my point had nothing to do with the morality or otherwise of the state in question. Other than economic disintegration, the key factor is self-confidence, the will of the state to assert its authority. North Korea does not seem to have lost that will as yet, although I don’t think it can be that far away, and whatever its economic condition it is certainly ready enough to use its muscle to keep the people in place.

    The point is that the east European states were not prepared to do that by the 1980s.

    Communists really aren’t that bad, eh?

    I said that where, exactly?

    It seems to be a common enough idea amongst pro-Tibetans that prior to the Chinese occupation the Tibetan people lived in some sort of peaceful Nirvana under a system of enlightened Buddhist philosophy. The reality is that Tibet was a mediaeval feudal theocracy founded on serfdom and brutal oppression, upon which various foreign visitors had commented adversely for decades. Although the PRC is very far from an ideal government, it is truly hard to see what exactly the Tibetans lost as a result of Chinese occupation – I incline to the view that they exchanged one dictatorship for another, but at least the new one abolished serfdom and had no particular desire (other than during the Cultural Revolution) to live stuck in the Middle Ages.

    I don’t defend communism, but I’m also aware – plainly unlike some others – of the nature of the system that preceded it in Tibet.

    Maybe you are correct but what is your argument for this view

    I already have explained why the regimes would have collapsed anyway, and this should be abundantly clear from my comments.

    EG

  • Luniversal

    “How small, of all that human hearts endure,
    That part which kings or laws can cause or cure.”

    God bless you, Adriana. May you come to learn the peace that passeth all understanding, and also that swearing at strangers is not the habit of good society in your adopted land.

  • Joshua

    God bless you, Adriana. May you come to learn the peace that passeth all understanding, and also that swearing at strangers is not the habit of good society in your adopted land.

    I love it! Swearing at strangers is not the habit of good society, but calling a political movement in which she participated (at not insignificant personal risk) a “mob” of “suckers” is peachy.

    Don’t dish it if you can’t take it, Luniversal. You had every opportunity to phrase your position in inoffensive terms. You chose the words you chose.

  • zdenek

    I think Euan Gray’s view is really interesting but I still have two worries about it . The first point may sound like a bit of hair-splitting but needs to be made I think : there is a difference between explaining a view and justifying it ; I would say that we have seen lots of explaining but very little justifying of his claim that Czech dissent/opposition played a decorative role only in bringing down the communist regime ( not his words mine ).
    Second and more substantive point is this. We need to distinguish between direct or bold pressure dissidents may put on the government ( for instance by using violence etc. ) and more subtle pressure which aims at undermining the intelectual/moral justification the government rests on . Now the point is that economic difficulties etc do not provide the right kind of pressure to unermine regimes selfconfidence.
    If this is roughly right then Euan’s view involves a too crude a picture of what dissidents do and his argument fails.

  • Alex Douglas

    but attacking the sayer does nothing to refute what has been said.

    On the contrary, when a person demonstrates they are vermin, someone needs to call them vermin. Euan Grey’s endless apologias for tyranny are no less odious that arguing that gassing Jews dreadful but after all, the German government was democratically elected, so who are we to say an alternative might have been better? The fact he makes his points in a circumlocutious manner changes nothing.

  • I already have explained why the regimes would have collapsed anyway, and this should be abundantly clear from my comments.

    They would have collapsed because people braver than you would make them collapse. That is also abundantly clear.

  • zdenek

    Listen guys ( Perry and Alex ) you are arguing like some loony Leftwingers ; snide remarks , attacks on personality and so on; lazy stuff for sissies : if you can’t show what is wrong with say Euan’s views then leave it , do something else. Look at Alex’ s remarks for instance : total misunderstanding of what it means when someone points out to you that you are using ad hominem argument ; just giving coservative thought a bad name, really.

  • J

    Re Tibet. I’m under no shangri-la type illusions about Tibet. I would still support its independence, even if I knew that:

    1. It would become a repressive theocratic state afterwards.
    2. It would seek forcible expatriation of Han Chinese in the country (i.e. revenge ethnic cleansing).

    But what’s your point? That it’s OK for China to occupy Tibet because it wasn’t very nice to begin with? Would it be OK if China annexes Nepal next year then (as it would surely love to do)?

    The occupation of Tibet by China is just the same as the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviets, in my mind. Yet no-one else seems to see it that way. Even the liberals seem to care more about the threat of global warming from Chinese power stations, then they do about, say, the systematic elimination of ethnic Uygar and ethnic Tibetans.

