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Memory in Post-communist Europe: Controversies over Identity, Conflicts, and Nostalgia

Author(s): Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2018

Controversies over social memory form an important aspect of reality in the postcommunist countries of Eastern Europe. On the one hand, there are debates about coming to terms with the communist past and the Second World War that preceded it (because important parts of the memory of the war were “frozen” during the communist era), and, on the other hand, and intimately connected to that, are discussions about the constant influence of communism on the current situation. This article presents some of the main trends in research on collective memory in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and reveals similarities and differences in the process of memorialization of communism in the countries of the region. Although there are works devoted to a comparative analysis of memory usage and its various interpretations in the political sphere in the countries of Eastern Europe, there are still many issues concerning daily practices (economic, religious, and cultural) associated with varying interpretations of the war and the communist past which needs further elaboration and analysis.

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Navigating the Margins between Consent and Dissent. Mechanisms of Creative Control and Rock Music in Late Socialist Romania

Author(s): Petrică Mogoș / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2018

This study seeks to delineate the highly convoluted relationship between (rock) musicians and the state in late socialist Romania (1975–1985). By investigating extensive archival files originating from the Securitate records, Agitprop branches, and the ideological committees of the Romanian Communist Party, we examine how the Romanian regime employed its mechanisms of creative control and how it made sense of Romanian musicians’ attempt to navigate them. First, such intricate mechanisms ranged from rewards and penalties in order to ensure ideological compliance, to repression by means of surveillance, recruitment, and harassment. Second, in our exploration of the margins of consent and dissent, the relationship between musicians and the state fluctuated between one of duplicity (that proved beneficial for both entities) and (symbolic) resistance (through collective and individual forms of dissent). Successful dissent came mostly from abroad, while, domestically, musicians were much more rigidly controlled; without being able to articulate coherent forms of dissent through their music, musicians challenged the Securitate through issues of morality. Music also led to the formation of subcultures—csöves and punks—which practiced anti-proletarian rituals of dissent. Thus, this research throws considerable light on broader sociological debates, such as the role of musicians in totalitarian settings, the hidden mechanisms employed by the state, and the ongoing literature concerning the configuration of subcultural movements in the Eastern bloc.

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The Limits and Ambiguities of the Albanian “National Question” in Post-communism: Political Parties, Albanian Nationalism, and External Actors

Author(s): Odeta Barbullushi / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2016

This article interrogates the mobilization of the Albanian national question in Albania in 2012. The two interrelated questions of the article are why the nationalist card is not used consistently and why it failed to trigger a policy debate, or lead to policy changes. The main argument of the article is that, more than a policy alternative, “national unification”is a discursive practice performing two functions: Externally, it signals sovereignty and subjectivity to the international community in Albania, primarily the European Union (EU) and the United States, and as such it is used for political leverage, particularly at critical moments. Internally, it aims at constructing national cohesion, while drawing identity lines between the main political parties. This is particularly the case in moments of political instability, juncture or pressure, as before elections. However, its limited ability to inform policy and mobilize political action results not only from the demobilizing power of international actors, for example, the EU and the United States, but also the dominant position that a specific discourse of “good Albanian nationalism” holds in the political debate in post-communist Albania.

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Crossing the Borders of Friendship: Mobility across Communist Borders

Author(s): Mark Keck-Szajbel,Dariusz Stola / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2015

This collection of articles brings together scholars from the United States and Europe to explore mobility writ large in communist East Central Europe. While twentieth-century European mobility has increasingly become the focus of historiography, significant gaps still exist in the research. Especially with reference to the Soviet bloc, scholars have only recently begun to explore how people crossed borders. Where there is research, it is largely limited to individual states.

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Understanding 1989: The Revolutionary Tradition Revisited

Author(s): Vladimir Tismăneanu / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2014

Two and a half decades have passed since the formidable tumult called by many the upheaval in the East —the chain of dramatic events that led to the accomplishment of what most among us thought to be unthinkable: the collapse of communist regimes, the end of a system that seemed destined to last forever. The revolutions of 1989 resulted in the rehabilitation of individual dignity after decades of dictatorial domination. The post-1989 East-Central Europe has been a battlefield between proponents of civicliberal values and supporters of populist, ethnocentric, illiberal movements. Precommunist and Communist legacies continue to influence the democratic transitions.

