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Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989 Author(s): Timur Kuran Source: World Politics, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Oct., 1991), pp. 7-48 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2010422 . Accessed: 26/02/2011 05:24
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NOW OUT OF NEVER in The Elementof Surprise theEast of EuropeanRevolution 1989
By TIMUR KURAN*

I. UNITED

IN AMAZEMENT

UR jaws cannot drop any lower," exclaimed Radio Free Europe one day in late 1989. It was commentingon the electrifying collapse of Eastern Europe's communistregimes.'The politicallandscape of the entireregion changed suddenly,astonishingeven the most seasoned political observers.In a matterof weeks entrenchedleaders the were overthrown, communistmonopolyon power was abrogated in one countryafteranother,and persecutedcriticsof the communistsystem were catapultedinto high office. In the West the ranks of the stunnedincluded championsof the view is more stablethan ordinary thatcommunisttotalitarianism substantially "It authoritarianism.2 has to be conceded," wrotea leading proponentof this view in early 1990, "that those of us who distinguishbetween the two non-democratictypesof governmentunderestimatedthe decay of to Communistcountriesand expectedthecollapse of totalitarianism take longer than has actually turnedout to be the case."3 Another acknowledged her bewildermentthroughthe titleof a new book: The Withering State. . . And Other Surprises.4 Away ofthe Totalitarian
* This researchwas supportedby the National Science Foundation under grantno. SESby financed partly a fellowduringa sabbatical, of 8808031. A segment thepaper was drafted for ship fromtheNational Endowmentforthe Humanities,at the Institute Advanced Study in Princeton.I am indebtedto WolfgangFach, Helena Flam, JackGoldstone,Kenneth KoPlatteau,WolfgangSeibel, Ulrich Witt,and threeanonford,Pavel Pelikan, Jean-Philippe ymousreadersforhelpfulcomments. by 1 BernardGwertzmanand Michael T. Kaufman,eds., The Collapseof Communism, the of Correspondents "The New YorkTimes"(New York: Times Books, 1990),vii. of of see Hannah Arendt,The Origins Totalitarianism, 2 For an earlystatement thisthesis, New York: World Publishing,1958), pt. 3. Arendt suggestedthat 2d ed. (1951; reprint, religion,and probonds rootedin family, community, communismweakens interpersonal dependenton thegoodwill of the stateand a thatmakes individualsterribly fession, situation revolt. thus blocks the mobilizationof an anticommunist ' Richard Pipes, "Gorbachev's Russia: Breakdownor Crackdown?" Commentary, March 1990,p. 16. Surprises State... And Other AwayoftheTotalitarian The Withering 4Jeane J.Kirkpatrick, had articulated variant a (Washington,D.C.: AEI Press,1990). A decade earlierKirkpatrick is evoluthatthe communistsystem incapable of self-propelled of Arendt'sthesis,insisting

World Politics44 (October 1991),7-48

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Even scholarswho had rejectedthe conceptof a frozenand immobile region were amazed by the eventsof 1989. In 1987 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences inviteda dozen specialists,including several essays on East Euroliving in Eastern Europe, to prepare interpretive theseessayswent to pean developments.As theDaedalus issue featuring many authorsto change "whole prompting press,the uprisingstook off, sentencesand paragraphs in what were once thoughtto be completed essays."Daedalus editorStephen Graubard remarksin his prefaceto the issue: "A quarterlyjournal has been obliged to adapt, inconveniently, the techniques of a weekly or even a but in some measure necessarily, daily newspaper."5 Graubard proudly points out that even before the remarkableinsightsinto the inlast-minuterevisionsthe essays offered the that were transforming retellectual,social, and political stirrings foresawwhat was gion. But he concedes thatneitherhe nor his essayists to happen. Recalling that in a planning session he had asked whether anythingcould be done to avoid publishing "an issue that will seem 'dated' threeyearsafterpublication,"he continues:"Was this passage a premonitionof all that was to follow? One wishes that one could claim it prescience.Regrettably, did not reallyexist."6 such extraordinary Wise statesmen, diplomats,and giftedjournalistswere also discerning JohnNaisbitt's celebrated caught offguard. So too were futurologists. which sold eight million copies in the early 1980s,does not Megatrends, As predictthe fall of communism.7 the Economistobserved even before the East European Revolutionhad run its course, 1989 turnedout to be a year when "the most quixotic optimists"were repeatedly"proved too cautious."8 Within Eastern Europe itselfthe revolutioncame as a surpriseeven to leading "dissidents."In a 1979 essay,"The Power of the Powerless," VaiclavHavel recognized thatthe regimesof Eastern Europe were anythingbut invincible.They mightbe toppled,he wrote,by a "social moveinside an apment, an "explosion of civil unrest,"or a "sharp conflict and Double Standards,"Commentary, November 1979, "Dictatorships tion.See Kirkpatrick, pp. 34-45. Central Europe ... Europe,' 5 Graubard, "Preface to the Issue 'Eastern Europe ... Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990),vi. 6 Ibid., ii. 7 Naisbitt, Ten New DirectionsTransforming Lives (New York: Warner Our Megatrends: Books, 1982). The monthsfollowingthe East European Revolutionsaw the appearance of for 2000: Ten New Directions the 1990's JohnNaisbitt and Patricia Aburdene,Megatrends the (New York: William Morrow, 1990). This sequel characterizes East European developthat the "politicalearthquake" and thenpredicts mentsof the late 1980s as an unforeseen erosionof communism(chap. 3). 1990swill witnessthe further November 18, 1989,p. 13. 8 Economist,

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

9

parentlymonolithicpower structure," among other possibilities.9 This essay is at once a brilliantprobe into the communistsystem'sstability and a penetrating prognosisof its ultimatedemise. Yet it steersclear of speculation on the timing of the collapse. It is replete with statements to such as "we must see the hopelessnessof trying make long-rangeprealdictions"and "far-reaching politicalchange is utterly unforeseeable," though it ends on a cautiouslyoptimisticnote: "What if [the 'brighter future']has been here fora long time already,and only our own blindness and weakness has preventedus fromseeing it around us and within us, and kept us fromdeveloping it?."10 Eight years later Havel himselfwould exhibit "blindness" to events that were usheringin a "brighterfuture."Less than threeyears before the revolutionhe commentedas followson the rousing welcome given by a Prague crowd to visitingSoviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev:
I feel sad; this nation of ours never learns. How many times has it put all its faith in some external force which, it believed, would solve its problems? . . . And yet here we are again, making exactlythe same mistake. They seem to think that Gorbachev has come to liberate them from Husa~k!

In late 1988,with less than a year to go, Havel was stillunsure about the directionof events:
Maybe [the Movement forCivil Liberties]will quickly become an integral featureof our country'slife,albeit one not particularly beloved of the regime. . . . Perhaps it will remain for the time being merely the seed of somethingthat will bear fruitin the dim and distantfuture.It is equally possible that the entire"matter" will be stamped on hard.'2

Other Czechoslovak dissidentswere just as unpreparedfor the revolution. In November 1989 JanUrban suggestedthatthe oppositioncontestthe national electionsscheduled forJune1991-only to be ridiculed by his friendsformaking a hopelesslyutopian proposal."3 Within a matter of days, they were all celebratingthe fall of Czechoslovakia's communistdictatorship.
9 Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"(1979), in Havel et al., The PowerofthePowerless: CitizensagainsttheState in Central-Eastern Europe,ed. JohnKeane and trans.Paul Wilson (Armonk,N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1985),42. 10Ibid., 87, 89, 96. 11Havel, "Meeting Gorbachev" (1987), in William M. Brintonand Alan Rinzler, eds., Without Forceor Lies: Voices fromtheRevolution Central of Europein 1989-90 (San Francisco: MercuryHouse, 1990),266. 12 Havel, "Cards on the Table" (1988), in Brintonand Rinzler (fn. 11),270-71. 13 Sidney Tarrow, " 'Aiming at a Moving Target': Social Science and the Recent Rebellions in EasternEurope," PS: PoliticalScienceand Politics24 (March 1991), 12.

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in A few monthsbeforethe revolution, neighboringPoland negotiathe tionswere under way betweenthe communistregimeand Solidarity, trade union that for years had been demanding political pluralism. To the regimeagreed in April 1989 to hold the surpriseof almost everyone, open elections for a pluralisticparliament. In elections scheduled for June all 100 Senate seats and 161 of the 460 Assembly seats would be Solidaritywon all but contestable.Exceeding the wildest expectations, one of the Senate seats in addition to all of the Assembly seats it was allowed to contest.Stunned by the enormityof this success, Solidarity would worried thatthe electoratehad gone too far,thatvictory officials raised forceSolidarityinto making bold politicalmoves simplyto satisfy hopes. They fearedthatsuch moves would provoke a communistcracknor Solidarity down. The significant pointis thatneitherthegovernment was prepared forsuch a lopsided result.The April accord was designed and legitimate to give Solidaritya voice in Parliament,not to substantiate its claim to being thevoice of the Polish people.14 We will never know how many East Europeans foresawthe eventsof 1989-or at least the impending changes in theirown countries.But at each step,journalisticaccounts invariably painted a pictureof a stunned public. For example, two days afterthebreachingof the Berlin Wall, the New York Times carried an article in which an East German remarks: "It's unfathomable.If you had told me that one week ago, I wouldn't have believed it. Mentally,I stillcan't. It will take a few days beforewhat thismeans sinks in.""5 I know of only one systematic studyof relevance.Four months after the fall of communismin East Germany,the Allensbach Instituteasked a broad sample of East Germans: "A year ago did you expect such a alpeaceful revolution?" Only 5 percentanswered in the affirmative, though 18 percentanswered "yes, but not that fast." Fully 76 percent indicated that the revolutionhad totallysurprisedthem.16These figures are all the more remarkable given the "I knew it would happen" fal14 On of see Taglibue, New theelectionsand the reactions theygenerated, thereports John YorkTimes,June3-6, 1989. The eventsleading up to the April accord have been chronicled of by and interpreted Timothy Garton Ash, "Refolution:The Springtime Two Nations," New YorkReviewofBooks,June15, 1989,pp. 3-10. He observed:"Almost no one imagined that the great gulf between 'the power' and 'the society,'between Jaruzelskiand Walesa, account of Poland's political bridged" (p. 6). For anotherinformative could be so swiftly Bloc: Behind the Upheavalin EasternEurope see transformation, Elie Abel, The Shattered 1990),chap. 4. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 15 New YorkTimes, November 12, 1989,p. 1. 16 Question 36 on the East German Surveyof the Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach, February 17-March 15, 1990, Archiveno. 4195 GEW. I am indebtedto Elisabeth Noellefor of Neumann, director the institute, agreeingto insertthisquestion intoa broadersurvey on East German politicalopinions.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

11

Even trained lacy-the human tendencyto exaggerateforeknowledge."7 unanticipatedeventsas inportraying historianssuccumb to thisfallacy, In evitable, foreseeable,and actually foreseen."8 view of this fallacy,if East Germans had been asked a year before the revolution,"Do you expect a revolutionin a year's time?" the percentageof unqualifiednegative answers would undoubtedlyhave been even higher. The eventsthat sealed the fateof East Germany'scommunistregime took offin the final days of summer,when thousands of East German vacationers in Hungary took advantage of relaxed border controls to turntheirtripsinto permanentdeparturesforWest Germany.The East its German government respondedby restricting citizens'access to Hungary, only to see thousands show up at the West German embassy in arrangePrague. In the ensuing days it acceded to a seriesof face-saving mentsby which the vacationerscould departforthe West, but only after waves of firstreturninghome. Each new concession prompted further the expectationthatthe exhowever,confuting government's emigrants, was not alone in failing The government odus would taperoffquickly.19 Thousands of East German citto anticipatewhere eventswere headed. izens rushed to join the exodus preciselybecause theyfelttheirchances of reaching the West would never again be so good. Had they known that the Berlin Wall was about to come down, few would have leftin such haste, leaving behind almost all their possessions,including their cars. It mightbe said thatsome veryknowledgeable observersof the communist bloc had predictedits disintegration beforethe centurywas out. the As earlyas 1969,forinstance, Soviet dissidentAndrei Amalrik wrote that the Russian Empire would break up within a decade and a half. a Although it is temptingto credit Amalrik with exemplaryforesight, rereadingof his famousessay shows thathe expected the Soviet Empire and devastatingwar with China, to meet its end followinga protracted not througha stringof popular upheavals. In fact,he explicitlystated that the Soviet systemof governmenthad left people too demoralized
17 Baruch Fischhoff, "Hindsight * Foresight:The Effectof Outcome Knowledge on Human Perception Judgmentunder Uncertainty," Journalof Experimental Psychology: and 1 and Ruth Beyth," 'I Knew It Performance (August 1975),288-99; and Baruch Fischhoff Would Happen'-Remembered Probabilitiesof Once-Future Things," Organizational Be13 havior and Human Performance (February1975),1-16. 18 David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Towarda Logic ofHistoricalThought (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1971),chaps. 6-8. 19For a compilationof pertinent reportsfromthe New YorkTimes,see Gwertzman and accountsinclude Timothy Garton Ash, "The Kaufman (fn. 1), 153-84. Superb eyewitness New YorkReviewofBooks,December 21, 1989,pp. 14-19; and George German Revolution," Paul Csicsery,"The Siege of Nogradi Street,Budapest, 1989," in Brintonand Rinzler (fn. 11),289-302.