    But I digress…

  • Chris Harper

    J,

    Thank you, a voice of reason.

    Are you aware that Australia, under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, still a hero to the Oz left 30 years after he was sacked for gross incompetence, was one of the only democracies to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic countries?

    An act that will live in infamy.

  • Tonight I’ll pour a glass for those who would not submit.

    I’ll bet it took a bit to dredge that up and put it out there, as she did, so my thanks.

    It’s true what they say: you either lead, follow, or are told to get out of the way… shame there’s so many signing up for service in the last group.

    Here’s a bit of something I found at Gettysburg, near the cenotaph to the Irish Brigades from New York. For those of you who don’t know, it is a fine carving of a large Celtic cross, stationed at the edge of the Wheatfield where most of those boys ate it.

    (Funnily, they did so even though they were in no physical danger at home in NYC, nor had much in the way of personal vendetta against the South, and despite the fact that the Southern economy “would have collapsed anyway”.)


    “Of those who in their manhood died to blot out Slavery’s stain,
    And rear aloft in all its pride, fair Freedom’s flag again!
    ‘Tis ours to raise this cross on high above the Irish dead,
    Who showed mankind the way to die, when Truth and Freedom led.”

    ever forward,
    Samedi

  • Johnathan

    Luni, RReagan did not just sit back and wait. As even Euan Gray concedes (!),one of the reasons why the former Soviet Union collapsed was that it could not match U.S. defence spending. Who do you think was the main driver of that policy? Clue: a retired movie actor who had a wife called Nancy.

    Your contemptuous treatment of people like Havel who spent years in jail is an outrage and shows an elementary ignorance of what that man endured. I don’t blame Adriana at all for losing her temper with you.

  • Johnathan

    Euan keeps repeating that these regimes would have collapsed anyway. Well, that still does not quite help us know what sort of time frame we are talking about. Months, years, decades, centuries? These things can endure a long time. As I said, hindsight is not much good in guiding actions of people with less-than-perfect data. Many of the protesters had no idea or only a dim awareness of how vulnerable the Soviet Empire was. That is why I salute the courage of people like Adriana and her countryfolk and why I stunned at the cynical savagery of Luniversal.

  • Marc J.

    I already have explained why the regimes would have collapsed anyway

    I wonder why they collapsed… could it have anything to do with those pesky protestors in the streets challenging the government to a showdown? Once the tanks didn’t roll, the streets didn’t flow with blood, and there wasn’t daily executions; the protestors won.

    Be like most Czechs: sit tight and say nowt

    I’m assuming you meant “sit tight and stay down”

    What a wonderful attitude you support! It’s a wonder you even managed to turn your computer on or eat some food! You know those electric currents, they can kill you! And food poisoning… you might die!

    My god man, grow some balls!

    ———

    When the question comes, ‘Who will change the world?’, I hope my answer will be the same as the brave anti-Socialist/Communist protestors:

    “If not me, who?”

    From someone born in ’87, thank you Adriana and everyone else who contributed your part in tearing down the walls of tyrany, where-ever you found them.

  • rosignol

    Euan keeps repeating that these regimes would have collapsed anyway.

    No, no. You’ve misunderstood his argument- the Soviet Union collapsed because it couldn’t match the US’s military spending.

    The collapse of the Soviet Union’s eastern european client states was historically inevitable and would have happened sooner or later anyway. It had nothing to do with the protesters.

  • Euan Gray

    The collapse of the Soviet Union’s eastern european client states was historically inevitable and would have happened sooner or later anyway

    I don’t think anyone mentioned historical inevitability. The collapse of the regimes was inevitable, but this has nothing to do with historical inevitability and everything to do with public declarations that the Soviet army wasn’t available to maintain them in power and the lack of Soviet money to bankroll them, these resulting in a failure of confidence in the regime.

    It had nothing to do with the protesters

    Correct. If protesters were all that was needed, why did the regimes survive the uprisings in Germany and Hungary in the 1950s and the “Prague Spring” in 1968?

    EG

  • Johnathan

    “It had nothing to do with the protesters”.

    Wrong. The protesters had a part to play in this, although of course it helped that the structure of the former Soviet Empire was crumbling. But for a rotten structure to fall, people need to push it over, and to have the bravery to spot the cracks and fissures.

    At least Euan is trying to think through the underlying issues here. I am still gobsmacked by Luniversal’s vile rants at Adriana’s fellow countrymen and women.

