Europe Thirty Years After 1989 : Transformations of Values, Memory, and Identity [1 ed.] 9789004443587, 9789004442115

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Europe Thirty Years after 1989

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Executive Editor Leonidas Donskis† Managing Editor J.D. Mininger

volume 359

Central European Value Studies Edited by Vasil Gluchman, University of Prešov, Slovakia Affiliate Editors Jaap van Brakel, University of Louvain Eckhard Herych, University of Mainz Assistant Editors Arnold Burms (Belgium) – Herman Parret (Belgium) – B.A.C. Saunders (Belgium) – Frans De Wachter (Belgium) – Anindita Balslev (Denmark) – LarsHenrik Schmidt (Denmark) – Dieter Birnbacher (Germany) – Stephan Grätzel (Germany) – Thomas Seebohm (Germany) – Olaf Wiegand (Germany) – Alex Burri (Switzerland) – Henri Lauener (Switzerland)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs

Europe Thirty Years after 1989 Transformations of Values, Memory, and Identity Edited by

Tomas Kavaliauskas

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Image created by Dogu Bankov for the exhibition titled “War Requiem,” exhibited in Kaunas, Lithuania, November 11th, 2018 for the 100th commemoration of the end of World War I. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020919398

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0929-8436 ISBN 978-90-04-44211-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-44358-7 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Tomas Kavaliauskas. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Content Acknowledgements  vii Contributors  viii Introduction  1

Part 1 Values, Memory, Identity 1

East-Central Europe Searching for (European) Values: How to Be More Than the “Proud Periphery”?  7 Ladislav Cabada

2

Thirty Years in Search for Identity in Central Europe  27 Tomas Kavaliauskas

3

Conservative Assertiveness in Central and Eastern Europe: Case Studies from Poland and Hungary  59 Nicolas Hayoz and Magdalena Solska

4

Croatia after 1989: Memories of Socialism in Post-socialist Times  91 Josip Zanki and Nevena Škrbić Alempijević

5

Types of Social Memory and the Subordination of Identities of Ethnic Minorities in Latvia  105 Deniss Hanovs and Vladislav Volkov

Part 2 In Search of European Home and Hospitality 6

The Ideal of Absolute Hospitality and the Reality of Anti-migrant Fences  131 Rūta Bagdanavičiūtė

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“A Home for Our Children”: The Bulgarian (Dis)illusion with Democratic Society Thirty Years Later  140 Valentina Gueorguieva, Galina Goncharova and Slavka Karakusheva

Part 3 The Role of Intellectuals and Dissidents 8

Envisioning Europe from the East: À la recherche du temps perdu with Václav Havel and Lennart Meri  175 Maria Mälksoo

9

The Rise of the Public Relations Man and the Decline of the Soviet “Intelligentsia” after 1989  193 Gintautas Mažeikis

10

From Ideology of Culture to Cultural Critique: Kultūros barai Journal and the Changing Roles of Lithuanian Intellectuals (1989–2019)  221 Almantas Samalavičius

Part 4 Political Travelogues 11

From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum Achieving Statehood through Peaceful Protest: Two European Models Face to Face with 30 Years between Them  241 Jordi Arrufat Agramunt



Index of Names  267 Index of Subjects  270

Acknowledgements I would like to thank wholeheartedly all of the contributors to this volume. At first we discussed the concept. It took less time than expected as the topic seduced us to commence writing immediately about what we had been reflecting on so much privately and publicly. Behind these thoughtful articles lie already given lectures and talks at conferences, public reactions to political events. The content speaks for itself. The diversity of identity among the authors, hailing as they do from different countries and contexts, created a multinational dimension and multi-cultural perspectives on how values, memory, and identity have been transforming and have been trasnformative during the last thirty years in Eastern and Central Europe. One of the authors (as the reader will notice in the last chapter) has walked by foot from Tallinn to Vilnius in order to repeat the famous Baltic Way of the year 1989. Though such an act speaks for itself and requires no further comment, I would nevertheless deign to humbly add, as the symbolic spirit of this volume: what passion! My gratitude also goes to the VIBS Managing Editor J.D. Mininger for his support of the project. Tomas Kavaliauskas

Contributors Jordi Arrufat-Agramunt is a Public Affairs professional currently working as a Project Manager for the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia, a public-private partnership set up by the Catalan Government whose mission is to promote Catalonia internationally through public diplomacy tools. He holds a BA in Political Science from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, a Msc in International Business Management by ICEX-CECO Madrid, a MSc in International Relations from IBEI Barcelona and an MSc in Teaching from URV University in Tarragona. Nevena Škrbić Alempijević professor, was, from 2008 until 2010, the head of the postgraduate studies of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, and from 2013 to 2015 the head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. She was a member of the editorial board of the scientific journal Studia ethnologica Croatica from 2007 to 2015. She is the president of the Governing board of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb. She actively participates in the work of national and international professional associations. Currently she is the member of the executive board of the Croatian Ethnological Society. She is the president of SIEF (since 2017). Main areas of her scientific interest are: anthropology of social memory, anthropology of place and space, the construction of cultural regions, island studies, performance studies, studies of carnivals, festivals and other public events. Rūta Bagdanavičiūtė is a doctor of philosophy. Her doctoral dissertation is on the topic of hermeneutics, titled The Way of Interpretative Dynamics and its Change in Hermeneutics. She teaches philosophy courses at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. Her research embraces hermeneutics, ethics, media ontology, art philosophy. Email: [email protected] Ladislav Cabada is affiliated with Metropolitan University Prague where he teaches, serves as Vice-Rector for Research and Creative Activities, and is the Editor in Chief of the journal Politics in Central Europe. He is also affiliated with University of West Bohemia and the Central European Political Science Association where he served as the President (2012–2018).

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Galina Goncharova holds a PhD in Cultural Studies (Bulgaria, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski). She is an assistant professor at the Department of History and Theory of Culture, Sofia University. Galina Goncharova has held two fellowships research at the Centre for Advanced Studies – Sofia and has taken part in big international projects. Her major academic interests are in the fields of Bulgarian contemporary history, oral history, sociology of youth cultures and sociology of religion. Goncharova has publications on death and dying under (post)socialism, generational discourses, and religious practices in Bulgaria, among others. She is the author of the book Politics of “Generation”. Generational divisions in Bulgaria in the Second Half of the 19th to Early 20th Century. Recently she is working on a national project on the generational models of informal care in Bulgaria. Valentina Gueorguieva is an associate professor at the Department of cultural Studies of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. She holds a PhD in sociology from the Université Laval (Quebec, Canada), and has specialized at the Center for the Studies of Social Movements at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at the Central European University in Budapest. She was a visiting professor at the Doctoral School for Social Sciences at CEREFREA (Bucharest, Romania) and the Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies in Tribhuvan University (Kathmandu, Nepal). Her research interests are in anthropology of democracy, social movement studies, political mobilizations and civil society organizations. She has authored two monographs and more than thirty academic articles in English, French and Bulgarian, as well as popular readings in the online reviews Seminar_BG (http://seminar–bg.eu/) and dVersia (dversia. net). Her recent book Multitudes of Discontent: An Anthropology of the Protest Movements in Bulgaria (2009–2013), published in Bulgarian in 2017, studies the recent social movements in post-socialist context. Deniss Hanovs (1977), cultural historian, professor at Riga Stradins unibersity, Faculty of Communication. His fields of research are interdisciplinary and include nationalism studies, history of communication (18th century opera studies) and ethnic minorities. Dr. Deniss Hanovs: [email protected] 0037129148780 Nicolas Hayoz is professor of political science and the director of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

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He has conducted research projects, published articles and edited several books on various aspects of the transformation process Eastern Europe, particularly on topics such as democratisation, authoritarianism, informal networks, political leadership and state reforms. He has conducted also research promotion projects in Georgia and in the Western Balkans. His research interests include democratization studies in Eastern Europe, political sociology and political theory. Slavka Karakusheva is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. She holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology and a BA in Cultural Studies from the same university. She has recently been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz; at the Cultural Politics and Management Research Centre, Istanbul Bilgi University and at the Department of New Media, Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Her research interests focus on population policies in nation-building processes with emphasis on migrations and displacements of minorities, on the role of social media in changing migratory experiences and reinforcing transnational connectedness and on the construction, negotiation and redefinition of cultural heritage boundaries in Bulgaria. Tomas Kavaliauskas PhD, is a Lithuanian senior researcher at the Philosophy department as well as at the Centre of Social and Political Critique at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. He is the author of the book Transformations in Central Europe between 1989 and 2012: Geopolitical, Cultural, and Socioeconomic Shifts (Lexington Books, 2012). He is a member of Lithuania's Writers Union as an author of fiction literature books. He is a member of Lithuanian PEN centre as an author of political essays (English version available at eurozine.com). Maria Mälksoo is senior lecturer in International Security at the University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies. She is the author of The Politics of Becoming European: A Study of Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War Security Imaginaries (Routledge, 2010), and a co-author of Remembering Katyn (Polity, 2012). Her work on European security politics, transitional justice, liminality, memory wars and memory laws has appeared in International Studies Review, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, International Political Sociology, Security Dialogue, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, European Security, Contemporary Security Policy, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, and in various edited volumes. Her

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c­ urrent research explores rituals in world politics, militant memory laws and the prospects of provincializing International Relations from Central and Eastern Europe. Gintautas Mažeikis is a Lithuanian philosopher, anthropologist, theoretician of culture and a professor in philosophy at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas. He is the head of the Centre of Social and Political Critique. MA in Philosophy (1986–1991), Sankt-Petersburg State University, Russia. He holds Ph.D. in Philosophy, Vilnius University, Lithuania. The title of the doctoral dissertation Symbolical Thinking of Renaissance. Today he is a visiting professor at various European universities. Almantas Samalavičius is a professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and simultaneously at Vilnius University. Educated as an English philologist, he obtained a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory and has been a visiting professor in American, South Korean, and Indonesian universities. He is the author of some dozen scholarly books including Visionaries of the Twentieth Century (1997), Change and Continuity (2008), Lithuanian Architecture and Urbanism (2019) as well as editor of numerous anthologies and collections of essays, including Dedalus Book of Lithuanian Literature (2013), Neoliberalism, Economism and Higher Education (2018). A prolific cultural critic and essayist analyzing issues ranging from post-Communist transition and memory to higher education, he served as president of Lithuanian PEN and is a regular contributor to Kultūros barai and Eurozine – Europe’s leading network of cultural journals. His writings have been translated into some 15 languages and won 8 prizes in his home country. Magdalena Solska is lecturer in political science at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research focuses on post-Communist democratization in Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular on the development of political parties, party systems and political opposition in post-Communist democracies. Vladislav Volkov (1963) Jelgava/Latvia. Acadimic qualifications: PhD in philosophy (1989), Dr. sc.soc. (sociology (1998)). Post-graduate Course of Urals State University (Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation); Urals State University (Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation), Faculty of Philosophy. Scientific areas: sociology of nations and nationalism; sociological and historic analysis of Russian minority in Latvia. Publications: the author of 150 scientific publications, including 5 monographies.

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Josip Zanki graduated from the Graphic Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1994 (class of Professor Miroslav Šutej) with a thesis entitled “Mysticism in the Artistic Practice of J. Beuys” and an experimental series of etchings New Machines, a remake of the research conducted by the Croatian renaissance scientist Faust Vrančić. In 2016 he completed his Postgraduate Doctoral Studies in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He received his PhD with a thesis entitled “Anthropological Conceptualisation of the Space in Thangka Painting and Contemporary Art Practices“ (supervisors Suzana Marjanić, and Leonida Kovač) on 11th February 2016. Since 1986 he has been working on the field of graphic media, film, video, installations, performances, and cultural anthropology. He has received numerous prizes for his artistic work. He has realized numerous exhibitions and projects in Croatia and abroad. He taught at the University of Zadar 2009 to 2017 and at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas 2016 and 2017. Since 2017 he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Since 2018 he has been vice president of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists, oldest and largest institution of its kind in Croatia and the entire region, established in 1868. He has been a member of the European Cultural Parliament since 2011.

Introduction Tomas Kavaliauskas The legacy of 1989 is often understood as annus mirabilis – the fall of the Berlin Wall and the coming collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this book takes a broader look at various Eastern and Central European countries exploring whether and how the conception of the extraordinary events of 1989 has changed over the last thirty years. In some countries we find disillusionment with the way democracy and capitalism paved its way through peoples’ fates. Nostalgia for the bygone socialist times that we find in the post-socialist period certainly has its reasons. Does that play a role when some countries that experienced a supposedly successful transition from Communism to democracy have turned their backs on liberal democracy? Some countries that avoid such open rhetoric are illiberal in practice. Yet there are so many geopolitical achievements in terms of ontological security after the experience of the Soviet occupation that questioning the success of the transition from the socialist pre-1989 to the democratic post-1989 while being in nato becomes uncanny. True, it does not mean fixed stability, since the current authoritarian governement of Russia demonstrates militaristic power, occupying new territories in Ukraine and playing an active role in promoting European scepticism by supporting anti-liberal and nationalistic voices. In addition, regardless of different levels of economic development in the post-socialist countries of East-Central Europe, one has to acknowledge another achievement: namely, the availability of material consumption and free access to material and commercial goods, which is something that under the rule of a single Communist party was the dream of its humiliated proletariat. In spite of all of the distortions of ideal democracy, the region of “New Europe” after 1989 has held legitimate democratic elections. People actually do vote and their voices are counted, unlike in Russia and in Belarus, where decade after decade the elections miraculously deliver the same presidents – Vladimir Putin and Aleksander Lukashenka. These two presidents continue to use cynical propaganda, cruel forms of dictatorship against their own citizens while desperately clinging to their power. Unfortunately, these two authoritarian rulers from Eastern Europe have contaminated Central Europe, which used to be so proud of its liberation from authoritarianism, and alongside this pride shared the legacy of the anti-­ authoritarian dissidents. Thirty years ago the Baltic States and the Visegrád countries stood as a paradigmatic example of peaceful and liberal patriotism,

© Tomas Kavaliauskas, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_002

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but over the past thirty years some countries have experienced ­transformations in their values, memory, and identity, although not without the overlapping trends in Western and Southern Europe. Thus, our book seeks an interpretation of and answer to the question: over the past thirty years what has happened to Eastern and Central Europe’s dreams of 1989, and why did those changes and transformations in dreams and realities occur? The book is divided into four sections. The chapters of the first section – ­titled Values, Memory, and Identity – focus on the titular concepts of the section, specifically as they relate to East-Central Europe, and how they changed during the last thirty years. The opening chapter of this section and of the entire volume is written by Ladislav Cabada, the President of the Central European Political Science Association (2012–2018). He writes that in spite of the European Union, the core-periphery divide in the EU is gaining strength and a decline in democracy in East-Central Europe is visible. “The migration crisis in 2015 and beyond even strengthened the mental gaps between so-called ‘Old Europe’ and ‘New Europe’”, says Cabada, referring to Hungarian political scientist Attila Ágh. The second chapter, penned by the volume’s editor of the volume, casts a look on the identity of Central Europe, and how its identity has transformed over the last thirty years. The third chapter of the first part explores why Poland and Hungary have become illiberal democracies. Coauthors from the Institute of East and Central Europe, at Fribourg University (Switzerland), Nicolas Hayoz and Magdalena Solska examine the Polish and Hungarian case(s) as conservative assertiveness. The fourth is a witty chapter on Croatia by coauthors Nevena Škrbić Alempijević and Josip Zanki, who take a cultural anthropological approach. They analyze how artists in Croatia approach nostalgia, and play with the memory of the socialist past. The first section of the volume also embraces Latvian social memory, which is often perceived as divided by ethnic polarization. A case study on this topic by Denis Hanovs and Vladislav Volkov makes the following conclusion: “As demonstrated by many sociological studies in contemporary Latvia, the rigid opposition of the social memory of Latvians and ethnic minorities is largely a product of nationalistic fantasies and political technologies.” The second section, titled In Search of European Home and Hospitality, is devoted to the issue of a need for home. It starts with a philosophical chapter by Lithuanian author Rūta Bagdanavičiūtė. By applying philosophical hermeneutics, she analyses the ideal of hospitality and how it may or may not work in practice, especially when Europe faces migration challenges. This chapter is followed by scholars from Bulgaria, at the Department of Cultural Studies of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski: Valentina Gueorguieva, Galina Goncharova, and Slavka Karakusheva, who analyse the need for home. They show the

Introduction

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Bulgarian context of illiberal rhetoric and nationalistic values, which are aimed against migrants, Roma people, and Turks as well as against multicultural voices, including the voice of the Pope Francis during his visit to Bulgaria. As their article contends, “thirty years after the collapse of the socialist regime and within the ‘European family’, the values that were once identified and proclaimed as liberal and democratic, such as freedom of expression, equality in rights of participation, civil liberties and the multi-party system, are exactly those that provoke the nationalist backlash, making some citizens of Bulgaria feel threatened, not accepted, and not ‘at home’ in their own country.” The third section – The Role of Intellectuals and Dissidents – includes three chapters. Since some of the dissidents after 1989 became politicians under ­democracy – Václav Havel even became President – it is important to analyze how one single person caried the values of liberty from one political regime to another, from the epoch of totalitarianism to democracy. Havel’s ideas about liberty and humanism are compared with the Estonian president Lennart Meri in the chapter written by Estonian scholar Maria Mälksoo. Her choice to compare Havel and Meri is not coincidental – their political visions are important not just for comprehending East-Central European identity, but for the entire project of the European Union. As Mälksoo observes, “in comparison to Havel, Meri comes across as more openly nationalist, concerned, first and foremost, with the fate of his native country rather than that of humanity as a whole. While for Havel, the small is beautiful-maxim finds its expression in promoting a citizens-led (direct) democracy, Meri utilizes this slogan to pragmatically tie the telos of the European community to the protection of small states as part of the Union’s self-proclaimed guardianship of diversity.” Next is a contribution by Lithuanian philosopher Gintautas Mažeikis, himself a renowned Lithuanian public intellectual. His contribution uncovers a previously hidden history, that of the rise of Public Relations Man (pr-Man) in Russia. He provides in-depth knowledge of Russian intellectual movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, and he explains how in the 1990s and afterwards the former dissidents lost their moral authority witnessing the success of people who, thanks to the mechanism of public relations, reached the heights of the Kremlin. Mažeikis studies the fading away of honest and authentic voices of dissidents and social critics, and the rise of manipulative and cynical showmen as a construct of public relations in post-Soviet Russia. Mažeikis’ text explains that “at first, when the public intellectuals and critical thinkers refused to accept the services of pr-agencies, it was a refusal on idealistic grounds of a true believer in human essence and in the meaning of a dissident who believes in the ‘truth’. Soon the refusal and the critique of pr-Men and pr-agencies became fruitless, and the true essence of an authentic public intellectual became

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an illusion. The post-Soviet education had no critical tools for analyzing ­contemporary Russian public relations and how public consent was manufactured along with ‘democratic opinions’.” The third chapter of the third section was written by another well-known Lithuanian public intellectual, Almantas Samalavičius. His chapter provides an indepth study of the Lithuanian journal of culture Kultūros barai [Domains of Culture], which has a strong voice of social critique. Samalavičius tells the story of how various Lithuanian intellectuals of different ideological beliefs during the last thirty years of independence constructed their personalities as public intellectuals by being prolific and influential authors in the journal. By belonging to the multilingual Eurozine network (Eurozine is an online magazine and European network linking up more than 90 cultural journals and associates in 35 countries) the journal spreads its ideas globally and its authors transcend Lithuanian intellectual locality. Samalavičius notes an important subtlety in his text: “It must be admitted that critically minded intellectuals and writers had started to question Communist ideologically ‘ready-made’ certainties even before the social change of 1990; however, it was in the post-Soviet period that the journal established its intellectual format and performed its role in creating a public space open to critical reflections on society and its culture.” The fourth and final section is titled Political Travelogues and it consists of a single chapter written by a passionate fan of the Baltic countries, a Catalonian named Jordi Arrufat, who travelled by foot from the Estonian capital of Tallinn to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius to repeat the Baltic Way of 1989. He took interviews, which he poetically called “a Mosaic of Views 690 Kilometers Long”. Catalonians reaching out for their independence have repeated the Baltic Way in their own way by event of people holding hands: in 2013 it became known as the Catalan Way. This volume offers multiple discrete but related studies of topics that all reflect considerations of the legacy of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. As a whole the book aspires not only to thoughtfully reflect on the many changes and transformations that occurred, it equally seeks its place in the discourse(s) and reality(s) of Central and Eastern European life.

Part 1 Values, Memory, Identity

∵

Chapter 1

East-Central Europe Searching for (European) Values: How to Be More Than the “Proud Periphery”? Ladislav Cabada 1 Introduction1 The development of new East-Central European (ece) democracies after 1989 might be separated into two different parts – external and in many ways also internal evaluation. While the first fifteen years, crowned by the “big bang” EUenlargement in 2004, might be evaluated as a generally successful story of socialisation into the Western structures, i.e. democratisation and Europeanisation, the next fifteen years are often evaluated as the period of getting sober. Many scholars, analysts, politicians and media-experts from West European countries, but also an important part of the “liberal-democratic” observers in the ece have become convinced that the time span after the post-transitive period has not yet been long enough to expect the same characteristics and performance from the new EU-member states as in the case of the EU-15 group. Logically, the same actors are surprised and often disappointed that the new – or better said, some of the group of new – ecE democracies do not always bring about the best results. They often oppose generally accepted code of the European integration and identity. All of these seem to be matter of fact, at least when we the West European mainstream media reflect. In their perspective, the (East-)Central Europe is illiberal, we have to deal with the Big Bad Visegrád or Europe’s dark heart, Europe/the EU has to be in a clash of cultures. All of those labels may be found in The Economist from 30 January 2016 (Big Bad Visegrád 2016). ece, and in the first place the nations in the Visegrád Group, repeatedly demonstrate that they did not accommodate general European values. Paradoxically, instead of continuing a Europeanisation of values, memory and identity in many East-Central European nations we observed a strengthening of anti-EU and anti-European attitudes. As the Hungarian political ­scientist Attila Ágh stressed in his latest works, no later than after the 2008 1 This chapter was prepared with the support of an internal grant from Metropolitan University Prague “Politics, Media and Anglophone Studies”, internal code 80–01. © Ladislav Cabada, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_003

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f­inancial crisis outbreak did we have to deal with the polycrisis situation ­accompanied with de-Europeanisation, failure in the catching up process, a strengthening of the core-periphery divide in the EU/Europe and a decline in democracy in East-Central Europe. The migration crisis in 2015 and beyond even strengthened the mental gaps between so-called “Old Europe” and “New Europe”. In the last decade especially in ece, but surely also in several political parties and society groups in so called “Old Europe”, we observed the demands for “Another Europe” – more traditional, more authoritarian, and with a clear dominance and preference for national identity that is against European/EUidentity. These voices are calling again for Europe as a fortress. A new danger should be located beyond the European borders, comparable with the Middle Ages or the Cold War. Many ece politicians promptly and effectively use(d) this issue by stressing out that “Old Europe” and/or “Brussels” do not seriously reflect such danger. Such behaviour should be further evidence for the disinterest in ece, including the (great) power and/or colonial attributes (e.g. lack of discussion, one-side decisions, relocation quotas). For the ece populists this is development of new evidence of double standards and the unequal position of the EU’s East vis-á-vis the West. ece should (again) be the object of history and Great power politics, the instrument or victim of West European interests. In my contribution I follow two main goals. Firstly, I try to clarify the background and reasons for the trivial narrative about the “good West” and the “bad East” in Europe and falsify this black-and-white narrative. In my opinion, the important problems in some ece states must be analysed in a broader geographic and cultural-political frame. Namely, many problems and challenges we face in ece might also be observed within the “old democracies” and we have to analyse them as Europe-wide challenges. In other words, the popular “Manichaean” division of Europe into two subunits has to be refused, as far as we have to deal with a more colourful picture. Secondly, I will ask for the reasons for the dissimilarities of EU-member states with the specific focus on the post-Communist states. My basic hypothesis is that the most important differences are related to the unfinished and deformed modernity, and with the different value orientation in such nations. Again, I assume that such differences might be detected not only in the new EU-member states, but in ece they evince more distinctive intensity. Both presented main goals of my analysis reflect the question of European identity or identities. Naturally, the plurality of identities signifies also the plurality of values in my analysis. Thus, I will focus on development and co-­ existence of these two ideal-typical political cultures in Europe and ece, as

East-Central Europe Searching for (European) Values

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well as most important actors promoting these cultures. Both cultures seem to be interconnected with different narratives, memories, values and also identities. Thus, I will focus on the most important issues and stories related to them. 2

East-Central Europe as the (West) European Periphery

Analysing the history of ece as the space between the Germany/West Europe and Russia in the last two centuries, we will observe above all the history of uncertainty and insecurity. Such history was precisely labelled by Hungarian scholar István Bibó as the “The Misery of Small Eastern European States” (Bibó 1997). Indeed, since the Middle Ages and Renaissance period the Central European region developed slower in the economic, cultural and civilisational aspects in comparison with the “three daughters of Rome” – Italy, Spain and France. Of course, in the history of Central European nations – the Czech Lands, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland – we repeatedly find periods of upswing and boom, but such success usually remained limited to small urbanised areas and population groups. For long centuries closing the gap on the West became one of the most important narratives in East-Central Europe. Such a narrative in the region created many positively-rooted movements and actors, but naturally also anti-Western and anti-modern actors. Until the Enlightenment, above all France, served as a positive example. This role model function of a new, rapidly modernising nation had been ascribed to Germany since the beginning of the 19th century. All the more was the disappointment of the EastCentral European nations, when this civilisational mission was transformed into colonial takeover. This disappointment probably also produced the situation in which some of these nations directed their hopes towards another great power: Russia/ussr. The behaviour of both nations – Russia and Germany – but maybe also the geopolitically-rooted activities of other European powers led the East-Central European nations towards a specific victim-syndrome. Nowadays this syndrome still presents an important part of the collective mentality in East-­ Central Europe; that this region could be as well developed as the West, but was repeatedly betrayed, abandoned, occupied and exploited. As the result of such narratives we observe the mixture of admiration, envy and hate towards the West that is embedded in the centre–periphery opposite. Many East-Central European nations developed in the modern times into underdeveloped peripheries. “In consequence, the national movements in these countries articulated the national identity rather as the mobilization of the tradition and primordial

