Revolution and nationalism in Eastern Europe: Five alternative futures

SESSION FIVE FOCAL POINTS WORKSHOP TWO THE PROBLEM

Chirperson:

OF NATIONALITIES

Beryl Williams

(Sussex University.

U.K.)

REVOLUTION AND NATIONALISM IN EASTERN EUROPE: FIVE ALTERNATIVE FUTURES THOMAS MAGSTAD~ What kind of Europe will emerge from the ruins of the post-war order? Will a recrudescence of long-suppressed nationalism tear as under the fabric of peace in Eastern Europe? Will the allure of the European Community prove irresistible? Will a reunified Germany turn inward or look east? In this essay, five alternative futures (scenarios) for Eastern Europe are examined: (1) Findalisation; (2) Europeanisation; (3) Germanisation; (4) Balkanisation; and (5) reSovietisation.

FINLANDISATION This term refers to the unique status of Finland, the only contiguous state in Europe which the Soviet Union (i.e. Stalin) did not colonise after World War II. In contrast to its iron-fisted policies in Eastern Europe, the Kremlin did not interfere in Finland’s internal affairs, nor did it deny Finland the ‘luxury’ of neutrality. In exchange, Finland’s government refrained from criticising the Soviet Union. Throughout the post-war period, Finland has maintained close economic and diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union. Because of this special relationship, and Finland’s status as a neutral state, Helsinki was selected as the meeting place for the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The issue of human rights (Basket III of the Helsinki Final Act) was addressed at this meeting with the acquiescence of the Soviet Union; thus, Finland hosted the East-West meeting that inspired the human-rights movements in Eastern Europe (with dramatic consequences in the 1980s). At least one prominent Western journalist (and East European specialist), William Echikson of the Chrisban Science Monitor, has advocated Finlandisation as the best alternative because ‘the captive nations of the outer Soviet empire would be freed to enjoy Western-style democracy and prosperity in return for cast-iron guarantees of [Moscow’s] its vital security interests’.’ When Gorbachev visited Helsinki in October 1989 he hinted that the East European nations should emulate Finland, which he called a ‘model of relations’ between a big country and a small country. . . a model of relations between neighbors’. Janos Barabas, a spokesman for the new Hungarian Socialist party, even suggested that Finland may be a model for Hungary’s domestic reforms. ‘Finland is much closer to my idea of socialism than Hungary’, he mused.2

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EUROPEANISATION The principal force behind Europeanisation is, of course, the European Community (EC). Founded in 1957, it developed into the world’s largest trading bloc in only three decades by dint of both a competitive, free-enterprise driven economic .dynamism and an unobstrusive geopolitical expansionism-the original six (France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries) were later joined by Great Britain, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. In November 1989, the ~~off~~jst argued that Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and possibly Yugoslavia, will soon ‘want the EC to open its arms to them, and the Community should say yes’.j In economic and demographic terms, the EC has clearly emerged as a superpower on a par with the United States and Japan. In 1987, the 12 EC nations had a combined population of 322 million (compared to roughly 240 million for the United States) and a gross domestic product of $3.78 trillion in 1986 (compared to $4.436 trillion for the United States).4 But geography dictates that the magnetic pull of the EC market wil be far more powerful for the East European nations than that of the United States or Japan. This attraction is likely to become more intense as 1992 approaches. The nearterm prospect of a single unified economy encompassing the 12 EC nations has added a sense of urgency to the deliberations of decision makers from Washington to Tokyo to Moscow, as well as those of the EC and, of course, Eastern Europe. One widely quoted study estimates that the EC’s gross domestic product will climb by 5 percent, that 2 million jobs will be created, and that prices will fall by 6 percent on average.’ Whether or not this bouquet of expected benefits is fully realised, these high expectations will be a powerful incentive for the newly independent nations of Eastern Europe to ‘get under the tent’. As Alvin and Heidi Toffler have suggested, the EC’s Project 1992 and Gorbachev’s perestroika could bring ‘a massive upsurge in Euro-Soviet trade, closer links between the two ends of Europe, a further distancing of Western Europe from the U.S., and intensified instabilities in Eastern Europe caught between the two great projects’.6