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Enacting Identities in the EU–Russia Borderland An Ethnography of Place and Public Monuments

Author(s): David J. Smith,Stuart Burch / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2012

Drawing on Rogers Brubaker’s theoretical analyses of “nationness” and nationalism in post-communist Europe, this article examines the dynamics of social identity within the nationally contested setting of the Estonian–Russian borderland. Since 1991, the city of Narva (96% Russophone by population) has customarily been defined (both politically and academically) in binary national terms as a “Russian enclave” within a unitary and “nationalizing” Estonian state. An ethnographic approach to the case, however, gives a rather different perspective, pointing to hybridity rather than nationality as the defining characteristic of identity politics within the city. In what follows, we bring to bear the results of extensive fieldwork carried out in Narva during 2006–2008. We first examine how different identity categories (local, national, meso-regional, and supranational) are being officially inscribed within Narva’s sites of memory. Thereafter, we focus on how these discursive-material articulations of place are implicated within the everyday performance of identity amongst the city’s population. Using the novel methodology of photo elicitation, we examine how residents of Narva appropriate but also subvert the identity categories that elites and outsiders (including ourselves as researchers) would seek to impose on them from above. This study (we argue) is significant for its methodological novelty, as well as in terms of giving a more nuanced understanding of Narva’s situation at a time of continued ethnopolitical contestation within Estonia as a whole.

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The European Dimension of Minority Political Representation. Bulgaria and Romania Compared

Author(s): Maria Spirova,Boyka Stefanova / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2012

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.

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“The Past Is Never Dead”. Identity, Class, and Voting Behavior in Contemporary Poland

Author(s): Krzysztof Jasiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2009

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 postcommunist 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.

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The Roots of the “Fourth Republic”. Solidarity’s Cultural Legacy to Polish Politics

Author(s): Robert Brier / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2009

Most scholars studying Polish politics agree that some of the country’s fiercest political conflicts evolve around a cultural cleavage that Poland’s Third Republic inherited from the communist period. The existing literature, however, provides no answer as to why this cleavage sustained its importance despite the events of 1989. Therefore, the article seeks to refine some of the theoretical categories used to analyze cultural legacies. In particular, it argues that cultural systems are transmitted through time primarily because they sustain their capacity to endow social reality with meaning. Focusing on right-wing discourse and in particular on the conflict over Poland’s 1997 constitution, the article then shows that some of the cultural paradigms of the Solidarity period interacted with the character of the Polish transition as a compromise in a way that provided right-wing politicians with a meaningful framework within which to challenge their opponents and advance their claims.

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Review of Feinburg’s Elusive Equality, Johnson and Robinson’s Living Gender after Communism, and Wingfield and Bucur’s Gender and War in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe

Author(s): Irene Hanson Frieze,Josephine E. Olson / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2008

The review of: 1) Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950, by Melissa Feinberg. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. 2) Living Gender after Communism, by Janet Elise Johnson and Jean C. Robinson. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007. 3) Gender and War in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe, edited by Nancy Wingfield and Maria Bucur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. $24.95 (paperback).

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Normalization and the Limits of the Law: The Case of the Czech Jazz Section

Author(s): Peter Bugge / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2008

The Jazz Section was one of the most remarkable cultural institutions in “normalized” Czechoslovakia. Established in 1971 as part of the official Musicians’ Union, the Jazz Section used its legal status to arrange jazz and rock concerts and to publish a variety of books without the permission or consent of the Communist authorities. From the late 1970s, the regime strove hard to close the Section; however, it survived until 1984. Only in 1986 did the regime find a way to prosecute its leading activists. This article investigates why persecution proved so troublesome. It focuses on the impact of the Jazz Section’s legalistic strategy, and on the role of legal concerns in regime behavior. It argues that references to “law and order” had a central legitimizing function in the social discourse of the Husák regime, and that the resulting need to translate policies of repression into legal measures inhibited the authorities in their assertion of power and created an ambiguous window of opportunity for independent social activism.

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Review of Pfaff’s Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany and of Rodden’s Textbook Reds

Author(s): Jennifer A. Yoder / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2008

The review of: 1) Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989 by Steven Pfaff. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. pp. 333. 2) Textbook Reds: Schoolbooks, Ideology, and East German Identity by John Rodden. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. pp. 443.

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Origins, Memory, and Identity: “Villages” and the Politics of Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova

Author(s): Jeniffer R. Cash / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2007

This article reconsiders the manifestation of nationalism in the Republic of Moldova during the late Soviet period and early 1990s. Whereas dominant approaches have focused on the ethnic dimensions of the national movement, I argue that rural-urban identities also played a significant role in shaping political events and outcomes of the recent past by drawing on ethnographic research among participants in the “folkloric movement” within the arts and performance world. This movement coincided with the broader national movement of the 1980s and demonstrates the centrality of “villages” in the construction of an anti-Soviet “national” identity among ethnic Moldovans. In conclusion, the politics of nationalism must be understood in a wider framework that also accounts for the importance of non-ethnic forms of collective identity, such as villages, and that investigates how individual origins and social memory shape civic and political participation.

