East European Politics & Societies current issue

Letter from the Editors

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

The Ethical Significance of Eastern Europe, Twenty Years On

Snyder, T. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

Twenty years after the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the region seems to have lost its sheen of moral appeal. What has happened to the dissidents, the heroes, the ethical lessons? Yet the Eastern Europe of today has become, in new and surprising ways, the test case of three of the largest questions of political morality in the early twentieth century: free elections, energy independence, and the divisiveness of national memory.

What Happened in the Balkans (or Rather ex--Yugoslavia)?

Banac, I. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

How Milosevic’s empire-building completed the process of national homogenization in the successor states of Yugoslavia and brought this part of the Balkan region in conformity with the modernity’s prescription of national statehood.

What Happened in East European (Political) Economies?: A Balance Sheet for Neoliberal Reform

Orenstein, M. A. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

Assessing the results of neoliberal reform remains controversial even twenty years after 1989. While neoliberal reform programs appeared to have finally produced rapid economic growth in the 2000s after a long transitional recession, the 2008 global economic meltdown plunged Central and East European countries back into crisis. This article offers a mixed assessment of the results of neoliberal economic reforms and questions the easy compatibility of democracy and radical reform observed during the 1990s. Since the 2000s, both democratic and authoritarian countries in Eastern Europe have experienced rapid growth. Geopolitics, more than reform or democracy, seems to separate the winners from the losers. Successful countries are those that either joined the European Union or developed close political and economic relations with Russia. Those betwixt and between and those suffering internal strife (or both) still have not reached 1989 levels of economic production.

"The Past Is Never Dead": Identity, Class, and Voting Behavior in Contemporary Poland

Jasiewicz, K. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

This article presents a summary of analyses addressing the changing patterns of voting behavior in post-communist Poland as a context for examination of the issue of the relationship between regions defined by history (eighteenth-century partitions, border shifts after WWII) and contemporary forms of voting behavior. In the 1990s, the dominant cleavage in Polish politics was the one between the post-Solidarity and post-communist camps, and the best predictor of voting behavior was one’s religiosity. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this cleavage has been replaced by another, between the liberal, pro-European orientation and the more Euro-skeptic, populist attitudes. The empirical evidence seems to suggest that one end of the populist—liberal continuum is relatively well defined and represents the traditional system of values, which defines Polish national identity in terms of ethnic nationalism, strong attachment to Catholic dogmas, and denunciation of communism as a virtual negation of those values. The other end of this continuum is defined more by rejection of this nationalistic-Catholic "imagined community" than by any positive features. This article examines the relative role of identity-related factors (e.g., religiosity or region) and determinants based on one’s socioeconomic (class) position in shaping voting patterns in the 2007 elections to the Polish Sejm and Senate. The empirical data come from a postelection survey, the Polish General Election Study 2007.

The German Democratic Republic: The Revolution that Wasn't

Galecki, L., Tymowski, A. W. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

The 1989 revolution in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) constituted an integral element of wider revolutionary processes in Eastern Europe. But in contrast to what happened in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, where the abrogation of real socialism meant return to one’s own national history, to distinctive national and state traditions, what happened in the GDR left its citizens in a great void, because they lacked a collective identity of their own. The crisis of GDR society came down to the fact that rejecting socialism meant rejecting one’s own country, and this had for a long time been against the wishes of the majority. As 1989 unfolded, opposition intellectuals continued to see the only alternative to the GDR to be a new, improved, but still socialist GDR. Meanwhile, the popular demonstration in Leipzig on 9 October 1989 signaled the end of the Communist regime. The destruction of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was its last dying breath. The paradox was that although the popular call for reunification with West Germany succeeded, the result was widespread frustration, not satisfaction. Moreover, it must be said that the pre-1989 opposition played only a small role in the transformation.

