Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe
▪ 1994

      When measured by the criterion of whether democracy was enhanced, the year in Central and Eastern Europe was a rather gloomy one. Indeed, while the trends were not catastrophic, there was little doubt that the high hopes that had accompanied the fall of communism in 1989 would not soon be realized. The currents noted in previous years—the significance of nationalism and the slow pace of transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy—persisted, with some minor variations. But new, alarming trends were added to the negative factors of the previous few years.

      Perhaps most important, it was evident that "postcommunism" was not a transitional phenomenon but had established itself as a permanent feature of the political landscape. The political structures of these states would be determined by the communist legacy for many years to come. Equally, the patterns established by the new postcommunist elites in response to their experience of communism had made their impact on the way in which political business was conducted.

      The systems were elitist in the sense that the new leaders behaved with limited regard to public opinion, continued to engage in complex moral and ideological debates while tending to neglect bread-and-butter issues, and looked for scapegoats when things went wrong. Furthermore, they tended to be inefficient in the actual organization and management of government and to believe that the issuing of regulations was sufficient to solve problems.

      The response on the part of a growing section of the population was to look for radical alternatives. The most striking success in this respect was the extraordinarily high vote achieved by the former communists in Poland, which became the largest single party in the Sejm (parliament). This development appeared to confirm the precedent set by neighbouring Lithuania, where the former communists first gained a parliamentary majority toward the end of 1992 and then won the presidential election in early 1993. The former communists in Hungary could hope to perform successfully in the 1994 elections, while their counterparts in Slovakia and the Czech Republic were maintaining strong positions.

      To be fair, the former communists insisted that their commitment to democracy—Western style—was sincere and that they would fully respect the domestic and international obligations assumed by their predecessors. There was no suggestion of any deviation from this position in either Lithuania or Poland. The shift in emphasis that they sought was in the direction of slowing down privatization, defending the welfare state against cuts in the state budget, and diluting the right-wing's moralizing rhetoric.

      The right, indeed, appeared increasingly to be something of a threat to democracy. It made little secret of the fact that it had no time for the procedural or substantive niceties demanded by a democratic order. While few right-wingers espoused authoritarianism openly, the basic assumptions of liberal democracy were undoubtedly rejected by the right in favour of populist-nationalist collectivism, which in some cases (Poland, Slovenia) could be tinged with clericalism.

      Their key feature, however, was a combination of populism and nationalism. For the populist the true relationship is that between the leader and the people, for the authentic leader has the innate ability to understand and articulate the wishes of the people. This political position is ultimately incompatible with democracy, but it has been attractive to those who find the complexity of modern life too much to cope with and are ready to listen to a message promising greater simplicity. Furthermore, it seems to be a standard feature of populism to promise more than the populist leader can deliver. Politically vulnerable and unsophisticated populations, left in that state by communism, were increasingly impatient with what they saw as the needless obfuscations of democratic politics.

      This message was dangerous enough in itself, but it was turned into a far more volatile cocktail by the addition of nationalism. While not all nationalists are populists, it is hard to conceive of a nonnationalist populism, given that the constituency of the populist—the people—is bound to be the nation under modern conditions. Where political institutions are well established and public opinion understands the need for procedures, emotional appeals of this kind can be diluted. The problem in the postcommunist world was precisely that institutions were weak and lacked popular credibility. Sections of the population tended to be suspicious of the entire paraphernalia of democracy, making them vulnerable to political adventurers.

      What exacerbated this complex of problems was that the nationalist agitation of one country was bound to have an impact on its neighbours, not least because of the continuing presence of ethnic minorities with attachments in the neighbouring state. In these circumstances it was extremely easy to whip up nationalist fervour and to undermine potential compromise solutions. Several such interstate disputes were in danger of entering into a subacute or acute phase, notably the dispute between Slovakia and Hungary over the ethnic minority in southern Slovakia, the Greek minority in Albania, the Polish minority in Lithuania, the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, and the Albanian minority in Macedonia.

      Behind all these disputes there loomed the awful example of former Yugoslavia, where the dissolution of the state was accompanied by extreme violence and unspeakable cruelty. The war of Yugoslav succession influenced the situation in two directions. On the one hand, it was warning of what could happen if ethnic violence were to get out of hand; on the other, it encouraged ethnic entrepreneurs in the belief that they, too, could emulate the precedents set in Bosnia and Herzegovina and proceed with genocide or ethnic cleansing against local minorities. The situation in the Balkans was especially tense, as a series of interrelated ethnic and frontier disputes, all connected with the ambitions of Serbia to dominate the region, were a potential threat to stability. Indeed, the Balkan crisis carried added dangers because it involved Greece and Turkey, both of which were members of NATO, while Greece was also a member of the European Community.

      Another source of mounting concern to the Central and Eastern European states was the resurgence of Russia. As the initial shock of the collapse of the Soviet Union wore off and, equally, the Western powers seemed mesmerized by the Yugoslav war and the apparently insoluble problem of reestablishing stability in the Balkans, the rise of Russia was rather weakly welcomed by the West because it relieved it of the responsibility of peacekeeping in a highly volatile area. The Russian government, after the initial shock had worn off, formulated the doctrine of the "near abroad," the territory of the former Soviet Union, where, in effect, Moscow had the right to involve itself in the affairs of nominally independent states. Anxiety in Central and Eastern Europe mounted when Russia sought to veto the approaches they were making to NATO, as this looked very like a revival of the Soviet empire. The West watched this process helplessly. (GEORGE SCHÖPFLIN)

      See also Economic Affairs ; Military Affairs .

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

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