p114--new system had to keep power for the leaders but acknowledge that the stalinist heritage was becoming obsolete--stagnation and immobility

p115--the universal sense of hellessness of the indiviual of Stalinism had "vanished almost completely"--as it became clear that the regiems were ineffective, public dissent became possible--all the eastern states had organizations develope to oppose the status quo--all five tried at least somewhat to repress them to different results

p116--worst repression in Ceausescu’s Romania--at any cost the ruling parties managed to hang on until the late 1980s

Premises for a Civil Society

p117--Poland, loss of ruling party’s authority--1975 Helsinki Agreements on humman rights--because the governments didn’t fulfill this promise, the opposition could use it against them

Poland: The Rebirth of the Civil Society

p118--BIrth of the Polish SOlidarity movement was predicated on the public’s awareness of the dominate power’s loss of authority

p119-- 31 August 1980 the Communist party agrees to acknowledge Solidartiy as an independent party/union--durring 1981 Polish political life was dominated by the Catholic Church, the Communist Party, and Solidarity--Solidarity became offensive

p120--General Jaruzelski became Prime Minister in Feb 1981--cracked donw on solidarity, declared martial law--to avoid Soviet intervetion--when it became clear this wasn’t going to happen (Gorbachev) he became very reformist--but didn’t relegalize SOlidartiy

p121--"Since its beginings in Eastern Europe, communism had been in a permanent crisis - a crisis of authority and legiticmacy, a crisis of morality, and, of course, a crisis of economic effectiveness."

p122--Marshall law drove Solidarity underground, but it continued to thrive--its future leaders grew up under the martial law while the old ones were in jail--gained significant popular support

p123--The KOR gained popularity and support it would later need to take over power in 1980 by maintiang a policy of never lieing.

p124--The most important thing was that the KOR managed to unite the workers, the intellegencia, and the church against the outright lies of the communist regime

p125--The failure of revisionism taught reformers a valuable lesson that they could not work within the system, but that they could be sucessfull--in states like Bulgaria and Romania where there were no revisonist attempts, the final transition to freedom was much harder

p127--neopositivists still believed in communism, but not the party--they too realized that there had to be a total lbreak--Michnik wanted peacemeal, non-violent transformation

p128-- "new evolutionishm" put faith in the workers ability to be made into citizens and the ability to create a parallel set of social structures to those of the state (and then presumably switch over to them)--Solidarity got beyond its trade union status by instituting social organizations and networks--creating a civil society for once

p130--Solidarity knew it couldn’t set up a new Polish gov. because the USSR would interviene, so it set up to create the institutions neccessary for one in a parallel fassion

p131-- "The significance of Solidarity transcended the Polish borders"--1981 Polish gov. cracks down on Solidarity--concerns for its own survival, solidarity as an opposing force, pressure from the soviet union--

p132--Solidarity thrived underground because the regime failed to deliver on economic reforms--1989 revolution was both reform from within the party elite and a revolution from outside

The Politics of antipolitics: How Civil Society Emerges

p134-- "The new movements in Eastern Europe needed convincing theoretical explaniations of their political legitimacy"--Czech playwrite Vaclav Havel (founding member of Charter 77) wrote the essay "The Power of the Powerless"--the vegitable seller and the sign parable

p137--Ideology is the substitute for naked terror--it is used to control people without immediate force--creation of civil society included rebellion against the "mortifying role of ideology" in eastern europe--people had to all realie that the system was bankrupt and that nobody supported it before they could sucessfully revolt agianst it

p138--Brezhnev’s system was all aabout lies--you had to stick to party ideology and dogma to survive since it was all lies

p139-- ***"The symbols that justify the system must be endorsed through tht epractical behavior of individuals. They are not supposed to belive in these pseudo-values, and everyone knows that noebody is speaking the truth. Precisely this is the key to the post-totalitarian technique of dominatio: the make-belive, the simluation of convition, the as if transformed into and all-embracing mechainm of self-delusion" "they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie." "they must behave as though they did[belive it]"--according to Havle, it was the systems ability to turn its victims (the people) into accomplices (the ones who said the meaningless stuff) that makes "post-totalitarianism" differnt from classical dictatorships

p140--if one person denies the lie, then it is very dangerous because everyone sees that it is only a lie, only a game--

p141--there are risks to breaking with the status quo, but it doesn’t have to be dramatic or martyrdom.

p143--these revolts had to be undertaken from "a Kadar-like ‘enlightented despotism’ to a Ceausecu-like enthnocentric and paranoid dictatorship"

p145--KOR in poland, Initiative for Peace and Human Rights in the GDR, the Moscow Trust Group in the Soviet Union, Democratic Opposition in Hungary, Charter 77 in Czech--all provided some legitimate support against the main party--human rights--and some real and legitimate alternative--promote genuine pluralism.

p146--Chapter 77 defended a rock group on trial because it represented crossing human rights to try them, "The poilitics of antipolitics consists precisely in this discreet, unobtrustive attempt to restore the diginity of the individual"

p147--The state (and politics) should get out of private lives--under communism everythign was permiated by poilitics

Dissent in Post-totalitarian Societies

p149--Kadar’s regime was a "silent pact" between the rulers and the people which offered the people "material benefits and a limited range of autonomy so long as society did not disput the paternalist privileges of the regime"