- Email: [email protected]
National responses to the collapse of communist regimes
0191-659W92 $5.00+0.00 ’ I992 Pergamon Press Ltd
NATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE COLLAPSE COMMUNIST REGIMES
OF
WIESLAWA SURAZSKA* The fathers of modern sociology predicted no particular role for regional and ethnic divisions in modern society. Marxism has been the most radical in this respect; in the aftermath of social revolution, the very hallmark of ethnic regionalism-the national state-was to wither away. In many respects this was precisely what had happened in the Soviet Union and other countries of the Soviet bloc. The general proposition of this paper is that Marxist prediction had come true-the nation-state, or its most distinct features, such as the basic notion of the national interest, did disappear early on under Communist rule. This, however, did little to cure nationalism and ethnic conflicts. On the contrary, the dissolution of national states or preventing their formation (as was the case in the Caucasus) resulted in the most virulent form of nationalism which, after H. Arendt I shall call tribalism. The notion of tribalism needs some clarification. In ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ Arendt distinguished between nationalism of nation-states, which she called ‘a precious cement’ keeping societies together or, as Weber had it, the only source of substantive values that cannot be generated by an anonymous system of legal domination. Arendt considered this kind of nationalism, expressing tangible interests of really existing societies and bound by the rule of law, to be relatively safer for ethnic minorities than tribalism. The latter she associated with supra-national pan-movements, which were limited neither by state institutions nor by its borders. In this sense tribalism is a statelessform of nationalism and I want to maintain this meaning. On the other hand, Arendt’s description of a struggle between panGermanism and pan-Slavism as the engine of European disasters does not seem very convincing. Communism, like Nazism, had ail the characteristics ofa tribal pan-movement in Arendt’s sense; it was supra-national, it possessed an allembracing ideoiogy and the entire set of Utopian goals. This tribal character was additionally enhanced by the functioning of Communist parties, based on exclusive, primordial loyalties of their members. Political structures brought about by ruling Communist parties after the Second World War were lacking the basic features of a modern nation-state. Not only had the legal system been destroyed but also the functions of government were taken over by the party structures thus defying the modern differentiation of state institutions from all other organisations. Further, the crucial characteristic of a modern state, its monopolistic control over the forces of coercion has been absent under Communist regimes; both the army and police forces remained under strict control of the party centre and out of reach of formal *Department of Political Science, Box 191, Allegheny College, ~e~dville, PA 16335, U.S.A. 605
606
Wieslawa Surazska
governments. Therefore, contrary to various totalitarian concepts, the state under the Communist regime has been far from total but rather incomplete. This could be seen most clearly after the collapse of the Communist parties. Once deprived of guidance from parallel party structures, state administration in the former Communist countries has shown its true nature of an empty shell. There is a debate going on whether the institutions of Communist states need corrective reforms or whether they ought to be built anew. In either case, the task of state reconstruction in post-Communist countries seems to be not less urgent than the task of economic reconstruction. So far as post-Communist societies remained stateless in a sense, the eruption of their nationalisms has had some tribal characteristics. This is particularly clear in multi-ethnic countries, such as the Soviet Union, Romania and Bulgaria, where ethnic conflicts thrive. However, some tribal characteristics can be found also in homogeneous societies, such as, for example, Poland. Polish antiSemitism without the Jews can be a good example of a magical, pre-modern quality to post-Communist politics. The only way to curb tribalism seems to be the recovery of the framework of a nation-state, with its institutions based on the rule of law and more pragmatic approach to national interests. There are many factors which make this task very difficult and they can be divided into two broad categories: those which are common to all postCommunist societies and other that are peculiar to some of them. In the first category, economic exhaustion is the best known factor. Differences in this respect tend to disappear. Apparently, the best Communist economy in the G.D.R. is falling into pieces before our eyes. No other Communist economy can possibly withstand confrontation with competitive markets. What happens is that the real costs of the Soviet-type production are exposed in market prices and the same happens with personal incomes. Thus the prices of East-German products are much higher than the West-German ones whereas wages of East-German workers are much lower. The example of G.D.R. is spectacular indeed, considering that apart from market forces which devastate the East-German economy there are political forces ready to help out, to invest enormous sums, to lead by the hand. Nothing like that can be expected in other post-Communist countries. The ordeal has just begun and there is no other way out than to accept the rules of the new game. The truth is that there are no more economic resources to play the old game of redistribution. The resources have been exhausted, which was the reason to start perestroika in the first place. The response to these new circumstances is two-fold. First, people are told that their life-work was good for nothing. This is something very difficult to accept. In particular, elderly people are desperate, and there is a growing conflict between the new generation in their twenties and thirties and their parents who invested much more in Communist politics and economy. The severity of this symptom of a self-inflicted wound varies, however. It seems a dominant factor of a national consciousness in Russia and East Germany, where the Communist regime had had a wide, indigenous social basis. After all these two countries used to be the motherlands of World Communism. It is much lower in Poland or Lithuania, where the indigenous support for the regime had always been scarce. The second phenomenon is eschatological by nature. People used to think about the end of Communism as a messianic event, a kind of delivery from evil.