  • zdenek

    Correct, if protesters were all that was needed, why did the regimes…
    Two points about this : no one is maintaining that protesters played an exclusive role , so Euan is targeting a straw man.
    Second you can see what is wrong with his view. He is assuming the following : either protesters were all important or they were redundant. But this is false so his argument doesnt work.

  • zdenek

    Jonathan’s position is about right : giving role to the protesters while regognising other factors , economy etc. This is the view that Euan should target and not the straw man he has in most of his posts. What is the argument for thinking that either protesters played an exlusive role in bringing down the communist regime or they played no role at all ?

  • Marc J.

    If protesters were all that was needed, why did the regimes survive the uprisings in Germany and Hungary in the 1950s and the “Prague Spring” in 1968?

    It’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer. I suspect the economy is a major factor – if the people can’t afford food, their much more likely to protest and riot. In order to prevent protesting and rioting, the government would need a lot of manpower to control the people – a la the Soviet Empire: “One third of the population spys on the other two thirds”, but I doubt that the economy can full explain everything.

    Perhaps East Germany and Prague had a stronger interior security force or a security force that appeared strong? Hmm… now that I think about it, there may be a strong correllation between the countries that protesting worked in, the (relative) laxness of the “secret police”, and economic factors.

    Crumbling old-style Communist country + ineffective police control + really poor economy/just getting a taste of Capitalism = Nightmare for any good Communist believer

  • > It had nothing to do with the protesters … If protesters were all that was needed, why did the regimes survive the uprisings in Germany and Hungary in the 1950s and the “Prague Spring” in 1968?

    Similarly, if I attempt to climb Everest and fail, then try again and succeed, my initial failure proves that my eventual success was not my doing.

  • Euan Gray

    So why DID protest fail in Germany and Hungary in the 1950s, and in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s? I notice several people have pooh-poohed the idea that the decrepit state would fall anyway, but none has yet explained why, if people power protests are so important, they didn’t work in the earlier cases.

    EG

  • michael farris

    Euan: Earlier protests failed because the states weren’t so weak then (for a number of different reasons) and there was a superpower army nearby willing and able to invade and enforce it’s will.

    By 1989 the states were very weak (a partial effect of treading water for almost twenty years – when I visited Poland in 1984 no one, even party members pretended that the model they were following was viable, it was already running on fumes) and once the real threat of the Soviet army disappeared, the regimes had just no visible means of support and everybody knew it.

    It’s possible that a general (or group thereof) could declare a coup but in hindsight it’s clear that the homegrown armies were mostly not going to fire on civilians by then and the armies (like everyone else) were hoping for a soft landing.

    This doesn’t detract at all from the courage of the protestors, who really didn’t know what was going to happen next, and their actions were absolutely necessary, if not strictly speaking decisive.

  • zdenek

    Euan doesnt seem to get it : people who think that protesters played a key role dont therefore hold that protesters actions ALONE explain regimes collapse. Key role is not same as the only role. Now if this is the view that most people hold why should there be a problem explaining why people power failed in 60s but succeded in 90s ?

  • zdenek

    Re the claim that protesters played no role as Euan wants to argue consider the following : on November 17 1989 the Socialist Union of Youth ( a proxy of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ) organises a mass demonstration to commemorate the International Students Day. On the 23 November Army informs the Communist leadership of its readiness to put down protests. November 29 the parliament still dominated by the communists. December 3 president Gustav Husak nominates a new federal government which has 15 communists and only 5 non communists. Before I forget in the evening of 21 November Milos Jakes the Chairman of the Communist Party of CZ gives an address in which he declares that order must be preserved and that socialism is the only alternative for Czechoslovakia and sharply criticizes alternative groups.
    This is not a regime that will collapse whatever happens but one that needs a kick in the backsine and the that is what the protesters provided.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    “Euan does not seem to get it”.

    Bless him though, he’s a trier.

  • Euan Gray

    Earlier protests failed because the states weren’t so weak then (for a number of different reasons) and there was a superpower army nearby willing and able to invade and enforce it’s will

    Which is my point. People power accomplishes nothing if the state is powerful and confident.

    If the state is weak and not confident, people power is not necessary to demolish it. If we consider the demise of the USSR, it will be seen that people power had nothing to do with it. The regime collapsed internally because of a crisis of confidence in the prevailing ideology, which led to an attempted coup, which in turn failed because the coup plotters lacked the courage of their convictions, and then the whole thing fell apart as rival politicians squabbled over the corpse. By the time people took to the streets, the USSR was already dead.