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community against the threats of modernity. The definition of national identity occurred parallelly with the cleavage between the tradition and modernity. As the result, such cleavage became even more distinctive … The importance of the cleavage between the modernization and traditionalism, between the Westernization and protection of the autochthonous national culture corresponds with the way how is the European identity constructed and required” (Brusis 2003: 261). Next to the victim-syndrome the inferiority complex belongs to the specifically East-Central European mentality, related to its difficult geopolitical position and resulting limited alternatives. The insecurity of the region might be overcome through two different methods. The first seems to be merging with the West. The easiest tool for such a merge seems to be EU-membership. This process is already institutionally finished, as far as the majority of ece nations have already joined the EU. But mentally it is much more difficult for both sides. In ece, a strong tradition of positive auto stereotypes has developed in the past, which means that ece nations often consider themselves morally better than those in other European regions – the East and also the West. Let me commemorate at this point the disappointment of Milan Kundera or Václav Havel regarding the consumptive and intellectually declining West as well as their conviction that Central Europe specifically might play a positive role in European revitalisation. The second option presents the integration and cooperation of the small (East-)Central European nations against the external pressures from both the European West and East. Until 1918 the Habsburg Empire tried to play such a role, but no earlier than 1867 was it clear that the ethno-national powers are stronger than the integrative ones. After World War i many integrative ideas and projects were proposed. These included the imperial project of Intermarium with Poland in the leading role, also Masaryk’s idea of the Europe in-between created as a belt of small nations from Finland to Greece, as well as many externally based projects (with France, Italy or Nazi Germany in the leading role). During the EU-enlargement process ece was usually prepared to develop regional cooperation only within the EU’s framework. Nevertheless, in the recent period, no earlier than 2015, we observe important changes in strategy and presentation. The (East-)Central European cooperation is presented and understood as the opposition or pure negation and an alternative towards the EU, or better said an alternative to the EU-mainstream. I have in mind the media and politicians, their way of presenting the EU-15/West and then presenting the “New Europe” as the problem in a very general manner; but vice versa some important actors in ece were presenting “Brussels”/West in a similarly general

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way as the primary problem by populistically declaring the struggle for more plurality, or even independence. The question is: what happened that we have to deal with the situation of important differences between the European “West” and “East”? Should it be reality or rather the constructed media-picture and public discourse? As already mentioned, I will stress above all the deformed modernity in ece as well as many historical turns which complicate the long-term stabilisation of values and identity. 3

Unfinished and Deformed Modernity as a Challenge for East-Central Europe

As stressed, the backwardness and modernisation gap vis-à-vis West Europe are not only related to the Communist legacy in ece. On the contrary, since the Early Middle Ages Central and Eastern Europe were understood as the less developed European regions striving to catch up with the West. The modernity commencement in the 19th century presented a new form of this old challenge. The response given by the Habsburg court and the reformulated national societies was colourful and in many ways contradictory. We already stressed that Central and East Europe might be understood as the semi-periphery and/or periphery of the Western “core”. In this sense Wandycz stresses that Central Europe, religiously and culturally belonging to the West, was ascribed to the East, regarding economic, technological and general civilisation development difference. Indeed, the border between the West and the East was not very clear in Central Europe; as the most important reason the author stresses the unclearness of this border within Germania and later Germany. Last but not least he stresses the relatively low population density in Central and Eastern Europe. In his opinion all of this made this region European semi-periphery with visible internal differences – Bohemia was close to the centre while the eastern Polish or Hungarian provinces presented the periphery (Wandycz 1992: 3–12). Let us stress that such an “internal” periphery was geographically located at the direct borders with East Europe/Russia and the Balkans/Ottoman Empire. Similarly, many other scholars and observers stress the development/modernity issue regarding the formation and identity of different European regions. Hugo von Hofmannsthal labelled the Central European population and the citizens of the Habsburg monarchy as “semi-European and semi-Asian nations” (Kożuchowski 2013: 86). A similar position is put forth in the concept of Ruritania presented at the end of the 19th century by the British writer A ­ nthony

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Hope. Ruritania is a German-speaking, Catholic land in Central Europe, the absolute monarchy containing deep social conflicts. The most important tension exists between the (almost) western urban elites and the rural ethnics settled in the (semi-)peripheries. Hope’s book presents the persiflage of the “exotic Central Europe that bordered the Balkans and was populated by wolves, Count Dracula, Gypsies, illiterate peasants, orthodox Jews, and notorious Polish and Hungarian nobles” (Kożuchowski 2013: 177). Similarly, the Czech and British Anthropologist Arnošt (Ernest) Gellner presents the Habsburg monarchy as the epicentre of the decisive modernisation conflict between the cosmopolite liberals (“the Viennese”) and the representatives of the “post-feudal obscurantism and authoritarianism” (Gellner 1998: 32–33). Such an approach is going against the clear region-identity nexus – the urban modernist might also be observed outside Vienna (Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Zagreb etc., but also the modernists settled as the minority and modernisation “oligarchy” representatives outside the urban areas) while the rural traditionalists might also be represented outside the country-side (let us mention the conservatism of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph the i.). Nevertheless, within the Habsburg Empire a different approach often dominated, equalising with the modernity or traditionalism of the nations. As mentioned, in the European macro-perspective at the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th centuries the great European narrative was formed regarding the “reconciliation of the old Latin-German world with the new European World of Slavs”. Such a Latin-German vs. Slavic division presents the consequences of longterm prejudice. Also within the Habsburg Empire such prejudice was used by the pan-Germans (perceiving themselves as the group that has to modernise the other ethnical groups – Ostleute – maybe with the exception of the Hungarians), but as well by some other liberal-national movements. In this sense, the German-speaking, as well as the Czech, Slovenian or Hungarian liberalnational intellectuals perceived themselves as fighters against the anti-modern actors (Kożuchowski 2013: 86–87). Reminiscences on such internal division of Central Europe might also be observed in the discussions after 1989. On one side we have to mention the “separation” and auto-stereotype of Austria towards “East-Central Europe”. On the other hand, the internal divisions within the post-Communist area are rooted in positive auto- and negative hetero-stereotypes. One of the most visible is the self-evaluation of the Visegrád Group as the nations that dispose of better preconditions for EU-membership than the other post-Communist states (Cabada – Walsch 2017: 41–47). Similarly, the “Central European identity”

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is usually understood as more positive than the “East-European” or “Balkan” identity. In 1990 Ralf Dahrendorf gave his prognosis that the post-Communist nations could not expect a fast recovery, especially regarding the creation of a stable and functioning civil society. For this he stressed that two generations of change (or six decades) were needed (Dahrendorf 1991: 101). Several theoreticians of transformation studies believed that some countries – (East) Central European as opposed to East European – should have better dispositions for the complicated triple transition (Offe 1996, 2004). The reasons for such a difference and such positive expectations should be the limited, but still existing, democratic experience and tradition of capitalist industrial economy, partial reforms in individual Communist states, and the common border with (West) Germany, Austria and Italy. Moreover, the bigger interests of these countries are interconnected with those of the countries in Central European countries (the future Visegrád Group) and Yugoslavia (especially the northern republics, Slovenia and Croatia) (Di Cortona 1991: 327; Cabada 2001: 48–49). For sure, historical experience and historical prejudice on both sides of the former Iron Curtain played an important role in such an optimistic vision. A quintessential example reflected from inside as well as by external actors is that the Visegrád Group were the group of nations disposed for faster democratisation and Westernisation than the other ece nations. An important reason for such an auto- and a hetero-perspective were the intellectual debates that took place from the 1960s to the 1980s (and also beyond), in which intellectuals such as Kundera, György Konrád, Claudio Magris or Adam Michnik played important roles in portraying Central Europe as “kidnapped” West. Maybe we should also search here for the reasons for the “disappointment” from the development in ece, as far as the clearly privileged nations are at the moment judged as the biggest “trouble makers”. Indeed, we have to stress that even before the Eastern Enlargement we could point to several signs that some other ece-nations evince important potential (Estonia, Slovenia). On the other side, it was also clear that the postCommunist reality and legacy is very unique. In 2003, shortly before the Big Bang-enlargement, German scholar Martin Brusis wrote: “From the EU perspective the candidate states evince much more common characteristics as some candidate states and the EU-member states or nations from other East European regions” (Brusis 2003: 259). On the other side this evaluation seems too general to me – the Euro-optimistic Slovenian political elite and society is significantly different from the Euro-sceptic Czech society (Cabada – Waisová 2010). Nevertheless, Brusis – as did many other scholars, politicians and ­thinkers – recognised correctly that Communism played a truly catastrophic

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role in destroying the values and creation of the specific mixture of old and quasi-new anti-liberal and collectivistic values. Vodička and Heydemann stress that the Communist rule “devastated the moral values from the pre-totalitarian period, drastically deformed the civic culture and erased the civil society” (Vodička – Heydemann 2013: 319). Polish philosopher Zdzisław Krasnodębski highlights the complicated reversal in the utopic models in ece’s societies – from the Communist utopia the region jumped directly into the Kantian utopia of European identity and civil society. Thus, we observe in ece “the hopes (but also fear) in three differently undergoing processes occurring within the EU – the globalization, Europeanization and regionalization” (Orłowski 2003). Again, we have to stress that these hopes and fears play important roles even in West European societies, but in ece they are stronger since they are interconnected with the transformation processes. Another Polish thinker, Piotr Sztompka, uses the term fake modernity when describing the societies in ece countries before 1989. Deformed modernity he places in contrast with the authentic modernity in Western societies (Sztompka 1993). Similarly, Slovenian sociologist Ivan Bernik describes the (post-) Communist societies as “sub-modern”. Bernik relativises the dichotomy between the traditional and modern societies observing in ece a unique mixture of both types. In his opinion, we have to deal with the societies that underwent partial modernisation during the Communist period, but also preserved important parts of traditional political institutions. In the West the modernisation happened especially at the economic level and was later extended into the sphere of political rights and strong functional differentiation based on societal pressure. The most important particularity of the Communist states is the top-down modernisation, the dictate of modernist intellectual and partly also political elites (Bernik 1997, 2000). This is valid for the majority of ece societies (Cabada – Kolarčíková 2016), maybe with small exceptions in lands where modernisation had already happened before World War i based on the German example, in Bohemia and among the urban elites. 4

Asymmetry between the West and East(-Central) Europe

Returning to the victim-paradigm strongly influencing the internal political and societal discourse in ece, we can also better understand how – based on this paradigm – the EU perceived is. Before the revolution, ece states were fully subordinated to Soviet interests, and they are often convinced about a similar subordination and/or unequal position within the EU. We can surely

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mention a plethora of political decisions or political behaviour examples, such as the unilateral decisions of Germany in the refugee crisis, or decisions about the energy revolution (Energiewende) including an important energy security dimension – the gas pipeline Nord Stream which is strongly criticised in many ece countries. Similarly we can mention the dismissive behaviour of French presidents towards the ece – Jacques Chirac criticised the ece politicians in February 2003 for their positive reflection of the US Iraqi invasion with the famous sentence They missed a good opportunity to shut up; Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly questioned the upcoming Czech EU-Presidency in the second half of 2008 and ignored the Czech EU-Presidency during the new round of the Near East crisis in January 2009; Emanuel Macron repeatedly uses the phrase about the “wall between the old and new EU-member states”. Co-responsible for such feelings of inequality – and let us stress that feelings are an important part of politics and strongly influence the discourse – is the incorrect rhetoric of some EU-representatives. For example, Jean-Claude Juncker greeted the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the EU-Summit in Riga in May 2015 with the words Servus, Diktator. Let us stress that such words and paroles are presented from institutions that in other cases rank political correctness as one of most important European values. In his book The New Order at the Old Continent Austrian historian Phillip Ther describes the “obvious asymmetry between the West and East Europe” (Ther 2015: 229). The West reflected the enlargement issue timidly and many steps of EU-15 towards the ece nations strongly violated one of the basic European values – equality. It is not only the issue of fear of uncontrolled immigration from ece and the transition periods implemented in many EU-15 states. As Fehr stresses the issue was much more complex. The EU-15 fear was connected with three factors: “insufficient participation in the revolution from 1989, fear from the concurrence at the labour market, and fear to share the own welfare with new members” (Ther 2015: 330). The West European political elites tried to avert the negative, above all, economic effects of East-enlargement, unfortunately based in unequal treatment of which a typical example is agrarian subventions. “Instead of essential reform of this policy (that failed primarily because of French agrarian lobby) could the farmers in new EU-member states, compared with the West, use only small piece of these subventions”. … Such “unequal treatment left a bad taste” (Ther 2015: 331). Also after 1 May 2004 we observe such steps of the European West, strengthening the inferiority complex in ece and the feeling of double-standards. Among the newest examples we might mention the doublestandards of eatables, playing an important role in domestic debate and electoral campaigns in the Czech Republic and Poland.

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On the other hand, we have to stress that the populist anti-EU rhetoric in many ece countries is often very incorrect. Let us mention the example of the spokesperson of Czech President Miloš Zeman – Jiří Ovčáček. In September 2017 he gave a comment on the decision of the European Food Safety Authority (efsa) that banned the production and use of fragrances within the alcoholic drink “Inlandsrum” (Tuzemák) based on its carcinogenicity. In his comment, Ovčáček compared the EU with the Nazi Third Reich: “Reich decided that we in the Protectorate cannot drink the rum anymore” (Gričová 2017). Nevertheless, it was more or less the scream of a populist, immediately strongly criticised from the majority of politicians, media and social groups. As much more problematic I reflect on the anti-modern rhetoric often produced by Hungarian, Polish or Croatian politicians enjoying the decisive support of strong societal groups. German political scientist Helmut Fehr refers again to the anti-modern nature of these political actors. The populist movement parties instrumentalise the problems related to coping with history and use it in the struggle for cultural sovereignty and dominance (Fehr 2017: 1). The anti-modern positions and statements from ece populists are directed against “liberal scholars, ‘foreign’ politicians, secular way of life imported from West Europe’”. We can observe the specific appeal to “normality” – “traditions, historical awareness, patriotism, trust in God, the normal family life between man and woman” (Fehr 2016: 141). The Polish political party Law and Justice (PiS), reflecting history and its processing as an important mobilisation tool, evaluates the development since the revolution in 1989 distinctively differently as the positively rooted part of the Polish society: Jaroslaw Kaczyński is talking about the “betrayal of Communists and Post-Communists, the Liberals and Europe-sympathizers” (Fehr 2017: 3). Fehr calls such an anti-modern position as “plebeianism” making an appeal “above all on the way of life of former rurally shaped masses”. Strengthening and generalising the argument, Fehr quoted the parole of Viktor Orbán from 2014 about Hungary: ‘We are the rurally shaped nation’ (Fehr 2016: 148). Again, we observe the typically premodern division of society and actors in two camps – “good” and “bad”, and “we” and “they”. The mobilisation patterns are rooted in a permanent search for enemies. Among the most popular enemies belong the minorities, neighbours, Great Powers (including the European Union and Germany), cosmopolites, liberals, Jews, George Soros etc. “The label “liberal” in Hungary became a synonym for “alienated” and the liberal camp as the group that harm Hungary in command of “foreign interests”. “Liberal” is used as the term for “collaboration”. In Poland Jaroslaw Kaczyński and other members of PiS prefer the terms “false elite” and “rabble

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liberalism” in the polemic with their political opponents, especially against the critical publicists and cultural counter-elites” (Fehr 2017: 10). Very popular are also warnings before the “Sovietization of the EU” and the “dominating left in Brussels”, expressed often by J. Kaczyński, V. Orbán or V. Klaus (Fehr 2016: 68; Fehr 2017: 11). Nevertheless, a similar anti-EU argument is also offered by the West European far right, while the radical left represents the EU as excessively right-wing and interconnected with financial circles. Criticism against the ece politicians as the only – or most important – “EUenemies” is here seemingly biased. Nevertheless, this should not mean that we could fully equalise the EUs West and East regarding the level or quality of democracy/democratisation and acceptance of (liberal) European values. Namely, all relevant analysis shows that the post-Communist nations in aggregate evince still important differences in comparison with the West. Günther Heydemann and Karel Vodička concentrate the criticisms against the ece ­political systems into one sentence: “Compared with the established EU-­ democracies there exist diverse democratic deficits in post-Communist EU-­area at the level of representation (above all virulent party systems), at the  level of actors (liability to corruption), and at the level of civil society (weaker support for democracy and missing preparedness to participation)” ­(Heydemann – Vodička 2013: 15). The results from this and similar studies reverberate also in the opinions of political actors and media in old EU-member states. Repeatedly and with strengthening tendency we could observe the discussions about the de-­ democratisation in ece stressing that the ece nations did not reach the level of a consolidated democracy. Naturally, above all the situation in Poland after the parliamentary elections in October 2015, many problematic steps of the Hungarian government and Prime Minister Orbán and the weak state in Romania seem to confirm the doubts in positive development in this region. We can also mention many other problematic tendencies, issues and actors, such as anti-liberal tendencies in Croatia, visible populist politicians such as Robert Fico, Victor Ponta or M. Zeman or the danger of state capture in the Czech Republic after 2017 with the Oligarch Andrej Babiš as the Prime Minister. On the other hand, we have to stress again that different problematic issues and manifestations in the politics of ece nations could be at least partially observed in the old EU-member states. Mediocracy came with Silvio Berlusconi to the EU and personalisation of politics including the populist rhetoric we must not only associate with radical or even extremist politicians such as Umberto Bossi, Jean-Marie Le Pen or Pim Fortuyn, but also with so called mainstream politicians such as Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder or Nicolas Sarkozy from the past (Cabada – Tomšič 2016), or Boris Johnson, Sebastian Kurtz

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or the still growing group of leading Italian populist politicians. Surely, we can also mention the very problematic practice of selling citizenship in Cyprus or Malta, or opening the door to the EU for Russian oligarchs. The political parties and party systems in ece are often labelled unstable. Nevertheless, very visible marks of important changes towards instability can also be observed in Greece, Spain, France, Austria and in Germany. Additionally, the radicalisation of important and big societal groups might be observed not only in ece, but also in many nations usually understood and presented as stable Western ­democracies – next to Italy we can mention the stable position of Vlaams Belang in Belgium, as well as successes of Marine Le Pen and National Front, Geert Wilders or True Finns. With all of these allusions I do not want to relativise all of the important problems in various ece lands and the necessity to efficiently overcome these problems and win the prospects for the democratic development in the future. Nevertheless, we have to operate with facts and data and not with media clichés presenting the ece as an ungrateful complex of unsolvable problems. The recent analyses – for example the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2017) – show a clear picture. The new democracies in ece are still placed at the end of the list of consolidated democracies – with Taiwan, Uruguay and Chile in a group of consolidating democracies – but consolidated democracies (bti 2016)! In every case where the tendency towards better results does not exist (Hungary, Poland, Romania) we should be critical and search for remedies. Shortly summarised, Heydemann and Vodička repeatedly draw attention to the matter of fact that the new EU-member states from ece as a whole are situated on the road towards consolidated democracy and better results evince as the contemporary candidate or potentially candidate states in South-­Eastern and Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. “Population in the new EUmember states in majority supports the democracy not only as a model but as the real system and decisively denies the anti-democratic system alternatives […] While the post-Communist EU-countries are evaluated without any exception as “consolidating democracies” by the independent experts, the other post-Communist nations are in the best case labelled as defect democracies” (Heydemann – Vodička 2013: 320). The authors declare that “endemic corruption” is the most pressing problem of ece (Heydemann – Vodička 2013: 378). Unfortunately, I must fully agree with the authors regarding this issue, and add that many newcomer parties and anti-political movements in ece succeeded with the anti-corruption rhetoric, and then usually continued in the corruptive practices and often even deepening the state capture tendencies.

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Can we expertly confirm that the group of new EU-member states reflects the problems of “old democracies”? In my opinion, it is impossible, because many “old democracies” evince different problems with the quality of democracy. On the other hand, in ece there are many examples of promising consolidation of democracy, Europeanisation and socialisation. Many ece nations fulfilled very strict preconditions and adopted the Euro-currency, many demonstrated fiscal responsibility and (re)established stable economies after long decades of Communist devastation, the unemployment rates in many ece states is visibly under the EU-average, many governments from ce have already successfully experienced the EU-Presidency tasks. As Vodička and Heydemann conclude: “The most difficult times for the Eastern EU-nations are already in the past: in societal, economic and political sphere we can expect mainly positive development” (Heydemann – Vodička 2013: 380). But all this is before we witnessed the building of “illiberal democracies in Hungary and Poland, following the national populism from the period between the wars” (Fehr 2016: 7) as we witnessed a similar evolution of national populism in France or extremist movements in other EU-countries. Nevertheless, we should not accept a simple picture presenting politicians such as J. Kaczyński as a prototype or sociotype of an ece-politician. Such labelling of politics in ece is completely incorrect regarding any democratic political actors in the region. The older EU-member states show many typical elementary attributes of the older brother syndrome, similarly as it is discernible for example in the Czecho-Slovak relations after 1918 or in the West-East relations within Germany after the reunification. The “younger brother” response in such a situation is logically impulsive, often hysterical and negative. Specifically in this situation, genuine Europeans on both sides of the constructed intra-European border must be in search of the consensus which establishes a win-win-situation. Civil society in ece is in many cases weak, often the actors of a so called bad civil society (Chambers – Kopstein 2001) belong among the strongest – the antiliberal, often even extremist, homophobic, with militant associations. Let us stress here that the struggle against the Communist totality in ece states was often waged by the dissidents that did not accept the liberal-democratic values. I agree here fully with M. Brusis, stressing the principal role of civil society: “The construction of the national identity as inherent European and so embedded in the European values and norms facilitated the institutionalisation of civil society” (Brusis 2003: 262). The EU’s socialisation role nowadays is even more important than fifteen and more years ago, but must not be utilised as one of the conditionality components. The ece nations must enjoy full rights of EU-membership. If not, the wall will be constructed between the new and old member states. Last but not

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least, we have to mention that in the old EU-member states we may observe many signs of bad civil society, or – more generally – problems and menaces for the consolidated democracy. West Europe also has to accept the matter of fact that the European identity is much more complicated with the new member states and that the EU is not an identical institution to Europe. Even before the big bang enlargement, Brusis expressed a clear opinion regarding this issue: “In the early 1990s the importance of the European identity was closely tied with the breakup with the state-socialist past. The motto “Back to Europe” represented diffused and affective picture of Europe: Europe as dreamed-of ­contra-World against the hopeless state-socialist reality with its Communist ideology, Soviet hegemony and Marxist-Leninist state and society organization. The vision of the return to Europe implicated that the individual ece nation was the European component for long period in the past and part of European civilizational and cultural orientation. Nevertheless, based on the unfortunate historical events was this component artificially separated from Europe. Such a historical interpretation negates the (historically possible) alternative rendition of Europe as extensively reflected cultural and civilizational area including also the regions located to the East and South-East to its borders. As far as the diffuse-affective conception of Europe dominated the term Europe became the synonym to the EU-membership and vice versa. It did not exist any reason to differentiate between the European Community and Europe, the EU-membership and membership in other European organization and affiliation with the European culture” (Brusis 2003: 257). Brusis differentiates between the EU-member identity and European identity, and two concepts of “Europeanness” – synonymic and synecdochical. The “synonymic concept” presents the EU and EU-membership as the only possible way the nation and society can partake in the European identity. The “synecdochical concept” understands the European identity as something that must not necessarily be developed and constructed within the EU. During the process of approaching the EU the synonymic concept was usually accepted, naturally also for the pragmatic reasons: “The internal vagueness in mutual relation of both identity definitions allowed the internal critics of East enlargement to use the synonymic relation, while they in the reality preferred the synecdochical relation” (Brusis 2003: 268). In other words, the opinion of the EU-15 that the candidate states must fully adapt in all spheres to become European, was accepted in the group of candidates for simple reason – to reach the EU-membership. Once the nation entered the EU, the balancing process between the both ideal typical positions started: “The EU-membership is strongly singled out from the Europeanness

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and the definition of European identity” (Brusis 2003: 25). Such changes happen partly also because the new member states face a system of exceptions and softened rules, mostly regarding the old member states. Important examples include the issue of a common European currency and the position of the United Kingdom and Denmark compared with the ece states, the violation of fiscal rules not only in the case of Greece, but also by other nations including Germany, Italy and France, the opt-outs etc. Brusis concludes: “The crux of the problem is not to find the European borders. In many cases, the main issue is to balance the synecdochical and synonymic identity concept. At the same time, it is necessary to seriously take into consideration the function and relevance of national European identity for the democratization process in Central and Eastern Europe […] The EU-membership is partly representation and symbol of the European identity […] and the EU-membership has for the European identity the decisive importance. However, the European identity undoubtedly means more as the EU-membership” (Brusis 2003: 268–269). Here we return again to the question of common European values that could be shared by the Swiss, Norwegians and Ukrainians. Václav Havel clearly responded to this question, confessing for the European future on the basis of shared values “that arose from the best tradition and gained historical experiences […] Respect to the human rights, rule of law, civil society, sense for social fairness, care for the nature and for our environment” (Lermen 2003: 47). 5 Conclusion Shortly before the eastern EU-enlargement in 2004, Brusis stressed that all Auto- and Hetero-stereotypes regarding the East–West cleavage still survive in Europe and were re-formulated regarding the conditions where the modernisation narrative was transformed into Europeanisation. Again, he observes two important – and completely different – antipodes, namely the liberal modernists supporting Europeanisation as the last phase of Westernisation, and the traditionalists stressing the need to protect the autochthonous national cultures (Brusis 2003: 261). Such evaluation presents East-Central Europe again as the transitive region between the West and East. Nevertheless, the contemporary institutional framework clearly divided the East-Central European region into three sub-regions – EU-members; candidates states; Eastern Europe. Thus, the identity-region nexus got the new impulse in the Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe that might – but not necessarily must – be equalised with these newly and from outside – the European West or, in other words, “Old Europe” or “EU-15” – conceptualised groups of nations. These groups formulate

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their own perception regarding the West – EU-members as part of the West or “New Europe” – but also among themselves. Indeed, the geographical proximity combined with the Christian/European values might be observed as the common positive self-image of Central Europe and the Balkans. Polish, Hungarian and Croatian politics and historiography often stresses their important role in protecting Europe against non-European invaders (Russians/Soviets, Ottomans). Similarly, we often hear the interpretation of the Balkans as “the last bastion of Europe, standing as a bulwark in a defence of true European (Christian) values” (Aleksić 2013: 49). If we observe the contemporary political discourse in ece, this historical role is often stressed and combined with the criticism towards the “ultraliberal” Western Europe/EU and presented as “overall disillusionment with European values” (Aleksić 2013: 70). This brings us back to the Ruritania concept and the conflict of two different cultures and societal groups in the region(s). In my opinion, East-Central Europe has the tendency to accept only the “technical” part of modernisation (industrialisation, welfare), but not the “ideological” part, namely the liberal democracy. The proponents of such “limited modernisation” often stress that East-Central Europe evince better characteristics and is morally superior in the comparison with the West. All this reminds us on “limited modernization” of Russia or Turkey, i.e. the direct neighbours to the analysed regions influencing the development in ece nowadays. After 1837, Turkey underwent partial modernisation following the example of the West. “Westernization implied nothing more than controlled translation of Western cultural elements into the Eastern tradition. Islamic culture continued to provide the moral compass, and was preserved in order to dictate the boundaries of the emerging East-West relationship” (Ergin 2010: 246). Expectation that only part of the Western/European modernisation style might be implemented into ece presents the agenda of national-conservative actors in these regions and also brings them closer to the before-mentioned non-­ European actors or – in their own perception – again divides Europe into two or more parts. In their perspective, ece presents themselves (again) the protector of Europe, this time against the West European nations that are supposedly abandoning “European values”. In such a perspective the ece identity is supposed to be “better” than the rest of Europe. If we compare EU Central European part to the other parts of ece, the main difference is in the issue of EU-membership. Political actors in ece’s EU-­ member states present their “regional difference” within the EU and are asking about the balanced influence of “old” and “new” Europe within the Union. Meanwhile, the national-conservative and anti-modernist politicians in the Balkans and non-EU Eastern Europe reject the idea of EU-membership