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and too dependent on authorityto participatein a spontaneous uprising.20 So Amalrik did not reallyforeseethe eventsof 1989. Like a broken watch thattellsthe correcttime everytwelvehours,he got the timingof the first crack in the empire essentially right,but on the basis of a spurious forecast events. of This is not to suggestthat the East European explosion came as total surpriseto everyone.Though most were astonishedwhen it happened, and thoughfew who saw it coming expectedit to be so peaceful,a small number of commentatorshad prophesiedthat the revolutionwould be swift and remarkably bloodless. Havel, despite his above-quoted remarks, is one of these. And Vladimir Tismaneanu, a Romanian emigre livingin the United States,came close to predicting major change. About a year before the collapse of the Romanian regime, he depicted it as "probablythe most vulnerable" in Eastern Europe. Sensing an "all-pervasive discontent," observedthat"the Brasov riotsin November 1987, he when thousands of citizens took to the streets, chanted anti-Ceausescu slogans and burned the dictator'sportraits, representan unmistakable signal for Moscow that uncontrollableviolence may flareup in Romania."21Tismaneanu failed to place the Romanian uprisingin the context of an upheaval spanning all of the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact allies. Nor did he predict that Romania would be the last Soviet satelliteto overthrowits government.It is remarkable nonethelessthat he diagnosed the Romanian regime's vulnerability. Like Havel, he succeeded where many Westernobserversfailed,because he understoodthe weaknesses thatunderlaytheapparentstability thecommunistsystem. of This understandingprepared him for the type of explosion that eventually occurred,although,as discussed further it did not endow him with on, the abilityto predictwhen the revolutionwould break out. While the collapse of the post-WorldWar II politicalorderof Eastern In sequence of a multitudeof factors. each of the six countriesthe leadeconomic promisesremained unfulership was generallydespised, lofty filled,and freedomstaken forgrantedelsewhereexisted only on paper. But if the revolutionwas indeed inevitable,why was it not foreseen? Why did people overlook signsthatare clearlyvisibleafterthe fact?One of the centralargumentsof this essay is preciselythat interacting social and psychologicalfactors make it inherently difficult predictthe outto
20 until1984? (1969) (New York: Harper and Row, Amalrik,WilltheSovietUnionSurvive 1970),esp. 36-44. 21 Tismaneanu, "Personal Power and Political Crisis in Romania," Government Opand 24 position (Spring 1989),193-94.

Europe stunned the world, in retrospect it appears as the inevitable con-

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

13

I come of politicalcompetition. shall argue thatthe East European Revolution was by no means inevitable. What was inevitable is that we would be astounded if and when it arrived. "The victimof today is the victorof tomorrow, And out of Never / grows Now!"22 Brecht'scouplet capturesperfectly centralparadox: our seeminglyunshakable regimes saw public sentimentturn against them with astonishingrapidity, tinyoppositionsmushroomedinto crushing as majorities. Currentlypopular theoriesof revolutionofferlittle insight into this stunningpace; nor for that matterdo theyshed light on the element of surprisein previous revolutions.All lay claim to predictive power, yetnone has a trackrecordat veritableprediction.The next section briefly critiquesthe pertinent Without denying scholarlyliterature. the usefulnessof some receivedtheoriesat explainingrevolutionsof the past, I go on to present a theorythat illuminatesboth the process of mobilizationand the limitsof our abilityto predictwhere revolutionary and when mobilizations will occur. Subsequent sectionsapply this argument to the case at hand. is The termrevolution used here in a narrow sense to denote a masssupported seizure of political power that aims to transform the social it order. By thisdefinition is immaterial whetherthe accomplishedtransfer of power bringsabout significant social change. With regard to the East European Revolution,it is too earlyto tell whetherthe postrevolutionaryregimeswill succeed in reshapingthe economy,the legal system, internationalrelations,and individual rights-to mention just some of the domains on the reformist agenda. But even if the ongoing reforms in failure,the upheavals of 1989 can continueto be characterized all end as a regionwiderevolution.
II.

RECEIVED

THEORIES

OF REVOLUTION WEAKNESSES

AND THEIR

PREDICTIVE

In her acclaimed book States and Social Revolutions, Theda Skocpol treats social revolutions as the product of structuraland situational condishe tions.23 Specifically, argues thata revolutionoccurs when two conditions coalesce: (1) a state'sevolving relationswith other statesand local classes weaken its abilityto maintain law and order, and (2) the elites harmed by this situationare powerlessto restorethe statusquo ante yet
22 Bertolt Brecht, "Lob der Dialectic" (In praiseof dialectics, 1933),in Gedichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1961),3:73; poem translated Edith Anderson. by 23 Skocpol,States and Social Revolutions: Comparative A Analysis France,Russia,and China of (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,1979).

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strongenough to paralyze the government. Through theirobstructionism theelitesgeneratea burstof antielitesentiment, which setsin motion an uprisingaimed at transforming social order. The appeal of Skocthe pol's theorylies in its invocationof structural causes to explain shiftsin of the structure politicalpower. It does not depend on such "subjective" factors as beliefs, expectations,attitudes,preferences,intentions,and goals, although these do creep into structuralist case studies,including those of Skocpol herself. Tracking emotionsand mental statesis a treacherous business,which is why the structuralist school considersit a virtue to refrainfromapare easier to identify, pealing to them. Social structures ostensibly which would seem to endow the structuralist withpredictivesuperiority theory over "voluntarist"theoriesbased on "rationalchoice." Theories that fall under the rubricof rational choice have certainlybeen unsuccessfulat of predictingmass upheavals. What theyexplain well is the rarity popular uprisings.24 The crucial insightof the rational-choiceschool is that an individual opposed to the incumbentregimeis unlikelyto participate in efforts remove it, since the personal riskof joining a revolutionary to movementcould outweigh the personal benefitthat would accrue were the movement a success. It is generallyin a person's self-interest let to othersmake the sacrifices required to secure the regime's downfall,for a revolution constitutesa "collective good" -a good he can enjoy whetheror not he has contributedto its realization. With most of the regime's opponentschoosing to freeride,an upheaval may fail to materialize even if the potentialrevolutionaries a constitute substantialmadoes break out, and thispresents jority.Yet fromtime to time revolution a puzzle that the standard theoryof rational choice cannot solve. The standard theorysimply fails to make sense of why the firstpeople to to challenge the regimechoose selflessly gamble with theirlives.25 With respectto the East European Revolutionin particular, the standard theoryilluminateswhy, forall theirgrievances,the nations of the region were remarkably quiescent forso many years.It does not explain why in 1989 theirdocilitysuddenlygave way to an explosivedemand for change. For its part, the structuralist theoryelucidates why the revolutionbroke out at a timewhen the SovietUnion was emitting increasingly convincingsignals thatit would not use forceto tryto preservethe East
24 The seminalcontribution Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective is Action:Public Goods and the Theory Groups(1965; rev.ed., Cambridge:Harvard University of Press, 1971). 25 This point is developed by Michael Taylor,"Rationality and Revolutionary Action,"in and Taylor, ed., Rationality Rcvolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),6397. Taylor also offers illuminating an critiqueof structuralism.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN

REVOLUTION

15

European statusquo. But it explains neitherwhy the old order collapsed so suddenlyin several countriesat once nor why the eventsof 1989 outdistancedall expectations. weaknesses.That Neither school has come to termswithitspredictive granted,can the deficienciesin question be overcome by incorporating into these theories?It would seem, on the basis additional relationships is predictability an unachievable of reasons developed below, thatperfect objective. The theorydeveloped here accommodates some of the major featuresand implicationsof these two theories,with the added virtue, come as a surpriseand however,of illuminatingwhy major revolutions the why,even so, theyare quite easilyexplainedafter fact. the East European Revolution is Like all unanticipatedrevolutions, explanationsthat draw attention generatingmultitudesof retrospective to itsdiversecauses and warningsigns.To cite just one example,an essay writtenshortlyafterthe fall of the East German regime begins with a flashbackto April 1989: two passengerson an East German train,mutual about the regime, share witheach othertheirnegativefeelings strangers, within earshot of others-a highly uncommon event, because of the This opening gives the impressionthatEast Gerubiquityof informants. many was obviouslyreaching its boiling point,although the rest of the essay makes clear that the East German uprising was in fact scarcely Like so much else now rolling off the presses,this essay anticipated.26 as leaves unexplained why events seen in retrospect harbingersof an imminentupheaval were not seen as such beforethe actual revolution. The are Not that signs noticed in retrospect necessarilyfabrications. we shortcut use to compensateforour coga heuristic, mental availability withactual eventsat information consistent nitivelimitations, highlights withthem.27 events inconsistent Accordingly, the expense of information while the regime looked stable may suddenly considered insignificant afterit falls.Among all the events that are gain enormous significance witha particularoutcome,thosethatfitintothe models at our consistent will Thus, a structuralist disposal will be the ones thatattractattention. of the coming the as significant structural signs be predisposed to treat revolution.These signs need not be imaginary,but there is nothing in
26 Edith Anderson,"Town Mice and CountryMice: The East German Revolution,"in Brintonand Rinzler (fn. 11), 170-92. 27 On the availability see heuristic, Amos Tverskyand Daniel Kahneman, "Availability: 5 Psychology (September Cognitive A Heuristic for JudgingFrequency and Probability," knowledge are impartsto the use of historical 1973), 207-32. The biases thatthis heuristic Bias in Social Perceptionand Interaction," discussedby ShelleyE. Taylor,"The Availability under Uncertainty: in Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky,eds., Judgment Press,1982), 190-200. and Heuristics Biases (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity

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the structuralist theory-or, for that matter,in the standard theoryof rationalchoice-that explainswhy it is betterat explanationthan at prediction. This paradox is seldom appreciated,partlybecause the authors of retrospective accounts do not always concede theirown bafflement. They generallywrite as though theirfavoredtheoryshows the revoluseldom pausing to explain why,if thisis so, tion to have been inevitable, theythemselveshad not offered unambiguous,unequivocal forecasts. If one bete noire of the structuralist school is the rational-choiceapproach to the study of revolutions,another is the relative-deprivation are approach. According to thisthirdapproach revolutions propelled by thatis, by outcomes that fall shortof expececonomic disappointments, becomessufficiently tations.If theconsequentdiscontent widespread,the With respectto themajor revolutions investigates, she resultis a revolt.28 observes that theybegan at times when levels of disSkocpol correctly contentwere by historicalstandardsnot unusual. More evidence against the relative-deprivation theorycomes fromCharles Tilly and his associates, who find that in France the level of collectiveviolence has been uncorrelatedwith the degree of mass discontent.29 Thus, the relativedeprivationtheoryneitherpredictsnor explains. The reason is simple. While relative deprivationis doubtless a factorin every revolutionin it stable societiesto provide a comhistory, is too common in politically plete explanation foreveryobserved instability. implication,to treat By relativedeprivationas an unmistakablesign of impendingrevolutionis of to subject oneselfto a continuousstring alarms,mostlyfalse.
III. PREFERENCE
FALSIFICATION AND REVOLUTIONARY

