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Publications > Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 1, no. 3
Winter 1989/90
Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 1, no. 3
Winter 1989/90
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Contents
In memoriam: Constance Grice
Moscow conference on nonviolence
Moscow Center for Ethics of Nonviolence
AEI people power conference
Glossary of Nonviolent Struggle
Nonviolent sanctions in the news
In Memoriam
CONSTANCE GRICE
Constance Grice, executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution from 1985 to 1988, died on January 17, 1990 after a long bout with cancer. She was 41.
Connie played a major role in the growth and development of the Einstein Institution. Her joyous spirit and deep commitment to the work of the Institution inspired us all.
A special fund has been established in her memory: the Constance Grice Educational Fund of the Albert Einstein Institution.
Nonviolent Struggle
Discussed in Moscow
Nonviolent struggle was among several topics discussed at two recent international conferences in Moscow. Gene Sharp, president of the Albert Einstein Institution, presented separate papers on the historical and ethical significance of nonviolent struggle to each forum.
The Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences organized an international round table concerning "The Twentieth Century: Main Problems and Tendencies in International Relations," held November 21-23, 1989. Scholars from East Germany, Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United States, the USSR, and West Germany presented analyses of 20th century international conflicts. Dr. Sharp, in his presentation, argued that nonviolent struggle has been an important political factor throughout this century and that its importance is growing. The nonviolent pro-democracy movements that swept across Eastern Europe are only the most recent examples of the role nonviolent struggle has played in altering political structures and international relations in this century.
A second conference on the "Ethics of Nonviolence" was held November 27-29 in Moscow. Jointly sponsored by the Ethics Section of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Center for Ethics of Nonviolence, the Soviet Association Znaniye, the Soviet Peace Committee, and the International Foundation for Survival and Development of Humanity, this conference brought together scholars and activists from Austria, Canada, England, France, Poland, the United States, the USSR, and West Germany. Among the Soviet participants were scholars from Azerbaijan, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Conference participants offered varied perspectives on "nonviolence" during the three day meeting. Moral, religious, and pacifist positions were expressed alongside Dr. Sharp’s arguments for a strategic approach to nonviolent struggle. The director of the Ethics Section of the Institute of Philosophy, Dr. Abdusalam Guseinov, stated that the conference organizers had hoped to gain a broad survey of the "field" through the differing perspectives. He explained that Soviet scholars were new to this area ("the Russian tongue must learn to speak this word nonviolence again"); hence, they wanted to see what was "out there."
In his presentation, Dr. Sharp argued for a strict delineation between practical nonviolent struggle and "principled" forms of nonviolence, stating that the two are most often quite separate phenomenon. He refuted the contentions of several conference participants that people must first adopt "nonviolence" as a way of life before acting nonviolently, or that ethical, moral or religious belief in nonviolence was necessary to maintain nonviolent discipline. Sharp used recent examples from the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states to reveal that mass nonviolent action was indeed distinct from personal belief in nonviolence. Furthermore, Sharp criticized the tendency of participants to link nonviolent action with "peacemaking." Nonviolent action, Sharp argued, was not a substitute for conciliation or negotiations, but for violent conflict. In this regard, nonviolent struggle provides a way out of the "ends-means" dilemma often confronted in politics, that is, of adhering to ethical beliefs while acting with political effectiveness. In acute conflicts, lethal force can be replaced by nonviolent struggle. Submission or resort to violence are not the only alternatives, Sharp concluded.
The "Ethics of Nonviolence" conference received much attention in the Soviet media. The nightly news program, Vremya, televised a short piece on the opening day of the conference. On November 30, Pravda carried a report on the conference which contained specific references to the work of the Einstein Institution.
The Ethics Section of the Institute of Philosophy plans to expand its Russian language resources on nonviolence, beginning with the Ethics of Nonviolence, a soon to be published collection of essays on ethics, religious nonviolence, and nonviolent struggle. Dr. Guseinov also discussed the possibility of translating some of Dr. Sharp’s works into Russian. Possible translation projects include the forthcoming book, Civilian-based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System, a future abridged version of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, and a dictionary of terms on nonviolent action.