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Cultural Trauma and Social Quality in Post–Soviet Moldova and Belarus

Author(s): Pamela Abbott / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2007

This article looks at influences on the social quality of the lives of the citizens of Belarus and Moldova in the context of the traumatic shock—economic, political, and social—experienced after 1991. It argues that lived experience—how people evaluate their condition—is as significant an influence on their welfare as the actual circumstances in which they live. The majority of respondents perceive the post-1991 economic and political changes negatively, and levels of general satisfaction and happiness are comparatively low. The findings suggest that objective economic factors, health status, and social context influence well-being, but also personal control and satisfaction with material circumstances, with health having a greater influence on happiness, while material circumstances and the evaluation of them have a greater influence on general satisfaction.

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The Cultural Roots of Estonia’s Successful Transition: How Historical Legacies Shaped the 1990s

Author(s): Li Bennich-Björkman / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2007

This article investigates the cultural roots of Estonia’s surprisingly successful transitions in the 1990s. Taking the point of departure in historical institutionalism, two layers of political cultural legacies are identified as particularly crucial in preparing Estonia for the democratic government installed after independence. First, the article argues that even in a Baltic context, Estonia stood out as a hotbed for social initiatives and elite networks during Communist times. Second, to understand why such liberalisation within the authoritarian Communist regime started earlier in Estonia than elsewhere in the Soviet Union, there is a need to acknowledge the importance that the historical experiences of the inter-war republic played. Estonia then developed a civic culture that partly survived even during the Päts regime from 1934 to 1939. These experiences surfaced once the yolk of Stalinism was lifted in the 1950s and shaped Estonia under Communism into a society of “collective mobilization” where democratically inclined counter-elites could form.

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Market Reform and Social Protection: Lessons from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland

Author(s): Robert R. Kaufman / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2007

The countries of East Central Europe stand out as examples of the advantages of early and successful transitions to the market. Besides being early reformers, these countries also moved unusually quickly toward the establishment of broad social protection programs intended to cushion the shocks of the transition and to provide some longer-term protection against the uncertainties of the market economy. The success of these strategies has been uneven in terms of their impact on fiscal resources and their overall effect on the distribution of income. However, they must also be assessed in terms of the support they have generated for political and economic system among economically vulnerable but politically influential middle-class, blue-collar, and rural social sectors. In the countries of Central Europe, social transfers directed toward such groups have helped to win their acquiescence to painful adjustments and have facilitated longer-term support for democratic politics.

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Reimagining the Boundaries of the Nation: Politics and the Development of Ideas on Minority Rights

Author(s): Stephen Deets / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2006

The collapse of communism reshaped European debates on minority rights. By the 1980s, the different institutionalizations of turn-of-the-century perspectives created an ideational divide between East and West. Since 1989, Western norms have not simply transferred East, as intellectuals and politicians in the region challenged and reinterpreted the norms in novel ways. Fifteen years later, European minority norms are elaborated in much greater detail than ever before, but consensus on core issues remains elusive. The article first explores the roots of this ideational divide and how recent trafficking of ideas between East and West Europeans has caused both to reexamine their core assumptions on the rights of minority communities, particularly with regards to individualism, collective autonomy, and justice. The second part examines how these controversies over norm interpretation appear in minority policy debates in Eastern Europe, including minority autonomy, education, and the Hungarian Status Law.

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Internal Exclusion, External Inclusion: Diaspora Politics and Party-Building Strategies in Post-Communist Hungary

Author(s): Myra A. Waterbury / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2006

This article examines the domestic politics behind Hungary’s controversial 2001 “Status Law,” which granted special cultural and economic benefits to ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of other states. It argues that Hungary’s increasingly interventionist policy toward ethnic Hungarians beyond its borders in the late 1990s was driven not by a growing sense of ethnic nationalism in society or as a reaction to the plight of ethnic kin but by the party-building strategy of right-wing elites. These elites utilized and coopted transnational ties with the diaspora to further their own political goals. Specifically, engagement with the diaspora issue provided the thengoverning Federation of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) government with symbolically charged ideological content, important organizational resources, and the basis of a longer-term strategy for governance and institutional embeddedness.

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Reeducating the Hearts of Bosnian Students: An Essay on Some Aspects of Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Gordana Bozic / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2006

The article looks into the present education system in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the influence of politics in the creation and maintenance of segregated schools. It analyzes the concept of “educational protectionism,” which underlines the difference between “ethnically correct education” and “adequate education,” the latter being embedded in the human rights for group minorities to have education that reflect their language, culture, history, and religion. The article presents a preliminary case study of a multiethnic school in Popov Most, Eastern Bosnia, analyzing parents’ attitudes toward controversial educational issues such as language, religious teaching, and history.

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Review of Pettai and Ehin’s Deciding on Europe: The EU Referendum in Estonia

Author(s): Aleksander Lust / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2006

The review of: Deciding on Europe: The EU Referendum in Estonia, edited by Vello Pettai and Piret Ehin. Tartu, Estonia: Tartu University Press, 2005. pp. 147.

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