East European Connections

Professor Leslie Holmes (University of Melbourne) ��

'Party Financing Problems: East and West Europe Compared'

Professor Holmes began by pointing out that although it was valid to talk of �waves� of democratisation like tides that ebb and flow (having in mind Samuel Huntington�s early writings on the subject), one should nevertheless acknowledge that even in the most advanced countries, democracy was under threat and faced many problems. These were partly caused by reactions to September 11, such as the clamping down on citizens� rights, but also by globalisation (which had accentuated the problem of citizens� demands for restricted flows of communication being in conflict with rights of free speech), and finally the issue of party funding (with rising costs and often declining legitimate income). Professor Holmes� comparative study focused on Bulgaria, France, Italy, Germany, Russia and Poland. While these countries had significant differences in their party systems and funding arrangements, when examined carefully, these differences were more shades of grey than black and white; they were all European in essence, and also shared many of the same problems.

There were two main approaches to party funding: narrow, primarily for electioneering; and broader, including day-to-day administrative expenses, to be used for example to fund policy research, voter registration, and opinion polls. The number of elections had increased with trends of federalisation, EU elections, the diversification of campaigning methods, and political instability, consequently increasing costs. Sources of income for parties had often diminished and been increasingly perceived as problematic: membership was often in decline, while organisations that donated funds frequently expected paybacks, which many now see as undemocratic. Property and investments had been battered in recent years with market fluctuations; publications and fundraising were not significant sources of income; and tax relief was often grossly inadequate. On the other hand, funding by the state was in many cases insufficient, while funding from foreign sources was anathema to many citizens. The problem was a familiar one of contradictory public attitudes. On the one hand, people expected parties to act as agencies of civil society; on the other hand, citizens were all too often either unwilling or simply unable to pay for them. In this situation, states tended to step in � which some citizens then criticized as excessive state intervention in what should be largely civil society agencies.

It was important to bear in mind that political corruption did not just affect Central and East European states; Kohl and the CDU scandal in Germany, and the Chirac affair in France, had highlighted the fact that major cases have emerged in Western Europe too. Professor Holmes mentioned that as part of his current comparative research he was running public opinion surveys to find out whether or not the public preferred a corrupt but effective leader or party to a clean but less dynamic one. He referred to and elaborated Ivan Krastev�s proposal that a voucher system be introduced in European states, so that each citizen could actively support a particular party and the problem of private funding would be at least partly solved. Professor Holmes also referred to the possibility of a �democracy tax�, and argued that if the public understood that the cost to each citizen would actually be very low, and that they could thereby achieve a properly funded democracy fairly easily and at relatively little cost, they might well support the proposal.

Mr George Gomori (Darwin College, University of Cambridge)

'Max Hayward and the Hungarian Revolution'

Mr Gomori, who had been Max Hayward�s research assistant in the 1960s, began by outlining a short biography of the early part of Max Hayward�s life, noting that when Max Hayward joined the Foreign Office in 1947 he was probably still the apolitical young man he had always been. But subsequent experience in Czechoslovakia, where communist domination was looming, and the Soviet Union, turned him into a sceptic and a realist. Max Hayward�s good relationship with the Warden of St Antony�s College, combined with his expertise in Russian, were likely to have been the main reasons for his having been chosen as a member of the Oxford selection committee which flew to Vienna in November 1956. Max Hayward had been a keen observer of Soviet imperial politics and must have observed the Hungarian events of October 1956 with great attention. It had been a time of great expectations. Khrushchev�s famous secret speech at the 20th Congress of the CSPU in February had made many idealist communists lose their faith and illusions. It had also initiated a reform movement within the regime that was later labeled �revisionist�. Khrushchev had given a unique opportunity to the CIA to stage one of their greatest scoops ever: the balloon project. Copies of the secret speech had been translated into all East European languages and flown to the satellite states by air balloons.