— Bruce Jenkins
Center for Ethics
of Nonviolence formed in Moscow
A group of Soviet scholars have established a research and education Center for Ethics of Nonviolence in Moscow. The center plans "to promote investigations of social activities based on principles of nonviolence" and to popularize the "ideas and principles of nonviolence in order to calculate them into the mass consciousness of Soviet society," according to the center’s charter. Included in this agenda is the intention "to research various forms of violence and nonviolence in human history" and "to disseminate the ideas of nonviolence and the experience of nonviolent resistance by publishing academic and popular books and periodicals." The center intends to support students researching nonviolence, to develop contacts with foreign research centers, and to conduct conferences and workshops on nonviolence and conflict resolution. The center, which is to be completely independent of the Academy of Sciences or any other institution, will establish its own library on nonviolence.
—Bruce Jenkins
Nonviolent "People Power" Movements
Focus of Einstein Institution Conference
More than 180 people from twenty-seven states and sixteen countries participated in the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions in Conflict and Defense, February 8-11, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by the Albert Einstein Institution.
The conference brought together scholars, journalists, activists, foundation executives, religious leaders, and military strategists to discuss the increasing political significance and growing use of nonviolent methods of struggle in conflicts around the world — in the USSR, China, Burma, Poland, South Africa, the Israeli-occupied territories, and elsewhere. The conference also addressed the applicability of nonviolent resistance to national defense.
Featured speakers included: Mubarak Awad, Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence; Johan Jørgen Holst, Former Defense Minister of Norway; Patrick Lekota, United Democratic Front, South Africa; Li Lu, Chinese student leader; Raymundas Rayatskas, Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Tom Wicker, The New York Times; and U Tin Maung Win, Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma.
A Brief Glossary of
Nonviolent Struggle
The Albert Einstein Institution has prepared this brief glossary to encourage the use of more precise terminology in the field of nonviolent sanctions.
Bloodless coup: A successful coup d’etat in which there is no killing. Not to be confused with nonviolent struggle, although such a coup sometimes follows nonviolent protest and resistance against the government.
Boycott: Social, economic, or political noncooperation.
Civic strike: A collective suspension of normal activities — economic, social, and political — by an entire society to achieve a common political objective.
Civil disobedience: Deliberate, open, and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, military or police orders, or other governmental directives. The command may be disobeyed because it is seen as itself illegitimate or immoral, or because it is a symbol of other policies which are opposed. Civil disobedience may be practiced by individuals, groups, or masses of people.
Civilian-based defense: A national defense policy to deter and defeat aggression, both internal (i.e., coups d’etat) and external (i.e., invasions) by preparing the population and institutions for massive nonviolent resistance and defiance. The broad strategy is to deny the attackers’ objectives, block establishment of their government, and subvert their troops. This policy, alone or in combination with military means, has received governmental or military attention in several European countries.
Civilian insurrection: A nonviolent uprising against a dictatorship, or other unpopular regime, usually involving widespread repudiation of the regime as illegitimate, mass strikes, massive demonstrations, an economic shut-down, and widespread political noncooperation. Political noncooperation may include action by government employees and mutiny by police and troops. In the final stages, a parallel government often emerges.
If successful, a civilian insurrection may disintegrate the established regime in days or weeks, as opposed to a long-term struggle of many months or years. Civilian insurrections often end with the departure of the deposed rulers from the country.
The ousters of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and the Shah of Iran in 1979 are examples.
Also called "nonviolent insurrection."
Economic boycott: The withdrawal or withholding of economic cooperation in the form of buying, selling, or handling of goods or services, often accompanied by efforts to induce others to do likewise. It may be practiced on local, regional, national, or international levels.
Economic noncooperation: The use of economic boycotts or strikes, or both, against an opponent.
Economic sanctions: Usually, the imposition of international economic boycotts and embargoes. The term can also be used in domestic conflicts to refer to labor strikes and economic boycotts, shutdowns, and intervention.
Economic shutdown: A suspension of the economic activities of a city, area, or country on a sufficient scale to produce economic paralysis. It combines a general strike by workers with a closing of businesses by their owners and managers.
Embargo: An economic boycott initiated and enforced by a government.
Fast: Deliberate abstention from certain or all food. When applied in a social or political conflict, it may be combined with a moral appeal seeking to change attitudes. It may also be intended simply to force the opponent to grant certain objectives, in which case it is called a hunger strike.
Force: Either: (1) An application of power (including threatened or imposed sanctions, which may be violent or nonviolent). As, "the force generated by the civil disobedience movement." Or: (2) The body or group applying force as defined in (1), usually used in the plural. As, "the forces at the government’s disposal."