BANDWAGONS

So mass discontent does not necessarilygenerate a popular uprising against the politicalstatusquo. To understandwhen it does, we need to the identify conditionsunder which individualswill display antagonism toward the regime under which theylive. Afterall, a mass uprisingresults frommultitudesof individual choices to participatein a movement for change; there is no actor named "the crowd" or "the opposition."
28 For two of the major contributions thisapproach,see JamesC. Davies, "Toward a to American Sociological Review 27 (February1962),5-19; and Ted R. Theory of Revolution," Men Rebel (Princeton:Princeton Gurr, Why University Press,1970). 29 David Snyderand Charles Tilly, "Hardship and CollectiveViolence in France, 1830 to 1960," AmericanSociologicalReview 37 (October 1972), 520-32; and Charles Tilly, Louise 1830-1930(Cambridge:Harvard University Tilly,and RichardTilly,TheRebellious Century: Press, 1975). For much additional evidence against the theoryof relativedeprivation,see Steven E. Finkel and JamesB. Rule, "RelativeDeprivationand Related PsychologicalTheories of Civil Violence: A CriticalReview," in Louis Kriesberg, in ed., Research Social Moveand ments, Conflicts Change(Greenwich,Conn.: JAI Press, 1986),9:47-69.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

17

The model presented here is in agreement with the rational-choice school on this basic methodologicalpoint,although it departs in importantways fromthe standardfarein rational-choice modeling. Consider a societywhose membersare indexed by i. Each individual member must choose whetherto supportthe governmentin public or each person is oppose it; depending on his public acts and statements, or perceived as eithera friendof the government an enemy,forthe political statusquo or against. In private,of course,a person may feel torn and theopposition,seeing bothadvantages and between the government between disadvantages to the existingregime. I am thus distinguishing and The formeris efan individual'sprivate preference publicpreference. the fixedat any given instant, lattera variableunder his control. fectively differ-that is, the preference expresses Insofaras his two preferences he in public diverges fromthat he holds in private-the individual is engaged in preference falsification. Let S representthe size of the public opposition,expressed as a percentageof the population. Initiallyit is near 0, implyingthatthe government commands almost unanimous public support. A revolution,as a mass-supportedseizure of political power, may be treated as an enormous jump in S. Now take a citizen who wants the governmentoverthrown.The on likelyimpact of his own public preference the fateof the government is negligible: it is unlikelyto be a decisivefactorin whetherthe government stands or falls.But it may bringhim personal rewardsand impose on him personal punishments.If he chooses to oppose the government, for instance,he is likely to face persecution,though in the event the fallshis outspokenness government may be rewarded handsomely.Does this mean that our individual will base his public preferencesolely on the potential rewards and punishmentsflowing from the two rival to camps? Will his privateantipathy the regimeplay no role whatsoever in his decision? This does not seem reasonable,forhistory offers countless examples of brave individuals who stood up for a cause in the face of the severestpressures, includingtorture. On what, then,will our disaffected individual'schoice depend? I submit thatit will depend on a trade-off between two payoffs, one external and the otherinternal.30 to The externalpayoff siding with the oppositionconsistsof the justIn discussed personal rewardsand punishments. net terms,thispayoff is less unfavorable) apt to become increasinglyfavorable(or increasingly
30 For a detailed analysisof thistrade-off, Timur Kuran, "Privateand Public Prefersee and Philosophy (April 1990),1-26. ences,"Economics 6

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with S. The larger S, the smaller the individual dissenter'schances of with the oppositionand the fewer being persecutedforhis identification hostilesupportersof the government has to face. The latterrelationhe ship reflectsthe fact that governmentsupporters,even ones privately to sympathetic the opposition,participatein the persecutionof the government'sopponents,as part of theirpersonal efforts establish conto vincingprogovernment credentials.This relationship implies thata rise in S leaves fewerpeople seeking to penalize membersof the public opposition. The internalpayoffis rooted in the psychologicalcost of preference falsification. The suppressionof one's wants entails a loss of personal autonomy,a sacrifice personal integrity. thus generateslastingdisof It the more so the greaterthe lie. This relationshipmay be capcomfort, tured by postulatingthat person i's internalpayofffor supportingthe oppositionvaries positively with his privatepreference, The higherxi, xA. the more costlyhe findsit to suppresshis antigovernment feelings. So i's public preference depends on S and xi. As the public opposition grows, with his privatepreference therecomes a point where constant, his externalcost of joining the oppositionfallsbelow his internalcost of This switchingpoint may be called his revolupreferencefalsification. P. tionary a threshold, Since a threshold represents value ofS, it is a number between 0 and 100. If xi should rise,7 will fall. In otherwords,if the individual becomes more sympathetic the opposition,it will take a smaller public opposito tion to make him take a stand againstthe government. The same will be true if the governmentbecomes less efficient, the oppositionbecomes or more efficient, rewarding its supportersand punishing its rivals. In at thataffects relationship the betweenS and the individual's fact,anything externalpayoff supporting oppositionwill change his revolutionfor the ary threshold. Finally, P will fall ifi develops a greaterneed to stand up and be counted,forthe internalcost of preference falsification will then come to dominate the externalbenefit a lower S.31 at This simple frameworkoffers reason why a person may choose to a voice a demand for change even when the price of dissentis veryhigh and the chances of a successfuluprisingverylow. If his privateopposi31 The theory outlined in thissectionis developed more fullyin Timur Kuran, "Sparks and PrairieFires: A Theory of UnanticipatedPoliticalRevolution," Public Choice61 (April 1989),41-74. A summaryof the present formulation deliveredat the annual convention was of the AmericanEconomic Association, Washington, D.C., December 28-30, 1990.This presentation appeared under the title"The East European Revolutionof 1989: Is It Surprising That We Were Surprised?"in theAmerican Economic Review, Papersand Proceedings (May 81 1991), 121-25.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

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tion to the existingorder is intenseand/orhis need forintegrity quite is he strong,the suffering incurs for dissent may be outweighed by the he satisfaction derives from being true to himself.In every society,of course,thereare people who go againstthesocial orderof the day. Joseph Schumpeteronce observed thatin capitalistsocietiesthisgroup is dominated by intellectuals.Their position as "onlookers" and "outsiders" causes them to develop a "critical with much time for deep reflection attitude"toward the statusquo. And because of the high value theyattach to self-expression, they are relativelyunsusceptibleto social presThe same argumentapplies to noncapitalistsocieties.As a case sures.32 in point,a disproportionately large shareof the East European dissidents were intellectuals. Returningto the general model, we can observethatindividuals with and psychologicalconstitutions different will have private preferences thresholds.Imagine a ten-personsocietyfeaturdifferent revolutionary ing thethreshold sequence A = {0, 20, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100}. Person 1 (T1 = 0) supportsthe oppositionregardlessof its size, just as The remaining person 10 (T10 = 100) always supportsthe government. are eight people's preferences sensitiveto S: depending on its level, they opt forone camp or the other.For instance, person 5 (P = 40) supports the governmentif 0 < S < 40 but joins the oppositionif 40 ' S ' 100. Let us assume thatthe oppositionconsistsinitiallyof a single person,or 10 percentof the population,so S = 10. Because the nine otherindividuals have thresholdsabove 10, thisS is self-sustaining; that is, it constitutesan equilibrium. This equilibrium happens to be vulnerable to a minor change in A. Suppose thatperson 2 has an unpleasantencounterat some government Her alienation from the regime rises, pushing her threshold ministry. down from20 to 10. The new thresholdsequence is A' = {0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100}. Person 2's new thresholdhappens to equal the existingS of 10, so she switchessides,and S becomes 20. Her move intothe oppositiontakes the form of tossing an egg at the country'slong-standingleader during a but government-organized rally.The new S of 20 is not self-sustaining as self-augmenting, it drives person 3 into the opposition.The higherS of 30 then triggersa fourthdefection,raisingS to 40, and this process
32 Schumpeter,Capitalism, Socialismand Democracy, ed. (1950; reprint,New York: 3d Harper Torchbooks,1962),chap. 13.

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continues until S reaches 90-a new equilibrium. Now the firstnine individualsare in opposition,withonlythe tenthsupporting governthe ment. A slight shiftin one individual's thresholdhas thus generated a revolutionary bandwagon,an explosivegrowthin public opposition.33 Now considerthe sequence B = {0, 20, 30, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100}, which differs fromA only in its thirdelement: 30 as opposed to 20. As in the previous illustration, let 1 fall from20 to 10. The resultingsequence is B' = {0, 10, 30, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100}. Once again, the incumbentequilibrium of 10 becomes unsustainable, and S rises to 20. But the opposition'sgrowthstops there,forthe new S Some governmentsupporters is self-sustaining. privately enjoy the sight of the leader's egg-splattered face,but none followsthe egg throwerinto public opposition.We see thata minorvariationin thresholds may drasof And in particular, event an ticallyalter the effect a given perturbation. that causes a revolutionin one setting different may in a slightly setting a minor decline in the government's produce only popularity. Neither private preferencesnor the corresponding thresholds are common knowledge. So a societycan come to the brinkof a revolution withoutanyone knowing this,not even thosewith the power to unleash it. In sequence A, forinstance,person2 need not recognize that she has the abilityto set offa revolutionary bandwagon. Even if she senses the commonnessof preference she falsification, simplycannotknow whether use the actual thresholdsequence is A or B. Social psychologists the term pluralisticignoranceto describe misperceptions concerningdistributions In of individual characteristics.34 principle,pluralisticignorance can be But it is easmitigatedthroughpolls thataccord individualsanonymity. than to convincethemthatthe preferences ier to offerpeople anonymity theyreveal will remain anonymousand never be used against them. In falany case, an outwardlypopular governmentthat knows preference in to sification be pervasivehas no interest publicizing the implied fra"Threshold Models 33Lucid analysesof bandwagon processesinclude Mark Granovetter, 83 of Collective Behavior,"American Journal Sociology (May 1978), 1420-43; and Thomas of and Micromotives Macrobehavior C. Schelling, (New York: W. W. Norton,1978). 34 Under the term the impression universality, conceptwas introducedby Floyd H. Allof port,Social Psychology (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1924),305-9. The termpluralistic ignorancewas first used by RichardL. Schanck,"A Studyof a Communityand Its Groups and Conceived of as Behaviorof Individuals,"Psychological Institutions Monographs 43-2 (1932), 101.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

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to gilityof its support,because this might inspire the disaffected bring theirantigovernment feelingsinto the open. It has an incentiveto discourage independentpolling and discreditsurveysthat reveal unflattering information. We have already seen that the thresholdsequence is not fixed. Anyof the thingthataffects distribution privatepreferences may alter it, for instance,an economic recession,contactswith other societies,or intergenerationalreplacement.But whateverthe underlyingreason, private preferences and, hence, the thresholdsequence can move dramatically withouttriggering revolution.In the sequence a against the government C = {0, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 60, 100} the average thresholdis 30, possiblybecause most people sympathize with the opposition. Yet S = 10 remains an equilibrium. It is true,of course,thata revolutionis more likelyunder C than underA. C features seven individuals with thresholdsof 20, A only one. A ten-unitfall in would trigger revolution. a any one of the seven thresholds The point remainsthatwidespread disapproval of the governmentis not sufficient mobilize large numbersfor revolutionary to action. Antigovernment feelingscan certainly bringa revolutionwithinthe realm of but possibility, otherconditionsmust come togetherto set it off.By the same token,a revolutionmay break out in a societywhere privateprefindividual thresholds, tend to be relatively unfaerences,and therefore vorable to theopposition.Reconsiderthe sequence A', where the average thresholdis 46, as opposed to 30 in C. Under A' public oppositiondarts from10 to 90, whereas under C it remainsstuckat 10. This simple comparison shows why the relative-deprivation theoryof revolutionhas not the held up under empiricaltesting. treating likelihood of revolution By as the sum of the individual levels of discontent, relative-deprivation the overlooksthe significance thedistribution discontent. our of of As theory disaffected comparisonbetweenA' and C indicates,one sufficiently person with a thresholdof 10 may do more for a revolutionthan seven of individuals with thresholds 20. Imagine now thata superpowerlong committedto keeping the local in government power suddenlyrescindsthiscommitment, declaringthat it will cease meddling in the internalaffairsof other countries.This is preciselythe type of change to which the structuralist theoryaccords In such a change will revolutionary significance. the presentframework, not necessarilyignite a revolution.The outcome depends on both the distribution thresholds of and theconsequentshifts. Since the preexisting postulated change in internationalrelationsis likely to lower the ex-

