Into the Public Eye

Recent Western press coverage of post-Chernobyl demonstrations in Eastern Europe against nuclear power and state secrecy has once again drawn attention to one of the most exciting developments of the 1980s in the Soviet bloc--the emergence of independent citizens' peace and ecology movements and a widening discussion about disarmament and militarism among the civil rights movements launched in the 1960s and 1970s.

Although the human rights and other social movements in each of the East European countries are very different in nature, they all have in common a desire to reclaim from the state what is called "civil society" in the language of these countries, or what we might call "public life" or "community activism" in the United States. By this is meant a space where independent discussion and criticism can grow, where an alternative to the state's monopoly on information and education can thrive, where an effort can be made to restrain the state's arbitrary or arrogant use of power against its own citizens or other countries, and, finally, where the rigidity and isolation of the bloc mentality can be challenged. Activists in Eastern Europe have described this process as restoring the citizens as a subject of history, rather than as an object controlled by the state.

This struggle has had greater or lesser success, depending on the country. But in all of the Soviet bloc states, independent peace and human rights activity has been met with harsh retaliation from the security forces, which regard any unofficial citizens' initiatives as a challenge to their authority and power.

Four major events in the last decade have dramatically altered the stage and the players in Eastern Europe and expanded the space for "public life." The first grew out of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe 11 years ago by 35 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union. The accords are not legally binding, but they are a part of a continuing process of establishing security in Europe and improving trade and human rights conditions.

The signatories agreed to ratify the post-World War II borders in Europe and to refrain from seeking to change them by force, as well as from interference in one another's internal affairs. This was of paramount importance to the security-conscious Soviet Union, both a victim and a perpetrator of many invasions in its purported quest for national security. But the accords also provided a new, public acknowledgement to the peoples of Eastern Europe of their governments' commitments to internationally accepted human rights standards and proclaimed the indissoluble link between human rights and peace.

The Helsinki Accords emphasize the free flow of information and people, addressing the West's concern that the closed, repressive nature of East bloc societies causes suffering to citizens and is a threat to international security since preparations for war in these countries are cloaked in secrecy and beyond public control. The accords sparked citizens' "watch" committees and public petitioning in the Soviet bloc and continue to be a basis for all peace and human rights activity.

The second major event was the growth of Solidarity, the 30-million strong free trade union and democracy movement in Poland that continues to transform Polish life and is the largest independent social movement in Eastern Europe. In an unprecedented development, this mass movement was able to force an agreement with the government that was observed for a year and a half before the imposition of martial law in December 1981.

This agreement enabled the public to create its own institutions so that even the judiciary was reformed and police abuse curbed. Free publications flourished and continue to this day, and spontaneous demonstrations are a regular phenomenon. The movement, an outgrowth of detente that probably would not have been possible without the signing of the Helsinki Accords, spilled over into all the neighboring states in the East.

The third major influence on Eastern European social movements was the appearance of a vigorous Western peace movement, which flourished in Europe during the period 1982-83 in particular. The mass movements against nuclear weapons in Western Europe evoked an interest in the same issues in Eastern Europe, where citizens feel tied by history and fate to their West European counterparts and where independent proposals have also been put forth on disarmament, the forming of nuclear-free zones, the withdrawal of all foreign troops, and a breakdown of the bloc system itself. Conscientious objection has been particularly attractive to youth in the East who are subject to compulsory military education and the draft.

The fourth major event of the 1980s was the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in May 1986, which provoked a tide of fear and indignation among the peoples of Eastern Europe who were in the path of the radioactive cloud. Demonstrations and protests of one kind or another occurred in almost all the Soviet bloc countries. Calls to abolish nuclear power began to be heard, and the "green," or ecological, movement was reinvigorated.

These independent peace initiatives in the East differ from similar Western movements, mainly because official oppression has curbed their energies, and because some major differences in perspective on the link between peace and human rights have grown out of these countries' specific experiences under Soviet oppression. But all the groups have made extensive outreach to their Western counterparts, despite some disagreements in priorities. Were it not for support for these groups by major Western peace organizations, they long ago would have been crushed by state security agencies.

The following is a summary of the major groups and their recent activities.

Czechoslovakia

Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to put down what is known as the "Prague Spring," a reform movement in the Czechoslovak government that sought "communism with a human face." Hundreds of thousands of people, who were affected with jailings and firings, form the basis for the independent movements of today.