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stressing the quest for protecting the “moral quality” of their nations outside “decadent” Europe. Indeed, we should not forget that also the father-grounders of post-Cold War Central European regional integration stressed the “specific quality” of their visions as well as nations. After 1989, “the Central European project continued to operate as a political project in the way it always had: as a moral appeal and reproach addressed to Western Europe”. Soon, the “discourse on Central Europe have become part of the armoury of official foreign policy” (Neumann 1999: 156–158). The Central European identity offered “a way out of Soviet-type homogenization in emphasizing the European qualities of the local cultures … but by offering individuals a second, higher tier of identity, it can help them to escape the threat of reductionism encapsulated in political nationalism”. As Schöpflin optimistically concluded, “the Central Europe project is potentially a viable way of re-Europeanizing the area recovering some of the values, ideals, aspirations, solutions and practices that were eliminated by ­Soviet-type system” (Schöpflin 1989: 7). In the last two centuries, the ece went through innumerable changes ­regarding the polity construction, demographic structure and depopulation/ repopulation fluidity (Bianchini 2017: 39) and socio-economic conditions. Naturally, all these changes also presented a permanent challenge for the identity discussion. “Under the framework of the time-space compression characteristic of modern times, the relationship between political systems, state borders, identities and security has taken on a new appearance, particularly for the people living in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans during the arch of the twentieth century” (Bianchini 2017: 1–3). As Bianchini stresses, to belong to the European East means to experience the “permanent” insecurity given by geographical proximity. To escape such pressure means joining the West (or the North, as Wæver proposes for the Baltic part of East-Central Europe; Wæver 1992). Such opportunity is especially interconnected with Central Europe as semi-periphery, while Eastern Europe and the Balkans as the peripheries usually do not have such opportunity. Small Central European countries, “although many of them were packed in the Habsburg Empire for several centuries, suffered from the pressures of Western modernised and industrialised states, on one side, and the Eastern empires (Russian and Ottoman), on the other. They have been swinging through history between long waves of Westernisation and Easternisation” (Ágh 1991: 84–85). The “year of miracles”, i.e. the year 1989, opened again the perspective of Westernisation for these nations. Many of these nations used this new “opportunity window” and overcame the unfavourable geographical proximity and unfinished modernity. Despite the fact that some important actors in ece still

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prefer the posture of “proud periphery” before the Westernisation in the sense of modernisation and liberalisation, I am convinced that ece as a region continually progresses towards full inclusion in Europe. Nevertheless, for such inclusion it is necessary for West Europe to be as a partner and not (only) as a mentor. Furthermore, the real menace for the democracy consolidation in ece demonstrates not only the democratic decline in the region, but also the possible de-democratisation in the European West. In this sense, West Europe must reflect the processes of democracy de-consolidation in some ece nations as its own distorted mirror. In this sense, the real democrats in both European macro-regions face the same challenge. References Ágh, Attila (1991) “After the Revolution: A Return to Europe”. In Towards a Future European Peace Order?, edited by Karl E. Birnbaum, Josef B. Binter and Stephen K. Badzik, London: Pinter, 83–97. Aleksić, Tatjana (2013) The Sacrificed Body. Balkan Community Building and the Fear of Freedom. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Bernik, Ivan (1997) Dvojno odčaranje politike. Ljubljana: Faculty of Social Sciences. Bernik, Ivan (2000) Political Culture in Post-socialist Transition. Radical Cultural Change or Adaptation on the Basis of Old Cultural Patterns? Frankfurt/Oder. Bianchini, Stefano (2017) Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. Bibó, István (1997): Bída malých národů východní Evropy. Bratislava/Brünn. Big, Bad Visegrád (2016) Economist, 28 January 2016, available at https://www.eco nomist.com/news/europe/21689629-migration-crisis-has-given-unsettling-new -direction-old-alliance-big-bad-Visegrád (04.10.2017). Brusis, Martin (2003) Zwischen europäischer und nationaler Identität – Zum Diskurs über die Osterweiterung der EU. In Europäische Öffentlichkeit – Bürgergesellschaft – Demokratie. Ansgar Klein: Opladen, 255–272. bti 2016 (2017) Bertelsmann Stiftungs Transformation Index 2016, unter: https://www .bti-project.org/en/home/ (08.10.2017). Cabada, Ladislav – Kolarčíková, M. (2016): Balkánské komunismy. Prague: Libri and mup Press. Cabada, Ladislav – Tomšič, Matevž (2016) The Rise of Person-based Politics in the New Democracies – The Czech Republic and Slovenia. In: Politics in Central Europe, 12(2), 29–50. Cabada, Ladislav – Waisová, Šárka (2010) Slovenia as an EU-member – a Euroenthusiastic Society and Political Elite. In The Czech and EU Presidencies in a Comparative Perspective, edited by Petr Drulák and Zlatko Šabič. Dordrecht, 37–54.

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Cabada, Ladislav – Christopher Walsch (2017) Od Dunajské federace k Visegrádu … a zpět? Tradiční a nové formáty středoevropské spolupráce. Prague: Libri and mup Press. Dahrendorf, Ralf (1991): Betrachtungen über die Revolution in Europa. Stuttgart. Di Cortona, Pietro Grilli (1991) From Communism to Democracy – Rethinking Regime Change in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In: International Social Science Journal, No. 128, 315–330. Ergin, Meliz. (2010) Otherness within Turkey, and between Turkey and Europe. In Europe and its Others. Essays on Interception and Identity, edited by Paul Gifford and Tessa Hauswedell, Bern: Peter Lang, 245–262. Fehr, Helmut (2016) Vergeltende Gerechtigkeit – Populismus und Vergangenheitspolitik nach 1989. Opladen/Berlin/Toronto. Fehr, Helmut (2017): Populismus und Aufarbeitung des Kommunismus in Europa. In: Erinnern, 2017/1, Rundbrief der Stiftung Gedenkstätten Sachsen-Anhalt. Gellner, Ernest (1998) Language and Solitude. Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gričová, Andrea (2017) Ovčáček přirovnal EU na nacistické třetí říši. Výroku si všimli i v zahraničí. Novinky.cz, 29. September 2017, https://www.denik.cz/ze_sveta/ ovcacek-prirovnal-eu-k-treti-risi-vyroku-si-vsimly-i-zahranicni-agentury-20170929 .html. (08.10.2017). Heydemann, Günther / Vodička, Karel (Hrsg.) (2013): Vom Ostblock zur EU – Systemtransformationen 1990–2012 im Vergleich. Bonn: Bundeszentralle für politische Bildung. Chambers, Simone – Kopstein, Jeffrey (2001) Bad Civil Society. In: Political Theory 29(6), 837–865. Kożuchowski, Adam (2013) The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary. The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Interwar Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Lermen, Birgit (2003) Einführung in den wissenschaftlichen Teil. In: Brücke zu einem vereinten Europa. Literatur, Werte und Europäische Identität. edited Birgit Lermen and Milan Tvrdík. Prague, 43–49. Neumann, Iver B. (1999) Uses of the Other. “The East” in European Identity Formation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Offe, Klaus (1996) Varieties of Transition. Cambridge. Offe, Klaus (2004) Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe. In: Social Research 71(3), 501–528. Orłowski, Hubert (2003) Literatur und nationale Identität (heute). Brücke zu einem vereinten Europa. Literatur, Werte und Europäische Identität. edited Birgit Lermen and Milan Tvrdík. Prague, 51–80. Schöpflin, George. (1989) Central Europe: Definitions Old and New. In In Search of Central Europe, edited by George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood, Cambridge: Polity, 7–29.

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Sztompka, Piotr (1993) Civilisational Incompetence – The Trap of Post-Communist Societies. In: Zeitschrift für Soziologie 22(2), 85–95. Ther, Philipp. (2015) Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europas. 3. Auflage Berlin. Vodička, Karel – Heydemann, Günther (2013) Postkommunistischer EU-Raum – ­Konsolidierungsstand und Perspektiven. In: Vom Ostblock zur EU: Systemtransformationen 1990–2012 im Vergleich. Edited by Günther Heydemann and Karel Vodička. Bonn: Bundeszentralle für politische Bildung, 319–380. Wæver, Ole (1992) Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War. International Affairs, no. 1, 77–102. Wandycz, Piotr S. (1992) The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. London & New York: Routledge.

Chapter 2

Thirty Years in Search for Identity in Central Europe Tomas Kavaliauskas 1 Introduction The task of interpreting Central European identity in relation to the fall of the Iron Curtain thirty years ago first of all requires an explanation of how we understand the term “Central Europe”. We invest more into geopolitical and cultural maps, rather than geographical ones. As we would like to enlarge Central Europe northwards to the Baltic states and southwards to the Balkans (at least those countries that belong to the EU), let us start with two insights from Jody Jensen and Ferenc Miszlivetz, from Hungary. Jensen writes: The concept of Central Europe, in my mind, certainly extends to the Baltics and the Balkans. In fact, our institution still works with the metaphor of the “Amber Road” which extended from the Baltics to the Adriatic. Cultural affinities, as well as historic experience, support this notion of a broader and more inclusive conceptualization of Central Europe. Many times these affinities and common sensitivities are more clearly visible in the structure of the EU, for example, where distinctions between East and West, North and South, are sometimes brought into higher relief. (Jensen 2014: 134) Miszlivetz writes: The historically-rooted Central European cultural identity has many expressions in the fine arts and literature, just to mention the novels of Philip Roth, or Robert Musil or the essays of Czesław Miłosz. In this ­historic-cultural sense Central Europe includes the Baltic region, as well as the Western Balkans and Transylvania. Cultural impact and feelings of belonging cannot be limited by the borders of old and new states or empires. In other words, Central Europe is a mixture of the ‘territorial’ and the ‘non-territorial’. (Miszlivetz 2014: 134–135)

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Central Europe is also the New Europe, if we are to treat this region as including the new EU members since 2004. The countries of this region had different levels of economic and political liberties already in the times of socialism between wwii and 1989. The region had more suppression than liberties, yet those levels of suppression differed per country. Generalizations of the Communist “East” (a term that brutally blends Eastern Europe with Central) are misguiding and it is important to deconstruct those generalizations in order to show that even under socialism different countries had their different levels of political suppression for freedom of speech and economic suppression for the liberal market. These different levels expose different pre1989 cases and, therefore, different premises as well as conditions for post-1989 transformations. Different memories and traumatic historical experiences are even more important when discussing the search for Central European identity. Difficulties in creating trans-national history, and continuous disagreements of to whom “truly” belongs this or that city and border region, cause inner tensions among the countries. This seems to be the case with the Hungarians in Romania when Hungarians in Northern Transylvania seem to be more politically oriented towards the “original” home country, Hungary; also the Poles in Lithuania seem to be more aligned with the politics of Warsaw, especially when it includes language issues; also the Russians in Latvia and Estonia share the same memory politics with Moscow, e.g. liberation of Latvia and Estonia in wwii, instead of occupation. In addition to these linguistic-nationalistic perspectives, the New Europe is no longer sharing the same liberal democratic ideals. Some of the countries are against it, but at the same time managing to maintain unity within the structures of nato. Still for other countries even being a member of nato has meant becoming geopolitically friendly with Russia, which is anti-nato. Identity changes in Poland are noticeable in terms of its shift to political authoritarianism, but geopolitically it remains the same: anti-Russian and pro-­ American. The Hungarian and Czech cases indicate their shift towards cooperation with Russia. The Baltic States, on the other hand, as the Northern New Europe that feels ontologically insecure in the neighborhood of Russia, continuously raises red flags regarding the dangers, which by itself makes the geopolitical voice of these states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) distinct from some of the voices in Central Europe. The recent migration crisis provoked further distinctions within Central European countries. Their attitudes towards sharing and accepting migrants differ. The emphasis on the right to remain an ethnically homogeneous nation is also trumpeted unequally loudly. Hungary and Lithuania are different in this

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regard. But the overall concern regarding mismanagement of the migrations is felt and debated more along the lines of local ethnic traditions, rather than global racial variety. National voices of patriotism in 1989 were understood as liberal; the same impression was shared in 2004 when Central European countries joyfully joined the EU. But today liberal patriotism and nationalistic patriotism have become two different things: liberal patriotism “for my country’s and your country’s freedom” seems to be drifting into the past of the year 1989 as nationalistic patriotism took over. A fundamental question is: why did this happen? 2

What Is “East” and What Is “West”?

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is celebrated as the unification of West and East Germany, but in this chapter we would like to embrace a larger context – to treat the fall of the Berlin Wall as the fall of the geopolitical Iron Curtain that was dividing Europe into the democratic and Communist world. Thus, the “West” will be in quotation marks in order to indicate that it is not about the geographical West, but about the geopolitically conceptual West, because the European Coal and Steal Community of 1952, then European Economic Community of 1957 included Italy, which is a Southern country geographically, yet on a geopolitical map it was the West. Prague as the capital of the former socialist Czechoslovakia has always been more westward than Austria’s capital Vienna, yet Prague was considered to be on the East side of Europe due to Czechoslovakia’s belonging to the Warsaw pact, which de facto dissolved in 1989 and de jure dissolved in 1991. Thus, geographical and geopolitical West and East do not always coincide. It was Communism as such, and not only the Soviet Union, that stood against capitalism, democracy, and liberalism. The Communist ideology that was implemented in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries of the Warsaw Pact promoted collectivism with the economic emphasis on the State’s ownership, whereas liberalism as an ideology promoted individualism with the economic emphasis on private property. The Communist party as the only legitimate party in the socialist countries of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union controlled private business, regulated individual aspirations in business activity, whereas the economy of the “West” was based on private initiatives, entrepreneurship, business leadership within free market. On a political level the Communist ideology was unimaginable without the censorship of history (providing “correct” history narratives for identity of the republics of the Soviet Union) and persecution of political dissidents (imprisoning or even isolating

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them in mental hospitals), limitation of human rights to express religious believes (with the exception in Poland, which was not a part of the Soviet Union, but of the Warsaw Pact). The harshness of censorship and personal life control fluctuated according to the severity of the regime at different periods – from Stalin to Nikita S. Khrushchev, from Leonid Brezhnev to the Perestroika initiators Yuri V. Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev. That is the case of the Soviet Union. In the case of Warsaw Pact countries, for instance the socialist Czechoslovakia, the harshness of censorship and persecution increased after the legendary Prague 1968 uprising. Therefore, the map of Communist ideological brutality depends on the particular country and on the particular time period. Admittedly, in the geopolitically conceptual “West” – both Western Europe and the United States – the degree of democracy and freedom of speech was also evolving, if we are to remember various racial and homophobic prejudices, struggles for women’s rights, and all the social turmoil in the post wwii period. The “Western” democracy countries certainly were in search for their updated forms of human rights and human dignity. In other words, neither Communism in the “East” nor democracy in the “West” should be treated as pure or absolute; neither of them possessed the absolute Truth of its own ideology. Instead, both pre-1989 ideologically different parts of Europe could be treated as having their variations in the degree of ideological implementations. That embraces the economic and political dimensions. The varying degrees of the Communist ideology’s imperfections (if one is to criticize Communism from the perspective of democratic ideology) and perfections (if one is to praise from the perspective of Communist ideology) in practice are even more obvious when we compare the pre-1989 countries from the “East”: socialist Poland, socialist Hungary, socialist Romania as well as other Warsaw pact countries and the Soviet Union had different levels of suppression of capitalist market and different levels of suppression of freedom of speech. 3

Different Levels of Pre-1989 Suppression of a Capitalist Market

“‘Proto-neoliberal’ ideas existed in Hungarian society before the formal ‘transition’ in 1989–1990. […] the ‘Dimitrov Square Boys’, in reference to the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest (where the country’s economic and political elite – including most of the above-mentioned Dimitrov Square Boys – received their schooling in neoclassical economics), the members of this group played a key role in reform debates in the 1980s through the articulation and

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promotion of certain ideas and practices about the transition”, writes Fabry (2018: 97). Thus, when the formal transition started after 1989, Hungary had already started that process and had necessary experience. Slovenia also had its prior 1989 economic advancements. Needless to say, the fact that this country avoided the war of the former Yugoslavia helped a lot. After 1989 Slovenians did not have to start learning how to live and perform under market conditions, because they already had the experience. During the 1970s from Slovenia, just like from the other Yugoslavia’s countries, its citizens emigrated to the Western European countries, especially to neighboring Austria and Germany. Some of the emigrants returned before the end of socialism and shared their experience for the creation of small business (Norkus 2008: 625). These Slovenian cases have to do with the larger context of the specifics of the former Yugoslavian Communist ideology, which in its own way had inclinations for liberties and gradual “revisionistic social experiments” (Norkus 2008: 21). The key word here should be “competition”. The elements of the capitalist market even under socialism are the most recognizable when competition in sales and profit is allowed or tolerated. The Soviet Union tolerated private business under license of a homemaker, but under strict regulations making sure that a homemaker does not get rich; this, therefore, does not produce in abundance. Those who did not adhere to such legal regulations were called speculators or profiteers, the enemies of socialism and the enemies of the soviet people. The context of the Yugoslavian socialist market is radically different because of competition. One of the reasons why Slovenia had its post-1989 post-socialist economic success is because of well-developed market under socialism pre-1989, which included self-regulations. The directors of enterprises could independently make economic decisions. The enterprises had real market competition (Norkus 2008: 624). Consequently, the profiteer could not be the enemy of socialist Slovenia. Of course, there may be an objection that the case of Slovenia is applicable only to some extent, or not applicable at all, because this country as a part of the former Yugoslavia did not belong to the Warsaw Pact and had market socialism with open borders to the “West” unlike the Soviet Union with its satellite Warsaw Pact countries with hermetically sealed borders. However, we may counter argue that it was the same Communist ideology which demonstrated the ability to be open economically, allowing socialist-liberal market, therefore, the Soviet Union’s socialistic heritage did not have to be the only sample for the representation of Communist ideology. Secondly, pre-1989 Romania, in spite of belonging to the Warsaw Pact, had its independence under Nicolae Ceausescu regime, just like the Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito’s regime, but

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Romania’s form of socialist economy did not allow any forms of liberal market. But Hungary, despite being a Warsaw Pact country, maintained the spirit of the Budapest 1956 uprising and had economic reforms before 1989. 4

Different Levels of Pre-1989 Suppression of Freedom of Speech Both in the “East” and in the “West”

From the end of wwii and from the beginning of Yalta’s 1945 division of Europe into two Europes (one under the supervision of the U.S., Great Britain, and France, the other under the Soviet Union), the degree of censorship, prohibition of free speech, and limitation of individual business interests were changing differently in different countries at different stages, until 1989: in Poland the Catholic church was an island of freedom of speech as some scholars call the Polish church as state within a state; in Hungary, as mentioned above, market socialism reforms introduced, which, needless to say, would be impossible without a certain degree of freedom of speech to express “taboo” ideas; Gorbachev did the same in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s giving permission to form cooperatives for private business in order to fulfil the gap of supply and demand; typewriters were accessible in the Soviet Union and in the former socialist Czechoslovakia, of what the political dissidents took advantage for samizdat culture; but that was not the case in Romania under the strict control of Nicolae Ceausescu – a typewriter was not for personal use. The difference in the strictness of border control says a lot about the insecurity of the Soviet Union and the self-assurance of socialist Yugoslavia. The hermetically closed borders of the Soviet Union with special permissions to visit the Warsaw Pact countries says a lot not only about movement restrictions, but also about freedom of speech – you are not allowed to travel to the “rotten capitalists” to share your golden socialistic life experience. However, during the socialist times of Yugoslavia the possibility to cross the border was the reason for massive emigration, especially to Switzerland. Therefore, we have to be careful what impression the previous analyses of the socialist market of Yugoslavia leaves, especially of socialist Slovenia with its market competition. However, some differences in the level of freedom and democracy limitations should be noticed in the democratic “West” as well. When did Spain become democratic? When did it start democracy after Franco’s authoritarian regime? Don’t we see any continuation of the Franco dictatorship when in 2019 the body of the dictator is removed from the mausoleum and in the same year Spanish government refused to have a dialogue with the Catalonians who seek independence? Spain has Catalonian politicians and an activist imprisoned,

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which means that Spain has political prisoners within the European Union. Thus, Spain also differs with its own level of democracy from other EU countries. Then, we may just as well ask: when did Great Britain stop persecuting homosexuals as if that country did not have to be thankful to Alan M. Turing – the famous code-breaker that helped to decode military plans of the Nazis? Alan Turing today is “an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts” (Laid Law Scholars 2020). The debates for homosexual equality did not start until the 1960s. Then, if we are to take a look at the Unites States, we may ask the following question: when did African Americans and women gain equality? Martin Luther King says his famous “I have a dream” speech in 1963; however, it takes decades till the dream becomes true in practice in fragmented ways. If we are to go back to Europe, then the protests of Paris 1968 expose a lot about the dissatisfaction with capitalism. The intellectuals flirted with the ideas of Communism ignoring Prague 1968. The uprisings or protests of Paris 1968 were repeated in 2018–2019 by the movement des gilets jaunes [Movement of the Yellow Vests] demanding social justice, social responsibility from the capitalists. Basically, it is a revolutionary movement, although sadly with the elements of hooliganism and overbearing destruction, which is very different from the peaceful civil disobedience of Martin Luther King and his followers. If we are to add the protests of the greens who raised ecological awareness as well as necessity to criticize the forms of capitalist egocentric interests of oil companies and car industry, then the picture of the morally superior “West” standing in opposition to the evil Communist “East” during the cold war period becomes complicated; however, not without clear ideological distinctions and different possibilities for an individual self-realization. 5

On the Eastern European Road to Western Democracy and Capitalism

The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 did not establish democracy in the European “East” (leaving aside the former Yugoslavia, which after 1989 had a war) in itself, but granted the possibility to make a transition from one Communist party political system to multi-party democratic elections. Implementation of democracy had to follow immediately after the celebration of the “Big Event” of the peaceful revolution; however, the leaders of the angelic revolution declared only an abstract value of “living in freedom”, spreading slogans for such ideals with the energy of victory over the Communist regime. The question in

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Poland and Lithuania was to what extent the Solidarność leaders and the ­leaders of Sąjūdis (Independence movement) were capable of running an economy. Thanks to hindsight, we know the tendency of disappointments of the ideals by 1993 in Lithuania and in Poland by 1995 when the former Communists returned to power and became the presidents. For Vladimir Tismaneanu this is the logic of changes from the Communist past to democracy when the Communist politicians returned under new political conditions (Tismaneanu 1996). Only in salvation fantasies does 1989 mean a completely new chapter of Eastern Europe; yet in practice the ghosts from the past reemerge, although with different slogans and promises. The “Big Event” mobilized the citizens to overthrow the regime on the level of ideals, but the citizens lacked a fundamental understanding about the upcoming task – to build civic society with the forms of freedom, not really knowing how they will feel about tolerance according to the Western European standards to those who are different ethnically, racially, and religiously. The citizens had a vague idea about what it means to create multi political parties and learn democratic debates, on the one hand; and on the other to face coalitions of the ideologically different parties, arrangement and manipulation of the polls in the name of democracy. But the learning process was fast – manipulations of public opinion using political science techniques was implemented rather quickly. That is when manipulation with ideals starts. Evidently if the liberal patriotism in 1989 called for positive freedom – to create, to be self-master of your country – so the era of post-1989 manipulative elections are more about the negative aftermath of freedom that includes Machiavellian shades. This mentioning of positive and negative freedom is not identical to what Isaiah Berlin had in mind. First of all, he developed such concepts much before 1989 when the Cold War was at its core. Isaiah Berlin’s lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty” that he gave in 1958, could be called the defense of liberalism in the face of Communist ideology, not even considering the side effects that strike when freedom is achieved, when the ideals fade and the real politik becomes the only reality. When patriotic gatherings in the stadiums fade away and the national flag is raised to declare independence, the former dissidents become current new politicians, who are thrown into the mud of negotiations with the former Communists just to start the era of post-truth realpolitik. Berlin’s negative freedom is more about freedom to move away, to separate, more about freedom to leave; whereas the positive freedom is more about self-mastery and freedom to create, it is more about freedom towards something. Berlin defended the negative freedom understanding that conflicting interests have to be managed and liberty itself has to be secured. According to Weigel:

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Berlin’s basic intellectual move was to distinguish between “negative liberty” and “positive liberty”, and then to defend the former as the only concept of liberty that could be actualized in the “real world” of inevitably conflicting interests, diverse concepts of the good, and competing human projects. “Negative liberty” for Isaiah Berlin is freedom from: f­ reedom from interference in personal matters, which implies the circumscription of state power within a strong legal framework. As biographer Michael Ignatieff summarizes Berlin’s argument, the primary purpose of a liberal political community is to create the public circumstances in which men and women are left alone “to do what they want, provided that their actions [do] not interfere with the liberty of others”. “Positive liberty”, on the other hand, is freedom to: freedom to realize some greater good in history. (Weigel 2001) But what about the wild capitalism which in the early 1990s created social layers and inequality? After the collapse of equality that socialism used to promote (when the majority does not have free money, but ideology says that being rich is wrong), capitalism promoted legalized greed. Greed as a vice under socialism suddenly was turned into a virtue. What does one say about gained freedom then, when one does not have the foresight for Central European prosperity in a few decades? But “prosperity” for whom? Prosperity here comes with a question mark if we are to consider the corruption in Romania, massive protests in Bucharest against corrupt politicians in 2017 claiming immunity; and also, if we are to take seriously the claim that in Bulgaria no one believes that they are in the EU; and also, if we are to consider how many millions of Poles emigrated for the Western EU countries, where they find prosperity; and also, if we are to be reminded of the new oligarchs of the post-­ socialist Europe and the new socially supported, socially stigmatized layers of society. In the very correct words of Berlin himself, liberty should not be considered outside social equality issues: Liberty is not the only goal of men. I can, like the Russian critic Belinsky, say that if others are to be deprived of it – if my brothers are to remain in poverty, squalor, and chains – then, I do not want it for myself. […] If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral. But, if I curtail or lose my freedom, in order. to lessen the shame of such inequality, and do not thereby materially increase the individual ­liberty of others, an absolute loss of liberty occurs. (Berlin 1969 : 5)

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Such  a  transition, which happened from socialism to capitalism in East-­ Central Europe, cannot immediately fulfil hopes of a better life. Such a transition requires time. But even having that in mind, still some countries like Estonia managed to be successful in its reforms rather quickly. On the other hand, the former East Germany even today thirty years after reunification is still economically behind West Germany, although that “behind” does not have to be understood as poverty. If one compares the former East Germany with Ukraine or Moldova, or if one compares EU member Lithuania with non-EU Ukraine, then we see the hierarchy of success levels. It is more about what is “good enough”. We may also call it what is good enough in terms of capitalist “managerial success” after having to deal with the inherited fifty years of Communist managerial mismanagement, carelessness in keeping balance for food supply and demand, while the Communists never lacked the vigour in propaganda about the supposedly morally righteous Soviet life. The celebration mood of independence in the Baltic States in 1990 and 1991 was overshadowed by the shock therapy of a sudden privatization of what was to follow in the years of 2000 bringing in business ethics standards. Social corporate responsibility as a notion and as a term came at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of 2000, leaving the first ten years of transition from socialism to capitalism under brutal conditions. The beginning of the free market transformed values – socialistic altruism was replaced with capitalistic egoism, and socialistic collectivism was replaced with capitalistic individualism. This is more the case of those countries that had a very limited experience of the socialist market. People in such countries, primarily of the republics of the Soviet Union, were used to such moralization as, for example, that a profiteer is the enemy of the socialism. The shock of sudden transformations in moral values might be more applicable to the republics of the former Soviet Union and to such countries as Romania and Bulgaria, but not so much for Hungary or Slovenia, who require a separate study. Even Polish people say that the “Western” goods on the empty socialist shelves appeared “overnight”. This is not the case in the memory of the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, where the “Western” goods (at first of a very basic household level like German made shampoos or soft drinks like Coca Cola) appeared gradually within the period of a few years. The word “appeared” is misleading, because the goods or rather the deficit goods had to be transported and imported by the new businessmen, who reoriented themselves under the new capitalist ­morality – profit is good, individual making business is beneficial for you and for the free market. Suddenly, essentially overnight, a profiteer became a moral person, not only a legal person.