So the collapse
of Communist regimes has been perceived as a kind of Second essiah came and nothi appened, What is more, the first steps into a market economy and democra ead to eve~thing but prosperity and social peace. To be sure, freedom of speech makes a considerable difference. The problem is, however, that after the first months of elevation it appears that needs for objective information, comprehenthere is no quality media to sat sive commentary and so on. ost of the new media people were trained in underground activity. They leaflets rather than quality ed to produce with slogans they often switch back to newspapers. Now that people are fed nal though they are produced by the the old titles which are more profes r Communist jouranlists. no means all this looks like the gates of heaven. This kind of gnosfic ~~s~~~o~~~~e~~ has had its destructive role in Israel and Ireland. Here, however, it embraces the whole Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. The results of this phenomenon are very difficult to predict. Nevertheless, we should keep it in mind while reading various reports about the outbursts of ethnic conflicts and other types of irrational behaviour in this region. Among the factors which appear to differentiate national responses to the collapse of communist regimes two seem particularly important. These are: (i) the level of popular mobilisation; and (ii) the concentration of political leadership of The factor of popular mobilisation can be described in three dimensions: apathy, active consensus and conflict. Popular apathy seems to be most distinct in Hungary, where people did not bother to take up important nstitutional issues presented to them in the form of referendum by their elect representatives. The other extreme oscillates between active consensus, as has been the case in Lithuania and until very recently in Poland, and open conflict, which can be observed most starkly in Armenia. The three Dimensions of the mobilisation factor can alternate in one county depending on time and situation. Most extreme change has happened in Romania, where active consensus gave way to grave conflicts, of both ethnic and social character. Concentration of poiitical leadership may take two forms: either through building up national institutions or by means of charismatic leadership. The two forms can merge as it is the case in Czechoslovakia, where the charismatic leader became the president elected with due process. Lithuania seems to have its democratic institutions most advanced and largely independent of charismatic personalities, which is quite an achievement, considering the short time and the circumstances, This can be credited to the active consensus in society. In Poiand~ however, the same factor did less to the same effect. Because of particular circumstances, the presidency has remained in the hands of General Jaruzelski. Thus the charismatic leadership of Walesa diverges from, and even competes with, the institutional setting. In Hungary, in turn, despite social apathy, the institutional framework has been fairly advanced and it seems as if it has been able to accommodate arising conflicts. Both factors, popuIar mobilisation and development of political institutions, seem to be intertwined. This can be seen in Fig. 1. The countries of active consensus seem to be more advanced in the building of their institutions than those which verge between apathy and conflict. The only exception is Hungary.