There are currently 80,000 Soviet troops stationed in Czechoslovakia, exerting a chilling effect on developments in the society, which has remained virtually stagnant since 1968. The sole exception is Charter 77, both a civil rights movement and a manifesto, which was issued by Czechoslovak intellectuals and workers in 1977 and requests their government's compliance with the Helsinki Accords.

Some 1,000 people from all walks of life signed the charter, and the movement has managed to survive for nine years, spawning a wealth of cultural, publishing, human rights, peace, and ecology activities. The group has also issued an impressive array of independent documentation on human rights abuse, the law, environmental pollution, and other issues. The best theoretical writing on the relationship between peace and human rights has come from Charter 77 activists, and Charter spokespersons have made it a major priority to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the Western peace movements.

Because of their critical stance, Charter activists are periodically rounded up, and many have been tried and sentenced or fired from their jobs. Each year, on the August anniversary of the Soviet invasion, Charter leaders issue protests and stage demonstrations and are promptly jailed. When Soviet missiles were deployed in Czechoslovakia in 1983, after NATO deployment in Europe, Charter representatives were rounded up by police for distributing protest leaflets. Former Charter spokesperson Ladislav Lis, active in contacts with the Western peace movement, was jailed for 14 months during the period 1983-84.

During the 1983 World Peace Council conference in Prague, Charter 77 tried unsuccessfully to gain entrance to the conference and met separately with Western delegates in a city park, where a statement of cooperation was drawn up. Five Czech youths were arrested by police after a group of about 200 broke away from a large official peace march, chanting their own slogan, "We want peace and freedom." Several young workers were detained for their involvement in circulating petitions against the deployment of Soviet missiles.

In March 1985 Charter 77 issued what is known as the "Prague Appeal," a general consensus document on peace, addressed to the European Nuclear Disarmament conference in Amsterdam, which calls for responses from Western groups:

There can be no democratic and autonomous Europe as long as any of its citizens, minorities or nations are denied the right to a say in matters affecting not only their everyday lives but their very survival. It would then be possible, in cooperation with all those who genuinely desire to put an end to the present dangerous situation, to put forward proposals for disarmament... to lend support to every individual, group or government initiative aimed at bringing the nations of Europe closer together....Only free, autonomous nations can create a Europe as a community of equal partners which will not generate a threat of global war to the rest of the world.

East Germany (GDR)

East German citizens have more contact with Western Europe than any other Soviet bloc citizens because they watch West German television and receive visits from their West German relatives. These factors have worked to make the GDR peace movement the largest in Eastern Europe, with an estimated 10,000 people involved in movements such as Swords Into Ploughshares and Women for Peace. These groups seek abolition of both the draft and the sale of war toys and protest both NATO and Warsaw Pact missile deployments and troop occupations. Although the GDR has the best standard of living among the socialist states and has special relations with West Germany, 380,000 Soviet troops stationed in the GDR ensure that the country stays firmly in the Soviet orbit.

The peace movement is somewhat protected from official persecution by the church, which provides an environment and physical facilities where young people can hold free discussions and peace activities. But street actions are harshly discouraged; about 500 peace activists have been sentenced in the last few years for leafletting, holding silent vigils and other peaceful demonstrations, or for spray painting anti-nuclear slogans on walls.

With the rapid spread of interest in peace among young people, the church has become increasingly outspoken on foreign policy issues, peace, and domestic issues such as militarization, alcoholism, and crime. The regime has cautiously allowed these issues to be discussed within the churches but has exacted loyalty for the main government programs in exchange, and has often co-opted church leaders in one-sided attacks on Western armaments.

In the fall of 1983, hundreds of thousands of people took part in mass religious meetings in celebration of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's birth. Several hundred GDR peace activists and Western friends planned to petition both the U.S. and Soviet embassies, calling for no new deployment of nuclear weapons. Despite preventative arrests, about 30 East Germans, joined by West German Greens and the Dutch IKV (Interchurch Peace Council), managed to demonstrate for an hour in an East Berlin square before they were arrested.

In recent years the East German peace groups have tended to engage in quieter activities within the churches to avoid the discouraging attrition of arrests. GDR authorities have moved to cut off the life line with the Western peace movement by denying visas into East Berlin for more than 100 activists in West Germany.

In 1984 a joint statement was issued by independent peace activists in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, protesting the stationing of both Soviet and NATO missiles. Since then, cooperation has increased with a woman's peace petition among a number of East and West European nations, and other appeals and cross-border meetings.