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In other words, values in the new socioeconomic reality turned upside down – what was immoral and illegal, became moral and legal. Greed for money and entrepreneurship for individual success using cruel methods of Ponzi system in the banks, which soon would go bankrupt during the transitional periods from socialism to capitalism, was exactly what people from the “East” did not expect when they celebrated the miraculous geopolitical victory in 1989. This is especially applicable to the early post-socialist history in the former republics of the Soviet Union, including Lithuania, which was considered to be one of the most advanced Soviet republics and to be the first to declare its independence on March 11th, 1990. The “East” celebrated the end of Communist power having in mind the end of persecutions and economic humiliation, the end of restriction to travel abroad and to speak the true history of their nations, which they had before Yalta divisions; but they did not celebrate the year 1989 as the beginning for grand scale corruption and for the birth of the oligarchic clans who would also become politicians. It is no surprise that the new oligarchs of the former “East”, now of the New Central Europe, became the ones who own media. Quite representative is the Czech case, which says a lot about the transformations from the Communist censorship to democratic control of media: Andrej Babis, who is by the Financial Times titled “media mogul”, is the finance minister and also the leader of the second largest party, uses power via media. Babis, who probably could be called the Czech Berlusconi, is viewed to be the most powerful politician who owns a large part of media. (Financial Times 2014) Václav Havel, who was an anti-Communist and a dissident, a political prisoner under the Communists, as if a prophet, as if sensing the cynical distortions of democratic freedom of speech, before 1989 he did not even believe that the transition from socialism should be to democracy and capitalism. For him the transition had to go above that – into post-democracy on a spiritual level. Interestingly, for Havel the “West” was not the ideal for the socialist “East”. We might be surprised by the latter thought, especially having in mind that once Havel became the president he did not lead the country anywhere else but to democracy, and felt a mission to consolidate the Czech Republic as a democratic country within the structures of nato; nevertheless, he is famous for his intellectual contribution of an alternative political vision. Perhaps it means that we are talking about two Havels – the dissident, i.e. the one of the 1970s, and the president, i.e. the one of the 1990s and early 2000s.

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His essay “The Power of the Powerless” (Havel 1978) talks about his ideal of post-democracy after existential revolution that would create self-governance for local communities sharing values of trust and mutual responsibility. The dissidents who had common experience of trust, who shared same values, they can build their naturally formed communities instead of organizations. Postdemocracy was supposed to follow after 1989, not democracy copied from the West. Havel wrote the following in 1978: the essence of such a ‘post-democracy’ is also that it can only develop via facts, as a process deriving directly from life, from a new atmosphere and a new spirit (political thought, of course, would play a role here, though not as a director, merely as a guide). […] Does not this vision of “postdemocratic” structures in some ways remind one of the “dissident” groups or some of the independent citizens initiatives as we already know them from our own surroundings? Do not these small communities, bound together by thousands of shared tribulations, give rise to some of those special humanly meaningful political relationships and ties that we have been talking about? Are not these communities (and they are communities more than organizations) – motivated mainly by a common belief in the profound significance of what they are doing since they have no chance of direct, external success joined together by precisely the kind of atmosphere in which the formalized and ritualized ties common in the official structures are supplanted by a living sense of solidarity and fraternity? Do not these ‘post-democratic’ relationships of immediate personal trust and the informal rights of individuals based on them come out of the background of all those commonly shared difficulties? […] In other words, are not these informed, non-bureaucratic, dynamic, and open communities that comprise the ‘parallel polis’ a kind of rudimentary  ­prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful “post-­ democratic” political structures that might become the foundation of a better society? I know from thousands of personal experiences how the mere circumstance of having signed Charter 77 has immediately created a deeper and more open relationship and evoked sudden and powerful feelings of genuine community among people who were all but strangers before. (Havel 1978: 78–79) Havel’s vision is not dominant to say the least. It is not in the discourse of EastCentral European transition literature. It finds room in the heads of intellectuals as a vision for Europe, but not as something to be implemented by politicians nor by the will of citizens. After all, that would require abandoning Western

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democratic ideals as exhausted, which would be true, yet extremely dangerous in the period of post-Communism when the former Communists were afraid of democracy. However, in spite of the Communist fear of democracy, they managed to adopt it and by 1995 to win presidential elections. In Lithuania the former Communist Algirdas Brazauskas won the presidential elections as soon as 1993. Therefore, the argument about the danger in implementing post-­ democracy after socialism is not entirely valid. At any rate, for Havel post-democracy values should stem from the roots of solidarity in a spirit that is not contaminated by utilitarian capitalism. The atmosphere and spirit are the key words along with solidarity value. In 1978 Havel did not look upon the “West” as superior politically. The superior economy of the Western Europe delivers consumerism, which is not the ideal, and from the moral politics point of view the “West” lacks solidarity, trust, and communal coexistence. Havel’s criteria are above utilitarian measurements in economics and his criteria are above the democratic right to vote. As a matter of fact, he thoughtfully or unconsciously draws from the New Testament the idea that the kingdom of God is not somewhere “out there” to be reached someday in a remote future, but rather it is here-and-now within you. Saying such a thing in 1978 implies that even under socialism you might be happy, you may have your informal community of dissidents with a sense of fraternity and solidarity where you experience self-realization. The brighter future does not have to be in a distant future. Here is the passage from the “Power of the Powerless”, the passage that finishes the essay in an ambitious voice of moral politics: “For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?” (Havel 1978: 80) In her chapter of this book Maria Mälksoo also observes Havel’s position: “Havel was all but idealizing the West, resisting utilitarianism and seeking a spiritual view of the universe”. But needless to say, such a vision based on spirituality and humanism could not compete with the demands of the ­market – to transform the empty shelves of food and household supplies stores into full ones, to replace the old dilapidated Russian Lada cars with the German Mercedes and Volkswagen, to change a single propaganda type tv channel into Hollywood entertaining production, to take down the dead serious propaganda slogans and replace them with illuminated commercial advertising, which often include fun, smiles, and managerial creativity. Paraphrasing Dostoyevski’s Grand Inquisitor, who had reproaching remarks to Jesus that his teaching was too hard for the millions, applicable only to thousands of people, perhaps Havel’s vision was applicable for the few thousands, but not for the

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millions of East-Central Europeans who were longing not only for a political change, but also for an economically affluent society as well as for all the opportunities for personal financial success making business, devoted to entrepreneurship, risking and willing to buy and resell, then to sell skills and diligence for higher wages. Millions of people desired such an opportunity without affiliations in the Communist elite and without corruption ties that would provide a privilege on the state level. Naturally, thus, a transition from the socialist-State-controlled-economy to free market took place, of course with different speed and quality in different countries. The troublesome issues of the transition from socialism to capitalism definitely should be highlighted and all the ugly privatization story should be told, but the transition also involved the achievements the individuals, of the individuals who risked to become Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian capitalists by taking initiative at very fragile socioeconomic conditions in the early 1990s. Again, the varying degree of success and failure of the transition should be compared country by country while treating post-socialist countries as case studies. Some intellectuals do not focus on such a balanced approach; instead, they focus on forms of social injustice, agitating for a revolution against neoliberalism. Some of them regard neoliberalism as a form of tyranny and refuse to see what benefits the post-socialist transition delivered thanks to the fall of the Iron Curtain. In such instances we would be reminded of what Pope Francis in his document Evangelii gaudium called unlimited capitalism as a form of tyranny. And if that is not enough, we would be told that “the tyranny of Communism was replaced by the tyranny of neoliberalism, capitalism in general” (Martinkus 2014: 121). The neomarxists-anarchists today love to use the word “tyranny” when describing neoliberalism, but the word seems to be more of an eye catcher rather than corresponding to social reality. There are so many radical claims of “tyranny”: Norwegian social anthropologist Eriksen talks about the tyranny of the moment, because according to him the free time is filled with other electronic duties and we suffer from the excess of information (Eriksen, 2001); then we find the tyranny of cyberspace (Zizek, 2006); and, of course, the tyranny of liberalism (Degutis, 2010). Regarding the “tyranny of liberalism”, such reasoning may find support in the circles of Gilletes Jaunes and in the groups of anarchists redolent of the spirit of Paris 1968. Of course, witnessing cynical greed of large corporations that Emanuel Macron supported in France, one may indeed be provoked to challenge the hegemony of socially irresponsible big capital and go for a ­ protest. However, this does not necessarily mean that capitalism as such should be destroyed. As we have seen throughout history, capitalism is capable of selftransformation. Today it is more and more green. There is a big difference

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b­ etween capitalism of the time of Karl Marx and of today. The 19th century proletariat today has transformed into a 21st century office employees, who have choices to offer skills in a market. This can hardly be called a tyranny on the same level as Communist ideology that would limit choices and take away the right for private business and individual choice where and how to sell personal skills, production, managerial creativity. The evolution of socialism that evolved in the Soviet Union to the degree of Perestroika, which allowed the formation of cooperatives for profit, resulted in the full transformation of a free market. Evidently pure socialism does not function. The case of Yugoslavia before 1980s that had market socialism is proof that socialism functions the best in a mix with market elements, something that the Soviet Union started too late in the name of Perestroika. In this sense systemic implosion happened, not the Velvet revolution.1 Therefore, “I disagree that neoliberalism is a tyranny that continues Communist tyranny. Moreover, social injustice and the degree of oligarchic elite vary per country. Not even all post-Communist countries need yet another “great transformation”. I think there is a difference between Poland and Romania, Estonia and Bulgaria. And what socio-economic contrasts we can see in the pairs of the Czech Republic and Ukraine, Lithuania and Moldova, etc. Euromaidan showed how difficult it is for Ukraine to end its never ending postCommunist transition” (Kavaliauskas 2014:121). 6

The New Identity of Central Europe

We may debate whether the fall of the Iron Curtain (in its wide sense meaning the collapse of political ideology together with change in moral values and economic system) happened because of revolution or because of systemicimplosion, but what is undeniable is that the year 1989 is the starting point for a new regional identity development – East-Central Europe (The Baltic States, Vishegrad 4) and Eastern Europe (Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine) East-Central Europe acquired its geopolitically fully fledged new identity in 2004 with the membership in nato and in the EU, thus, leaving Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova behind a new Silk Curtain. This is when East-Central 1 According to Christian Giordano, it is wrong to regard the year 1989 as revolutionary, because revolutions have different elements. One of them is violence. Peaceful revolution for him is an oxymoron. “Peaceful revolution was possible because the powerholders had no other choice than to step down. The conflict between the ancient regime and its opponents, inherent in every revolution, was negligible and missing altogether in this case. Calling it a systemic implosion, rather than a revolution, would probably be more accurate” (Giordano 2015: 111).

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Europe splits – Central Europe ends up on the other side of the geopolitical fence, leaving Eastern Europe outside of nato and outside of the EU. The discourse of the New and Old Europe developed over the issue of the Iraq war when in 2003 the aspiring new members of the EU and nato supported the controversial war, provoking France president Jacques Chirac to ask ironically whether these “Vilnius 10” countries (“Vilnius 10” because of 10 p ­ ost-Communist countries in Vilnius, Lithuania, declared support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq) should be joining the United States instead of the EU? That was the period of 2003–2004, which was crucial for the aspiring Central European countries to build their own geopolitically pro-American identity, yet at the same time to remain balanced being pro-Brussels politically and economically in order to join both nato and the EU. The Iraq war controversy should not be overlooked in the choices the Baltic States and Visegrád 4 made building its identity of the New Europe. However, today, thirty years after the year 1989 and seventeen years after the new membership in the EU, certain post-Communist countries have changed their political rhetoric emphasizing not only national values, but also extremely nationalistic values. Now in the year 2019 we are to hear history that is to be re-interpreted along nationalistic lines. On top of that, if not beneath that, the media is controlled to secure history reinterpretations and desirable elections for those who would support nationalistic emancipation over liberal democracy. All of it is supposed to substantiate the political identity of Poland, Hungary, but also of a southern European country: Italy. When we see the Italian interior minister Mateo Salvini visiting Warsaw to hug Jarosław Kaczyński in hopes of building their ideological frontiers against the liberal EU, we become witnesses of the new transformations in the EU values, memory, and identity. The values were supposed to remain of liberal democracy, yet they are challenged; memory was supposed to become transnational. Why? Because of the Holocaust. If we are to admit that the Holocaust is a tragedy of humankind, not just of Nazi Germany, then the post-Holocaust European era ought to accept collective responsibility for moral duty to maintain peace. Such post-Holocaust peace is of the nature of ontological survival, what we may call Heideggerian ontological Sorge (care) for maintaining Being; certainly above political diplomacy. Yet, ultra-national demonstrations are supported by certain politicians and parties; the identity of the New Europe that had said farewell to totalitarianism of the Communist system was supposed to be along the lines of such a morality that stands against Russian threat as well as against Russian disrespect to human rights, disrespect to international sports standards (doping as a Russian system on

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the State level) and above all Russia has political prisoners, censorship, yet contemporary Hungary and the Czech Republic, if not Bulgaria and Romania, while being geopolitically de jure nato and the EU, geopolitically they are de facto pro-Putin’s pro-Russians. These countries have already turned their backs to liberal democracy. Now yet again there is an ideological competition. This time it is nationalism based on statehood that is against liberal democracy, because the forms of tolerance for difference and deviance from the majority are unacceptable for some. Interestingly, Kaczyński warned Salvini during his visit about the dangers of Russia, reminded him of history and expressed his concern that Le Pen’s movement is financed by Moscow, which is an obstacle for making a nationalistic union in spite of common nationalistic values. Radosław Fogiel, a policy adviser to Kaczyński, said in an interview with the Guardian in February: ‘They agree on many things when it comes to immigration policy or the way the EU should go in the future but we never hide that the Hungarian stance towards Russia and Putin is something we do not approve of’. He also ruled out cooperation between PiS and Le Pen, partly due to the Russia links. ‘Not only is she funded by Russia, she’s way more far right when it comes to the social issues. She’s way too extreme for us to cooperate’. (The Guardian 2019) That does not make Polish current identity less nationalistic or less authoritarian at home, but internationally it shows that when it comes to the partnership with Russia, Poland’s geopolitical orientation and values are different. Anti-Brussels coalition cannot be formed with the help of Russia – seems to be the point that Kaczyński is making. His point has become even more evident after the scandal that disclosed Salvini’s relationship with the Russian authorities (bbc 2019). And that is when Europe is facing its own identity crisis due to migration crisis, Brexit, Russian information war, and ideas of separatism that are so lively in Scotland and Catalonia, although, and this is important, Scottish and Catalonian separatism is cosmopolitan, is absolutely pro-EU, unlike English Brexit. Scottish and Catalonian separatism is not even separatism in the sense of the unity of the European Union. Brexit is separatism as Great Britain separates from the EU. When it comes to Poland, there is no discourse of Poland-exit: Only a few years ago the meeting between the leader of the Italian League party and the leader of the Polish Law and Justice party would have been little more than a get-together of nationalist politicians, isolated at home

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and uninfluential abroad. Now, Salvini and Kaczyński are de facto leaders of their countries, and in bringing together the strongest politicians of what will be after the UK’s departure the third- and fifth-largest member states of the EU, their meeting was in effect a diplomatic summit with important repercussions. […] Salvini’s proclamation that Italy and Poland would form an ‘axis’ against Franco-German dominance was no bombast. (EU observer 2019)

... The Velvet and Singing revolutions in former Eastern Europe had their creative force. Speaking metaphorically, just like the universe started to expand after its Big Bang, so too did the fall of the Iron Curtain spur and spark the energy for the spread of liberally oriented patriotism eastward. Back then, as the result of the fall of the Iron Curtain, on a political level the principles for democratic elections and the values of human rights were soon established even with poor knowledge what challenges were awaiting; on an economic level socialist economy was replaced with a capitalist system, although people had a vague idea what they will have to endure – all the shocks of social injustice due to privatization process and financial instability. However, the discourse on the “New Europe” provides a picture of a relatively easy project. It was labeled as a success story: after all, East-Central European countries of the Visegrád 4, then the Baltic States in the Northern part, and Bulgaria with Romania in the Southern part, also Slovenia that was praised earlier (Norkus 2008), jumped on a speedy track of political and economic transition from Communist ideology to democracy, from State pre-planned socialist economy to a free market of capitalism. The hierarchy of the successfully transformed countries was established, ranking Slovenia and Estonia at the top after “A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Patterns in ­Post-Communist Transformation” (Norkus 2012). 7

The End of the Fairy Tale of Transition “from/to” and the Beginning of Memory Based Self Reinterpretation

This fairy tale of transition “from/to” seems to come to an end, at least in a political realm: Visegrád 4 is seen as the area for authoritarian nationalism, especially Poland and Hungary, but others catching up. And the above quoted insight from the EU observer about Poland and Italy forming a new ideological

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axis is a paradigmatic shift in this East-Central European fairy tale. The discourse of the successful East-Central transition “from/to” is experiencing an anomaly as it is no longer about orientation to liberal values, but to controlled democracy or democratura – as Adam Michnik said speaking about contemporary Poland (Michnik 2018). The question is: why did it happen? Aside from the many versions of what the real reason is for the re-transition backwards or sideways from democracy to democratura, the following issues may have contributed to the end of the Central European fairy tale of successful transition: national memory of historic injustices, traumas, a need for substantial identity, and lastly, a need for self-emancipation. The memory of national traumatic experiences is often subjective, evolves with its own perspective of victimization and tends to overlook its neighbours’ similar experience(s). The feeling of historic injustice often reflects a low ­national self-esteem. Politicians demonstrate ambitions to restore national “pride” by the means of reinterpreting their history as superior to the neighbouring country. This is observed in Polish-German, Lithuanian-Polish, PolishUkrainian historic narratives about disputed territories, cities, the roles of rulers, national pride and cultural superiority. However, traumatic memories persecute us like ghosts – national memories do not forget their traumas, although temporarily sometimes they are suppressed. Such traumas as are rooted in national narratives are often related to heroic sacrifice or unjust victimization, and often provoke passionate will for the restoration of a historic “truth”. The passionate nationalistic will for the truth is often selective when it comes to the facts or rational arguments. None of it contributes to transnational memory building; rather it builds memory wars among nations, especially neighbourhood ones. The lack of hermeneutical empathy (the one that embraces the other’s perspective and initial premises as well as symbolical thinking) is evident, and then the dialogue fails. When the dialogue succeeds, usually it is because of diplomacy efforts among higher class politicians or because of academic culture in conferences, which is far away from those who vote for tradition-oriented party leaders, not to mention those who drink beer in pubs before football games and have heated debates over their national historic “pride”. In the latter cases Poles and Lithuanians would hardly agree to whom Vilnius/Wilno belongs. The issue of hermeneutical empathy also reaches the top ranks of philosophy. Willingness to accept the Other’s perspective is sometimes challenging for world famous academics, not only for local provincial nationalists. Unwillingness to go for the Other’s comprehension could be a conceptually conscious posture. For instance, German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer could not

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have had a mutually comprehensive debate with the French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. The debates took place in 1981 in Paris at the Goethe institute, but Derrida from the very beginning of the “conversation” was deconstructing all efforts for mutual understanding. His will was not to understand, instead the will was to maintain différance (Michelfelder, Palmer, 1989). “Gadamer from the very moment of the meeting stood at the beginning, whereas Derrida from the very ­moment of the meeting stood at the end of the conversation” (Bagdanavičiūtė 2014). There is always an interlocutor who not only fails to comprehend the Other’s perspective, but who, due to his or her nationalism, “from the very moment of the meeting stands at the end of the conversation” (Bagdanavičiūtė 2014). From the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, which highlights the importance of initial premises along with the Other’s symbolic thinking and existential experience of trauma, we cannot overcome the troublesome past by the means of pure rationality. Logical explanations and rational arguments may not reach even those who, like Gadamer, “from the very moment of the meeting stands at the beginning of the conversation” willing to understand the Other’s “truth”. It is because emotions and historical trauma take over. The attempt to leave traumatic experience behind and to move forward with a positive attitude for “progress” does not work here, because the memory roots that reach wwii tragedies and injustices keep resurfacing. Moreover, if we are to keep in mind the level of complexity of wwii history in Eastern and Central Europe as it is analysed by Timothy Snyder in The Bloodlands, the question then is not only what the “truth” in wwii injustices is, but also what is the “falsity” may be. According to Snyder, we have to look at wwii genocides as the result of Nazi Germany’s and the Communist Soviet Union’s interaction during five years in a relatively small territory of Eastern Europe where most likely more people were killed than we have counted. In addition, that interaction of two evil powers during wwii overlapped three times in Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus. Therefore, Soviet and Nazi crimes against humankind also overlapped, but often disguised in deception. Suffice it to recall the classic essay by Jozef Mackiewicz on Katyn where he disclosed how masterfully the massacre of Polish elite soldiers in Katyn by the Soviets was disguised in the name of Germans. Thus, falsity was prevalent for years till the truth became known. After the fall of the material bricks in the Berlin Wall and after the collapse of the ideological Iron Curtain, controlled versions of historic narratives disappeared. Freedom of speech opened a need for reinterpretation of history and rehabilitation of traumatic experiences in wwii. However, historic findings are very much a subject of politics. Looking back at traumatic experiences, which in Central Europe are interwoven with local participation in Holocaust, causes

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confusion: should national identity be substantiated with self-­victimization or should it be substantiated with guilt in collaboration with the Nazis in the Holocaust? This question for Polish current government was unacceptable – a law was passed forbidding accusations of Polish people in taking part in Auschwitz concentration camp (which seems to be updated later on). Because there is more deceitful falsity in wwii history than open truth, the acceptance of both guilt (with the awareness of your nation’s responsibility because of committed injustice against another nation) and self-victimization (with the awareness of your nation’s martydom because of the injustice done by another nation) becomes too complex and too self-contradictory, especially for the nationalistically oriented narratives, since they aim only at national emancipation and identity purification. Contradictions that arise from guilt and self-victimization at the same time create enormous tensions, which divide historians, politicians, cultural institutions, and citizens. These contradictions do not reveal an open truth, since opponents tend to take sides; instead, contradictions reveal to what extent wwi left us with deceitful falsity. Sometimes it seems that the dilemma of when a nation is both guilty and claims self-victimization can be resolved. For instance, Lithuanian official political discourse has embraced its guilt in the Holocaust in parallel to Lithuanian self-victimization narratives, which bespeak of massive deportations of Lithuanian elite by the Soviets to Siberia. In fact, Lithuanian discourse on suffering in Siberia due to Communist deportations has been dominant, especially in the 1990s, and the guilt discourse on the mass killings of the Lithuanian Jews is relatively new. It entered Lithuanian political discourse in the early 2000s or late 1990s thanks to such internationally renowned intellectuals as Tomas Venclova and Leonidas Donskis, who started speaking about it on national tv. They highlighted what was inconvenient for the moral “purity” of the Lithuanian nation. On the other hand, Lithuania President Algirdas Brazauskas apologized for the Holocaust in the name of the Lithuanian nation in Israel as early as 1993. However, Lithuania is now having new tensions in the debates over what heroic partisans of the resistance to the Soviet regime were guilty of in wwii for taking part in Jewish Holocaust and which heroic partisans actually were saving the Jews. How the traumatic experience of both ethnic groups was successfully embraced in Lithuania speaks to the visit of the Pope Francis, who prayed at two different memorials (for two ethnicities that suffered) with the attendance of Lithuanian government, including the President and the Prime Minister. But in Poland the controversial law about the “correct” mentioning of Auschwitz, but not Oświęcim concentration camp, avoiding any accusation of

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Polish participation in Holocaust, exposes a different political approach to the traumatic past and national responsibility. When new monuments as well as castles and palaces are resurrected for the confirmation of national glory in the past, it often raises suspicion: are these monuments without any contradiction to a traumatic experience of another neighboring nation? Restoration of national pride and honor, which often is expressed by the heavy monuments, are noticeable in today’s Belarus, which claims itself to be the original Lithuania, the “true” heir of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy. Similar conflicts can be noticed in Northern Transylvania where the Romanian government erects its monument for a national hero in the middle of Hungarian speaking population, e.g. Cluj Napoka. The monument for Avram Iancu, who fought against Hungarians, is erected in Romania’s town Cluj Napoka where the majority of the population is Hungarians. Moreover, the monument is of a disproportionate size. And it is placed in front of a church, blocking its façade. The choice seems to be political – an everyday reminder that Hungarians in Northern Transylvania of Romania might be unwanted. This tendency has not made any contribution to the creation of pan European trans-national memory. Nor have these tendencies made a contribution to building solid liberalism that unites liberal values with patriotism. Patriotism in Central Europe, unlike in Scotland and Catalonia, drifted away from cosmopolitanism and became limited to nationalistic pride. Common present and the common future of Europe is left without a common history: Polish, Belorussian, and Lithuanian interpretation sof their shared Grand Lithuanian Duchy is different. Hungarians and Romanians have different interpretations of the Northern Transylvania; Poland and Ukraine have another dispute, while Ukraine and Russia are in a memory war, including the separation of Orthodox church, not to mention the real war in East Ukraine. But politically constructive events that make a contribution to transcultural European memory building along with geopolitical connotations against Russia happened in Vilnius, Lithuania on the 22nd of November, 2019: Polish President Andrzej Duda together with the Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda attended an exeptional ceremony of a funeral for the remains of the participants of 1863–1964 uprising against Tsarist Russian empire. Polish, Lithuanian, and Belorussian flags were carried to indicate that the Lithuanian leaders of the uprising are equally honored by Polish and Belorussians. This was verbalized in the speeches of the presidents during the Holy Mass at Vilnius main Catholic Church. It certainly is more than a dialogue. It is an embracing as multi-national the 19th century Lithuanian Grand Duchy. But in certain cases a historic interpretation is so radically different that a dialogue between opposing sides is hardly imaginable, e.g. in the Baltic States the meaning of May 9th – whether it is a liberation from Nazi Germany ending

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wwii or whether it is an occupation by the Soviet Union. It is a never ending disagreement. The Alyosha monument in Tallinn has even caused riots in 2007 between Estonian Estonians and Estonians Russians, because of two radically different meanings – occupation versus liberation. 8

When Nationalism Replaces Liberal Patriotism and Liquid Liberalism Replaces Solid Liberalism