608 t Inst i
Wieslawa Surazska
ituticna 1isat.ion
I I I I I I I I I I I
Hungary
Poland Czechoslovakia Latvia Estonia Russia
IRomania I I i I I I I
IArmenia I I---_--Conflict
Lithuania
DDR Bulgaria
Ukraine ~-~~--------_~___~~~---~~--~-~~~~--_ Consensus Apathy
Fig. 1. The level of popular Communist societies.
mobilisation
and
institutionalisation
in post-
The crucial event in building new democratic institutions seems to be the national election. It creates civic consciousness which is the bed-rock of a democratic regime. However, some cases are difficult to qualify in this way. For example, what about popular elections which gave legitimacy to the old structures and practices, as has been the case in Romania and Bulgaria? Should these cases be treated as transitional or can we draw conclusions about differences in political cultures? The latter approach seems to prevail. There is a temptation to classify particular cases according to regions and seek some historical continuity. Thus bloody developments in Romania may associate easily with the Balkan tradition. A peaceful change in central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany) we are inclined to credit to a relative political advancement of this region. The situation in the Soviet Union appears particularly complicated and we tend to separate the problems of the Soviet republics from other Communist countries which enjoy their newly recovered sovereignty. This regional approach prevails because it caters best for the foreign policy needs. It is not enough, however, if one wants to understand the complex processes taking place in the former Soviet bloc. For example, how to explain
609
The Collapse of Communist Regimes
extremely divergent developments in Lithuania and Armenia, even though both are parts of the Soviet Union? Further, this kind of regionalisation into Central Europe, Balkans and the Soviet Union is in fact ahistoric. It disregards differences between the heritage left behind in the Balkans by the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires. The heritage of the former European empires shows itself in central Europe as well. Within one country, that is Poland, both political and economic behaviour are different according to the old lines of partition between three empires, that is: the former Congress Poland under Russian rule, the Hapsburg Galicia in the South and the Great Poland (Wilkopolska with Poznan) in the West, formerly part of Prussia. This could be observed when local elections took place in May-June this year. The turn out of the electorate was much higher in Great Poland than in the Congress Poland, with Galicia in the middle. The number of new enterprises is distributed in more or less the same way, with the exception of Warsaw as the latter clearly dominates the whole country, both politically and economically. In my opinion, these regional differences will grow rather than disappear and they will lead to uneven economic and political development. They confirm the importance of the origins of a civic culture. Wieslawa Allegheny College, PA
Surazska
NATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE COLLAPSE COMMUNIST REGIMES
OF
WIESLAWA SURAZSKA* The fathers of modern sociology predicted no particular role for regional and ethnic divisions in modern society. Marxism has been the most radical in this respect; in the aftermath of social revolution, the very hallmark of ethnic regionalism-the national state-was to wither away. In many respects this was precisely what had happened in the Soviet Union and other countries of the Soviet bloc. The general proposition of this paper is that Marxist prediction had come true-the nation-state, or its most distinct features, such as the basic notion of the national interest, did disappear early on under Communist rule. This, however, did little to cure nationalism and ethnic conflicts. On the contrary, the dissolution of national states or preventing their formation (as was the case in the Caucasus) resulted in the most virulent form of nationalism which, after H. Arendt I shall call tribalism. The notion of tribalism needs some clarification. In ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ Arendt distinguished between nationalism of nation-states, which she called ‘a precious cement’ keeping societies together or, as Weber had it, the only source of substantive values that cannot be generated by an anonymous system of legal domination. Arendt considered this kind of nationalism, expressing tangible interests of really existing societies and bound by the rule of law, to be relatively safer for ethnic minorities than tribalism. The latter she associated with supra-national pan-movements, which were limited neither by state institutions nor by its borders. In this sense tribalism is a statelessform of nationalism and I want to maintain this