GERMANISATION Jean Francois-Poncet, another former French foreign minister, expressed an anxiety felt nearly everywhere in Europe in a front-page article in the LL Figaro when he alluded to the ‘economic and political hegemony of a nation of 80 million inhabitants becoming the industrial colossus of Europe’, should the two Germanys unite.’ But there are other, more subtle, fears as well. For example, in mid-November 1989, with East Germany and Czchoslovakia in turmoil, an editorial in the West Berlin daily Tugesspiegelwarned of ‘the fear that the Federal Republic could concentrate too much on aid and support for the reform process in Eastern Europe, that it will neglect its engagement to Europe and European union’.s Indeed, Eastern Europe has no less cause for discomfiture than West Germany’s EC partners:

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West German leaders like to speak of their nation’s historic ties to the region; to many Poles and Czechs and Hungarians, that is as perverse as it is true. A side benefit of the cold war was that it alleviated, at least for a generation or two, the fears that have existed ever since the Teutonic Knights roamed Eastern Europe in the 13th century, taking on the Balts and the Slavs.’ A reunified Germany would be a powerful force in all of Europe, but especially in the East where German trade, aid, and investment will be vital to the success of perestroika and hence democratisation. With 75-80 million people and a gross domestic product nearly equal to that of Britain and France combined, ‘plus the biggest army in Europe outside Russia’, the new Germany would ‘make most other Europeans gulp, even if that greater Germany stays both non-nuclear and inside all the institutions of the West’, according to the Economist.‘o However, Germany has long-standing ties not only to Austria (with which it shares elements of a common ethnolinguistic and cultural heritage), but also to the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. These ties are likely to be reinforced by the allure of German largesse. West Germany has displayed far greater generosity than the United States or any other NATO country in its response to the winds of change sweeping across Central and Eastern Europe. The G.D.R. had been receiving as much as $3 billion a year from the Federal Republic even before the hard-line Honecker regime’s demise in the fall of 1989.” After the Christian Democratic Union won the East German elections in the spring of 1990-a vote for both reform and reunification-the F.R.G. prepared to underwrite the entire cost of economic restructuring in East Germany. But West Germany’s economic sphere of influence is not confined to the G.D.R. Bonn rewarded Hungary’s decision to allow East German ‘tourists’ to go West in the fall of 1989 by doubling its limit for credit guarantees to DMl billion ($530 million), a sum subsequently matched by two West German states, namely Baden-Wurtemburg and Bavaria. The F.R.G. was even more generous with Poland. When Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited Poland in November 1989 he delivered a package of trade-and-aid benefits totalling DM4.5 ($2.4 billion). He also agreed to convert a DMl billion credit squandered by the Gierek regime in the 1970s into zlotys. In short, ‘German investment can save Polish industry, German markets will buy Polish produce, Germans hold more than 20% of Poland’s $40 billion debt’.” Bonn’s message to Eastern Europe is clear: open your markets and the F.R.G. will open its coffers. The Baltic states, eager to consolidate-and capitalise on-their economic independence from Moscow, appear to be prime candidates for West German investment as well. In all likelihood, Germany will play a major role in the rebuilding of Eastern Europe.

BALKANISATION At the end of the 19th century the fledgling Balkan nations included Romania (Wallachia and Moldavia), Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, and BosniaHercegovina. The existence of so many emergent nation-states in a territory

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which had for centuries served as the land bridge between Europe and the Near East gave rise to great instability. In 1912, the Balkan Wars erupted; two years later, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, ignited World War I. The term ‘Balkanization’ is derived from this turbulent period. Age-old ethnic hatreds, north-south regional disparities, economic decline continue to jeopardise Yugoslavia’s existence as a viable nation-state. The smouldering conflict in the Kosovo province between ethnic Albanians and the politically dominant Serbians is only the tip of the iceberg. Deep-seated rivalries, jealousies, and mutual suspicions also divide Slovenes and Serbs, Croatians and Serbs, etc. The effect of these ethnic fissures is magnified by a widening gap between the relatively prosperous north (Slovenia, Croatia, and Vojvodina) and the underdeveloped south (Serbia, Macedonia, and Montegro). The Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina illustrate yet another dimension of Yugoslavia’s demographic diversity. But Yugoslavia is merely a microcosm of Eastern Europe, where nationalism is resurgent and a variety of longstanding disputes remain unresolved. As Soviet troops withdraw from Eastern Europe, the danger of armed conflict increases. For example the roughly 1.8 million Magyars living in Romania were subjected to a policy of cultural genocide by the Ceausescu regime. Since Ccausescu’s overthrow, tension between Hungary and Romania has subsided, but the rancor will remain for many years to come. Democratisation may exacerbate nationalism throughout the region. If so, there are many unsettled scores beyond those already mentioned. For example, a reunified Germany could stake a claim to part of western Poland. Similarly, a democratic Romania could reassert its claim to Soviet Moldavia (which was itself the scene of nationalistic ferment in 1989). In short, Eastern Europe is a potential hotbed of boundary disputes and ethnic rivalries. The possibility that Europe is moving into a new era of political instability emanating from this rapidly changing region cannot, therefore, be dismissed.