General strike: A work stoppage by a majority of workers in the more important industries of an area or country, intended to produce an economic standstill to achieve political or economic objectives. Certain vital services, as health, food, and water, may be exempted. Such strikes may be symbolic, lasting only an hour, to communicate an opinion, or may be intended to produce economic paralysis in order to force concessions from the opponent.
Hunger strike: See "fast."
Mutiny: Refusal by police or troops to obey orders. It can in extreme cases entail individual or group desertion. It is a method of nonviolent action unless the mutineers resort to violence.
Noncooperation: Acts that deliberately restrict, withhold, or discontinue social, economic, or political cooperation with an institution, policy, or government. A general class of methods of nonviolent action.
Nonviolence: Either, (1) The behavior of people who in a conflict refrain from violent acts. Or, (2) Any of several belief systems that reject violence on principle, not just as impractical.
Otherwise, the term is best not used, since it often contributes to ambiguity and confusion. To describe specific actions or movements, the recommended terms are: "nonviolent action," "nonviolent resistance," or "nonviolent struggle."
Nonviolent action: A technique of action in conflicts in which participants conduct the struggle by doing — or refusing to do — certain acts without using physical violence. It is an alternative to both passive submission and violence. The technique includes many specific methods, which are grouped into three main classes: nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention.
The technique’s variables include the motives for using it, the objectives, the intended way success is to be accomplished (mechanism), and the relation between nonviolent action and other forms of action.
Nonviolent discipline: Orderly adherence to the planned strategy and tactics of an action and to nonviolent behavior even in face of repression. This is a major factor contributing to the success of a nonviolent struggle movement.
Nonviolent resistance: Nonviolent struggle, conducted largely by noncooperation, in reaction to a disapproved act, policy, or government. The broader terms "nonviolent action" and "nonviolent struggle" are therefore preferred to refer to the overall nonviolent technique of action and to action in which the nonviolent group also takes the initiative or intervenes, as in a sit-in.
Nonviolent sanctions: The methods of the technique of nonviolent action. The term is used especially when one wishes to make clear that these methods are not merely expressive behavior but are ways to wield power, exercise influence, inflict punishments, and impose costs.
Nonviolent struggle: A synonym for "nonviolent action." This term may be used also to indicate that the nonviolent action in a conflict is particularly purposeful or aggressive. "Nonviolent struggle" is especially useful to describe nonviolent action against determined and resourceful opponents who use repressive measures and countermeasures.
Pacifism: Several types of belief systems of principled rejection of violence. Pacifism is distinct from the technique of nonviolent action, which is usually applied as a practical way to act by people who are not pacifists. Pacifist belief systems, at a minimum, reject participation in all international or civil wars, or violent revolutions. Pacifists may support nonviolent struggle, or may oppose it on ethical grounds as too conflictual.
The term "pacifism" or "pacifist" should therefore not be used in relation to nonviolent struggles unless there is clear evidence that pacifists are playing significant roles in the conflict.
Passive resistance: A nineteenth century term once used to describe nonviolent struggle. The term is now in disfavor and rejected because "passive" is plainly inaccurate to describe recent cases of nonviolent noncooperation and defiance.
People power: The power capacity of a mobilized population and its institutions using nonviolent forms of struggle. The term was especially used during the 1986 Philippine nonviolent insurrection.
Political boycott: See "political noncooperation."
Political noncooperation: The withholding of usual obedience to, or participation in, the political system. The aim may be to correct a specific grievance or to disintegrate a government. Political noncooperation can take a great variety of forms, including withholding of allegiance, civil disobedience of "illegitimate" laws, and governmental refusal of diplomatic recognition. A synonym for "political boycott."
See also "noncooperation."
Sanctions: Punishments or reprisals, violent or nonviolent, for either failure to act in the expected or desired manner or for acting in an unexpected or prohibited manner. Nonviolent sanctions are less likely than violent ones to be simple reprisals and more likely to be intended to achieve a given objective.
See also "nonviolent sanctions."
Satyagraha: M.K. Gandhi’s version of nonviolent action, and also his fuller belief system enjoining nonviolent personal behavior and social responsibility. Pronounced sat-ya-graha.
Strike: A group’s deliberate restriction or suspension of work, usually temporary, to put pressure on employers or sometimes the government. Strikes take many forms and range widely in extent and duration.
See also "economic noncooperation."
Transarmament: The process of incrementally building up a nation’s civilian-based defense capacity and gradually phasing out its military defense capacity. "Transarmament" is contrasted to "disarmament" which involves a simple reduction or abandonment of military capacity without providing a substitute means for national defense.