At first glance liberalism is easily combined with patriotism as we have seen it in 1989 when one country stood for the other’s freedom. Here the word “patriotism” is carefully selected instead of “nationalism”, because the latter today in Central Europe as well as in Europe in general has much darker colors than thirty years ago. Jody Jensen explains: I believe that the fundamental impetus towards the toppling of the Soviet empire in East and Central Europe was derived, first of all, from the people’s sincere desire for independence and freedom from Soviet occupation. National expressions in songs represented a reassertion of patriotism that had been suppressed under the totalitarian regime, not necessarily nationalism with its characteristic of exclusion. Patriotism better describes the prevalent sentiments of ’89 concerned with values and love of country than with the rivalry and resentment characteristic of nationalism. (Jensen 2014) Suffice it to recall the Baltic Way’s live human chain from Tallinn to Riga, from Riga to Vilnius. Patriotic aspiration for independence and self-determination is seen as liberal in the sense that patriotism stood against oppression. However, the romanticized politics of the Baltic Way’s patriotic freedom or romanticized Euromaidan in Kiev for the right to remove corrupt president and join the EU economic association, is portrayed along liberal values ignoring the level of nationalism that motivated people for their patriotism. The Baltic Way is known as a peaceful live chain of humans (imitated in the Hong Kong uprising in 2019 as well as in Catalonia, known as the Catalan Way in 2013), but Maidan was a battleground. The EU media ignored extreme far-right groups and their ultranationalistic mood, defending Maidan, because this discourse was meant to be pro-EU. Although it is a question of political anthropology to what extent the far-right type participants comprised Maidan. As Volodymyr Kulyk observed, having brought together people from various regions and various organizations, the Maidan manifested both significant differences in their

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versions of national identity and the strong preference for putting those differences aside, at least for the time being. The differences turned out particularly perceptible in views of the past and their ramifications for the present. While the radical nationalist part did their best to imbue the entire protest movement with slogans and underlying ideas of the interwar integral nationalists in Western Ukraine, moderate segments felt uneasy about the need to keep alliance with their ideological opponents for the sake of a unified front against the regime. (Kulyk 2014: 116) Nevertheless, those different groups, being geopolitically open to the new course towards the EU, did not imagine – nor were culturally ready on cold and bloody winter nights – that soon Ukraine will be asked to tolerate homosexuality as a requirement for visa-free entrance to the EU. Once the blood was washed from the tiles of Maidan, once Maidan became available for political tourism to honor the heroes in this famous square in Kiev, Brussels issued a requirement for gay rights in Ukraine as a condition for visa-free traveling. “Ukraine’s parliament has scuppered the country’s chances of visa-free travel to most EU nations by blocking legislation that would have banned discrimination against gay people in the workplace. […] Only 117 lawmakers in the 450seat parliament supported the changes demanded by Brussels. Such a minority reflects not only public opinion…” (The Guardian 2015). But at last the bill was passed – visa-free traveling in exchange for homosexuality equality. “The bill banning discrimination against gay people in the workplace had been rejected on four previous attempts, reflecting a strong opposition from those in parliament who saw the document as a challenge to the country’s Orthodox Christian traditions” (The Guardian 2015). While it is a civilizational milestone of progress in defending sexual minorities in Eastern Europe, where discrimination has deep roots, the sociological suspicion remains that – and this is to put it mildly – in social reality the anti-gay attitudes of the locals remain the same. Those attitudes are extraordinarily provincial and brutal, stemming from a nationalistic comprehension of Orthodox Christianity, forgetting that visa-free traveling is desirable to secular liberal Europe, unless Catholic Poland is good enough. As a matter of fact, Poland is counting about a million Ukrainian immigrants. But the most important point here is the level of confusion: when the Ukrainian is praised for his sacrificial Maidan battles against Berkut special forces, when he is respected for his courage to fight for democracy and westernization of Ukraine, no one thinks about post-Maidan and post-revolutionary developments, but once the revolution is over, one discovers that according to the EU standards the hero of Maidan happens to be anti-human rights person and has

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to be sexually “reeducated”. Here one may imagine the degree of cultural shock both for local Ukrainian citizens and politicians who decided to overcome personal prejudices in exchange for visa-free traveling. But this is the case when we see the functionality of solid liberalism. Legal requirements were based on liberal life values and on individual freedom to make a choice for sexual preference. The requirement was successfully imposed on Ukraine at least in theory on the jurisprudential level. Contrary to such solid liberalism, liquid liberalism, however, as will be discussed later in this chapter, would not produce such functionality. Liquid liberalism is not a demanding type of liberalism, it does not impose its values on others for reeducation the way solid liberalism does. Rather liquid liberalism – as it is seen from its submission to Islamicization and uncontrolled migration – stands passively. Solid liberalism actively stands for human rights and cosmopolitanism. It is not a post-truth ideology. For what truth solid liberalism stands for is formulated in legal requirements, political programs, cultural partnership of European cultural capitals, Schengen, Erasmus student exchange programs, high cosmopolitan standards for tolerance for those who deviate from tradition and from the majority – all of it in order to build a common European experience embracing ethnic and cultural sub-group diversities. It is rather liquid liberalism that has post-truth ideology, since it fails to impose the requirement for tolerance, fails to impose intolerance to the intolerant ones, and fails to impose respect for secular cosmopolitan life forms. Secular and liberal life forms are not tolerated in certain urban migrant enclaves that we find in Brussels, Malmö, Dresden, and Paris. Liquid politics and lack of solid position regarding multicultural integration seem to have dissolved the substance of European local culture. We would define liquid liberal democracy according to Zygmunt Bauman’s attempt to describe liquidity in terms of fluidity: Fluids travel easily. They ‘flow’, ‘spill’, ‘run out’, ‘splash’, ‘pour over’, ‘leak’, ‘flood’, ‘spray’, ‘drip’, ‘seep’, ‘ooze’; unlike solids, they are not easily stopped  – they pass around some obstacles, dissolve some others and bore or soak their way through others still. From the meeting with solids they emerge unscathed, while the solids they have met, if they stay solid, are changed – get moist or drenched. (Bauman 2000) What is solid gets moist or drenched by the liquids. Using it as a metaphor, this time for the issues in Western Europe, not Central Europe, traditionally solid cultures such as English, German, and French have become drenched by

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non-­European cultures. Central European countries, being smaller and more fragile, ontologically insecure and without a moral burden of colonizing the others in the 19th century, instead of having a full package of traumatic memories, are demonstrating resistance to the phenomenon of liquid liberalism. The resistance is in order to avoid Central European cities being drenched by nonEuropean cultures, but not only. Liquid politicians, often camouflaged under economic diplomacy, noticeably in Germany, prioritize economic benefits of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 at the expense of the concerns of the Baltic States and Poland (along with the U.S.), because these economic projects are also within Russia’s geopolitical interests. Both Nord Streams create a bond with Russia and that is after Russia has openly talked about its nuclear power, also after this country openly denied basic human rights for democratic elections and liberal cultural forms, also after this country, called Putin’s Russia, financed nationalistic Italian League and French Le Pen movement (movements that are anti-liberal, antiEU), also after Russia showed no effort to apologize for Stalin’s terror and deportations to Siberia, not to mention a need for current internationally pressing apology to the Netherlands for shooting down Malaysia Aircraft Flight MF17 with the passengers, and that is not without the notorious prehistory in Russian Smolensk airport in 2010 when the Polish political elite died for the occasion of commemoration of Katyn massacre by the Soviet army. Seeing the story from the perspective of German-Russian mega Nord Stream gas projects in the name of economic diplomacy, and seeing the critique of this story from the perspective of the Baltic States where geopolitical security is the priority, we see how economy is prioritized over the geopolitics of the small states.

...

The factor of a small nation often plays a role – a small nation, using this term in the sense of Milan Kundera (Kundera 1984), fears to drown in the sea of multicultural diversity losing local language, local ethnic heritage, and local memory discourse, without which a small nation cannot compete with a big nation. A small nation of Central Europe does not have the moral burden of a postcolonial history in Africa. If anything, it was Central Europe that was occupied and then culturally colonized by the Soviet Union. Heroes and victims, legends and myths, although often illogical, they constitute national consciousness, help to answer “who am I?” Such a need to preserve what is precious for a small nation is often overlooked in various critiques of nationalism. Paradoxically, the liberals praise the classic essay “The Kidnapped West”, as it

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was originally titled by Milan Kundera. Today we know this essay under a different title: “The Tragedy of Central Europe”. The main idea of his essay – the value of a small nation, its right to have its existence as a substantial part of Central European region – corresponds to the main motif of why these countries joined nato and the EU: for safety. It was for the idea to preserve fragile sovereignty after the Soviet occupation, not to dissolve within an EU overflooded with migrants who share different civilizational behaviour codes. Today the Western European countries are experiencing the aftermath of post-colonialism. This one is full of political and cultural issues of multicultural integrity. A representative formulation for it was by Angela Merkel: “the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed” (bbc 2010). Needless to say, in the same speech was added that immigrants are still welcome. The famous “welcome” was repeated during migration crisis a few years ago in 2015. Witnessing such liquid politics in neighbouring Germany, naturally Central European countries fear becoming ethnically and culturally rootless. They fear becoming a liquid nation comprised of citizens with a different worldview, memory, and values. Such fear provokes a small nation to search for its own substantial identity, unfortunately often at the expense of liberal values, opening doors for ultra-nationalists. History teaches that substantial national identity is a threat to peace. Blood and soil, this German Blut-und-Boden, has produced racism and finally the tragedy of Holocaust. That is why the new ideological axis of Le Pen and Mateo Salvini and Viktor Orban is so spooky. What values are they going to promote, then? That is why the acknowledgment of the need of a small nation to build its substantial national identity is also a dangerous moral trap. It is a political and a moral trap: as soon as such a need is acknowledged, we are back to the nationalistic 19th century type of understanding of a nation. In such a case Milan Kundera’s concept of a small nation in his glorified essay also has to be reconsidered according to the new context of “thirty years after 1989”. But if liquid liberalism could be stopped and solid liberalism would embrace the European way of life maintaining secular standards that are needed for tolerance, the process of speedy Islamicization and more importantly the rising numbers of migrant crimes, violent behaviour in such formerly culturally calm towns like Bavarian Augsburg, hopefully would stop. If so, then nationalistically oriented political parties in the “small countries” as well as in the “big countries” would lose their arguments that far-right parties can save Europe. Thirty years later, after relatively successful integration into the EU, we are witnessing retransformations in values, memory, and identity. The migration crisis due to the absence of common EU borders and due to the absence of crystal-clear

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control policy for human smuggling (suffice it to recall the Italian-Spanish dispute about who will take the rescued refugees), only fueled the nationalistic arguments. The chaos of the migration crisis reminded every small nation that it could be a victim of disorderly humanitarian catastrophe, due to liquid liberalism of the EU. The social problems as well as crime caused by migrants and their occasional terrorist attacks in Western Europe, noticeably in France, Austria and Germany, only strengthened certain Central European prejudices against the civilizational Other. Yet not all the countries from the “New Europe” refused to sign United Nation migration pact: Lithuania signed, but Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic did not along with the U.S. and Israel. Here we see a documented attitude towards the civilizational Other. If we are to include East Germany into the club of Central Europe in spite of its reunification with West Germany, then the Pegida movement that is directed against immigrants is another indication of boiling emotions as well as of resurrected Nazism. The values of Pegida are interconnected with the values of those who marched in Warsaw on November 11th. Not coincidentally Václav Havel and Adam Michnik were concerned about nationalism replacing Communism (Michnik 1998). However, the common East-Central European geopolitical orientation westward tamed those nationalistic aspirations in the entire post-Communist region, except former Yugoslavia. It remains to be seen whether thirty years after 1989 nationalism will be subdued yet again.

...

We should also discuss nationalism as geopolitical. Geopolitical nationalism can be centrifugal and centripetal. As Ullrich Kockel observed: political movements for separatism, and the governments that may result if these movements are successful, have to walk a tight-rope between, on the one hand, celebrating the differences that justify their separatism and, on the other hand, facing up to the actual political implications of these differences. That applies particularly to small nations – and any real nations will have to be relatively small to be viable in the longer term. A hundred years ago, some big established empires waged a war that the leader of a newly emerging empire – the USA – subsequently characterized as a war for the right of small nations to self-determination. This description was not universally applicable – while British imperial forces defended Belgium, they also squashed a nationalist rebellion in the

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e­ mpire’s Irish backyard. There is a political rhetoric here that is truly Machiavellian, which says that “big”, centripetal nationalism, which pulls disparate regions and ethnicities together under the hegemony of a dominant region and/or group, is “good”, whereas “small”, centrifugal nationalism that aims at separation and self-determination is “bad”. (Kockel and Kavaliauskas 2016) We may notice at least two types of national self-determination: one is selfcentered anti-EU, the other is open pro-EU. In the case of Catalonia and Scotland, these countries claim their distinct national identity while being pro-EU sharing cosmopolitan values. Scotland has expressed concern about how to stay in the EU after Brexit; Catalonia expressed its wish to remain an EU country after separation from Spain. These two countries could be an example of national-cosmopolitanism with a very clearly expressed national identity, yet embracing multicultural European diversity. Perhaps Scotland and Catalonia, being small countries from the other parts of Europe, could serve as an example for the small countries of Central Europe. 9 Conclusions The new transformations in values, memory, and identity in Central Europe to a large extent are provoked by the tensions that have polarized Western European societies. Certain rhetoric of Central European countries reflects reactions to their need to maintain self-identity and to preserve national-state’s sovereignty. Instead of liquid liberalism that more and more often prevails in Western European countries, solid liberalism – the one that does not tolerate intolerance, but stands firmly in defense to the ideas of intellectual freedom and humanism, and defends liberal life – could be the choice for Central Europeans instead of democratura. Central and Eastern Europeans in 1989 chanted for liberty against Communist dictatorship. People wanted liberty – political and economic, spiritual and cultural – but it seems that they have dangerously shifted towards solid nationalism, which we call the radical right. On top of that the new oligarchs control media and elections, and then unite with the other right movements that are financed by Russia. Central European countries are mostly small, perhaps with the exception of Poland and Romania, but some are not merely small, but tiny: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia. In order to survive being small in a big web of Russian promoted union that includes the Italian-French-Hungarian

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nationalist movements, the small nations should be vigilant of what is left of the ideals of the year 1989. Now that the challenges are stemming not only from the civilizational Other, but also from brutally aggressive and corrupt Russia, Central Europe itself could shift to solid liberalism, not to democratura. Instead of waiting when Brussels will end liquid liberalism responding to various geopolitical challenges as well as refugee challenges, Central Europe, in the spirit of the year 1989, could stand for our and your freedom. However, the tendency is different. No wonder that the 30th jubilee conference of Eurozine that took place in Berlin in November 2019 was titled “1989 – the promise recalled”. The Liberal EU project that has created Schengen – a common space in our multi-national, multi-ethnic continent after wwii racial nationalism – is a political miracle, but this miracle is being challenged by active anti-democratic forces and cultures. Can Central Europeans, who know how precious the fall of the Iron Curtain is, who experienced the pleasure of the fall of chains and censorship, who destroyed Communist falsifications, rise against anti-democratic forces? If this is too naive in regard for certain governments, there is always the legacy of the dissidents. Adam Michnik is still the voice…. References Bagdanavičiūtė, Rūta (2014). H.D. Gadamerio ir J. Derrida neįmanomi debatai: nuo dinamiško dialogo iki supratimo anapus supratimo. [H.D. Gadamer’s and J. Derrida’s impossible debates: from the dynamic dialogue, to the understanding beyond understanding] Inter-studia humanitatis 17, Šiauliai. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity Press. Berlin, Isaiah (1969). Two Concepts of Liberty. Four Essays On Liberty. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, pp. 118–172. Available at: http://cactus.dixie.edu/green/ B_Readings/I_Berlin%20Two%20Concpets%20of%20Liberty.pdf (Accessed  10 March, 2012). Giordano, Christian (2015). Power, Legitimacy, Historical Legacies: a Disenchanted Political Antrhopology. Lit Verlag, Wien. Degutis, Algirdas (2010). Kaip galima liberalizmo tironija [How is the Tyranny of Liberalism Possible]. Logos 64, pp. 51–61. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2001). Tyranny of the Moment. Pluto Press. Fabry, Adam (2018). The origins of neoliberalism in late “socialist” Hungary: The case of the Financial Research Institute and “Turnabout and Reform”. Capital & Class 2018, Vol. 42(1) 77–107. Page 97 on pdf version on SAGE journals publication. Kockel, Ullrich and Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2016). An Enlightened Localism. Eurozine.

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Kulyk, Volodymyr (2014). Bilingual Asymmetry, Memory Ideology, and Cultural Diversity in Ukraine. In Kavaliauskas, Tomas (ed.) Conversations about Transcultural European Memory. Vilnius: leu. Michnik, Adam (1998). Conversation with Václav Havel. In: Letters from Freedom. University of California Press. Michnik Adam (2018). The Shift Toward Authoritarianism in Government Today, Adam Michnik. YouTube (Accessed November 11, 2018). Kundera, Milan (1984) The Tragedy of Central Europe. New York Review of Books ­ Volume 31, Number 7. April 26. Miszlivetz, Ferenc (2014). Postfeudal Hungary between Neoliberalism and Communism. In Kavaliauskas, Tomas (ed.) Conversations about Transcultural European Memory. Vilnius: leu. Jensen, Jody (2014). Postfeudal Hungary between Neoliberalism and Communism. In Kavaliauskas, Tomas (ed.) Conversations about Transcultural European Memory. Vilnius: leu. Martinkus, Andrius (2014). History is Written by the Victors: the Case of Russia and Lithuania. In Kavaliauskas, Tomas (ed.) Conversations about Transcultural European Memory. Vilnius: leu. Michelfelder, P.; Palmer, Richard E. (1989). Dialogue & Deconstruction: The Gadamer – Derrida Encounter. Albany: State University of New York Press. Havel, Václav (1978). The Power of the Powerless. Available at: https://s3.amazonaws .com/Random_Public_Files/powerless.pdf (Accessed: 3 July, 2019). Norkus, Zenonas (2008). Koks kapitalizmas? Kokia demokratija? [What Capitalism? What Democracy?] Vilnius University. Abbreviated version is available in English. See below (Norkus: 2012). Norkus, Zenonas (2012). On Baltic Slovenia and Adriatic Lithuania: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Patterns in Post-Communist Transformation. Central European University Press. Tismaneanu, Vladimir (1996). Fantasies of Salvation: Post-Communist Political Mythologies. Princeton University Press. Weigel, George (2001). Two Ideas of Freedom. Published in the Inaugural William E. Simon Lecture. Available at: https://eppc.org/publications/two-ideas-of-freedom/. Zizek, Slavoj (2006). Is this digital democracy, or a new tyranny of cyberspace? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/30/comment.media.

Media Sources bbc (2019). Italy’s League: Russian oil allegations grip Salvini’s party. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49004737 (Accessed 28 July, 2019).

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bbc (2010). Merkel says German Multicultural Society failed. Available at: https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11559451. Euobserver (2019). Salvini and Kaczynski – the new ‘axis’ powers? Available at: https:// euobserver.com/opinion/143948 (Accessed: 15 June, 2019). Financial Times (2014) Czech media oligarchs consolidate press powers. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/336eadaa-2f87-11e4-83e4-00144feabdc0 (Accessed 9 July, 2019). LaidLawScholars (2020). Alan Turing: do the things that no one can imagine. Available at: https://laidlawscholars.network/posts/do-the-things-that-no-one-can-imagine (Accessed 25 September, 2020). The Guardian (2019). Europe’s far-right divided over Russia as Salvini stages pre-election rally in Milan. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/17/ europes-far-right-divided-over-russia-as-salvini-stages-pre-election-rally-in-milan (Accessed : 06 July, 2019). The Guardian (2015). Ukraine eschews visa-free EU travel by blocking law to protect gay people. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/ukraine -visa-free-european-travel-anti-gay-law (Accessed 17 July, 2019). The Guardian (2015). Ukraine moves closer to visa-free EU travel as gay rights bill passes. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/13/ukraine-moves -closer-to-visa-free-eu-travel-as-gay-rights-bill-passes (Accessed 17 July, 2019).

Chapter 3

Conservative Assertiveness in Central and Eastern Europe: Case Studies from Poland and Hungary Nicolas Hayoz and Magdalena Solska 1 Introduction Each decade after the breakdown of Communism reveals new aspects of the meaning of 1989 and its consequences. After all, societies are evolving, and observers can ask themselves to what extent the changes realized since 1989 have corresponded to what was expected. Ten years ago scholars came to discover diverging developments in post-Communist Europe, an increasing gap between the democratized or democratizing part of Europe and another increasingly authoritarian one. Moreover authors were pointing to “democratic fatigue” and already warning about the possibility of “democratic regression” (Rupnik, Zielonka 2013) within the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Others were underlining considerable deficits in their democratic culture by speaking of “democracies without democrats” which became a catchphrase to say that those democracies suffered from a similar culture of polarization and confrontation (Pehe 2009; Galina and Hayoz 2011). And Ivan Krastev (2013: 114) observed that, “Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a growing ambiguity about the historical significance of 1989 and about the state of democracy in Europe (particularly Central Europe). Trust in democratic institutions (including elections) is steadily declining. The political class is viewed as corrupt and self-interested. Disenchantment with democracy appears to be growing”. Obviously, the comments of most political scientists around the 30th anniversary of 1989 not only confirm this concern, they also point to the fact that things have gotten worse: that there is an “illiberal backlash” in several Central and Eastern European (cee) countries, particularly in Hungary1 and – to 1 In 2010, Fidesz (Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Alliance) together with its coalition partner KDNP (Christian-Democratic People’s Party) obtained an unprecedented 52.7% of vote share. Hungarian disproportional mixed electoral system translated that vote share into over two-thirds of the seats (67.8%) in Parliament. Also, in 2014 and 2018 Fidesz-KDNP obtained the constitutional majority in Parliament.

© Nicolas Hayoz and Magdalena Solska, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_005

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a ­lesser extent – in Poland.2 For the first time after 1989, when round table consensus on the new rules was meant to mark discontinuity with regard to the former Communist regime, the victories in the elections of the conservative forces in Hungary in 2010 and Poland in 2015 have been presented as a kind of “rupture”, described by the incumbents as “revolutionary” and by the analysts of the decay of liberal democracy as “counter-revolutionary” (Halmai 2015; Smolar 2016). In Poland as well as in Hungary some political, social and cultural changes intended and conducted by the ruling political parties PiS and Fidesz are presented as part of an ongoing “national” or “conservative” revolution.3 This chapter is not so much interested in analyzing the institutional aspects of the construction of the “new illiberal state”.4 Whether and to what extent several countries of Central or South Eastern Europe are now not only revealing illiberal practices but are also showing elements of authoritarian regimes is an open question (as it is an ongoing process) and will not be discussed here.5 This chapter rather discusses the discursive and ideological elements behind the alleged antiliberalism,6 which has been frequently attested in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Western Europe more generally.7 2 In 2015 in Poland, PiS (Law and Justice), within its electoral coalition called “United Right” and including two other minor parties, “Solidaristic Poland” and “Poland Together”, obtained an absolute (but not constitutional) majority in Sejm (the lower chamber of the Parliament) and in Senate (the upper chamber). This result was due primarily to the high number of wasted votes (more than 16% – see Markowski 2016) cast for the parties that did not cross the required threshold of 5%. Hence, with the support of only 19% of the whole electorate, the party received an absolute majority in Parliament. 3 See the special volume of “Osteuropa” with the focus on the conservative revolution in Poland: “Gegen die Wand: Konservative Revolution in Polen”. Osteuropa 66 (1–2) 2016. 4 The term was used by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, in a speech in Baile Tusnad in 2014. 5 With this regard see Solska, Bieber, Taleski 2018. See also several issues of Journal of Democracy focussing on these aspects (vol. 29 (3), July 2018). 6 “Antiliberalism” and “illiberalism” are used here interchangeably. Liberalism can be defined within its three dimensions. Political liberalism refers to the rule of law, separation of powers and is a constitutional pillar of “liberal democracy”. Economic liberalism points to the neoliberal economic policy implemented in cee within the broad post-Communist transformation process. Cultural dimension of liberalism includes respect for minorities of each kind, tolerance, the idea of open society and similar. An anti-liberal stance will then denote an attitude that does not consider the features mentioned above as a priority and will be specified in this paper as to which dimension it respectively refers. Jan Kubik (2012: 80) defines illiberalism as a political option based on three principles: populism (exaltation of the “will of the people”), organizational antipluralism (denial of legitimacy to most political adversaries), and ideological monism (promotion of the only “proper” ideology, usually against the principles of plurality and tolerance). We claim that this denial of legitimacy appears within the discourse rather than through legal changes limiting the political pluralism. However, the contested policies regarding the ngo sector and public as well as private media in Hungary should not be ignored, see Bos 2018. 7 Even though in political science, there is a relevant distinction between policies and discourses, and a possible system change occurs within the first dimension, the paper is rather

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Illiberalism, nationalism, euroscepticism are not new elements, they are part of conservative political semantics shared by many European “new right populists” or “new conservatives”. Smolar (2016) sees in them not simply a conservative but rather a backwards oriented movement or revolution. Where the new conservatives or illiberals are in a power position they are using their power not just to solve economic and social problems, but are rather aiming at advancing their ideological project. In short, they want it to become hegemonic, not in the sense of reaching a new political consensus but to marginalize those dominating the political scene beforehand (Hufer 2018: 130; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). In an authoritarian regime such as Russia, this attempt to oppose the “liberal hegemonic world” has far better chances to be realized than in Hungary or Poland, which, despite their contested practices8 are still democratic countries. Jacques Rupnik (2018: 36) is certainly right when concluding that “In Central Europe, a quarter-century after 1989, the antiliberal swing of the pendulum is bringing to power a conservative reaction”. A lot has been said to explain the rise of illiberalism and populism particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. Scholars have mentioned reasons such as widespread dissatisfaction with the reform process, with liberalism reduced to its neoliberal variant, with political elites, the feeling among some parts of national societies of being “left behind”, with corruption and so on (Berend 2019; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018). Buzogány and Varga (2018: 812) mention also other factors explaining the “illiberal backlash” such as the “exhaustion and internal contradictions of the liberal modernization paradigm”, the lack of real elite change, the increasing polarization between political parties or the role of the European Union. Moreover, Bluhm and Varga (2019: 13) underline especially the importance of a conservative network system or a knowledge regime, which helped to develop the illiberal alternative conception to liberalism. Such knowledge networks are understood as “loose groups of think tanks, media outlets, politicians or factions within political parties, and university departments or holders of single university chairs that engage in the production and dissemination of ideology, that is of a ‘political conception of the world’”. Others are more accentuating the importance of the factor of the “failure of liberalism”. For Krastev and Holmes (2018) “1989” was also a return back to the West, to normality. According to these authors this imitation of the West seems to have triggered the so-called «counter-revolution» in Hungary and in Poland in 2010 and 2015 (see also Zielonka 2018). The West, especially Western related to the frequently neglected changing values and identities in both post-Communist societies as the basis for the electoral success of conservative reformers. 8 The so-called “bad practices” include very rapid legislation process, often with no public consultations, divisive discourse, broad clientelism and patronage, biased public media (which is not necessarily a new phenomenon), and generally – the majoritarian style of governing, often ignoring the proposals of parliamentary opposition.