In the last year, a new civil rights initiative has emerged out of the independent peace movement, calling itself Human Rights GDR. The first appeal to GDR leader Erich Honecker was on the occasion of the U.N. Youth Year and called for full implementation of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In subsequent appeals the group called for, in addition to civil liberties, the demilitarization of society, the creation of alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors, and an end to travel restrictions for both East and West Germans. The appeal was signed by more than 300 people.

After the Chernobyl explosion, GDR officials strained to dismiss widespread concern about health hazards as most citizens virtually stopped buying fresh fruit and vegetables. The first letter of protest was sent to the Council of Ministers by a church peace group in East Berlin, demanding the shutdown of all reactors.

An anti-nuclear petition, submitted to the government on May 5 by 140 people describing themselves as from "the independent peace and ecology movement and other concerned citizens," was later reported to have gathered several hundred more signatures. Titled "Chernobyl is Everywhere," the petition condemns irresponsible information policies in both the East and West, rejects the distinction between civilian and military use of nuclear power, and calls for the halting of new atomic plant construction and the elimination of nuclear power by 1990.

There are many signs, even among GDR government leaders, that a serious nuclear debate has been unleashed. But like many of the East European countries, the nation is in a quandary over the fact that nuclear power has been seen as a solution to their energy dependence on brown coal, which severely damages the environment.

Hungary

Hungary's popular uprising in 1956 was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks. The presence of 65,000 Soviet troops keeps the painful memories alive, and citizens are still not permitted to publicly discuss the revolution. Last year, for example, a Writers Union official was forced to resign for writing a poem mentioning the execution of Imre Nagy, the prime minister of Hungary at the time of the revolution.

But Hungary is generally regarded as the most liberal of the Soviet bloc countries; authorities are somewhat more tolerant of free expression, preferring to fine or otherwise harass samizdat ("underground") authors rather than jail them. A small "democratic opposition" made up of several hundred intellectuals is relatively tolerated, and a number of its leaders have been allowed to travel abroad for lecture and study.

In 1985 Western observers were surprised to learn that two members of the democratic opposition ran in parliamentary elections, an uprecedented event in the Soviet bloc. The dissidents took advantage of a new electoral law that allows those who endorse the official party program and receive one third of the votes at selection meetings to be considered candidates.

The two candidates endorsed the official party platform but urged greater freedom and debated with officials on the need to alleviate poverty and ensure greater consultation with the public before installing a controversial hydroelectric project on the Danube River. They also called for recognition of conscientious objector status and protection of the oppressed Hungarian minority in Romania and Czechoslovakia.

The Peace Group for Dialogue was organized in September 1982, primarily by university students and recent graduates. During the brief span of its independent activity, this group attracted thousands of young people and organized a number of successful activities of the sort not normally tolerated in Eastern Europe. These included an officially sponsored peace march, several public meetings, and a lecture by British END (European Nuclear Disarmament) leader E.P. Thompson (held in an apartment after permission was denied for a public meeting).

Yet because of its efforts to develop as a large, autonomous, independent organization, the group was subjected to increasing pressure by the Hungarian authorities. The official Hungarian Peace Council made numerous attempts to get the unofficial peace group to merge with it.

In May 1983 authorities reversed their prior decision and refused to grant passports to Peace Group members who were planning to attend an international peace conference in West Berlin. In July 1983 officials prevented the group from holding an international peace camp in Hungary by refusing visas, expelling Western pacifists, and detaining about 20 activists. Afterward, the group disbanded, saying that its chief aim--dialogue with the authorities--had become effectively impossible.

During an official signature campaign against the NATO deployment of nuclear missiles in Western Europe in the fall of 1983, some high school students began circulating a counter-petition, protesting that the issue of Russian deployment had not been addressed. Two school principals were reportedly fired for failing to stop the students' petitions.

Some members of Catholic base communities have encouraged conscientious objection to military service. They are associated with dissident Piarist priest Gyorgy Bulanyi, a widely known pacifist. In June 1985, Cardinal Laszlo Lekai denied Fr. Bulanyi the right to celebrate Mass on the grounds that his theological teachings contradicted Roman Catholic doctrine. At least eight other Roman Catholic priests who are allied with Fr. Bulanyi have been removed from their parishes.

Approximately a dozen young Catholics have been sentenced to prison terms of up to three years for refusing military service. The right of conscientious objection is recognized only for the Nazarenes and the Jehovah's Witnesses. In a letter to the Budapest Cultural Forum, a Helsinki Accords review meeting last fall, Karoly Kiszely stated that there were a total of 150 Hungarians imprisoned for conscientious objection, either for refusing service without arms or refusing the draft entirely, and urged the representatives of Helsinki signatories to consider their plight.