The Hungarian revolution had started on 23rd October with two student demonstrations expressing sympathy with the reformist Poles and demanding further democratisation in Hungary. Mr Gomori was the organiser of the demonstration on the Pest side of the river involving all faculties of the University, while on the Buda side the Polytechnic had staged a similar though much more muted demonstration. At what point did Max Hayward realise that something extraordinary was happening in Hungary? The Hungarian workers and students had not laid down their weapons at the sight of Soviet tanks but had attacked them with petrol flasks which later went down in history as �Molotov cocktails�. Within days the Red Army had become hopelessly embroiled in urban guerrilla warfare. When Imre Nagy (whom the Party had appointed Prime Minister on the night of 23rd /24th October) had begun to exercise real power, that is after a few days of street fighting, it had even seemed for a moment that this popular uprising would be victorious. The Russian leadership had issued a declaration on 30th October 1956 admitting that there was �more than one way to socialism� and had seemed to settle for a �national� communist regime of the kind envisaged in Poland under Gomulka. Then there had been the Suez attack and mounting Chinese pressure to stop the rot in Hungary. With a bungled handling of the situation by Dulles, the Hungarian revolution had been doomed to failure.

Oxford University had organised a committee to go to Vienna to pick the best �migr� students and offer them scholarships. Mr Gomori suggested that some Western academics� feeling of guilt about their politicians� impotence vis-�-vis the Russians may have been one reason why most free countries at that time had offered not only generous immigrant quotas but also numerous scholarships for Hungarian refugees. Max Hayward had been a brilliant linguist who, it was rumoured, had begun to learn Hungarian the day after the outbreak of the Revolution and had been able to advise the Hungarian students in Oxford in their own language (only three out of the thirty-four member first group selected by Oxford in Vienna had spoken English). A few days after Mr Gomori�s group had arrived in Oxford in December, they had produced a statement (in the name of Hungarian university students) calling for a boycott of both K�d�r�s pseudo-revolutionary (in fact, counter-revolutionary communist) government and the Soviet Union until the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary. Max Hayward had then begun to organise the East European section of the library for the College, apparently supported by Rockefeller Foundation grants in 1954 and 1959. This great scholar and Russian translator had devoted considerable time to tutoring the young Hungarians exiled by the 1956 Revolution. �

Dr Milan Hauner (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

�Bene� and Stalin�

Dr Hauner began by explaining the complex motivation of Edvard Bene� (1884-1948) regarding his relationship with Russia and the Soviet Union, which contained elements of socialism, neo-slavism and, above all, pragmatism. Although he had never visited Russia (until 1935), Bene� developed strong socialist sympathy for Russian revolutionaries after 1905. With the ending of World War I and the creation of Czechoslovakia, of which he was together with T.G.Masaryk the principal co-founder, Bene��s major task as the new foreign minister was to pull out the Czech Legion from Siberia where it was since 1918 entangled in the civil war against the Bolsheviks. This was the main reason while diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were not inducted until the Nazis came to power in neighbouring Germany and Czechoslovakia was eagerly looking for new allies. Hence the Friendship Treaty of Assistance which Bene� went to sign to Moscow in June of 1935. This was also his first encounter with Stalin. Regarding the Tukhachevsky Affair, with which the name of Bene� became linked, Dr Hauner insisted that the motivation in approving the Soviet marshal�s downfall was entirely pragmatic on Bene�� part. In order to prevent a �second Rapallo�, Bene� supported in Stalin the anti-German policy of Russia. During the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1938, which culminated in the surrender of the Sudetenland to Hitler at the conference of Munich, Bene� hesitated to avail himself of direct Russian military involvement � for fear of starting a civil war in Central Europe without the backing of the western powers. Moreover, although Bene� knew that because of geography neither the Red Army nor the Soviet Air Force could have saved Czechoslovakia from the German assault, he allowed the Communist propaganda to spread the legend of Soviet readiness in contrast to western betrayal. Yet Bene� remained a �westerner� and went to exile to England and the United States after Munich. During a secret meeting with FDR in May 1939 the former Czechoslovak president revealed himself as one of the first protagonists of the �convergence theory�, namely that the western powers should ally themselves with Communist Russia against the fascist powers, thereby helping to humanize the communist system by letting it coexist with western democracies. Thus Bene� had definitively underestimated Stalin�s ultimate goals in Central Europe in having accepted at their face value Stalin�s repeated promises of non-intervention in Czechoslovakia�s internal matters. The final trade over looked much more pragmatic: for the sacrifice of Transcarpathian Ruthenia, which henceforth became part of the USSR, Bene� secured Stalin�s backing for the restored pre-Munich borders, the re-attachment of Slovakia, and the expulsion of the German (but not Hungarian) minority.