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are pected cost of joining theopposition,people's thresholds likelyto fall. Let us say that everythresholdbetween 10 and 90 drops by 10 units. If thresholdsequence were A, B, or C, the resultwould be the preexisting an explosion in S from10 to 90. But suppose thatit were D = {0, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 100}. shock turnsthissequence into The structural DI = {0, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 100}. of Fully four-fifths the population is now willing to switch over to the No someoneelsegoesfirst. one does, leaving S at 10. oppositionbut onlyif are yet factors thuspartof the story, by no means the whole Structural the likelihood of revolution, theycanaffect While theycertainly story. not possiblydeliver infalliblepredictions.A single person's reaction to between a an event of global importancemay make all the difference massive uprisingand a latentbandwagonthatnever takes off.So to sugare do, gest,as the structuralists thatrevolutions broughtabout by deep the passive bearers of these historical forces with individuals simply forces is to overlook the potentiallycrucial importance of individual in of characteristics littlesignificance and of themselves.It is always a and thus unimportant manyof them intrinsically conjunctionof factors, if not unobservable,that determinesthe flow of events. A unobserved, outcomes in two major global event can produce drasticallydifferent and Structuralism individualismare not rival thatdiffer trivially. settings and mutually incompatible approaches to the study of revolution,as Skocpol would have it. They are essentialcomponentsof a single story. We can now turnto the question of why with hindsightan unanticiconsequence of monumenpated revolutionmay appear as the inevitable tal forcesforchange. A successfulrevolutionbringsinto the open longcontentwith repressedgrievances.Moreover,people who were relatively embrace the new regime,and theyare apt to attribute the old regime to theirformerpublic preferences fearsof persecution. Reconsider the thresholdsequence A' = {0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100}. The relatively high thresholdsin A' are likelyto be associated with primore favorableto the governmentthan to the opposivate preferences with the government Person 9 (T9 = 80) is much more satisfied tion.35 than,say,person3 (T3 = 20). As such she has littledesireto join a move35 Relatively to great vulnerability may also be associatedwith relatively high thresholds social pressure.

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

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mentaimed at topplingit. Rememberthatpublic oppositionsettlesat 90, she being the last to jump on the revolutionary bandwagon. The important point is this: person 9 changes her public preference only afterthe opposition snowballs into a crushingmajority,making it imprudentto remain a government supporter. Having made the switch,she has everyreason to feigna long-standing to She will not admit thatshe yearns antipathy the toppled government. for the status quo ante, because this would contradicther new public Nor will she say thather change of heart followed the govpreference. ernment'scollapse, because thismightrenderher declared sympathy for She will claim thatshe has long had serious the revolutionunconvincing. misgivingsabout the old order and has sympathizedwith the objectives of of the opposition. An unintendedeffect this distortionis to make it seem as though the toppled government enjoyed even less genuine support than it actuallydid. This illusionis rootedin theveryphenomenonresponsible making for falsification. the revolutiona surprise:preference Having misled everyone into seeing a revolutionas highlyunlikely,preferencefalsification now conceals the forcesthatwere workingagainst it. One of the consefalsification thusto make even is quences of postrevolutionary preference less comprehensiblewhy the revolutionwas unforeseen. The historiansof a revolutionmay appreciate the biases that afflict accounts of their prerevolutionary people's postrevolutionary disposiof tionswithoutbeing able to measure the significance thesebiases. Consider the sequence

C' = {0, 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 60, 100}.
Like A', this sequence drivesS from10 to 90, implyingthatnine out of ten individuals have an incentiveto say that theydespised the prerevobelow 50 reflect lutionaryregime.If thresholds privatesupportfora revwith the statusquo, eight olution,and thoseabove 50 privatesatisfaction of the nine would be telling the truth,the one liar being person 9 (T9 = 60). It follows from the same assumption that four of the nine would be lying if the thresholdsequence were A'. But once again, beare cause thresholds not public knowledge,historians may have difficulty whetherthe prerevolutionary was A or C-or for determining sequence thatmatter,whetherthe postrevolutionary sequence is A' or C'. Before moving to the East European Revolution,it may be useful to commenton how the foregoing argumentrelatesto threesourcesof conin on of troversy the literature revolutions:the continuity social change, of the power of the individual,and the significance unorganized crowds.

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The proposed theorytreatscontinuousand discontinuouschange as a and single,unifiedprocess.Privatepreferences the corresponding thresholds may change gradually over a long period during which public oppositionis more or less stable. If the cumulativemovementestablishesa latent bandwagon, a minor event may then precipitatean abrupt and sharp break in the size of the public opposition.This is not to say that A privatepreferences change onlyin small increments. major blunderon the part of the government may suddenly turn private preferences against it. Such a shift could also occur in responseto an initial,possiblymodest, increase in public opposition.The underlying logic was expressedbeautifully Alexis de Tocqueville: "Patientlyendured so long as it seemed by beyond redress,a grievancecomes to appear intolerableonce the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds."36In terms of our model, Tocqueville suggeststhat the thresholdsequence is itselfdependent on the size of the public opposition.If so, a revolutionary bandwagon may come about as the joint outcome of two mutuallyreinforcing trends: a and a rise in public opposition. Imagine that public fall in thresholds to to oppositionrisessufficiently convincethoseprivately sympathetic the governmentthat a revolutionmightbe in the making. This realization to induces many of them to thinkabout possible alternatives the status quo. Their thinkingstartsa chain reactionthroughwhich privateprefThe conerences shiftswiftly and dramatically against the government. bandsequent changes in the threshold sequence cause the revolutionary wagon to accelerate. The theorydepicts the individual as both powerless and potentially verypowerful.The individual is powerlessbecause a revolutionrequires the mobilization of large numbers,but he is also potentially very powhe erfulbecause under the rightcircumstances may set offa chain reaction that generates the necessarymobilization. Not that the individual Alcan know preciselywhen his own choice can make a difference. are thoughhe may sense thathis chancesof sparkinga wildfire unusually great,he can never be certainabout the consequences of his own opposition.What is certainis thatthe incumbentregimewill remain in place unless someone takes the lead in moving into the opposition. As we saw in the previous section,the standard theoryof rational as choice depictsthe potentialrevolutionary paralyzed by the realization of his powerlessness.Many social thinkers who, like the presentauthor, accept the logic of collectiveaction have struggledwith the task of explaining how mass mobilizationsget started.One of the proposed expla36 Tocqueville, The Old Regimeand the FrenchRevolution(1856), trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 177.

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his nationsrestson a cognitiveillusion: theindividual overestimates personal political influence.Another invokes an ethical commitment:the individual feels compelled to do his fair share for the attainmentof a The approach used here, which is not incomjointlydesired outcome.37 patible with these explanations,places the burden of sparkingthe mobilization process on the individual's need to be true to himself.This apleaders tend to be proach is consistentwith the fact that revolutionary explanasurprisedwhen theirgoals materialize. The cognitive-illusion out of an overestimation is not: people who challenge the government tion of their personal abilityto direct the course of historywill not be surprisedwhen theirwishes come true.The approach of thisessayis also with the factthatsome people risk theirlives fora revolution consistent of refrain fromdoing even as the vast majority the potentialbeneficiaries theirown fairshare. Finally, the outlined theoryaccords organized pressuregroups and roles in the overthrowof the govunorganized crowds complementary enhance the externalpayoffto dissent, ernment.Organized oppositions both by providingthe individual dissenterwith a supportnetworkand revolution. They also help shatter by raisingthe likelihoodof a successful of the appearance of the invulnerability the status quo, and through in propaganda, they shiftpeople's privatepreferences favorof change. and rightto draw attentionto the structural Charles Tilly is therefore situational factorsthat govern a society'spatternof political organizaBut as Pamela Oliver warns,we must guard against overemphation.38 sizing the role of organization at the expense of the role of the unorgain nized crowd. A small difference the resourcesat the disposal of an organized oppositionmay have a tremendousimpact on the outcome of This observationmakes perfectsense in the contextof the its efforts.39 theorydeveloped here. Where a small pressure group fails to push a better largerone organizedor slightly bandwagon into motion a slightly might.

IV.EAST EUROPEANCOMMUNISM ANDTHE WELLSPRINGOF ITS STABILITY
Communistpartiescame to power in Russia,and thenin Eastern Europe socialism" would pioand elsewhere, with the promise that "scientific
37 Each of these is developed by Steven E. Finkel, Edward N. Muller, and Karl-Dieter Politand CollectiveRationality, Mass PoliticalAction,"American Opp, "Personal Influence, ical ScienceReview 83 (September1989),885-903. 38 Tilly,FromMobilization 1978). to Revolution (Reading,Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 39 Oliver, "Bringing the Crowd Back In: The Nonorganizational Elements of Social and Change Conflict Movements," in Louis Kriesberg,ed., Researchin Social Movements, (Greenwich,Conn.: JAI Press,1989): 11:1-30.

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neer new dimensions of freedom,eliminate exploitation,vest political and raise standardsof living power in the masses,eradicatenationalism, to unprecedentedheights-all this,while the statewas witheringaway. They did not deliveron any of thesepromises.Under theirstewardship, censorship,ethnic chauvincommunism came to symbolize repression, red ism, militarism, tape, and economic backwardness. The failuresof communism prompteda tinynumber of Soviet and policies and establishedinstiEast European citizens to criticizeofficial throughclandestine tutions.Such dissidentsexpressedtheirfrustrations self-publications (samizdat)and writingspublished in the West (tamizdat). Given the chasm between the rhetoricof communism and its achievements,the existenceof an opposition is easily understood. Less of comprehensibleis the rarity public opposition-prior, thatis, to 1989. The few uprisings that were crushed-notably, East Berlin in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968-are the exceptionsthat prove the rule. For most of several decades, most East Europeans disand inefficiency. They replayed a remarkable tolerance for tyranny even outwardlysupportiveof the status mained docile, submissive,and quo. This subservienceis attributable partlyto punishmentsmeted out by to the communistestablishment its actual and imagined opponents. In the heydayof communisma person speaking out against the leadership or in favor of some reformcould expect to sufferharassment,lose his job, and face imprisonment-in short,he could expect to be denied the to opportunity lead a decent life. Even worse horrorsbefellmillions of camps of the Gulag suspected opponents.Justthinkof the forced-labor of Archipelago and of the liquidationscarriedout under the pretext his"We can only be rightwith and by the Party,"wrote a toricalnecessity. of has provided no other leading theoretician communism,"for history Such thinking could, and did, serveto justify way of being in the right."40 horriblecrimesagainst nonconformists. Yet officialrepressionis only one factorin the endurance of communism. The systemwas sustainedby a general willingnessto supportit in public: people routinelyapplauded speakers whose message they disliked, joined organizationswhose missiontheyopposed, and signed defamatorylettersagainst people theyadmired, among other manifestations of consent and accommodation. "The lie," wrote the Russian novelistAlexander Solzhenitsynin the early 1970s, "has been incorporated into the statesystemas the vital link holding everything together,
40

The words of Leon Trotsky, cited by Arendt(fn.2), 307.

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several dozen to each man."'41 If people with billions of tinyfasteners, stopped lying,he asserted,communistrule would break down instantly. He then asked rhetorically, "What does it mean, not to lie?" It means "not sayingwhat you don't think, and that includes not whispering,not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not castingyour vote, not feigninga smile, not lending your presence,not standing up, and not "42 cheering. In "The Power of the Powerless,"Havel speaks of a greengrocer who the places in his window, among the onions and carrots, slogan "Workdo ers of the World, Unite!" Why does thegreengrocer this,Havel wonders. Is he genuinely abouttheidea ofunity enthusiastic amongtheworkers of he an so theworld?Is hisenthusiasm greatthat feels irrepressible impulse to acquaintthe publicwithhis ideals? Has he really givenmorethana moment's to thought how such a unification mightoccur and what it wouldmean? Havel's answer is worthquoting at length: of never think The overwhelming majority shopkeepers abouttheslogans nor use to their opinreal they in their put windows, do they them express to fromthe enterprise ions. That posterwas delivered our greengrocer He headquarters alongwiththeonionsand carrots. putthemall intothe becauseithas beendonethat becauseeverywindowsimply wayfor years, one does it,and becausethatis thewayit has to be. If he wereto refuse, for He couldbe trouble. couldbe reproached nothavingtheproper there in evenaccusehimofdisloyalty. "decoration" hiswindow;someone might mustbe doneifone is to getalongin life. He does it becausethesethings him of that It is one ofthethousands details guarantee a relatively tranquil withsociety," they as lifein "harmony say.43 So our greengrocer puts up the assigned slogan to communicatenot a social ideal but his preparednessto conform.And the reason the display has conveysa message of submissionis thateverysubmissivegreengrocer foryears.By removingthe poster-or worse, exhibitedthe same slogan replacingit with one thatreads "Workersof the World, Eat Onions and would expose himselfto the charge of subCarrots!"-our greengrocer version. He therefore and fends displays the required slogan faithfully off trouble. In the process,he reinforces the perceptionthat societyis solidlybehind the Party.His own prudencethus becomes a factorin the willingnessof other greengrocersto promote the unity of the world's et 41 Solzhenitsyn, "The Smatterers" (1974),inSolzhenitsyn al.,FromundertheRubble, trans. A. M. Brock et al. (Boston: Little,Brown, 1975),275. 42 Ibid., 276; emphasisin original. 43 Havel (fn.9), 27-28.