meaning. On the other hand, Arendt’s description of a struggle between panGermanism and pan-Slavism as the engine of European disasters does not seem very convincing. Communism, like Nazism, had ail the characteristics ofa tribal pan-movement in Arendt’s sense; it was supra-national, it possessed an allembracing ideoiogy and the entire set of Utopian goals. This tribal character was additionally enhanced by the functioning of Communist parties, based on exclusive, primordial loyalties of their members. Political structures brought about by ruling Communist parties after the Second World War were lacking the basic features of a modern nation-state. Not only had the legal system been destroyed but also the functions of government were taken over by the party structures thus defying the modern differentiation of state institutions from all other organisations. Further, the crucial characteristic of a modern state, its monopolistic control over the forces of coercion has been absent under Communist regimes; both the army and police forces remained under strict control of the party centre and out of reach of formal *Department of Political Science, Box 191, Allegheny College, ~e~dville, PA 16335, U.S.A. 605
606
Wieslawa Surazska
governments. Therefore, contrary to various totalitarian concepts, the state under the Communist regime has been far from total but rather incomplete. This could be seen most clearly after the collapse of the Communist parties. Once deprived of guidance from parallel party structures, state administration in the former Communist countries has shown its true nature of an empty shell. There is a debate going on whether the institutions of Communist states need corrective reforms or whether they ought to be built anew. In either case, the task of state reconstruction in post-Communist countries seems to be not less urgent than the task of economic reconstruction. So far as post-Communist societies remained stateless in a sense, the eruption of their nationalisms has had some tribal characteristics. This is particularly clear in multi-ethnic countries, such as the Soviet Union, Romania and Bulgaria, where ethnic conflicts thrive. However, some tribal characteristics can be found also in homogeneous societies, such as, for example, Poland. Polish antiSemitism without the Jews can be a good example of a magical, pre-modern quality to post-Communist politics. The only way to curb tribalism seems to be the recovery of the framework of a nation-state, with its institutions based on the rule of law and more pragmatic approach to national interests. There are many factors which make this task very difficult and they can be divided into two broad categories: those which are common to all postCommunist societies and other that are peculiar to some of them. In the first category, economic exhaustion is the best known factor. Differences in this respect tend to disappear. Apparently, the best Communist economy in the G.D.R. is falling into pieces before our eyes. No other Communist economy can possibly withstand confrontation with competitive markets. What happens is that the real costs of the Soviet-type production are exposed in market prices and the same happens with personal incomes. Thus the prices of East-German products are much higher than the West-German ones whereas wages of East-German workers are much lower. The example of G.D.R. is spectacular indeed, considering that apart from market forces which devastate the East-German economy there are political forces ready to help out, to invest enormous sums, to lead by the hand. Nothing like that can be expected in other post-Communist countries. The ordeal has just begun and there is no other way out than to accept the rules of the new game. The truth is that there are no more economic resources to play the old game of redistribution. The resources have been exhausted, which was the reason to start perestroika in the first place. The response to these new circumstances is two-fold. First, people are told that their life-work was good for nothing. This is something very difficult to accept. In particular, elderly people are desperate, and there is a growing conflict between the new generation in their twenties and thirties and their parents who invested much more in Communist politics and economy. The severity of this symptom of a self-inflicted wound varies, however. It seems a dominant factor of a national consciousness in Russia and East Germany, where the Communist regime had had a wide, indigenous social basis. After all these two countries used to be the motherlands of World Communism. It is much lower in Poland or Lithuania, where the indigenous support for the regime had always been scarce. The second phenomenon is eschatological by nature. People used to think about the end of Communism as a messianic event, a kind of delivery from evil.
