Did Civil Resistance End the Soviet Empire?

6.30-8.00pm, 27 October 2009
10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH

Professor Timothy Garton Ash, CMG, General the Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank GCB, LVO, OBE, DL, Dr Janusz Onyszkiewicz, and Professor Sir Adam Roberts, KCMG, FBA

Twenty years after the opening of the Berlin Wall, the question of what caused the end of the Soviet empire remains contested. One significant factor was ‘people power’ in Central/Eastern European countries and in the Soviet Union: especially Solidarity in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, New Forum in Germany, the independence movements in the three Baltic states, and the resistance to the coup d’état in the Soviet Union in 1991. Such civil resistance movements contributed significantly to the remarkable process of peaceful change that ended the Cold War and the Soviet Union itself. This meeting marks the publication by Oxford University Press of Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, edited by Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash.

The speakers will explore not only the particular role of non-violent forms of resistance in these events, but also the complex question of how they relate to other factors of power in bringing about historical change – not just in the past, but also today.

The panel will include Sir Adam Roberts, President of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor of International Relations, Balliol College, Oxford; Professor Timothy Garton Ash, St Antony’s College, Oxford, and author of a number of works about the 1989 events; General the Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Chief of the UK Defence Staff, 1997–2001; and Dr Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a leading figure in Solidarity in the 1980s and for two spells in the 1990s the Defence Minister of Poland.

Attendance

6.30-8.00pm, followed by a reception. Please note: registration is required for this event.

Illustration: 'Solidarity. High Noon, 4 June 1989' poster by © Tomasz Sarnecki