    EG

  • Michael Farris

    Euan, The USSR and the CSSR were very different kinds of places (for that matter, each of the central european satellites of the USSR was a very different kind of place).

    In Czechoslovakia, early people power movement didn’t succeed immediately but it helped immensely in the long term. Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia (as in Hungary) was directly provoked by people power and helped strip the regimes of any moral authority among all but the most ruthless/naive (domestically and abroad respectively). Basically, in Czechoslovakia after 1968 there was twenty years of stagnation, economically and culturally (Helena Vondrackova and Nemocnice na kraji mesta notwithstanding). 1968 effectively ended socialist Czechoslovakia as a viable entity since it was clear it wasn’t what the people wanted and only a facade could only be maintained. The regime could put down open dissent but couldn’t do any more than maintain itself. The demonstrations were the final nail in a coffin begun in 1968.

    In the USSR, the anti-Gorbachev coup might well have succeeded had Yeltsin had his people power moment. The Soviet government was so used to having lies go unchallenged at the government level that they fell apart when one was (The Emperor’s New Clothes phenomenon).

  • Johnathan Pearce

    As I and others have said, repeatedly (sigh) the brittle nature of the former Soviet Empire was a necessary condition for the successful overthrow of said regime, but not the sole factor. Without a shove from protesters, who knows how long it would have taken for the Evil Empire to fall down? Euan is being mule-headed on this point.

    Take a very current example. The Iranian regime appears invincible. Student rebellions have been mercilessly crushed. Sooner or later, though, the regime will be so weakened by its own internal contradictions (good Marxian phrase!) that a revolt could succeed. We don’t know when such a moment will arise but in retrospect, you can bet that the 20-20 hindsight brigade will be claiming that it was all “going to happen anyway” and the rebels should keep their heads down, tend their gardens, etc.

  • zdenek

    How does Euan analysis apply to South Africa I wonder ? ANC played no significant role because DeKlerk regime was weak ? Does Euan think that we only get supremely confident and totally weak, ready to collapse types of regimes ? That there are no as it were ‘in betweens’ ? Burden of proof should be with him and as far as I can see he has not offered any defence of this view . If he concedes on the other hand that we do get transition between the two extremes then why not concede that popular protest might quicken the transition ? In fact this is just what you see in the Czech case the regime teetering but finding enough selfconfidence to continue to hold on to power ( see Jakes address on state TV and the position of the army ) .

  • zdenek

    Euan’s focus anyway is a distraction ( interesting but off the topic somehow ) because Czech dissent is worth thinking about not just because it helped to bring down the Communist Regime ( Nazi movement or radical Left of some sort can be as effective ) but what government it help to bring about in its place. And note that on Euan view you cant say much about this angle.

  • zdenek

    Euan’s focus anyway is a distraction ( interesting but off the topic somehow ) because Czech dissent is worth thinking about not just because it helped to bring down the Communist Regime ( Nazi movement or radical Left of some sort can be as effective ) but what government it help to bring about in its place. And note that on Euan view you cant say much about this angle.

  • Joshua

    The thing I find interesting about Euan’s position on this thread is that it seems to be a step outside his normal line. Normally, Euan’s argument is something to the effect that Libertarianism is a crock that would never work because it won’t ever be able to drum up majority support. For Euan on a weekday, majority opinion is both a moral and practical necessity. Without getting into whether he’s right about Libertarianism (there’s something to what he says, but his view is overly, and I suspect deliberately, simplistic) – I would point out that his opinion here is utterly incompatible with his standard view. Now that we’re talking about regimes with absolute zero regard for public opinion, Euan wants to jettison the “practical necessity” part of his pro-democracy line.

    For evidence that he has given this line – please scan back to this thread. Near the end, Euan mischaracterizes my position by arguing that the only vehicle for change in it would be revolution. He writes:

    Thirdly, it prevents for all practical purposes the people choosing some different way, and this is a recipe for disaster because at some point they WILL want another way. Because your system would deny them the ability to peacefully change things, the only route is violent overthrow, and it would in time be certain to happen.

    See – when it’s convenient for his argument, not bending to the wishes of the people is a “recipe for disaster.” Why that would not be the case in the USSR et al is, of course, mysterious – so I’m eager to hear his explanation.

    Zdenek’s criticisms of Euan’s position have been right on point. He’s burning straw men. No one here is claiming that the protests in Czechoslovakia alone were responsible for that regime’s demise. They are merely claiming that the regime wouldn’t have teetered over without them. That is almost certainly true – see Zdenek’s post on the Socialist Union of Youth. Anyone who knows anything about East Germany and Romania will be able to supply similar examples.