See also "civilian-based defense."
Violence: The infliction on people of physical injury or death, or the threat to do so. All behavior cannot be neatly classified as either "violence" or "nonviolence," and several categories fall between these two extremes, including "destruction of property."
In reporting a demonstration or resistance movement which is primarily or exclusively nonviolent, care is required to distinguish it, for example, from the acts of violence by small numbers of persons (who may be undisciplined or deliberately disruptive for political reasons or as agents provocateurs). Similarly, a demonstration should not be described as "violent" when it is violently attacked by police or troops but nevertheless maintains its nonviolent discipline.
Nonviolent Sanctions
in the News
The last three months of 1989 saw an explosion in the use of nonviolent sanctions in acute conflicts around the world. Listed below are just a few of the stories which appeared in The New York Times (NYT) and The Boston Globe (BG) during that period:
MINSK, USSR, Oct. 1 — Thousands of Byelorussians, denouncing local leaders, marched through the center of Minsk yesterday to demand further cleanup measures after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Up to 15,000 protesters wearing armbands with radioactivity symbols and carrying the banned red-and-white Byelorussian national flag filed through torrential rain in defiance of a ban by local authorities. (BG)
JERUSALEM, Oct. 3 — The underground leadership of the Palestinian revolt in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip sought today to broaden the protest, calling for a five-day general strike and "rebellion" in the streets. (NYT)
BEIT SAHUR, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Oct. 4 — To press the Palestinian uprising, the people of this town have refused for months to pay their taxes. In response, Israel has begun to confiscate their goods. (NYT)
OSLO, Oct. 5 — The Dalai Lama, the exiled religious and political leader of Tibet, was named the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize today in recognition of his nonviolent campaign over nearly 40 years to end China’s domination of his homeland. (NYT)
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 14 — Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched today in more than a dozen cities and towns across South Africa in a simultaneous protest against apartheid that took on overtones of a celebration of the expected release of Walter Sisulu and seven other political prisoners.
The demonstrations drew more than 150,000, according to the South African Press Association, in the largest simultaneous protest against apartheid anyone here could remember. (NYT)
BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 24 — Hungary formally declared itself an independent republic yesterday, and for the first time held an open observance of the anniversary of a 1956 uprising that was crushed by Soviet tanks.
In the evening, a crowd estimated by organizers at 100,000 interrupted speeches before Parliament with shouts of "Russians Out! Russians Out!" Others, imitating the 1956 rebels, tore the hammer-and-sickle symbol from red, white and green Hungarian flags. (BG)
EAST BERLIN, Oct. 24 — More than 200,000 people demonstrated yesterday in Leipzig, and thousands more filled the streets of three other cities in the biggest antigovernment protests so far.
For the fifth consecutive day, crowds chanting slogans for free elections and travel abroad massed in Leipzig, East Germany’s second largest city, and marched around its inner ring road. (BG)
PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia, Oct. 29 — Thousands of people defied the government yesterday to rally for democracy on the 71st anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence, and scores were beaten and dragged away by riot police who poured into central Prague.
"We want no violence!" protesters chanted as they were penned in by riot police on Wenceslas Square. "We’ve got bare hands!" they shouted, raising their arms to show they were unarmed. (BG)
DUBLIN, Oct. 29 — About 1,000 people rode two "peace trains" from Belfast to Dublin yesterday to protest bombings by the Irish Republican Army of the vital rail link. (BG)
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 29 — The largest political rally in the history of the African National Congress was held today with the acquiescence of the white minority Government, which declared the organization illegal 29 years ago.