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workers. Moreover, it pressures farmers,miners, bus drivers,artists, journalists,and bureaucratsto continuedoing and sayingthe thingsexpected of them. Effortsto prove one's loyaltyto the political status quo often took display of a well-worn Marxist more tragic formsthan a greengrocer's slogan. People tattledon each other. And they ostracized and vilified who were sayingor doing thingsthattheyadmired. The nonconformists Romanian dissidentNorman Manea writesof authorswho "persecuted diabolical energy."44In the theircolleagues on the 'blacklist'withtireless, same vein, the Polish dissidentPiotr Wierzbicki writesabout a famous composer who went out of his way to alert the governmentto an antiSoviet insinuationon the sleeve of a recordby a Pole livingabroad. The was likely to block the squealing composer knew that this information of local performance his fellow Pole's music. He did it to prove his loyof altyto the regime-to earn, as it were, a certificate normalcy.45 establisheda loose asIn 1977 a group of Czechoslovak intellectuals sociation,Charter 77, dedicated to the basic human rightsthatCzechoThe slovakia agreed to respectby signingthe Helsinki accords of 1975.46 governmentresponded by detaining the spokesmen of Charter 77 and In launchinga nationwidecampaign againstthe association.47 the course millionsof ordinarycitizensexpressedtheiropposition of thiscampaign of to Charter 77 by signingstatements condemnation,sending hate lettersto newspapers,and ostracizingits signatories. Many an opponent of Charter 77 did so in betrayalof his conscience. It is true of course that some who participatedin this campaign saw CzechoslovaCharter 77 as a menacing organizationbent on tarnishing Polish composermay well have kia's image abroad. And the tale-bearing had motivesother than a desire to please the regime,for instance,jealousy or professionalcompetition.But East Europeans turned against even in the absence of such motives. each otherroutinely Havel asks us to "imagLet us returnto the storyof the greengrocer. ine thatone day somethingin our greengrocer snaps and he stopsputting up the slogans." The greengroceralso "stops voting in elections he knows are a farce"; he "begins to say what he reallythinksat political in meetings";and he "even findsthe strength himselfto expresssolidar44

45 Wierzbicki,"A Treatise on Ticks" (1979), in Abraham Brumberg, ed., Poland: Genesis ofa Revolution (New York: Random House, 1983),205. 46 The Charter77 declaration is reproducedin Havel et al. (fn.9), 217-21. 47 See Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essayson the Fate of CentralEurope (1983-89) (New York: Random House, 1989),esp. 61-70.

327.

in Manea, "Romania: Three Lines with Commentary," Brintonand Rinzler (fn. 11),

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itywith thosewhom his consciencecommandshim to support."In short, Here are the likelyconthe he makes "an attemptto live within truth."48 sequences of thisrevolt: of will of [The greengrocer] be relieved hispostas manager theshopand to His pay will be reduced.His hopes fora transferred the warehouse. educaHis accessto higher holiday Bulgariawill evaporate. children's in will himand hisfellow workHis tionwillbe threatened. superiors harass whoapplythese sanctions, howerswillwonder abouthim.Mostofthose inner but under conviction simply any ever,willnotdo so from authentic the thatonce pressured the pressure fromconditions, same conditions the They will persecute greento the slogans. greengrocer display official or their of either becauseitis expected them, todemonstrate loyalty, grocer an to or simply partofthegeneral as panorama, whichbelongs awareness of thatthis, fact, in is thatthisis how situations thissortare dealt with, if are how things alwaysdone,particularly one is not to becomesuspect oneself.49 into the pressuresthat lies The brillianceof thisvignette in its insights tyrannicalrekept East Europeans outwardlyloyal to theirinefficient, Officialrepression met with theapproval of ordinarycitizensand gimes. theirpreferences indeed was predicatedon theircomplicity. falsifying By citizens jointlysustained a system and helping to discipline dissenters, thatmany consideredabominable. Accordingto Havel, the crucial "line of conflict"ran not between the Partyand the people but "througheach person," for in one way or another everyonewas "both a victimand a supporterof the system."50 The same idea found vivid expressionin a banner hung above the altar in an East German church: "I am Cain and Abel.""5The implied intrapersonalconflictis rooted of course in the clash between the individual's drive to exercise autonomyand his need for social acceptance. Until 1989 most East Europeans tended to resolve this chronic clash in favor of social acceptance. By thus avoiding an open battle with communism, theyacquiesced to battle silentlywith themselves.In the prothoughat the expense of cess,most achieved a measure of outer security, inner peace. Not that communist rule managed to do away altogetherwith the to human propensity protest.As Wierzbicki pointsout, newspapers reof ceived letters complaintin abundance-about shabbyhousing,the neglected grave of some poet or other,and the sloppilypainted fenceof a
Havel (fn.9), 39; emphasisin original. Ibid., 39. 50 Ibid., 37. 51 Timothy Garton Ash, "Eastern Europe: The Year of Truth," New York Review of Books,February15, 1990,p. 18; emphasisin original.
48
49

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children's playground.Yet protesters tended to stay withina Party-definedzone of acceptability: theyrefrained fromprobingtoo deeply into issues and avoided challengingcommunismitself. schoolteacherwritA ing furiousletters a defective about appliance would not bringherselfto blame the systemthatproduces useless appliances. Nor would she sign a letterexpressingsolidaritywith dissidentsor join a demonstrationfor freedomof speech.52 The typicalEast European feignedopposition to the few dissidents, though in private he applauded theirmission. Havel suggeststhat this admirationwas coupled with a resentment: people who lacked the courage to be true to themselvesfeltthreatenedby displays of integrity on the part of others.They thus treatedopen defiance"as an abnormality, as arrogance,as an attack on themselves, a formof dropping out of as If society."53 it is true that the "iron in the soul" of anotherreminded a conformist the lack of iron in his own, this would have served as an of additional obstacle to overtopposition.54 Another such obstacle was pluralistic ignorance: people alienated fromthe communistregime did not know how widely theiralienation was shared. They could sense the represseddiscontent theirconformof ist relativesand close friends;they could observe the hardships in the lives of their fellow citizens; and theycould intuitthat past uprisings would not have occurred in the absence of substantialdiscontent.Still, on theylacked reliable, currentinformation how many of their fellow citizens favored a change in regime. The government-controlled press the "unityof socialistsociety"and exploited this ignorance by stressing its "solidarityin supportingthe Party." Insofaras such propaganda led to potentialrevolutionaries underestimate the prevalenceof discontent, it weakened theirincentives join the minusculeopposition. to Governmentsthroughouthistory have recognized the significance of preference falsification and out of self-interest have tried to keep themselves informedabout the privatepreferences theirconstituents. of Louis XIV told his heir that "the art of governing"consistsin "knowing the real thoughtsof all the princesin Europe, knowing everything thatpeople tryto conceal fromus, their secrets,and keeping close watch over them."55So it is that the communistgovernmentsof Eastern Europe conducted numerous surveysto findout the true thoughtsand feelings
Wierzbicki(fn.45), 206-7. Havel (fn.9), 37. 54 The metaphor belongsto Barrington Moore, Jr., Injustice:The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt(White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1978). 55 Cited by NorbertElias, Powerand Civility (1939), trans.Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon,1982), 197.
52
53

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of theirsubjects. If the factthat theykept the resultssecretis any indication,these were not entirely flattering them or theirpolicies. Inforto mation for publication "was checked beforehandand given the appropriateinterpretation," keep it fromemboldeningthe regime'sdeclared to and potentialopponents.56 It would be an exaggerationto suggest thatall East European supporters of communist rule were privatelyopposed to the status quo. Some benefited and othersfeltthreatened handsomelyfromthe system, Nor did those who became consciousof the failuresof by major reform. communism necessarilylose faithin officialideals. Even leading dissito dentsremainedsympathetic centralplanningand collectiveownership ever suspiciousof the free-enterprise and system.57 and large,theyfelt By that communism was betrayedby self-serving leaders, not that it was unworkable. inherently These observationsare consistent with opinion polls of East Europeans travelingabroad conducted by Western organizationsin the 1970s and for each nation, the and early 1980s. With remarkableconsistency a data showed that in free elections offering full spectrumof choices, including a Democratic Socialist Party and a Christian Democratic Party,the Communist Party would receive at most a tenthof the vote, and the socialistswould invariablybe the winners.58 evidence is contained in surveysconducted from Further systematic of 1970 onward forthe benefit the leadershipby the Central Institute for Youth Development in Leipzig. Now being declassified,these surveys suggestthatuntilthe mid-1980smostEast Germans accepted the official goals of socialism.In 1983,46 percentof a sample of tradeschool students endorsed the statement"I am a devoted citizen of the German Demoand cratic Republic," whereas 45 percentendorsed it with reservations only 9 percentrejectedit. And in 1984,50 percentagreed that"socialism will triumph throughoutthe world," whereas 42 percentagreed with and 8 percentdisagreed. Between 1970 and 1985,the results reservations showed little variation.59 They may, of course, have been based on a
56 Jifi Otava, "Public Opinion Research in Czechoslovakia,"Social Research55 (Springofficial bulletinon public Summer 1988),249. Everyissue of theCzechoslovak government's that this bulletinis not meant for the public, opinion stated: "We remind all researchers as and acquaintances,but servesexclusively internal which means not even foryourfriends and thosewho collaboratewithus" (p. 251 n. 2). materialforpoll-takers 57 See Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Crisis in ofMarxist Ideology EasternEurope: The Poverty of Utopia(London: Routledge,1988),esp. chap. 4. 58 Henry 0. Hart, "The Tables Turned: If East Europeans Could Vote," Public Opinion 6 (October-November 1983), 53-57. The surveysreportedby Hart cover Czechoslovakia, Hungary,Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. 59 "Daten des Zentralinstituts furJugendforshung Leipzig" (Mimeograph),Tables 1 and the of and 2. These tableswere compiled by WalterFriedrich, director the institute, distrib-

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flawed methodology, was much public opinion researchdone in Eastas ern Europe. But, as we shall see later,it is highlysignificant that after a 1985 thissame methodologyregistered sustaineddeterioration both in to the citizenry's attachment the regimeand in its faithin socialism. It thus appears that while the East Europeans overwhelmingly disliked the regimes under which theywere living, they were much less troubledby the principlesof socialism-at least until the mid-1980s.To we make sense of this finding, need to touch on the cognitiveimplicafalsification. Disaffectedcitizenschoosingto conform tionsof preference to the regime's demands typically paid lip serviceto officialgoals, used Marxist jargon, and made excuses for communism's shortcomingsby pointing to the ostensiblyworse failuresof capitalism. In the process, they unavoidably kept theirfellow citizens uninformedabout those of their private beliefs that were inimical to the status quo. Worse, they knowinglyexposed one anotherto falsefactsand misleadingarguments. In short,they distortedpublic discourse. Since public discourse influthis ences what is noticedand how eventsare interpreted, distortion undoubtedly affectedthe evolution of East European private preferences. of East Europeans subjectedfromearlychildhood to predictions the imminent demise of capitalismand to theoriesof the incontrovertible suof communismmust have become more or less conditionedto periority think in Marxist terms,developing some mental resistanceto the fundamental flawsof theirsocial order.60 Marxistdiscoursewould also have blunted If this reasoningis correct, an the abilityof East Europeans to articulate alternative economic order. Vladimir Shlapentokh points to a paradox here. The socialist worker mistruststhe market order, even though he obtains his treasuredblue jeans through the only free market to which he has access-the black market. Likewise, the enterprisemanager who turns regularlyto the undergroundeconomy for vital spare parts dreads economic liberalizato tion. Shlapentokhascribessuch inconsistencies a disjunctionbetween the "pragmatic" and "theoretical" layers of the individual mind.61 at uted to the participants a conferenceheld in Ladenburg in February 1991, under the auspices of the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann it broughtthe documentto myattention; JohnAhouse translated intoEnglish. 60 For a fuller falsification distorts on argument how preference publicdiscourseand how, in turn,thisdistortion see warps theevolutionof people's privatepreferences, Timur Kuran, in "The Role of Deception in PoliticalCompetition," AlbertBretonet al., eds., The CompetitiveState (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1990),71-95. 61 Though Shlapentokh withrespect theSoviet Union, it applies to developstheargument SovietPublic Opinionand Ideology: also to Eastern Europe. See Shlapentokh, Mythology and in Pragmatism Interaction (New York: Praeger,1986); and idem,Publicand Private Life ofthe Russia (New York: Oxford University SovietPeople: ChangingValues in Post-Stalin Press, 1989).