So the collapse
of Communist regimes has been perceived as a kind of Second essiah came and nothi appened, What is more, the first steps into a market economy and democra ead to eve~thing but prosperity and social peace. To be sure, freedom of speech makes a considerable difference. The problem is, however, that after the first months of elevation it appears that needs for objective information, comprehenthere is no quality media to sat sive commentary and so on. ost of the new media people were trained in underground activity. They leaflets rather than quality ed to produce with slogans they often switch back to newspapers. Now that people are fed nal though they are produced by the the old titles which are more profes r Communist jouranlists. no means all this looks like the gates of heaven. This kind of gnosfic ~~s~~~o~~~~e~~ has had its destructive role in Israel and Ireland. Here, however, it embraces the whole Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. The results of this phenomenon are very difficult to predict. Nevertheless, we should keep it in mind while reading various reports about the outbursts of ethnic conflicts and other types of irrational behaviour in this region. Among the factors which appear to differentiate national responses to the collapse of communist regimes two seem particularly important. These are: (i) the level of popular mobilisation; and (ii) the concentration of political leadership of The factor of popular mobilisation can be described in three dimensions: apathy, active consensus and conflict. Popular apathy seems to be most distinct in Hungary, where people did not bother to take up important nstitutional issues presented to them in the form of referendum by their elect representatives. The other extreme oscillates between active consensus, as has been the case in Lithuania and until very recently in Poland, and open conflict, which can be observed most starkly in Armenia. The three Dimensions of the mobilisation factor can alternate in one county depending on time and situation. Most extreme change has happened in Romania, where active consensus gave way to grave conflicts, of both ethnic and social character. Concentration of poiitical leadership may take two forms: either through building up national institutions or by means of charismatic leadership. The two forms can merge as it is the case in Czechoslovakia, where the charismatic leader became the president elected with due process. Lithuania seems to have its democratic institutions most advanced and largely independent of charismatic personalities, which is quite an achievement, considering the short time and the circumstances, This can be credited to the active consensus in society. In Poiand~ however, the same factor did less to the same effect. Because of particular circumstances, the presidency has remained in the hands of General Jaruzelski. Thus the charismatic leadership of Walesa diverges from, and even competes with, the institutional setting. In Hungary, in turn, despite social apathy, the institutional framework has been fairly advanced and it seems as if it has been able to accommodate arising conflicts. Both factors, popuIar mobilisation and development of political institutions, seem to be intertwined. This can be seen in Fig. 1. The countries of active consensus seem to be more advanced in the building of their institutions than those which verge between apathy and conflict. The only exception is Hungary.
608 t Inst i
Wieslawa Surazska
ituticna 1isat.ion
I I I I I I I I I I I
Hungary
Poland Czechoslovakia Latvia Estonia Russia
IRomania I I i I I I I
IArmenia I I---_--Conflict
Lithuania
DDR Bulgaria
Ukraine ~-~~--------_~___~~~---~~--~-~~~~--_ Consensus Apathy
Fig. 1. The level of popular Communist societies.
mobilisation
and
institutionalisation
in post-
The crucial event in building new democratic institutions seems to be the national election. It creates civic consciousness which is the bed-rock of a democratic regime. However, some cases are difficult to qualify in this way. For example, what about popular elections which gave legitimacy to the old structures and practices, as has been the case in Romania and Bulgaria? Should these cases be treated as transitional or can we draw conclusions about differences in political cultures? The latter approach seems to prevail. There is a temptation to classify particular cases according to regions and seek some historical continuity. Thus bloody developments in Romania may associate easily with the Balkan tradition. A peaceful change in central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany) we are inclined to credit to a relative political advancement of this region. The situation in the Soviet Union appears particularly complicated and we tend to separate the problems of the Soviet republics from other Communist countries which enjoy their newly recovered sovereignty. This regional approach prevails because it caters best for the foreign policy needs. It is not enough, however, if one wants to understand the complex processes taking place in the former Soviet bloc. For example, how to explain
609
The Collapse of Communist Regimes
extremely divergent developments in Lithuania and Armenia, even though both are parts of the Soviet Union? Further, this kind of regionalisation into Central Europe, Balkans and the Soviet Union is in fact ahistoric. It disregards differences between the heritage left behind in the Balkans by the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires. The heritage of the former European empires shows itself in central Europe as well. Within one country, that is Poland, both political and economic behaviour are different according to the old lines of partition between three empires, that is: the former Congress Poland under Russian rule, the Hapsburg Galicia in the South and the Great Poland (Wilkopolska with Poznan) in the West, formerly part of Prussia. This could be observed when local elections took place in May-June this year. The turn out of the electorate was much higher in Great Poland than in the Congress Poland, with Galicia in the middle. The number of new enterprises is distributed in more or less the same way, with the exception of Warsaw as the latter clearly dominates the whole country, both politically and economically. In my opinion, these regional differences will grow rather than disappear and they will lead to uneven economic and political development. They confirm the importance of the origins of a civic culture. Wieslawa Allegheny College, PA
Surazska