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l­iberalism, should no longer be imitated. Krastev and Holmes (2018: 119) conclude that “Central and East Europeans turned against liberalism not so much because it was failing at home as because in their view it was failing in the West”. On the other side, the success of new conservative, populist forces is noticeable not only in Central and Eastern Europe but also in the old EU member states. The EU’s failure to see that the way it managed its multiple crises, including the migration crisis, also contributed (together with its neoliberal policies) to populism and nationalism in Central Europe. What are then the “­political theories” or ideas advanced by the already mentioned “conservative counter-revolution?” Political discourses and ideas are not just freely floating in the air. If political parties want to win elections with their “product”, with their discourse, they must resonate with the expectations and frustrations of important parts of their electorate. This was, and is, the case with the discourse on illiberalism as a movement directed against liberalism, especially its economic dimension. In this sense, particularly successful populist parties are formulating the grievances of their voters by picking up concepts, ideas and symbols supposed to express the central stakes in the political battle between the “good” and the “bad”, between the national interest, i.e. the good people, and the “others”. Moreover, political scientists consider whether, or to what extent, the conservative “counter-revolution” puts into question the model of liberal democracy. But while this paper is attempting to understand the rise to power of conservative parties in Poland and Hungary, it aims to also show that the polarizing rhetoric of the conservative populist parties is bringing back the distinction of friends and enemies, which was so far rather a central aspect of authoritarian systems such as in Russia. The conservative return to “moral politics” and to moral truth puts into question (at least verbally) political pluralism and a political culture of compromise, which is believed to be at the core of liberal democracies. The chapter is organized in the following way. The first section considers the failures of different dimensions of liberalism (economic, political and cultural) in Central and Eastern Europe (especially in Poland and Hungary), as a reason for the rise of the new conservatism. The second section deals with the vision of the state that the new conservative parties in power intend to advance. The third and final section shows how the new conservatives have used the populist discourse to define the enemies (internal and external) and thus how they contribute to the rising polarization of society. This in turn could have detrimental consequences for the quality of democracy, which we address in the conclusions. In every section, a wider overview of central debates and concepts is followed by examples from Poland and Hungary.

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“Antiliberal” New Conservativism in Central Europe as an Answer to Failures of (Neo)liberalism

The semantics of revolution as it has been used by PiS and Fidesz does not only mark the rupture with regard to the former left-liberal governments; it is much more the questioning of the liberal version of 1989 with the idea of a negotiated transition (Lang 2016; Bachmann 2016; Gnauck 2018: 236). More precisely, both parties criticize the consequences of the “elite-pacting” for the quality of the post-Communist system. In that sense Krastev (2016: 94) identifies “two faces of 1989” and concludes that “at the core of the populist’s claim of legitimacy is a revision of the legacy of 1989”. Since the dominant liberal narrative of 1989 is considered as being based on a “betrayed version of 1989”, the “national revolution” proclaimed in 2010 and 2015 has to establish a new hegemonic narrative, one that is “catching up” with 1989 by revealing its real, national meaning and potential. One could speak here of a clash between diverging narratives on the meaning of 1989. Consequently, the populist and conservative governments in Hungary and Poland are putting into question the whole liberal order created in Europe after 1989, especially the way Europe and the policies of the so-called liberal elites have developed. We could also say that the conservative critique blames liberalism precisely for the fact that it ignored the main topics of the conservative agenda such as collective identity, memory or state sovereignty (Rupnik 2018: 34). Furthermore, conservatives draw attention to fact that the European “Brussels-elites” and political representatives are rather “far away” and do not take into account the national interests of the new member states. Neither have they defined a common European interest. As mentioned above, the way the multiple crises in Europe have been managed and “sold” by its so-called liberal elites, including the migration crisis was a catalyst of Central European rising criticism of the politics from Brussels, and reinforced the already existing distrust against the liberal elites and their policies in Europe. On the other hand, there are other even more important reasons underlying this critique of liberalism. They can be seen in the absence of a liberal tradition in Eastern European countries as well as in the fact that after having left the Communist system, these countries were attracted by the promise of so-called “neoliberalism” with rapid and radical market reforms, including large scale privatizations, that would allow them to quickly reach the happy shores of a prosperous capitalist society. At the same time, liberal politicians and liberal economists agreed to organize a “common liberal” project of dismantling the state. This allowed the forging of a political consensus for radical economic reforms, but it also lies at the root of the connivances and misunderstandings

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that partly explain today’s antiliberal thrust – or to put it more precisely, the “decoupling of democracy from liberalism” (Rupnik 2018: 31). The fact that post-socialist countries “imported” only a truncated, or at least one-sided, version of liberalism in a context without liberal tradition has been observed by many authors. Freeden (2015: 110f.) noted how neoliberalism became the dominant ideology in Eastern European countries identified with their “market societies” while leaving the individual rights discourse of liberalism to the parallel society of “civil society”. He concludes that “Liberalism failed to take deeper roots in Eastern Europe, while its ideas of liberty were pressed into personalized and idealized intellectual and artistic spheres”. In this regard Rupnik (2018: 32) points to the failure of the former dissident intellectuals and liberals to bring back liberal politics in form of liberal parties, a failure which left the political field to the liberal economists, champions of neoliberalism. This miscarriage opened the way to what the author has described as the already mentioned “decoupling of democracy and liberalism”. In a similar perspective Kim Lane Scheppele in his foreword to Magyars book “Post-Communist Mafia State: the Case of Hungary” (Magyar 2016: xviii) explains the unpopularity of liberalism in post-Communist states due to the fact that constitutional liberalism “was introduced in post-Communist Europe at the same time as a particularly virulent strand of economic neoliberalism mandated radical privatization, slashed social safety nets and insisted on economic austerity in the face of economic contraction…. When the pain of ­economic dislocation in the 1990s was blamed on liberalism, newly democratic publics couldn’t see that constitutional and economic liberalism were separable. As a result, electoral rejection of neoliberalism, the economic ideology, spilled over into electoral rejection of constitutional liberalism, the political ideology. Liberals now have few friends throughout the former Soviet world”. Liberal politics with liberal parties and a state oriented on individual rights as well as on social solidarity were marginalized ideas at that time. Things changed even more radically after the financial crash of 2008 and its dramatic consequences for many economies in Eastern Europe. The failure of the neoliberal model, unable to realize what it had promised, was followed by disillusions, and even open-minded observers of liberal capitalism acknowledged that the “neoliberal orthodoxy was badly flawed” (Fawcett 2014: 398). Therefore, it is plausible that the triumphs and failures of neoliberalism and its depoliticized conception of a society dominated by competitive markets were at the beginning of the conservative critique which “knew” liberalism only through the glasses of the neoliberal orthodoxy. It would seem that the confusion of political liberalism with economic liberalism, according to Rupnik (2018: 32f.), paved the way to the fatal decoupling

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of liberalism from democracy operated by the conservatives. In that sense, according to the author, the triumph of neoliberalism in the 1990s prepared the ground for the actual political antiliberalism. A political liberalism identified with a discredited neoliberalism could be easily denigrated and presented as evil, and logically a liberalism reduced to a caricature implied that the contrary position, antiliberalism, became the positive value in the distinction liberalism / antiliberalism. That is where the “conservative renaissance” started which was oriented against the “tacit ‘liberal modernization pact’ (…) that moderate postCommunists, liberal, and neoliberal intellectuals have formulated during the transition period” (Buzogány and Varga 2018: 815). Antiliberalism can be celebrated when liberalism is presented as the main reason for the crises of the present. 3

Failure of Political Liberalism

Indeed, in Hungary, the political crisis in 20069 led to a dramatic loss of confidence in the liberal government and was magnified by the financial crisis in 2008. Hungary was the first country that needed help from the imf and signed a stability package. The austerity measures fueled public discontent and further undermined the support for the government. The combination of those political and economic crises led to strong alienation and anti-elite sentiments (Solska 2020). Consequently, in the 2009 poll conducted in the seventh year of the socialist-liberal coalition in office, three in four respondents (77%) in Hungary said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy was working, the highest percentage among the countries in the survey (see Batory 2016). “In the eyes of many Hungarians, what unfolded in the twenty years since state socialism was liberal democracy – and it has failed” (Müller 2011: 9). By contrast, Poland remained unaffected by the financial crisis in 2007–2010, the gdp had been growing by more than 3% for several years (3.6 in 2015). Nonetheless, the opinion poll in 2015 (cbos, 2015) revealed that 31% of Poles assessed the political system as “bad and demanding fundamental changes” and 41% as “not good and requiring many changes”. In sum, 72% of respondents recognized a necessity of far reaching reforms in the Polish political system. According to Karolewski and Benedikter (2016), the essential reasons for Law and Justice (PiS) electoral victory were conspicuous (but hardly ­avoidable) 9 The crisis was due to the leak of a speech of the re-elected socialist Prime Minister shortly after the elections in 2006. In this speech, he claimed that his government lied to the people about the state of the economy.

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“pathologies of economic governance” in the post-Communist period. Especially the position of the youth and seniors appeared precarious (Matthes 2016: 328). The widespread perception of the political establishment as corrupt, selfserving, and remote from the voters played a crucial role in the 2015 elections in Poland. The subsequent PiS campaign about “Poland in ruins” brought about the expected results. According to PiS the existing procedural legal structure inhibited the effectiveness of the state and decisive political action. Procedures underlying the system of separation of powers between the parliament, government and judiciary were designed to serve the interests of the post-Communist elite (political and business), which, in turn, weakened the state – Kaczyński called this phenomenon “impossibilism” (see Kaczyński 2011:79, the notion was often used in reference to the Constitutional Court introduced in 1985). The constitution of 1997 (the third one since 1989 and accepted only by 43% of the voters) also contributed – according to PiS – to the inefficiency of the state.10 This inefficiency was hence not just a structural problem inherited from Communism, but resulted from the lack of political will to reform it (see Dąbrowska 2019). This is also why PiS intended to establish the Fourth Republic.11 What is more, according to the conservatives, a new political social and economic order should emerge from within nation and be consistent with the nation’s values and not be imposed from above along with supposedly universal principles and procedures (see Dąbrowska 2019). This reminds one strongly of the substantive understanding of democracy (as opposed to procedural one). It seems, and in accordance with the remarks of Benedikter and Karolewski (2016: 3), the PiS government considers the problems to be so deep-rooted and serious (and completely misunderstood by the EU) that they require a farreaching capacity to act, similarly to a government of “national unity”. Such an 10

11

As a matter of fact, it entails several vague provisions, especially when it comes to the President’s and Prime Minister’s prerogatives in foreign policy. In addition, the existence of the second chamber has frequently been questioned in a unitary state and under the current electoral law. The “Fourth Republic” was a programme to which both PO (Civic Platform) and PiS were committed. It was understood as a moral and institutional renewal of the state, especially after several corruption affairs in the preceding, post-Communist governments. The project aimed at an intensive fight against corruption, against the hidden ties between politics and business, as well as emphasizing the role of the Institute of National Remembrance. However, in 2005, the expected coalition po-PiS did not emerge, so the project of the Fourth Republic lost its appeal, given a very controversial coalition between PiS, the populist Self-Defence and the nationalist League of Polish Families (See Sokołowski, 2015).

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empowered government could break the vested interests and rectify the deficiencies of the current system. However, PiS has neither forged such an alliance, nor has it attempted to reach any consensus in a public debate. So it is hardly legitimized to modify the rules of the game (Solska 2020). Indeed, the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated in an interview, that it is impossible to breach the vested interests in a nice and subtle way.12 From the PiS perspective, the politics of “good change” (“dobra zmiana”) justifies hence the use of unilateral measures and even the (short-term) deterioration of the quality of liberal democracy. Fidesz, in turn, explicitly rejects predominant liberal ideas. It equates the political “right” in Hungary with the defense of the nation state and the “left” with liberalism that is conspiring against the Hungarian nation (Krekó and Mayer 2015). Therefore, it is profoundly critical about liberal democracy as regards its impact on the nation state. Orbán laid out his fundamental critic of liberal democracy in a speech in 2014: “Liberal democracy was not capable to openly state and to oblige – even with constitutional power – the Hungarian government to work in the interests of the nation. It even questioned the idea of the existence of national interests. It did not oblige the Hungarian government to acknowledge the belonging of Hungarians living all over the world to the Hungarian nation and to strengthen this togetherness with his work” (cited in Hegedüs 2019: 418). 4

Neglected Sphere of Symbols

It is worth reminding that the (inevitable) grievances resulting from the neoliberal economic policies implemented during the system transformation have been, to a great extent, neglected by the left and liberal governments dominant during the 1990s and 2000s in Poland and Hungary. On the one hand, the consistent economic reforms contributed to considerable economic growth. On the other hand, they also led to unjust social inequalities, and – in the end, and especially in Poland – to a passive, apolitical society detached from state institutions left without any collective project. This dominant political culture based on low levels of interpersonal and political trust, strong a­ nti-party 12 Siennicki, PaweƗ (2017). Mateusz Morawiecki: Nie da się w białych rękawiczkach naruszyć zacementowanych interesów. Wywiad, available at: https://plus.polskatimes.pl/mateuszmorawiecki-nie-da-sie-w-bialych-rekawiczkach-naruszyc-zacementowanych-interesowwywiad/ar/11657068 (accessed 22 June 2019).

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sentiments and general disengagement became the constant feature of post-­ Communist societies. Exactly that deep-rooted distrust in the authority of state (which used to be regarded as a foreign one) and in fellow citizens hindered participation (see Gwiazda 2016: 90–91). PiS and Fidesz focused thus on symbolic, cultural side of public policies. They offered a definition of nation, patriotism and national community. PiS has defined patriotism in a traditional way. In his inaugural speech, President of Poland, Andrzej Duda stated: “If we talk today about tradition, culture and fundaments of Polish nation, then one thing has to be stated: it is our Catholic faith that constitutes the fundament, which has been shaping our generations, our tradition, our culture (…) These are elements that unite us, thanks to them we feel the cultural unity” (cited in Kozub-Karkut 2016: 83). This type of patriotism refers to the past, to history and stresses its most glorious moments. “Polishness” is hence determined by common history, values and religion, and not by a territorium. In another speech, President Duda pointed to the necessity to create a community of Poles living in the country and abroad. He pictured Poland “remembering about Poles left outside its borders due to historical circumstances; this is a vision of Poland which is able and wants to protect them, because our country needs to be home for every Pole and defend its citizens wherever they live” (cited in Kozub-Karkut 2016: 89). Similarly, but more concretely, the issue of “external Hungarian minorities” has been a vocal topic for Fidesz not only for outlining its distinct nationalconservative ideology but also for party organization. Viktor Orbán’s vision was a community of Hungarians connected by a common culture, history and language, as a form of “virtual irredentism” (Waterbury 2006). Fidesz has in fact established clientelistic relations to the external Hungarian communities (see Enyedi 2016). The introduction of the Status Law in 2001 was instrumental for Fidesz’s “cooptation” of ethnic Hungarian organizations (Szöcsik 2020). This legislation has granted special subsidies mainly within culture but also provided temporary labor permits to the members of the external Hungarian communities. Special ethnic identity cards (“Certificate of Hungarian Nationality”) recognized them as members of the Hungarian “nation”. The Status Law not only created considerable tensions between Hungary and neighboring countries, but many critics pointed out that it created dependencies and paternalism and therefore weakened Hungarian minority communities’ self-­ governing projects (Szöcsik 2020: 243). What is more, once Fidesz regained executive power in 2010, it submitted a law that offered dual citizenship (and thus voting rights) without residence requirements for Hungarians living in the neighboring countries (Pogonyi

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2017; Enyedi 2016). Fidesz also passed a law declaring June 4 as the “Day of National Unity” to remember the Treaty of Trianon (see Szöcsik 2020: 244).13 What is more, the new constitution adopted in 2011 depicts the Fidesz’s conception of the Hungarian nation. Article D states the following: “Bearing in mind that there is one single Hungarian nation that belongs together, Hungary shall bear responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living beyond its borders, and shall facilitate the survival and development of their communities; it shall support their efforts to preserve their Hungarian identity, the assertion of their individual and collective rights, the establishment of their community self-governments, and their prosperity in their native lands, and shall promote their cooperation with each other and with Hungary” (cited in Szöcsik 2020: 244).14 It must be stated however, there has not been any attempt on the liberals’ side to offer an alternative, a “liberal” definition and interpretation of the nation, patriotism, history, religiosity, the sources of national pride – to simply “rationalize” symbols (Osiatyński 2017). Also “Europe” as a symbol of unity, peace, reconciliation, open borders, labour movement and subsidiarity has never been present in a public debate under so-called “liberal” governments. Jarosław Kaczyński has frequently criticized the avoidance of thinking about patriotism or community on the side of liberal elites, especially the ones belonging to its main political opponent, the Civic Platform (po). According to Kaczyński, the existence of “community” would hinder the realization of the po party’s particular interests: “How does po act? They do not like the word “nation”. They do not want strong, integrated state. They just want to maintain power and this tactic does not work when a coherent community exists. What they care about are only the strong ones, the power of media and of money, internal and external forces, like those of the “street” and from “abroad”. They treat power as a mechanism of manipulation, using the media advantage and

13 14

The Hungarian right has always considered the Treaty of Trianon as a national tragedy and the position of the external Hungarian minority communities has become a key concern for the national conservative camp. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (2011: 9) has pointed out that “such a wide understanding of the Hungarian nation and of Hungary’s responsibilities may hamper interstate relations and create inter-ethnic tension”, see Venice Commission Opinion on the New Constitution of Hungary adopted at its 87th Plenary Session, Venice, 17–18 June 2011. Available at: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx? pdffile=CDL-AD(2011)016-e (accessed 23 January 2020).

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misleading voters. They have a negative attitude towards truth about the past and towards community…”15 The fact is that both PiS and Fidesz have, for many years, been able to decide and determine the topics of the public debate and to lead political conflict. To use Schattschneider’s seminal words “Since the development of cleavages is a prime instrument of power, the party which is able to make its definition of the issues prevail is likely to take over the government” (Schattschneider 1960: 73). Both parties have succeeded to make their definition of the relevant issues prevail. The most pronounced symbolic measure taken by Fidesz and even more intensively – by PiS – is the “redistribution of prestige” (Markowski 2016) in the form of social transfers for families and further social allowances for seniors and young people. This should make people, who had felt like “second-class” citizens, start to feel that their government was restoring a sense of moral order and justice, and that they belong to the “national community” of “ordinary Poles”. The social policy has since become the reference point for every relevant political party. Because PiS and Fidesz have indeed fulfilled the social promises while in power, both parties appear most credible, even when they engage in the “politics of outbidding” and make further promises, however irresponsible this can be in the long term. Exactly the solidarity-oriented state (discussed below) brought back by the new conservatives should have become the guarantee of these social premises. The state the conservatives have in mind is the good, responsible and inclusive state taking care of the needs of the population and the national interest, contrary to the liberal exclusive state oriented solely on promoting private interests and neglecting the interest of the national community. 5

The State the “New Conservatives” Have in Mind

As Bluhm and Varga (2019: 12) put in their book “New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe”: “The preoccupation with state strength is the key to understanding why the new conservatism is illiberal and authoritarian at its 15

The speech of Jarosław Kaczyński in Cracow in 2018 explaining the main tenets of the PiS political programme is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7-u5V5ueGY (accessed 23 January 2020). While referring to the forces of the “street” and forces from “abroad” Kaczyński means the strategy of the parliamentary opposition in Poland (called “total opposition”) consisting in attempts to mobilize protests and criticizing as well as complaining about the Polish government in the EU Parliament. This impression of the total opposition is strengthened by the fact that it has not managed to present any cohesive program of necessary reforms in Poland.

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core (despite the opposite claims heard from new conservative ideologists and politicians). The notion of a strong state goes hand in hand with a deep skepticism toward liberal laissez-faire.” The new conservatives favor the idea of the strong state and put the “national interest” in the center (Bluhm, Varga 2019: 282). Such state centralizes and concentrates power instead of diffusing it, as many western states do with the prevalent governance concept (Buzogány, Varga 2019: 80 f.). The return of the strong state is supposed to compensate the weakness of  the former post-socialist state. According to Dąbrowska, Buzogány, ­Varga (2019:  184) “Fidesz embraced the ideal of a “neo-Weberian” state which was thought should replace the “sell-out” of public assets (privatization) and the excessive embracement of “new public management” (npm) ideas by previous socialist governments. Instead of a market-oriented, “lean” government, which was seen by Fidesz to have served foreign interests to the detriment of the public good, a new, centralized core executive was installed, following the ideal of an effective “hard government””. In political science, the idea of a strong state implies a state having the necessary capacities to fulfill its functions. In authoritarian Russia, the strong state idea is clearly the ideology covering the repressive state controlling society. In the conservative ideology of Hungarian and Polish politicians or spin-doctors the state should not only be the defender of “national interests” and keep things in society under control. It should be also a moral authority providing guidance, security and identity. However, as always, discourses are one thing and reality another. Looking behind the myth and the construction of a “national system of cooperation” in Hungary with a strong state in the center one could see quite well, that the reverse side was the establishment of a corrupt clientelist system with elites trying to influence society, particularly public opinion. Authors such as Magyar (2016) even spoke of a “Mafia state” in Hungary. Other authors have shown how “since 2010 public procurement has become more centralized, less transparent, and more corrupt, to such an extent that researchers refer to the Hungarian economy as ‘crony capitalism’” (Dąbrowska, Buzogány, Varga 2019: 184). In fact, according to “Transparency International” in 2019, the corruption index for Hungary has massively deteriorated, whereas Poland, due to effective measures combating tax evasion, has become one of the less corrupt countries among new EU member states, after Estonia and Lithuania. Nonetheless, also in Poland there are indications for a similar growing role of political rent, patronage and clientelistic networks. Karolewski (2018) points in this context to the “party state capture”, which is not new in Poland (see Gwiazda 2008). What is new is the degree of the party reach (“colonization”) within the state under

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PiS and the fact that the party happened to explicitly violate standard procedures while conducting policy changes regarding the Constitutional Tribunal and judiciary. Furthermore, Jasiecki highlights unequivocally further dubious tendencies (2019: 143): “Regulatory actions strengthening the state weaken the capital market, diminishing the role of minority shareholders in state-owned companies and leading to the hybridization of ownership, fuzzy ownership structures and unclear interdependencies between state-owned subsidiaries”. According to PiS and Fidesz, the state should be sovereign and capable of defining and fulfilling national interests, not least in the realm of economy. Therefore, as Dąbrowska (2019) notices, its legal structure, social and economic policy, the “politics of memory” and “national awareness” should be subordinate to this national interest. This points to the PiS and Fidesz unilateral ­decision-making. In a “liberal” sense, the state of PiS and Fidesz is ­anachronistic – especially in such fields as environmental and climate policy, women’s rights, or education. On the whole, we can observe in Hungary and Poland the elements of “state capitalism” that implies, on the one hand, the intervention of the central state in the economy (based on considerable state ownership) and, on the other hand, the redistributive state, because the declared goal is to create more “comprehensive justice” (Jasiecki 2019). This is also why PiS and Fidesz are some of the most popular ruling parties in Europe with the highest vote share in their respective parliaments. The PiS-led government has introduced a broad family program (a monthly financial support for a second and each subsequent child in the family, of approximately 125 Euros; in the “electoral year” 2019 it extended this payment to the first child too). It restored early retirement (60 for women and 65 for men), raised the minimum wage and minimum pensions, offered free medication for seniors and launched a program of low-cost social housing (see Jasiecki 2019). On the one hand, one can critically mention that with such measures PiS is buying votes and attracting the “losers of transformation” – lower social classes, laborers and farmers, residents of rural areas, small towns and villages. Indeed, exactly this population constitutes the core voters of the party (see Roose and Karolewski 2019).16 New promises may additionally lead to further claims that the state will not be able to realize. On the other hand, their social policy has reduced poverty

16

In contrast, the core voters of Fidesz are different – they have a high level of income and they are not particularly committed to tradition. In terms of fundamental values there are also important differences (see Roose and Karolewski 2019: 125).

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among children,17 social disparities and financial inequalities (see Jasiecki 2019), however, its intended positive impact on birth rates remains ambivalent. In contrast to that, in Hungary, the inequalities have actually continued to widen (Krekó, Enyedi 2018: 48). The popularity of Orbán among the poor derives rather from the intensive exploitation of their fears related to their social status, to their identity as part of the national community challenged by such processes as globalization or migration. Anyway, notwithstanding the shortterm positive aspects of redistribution, the direct money transfers will not streamline nor advance public services without deep reforms. It remains thus to be seen how these new conservative strong states will be able to reach their goals. The one-sided mode of operation adopted by both party leaders (frequently excluding opposition parties and public consultation with affected social groups and related experts) may, however, lead to stronger social divisions. To be sure, the whole conflict around the Constitutional Court in Poland and judiciary reform introduced within a very short timeframe raises legal uncertainty. These mentioned reforms bucked down – above all – to massive elite change within related institutions but did not introduce new mechanisms that would rectify the inherent systemic weaknesses. Such government policy, coupled with suspicion towards autonomous institutions, may, in the long run, diminish opportunities for modernizing the state and undermine the position of Poland and Hungary within the EU. After all, these states are now part of an open European state system with European institutions guaranteeing open borders and economic spaces of cooperation but requiring also the implementation of European policies. That notwithstanding, the idea that a nation state should be able to protect the interests, fears and worries of a population confronted with globalization and immigration has been neglected by EU elites for too long time. In that sense the return of the conservative strong state is once again a response to the failures of the EU to take national peculiarities and worries seriously. 6

New Conservativism, Populism and Polarization

In the case of the discourse on “illiberalism” or “illiberal democracy” noticeable especially in Hungary, one can clearly see the attempt to reactivate a central 17

Pilewski, P. (2018), Polska z największym spadkiem do najniższego poziomu w historii. Eurostat podał dane o dzieciach zagrożonych ubóstwem, available at: https://businessinsider.com.pl/finanse/ubostwo-dzieci-w-polsce-historyczny-spadek-dane-eurostatu/ 0p9prqn (accessed 23 January 2020).

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ideological conflict dating back to the 19th century: the one between Liberalism and Conservativism. Similarly, Aleksander Smolar’s observation that what can be seen in Poland is the return of “Gemeinschaft” against “Gesellschaft” (see Osteuropa 2011 11–12: 95) expressing precisely one of the classic frontlines between Liberalism and Conservativism, between holistic and individualistic concepts. To the positioning of “illiberal” conservativism in Hungary or in Poland against liberalism corresponds the return of the old ethnic form of nationalism turned against its universalist version. It looks as if the once successful formula of liberalism coupled with nationalism which played a fundamental role in overcoming Communism (Mungiu-Pippidi 2015: 91 f.), has been replaced by the “illiberal” formula combined with ethnic nationalism. However, it comes as no surprise that the conservatives attempt to determine such notions as the nation, the state, authority, national community, power, Christianity or Europe. In the conservative world, notions based on the collective have indeed priority over the individual. The conservative ideology does what ideologies do, particularly well in a globalized world – it offers orientation; it “tells the individual that he or she is not simply an individual. Each of us is part of a greater whole, and each should realize that he or she must act with the good of the whole society in mind” (Ball, Dagger, O’Neill 2014: 129). Such conservativism can, as the history of conservativism in democratic countries shows, perfectly well “come to terms with the Democratic ideal”. But political parties in power supporting the idea of “illiberal democracy” frequently resort to the populist variant of conservativism. They play off collective notions such as the community, the nation, the group or the state against individualistic ones which underline individual rights. This has the advantage to create artificial distinctions, walls or borders between the “we” community and the others, especially the ones who do not share your opinion. It brings back the Schmittian dichotomy enemy versus friends, which the new conservatives share (obviously to a certain degree) with authoritarian regimes in Russia or Turkey. When it comes to their political methods or style of operation, both PiS and Fidesz are frequently described as populist, illiberal, or even authoritarian (see Enyedi 2015; Guasti, Mansfeldová 2018). In particular, the dominance of the respective charismatic leader is underlined,18 their radical l­ anguage ­disparaging

18

It is noteworthy that whereas the Prime Minister Orbán is the head of the executive in Hungary, the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczynski was just a Sejm deputy until October 2020.