By far, the most tenacious and widespread movement in Hungary is the ecologist or "green" movement, which is largely concerned with protesting the construction of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam on the Hungarian Danube. This is a joint project of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian governments, and it is apparently also to be financed by the Austrian government. Thousands of signatures have been garnered for this environmental issue.

In the wake of the Chernobyl accident, Hungarian environmentalists were cautious about raising the nuclear power issue. The Christian Science Monitor of August 11, 1986 quoted one leader, Ivan Baba, as saying that "opposing nuclear power means opposing the Soviet Union, which helps us build nuclear plants. If we want to exist, we have to avoid criticism of such a sensitive subject." On August 14 Moscow's Izvestia announced that a new agreement on further joint development of nuclear power was signed between the Soviet Union and Hungary, which will begin with the installation of two reactors.

Poland

Although martial law was technically lifted in July 1983, new legislation effectively institutionalized all the brutal features of martial law, known as the "state of war" in Polish. The regeneration of Polish institutions such as the schools, professional unions, cultural societies, and the court system was progressively overturned; in some cases, the regime had to disband official bodies such as the Writers Union or bar associations in order to regain control with its own appointees.

An estimated 10,000 (official statistic) to 40,000 (from Solidarity sources) people were jailed under martial law, and 75 deaths of activists at the hands of the security forces were documented. Despite official persecution the underground Solidarity movement still claims one million dues-paying members, and thousands of Poles still demonstrate on important anniversaries of Solidarity actions and tragic events in Polish history.

In 1984 the government freed 665 political prisoners, including the celebrated "Solidarity 11" leaders. But new arrests began immediately after the amnesty, and many of the "11" are back in prison. Another amnesty in 1986 brought the release of prominent Solidarity spokespersons Adam Michnik and Bogdan Lis, but, disappointingly, only 160 other activists. Jacek Kuron, Solidarity's foremost thinker, remains in prison.

Both Kuron and Michnik have made a number of thoughtful statements to the Western peace movement. When three Solidarity activists went on trial in 1985, Michnik urged members of the international peace movement to come to Gdansk and attempt to attend the trial, saying that "perhaps your presence might be decisive to our fate." A group of 36 peace and social justice leaders organized by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy responded to the plea with a public statement and sent a representative to the trial.

A new independent peace group, the Freedom and Peace movement, was founded in April 1985 by young people concerned about growing militarism in their country and the abuse of human rights. The movement has undertaken a variety of actions for peace, ecology, and human rights, and has involved people of varying viewpoints on the spectrum of religious, political, and pacifist opinion.

Although Solidarity has always had a commitment to nonviolence as a tactic, it has generally made trade union and civil rights its priority, and has not been involved in general peace issues and the right to refuse the draft. Freedom and Peace is the only opposition group in Poland that has included the struggle against the nuclear threat in its agenda. The group has sought the right to conscientious objection status and the rejection of the oath under which military recruits in Poland pledge fraternal alliance with the Soviet Union. The group has attracted the support of a number of Solidarity leaders, and one appeal issued by the group, opposing the oath and urging the right to conscientious objector status, garnered 4,000 signatures.

Freedom and Peace has been at the forefront of the massive response in Poland to the Chernobyl disaster. It was the first group in Eastern Europe to stage demonstrations after the accident. On May 9, in Wroclaw, several dozen peace activists staged a sit-in against the use of nuclear power and attracted the support of many bystanders. Police did not attempt to stop the anti-nuclear action. About 3,000 people were involved in a march in Cracow.

In Bialystok, an area most exposed to Chernobyl radioactivity, about 3,000 people signed a petition calling for the suspension of the construction of Poland's first nuclear plant in Zarnowiec, which is to be built with Soviet help. Solidarity's best-known newspaper, Tygodnik Masowsze, accused the Soviet Union of "criminally ignoring the health of millions of people by holding back on information" and called for more protests.

Because of massive concern for the environment that had been generated even during the Solidarity era by independent researchers, the Polish government was under tremendous popular pressure to respond to the Chernobyl disaster. It was viewed as the most cooperative of the East bloc governments in terms of providing health information and iodine for children. But in response to Poland's severe energy shortage, the government has announced that plans for construction of three nuclear plants by the year 2000 will go ahead.

Soviet Union

The independent peace movement in the Soviet Union, spearheaded in June 1982 by the foundation of the Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S. and the USSR, is virtually the only social movement in the country today that operates in the open with relative tolerance from the government. Most other civil rights, religious, and nationalist groups were crushed after their heyday in the detente era of the 1970s and have been forced to work underground.