Nearly 70,000 supporters filled a new soccer stadium a few miles from Soweto, the huge black township near here. They waved the flags of the A.N.C. movement, chanted its slogans, cheered for the release of Nelson R. Mandela, its best-known leader, and listened to political songs and speeches that included a message from the Congress’s leadership in exile. (NYT)
LEIPZIG, East Germany, Oct. 30 — Chanting demands for everything from free elections to the ouster of the secret police, more than 300,000 East Germans marched around Leipzig’s old center in what has become the major weekly ritual of the growing popular movement for change. (NYT)
MOSCOW, Nov. 1 (UPI) — Thousands of Georgians have protested for five days in Tbilisi to demand formation of a local all-Georgian army, replacement of the republic’s Communist Party leadership and a new investigation of the April crackdown that killed 19 persons, Radio Moscow said yesterday. About 30,000 people massed at the Georgian capital’s main Rustaveli Square on Monday to push demands for a UN commission to investigate "the illegal annexation of Georgia" by the Soviet Union and the right to refuse service in the Soviet army, a witness said by telephone from Tbilisi. (BG)
MOSCOW, Nov. 2 (Reuters) — Thousands of miners in the Ukraine defied an official ban and staged warning strikes yesterday in the Soviet Union’s largest coal field. Unrest also spread in the Siberian mines. At all 28 mines in the major Ukrainian coal center of Donetsk, miners stopped work for two hours to demand improved pensions and vacations, a strikers’ representative said by telephone. (BG)
EAST BERLIN, Nov. 4 — Four weeks to the day since a few thousand East Berliners took to the streets to demand political change, at least a half million demonstrators jammed the heart of the East German capital today for the largest rally so far in what one speaker called a "revolution from below." (NYT)
MOSCOW, Nov. 7 — Thousands of political dissenters staged an audacious alternative parade today on the 72d anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, a major holiday that has traditionally been a celebration of monolithic Soviet rule.
Such a dissident march had not been seen in Moscow since the early 1920’s before Stalin came to power.
Dissident activity was reported at other parades around the country, principally in Kishinev, the capital of the Moldavian republic. Thousands there were said to have swarmed around a parade of tanks, demanding greater recognition of the rights of the republic’s Rumanian-speaking majority. (NYT)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Nov. 8 (Reuters) — A general strike protesting the arrests and beatings of three anti-Government leaders brought the Haitian capital to a virtual standstill for the second straight day today.
Most stores and businesses were shuttered, wooden stalls stood empty at normally bustling markets and public transportation ground to a halt. (NYT)
PRAGUE, Nov. 16 — Several hundred people marched through the center of the city yesterday, carrying flickering candles and chanting for political reform. In a sharp break with past practice, police refrained from using force to disperse the peaceful crowd.
Instead, protesters and police had a quiet standoff on the Charles Bridge, where demonstrators knelt on cobblestones before a thin line of police, raised their hands in mock surrender and sang "We Shall Overcome." (BG)
PRAGUE, Nov. 17 (AP) — Tens of thousands of young people attending a memorial today for a student killed by the Nazis 50 years ago turned it into a rally demanding the removal of the hard-line Communist regime. (NYT)
PRAGUE, Nov. 18 (Reuters) — Defiant Czechoslovaks staged a fresh protest in central Prague today, and in a new challenge to the Communist authorities, actors began a weeklong strike to protest police brutality. (NYT)
SOFIA, Bulgaria, Nov. 18 — In the largest independent rally in this country’s postwar history, about 50,000 Bulgarians filled the broad cobblestoned square of a cathedral here in the capital today to exorcise their repressive past and chart a democratic future. (NYT)
PRAGUE, Nov. 21 — After 21 years, spring returned to Prague yesterday. About 200,000 Czechoslovaks, from high school students with bookbags on their backs to elderly couples with tears in their eyes, poured into the streets chanting for freedom and jingling keys representing the "last bell" for the communist government.
It was the largest antigovernment demonstration since a Soviet-led invasion crushed the 1968 "Prague Spring" movement of liberalized government, installing a hard-line regime. (BG)
PRAGUE, Nov. 26 — The underground press is thriving in Prague these days. The rare clandestine documents of previous generations have given way to a flood of homemade handbills and posters that adorn the city’s walls and windows, subway cars and stations. . . .
Typed by students on home computers and typewriters, or in some cases hand painted, this "subway samizdat" has been the most effective means of spreading the word about the opposition movement and of informing the public about coming events like today’s human chain, Saturday’s mass at St. Vitus Cathedral and the weekend change of venue for a daily demonstration. (NYT)
PRAGUE, Nov. 27 — Millions of Czechs and Slovaks walked off their jobs and into the streets at midday today, bringing Prague and the rest of the country to a standstill. It was a powerful demonstration of national solidarity in support of free elections and opposition to Communist domination. (NYT)
SOFIA, Bulgaria, Nov. 30 — Hundreds of prisoners have begun a hunger strike, demanding the abolition of capital punishment and improved prison conditions, a newspaper reported yesterday. (BG)
LEIPZIG, East Germany, Dec. 18 — The marchers at the regular Monday demonstration in Leipzig today exchanged most of their banners for candles and their chants for silence — to commemorate "victims of Stalinism," and to cool passions that have begun to flare in recent weeks over the issue of German reunification. (NYT)
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