SURPRISE IN THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

33

this Known in cognitivepsychology mental as partitioning, phenomenon in is an inevitableconsequence of the mind's limitations receiving,storing, retrieving, and processinginformation. People are simplyunable to incorporateinto a single, comprehensivemodel the multitudesof variables and relationshipsthat bear on their happiness; they thus ignore many interconnections and treat closely related phenomena as unrelated.62

For our purposes,the important implicationis this:an East European would not necessarily confronted daily with communism'sshortcomings of have taken them as a sign of the unworkability the system.He could withoutlosing faith easily have turned against individual functionaries in in the system which theyoperated.Some East Europeans did of course were part of a general patternof recognize that specificshortcomings failure. Many were intellectualswith much time to think and thus to the make the mental connectionsnecessaryforidentifying system'sfundamental flaws.But many othersdid not make theseconnections, partly because the prevailingpublic discourseprovided no help. falsification So processesrooted in preference kept privateopposition to communism far fromunanimous. This does not negate the factthat vast numbersremainedoutwardlyloyal to communistrule primarily out the communistreof fear. But for widespread preference falsification, gimes of Eastern Europe would have facedseverepublic opposition,very possiblycollapsing before 1989. In view of its profoundimpact on both falsification privateand public sentiment, preference may be characterized as the wellspringof the communistsystem'sstability. V.
THE REVOLUTION

The foregoingargumenthas two immediateimplications.First,the remore vulnerable than the gimes of Eastern Europe were substantially subservienceand quiescence of theirpopulationsmade them seem. Millions were prepared to stand up in defianceif ever theysensed that this was sufficiently safe. The people's solidaritywith their leaders would then have been exposed as illusory,strippingthe veneer of legitimacy fromthe communistmonopoly on power. Second, even the support of to those genuinelysympathetic the statusquo was ratherthin. Though to many saw no alternative socialism,theirmanygrievancespredisposed them to the promise of fundamentalchange. Were public discourse
62 See John H. Holland et al., Induction: Processes Inference, of Learning,and Discovery (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); and Amos Tverskyand Daniel Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Rationality Choice," Science211 (January of 1981),453-58.

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somehow to turnagainst socialism,theywould probablyawaken to the thattheirlives could be improved. possibility mobilization? But what would catalyze the process of revolutionary With hindsightit appears thatthe push came fromthe Soviet Union. In denied, economic problems,until then officially the mid-1980s festering (restructuring) leadershipto call forperestroika convinced the top Soviet and glasnost(public openness). Repressedgrievancesburstinto the open, with communistrule itself.And with Mikhail including dissatisfaction Gorbachev's rise to the helm in 1985, the Soviet Union abandoned its with the West, to seek accommolong-standingpolicyof confrontation In dation and cooperation.63 Eastern Europe thesechanges kindled hopes of greaterindependenceand meaningfulsocial reform. Lest it appear that these developmentsprovided a clear signal of the coming revolution, remember that Havel dismissed a Czechoslovak crowd's jubilation over Gorbachev as a sign of naivete. He was hardly alone in his pessimism.Even if Gorbachev wanted to liberate Eastern Europe, a popular argumentwent, it was anythingbut obvious that he could. Surely,the militaryand hard-lineconservativeswould insiston buffer against an attack fromthe retainingthe Soviet Union's strategic West. Nor was thisthe onlyobstacleto liberation.Economic and ethnictensions within the Soviet Union could provide the pretextfora conservative coup. There was always the precedentof Khrushchev,toppled in 1964. About the time that Havel was exuding pessimism,a joke was between Gormaking the rounds in Prague: "What is the difference bachev and Dubcek [the deposed leader of the 1968 Prague Spring]?" SignifiThe answer: "None--except Gorbachev doesn't know it yet."64 cantly,in the fallof 1989 Moscow was rifewith rumorsof an impending coup.65Some observersexpected Gorbachev to survive but only by reAn versing course and becoming increasinglyrepressive.66 old Soviet joke expresses the underlyingthinking.Stalin leaves his heirs in the Party two envelopes. One is labeled, "In case of trouble, open this." Trouble arises and the envelope is opened ceremoniously:"Blame me."
63 For details,see RobertC. Tucker, PoliticalCulture in and Leadership SovietRussia:From (New York: W. W. Norton,1987),chap. 7. Lenin to Gorbachev 64Economist, July18, 1987,p. 45. 65 Z [anonymous], "To the Stalin Mausoleum,"Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990),332. 66 With the revolution, notionthatGorbachevwould turnto the armyand the KGB in the in It a bid to stayin power lostplausibility. regainedplausibility late 1990withtheresignation Eduard Shevardnadze,who publiclyaccused Gorbachev of plotting of his foreignminister, dictatorship. to withhard-liners createa repressive

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The otherenvelope is labeled, "In case of more trouble,open this." More troublecomes and the second envelope is opened: "Do as I did."67 In support of their predictionthat the conservativeelements in the invoked leadership would prevail sooner or later,pessimistsfrequently of the conservatism the Soviet people. In a widely discussed 1988 article, argued that seven decades of bufor instance,a Russian social scientist reorienthad suppressedindividual creativity, reaucraticregimentation transformation to away fromrevolutionary ing the "Soviet value system conservativeimmobility."Communism had quashed the very personal In were counting.68 June 1989 another qualities on which the reformists Soviet observerwould confess:"For threeyears I have tried to findout and whetheror not thereis mass supportfor perestroika, now I feel I can conclude that it does not exist." He blamed not only the individual citisocial justice zen's fearof change but also the Soviet ethic thatidentifies to The upshotof such comments, which scores with economic equality.69 more from diverse sources could be added, was that Soviet citizens tended to be deeply suspicious of Gorbachev's intentions.Many commentatorsinferredthat Gorbachev's reformswere doomed, reasoning againsta conservative thathe could not relyon the masses forprotection challenger. the to As Gorbachev was trying restructure Soviet Union, Poland was testingthe limitsof its freedomfromMoscow. The struggleto legalize Solidarityhad already given the countrya taste of pluralism,and governmentcensorshipwas being relaxed in fitsand starts.Everyone recenjoyed Gorbachev's approval. Yet few inognized that this softening formed people put much faith in Gorbachev's ability to push the and once again it was forward, liberationof Eastern Europe substantially Europe," wrote not clear thathe intendedto try."Dissidents throughout the Economistin mid-1987,sound "sceptical" when talking about Gorzeal. It is simbachev. "This is not because theyquestion [his] reforming ply that many thinkingpeople in Eastern Europe have come to believe that real change in Communist countriescannot be imposed from the Plentyof events top-or fromoutside-but mustemerge frombelow."70 lent credence to this reasoning.For instance,Gorbachev did not prevent
67 Recorded by Daniel Bell, "As We Go into the Nineties: Some Outlinesof the TwentyDissent37 (Spring 1990), 173. first Century," 68 Igor Kon, "The Psychology of Social Inertia"(1988),Social Sciences20, no. 1 (1989), 6074. 69 Gennadii Batyagin, TASS, June28, 1989,quoted byElizabeth Teague, "Perestroikaand 25 and the Soviet Worker,"Government Opposition (Spring 1990), 192. 70 July18, 1987,p. 45. Economist,

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the the East German regimefromfalsifying resultsof local electionsheld in the springof 1989 or fromendorsingChina's massacreat Tiananmen Square that summer. Nor did he keep the East German regime from against these two acts.7" using forceto dispersesmall demonstrations In sum, prior to the actual revolutionit was not at all clear that the Soviet Union would sit back if its six Warsaw Pact allies tried to overevents,and trendsthat in throw their communistregimes.Statements, appear as unmistakablesigns of an explosion in the making retrospect coexisted with many signs that pointed in the directionof inertia and Some of Gorbachev's actionsdid indeed suggestthat continuedstability. in reforms manyareas, includingthe fundamental he wanted to institute Soviet Union's relationshipwith its East European satellites.But there to were many reasons to expect his efforts end in failure. it Yet since the revolution has seemed as thoughGorbachevengineered the liberationof Eastern Europe. In fact,he was a masterat puttingthe best face on events that had pushed past him. In the fall of 1989 there and/or faster were many reportsthat events were going much further to permitmoves towilling than Gorbachev wanted. He was reportedly ward democracy, provided the communistswere not humiliated and ties to the Soviet Union were preserved.And Eastern Europe's military like leaders in Washington,Paris, Bonn, and elsewhere,he was reluctant to support anythingthat might disturbEurope's hard-won peace. But when the peoples of Eastern Europe grabbed politicalpower,pushed the communistsaside, and proclaimed theirintentionto leave the Warsaw and gave his blessingto eventsgenPact, Gorbachev just accepted reality erated by forcesbeyond his control.One is reminded of the horseman who, thrown from his horse, explains with a smile that he has "dismounted." The point remains that the Soviet reformmovementfueled expectationsof a freerEastern Europe, reducingforgrowingnumbersthe perceived riskof challengingthe statusquo. In termsof themodel described thresholdsof in Section III, the movement lowered the revolutionary easy to set in motion a revoluEast Europeans, making it increasingly tionarybandwagon. But no one could see that a revolutionwas in the making, not even the Soviet leader whose moves were helping to estabbandwagon. lish the still-latent thresholdsare influencedalso by people's Recall that revolutionary are Since privatepreferences governed to a considprivatepreferences. erable extentby public discourse,thedissentgeneratedby Soviet glasnost
71 TimothyGarton Ash, "GermanyUnbound,"New YorkReviewofBooks,November 22, 1990,p. 12.

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37

probablypushed the privatepreferences East Europeans against comof munism and communistrule. The East German surveys discussed above provide dramaticevidence to thiseffect. They show thatafter1985 East German attachmentto socialism steadilydeteriorated.By October 1989 only 15 percentof the surveyedtrade school studentsendorsed the statement "I am a devoted citizen of the German Democratic Republic," down from46 percentin 1983. Fully 60 percentendorsed it with reservationsand 25 percentrejectedit. In the same monthas few as 3 percent continuedto believe that"socialismwill triumphthroughout world," the down from50 percentin 1984. Just27 percentagreed with reservations The contrast betweenthe figures and a whopping 70 percentdisagreed.72 It for 1989 and those for 1983-84 is striking. points to a massive rise in in discontent the second halfof the decade, a risethatmust have lowered the revolutionary thresholds millionsof individual East Germans. of eventsset the revolutionary What specific bandwagon in motion? One to must recognize thatattempting answer thisquestion is akin to trying the spark that ignited a forestfireor the cough responsible to identify fora fluepidemic. There were manyturning pointsin theEast European Revolution,any one of which mighthave derailed it. One turningpointcame in earlyOctober,when East German officials refusedto carryout Partyleader Honecker's order to open fireon street On demonstrators. October 7 Gorbachev was in Berlin for celebrations of marking the fortieth anniversary the German Democratic Republic. With scores of foreignreporters looking on, crowds took to the streets, chanting,"Gorby! Gorby!" And the police clubs went into action. West German televisionimmediatelyplayed these events back to the rest of East Germany.The scenes alerteddisgruntled citizensin everycornerof the countryto the pervasivenessof discontent, while the government's A weak responserevealed itsvulnerability. peacefulprotestbroke out in Leipzig on October 9. Honecker ordered the regional Partysecretary to block the demonstration,by force if necessary. But bloodshed was averted when Egon Krenz, a Politburo member in charge of security, flew to Leipzig and encouraged the securityforces to show restraint. Local leaders-some of whom had already appealed for restraint-acof cepted this contravention Honecker's order, and tens of thousands marched withoutinterference. Sensing the shifting politicalwinds, more and more East Germans throughout country the took to the streets. The East German uprisingwas now in fullswing.As the regimetriedto stem the tide througha stringof concessions,the swelling crowds began to
72

"Daten des Zentralinstituts Jugendforschung fuir Leipzig" (fn.59), Tables 1 and 2.