The Moscow Trust Group, formed to foster grassroots peace initiatives "from below" and dialogue between ordinary citizens East and West, has spawned similar groups in Leningrad, Kiev, Gorki, Riga, Tallinn, Novosibirsk, and other towns. The group is said to involve about 2,000 people, whose activities range from staging demonstrations or signing appeals to more quiet moral support or the distribution of literature on disarmament, pacifist, and environmental issues.

In addition to the Trust Groups, which have generally refrained from criticism of either Western or Soviet peace policies, more radical groups based in the Soviet "hippie" movement, such as Independent Initiative and the Group of Good Will, have urged opposition to the war in Afghanistan, refusal of the draft, and an end to capital punishment.

Incredibly, the Moscow Trust Group has survived four years of constant secret police intimidation and the arrests of a number of its leaders. Group members continue to hold regular weekly educational seminars on issues such as the teachings of Gandhi and Tolstoy, the medical consequences of nuclear war, the nuclear winter theory, and the activities of Western peace groups. The meetings attract a constantly shifting attendance of from 50 to 100 young people. Hundreds of Western peace activists have visited the group, generally without interference, although the KGB occasionally prevents entrance to apartments where meetings are held and has sought to break up some seminars.

The Trust Group members periodically attempt to stage demonstrations on the street and gather signatures for peace appeals from passers-by; such actions have usually evoked sympathy from citizens but hasty arrests by the police. One appeal released by the group last year expressed approval of Gorbachev's test ban initiative and called on the United States to follow suit.

In the years since the Trust Group's emergence, 16 leaders have been forced into exile in the West, including artist Sergei Batovrin, a founding member who spent a month in psychiatric detention in 1982 for attempting to hold a Hiroshima Day art exhibit. Four core group members have been tried and sentenced: Oleg Radzinsky, who is serving a five-year term in exile; Olga Medvedkova, who was handed a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence; Aleksandr Shatravka, who was sentenced to three years of labor camp for distributing the group's founding appeal and was resentenced to an additional two years on trumped-up narcotics charges; and physician Vladimir Brodsky, who was sentenced in August 1985 to three years of labor camp on fabricated police assault charges for attempting to join Dutch peace activists in a demonstration.

In May 1986 Dr. Evgeni Chazov, chair of the Soviet branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), unexpectedly announced at the IPPNW annual convention that in response to concern from Western peace activists, he had appealed to the Supreme Soviet for the release of Shatravka and Brodsky. This was an unprecedented move for Soviet officialdom, which has traditionally managed prisoner releases through diplomatic channels and has never acknowledged pressure from public movements in the West, and is a tribute to the impressive influence of the Western peace movement.

Shatravka was eventually released and hastily given an exit visa to the West in July 1986. He has since settled in New York. Brodsky was released on September 14. He and his wife, Dina Zisserman, also a Trust Group member, were expelled and are currently in Israel. Five days later Olga and Yuri Medvedkova, geographers who had organized much of the group's Moscow activities in their home, were also granted exit visas and expelled. They are now living in the United States (see "Soviet Trust Group Members Released," December 1986).

THE MOST RECENT crackdown against the Trust Group began last February before the 28th Communist Party Congress, in an effort to neutralize the group's appeals to the congress and visiting foreign communists. Several young people were taken to the woods outside of Moscow, beaten severely, and left in the snow; others were put in psychiatric detention for a month or more, including Viktor Smirnov, who continues to be held.

After the Chernobyl accident, the Trust Group stepped up its activism and decided for the first time to take a radical position of opposition to all nuclear power. Its members called on the government to issue more information and make iodine and Geiger counters, to treat and measure radiation, available to citizens. In their discussions about Chernobyl, they have been critical of the Western media's exaggeration of the casualties and have noted that secrecy on nuclear plants is a serious problem in the West as well.

In August two American activists and two British peace workers joined Trust Group member Nina Kovalenko in a leafletting action in Gorki Park. The leaflet was a neutral advice sheet on the consequences of radiation with suggested health precautions. The activists, carrying signs that said "Peace and Environmental Safety for All--No More Hiroshimas, No More Chernobyls," managed to hand out about 100 leaflets to eager passers-by, who snatched the flyers out of their hands, before police arrested the group. They were all released after an hour of questioning. The following week another group of British activists and Trust Group members handed out hundreds of the same leaflets in a public square, ringed by police and KGB who did not interfere this time.

