‟A disquietlingly large number of the thinkers (the intellectuals) have become advisers of chiefs-of-staffs. They are making efforts to make appear as sensible what is deadly senseless. The intellectual specialists of the nuclear- and ideological war are receiving their money for misleading the others and that people would go to the slaughter house like sheep”. (György Konrád)
No social movement opposing membership of NATO has developed in Hungary, or in the other Central and East European countries. The protests against NATO membership can hardly articulate themselves and for this reason, the sporadic protests cannot reach the stage of intensification. The protest actions are unable to broaden or become institutional and the signs of a ‟transitional team”-type anti-NATO-membership could emerge are not there either. The possibility of NATO membership has not been a social challenge so far and it has not had a mobilising force concerning the existing movements. A new type movement cannot emerge and the peace and eco-type movements cannot strengthen along this line either. (Neither a new movement, nor a new quality in the existing movements has developed). NATO-membership which can be regarded as a new wave of modernisation has failed to inspire a new cycle of movements – at least so far.
Maybe the social conditions or structure has to change before an anti-NATO-membership network or a ‟single issue” movement can develop which – independently from political goals – would set the prevention of membership of NATO as its sole aim.
During the start of the accession talks, or when the conditions become known, or at the time of setting the date of the referendum of NATO membership, the general conditions will certainly change. Probably, it will be decided then whether the anti-NATO-member-ship protests can institutionalise or not, and if they do, then what will its political framework be; it is yet to be seen whether the civic organisations will work together or each on its own, whether they will remain within the civilian sphere or will be attached to political parties, whether they will have a unity of action, or form a specific civic movement. It is a question whether the interest safeguarding organisations, the integrating and professional organisations will become active? Similarly, it is not known what role the non-Parliamentary parties which are opposed to NATO membership can play. And that the left wing which is outside Parliament is ready to join forces with others and if any of the green parties will strongly identify itself with the opposition to NATO?
ALTERNATIVES WITHOUT INTELLECTUALS
What is happening, or more exactly what is not happening in connection with Hungary’s integration into NATO and the European Union can be interpreted as a sign of crisis of the intellectuals.
The critical type intellectuals are fewer and fewer in this region. The intelligentsia are waging its life and death, and political struggle, while being exposed to lobby interests in the hope of obtaining money and existence. The path to western scholarships and invitations to attend conferences does not lead through the neglecting of modernisation
elaboration of Hungarian and foreign modernisation, integration or Euro-Atlantic integration strategies and placing it on a scientific foundation.
However, without intellectuals no alternative movement, or alternative ideology can be born. In Hungarian, there is no post-materialist intelligentsia and there is hardly any intellectual-public grouping which would represent the post-materialist and anti-militarist values. Issues of peace ‟have got detached” from the demands of the civil rights movements and the programmes of the East European liberal opposition which would perhaps be the best entitled to assume that role.
The same thing has happened to the Czech Charter ‘77, the Polish Solidarity or the Hungarian democratic opposition: they have disintegrated in power and revised their earlier views. After they got into power, all alternative ideas and indeed anti-militarism too, were swept out from the programmes of the former opposition. To have the freedom rights and civic right accepted consumed all their energies. The ideas to eliminate the bi-polar world have been realised, since the world has become ‟one-polar”.
Global issues, solidarity, equal rights of the peoples etc. could not be dealt with on the level of everyday and pragmatic politics (since they did not concern us directly any more) and anti-militarism aimed at conscientious objection which was ultimately resolved by the introduction of civilian military service.
Since the anti-militarism and freedom of violence in the system of values of the left wing are not duly represented politically, anti-militarism has suffered ‟a historical defeat”. The anti-militarist elite of the change of system are united today in their support of membership of NATO together with the former Communists who got into Parliament who had early been dogmatically against NATO. Personal political lives and changes symbolise this situation very well. One of the founders of Dialogue, the first independent Hungarian peace group after 1945 had been a top state supporter of Euro-Atlantic integration for three years, and today he is the No.1 man in the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament effectively lobbying for NATO membership. One of the prominent personalities of the East-West Dialogue Network Circle, an independent peace group fighting for disarmament both in the East and West, established before the change of system, is a leading foreign affairs politician of one of the governing parties committed to membership of NATO. A well defined group of the East-West Network who were close to the British European Nuclear Disarmament (END) today belong to the core of the Young Democrats-Civic Party and the Alliance of Free Democrats. One of them is the chairman of the pro-NATO European Integration Committee of Parliament, the other one is the vice president of the pseudo-civic organisation, Hungarian Atlantic Council working for Euro-Atlantic integration. Members of the one time democratic opposition, the one time editors of samizdat publications are ardent believers of NATO-membership today as politicians inside power, or outside of it, as writers, scientists, public personalities or columnists. One of the former representatives of the official peace movement of the one-party state, the Peace Council which proclaimed radically anti-NATO views that resounded the will of the state is now one of the highest ranking Hungarian NATO diplomats, while the successor of the organisation – in line with the desire of the present holders of power – is pro-NATO. A top staff member in charge of
‟foreign propaganda” of the Central Committee’s Agitation and Propaganda department was first the head of the Defence Ministry’s NATO department, and as such the main guardian of civilian control, then he became the ‟propaganda minister” in charge of NATO membership, while at present he is the secretary of a pseudo NGO, comprising of
politicians lobbying NATO who speaks out in the media as an ‟independent” expert. It is also public knowledge that the present Minister of Defence who ‟demands” membership of NATO wrote a chapter of a textbook in 1988 against NATO as an organisation which obstructs world peace and even at the end of 1992, he openly criticised those supporting NATO membership.
But ‟it is doubtful how real is the nation or the military alliance. As long as the interest of the state is bigger that the life of the individual, world peace is in danger.
Intellectual rule over force is needed, otherwise we will be killed. Everybody has a liberation case study as his lot. We provide the answer to the most important questions with our biography.” (György Konrád)
Translated by Vera SÁRKÁNY
Published under the title of Defeat of anti-militarism in Magyar Narancs, on 31, July 1997.