Latvia: Normality and Disappointment

Plakans, A. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

Nearly two decades after renewed independence, the population of Latvia is quite unhappy with the status quo. The number of inhabitants in the country continues to decline due to outmigration and a low fertility level; the international image of the country is believed by Latvians to be ambiguous at best, negative at worst; there is widespread disillusionment with the new political elite, which is thought to be incompetent as well as corrupt; the market economy has not produced straight-line economic progress but rather a growing subpopulation living at the minimal standard of living; continuing divisions of opinion over a wide range of subjects (such as the meaning of World War II and the question of the country’s official language) continue to suggest at least incomplete social integration; and the openness brought by the instruments of the information revolution appears to many to contribute to dissension and not cohesion. This was not the normality Latvians had aspired to during the heady years of unified opposition to Soviet power in the 1988—91 period, but the characteristics of this normality are shared in different combinations by many members of the European Union.

Estonia after 1991: Identity and Integration

Raun, T. U. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

The past two decades have witnessed a reassessment and broadening of conceptions of identity among both the ethnic Estonian and Russian populations in Estonia. In addition to a continuing focus on aspects of national distinctiveness, emphasizing their small numbers, language, culture, territorial homeland, and—as a new factor—the state, the Estonians have increasingly engaged with a wider range of identities (local, regional, and European). Among these, the regional level has been the most productive, enhancing Estonia’s already strong ties to Finland but also fostering closer connections to its other Nordic and Baltic neighbors. Although integration into NATO and integration into the European Union continue to receive strong approval, a European identity is still in the process of formation. For the Russian community, the fall of communism led to a full reevaluation of the bases of its identity. The major trend has seen a shift from a political consciousness (loyalty to the Soviet Union) to a greater emphasis on the Russian language and ethnicity. In spite of the general peacefulness of ethnic relations, any meaningful integration of the two major nationalities in Estonia remains incomplete, as graphically demonstrated in the Bronze Soldier affair in April 2007. Russians, especially younger ones, increasingly know the Estonian language, but views of history, especially regarding World War II, and attitudes toward Russia still differ markedly between the Estonian and Russian populations. The process of integration is further complicated by the neighboring and still powerful kin-state of the local Russian population.

Lost in Transition: Nostalgia for Socialism in Post-socialist Countries

Velikonja, M. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

Why is there nostalgia for real socialism? Is it but a logical response to sudden, dramatic transformation? Don’t people remember those days anymore—or do they remember them all too well? In popular opinion, nostalgia for socialism is something fabricated, invented, and then imposed by different groups of people to achieve some goals: to open a new commercial niche, to attain political credit, to win popular support, to get artistic inspiration, and so on. Thus, many academic studies have examined only this instrumental side of the phenomenon, limiting it to the "industry of nostalgia" only. But research shows that nostalgia is in fact a retrospective utopia, a wish and a hope for a safe world, a fair society, true friendships, mutual solidarity, and well-being in general, in short, for a perfect world. As such, it is less a subjective, arbitrary, ideological effort to recall the past as it is, an undetermined, undefined, amorphous wish to transcend the present. So nostalgia for socialism in fact does not relate exclusively and precisely to past times, regimes, values, relations, and so on as such, but it embodies a utopian hope that there must be a society that is better than the current one.

East-Central European Literatures Twenty Years After

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

The goal of this collective effort is to provide an overview of the course of Central European literatures in the twenty years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The authors have highlighted works they consider representative of their countries’ literary production and placed them in the context of the political and social changes they reflect. Where English translations of the works in question are available, they are listed in a bibliography attached to each article.

Eastern Europe since 1989

Katz, S. N. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:18:53 PDT

The author began working in Eastern Europe in connection with his project to study the impact of U.S. constitutionalism following the U.S. constitutional bicentennial in 1987. This led him to organize a conference on constitutionalism in Eastern Europe in 1990 and to collaborate in projects on the progress of constitutionalism in the region since that time. The question the author addresses is whether the constitutional promise apparent in 1989 and following has been fulfilled two decades later.