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corruption and incapability of previous political elites at power, pointing to pathologies of the post-Communist state. Furthermore, what is criticized is the exclusive and very rapid legislation process (even on most fundamental reforms), the (especially verbal) animosity towards the critical civil society organizations and political opponents, and constant ostentatious criticism of liberal, “cosmopolitan” and “leftist” values (as a threat to traditional ones) (Solska 2020). At the same time, what differentiates the political systems of Poland and Hungary from the authoritarian regimes is the fact that elections are still free19 and constitute the main source of governments’ legitimization, and the opposition can still fulfil its main functions, such as criticism, control and presenting an alternative. In other words, political pluralism in both countries has not yet been constrained. It must be noted at this stage, however, that the very absolute and especially constitutional majority of the governing party in parliament, and certain institutional policy changes related to parliamentary order in Hungary (see Várnagy and Ilonszki 2018) could have, arguably, at least partially weakened parliamentary control possibilities. Moreover, there are pivotal differences between the scope and quality of legislative changes in Poland and Hungary. Without going into details20, it suffices to say that in Poland the constitution has not been unilaterally changed (however this remains the long-term goal of PiS). There is no equivalent to the Hungarian so-called Fourth Amendment, which, according to many authors, has undermined the independence of the judiciary, brought universities under greater governmental control, and classified homelessness as a crime. Media freedom is not restricted in Poland, while, just like in Hungary, the public media in Poland remain clearly pro-government. The Hungarian government used a new advertising tax to influence coverage also in the privately owned media. And there is no similar, contentious ngo-law, however the PiS also intends to initiate reforms in this realm.

19 20

One spoke of “two poles of authority” in Poland (the PiS leader as a real decision-maker and the Prime Minister as the one fulfilling the decisions). Many authors argue that the elections in Hungary are not fair anymore, see for instance Krekó and Enyedi (2018: 40). Karolewski, I.P.; Benedikter, G. (2016a) Poland is not Hungary. A Response to “Poland’s Constitutional Crisis”, in Foreign Affairs, available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-europe/2016-09-21/poland-not-hungary (accessed 23 January 2020).

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Friends and Enemies

Needless to say, changing society by decree in western democracies has always failed and it is well known that the failures of Communist “social engineering” by collectivist states were among the main reasons of the breakdown of Communism. It may be that the return of the conservative paternalist “welfare state” in certain countries of Central and Eastern Europe may convince parts of the electorate for a while, particularly those left behind by the transformation process. But as soon as political parties claim to be more than a simple antiliberal movement and pretend to represent a cultural “counter-revolution” (Rupnik 2018: 36), things get more complicated and the relationship between political goals and political means starts to become a problem. Any ambition to go beyond a constitutional neutrality of the state would put pluralism and the rule of law under stress. A political party such as PiS may convince its electorate that it has fought corruption more successfully than under the previous government, still it needs to stress the reach of its power if it pretends to realize a “good society” or a “Christian community”. And for sure the conservative claim of bringing back the lost unity of the nation brings about the essential element of pluralism, conflict and opposition. By trying to solve social and cultural problems by decree, more precisely by trying to control the judiciary politically, conservatives all over the world, from the United States to Central Europe, are putting into march a dangerous anti-pluralistic logic. If all that counts is to have the law on your side to support your moral claim and truth, then this undermines democracy and the very sense of rule of law. And if the political objective is to make sure that conservative values will dominate in society, such a divisive enterprise would necessarily lead to the reintroduction of “moral politics”, an undertaking which implies the necessary production of the distinction of friends and enemies. Compromise would not be possible anymore in such a “logic” and political antagonists would become enemies. Conservative illiberals are said to redefine the very sense of the political. As Buzogány and Varga (2018: 818) put it: “Following Carl Schmitt, one of the central ideas propagated against this tendency is to “make politics political again” by bringing questions of power, personality, and the distinction between “us” and “them” to the forefront”. But the conservative illiberal idea of the state does exactly the contrary: instead of accepting the very sense of the political in modern democracies, i.e. the essentially conflictual character of politics, it tends to dissolve the political by celebrating the old political semantics of society as organic community held together by the State. Such ideas imply the return of hierarchy. It is precisely this imaginary space of the political in which

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society appears as a nation that is being negated by a bureaucratic and hierarchic conception of society (Lefort 1981: 172, Hayoz 2012: 32). However, social reality can neither be incarnated nor represented by a hierarchy, be it the state or a party organization. Power is inevitably an empty place. And as Niklas Luhmann (1990) has shown, state power is an exchangeable, unstable and divided position based on the distinction between government and opposition. Under modern conditions, sovereign power is nothing more than the contingent possibility to stay in power or to be in opposition. This is the very essence of democratized power. Populist conservatives follow the idea of one single people which refuses the concept of “one and the other” (Lefort 1981). It is not by accident that Carl Schmitt has become so fashionable among conservative intellectual circles: A government that cannot accept the institutionalization of “the other” has to take recourse to the archaic distinction between friends and enemies. And it should be clear that such a regime becomes dangerous particularly for the social environment of politics, where such a conception of the political directly contradicts the autonomous realities of other social spheres, particularly those of the economic system. And it should be clear that such a regime becomes dangerous particularly for the social environment of politics, where such a conception of the political directly contradicts the autonomous realities of other social spheres, particularly those of the economic system. It would likely provoke dissent and opposition, and bring back conflict which the illiberals would like to marginalize. In fact, several social protests erupted in Poland in reaction to PiS policies on the judiciary and women’s rights; similarly, in Hungary people protested against internet tax or the new labour law.21 Modern politics needs to involve opponents and opposition. This crucial difference between enemies and opponents points to the core of the political in modern society and also to the problem of morals in politics: as soon as opponents are considered as foes, an elimination process starts (Edelman 1991, Mouffe 2005). Contrarily, their acceptance implies competition focused on political victory. The latter can be obtained only by respecting the rules of the game and established procedures. Today, authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe still have considerable difficulties in “living” with a political opposition. As mentioned above, there have been no attempts, so far, in Hungary and Poland to suppress the political opposition by oppressive means – quite the 21

Hockenos, P. (2019) Hungary Finally Has an Opposition Worth a Damn, in Foreign Policy, available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/17/hungary-finally-has-an-oppositionworth-a-damn/ (accessed 23 January 2020).

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contrary, new parties emerge in the run-up to every election (however, to the detriment of the opposition’s coherence); there have been protests and demonstrations. In Poland and Hungary, however the populist conservative parties have tried to delegitimize their political opponents discursively – holding them responsible for the failed post-Communism and the miserable condition of the state – and so they resorted to images of enemy, encouraging conflict and polarization. 7.1 Populism and Rising Polarization Undoubtedly, questioning the national-democratic consensus (institutions and procedures agreed upon at round table negotiations) leads to increased polarization. The effort of political forces to redesign the rules of the game observed especially in Hungary but also in Poland have intensified the conflict and may even lead to social unrest (see Casal Bértoa 2019). This is visible particularly in the protests, and in Hungary, additionally, by the rise of extreme right groups. Włodzimierz Wesołowski noted for Poland (but his remark could be also applied to Hungary) that the “process of accentuating one dividing axis and diminishing the meaning of others (e.g., in economic and social policy) may be labelled “deliberate polarization of the political scene”. This process is currently gaining in significance. It has proven to be a successful means of prioritizing only one, sharply defined feature of the political enemy. In such cases, other features naturally recede into the background, or at least into the second plan. The enemy begins to behave likewise” (Wesołowski 1997: 233). In Poland, it is the conflict between liberal and solidaristic Poland, in Hungary – between liberal and illiberal democracy. And it is respectively PiS and Fidesz that constantly determine the contents of this main conflict and thus – stay at power. We can also observe the process called “populism by contagion” (see Pappas 2014) – the opponents resort to similar populist means, e.g. politics of outbidding, and become subordinate to the populist dichotomy underlying the main conflict. This is why in both countries the level of polarization has been on the rise (see Casal Bértoa 2019: 2). Casal Bértoa (2017) identifies other sources of rising polarization: electoral system, type of regime, but more importantly – “personalism” that plays a particular role in both countries. Viktor Orbán has managed to exert enormous influence on Hungarian politics and polarize the whole country around him. His party’s rapid ideological adjustment (from a liberal to a national-­conservative party), his aggressive political style and leadership rendered him the most recognizable politician and his party the best organized and disciplined political formation in the country (Enyedi 2005). As noted by Casal Bértoa, he has participated in most political opposition demonstrations since 1989. Also in ­Poland,

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Jarosław Kaczyński managed to polarize Polish society, with his anti-establishment rhetoric, but especially – “conspiracy approach” to the Smoleńsk plane crash (i.e. blaming Russia, and indirectly, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his political camp). His words on “Poles of a worse sort” “prone to treason” have triggered vehement protests among the liberal elites. However, as Casal Bértoa (2017: 10) rightly points out, the hostile competition, personality clashes and very weakly institutionalized political parties have been a constant feature of Polish politics (see also Wesołowski 1997). The antagonism inherent to polarization is also a constitutive feature of populism.22 It is quasi natural that this antagonism stems from a divide between the “governed” (the people) and the (previously) governing elite that focuses only on its interests. Populist politicians attempt to deepen the existing divisions or construct new ones, which is facilitated by the polarization of society around some universalist values. In Poland, for instance, since 2005 the post-Communist divide ebbed, and political rivalry between the two Solidarność successor parties, po and PiS, came to the foreground, based on a dichotomy solidaristic vs. liberal Poland. This division has been transformed by PiS from a merely economic one into the confrontation between “elites” (well educated, city dwellers, secular and cosmopolitan) and “ordinary people” (economically worse off, less educated, from rural areas, religious and patriotic) (see Dzwończyk 2016: 321f). In the end, “solidaristic Poland” targeted “losers of transformation”, demanding more welfare state, cherishing religious, traditional, and conservative values. “Liberal Poland”, in turn, centered on the groups who benefited from the post-Communist transformation (conservatives would add: not always with legal means), who preferred progressive, liberal, secular values. This division has been thus ingrained in the populist logic through the polarization of society within economic and ethical/cultural dimension. The initially substantive conflict became populist through an extension of its main determinants – and it thus became more understandable for the public opinion (Dzwończyk 2016: 322–323).

22

We can define populism as a discursive frame utilized to challenge the status quo, aimed at restoring power to the people and replacing the elites along with their ideas and values (Ghergina et al. 2017: 194). The ideational approach to populism denotes the construction of a dichotomy between an amorphous “people”, typically depicted as virtuous and hardworking, and corrupted “elites” whose interests and ensuing actions pose a threat to the people (Mudde 2004 and 2016). This definition points to a dichotomic construction of social reality, also with e.g. conspiracy theories and the creation of the enemy.

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Radicalization of Discourse and Externalization of “Enemies”

PiS in Poland has always been consistent with its EU critical stance, anti-­ Communist and conservative program. Fidesz, in turn, emerged as a liberal party and then turned into a national conservative, very well organized political force that managed to consolidate the right spectrum of the political scene and create a social movement – civic circles – to promote its conservative stance (see Enyedi 2005). As a former part of the liberal establishment, Fidesz had to strictly differentiate and reinvent itself. This is why its discourse has become more radical, reaching to the “external enemies”. It must be noted, that at home, Orbán, has frequently claimed that the European Union intends to colonize Hungary, treats it as a second-class country unequal to Western states (see Jenne and Mudde 2012). Therefore, recalling the tradition of Hungarian revolutions and freedom fights against the Habsburgs in 1848 and the Soviets in 1956, he projected the “freedom fight” against Western influence in the country. As he claimed in his 2012 commemorative speech at the anniversary of 1848 revolution: “The political and intellectual program of 1848 sounded: We don’t want to be a colony! The main program and demand of Hungarians in 2012: We don’t want to be a colony! […] Freedom means for us that we are not of lower value than others and we also deserve respect. It means that we work for us, for ourselves, and we won’t live in debt slavery” (cited in Hegedüs 2019: 415). At the same time, Orbán has frequently devaluated the domestic opposition as being only an object in the hands of real European and global political opponents. Thus left-liberal opposition appears without its sovereign political will, only representing the past and lacking any suitable program for Hungary’s future (Hegedüs 2019). By the same token, ngos active at the field of human rights and migration have become the targets in the discourse of Orbán and his Fidesz party since 2015. Watchdog ngos were mainly portrayed as paid political activists representing the interest of foreign countries. They were therefore deprived of their “agency” (see Palonen 2018). Both PiS and Fidesz decisively rejected the refugee relocation scheme determined very quickly at an EU summit. On the one hand, this rejection was the parties’ demonstration of the responsiveness to the “will of the people”, where the bulk of society did reject any refugee allocation in their countries. Additionally, this rejection suited well their discourse of “agency”, “subjectivity” and “empowerment” of the respective nation that was now able to oppose the onesided, frequently Germany-led decisions.23 In fact, neither the EU nor domestic 23

It is important to note that both Polish and Hungarian governments – apart from their radical and divisive discourse – pointed to the fact that most refugees did not intend to

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governments have so far come up with a feasible solution of similar, migrationrelated challenges, which are likely to reoccur in the near future. The general problem of migration was the salient issue even in the last parliamentary elections in Hungary in 2018. Prime Minister Orbán equated terrorism with immigration, and declared liberal multiculturalism an “obsolete idea” not able to provide proper answers to the crisis emerging in Europe. Since 2015, Orbán’s rhetoric changed, switching the focus to the ethnic, cultural and biological survival of the Hungarian nation in the context of the “migration crisis”, which should enjoy priority over economic issues (Hegedüs 2019). Furthermore, Orbán also regarded “political correctness” as preventing ­Europe “from giving” appropriate answers to the challenges it faces. This vision of Europe was best pronounced in a speech in 2015: “In other words, what is at stake today is Europe and the European way of life, the survival or extinction of European values and nations – or, to be more precise, their transformation beyond all recognition. The question now is not merely what kind of Europe we Hungarians would like to live in, but whether Europe as we now know it will survive at all. Our answer is clear: we would like Europe to remain the continent of Europeans. This is what we would like. We only say “we would like this”, because this also depends on what others want. But there is also something which we not only would like, but which we want. We can say we want it, because it depends only on us: we want to preserve Hungary as a Hungarian country” (cited in Mudde 2016: 47). Orbán also offered a “conspiracy theory” to explain the deliberate alteration of Europe’s ethnic composition. Accordingly, cosmopolitan elites intend to rule European nations and societies by undermining their ethnic homogeneity and power to resist. Finally, Orbán pointed to the alleged networks of George Soros and human rights watchdog ngos, and the supposed alliance between “Brussels” and George Soros, conspiring to undermine the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of Europe by settling millions of migrants to the continent (see Hegedüs 2019). This shifting focus was accompanied by more and more xenophobic radical right discourse, including the charges of criminality, terrorism, against the migrants/asylum seekers, reaching the discursive qualities of the xenophobic radical right (see more in Mudde 2016; see also Minkenberg 2017). The rhetoric of PiS became particularly radical, when it came to the acceptance of refugees. First, the government talked about “imposed multiculturalism”: “The Union, Commission and Germany impose refugees on us”; or “Germany wants to blackmail Europe. This is its problem” (Walecka-Rynduch 2016: stay in their countries and apply for asylum, but rather preferred to travel to Germany or Scandinavian states. Besides, responding to the accusation of a missing European solidarity, Poland frequently stressed that it had accepted over 1 million Ukrainian refugees.

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342f). Then, the argument of a threat to national security and identity became more prominent: In a statement, the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, wrote: “We should not accept refugees of Islamic faith, because there are extremists among them, who (…) with time will become a very serious threat to the security of our citizens” (cited in Walecka-Rynduch 2016: 342). At the same time, PiS could easily justify such a radical stance. The related public opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Poles were against acceptance of refugees from Middle East and Africa, whom they regarded as a great threat to Poland’s security (Poushter, 2016). Almost 60% of respondents identified Muslims with terrorism (Fundacja “Afryka inaczej”, 2015). It must be concluded that such measures, while derived also from the stances prevalent in society, were primarily aimed at triggering fears and thus mobilizing the society. 9 Conclusion It is true that the mixture of conservative ideas, populism and nationalism does not have to be anti-democratic – it mobilizes majorities to win elections. What one observes, especially in Poland, but also Hungary, is the considerably rising electoral turnout, which – if this trend sustains – may indicate the development of a “political nation”. Concomitantly, one can see a dominant political party usurping state institutions, trying to change fundamental rules of democratic game (and not only their application). One dominant party also is resorting ever more to the politics of patronage and clientelism. Indeed, populists winning elections believe that the whole population is behind them, but electoral victories are not a license to change the constitutional regime, as particularly Fidesz did by using “its supermajority to rewrite the constitution and electoral laws to lock in its advantage” (Levitsky, Ziblatt 2018: 94). And this points again to the decoupling of democracy and liberalism: If liberalism is not seen (anymore) in terms of constraining procedures and rights to be respected but simply as a failed economic project, then democracy is the only value that counts, particularly for the conservative populist parties. And democracy not effectively constrained by rule of law, which constitutes the core of liberal democracy, becomes automatically fragile. The warning Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018: 7) expressed regarding the violations of democratic norms by Donald Trump’s presidency, is also relevant in the above discussed cases: “Constitutions must be defended by political parties and organized citizens, but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be”. Every party at power has the right to conduct reforms

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of judiciary and to amend the constitution. It must be done, however, in accordance with the constitutional rules and based on consensus, to the benefit of a common good and not particular party interest. The polarization accompanying the decoupling of democracy and liberalism is always detrimental for the quality of democracy. Sartori argues that the high ideological distances between extreme parties in polarized party systems lead to inimical and irresponsible oppositions, politics of outbidding and centrifugal competition (Sartori 1976). Others refer to difficulties with building stable legislative coalitions and thus conduct necessary polices. In polarized polities, political elites “have greater incentives to overtly politicize the bureaucracy or engage in clientelistic practices which will affect, for example, civil service recruitment and accordingly state continuity and efficiency” (Xezonakis 2012: 15; see also Casal Bértoa 2019). We observe in Poland and Hungary the lack of any substantive debate on policies; the party at power conducts its program or “reform agenda” unilaterally. This is also partially due to the self-inflicted weakness of the opposition in both countries, which does not present any alternative program or a vision of the future development of the country but irresponsibly engages in the politics of outbidding. In the case of Hungary and Poland, the policy changes have consisted in the massive elite change and social allowances, but have not so far eradicated the deficient functioning of the related institutions. Both PiS and Fidesz seem to remain suspicious towards autonomous institutions (or reform them in their own right), however, the policy changes in Hungary went further. PiS and Fidesz came into power with the promise of redistribution and social policy, which is known in Western welfare states. Both conservative parties follow a leftist/ socialist program, whereas actually all previous leftist or liberal governments made cuts to the social policies in order to bring about liberalization and reforms supporting competitiveness (see also Roose and Karolewski 2019: 125). For some observers, this trend in Poland constitutes the true end of the post-Communist system transformation in the sense that the dominant “paradigm of effort and resignation” that society had to go through to improve its status in the long run, has come to an end with the PiS massive social transfers.24 The question is, whether the end of this paradigm comes too soon. The conflict of PiS and recently of Fidesz with the EU exposes the fact that no consensus 24 Musiałek, Paweł (2019). Koniec polskiej transformacji, available at: https://klubjagiellon ski.pl/2019/05/28/koniec-polskiej-transformacji/?fbclid=IwAR0VAyl-WTv55BXRO_4XEMGau7_Ha1W7IZAx1MabSrE4ylBgYHnshHZZtc (accessed 23 January 2019).

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on common values has been established so far on the European level. In the past, such a common ground was Christianity, to which Poland and Hungary frequently refer. Recently the liberalism as a common denominator has failed, as both countries prove. Where does all that leave us with antiliberal conservativism in Central and Eastern Europe? Despite all their differences, PiS and Fidesz share an already mentioned retrograde conception of a strong patronizing state and a normative conception of society based on the idea of a center with a strong leader (or generally, executive) who could steer all components of the society for the good of it. For many observers this is not only an out-of-date idea of society; it translates also into a deep-rooted aversion of modernity. In that sense, such political parties appear reactionary, if not backward-looking.25 Nostalgia is a powerful political motivator as Mark Lilla (2016) observed, particularly in times of transformations when populists are raising their heads to claim that the present is betrayal and alienation. Moreover, the “organized society” they aspire to realize, has seemed to organically produce a side product, clientelism and patronage, with privileges for specific groups despite the promise of inclusive democracy. The corresponding conservative discourse with hegemonic ambitions together with partisan polarization and controversial legal changes is a catalyst for lasting division and conflict, exactly the opposite of what the antiliberal conservatives are aiming at. That is why countries like Hungary or Poland are still far away from a culture of compromise and consensus, the latter being conducive to democracy. The expression “democracies without democrats” appears thus to be quite appropriate for this region. Here, as in many other parts of the world, Tocqueville’s lesson has yet to be learned: an unchecked democratic majority puts a country on the path of tyranny. When governments with one dominant party, with an absolute or constitutional majority in Parliament, stay in power for more than one term in a post-Communist, fragile democracy, they become a recipe for a 25 Marek Cichocki (2016) has pointed to the general dilemma of conservative parties after Communism, especially in the countries with discontinued statehood, like Poland. They cannot cultivate the Communist or post-Communist institutions, so they become retrospective, searching for usable national traditions and historical experiences. He underlines nonetheless, that today in Poland, paradoxically, the conservative elites try to reform the countries (however contested their reforms appear) and try to respond to the current challenges such as globalization, cultural changes and rising inequalities. Conversely, the liberal elites tend to maintain the status quo and do not seem to have any alternative reform proposals. Needless to add- this is also the source of the conspicuous weakness of the opposition in both Poland and Hungary.

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Várnagy, Réka; Ilonszki, Gabriella (2018). Hungary: the de(con)strucion of parliamentary opposition. In De Giorgi, Elisabetta; Ilonszki, Gabriella (ed.) Opposition parties in European Legislatures. Conflict or Consensus? London and New York: Routledge. Walecka-Rynduch, Agnieszka (2016). Lęk i niepokój jako elementy politycznych strategii komunikacyjnych. Analiza kampanii prezydenckiej i parlamentarnej 2015 roku [Fear and concern as elements of political communication strategies. An analysis of 2015 presidential and parliamentary campain]. In Kułakowska, Małgorzata; Borowiec, Piotr; Ścigaj, Paweł (ed.) Oblicza kampanii wyborczych [Faces of electoral campaigns]. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Wesołowski, WƗodzimierz (1997). Political Actors and Democracy: Poland 1990–1997. Polish Sociological Review 3(119), 227–248. Waterbury, Myra A. (2006). Internal exclusion, external inclusion: Diaspora politics and partybuilding strategies in post-Communist Hungary. East European Politics and Societies 20(3), 483–515. Xezonakis, Georgios (2012). Party system polarization and quality of government: on the political correlates of QoG. Working paper. Available at: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/ bitstream/2077/38962/1/gupea_2077_38962_1.pdf (assessed 22 June 2019). Zielonka, Jan (2018). Counter-Revolution. Liberal Europe in Retreat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Croatia after 1989: Memories of Socialism in Postsocialist Times Nevena Škrbić Alempijević and Josip Zanki 1 Introduction We are in continuous state of transition. Our country is in transition, as well as the people. (…) We are supposed to abandon the old ways, the memories of ex-Yugoslavia and socialism. It is clear what we are expected to forget, but it is quite blur where we are supposed to end. Transition to what? How can we define ourselves as a postsocialist society if we forget what the socialist society looked like? This is how a member of the local government from Kumrovec, a village in northwestern Croatia, explained the in-between condition of the community he was representing, but also of the Croatian state in general during an ethnological research conducted in 2008. The occurrences our interview partner pointed to are related to the political, economic and social transformations that gained momentum after 1989. In the former constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Croatia included), the early 1990s were marked with the break-up of the country and the establishment of new independent states, the shift from the state-directed economy to free market model and from socialism to neo-liberal capitalism, the embracing of democracy as opposed to one-party political system, but also with inter-ethnic and inter-religious wars. All those factors thoroughly changed the way of life in Croatia, the country’s positioning in the international circles, as well as the identity-building strategies. The political networks, the image of the nation, social ideals and cultural values had to be constructed anew. After 1989, the identity of the Croatian state and the Croatian citizens has been reconstructed along two main lines. On the one hand, in the political narrative the state embraced the belonging among modern and future-oriented European countries and stressed its Central European and Mediterranean geopolitical and cultural dimensions, as opposed to the notorious Balkans, often stereotyped as the powder keg of Europe stuck in the conflicting past. Although

© Nevena Škrbić Alempijević and Josip Zanki, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_006

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in the geographical sense those cultural areas overlap, in the identity-building processes the categories of Central European/ Mediterranean heritage and the Balkan legacy were treated as two conflicting poles of a civilizational dichotomy (Čapo, 1999: 45–46). Accordingly, the progressive Europeanist civilizational ideals of the Croatian people have been placed in stark contrast to the Balkan mentality and identity, characterized with patriarchal cultural patterns, heroism and traditional morality codes (Rihtman Auguštin, 1995: 62). On the other hand, the Croats drew on the pre-socialist heritage and pre-Yugoslav history by emphasizing elements of Croatian sovereignty from the 7th century onwards, as well as the affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church and national symbols distinctive in relation to the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Such historic iconography elements weakened the common traits of South Slavic languages and traditional culture, which previously served as a means for building of the common Yugoslav identity (Žanić, 2002). The identity shift brought about the transformation of social and cultural values as well. The notions of “brotherhood and unity” and “Yugoslav togetherness”, which served as a homogenizing power among different Yugoslav groups, were substituted with the ideas of Croatian national and cultural distinctiveness and the narrative of “a thousand-year long dream of Croatian independence”. Religious values also changed with the shift from the proclaimed atheist orientation of the socialist Yugoslavia to the official proclamation of Catholic principles, said to be “widespread among Croats from the 7th century on”. A different class identification also led to an alteration in the value system. Yugoslavia had thus far been defined as “a land of workers and peasants”, i.e. as a socialist society led by the classes that had previously been suppressed by bourgeoisie exploitation. In contrast to that, present-day Croatia has been looking to its middle class to provide social foundations, proclaiming well-­ educated, well-mannered, Central European intellectual elite to be the backbone of the modern Croatian society. As a result of the new identity-building processes, memories of socialism vanished from the popular discourse and are evoked only in private circles, as family stories of the life as it once was. Yugoslavia was stigmatized as “a dungeon of nations” in which singular identities of diverse ethnic and religious groups were repressed (cf. Jambrešić Kirin, 2004: 140). However, for many people in Croatia, living in ex-Yugoslavia has been one of their formative experiences and their life stories are only fragmentary if the whole period of socialism is subject to intentional collective amnesia. That is why the evocations of socialism have found their expression in diverse social spheres and have thus become a part of alternative social memories, which we will analyse in this chapter.