  • Euan’s also being overly simplistic about whether or not a rebellion succeeds. While a rebellion may be crushed, it may still have partially succeeded in weakening the regime, thus making future rebellions more likely to succeed. A lot of people, including a lot of Czechs and Slovaks, think that that’s what happened in 68: that the 89 revolution was made both more likely to happen and more likely to succeed by the 68 rebellion. In that case, while it is true to say that the 68 rebellion was beaten, it is untrue to say that it was a wasted effort and incorrect to offer it as evidence that people power cannot work.

  • Midwesterner

    Is it just me, or does anyone else think that a collapsing regime can be very dangerous in the face of insurrection?

    It seems likely to me that a major march against a strong confident regime is less likely to be met with violence (which would look bad to the rest of the world) than if that regime is in a struggle for its life.

    Cornered or injured animals are the most likely to counter attack. I think anyone who marches against a failing government is taking a big personal risk. Especially when that government is scared and on the ropes.

    Some people will never change anything. They’ll just stand up after the danger is passed and say “I could have done that, but it wasn’t necessary.”

    Yeah. Right.

  • Marc J.

    It seems likely to me that a major march against a strong confident regime is less likely to be met with violence (which would look bad to the rest of the world) than if that regime is in a struggle for its life.

    Cornered or injured animals are the most likely to counter attack.

    True, but a cornered animal isn’t exactly the best analogy to a crumbling government. A crumbling bridge would probably be more apt.

    A cornered animal will sum up all of it’s strength in order to take you down with it; a crumbling bridge’s spans will eventually deteriorate to the point where it falls into the river/gorge below.

    The difference? The animal gathers it’s energy, a crumbling bridge drifts apart until almost all of it falls. It’s supports will still stand, but the arches are gone.

    Same with a crumbling government. The government will deteriorate until that “drop-point” when it’s spans fall. Protests/Anti-Government events are like the 18-wheeler going across it. A well built bridge will be able to stand it, but a badly built/mantained bridge will fall under the weight. Or it will be critically weakened to the point where it has to be condemned.

  • Midwesterner

    “A cornered animal will sum up all of it’s strength in order to take you down with it.”

    Wow, I think you’re attributing a suicidal revenge motive to an animal. The cornered animals I’ve seen all had one thing on their mind. Any desperate chance at survival.

    “Protests/Anti-Government events are like the 18-wheeler going across it. A well built bridge will be able to stand it, but a badly built/mantained bridge will fall under the weight.”

    I think this analogy was a little more apt than you may have intended. It actually does a better job of demonstrating my point. The government takes the protestors down with it.

    In most failed governments there will be people that have no future after the government falls. From Louis XVI to Nicolae Ceausescu, and at lower levels as well, there are people who have nothing to lose and will grasp whatever straws to survive. When these people have the means, they are dangerous.

    I think my point stands.

  • Marc J.

    Wow, I think you’re attributing a suicidal revenge motive to an animal.

    Corned animal, mortally wounded animal… same thing. 😛

    The government takes the protestors down with it.

    Maybe, I won’t argue that it doesn’t happen, but it’s more like this:

    People protest -> government falls -> no police, firefighters, health programs -> criminals run rampant, fires burn unchecked, health problems spiral -> protestors are in worse shape then if the government was there

    The above is basicly what happened in the French Revolution, only the criminals hijacked the protest movement and then started killing people.

    The absence of government takes the protestors down.

    I think my point stands.

    Stands, yes, but not completely. This is the reason why ‘storming the Bastile’ type revolutions almost always make something worse then what you had before it. The trick to a revolution isn’t overthrowing the government, it is having the vision/wisdom/ability to put a better government in power a la the American Revolution. For Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, overthrowing the Crown wasn’t the end point; it was the beginning.

    That’s one of my major beefs with those “anarchist” types. They always talk about “overthrowing the government”, but they forget about what to do after they’ve done it. (Which isn’t even a given, overthrowing a democraticly elected government is one of the hardest things to do) However, is the government if actually corrupt, then it becomes easier a la the government types in Eastern Europe.

    Now that I think about this more, this might be another reason why that the earlier revolutions didn’t work – what did the protestors offer the people? I don’t know, but if someone does, I’d be interested in hearing it.

  • Marc J.

    However, is the government if actually corrupt,

    Damned dyslexia! Switch the “if” and the “is”.