In the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the nationalist liberation movement has always had a platform advocating the declaration of the Baltics as a nuclear-free zone. Activists have also urged environmental protection against Russian industrial encroachment.

Ints Calitis, a Latvian anti-nuclear activist serving a six-year labor camp sentence, was unexpectedly released from imprisonment last July and permitted to return to Riga. But a dozen other Baltic peace activists remain in prison, including Lidiya Doronina, a Latvian Baptist who was sentenced for, among other things, distribution of the Moscow Trust Group's documents.

Mikhail Bombin, a 35-year-old Latvian Christian pacifist and "hippie" leader, was arrested on a train from Moscow in November 1984 for expressing his opinion that the war in Afghanistan must be stopped and that it was a sin to take the military oath. Witnesses to his comments included soldiers and KGB border troops. After undergoing psychiatric examination, Bombin was returned home and was reportedly tried in August 1986 on charges of "anti-Soviet slander" for his remarks and possession of Christian literature. His sentence is not known.

Each year hundreds of Soviet youths choose psychiatric detention or labor camp rather than serve in the army. A number of religious believers, such as Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Tolstoyans, refuse compulsory draft on the grounds of conscientious objection, which is not recognized by the Soviet state (nor is alternative service). Religious activists who go into the armed forces and refuse to bear arms are often beaten and mistreated, and several deaths have been reported in such cases.

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia is not a member of the Warsaw Pact. It is a leader among the neutral and non-aligned countries, receiving heavy economic subsidy from the U.S. government. Yet its communist regime is as repressive as other East European nations, and there are more political prisoners in Yugoslavia than in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland combined.

Yugoslavia is beset by conflicts among its six distinct republics, and a struggle is being waged between liberals and hardliners in the country's collective leadership, with differences defined along republic lines, ranging from Western-leaning Slovenia to repressive Bosnia-Hercegovina. There is a mixture of increased press freedom and civil rights activity, with more book bannings and newspaper closings.

The city of Ljubljana, in Yugoslavia's most liberal republic, Slovenia, has been the place where an autonomous peace movement has been launched. A decade ago a punk rock movement surfaced in Ljubljana, out of which independent peace and ecology groups eventually emerged. The movements--similar to the movements in East Germany and Hungary--devoted their attention mainly to issues such as domestic militarism, advocating alternative service for conscientious objectors, voicing opposition to the proposed introduction of military service for women, and urging a ban on war toys. Since Yugoslav travel policies are relatively lenient, activists have been able to attend international peace conventions in Europe and have established contacts with a number of Western groups.

Yugoslavia is the only East European nation where protests after Chernobyl have led to at least a postponement in the construction of nuclear plants. The socialist youth organization in Ljubljana condemned the Soviets' handling of the disaster and called for an end to nuclear power.

The Ljubljana Peace Group issued a strongly worded statement on Chernobyl, demanding complete information, punishment of those responsible for delays in information, claim of compensation from the Soviet Union, a moratorium on nuclear plants, a referendum on the construction of the planned Prevlaka plant, and the formation of independent nuclear energy agencies. About 2,000 people took part in a demonstration where the declaration was read. The Yugoslav press, which is more open than the Soviet bloc media, has carried frank criticism of past nuclear policies and expressed alarm about the serious consequences of nuclear energy for the country's future.

Last July the Ljubljana Peace Group issued an address to the Western peace movement, outlining its positions on the division of Europe and the East-West dialogue. The statement echoes many similar documents from the other East European peace groups. It concludes:

There is peace if citizens are obedient to state authority and if the state authorities suppress the citizens. There is said to be peace in Poland...[and] Czechoslovakia. State dictatorship over society, guaranteed by the national or some other fraternal army, is peace. There is peace if such a dictatorship is recognized as far as the internal affairs of the state are concerned, and if nobody interferes in these internal affairs. Such peace...represents a concept that is defined by the state.

Nevertheless, peace cannot be a state concept only. If we are able and willing to listen, we can hear more and more people saying that there is a fundamental link between peace and the assurance of and respect for human and civil rights, a decent life for individuals and an independent social life, with freedom and democracy.

There is peace if freedom is guaranteed by law and if such laws are or can be made use of. Peace is a concept which is defined by a society which is independent of the state, contrary to the state and distinct from it. Society in this sense is preliminarily called a civil society. Peace is a concept of a civil society.

Cathy Fitzpatrick was research director for Helsinki Watch in New York City when this article appeared.