The Communist Past, Twenty-Five Years After

Political scientists have documented significant variation in political and economic outcomes of the 1989-91 revolutions. Countries bordering on western Europe have become relatively democratic and economically successful, with both democracy and wealth dropping off as one moves east and south. Explanations for this variation and the replication of an older pattern on the Eurasian landmass have moved farther and farther into the past. Yet in moving to the longue durée, more proximate events such as the revolutions of 1989, the demise of communism and even the communist experience itself recede into the background and are themselves accounted for by antecedent conditions. The article discusses how two more proximate factors helped to change older patterns in central and eastern Europe: the impact of communist modernisation and the prospect of European integration. In my family, only my grandfather, Isadore Kopstein, appreciated my career choice. He loved speaking Russian and especially enjoyed correcting my grammar and word choice.

sarai.net

2015

This collective volume is published with the support of the Visegrad International Fund, as part of the project "International Student Conference of the V4 and Romania: 25 years since the fall of communism," no. 21420361.The project was carried out by the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, the Department of International Relations and European Integration with the financial support of the Visegrad International Fund.The articles from this volume have been presented by participants in the conference of the project – International Student Conference of the V4 and Romania: 25 years since the fall of communism, which took place on 26-27 March 2015, Bucharest, Romania.The fall of the Iron Curtain is a symbol of freedom that must be remembered by the younger generation. The uniqueness of the International Student Conference of the V4 and Romania: 25 years since the fall of communism consisted in the fact that for the first time, universities from...

2019

Why do we so uncritically buy the "democratic rhetoric" of our rulers instead of countering their selfish designs? How was it possible in too many post-communist countries that incredible riches accumulated in the hands of the parasitic few? Why is political power so often fused with wealth? These are only a few of the questions debated by two philosophers in search of an answer to what went wrong in the post-communist world after 1989.

1991

Soviet-type societies are gone. The system that'bnald Reagan called "the evil empire" exists no more. 'The first big step toward their dissolution came in 1980-81, when the Solidarity movement in Poland built the first civil society in a system where communists ruled the state. Civil society had been understood as that set of public social relations with legally constituted autonomy from the state, but Poland's civil society was made in spite of state law and the wishes of the authorities. This Polish civil society was forced underground when martial law was introduced in December of 1981, but it survived over the decade to return to negotiate the end to communist political monopoly in 1989. Solidarity's return to the public sphere was, however, preceded and in-fact enabled by another major step toward the end of Soviet-type society.-In 1987, after nearly two years of trying to modify the Soviet system, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated radical reforms with revolutionary consequences. His policies of perestroika and glasnost' throughout the USSR and the societies it dominated in Eastern Europe moved both authorities and opposition to contemplate changes more fundamental than anyone before even dared imagine. In 1988 and 1989, party and state authorities and leading members of the opposition in Hungary and Poland negotiated a gradual transition away from communist rule. The understandings established in these "roundtable negotiations" were violated later in 1989, however, as publics demanded a more rapid change than the negotiators planned. By the end of the same year, the people of Czechoslovakia,-East Germany,-Bulgaria and Romania initiated their own transitions to end the old system. In the USSR itself, change was controlled~much more from the top,-even~while there was revolutionary pressure from below. In 1988, especially among Lithuanians and Armenians, large organized social movements began pushing for greater national self determination within or even independence from the USSR. These movements were constrained by*the Soviet state and its coercive power, but the relative power of that state versus society was gradually declining. By August 1991, when communist hardliners tried to reestablish the old system with a coup d'etat, various national movements in the USSR, especially those of Russians, beat them back. ,In the aftermath of this failed counterrevolution, the peoples of the USSR have completed their own revolution and ended the formal rule of the communist party. What happened? What led people to overturn one system and try to build another? How did different groups of people help to bring this change about? With what did people identify as they struggled toward post-communism? And has post-communism solved the problems that motivated the struggle against Soviet-type society?

European Societies, 2014

The review essay on book: Norkus, Zenonas (2012) On Baltic Slovenia and Adriatic Lithuania: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Patterns in Post-communist Transformation, Budapest: Central European University Press.

Southeast European Politics Vol. V (1): 96-99, 2004

Grzymala-Busse has written an excellent book (awarded the Gabriel Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics) on the unexpected regeneration of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe. She seeks to explain why the discredited political actors of the ancien régime, widely despised by their own citizens, could not only survive the collapse of the old order, but also succeed in conditions of democracy. The main hypothesis is that the practices of the authoritarian regimes led to different configurations of elite political resources consisting in portable skills and usable past, which in turn determined their organizational and programmatic choices. Utilizing an elite driven approach she establishes a causal relation between the choice of party transformation strategies and the communist parties’ regeneration operationalized in terms of responsive appeals, electoral support and coalition potentials

2010