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make increasinglybold demands. Within a month the Berlin Wall would be breached,and in less than a year the German Democratic Republic would become part of a unified, democraticGermany.73 Anotherturningpoint came on October 25, during Gorbachev's state had formedPovisitto Finland. Two monthsearliera Solidarityoffical land's firstnoncommunistgovernmentsince the 1940s, following the Communist Party's stunningdefeat at the polls. A legislativedeputy to Gorbachev had declined detailed commenton the grounds that the developments were a domestic matter for the Poles.74The communists were in retreatin Hungary, too. In meetingswith dissidentgroups the elections. Hungarian CommunistPartyhad endorsedfreeparliamentary Then, in the belief that its candidates would do poorly runningunder the banner of communism,it had transformed itselfinto the Hungarian This was the first time that a ruling communistparty Socialist Party.75 had formally abandoned communism. With the world wondering whetherthe Soviet Union had reached the limitsof its tolerance,Gorbachev declared in Finland that his countryhad no moral or political in of rightto interfere the affairs its East European neighbors.Defining thispositionas "the Sinatra doctrine,"his spokesman jokinglyasked reporterswhethertheyknew the Frank Sinatra song "I Did It My Way." He went on to say that "Hungary and Poland are doing it theirway." Using the Western term for the previous Soviet policy of armed intervention to keep the governmentsof the Warsaw Pact in communist hands, he added, "I thinkthe Brezhnev doctrineis dead."76Coming on the heels of major communist retreatsin Poland and Hungary, these commentsofferedyet anotherindicationthatGorbachev would not try to silence East European dissent. If one effect thissignal was to embolden the oppositionmovements of of Eastern Europe, another must have been to discourage the governto This is mentsof Eastern Europe fromresorting violence unilaterally. not to say thatGorbachev enunciatedhis Sinatradoctrinewith the intention of encouragingEast European oppositionsto grab for power. Nor is it to say that the revolutionwould have peteredout in the absence of thismove. By the timeGorbachev renouncedthe Soviet Union's rightto intervene,opposition movementsin Poland, East Germany,and Hungary already commanded mass support,and it is unlikelythat anything
73 This account draws on Ash (fn. 19); Anderson(fn.26); and theNew YorkTimesreports compiled in Gwertzmanand Kaufman (fn. 1), 158-60,166-84,216-22. 74 New YorkTimes, August 18, 1989,p. 1. 75 Ibid., October 8, 1989,p. 1. For a fuller accountof the transformation, Abel (fn. 14), see chap. 2. 76 New YorkTimes,October26, 1989,p. 1.

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shortof massive brutality would have broken theirmomentumand restored the status quo ante. Nonetheless, some incumbent communist leaders were seriouslyconsideringa militarysolution,and the proclamation of the Sinatra doctrinemay well have tipped the balance against the use of force.Had even one East European governmentresortedto forceat this stage, the resultmay well have been a seriesof bloody and civil wars. protracted Just we cannot be certainthata delay in announcingthenew Soviet as doctrinewould have altered the course of history, will never know we whetherthe contravention Honecker's orderto shoothad a significant of impact on the subsequent flow of events.What can be said is this: had Honecker's subordinatesenforcedhis order, the growth of the opposition would have slowed, and later demonstrations would probablynot have stayed peaceful. The same historicalsignificance can be attributed to the restraint shown by theindividualsoldierson dutyduringthe demonstration and by the individual demonstrators. the tenseatmosphere In of the demonstration shot firedin panic or a stone thrownin excitea mentcould have sparkeda violentconfrontation. was an extraordinary It conjunctionof individual decisions that kept the uprisingpeaceful and preventedthe revolutionfrombeing sidetracked. The success of antigovernment demonstrationsin one country inelsewhere. In early November, Sofia was shaken spired demonstrations in demonstration fourdecades as severalthousand Bulgarians by its first marched on the National Assembly. Within a week, on the very day broke throughthe BerlinWall, Todor Zhivkov's thirty-five-year throngs leadership came to an end, and his successor began talking of radical reforms. Up to thattimeCzechoslovakia's communistgovernment had yielded littleto its own opposition.Conscious of developmentselsewhere,it had simply promised economic reformsand made minor concessions on travel and religion.77 These retreats encouraged the swelling crowds to ask formore. On November 24, just hours afterAlexander Dubvek addressed a crowd of 350,000in his first public speech since 1968,the CommunistPartydeclared a shake-up in the leadership,only to face a much largerrallyof people shouting,"Shame! Shame! Shame!" The new governmenttriedto placate the demonstrators vowing to punish thecomby mandant of the paramilitaryforcesthat had roughed up protestorsa week earlier.Unimpressed,theoppositionleaders labeled theannounced changes "cosmetic"and promisedto redoubletheirpressure.The success
77

Ibid., November 16, 1989,p. 1.

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of the general striketheycalled for November 27 led the Communist Party to capitulate within a matterof hours to their major demands, including an end to its monopoly on political power.78"Not since the Paris crowd discoveredthatthe dreaded Bastille containedonly a handful of prisonersand a few terrified soldiershas a citadel fallenwith such ease," wrote theEconomist few days later."They just had to say boo."79 a This bringsus back, forone last time,to Havel's brilliant1979 essay. He predicted there that when the greengrocers decided they had had enough, communism would fall like a house of cards. So it turned out: when the masses took to the streets, the support for the Czechoslovak governmentjust vanished. The mobilization process followed the patternsof East Germany and Bulgaria. Emboldened by signals from the Soviet Union and the successesof oppositionmovementsin neighboring countries,a few thousand people stood up in defiance,joining the tiny core of long-persecuted activists. so doing theyencouraged additional In citizens to drop their masks, which then impelled more onlookers to jump in. Before long fear changed sides: where people had been afraid to oppose the regime,theycame to fearbeing caught defendingit. Party members rushed to burn theircards,assertingtheyhad always been reformists heart. Top officials, at sensingthat theymightbe made to pay for standing in the way of change and forany violence,hastened to accept the opposition's demands, only to be confronted with bolder ones yet. Had the civilian leadership or the top brass attemptedto resist the of opposition,the transfer power would not have been so swift, and certainlynot so peaceful. One of the most remarkableaspects of the East European Revolutionis that,with the partialexceptionof Romania, the forcesand the bureaucracyjust meltedaway in the faceof growsecurity ing public opposition.Not only did stateofficials away fromputting shy a fight, many crossedover to theoppositionas a transfer power but up of appeared increasinglylikely. This is highlysignificant, a defection for fromthe inner establishment an unusuallygood indicatorof the preis vailing politicalwinds. A Politburomemberdistancinghimselffromthe Partyleader does more to expose the regime'svulnerability than a greengrocer who stops displaying the obligatoryMarxist slogan. In turn, a defiantgreengrocer does more harm to the regime'simage than does an confinement. obstreperous prisonerin solitary
78 For an eyewitness account of theseevents,see TimothyGarton Ash, "The Revolution of the Magic Lantern,"New YorkReviewofBooks,January 1990,42-51. See also Abel (fn. 18, 14),chap. 3. 79 Economist, December 2, 1989,p. 55.

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of In the simple model of Section III the perceivedstrength the public opposition is measured by S, the share of societypubliclyin opposition. This variable treatsall individuals equally: with ten individuals, each as individual carriesa weightof 10 percent.But in reality, I have argued, to in membersof societydiffer theircontributions the perceivedstrength of the opposition. So a more realistic measure of perceived strength indicatorof public opposition,where would be some unequallyweighted the weights correlatewith levels of relativeinfluence.Such a weighted measure would assign a Politburo member more weight than a greengrocer,and the lattermore weightthana namelessprisoner.Were we to into our model, the centralargument would introducethis refinement there still interdependent, remain unaffected:with public preferences of would remain the possibility a latent,unobserved bandwagon.80My in reason for abstractingfrom this refinement Section III was to keep the presentation simple. fromthe Partyor even who distancedthemselves Some of the officials moved into the opposition as the uprisingstook offmay at heart have disliked the communistsocial order.Many othersundoubtedlyacted for opportunisticreasons ratherthan out of conviction.Sensing the imminent collapse of the old order, theyabandoned it in hopes of findinga but the speed place in the order about to be born. A few chose to resist, of the anticommunistmobilization leftmost of them with insufficient time to plan and execute a coordinatedresponse.Had the mobilization been slower, theymightwell have managed to mount a credible,effective response.8" to Timothy Garton Ash, an eyewitness the mobilizationsin Hungary, Poland, East Germany,and Czechoslovakia, characterizes1989 as EastThis designationis accurate insofaras it ern Europe's "year of truth."82 capturesthe end of feignedsupportforcommunism.But it conceals the on falsification the partof those push the revolutiongot frompreference threwofftheir who sympathizedwiththe statusquo. As noncommunists many genuine communistsslipped on masks of masks in joy and relief, of theirown-masks depictingthem as the helpless functionaries a rethrilledto be speaking pressive system,as formerpreferencefalsifiers Yet theirminds after yearsof silentresentment. Ash's label is meaningful of discourse has in another sense as well. The flowering anticommunist see For a demonstration, Kuran (fn.31). The pace of events was undoubtedlya key factoralso in the failureof conservative Had eventsproceededmore groupsin the SovietUnion to block EasternEurope's liberation. slowly,theymighthave had timeto oust Gorbachevand orderthe Red Armyintoaction. 82 Ash (fn.51).
80 81

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exposed the officialideology more clearlythan ever beforeas a heap of and myth. It has awakened millions of dormant sophistry, distortion, citizens resignedto the statusquo with the conflicts minds, confronting between the pragmaticand theoretical layersof theirbeliefs.This is to say neitherthatthe thoughtsof everyEast European are now internally consistentnor that Marxist thinkinghas ceased. Rather,it is to suggest of thatthe transformation public discoursehas opened many to new possibilities. In the days followingthe fall of Czechoslovakia's communistregime, a banner in Prague read: "Poland-10 years,Hungary-10 months,East Germany-10 weeks, Czechoslovakia-10 days."83The implied acceleration reflectsthe fact that each successfulchallenge to communism lowered the perceived risk of dissent in the countriesstill under comin thresholds neighmunistrule. In termsof our model, as revolutionary contagious. boringcountriesfell,the revolutionbecame increasingly Had thisbannerbeen prepareda fewweeks later,it mighthave added "Romania-10 hours." As the Czechoslovak uprisingneared its climax, the executive committeeof the Romanian Communist Party was busy his reelectingNicolae Ceauaescu as presidentand interrupting acceptance speech with standing ovations. Three weeks later protestsbroke out in the western provinces,but theywere brutallyput down by the forces.Confidentof his abilityto preventa replayof the events security that had broughtdown other communistregimes,Ceauaescu leftfor a state visit to Iran, but the protestsintensified. Upon his returnhe orgabut nized a rally to denounce the "counterrevolutionaries," when he startedto speak he was booed. Television broadcastthe look of shock on his face, and the Romanian revolt was on. The consequent change of regime turnedout to be bloodier than the previousfive,because the securityforcesresponsibleforthe earliermassacre resistedthe revolution. They caused hundreds of deaths beforetheywere beaten by the army. Ceauaescu triedto escape but he was caught and summarilyexecuted.84 Yet again, the world watched a nation jump with littlewarning from quiescence and subservienceto turbulenceand defiance. As the year went out, commentatorswere still marvelingat the speed with which the politicallandscape of Eastern Europe had changed. Long-persecuted dissidentsnow occupied high government positions.In Czechoslovakia, forinstance,Havel was president, Dubcek, chairmanof the Federal As83

Minds3 (January-February 1990), "Czechoslovakia: The Velvet Revolution,"Uncaptive

84 of For the New YorkTimesreports theseevents,see Gwertzman and Kaufman (fn. 1), 332-39.