RE-SOVIETISATION To a greater extent than most Europeans care to admit, the future of Europe In late 1989, the depends on the future of one man- Mikhail Gorbachev. Economisr observed: , . . Mr. Gorbachev has watched the communist rout in Poland, Hungary and East Germany with apparent equanimity, if not encouragement. Yet he still has conditions he would like to hold to: the communist party must not be humiliated, meaning it should retain at least a share of power; and for the time being nobody should leave the Warsaw Pact.. The prospect of a freer Eastern Europe [c]ould conceivably end in military crackdown. (24)

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sudden or spectacular than in the one in neighboring East Germany. In December, a popular uprising in Romania swept away the Ceausescu dictatorship. The changes in Eastern Europe are not irreversible. If the Soviet inner empire comes unglued in response to the crumbling of the outer empire, or if the East Europeans, especially the East Germans or Czechoslovaks, tried to pull out of the Warsaw Pact, Moscow might revert to its old habits, substituting force for finesse. Such a turn of events would very likely follow a power struggle in the Kremlin and a victory for the hardliners; it would also revive the Cold War and eventuate in the full-scale reSovietisation of Eastern Europe.

CONCLUSIONS No one knows what form the new Europe will assume in the 1990s. Nonetheless, if Europeans are to shape their own identity in the 21st century, it is imperative that the alternative futures for Eastern Europe-a tinderbox until the Soviet takeover after World War II-be outlined as clearly as possible. Such efforts are especially urgent in light of the receding Soviet presence there. While the West can only rejoice at the recent changes in Eastern Europe, it would be a mistake to overlook the dangers-running the gamut from social and political destabilisation to economic and moral decay-which accompany the end of Pax Sovietica in the region. Which scenario is most likely to come about? Perhaps none in its pure form. What seems most desirable is some combination of the first two-i.e. Finlandisation and Europeanisation. Perhaps the least desirable is Balkanisation, although re-Sovietisation would result in a turning back of the clock to the bad old days of the Cold War. Even this unhappy exigency would be preferable to the extreme instability of the period prior to World War I. That leaves Germanisation, which will no doubt occur to some extent under any or all of the other scenarios except the fifth: only if the Soviets reassert imperial control in Eastern Europe is the rise of German influence likely to be prevented. If this development occurs as a concomitant of larger tendencies toward Finlandisation in Eastern Europe and Europeanisation generally, there is no reason why the export of Germany’s economic and technological genius need have a detrimental effect on the peace and prosperity of Europe. On the contrary, German economic dynamism within the context of a free-market system and a firmly rooted pluralistic political order-both in the two Germanys and in Eastern Europe as a whole-could usher in a new Golden Age in a part of the world that had plunged into the deepest darkness only a half-century ago. Thomas University of Nebraska-Kearney

Magstadt

Thomas Magstadt

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NOTES 1. William Echikson, ‘Why Eastern Europe should aspire to Finlandization’, Christian Science Monitor (10 November 1989), p. 19. 2. Ibid. 3. ‘Remixing Europe’, Economist (11 November 1989), p. 13. 4. ‘Eastern Europe’, Regional Brief, United States Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs (October 1989), p. 6. 5. Cited in Danielle Pletka, ‘Dark Side of Integration May Fuel Fatal Backlash’, Znsight (20 June 1988), p. 14. 6. See, AIvin and Heidi Toffler, ‘Grand Designs’, World monitor (October 1988). pp. 48-50. 7. Youssef M. Ibrahim, ‘Anxiety in West: Community to Discuss Birth of a ‘New Big Europe’, New York Times (14 November 1989), p. 10. 8. Quoted in Serge Schemann, ‘Reunification Next?‘, New York Times (16 November 1989), p. 8. 9. Walter Isaacson, ‘Is One Germany Better Than Two?‘, Time (20 November 1989), p. 41. 10. See note 3 above, pp. 13-14. 11. See, for exampfe, ‘Soul Searching at 40’, Economist (7 October 1989), p. 14. 12. ‘A Friend in Need’, Economist (7 October 1989), p. 14. 13. ‘Beyond the Wall’, Economist (18 November 1989), p. 13.