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Dienstbier(a Charter77 signatory sembly,and Jirv servingtime as a coal All six countriesbegan planning freeelections stoker),foreignminister. and committedthemselves economic liberalization.Some even moved to to withdrawfromthe Warsaw Pact. VI.
THE PREDICTABILITY OF UNPREDICTABILITY

Unexpected as theywere, these developmentsnow seem as though they could easily have been predicted.Was it not obvious that the economic failuresof communism had sown the seeds of a massive revolt? Was it thatthe East Europeans were just waitingforan oppornot self-evident tunityto topple their despised dictators?Did not the severe domestic problems of the Soviet Union necessitateits withdrawal from Eastern Europe, to concentrate resourceson economic reforms? its Retrospective a accounts of 1989 offer panoplyof such reasonswhy the East European Revolution was inevitable. "It is no accident that Mikhail Gorbachev in declined to intervene,"writes one commentator85-this, a volume peppered with commentson how 1989 surprisedone and all. This essay has shown that the warning signs of the revolution remained cloudy until it was all over. Moreover, the unobservability of thresholdsconcealed the latent private preferencesand revolutionary to bandwagons in formationand also made it difficult appreciate the of significance events that were pushing these into motion. The explathe of nation forthispredictivefailuretranscends particularities Eastern this is afterall hardlythe first time a major social uprisinghas Europe: come as a big surprise. The French Revolutionof 1789 shocked not only Louis XVI and his courtiersbut also outside observersand the rioterswho helped end his reign. Yet it had many deep causes-all expounded at great length in thousandsof volumes. This paradox is one of the centralthemes literally of Tocqueville's Old Rigime and the FrenchRevolution."Chance played no part whatever in the outbreak of the revolution," he observes. it "Though it took the world by surprise, was the inevitableoutcome of of gestation, abruptand violentconclusionof a process the a long period in which six generationsplayed an intermittent part."86 In this centurythe Nazi takeoverof Germany took place with astonwere ishingspeed. Withina few monthsentrenched politicalinstitutions turned upside down, all democraticoppositionwas destroyed, and a la85 William M. Brinton, "Gorbachevand the Revolution 1989-90,"in Brintonand Rinzof ler (fn. 11),373. 86 Tocqueville (fn.36), 20.

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bor movement with millions of members was driven underground.87 thereis no shortageof explanationsforthe Though it was not foreseen, rise of Nazism. The Iranian Revolution of 1979-80 offersyet another example of an unanticipateduprising. There now exists a panoply of competingexplanations,including ones that invoke class conflicts, failures of governance,foreignexploitation, economic reversals,the disafYet for all their fectionsof bazaar merchants,and Islamic ideology.88 studentsof this revolutionagree that it stunned almost evdifferences, eryone-the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the CIA and the KGB, statesmen, diplomats,academics, and journalists. The veryrevolutionthatpreparedthe ground forthe first communist regime in historywas an unforeseenevent. Weeks before the Russian Revolutionof February 1917 Lenin told an audience in Switzerland that Russia's greatexplosion lay in the distantfutureand thatolder men like And with just days to go, foreignobhimselfwould not live to see it.89 serversin Petrogradwere advising theircapitals thatthe monarchywas But the tsar fell,and beforethe year was over the stable and secure.90 communistshad gained fullcontrolof the government. has since been It recognized that Marxist scholarshipdid not prepare us for the world's firstsuccessfulcommunistrevolutionoccurringin, of all places, backward, semifeudalRussia.91 Nor did Marxist scholarship-or forthat matter,non-Marxistscholarship-anticipate the midcentury uprisingsin the communiststatesof Eastern Europe. "The Hungarian uprisingof October 1956 was a dramatic,sudden explosion,apparentlynot organized beforehandby a revhad anticipated olutionarycenter;neitheroutsidersnor the participants anythinglike the irresistible revolutionary dynamismthatwould sweep the country."Thus begins The Unexpected a Revolution, monograph on this failed attemptto overthrowcommunism that is replete with evi87 Detlev J.K. Peukert,InsideNazi Germany: and Conformity, Opposition, Racismin Everyday Life, trans.Richard Deveson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987),27-28 and passim. 88 For a sample of explanations, see Hamid Algar,The IslamicRevolution Iran (London: in Muslim Institute, 1980); Said Amir Arjomand, "Iran's Islamic Revolutionin Comparative Perspective," WorldPolitics38 (April 1986),383-414; Shaul Bakhash, The Stateand Revolutionin Iran (London: Croom Helm, 1984); Nikki R. Keddie, Rootsof Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); and RobertLooney,EconomicOrigins theIranian Revoof lution(Boulder, Colo.: WestviewPress, 1982). 89 Leonard Schapiro,The RussianRevolutions 1917: The Origins ModernCommunism of of (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 19. 90William H. Chamberlin,The RussianRevolution, 1917-1921 (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 1:73-76. 91 Furtherevidenceconcerning element surprise theFrench,Russian,and Iranian the of in revolutions may be foundin Kuran (fn.31), secs.2, 6-7.

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dence of widespread preferencefalsification rightup to the uprising.92 Prior to October 1956 writerswho were to play leading roles gave not the slightestsign of opposition to the political status quo. For another example, clerical employees remained docile and submissive until the oftenhiding theirgrievanceseven uprising in which theyparticipated, fromfamilymembers.93 The Prague Spring of 1968 offers anotherexample of an unforeseen attempt to crack the wall of communism. In a retrospective account, Havel writesthat in 1967 the entirenation was behaving like the Good Soldier Svejk, accommodating itselfto the regime's demands. "Who would have believed .
.

. that a year later this recently apathetic, skepti-

cal, and demoralized societywould stand up with such courage and intelligenceto a foreignpower!" "And," he continues,"who would have suspectedthat,afterscarcelya yearhad gone by,thissame societywould, as as swiftly the wind blows, lapse back into a stateof deep demoralization far worse than its original one!"94

This tallyof unanticipateduprisingscould be expanded, but the point has been made: the revolutionof 1989 was not the firstto surpriseus. has Time and again entrenched authority vanishedsuddenly,leaving the victorsastonishedat theirtriumphand the vanquished, at theirdefeat. Should we conclude, along with JohnDunn, that revolutionsare ineluctable "factsof nature,"eventsthatfail "to suggestthe dominance of human reason in any form"?95 other words, is the culprithuman irIn The argumentdeveloped in thispaper does not point in this rationality? that predictivefailureis entirely direction.It suggests,on the contrary, with calculated,purposefulhuman action. Underlyingan exconsistent are in of plosive shift public sentiment multitudes individual decisions to switch political allegiance, each undertakenin responseto changing incentives.So just as a failureto predicta rainstormdoes not imply that the clouds obey no physical laws, a failure to predict some revolution does not implyindividual irrationality. Dunn also suggeststhat revolutionshave too many determinantsto make them amenable to a grand, comprehensivetheory.Shunning the a futileexercise of constructing theorywith universal applicability,we of ought to focus,he says,on the particularities each situation.Although
92 Paul Kecskemeti,The Unexpected Revolution: Social Forcesin the Hungarian Uprising (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961),1. 93 Ibid., 60, 84-85. the withKarel Hvz~dala (1986),trans.Paul Wil9Havel, Disturbing Peace: A Conversation son (New York: AlfredA. Knopf,1990), 109. 95 Dunn, ModernRevolutions: Introduction theAnalysis a PoliticalPhenomenon, An to of 2d ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press,1989),2-3.

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I agree that revolutionsare complex events broughton by a symphony of interacting variables,I departfromDunn on the usefulnessof general revolutions not preclude do theorizing:obstaclesto forecasting particular useful insightsinto theprocessof revolution.Even if we cannot predict the time and place of the next big uprising,we may prepare ourselves mentallyforthe mass mobilizationthatwill bringit about. Equally important,we can understand why it may surprise us. There are other spheresof knowledge where highlyusefultheoriespreclude reliablepredictions of specificoutcomes. The Darwinian theoryof biological evolution illuminates the process wherebyspecies evolve but without enabling us to predict the futureevolution of the gazelle. Sophisticated theoriesof the weatherelucidate why it is in perpetualfluxbut without making it possible to say with much confidencewhetherit will rain in Rome a week fromnext Tuesday. Such general theorieshave a common virtue:theyreveal the source of The reason theycannot predictinfallibly theirpredictivelimitations. is not simplythat theycontain large numbersof variables. In each theory that is, a small perturvariables are related to one anothernonlinearly; bation in one variable,which normallyproducessmall changes in other variables, may under the right set of circumstanceshave large consequences. Consider the theoryof climatic turbulencedeveloped by Edward Lorenz. It shows thata sparrowflappingitswings in Istanbul-an event-can generatea hurricanein the Gulf of intrinsically insignificant Mexico. This is because the weatherat any given locationis relatedto its to determinantsnonlinearly.In other words, its sensitivity other varito ables, and theirsensitivities one another,are themselvesvariable.Accordingly,variable x may be imperviousto a jump in y from20 to 200, if yetexhibithypersensitivityy risesa bit higher,say,to 202. It may then startto grow explosively,effectively feedingon itself.The notion that small events may unleash huge forcesgoes against much of twentiethand continuity, centurysocial thought,with its emphasis on linearity, as gradualism. But in contextsas different technologicaldiffusionand a cognitivedevelopmentit is the key to understanding host of otherwise inexplicablephenomena. eventswith potentially What endows intrinsically exploinsignificant in the contextof political change is that public preferences sive power are interdependent.Because of this interdependence,the equilibrium levels of the public opposition are related to the underlyingindividual A characteristics may nonlinearly. massive change in privatepreferences leave the incumbentequilibrium undisturbed, only to be followed by a tinychange that destroysthe status quo, settingoffa bandwagon that will culminate in a verydifferent equilibrium.Partlybecause of prefer-

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the is ence falsification, natureof the interdependence imperfectly observable. This is why a massive rise in public oppositionmay catch everyone by surprise. Because preference falsification afflicts politicsin everysociety, major revolutionsare likelyto come again and again as a surprise.This is not of to assert the impossibility accurate prediction.If we possessed a reliable technique for measuring people's revolutionarythresholds, we would see what it would take to get a revolutionstarted.And if we we of understoodthe determinants thesethresholds, would know when the required conditionswere about to be met. For all practicalpurposes, is however, such information available only in highlyincompleteform. In any case, thereis an irremovablepoliticalobstacle to becoming sufficientlyknowledgeable: vulnerableregimescan block the productionand disseminationof information harmfulto theirown survival. potentially Censorship and the regulationof opinion surveys-both widely pracEastern Europe-are two of the policies that ticed in prerevolutionary serve theseobjectives. I have deliberately characterizedthe source of unpredictability imas The degree of imperas perfect observability, opposed to unobservability. a fectionobviously constitutes continuum.Societies with strongdemothan ones with nonexistent cratic traditionsexhibitless imperfection or fragiledemocraticfreedoms.This is because thereis less preference falin sification the former group,at least with respectto the politicalsystem one can track the course of antigovernment antior itself.Accordingly, for more confidently Norway, Switzerland,or France regime sentiment than forPakistan, Brazil, or Ghana. This is why developmentsin Pakistan are more likelyto catch the world offguard than are developments in Norway; by implication,Norway's political futurecan be predicted with greaterconfidencethan can thatof Pakistan. Most countriesof the world lie closer to Pakistan than to Norway as regards the significance in falsification sustainingtheirpoliticalregimes. of preference should not be consideredoffensive This emphasis on unpredictability to the scientific spirit:accepting the limitsof what we can expect from science is not an admission of defeat.On the contrary, establishingthese to limitsof knowledge is itselfa contribution the pool of useful knowledge. It is also a necessary step toward charting a realistic scientific agenda. "To act as if we possessed scientific knowledge enabling us to transcend [the absolute obstacles to the predictionof specificevents]," wrote Friedrich Hayek in his Nobel Memorial Lecture, "may itselfbecome a serious obstacleto the advance of the human intellect."96
96 EconomicReview79 (December Hayek, "The Pretenceof Knowledge" (1974),American 1989),6.

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The predictionof unpredictability not to be confusedwith the unis falsifiability the underlying of theory. The theory developed in thisessay is fullyfalsifiable.It implies that political revolutionswill continue to surpriseus, so a stringof successfulpredictions would renderit suspect. Simply put, it can be falsified developing some theoryof revolution by that forecastsaccurately.In principle,if not in practice,the presented theorycan also be falsified showing that preference by falsification was not a factorin unanticipatedrevolutions the past. of