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In this text we treat social memory as an attitude towards the past created in the present and adjusted to contemporary needs of the society (Connerton, 1989: 6). We observe “the afterlife of socialism”, perceived as a context “in which we see the potentiality of socialism to resonate beyond its historical existence” (Škrbić Alempijević & Potkonjak, 2016: 108, cf. Rigney, 2004). We are interested in, to paraphrase Katherine Verdery’s thought, the political and social lives of socialist bodies (Verdery, 2000). We discuss how citizens of Croatia perceive socialism today, which elements from socialism they evoke, recreate and reinterpret to address their current problems, and how they use them in order to define post-socialism. We pursue this research aim by focusing on two niches in which socialist legacy is reinvented, negotiated, affirmed or challenged. The first case study belongs to the sphere of cultural practices and public events. It deals with the celebrations of the former socialist holidays that still occur in present-day Croatia. The second case study refers to the realm of art. We approach art as an arena in which new dominant cultural values are brought to public view, but also criticized, in some cases through juxtaposing them with the elements of the socialist past. For that purpose, in our research process we combine methodology of ethnology, cultural anthropology and art theory. There is a wide range of symbols and motifs emerging from the socialist period that can occasionally be found in public spaces and in popular culture. Our analysis concerns two most prominent ones, which used to represent the symbolic cornerstones of the former Yugoslavia and are still inextricably connected with the socialist era. The first reoccurring socialist symbol is the figure of Josip Broz Tito, the President for Life and Marshal of the former Yugoslavia, who in many ways functioned as the personification of the country as a whole (Brkljačić, 2003: 99). Until 1989 Tito was treated as an unquestionable hero of socialist time, but afterwards was challenged as a symbol of the country and the political system he represented. The second symbol is connected with the People’s Liberation War (often referred to by abbreviation nob – Narodnooslobodilačka borba), which stands for the partisan warfare in the Yugoslav territory during ww2. It was the core founding myth of the Yugoslav Federation, declared to be born through the people’s sacrifices, the Partisan antifascist resistance, and the victory in the ww2. The narrative of the “brotherhood and unity of Yugoslav nations and nationalities” brought to life in nob was one of the main themes of history textbooks and the media propaganda throughout the socialist period, materialised and embodied during Yugoslav state holidays.

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Both symbols belong to the inventory of “memories of ex-Yugoslavia and socialism”, shunned in official representations of the newly founded and sovereign Republic of Croatia, to which our interview partner refers in the introduction of this chapter. His words bear additional significance since they are pronounced in Kumrovec, the birth village of Josip Broz Tito. Kumrovec as a realm of socialist memory (cf. Nora and Kritzman, 1996) will serve as a stage for our first ethnological case study. 2

Socialist Past and Post-socialist Celebrations

Considering the occasions and ways in which people who live in post-socialist Croatia evoke the symbols connected with the socialist past, we will look at how they become part of people’s everyday experiences and their role in the present-day Croatian society. One context that elucidates those questions are contemporary celebrations of the Day of Youth on 25th May, defined as the symbolic marking of the Yugoslav President’s birthday, as Tito’s actual date of birth was May 7th. Those observations are the results of a fieldwork research that was conducted over a long period of time, from 2004 to 2015 (cf. Škrbić Alempijević & Hjemdahl, 2006; Škrbić Alempijević, 2013; Škrbić Alempijević & Hjemdahl, 2016). From 1945 to 1988, the Day of Youth was a public holiday widely celebrated throughout the former Yugoslavia. A variety of gifts were made months in advance and sent to Tito for his birthday (Čolović, 2004: 149). Letters and greetings used to arrive from every corner of Yugoslavia. Specially crafted relay batons, so-called štafeta, were carried across Yugoslavia from hand to hand, from one village or town to another, mobilizing more than one million Yugoslav citizens and incorporating best birthday wishes for the President. The baton was delivered to Tito and, after he died in 1980, to high-ranked state representatives during a massive celebration at the Belgrade stadium. Another place where monumental birthday celebrations were organized was Tito’s birth village Kumrovec (cf. Škrbić Alempijević & Hjemdahl, 2016). In 1989 the Day of Youth ceased to be celebrated at the state level and after the breakup of Yugoslavia the date was erased from the official calendar of holidays in Croatia. However, the celebration has been taking place in Kumrovec unofficially, organized by the Croatian association of Antifascists and Antifascist fighters and by the Josip Broz Tito Society. Although for years it has been largely ignored by the media, every year several thousand visitors from various parts of ex-Yugoslavia have been gathering in Tito’s birthplace to

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­ onour their memories of “the good old times”. At least on those occasions, h they revive the socialist past of Kumrovec. The status of Kumrovec in the socialist symbolic geography, as well as in its aftermath, was an outcome of the decades-long production of a political place. A village which at the beginning of the 20th century had approximately 30 houses and 250 inhabitants, situated in the backwoods of the Zagorje region, was turned into an arena where the fundamental national myths were evoked and relived with each visit (Škrbić Alempijević and Kelemen, 2010). During Tito’s presidency of what was then Yugoslavia, Kumrovec served as a showcase for the stable and prosperous “land of workers and peasants”, as the country was defined at the time. Vast changes occurred in Kumrovec between the 1950s and the end of the 1980s as evidence of the new and modern era. The entire place was acknowledged as a memorial site listed in the register of cultural monuments. The first space that underwent major redefinition in accordance with the socialist symbolic system was the house in which Tito was born. In 1953, it was opened to the public as the Marshall Tito Memorial Museum with ethnologist Marijana Gušić as its founder. She used the unique position of Kumrovec to turn it into the first open-air museum in Yugoslavia, and into a monument to the rural way of life of that region at the turn of the 20th century (Gušić, 1986). Numerous other buildings were erected, like the Marshall Tito Primary School, the House of Veterans of the People’s Liberation War and of the Yugoslav youth organization, the Political School, etc. Thousands of schoolchildren participated in obligatory excursions to Kumrovec every year, paying visits to Tito’s birth house and other political and cultural institutions, watching movies that dramatise the People’s Liberation War, etc. The Marshall Tito Primary School was built in 1956. This huge building, even equipped with its own television studio, had capacity for a number of pupils three times the actual population of schoolchildren in Kumrovec and its surroundings. However, it was not constructed only for regular school activities – it was also built as a platform for monumental celebrations of the Day of Youth and similar political mass gatherings. Tito’s visits to his home village were favorite topics of media reports about the place. His presence was vital for the transformation of Kumrovec into a crucial milestone of Yugoslav identitybuilding. Moreover, the people’s readiness to visit Tito’s birth village in large numbers and their participation in his birthday celebrations were crucial for Tito myth-building. The industrialization of the area with the erection of spacious steel factory in Kumrovec symbolised the construction of a heroic place, as well as other categories of heroes. Those were anonymous heroes of industrial work, proclaimed to be the builders of the socialist society. Through the

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symbol of the socialist worker, Yugoslavia was presented as a progressive and modern state that renounced the intellectual elite in favour of the industrial proletariat. The period after 1989 did not bring the deconstruction or “destruction of political myths” in Kumrovec (Bringa 2004:178). It only shed a different light on the political dimension of the place. The Croatian War of Independence was not fought only against the once heroic Yugoslav People’s Army or, symbolically, the figure of Tito as a personification of the former state. Therefore, the symbolism of Kumrovec also had to change significantly. The village had to be purged of socialist symbols. The monuments that were reminders of the fallen regime were either removed to be stored or left outdoors and forgotten. Some monuments experienced a harsher destiny. That was the case of the statue of Tito in the garden of his birth house, a work of the sculptor Antun Augustinčić from 1948, which was blown up with explosives. The matter of the socialist times has still been in the process of becoming ruins. The buildings of Tito’s residence, the Political School, the House of Veterans were all closed down in the early 1990s. Numerous people employed in those institutions, mainly from Kumrovec, lost their jobs. Nowadays, Kumrovec is a village with some 300 inhabitants, whose economy is based on agriculture and tourism. It is a well-visited place, with tourists coming mostly from Slovenia and Croatia (approximately 60,000 annually, according to the Museum’s records), some to visit Tito’s birth house, some to see the ethnographic collection and some to enjoy a trip through the picturesque region of Hrvatsko zagorje. In the process of seeking new identifiers for Kumrovec, new directions have been developed by focusing on the open-air museum and the rural heritage of the region, instead of Tito’s birth house. In the current political and popular discourse, visits to Kumrovec inspired by Tito are frequently labelled as Yugonostalgic. In that context, the term of Yugonostalgia is a derogatory term used as an accusation of persons or groups as believers in the Communist regime who undermine the Croatian national identity. However, within the calendar of Kumrovec events, one day differs significantly from the current everyday routine. The markings of the Day of Youth actually never ceased in Kumrovec, although in the early 1990s they were organized on a small scale. In the last decade, on 25th May, some five to ten thousand people travel long distance, in some cases all night long, to join the celebration. They lay wreaths, light candles, take photos in front of Tito’s monument and write their names in the book of impressions in Tito’s birth house. They join in a wheel-dance or listen to partisan songs and speeches of the organizers, they watch the staged artistic programs, buy postcards and souvenirs that bear Tito’s name or image and purchase books from the socialist period, which

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are otherwise rarely found in Kumrovec. Some of the visitors dress in partisan and pioneer uniforms. Many prefer to take a glass of the so-called Tito wine, have a smoke of popular Tito cigars or enjoy their lunch in the inn named “Kod Starog” – “By the Old Man”, which was a code name Tito got as a member of the Communist Party in the late 1930s. The reality is that people keep coming to Kumrovec, regardless of whether the political elites regard it as an undesirable place. They cite diverse motivations and reasons to come to Kumrovec: to express their nostalgia, to create continuity between their past and their present, to criticize their current ­circumstances and the power relations, or just to have fun with their old comrades and enjoy the picturesque scenery. In Kumrovec they tell and re-enact the stories rarely told in public in today’s Croatia. The Day of Youth celebration functions as an arena for sharing experiences of the life during socialism, which mostly differ widely from the mainstream rhetoric about that period. The elderly are the most numerous among participants in the celebration. However, more and more young people come every year, wearing Che Guevara or Tito T-shirts, listening to ex-Yugoslav bands, admiring Tito for being “cool” and, in some cases, voicing their alternative political opinions. Among all the participants, no matter to which generation they belong, memory of Tito and socialism is in fact an attitude towards the past created in the present, a reflection of current socioeconomic circumstances and problems they encounter in their everyday lives. 3

History, Sculptures and Heroes

In our research we also focused on the presence of symbols and motifs connected with the socialist past in popular culture and art in post-socialist Croatia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia. Therefore, our second case study is based on the work of contemporary Croatian artist Ivan Fijolić, a sculptor based in Zagreb, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Two reoccurring socialist symbols we identified and analysed in his artwork are the theme of People’s Liberation War (nob), and the figure of Josip Broz Tito. In observing Fijolić’s artistic work, we apply Hal Foster’s approach to the artist as ethnographer (Foster, 1996: 172). More precisely, we use Foster’s concept of the horizontal way the contemporary artistic work is created, which stands for the synchronic movement from social issue to issue, from political debate to debate (Foster, 1996: 199). Foster states that horizontal method demands that artists and critics should be familiar not only with the structure of each culture well enough to map it, but also with its history well enough to narrate it. To

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­ araphrase Foster, if an artist (as Ivan Fijolić) wishes to work on the figure of p Tito or nob, he must understand not only the discursive breadth, but also the historical depth of Tito and nob representations (Foster, 1996: 202). Ivan Fijolić (born 1976) grew up in the last decade of Socialist Yugoslavia. In November 2019 we discussed his opinion of socialism and Tito. We also discussed the influence that these subjects had on his creative process. When he was in elementary school in the town of Velika Gorica, he used to play in the surroundings and climb on Emil Bohutinsky’s monumental figurative sculpture officially named Partisan (1948 – 1949), but popularly called Bomber, created in the manner of socialist realism. This sculpture captivated Fijolić and inspired him to become a sculptor. As a child he was fascinated with the Bomber, especially with the figure’s outfit: resolute, barefoot, athletic figure, throwing a bomb. That really made an impression on the artist, for him the figure was a hero. When he was 9 years old, Fijolić painted one of the sculpture’s toenails red. An inspection came to the school to find out who was responsible for the provocation. The artist remembers that he was lucky not to be discovered, but was very scared for a month. Bohutinsky sculpture and this memory was a base for Fijolić’s artwork Baby Boom, a sculpture presented in Neo N.O.B. exhibition. The exhibition was first installed in 2012 in Lauba Gallery in Zagreb, Croatia, then at the Mu­seum of the History of Peoples of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Serbia in 2013, and finally in the National Gallery Çifte Amam in Skopje, Macedonia in 2014. The posture of Fijolić’s figure is the same as Bohotinsky’s, but contrary to the statuesque partisan hero, Baby Boom is a small baby wearing a diaper; and instead of throwing a bomb, his fingers are crossed in a satirical gesture demonstrating a mischievous response: “you get nothing” (“Figa” in Croatian). The baby has a tattoo Year 2012 on his arm in the position where skinheads would hold a knuckleduster. The artist used symbolism of Year 2012 as Armageddon, the end of the time and the end of the World, coming from the New Age interpretation of the Maya prediction. Artworks displayed in the exhibition were created in 2010 and 2011. In that period the artist watched numerous movies about conspiracy theories and read articles about aliens, as well as about the end of the world. Today he confesses that he was completely paranoid but that this experience served him to start asking questions about the economic power and technological fascism. He states that the economy needs workers producing at all times, and that in contemporaneity we are all subordinated, we are “slaves controlled with smart phones, touch screens and social networks”. While writing about C. Wright Mills’ concept of higher immorality in the context of the new power elite, Vjeran Katunarić interprets it as the basic version of Social Darwinism.

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­ ccording to Katunarić, in the global economy no holds are barred and the A only rule is that there is no rule – unless the strongest player happens to lose the game. Players are decided by the power of violence (Katunarić, 2018: 14). Opposing such a hegemonic condition, Fijolić wanted to create a world based on the innocent time of his childhood, when he believed in superheroes. Another historical sculpture that influenced Fijolić’s artistic expression was Antun Augustinčić’s portrait of Marshal Tito. Augustinčić created his first portrait of Tito in the form of a medal and exhibited it in Jajce in 1943 and then immediately after World War ii. In 1948 he created the whole sculpture. Augustinčić’s work was the earliest portrait of Tito and the only preserved work created during World War ii and within the framework of People’s Liberation War (nob) movement (cf. Ivanuša, 1986: 3–14). Tito was presented in a typical contrapposto pose, wearing overcoat, head slightly down with an iconic gaze to the socialist future. The sculpture was first erected in Tito’s birth village of Kumrovec and then placed all over Socialist Yugoslavia. Fijolić’s first memories of Tito derive from his preschool age. He remembers it as a playful time, period of watching cartoons on television and eating. One day the nursery teachers stopped the children playing and Fijolić recollects they had to be quiet while the teachers stood stiffly like guards. Marshall Tito died in May 1980. Children were not allowed to laugh or run around. Fijolić was 4 years old at the time. That was the first time he became conscious he lived in a socialist country. Such views of Marshal Tito symbol were prevalent until the end of 1980s. Fijolić remembers the photo portraits of Tito overlooking the children in all the classrooms and the elementary school he attended organised two trips to Kumrovec to visit the memorial museum in Tito’s birth house, the open-air ethnographic collection and the Political School. On both occasions Fijolić was sick and could not join the excursion, so he never saw Augustinčić’s sculpture during socialism. In his work, he is inspired by the concept of superheroes to a great extent: in his youth he watched numerous American superhero movies. He juxtaposed those movie characters to the figures of nob heroes, like Marshal Tito and Boško Buha – a legendary partisan bomber, one of the nob icons, who died in battle at the age of 17. In Neo N.O.B. exhibition Fijolić presented the sculpture Buha (meaning red bug), which represents managers and bankers that replaced real superheroes. In his work Three Kings he combined the figures of Sylvester Stallone (Rambo) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator) with Elvis Presley’s legs from the famous Warhol painting. These two figures are armed with some type of Uzi gun machine and they have a small vagina. Fijolić is

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directly referring to the famous scene from the Cobra movie, when Stallone says: “Rambo is a pussy”. In 2010, when Fiolić decided to create the sculpture T&to, a homage to Augustinčić’s masterpiece, he visited Kumrovec for the first time in his life to see Augustinčić’s original. Fijolić describes this work as a pinnacle of portrait sculpture in an ideological sense: “It is not a real Tito, it is Tito we want to see; like Superman who was a journalist in real life and then transformed into a superhero, he is something else”. His first idea was to keep the same position and clothes as in Augustinčić’s original and to represent the head as an anatomical model of the human body. Eventually he decided to use the head of Jovanka Broz (Tito’s wife) on Tito’s body instead. The artist does not have the exact reason for such a symbolical act. However, knowing the author’s fascination with superheroes, it follows the “evolution” in the American superhero industry: at first male superheroes were created and then gradually female superheroines like Cat Woman and Wonder Woman followed as a result of political correctness. Fijolić pursued this idea, (subconsciously) acknowledging that the progressive position of women in the People’s Liberation War and in socialism marked the beginning of gender emancipation. Monarchist Yugoslavia ruled by Karađorđević royal family (1918–1941) was inhabited with dominantly rural population, organised in patriarchal families and kin structures. The Yugoslav Socialist Federation was not just a step forward in industrialisation, urbanisation, culture, but also in gender equality. However, the contrast of such figures of strong women in battle and revolution, who are later expected to function as virgins, silent mothers and wives in traditional families, betray the atavism of dominantly patriarchal and macho constructions (cf. Zanki, 2012). Fijolić’s sculpture was exhibited in Belgrade as a part of Neo N.O.B. The show opened on 29th November 2012, the Day of the Republic, which was the most important state holiday in the former Yugoslavia. It was placed 50 meters away from the House of Flowers, where Tito’s grave is located. Ten days before the opening of the exhibition Jovanka Broz passed away and she was buried in a smaller tomb next to Tito’s monumental one, the same as Moghul and his beloved wife were positioned in Taj Mahal. For the artist, this was not just a coincidence; he felt that his work was symbolically connected to this event and his narrative was transformed accordingly. Since 2010 Ivan Fijolić has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, at the Visual Culture Department, in Jabukovac 10 Street. His working space is in the same space where Antun Augustinčić had his studio. Augustinčić was friends with Tito from pre-war times, and Tito visited him in his studio on numerous occasions. Fijolić states that memories of Augustinčić and Tito had

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been erased from collective memories by the time he became a professor. When Miro Vuco (Fijolić’s master degree supervisor) was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, he kept Augustinčić’s sofa in the classroom. Many informants claim that this was the very sofa Tito liked to sit on during his visits to the studio. Professor Vuco placed the poster of the porno star Ilona Staller Cicciolina above the sofa. When Vuco retired, he moved the sofa to his studio in Križanićeva Street in Zagreb. Fijolić does not believe in cultural memories or giving meaning to space, he points out that professors and students at the Academy are more obsessed with a lack of artistic material or bureaucracy than with the memories of Augustinčić, Tito or nob. Paradigmatically, the life of Augustinčić’s sofa was extended to Cicciolina. Famous for her marriage to Jeff Koons, and eternalised in his sculpture works, Cicciolina is a real representative of the transformation of heroic ideas. We can follow the hero’s path from masculine partisans and the bomber, through Tito’s visionary step forward depicted in Augustinčić’s work, to Fijolić’s interpretation of American superheroes, represented through Stallone and Schwarzenegger, the hidden charisma of Jovanka Broz and finally to Cicciolina’s transition from a pornography actress to a muse and a political leader. By applying the poetic licence, we can state that Tito, Stallone, Elvis, Schwarzenegger and Cicciolina all met in an alternative reality. Like the character in Pelevin novel, Petar who got arrested by secret police Čeka in his vision imagined Schwarzenegger together with Marija, who was listening to Jihad Krimson during their departure from Moscow to the Schwarzenegger’s ranch. Marija saw a Moscow skyline and tried to say goodbye (Pelevin, 2010: 63–66) like in Margaritas’ departure from Moscow in Bulgakov’s story (Bulgakov, 1985:403), but none of them actually manage to leave. 4 Conclusion When we observe social phenomena and processes through the prism of cultural anthropology, from the perspectives of people who enact these social phenomena, then concepts like memory, nostalgia, transition, socialism and post-socialism no longer seem fixed and clear-cut. The observers see their complexity, their dynamic and fluid character. The case studies we presented indicate that the symbols and heroes of socialism should not be treated as remnants of the past, as passive “dead bodies” that belong to the regime, something that the official national history intends to forget after 1989. Instead, as our research shows, symbols like Tito and People’s Liberation War (nob) still function as active agents with the capacity to accumulate new meanings,

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generate contemporary cultural practices and social movements. Those symbols are definitely ideologically charged. The characters who evoke them purposefully do it on their own political relation to the past. However, the aim of the people who use them – the artists and participants of Kumrovec celebrations – is not to re-establish the fallen heroes and regimes. They use these symbols as a means to address challenges of today, to comment on disadvantageous trends of political and social transition and to provide continuity in the national remembering that has left some historical pages blank. In conclusion, we question the importance of Kumrovec. As a symbol, it provides an overview of a transformed society and helps to explore power relations and historical changes. From Kumrovec one gets a glimpse of a cult that was built by strong state-directed ideological instruments. Kumrovec also provides an insight into the difficulties of a transition from one ideology to another. Kumrovec evokes other political systems and places and other ways of dealing with, and perhaps healing, a troublesome past. Such an exploration is relevant not only for learning about one’s past and present, but also for facing the challenges at hand. Based on the example of artistic practices of Ivan Fijolić, we can redefine the attitude to socialist past in the contemporary artistic scene in Croatia and the neighbouring countries. The image of the Yugoslav socialist past in the Western contemporary art scene was partly based on a post-colonial discourse. Performance artist superstar Marina Abramović based her work on dramatising and stylising socialism, as well as imbuing it with mythological quality. Trauma of the war in the 1990s and documentary fiction ethnography also feature prominently in her work. The imagery she created in her work (good example is Balkan Erotic Epic, 2005) is the one the Western public wants to see. Contrary to this type of rhetoric, Fijolić changes personal and collective memories about ideology, culture, industry and everyday life in Socialist Yugoslavia. Fijolić’s artistic strategies include autobiographical narration, collecting socialist memorabilia and traditional stories, production of the new meaning, transforming cultural memory symbols into the popular culture elements and constructing of the new cultural heritage. The transformation of Bohotinsky’s Bomber and Augustinčić’s Marshall Tito into eternal Superheroes in Fijolić’s work represents unique value in post-wall, post-transition and neo-liberal Croatian and other former Yugoslavian societies. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can paraphrase Kennedy’s speech and ask ourselves who is playing the role of doughnut (pronounced “Berliner”) and who is playing the role of the Citizen?

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References Bringa, Tone (2004) The Peaceful Death of Tito and the Violent End of Yugoslavia, Berghahn Books, New York. Bulgakov, Mihail (1985) Majstor i Margarita, Sveučilišna naklada Liber, Zagreb. Brkljačić, Maja (2003) Tito’s Bodies in Word and Image. Narodna umjetnost 40(1), 99–127. Connerton, Paul (1989) How Societies Remember, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Čapo Žmegač, Jasna (1999) Ethnology, Mediterranean Studies and Political Reticence in Croatia. From Mediterranean Constructs to Nation-Building. Narodna umjetnost 36(1), 33–52. Čolović, Ivan (2004) On models and batons, in VlasTito iskustvo past present (ed. Radonja Leposavić), Samizdat B92, Beograd, 149–161. Foster, Hal (1996) The Artist as Ethnographer, in Return of the Real (Hal Foster), mit Press, Cambridge, 171–205. Gušić, Marijana (1986) The Personal Fund of Marijana Gušić, no. 2428, signature 21/1986, box 4, Croatian State Archives, Zagreb. Ivanuša, Dolores (1986) Augustinčićev ratni Tito u Muzeju revolucije, Anali Galerije Antuna Augustinčića (6)6: 3–14. Jambrešić Kirin, Renata (2004) The Politics of Memory in Croatian Socialist Culture: Some Remarks. Narodna umjetnost 41(1), 125–143. Katunarić, Vjeran (2018) The Quest for a Liberal-Socialist Democracy and Development: Against the Behemoth, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne. Nora, Pierre and Lawrence D. Kritzman (eds.) (1996) Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. I: Conflicts and Divisions, Columbia University Press, New York. Pelevin, Viktor (2010) Čapajev i praznina, Demetra: Faustovska biblioteka Dimitrija Savića, Zagreb. Rihtman Auguštin, Dunja (1995) Victims and Heroes: Between Ethnic Values and Construction of Identity. Ethnologia Europaea 25: 61–67. Rigney, Ann (2004) Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans. Poetics Today 25(2): 261–396. Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena (2013) Les localités politiques au quotidien: le village natal de Tito à l’époque postsocialiste. Ethnologie française 43 (2), doi:10.3917/ ethn.132.0229: 229–241. Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena and Sanja Potkonjak (2016) Titoaffect: Tracing Objects and Memories of Socialism in Postsocialist Croatia, in Sensitive Objects. Affect and Material Culture (eds. Jonas Frykman and Maja Povrzanović Frykman), Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 107–123.

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Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena and Kirsti Mathiesen Hjemdahl (eds.) (2006) O Titu kao mitu: proslava Dana mladosti u Kumrovcu, ff press – Srednja Europa, Zagreb. Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena and Kirsti Mathiesen Hjemdahl (2016) Kumrovec Revisited: Tito’s Birthday Party in the Twenty-first Century, An Ethnological Study, in Titoism, Self-Determination, Nationalism, Cultural Memory. Vol. 2. Tito’s Yugoslavia, Stories Untold (eds. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić), Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 165–192. Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena and Petra Kelemen (2010) Travelling to the Birthplace of ‘the Greatest Son of Yugoslav Nations’. The Construction of Kumrovec as a Political Tourism Destination, in Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side. A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s-1980s) (eds. Hannes Grandit and Karin Taylor), Central European University Press, Budapest – New York, 141–169. Verdery, Katherine (2000) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change, Columbia University Press, New York. Zanki, Josip (2012) Sarkofag Ivane Orleanske – “kult Djevice” u suvremenoj umjetnosti. Ethnologica Dalmatica 19: 71–84. Žanić, Ivo (2002) South Slav Traditional Culture as a Means to Political Legitimization, in The Balkans in Focus. Cultural Boundaries in Europe (eds. Sanimir Resić and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa), Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 45–58.

Chapter 5

Types of Social Memory and the Subordination of Identities of Ethnic Minorities in Latvia Deniss Hanovs and Vladislav Volkov 1

Tasks of Research

After 1991, Latvia continued the process of mnemonic activities of various “communities of memory” that began in the late 80-ies in the course of democratization and liberalization of the society. Based on the data of various sociological surveys, the authors of the article analyze the content of political discourses of social memory of ethnic groups in contemporary Latvia. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of the social memory of ethnic minorities in public-political discourse. The article presents the data of representative sociological research, that show the reproduction of different types of social memory of ethnic groups depending on the subordination of their ethnic and cultural identities within the national identity. At the same time, it is shown that ethnic differences in social memory are used by ethnic groups either to legitimize the positions of their ethnic and cultural identity in the structure of national identity (which is more typical for ethnic Latvians), or to strive for a significant increase in the value of their identity (which is mainly characteristic of ethnic minorities). 2

Some Statistics about the Peculiarities of Ethnic Diversity in Latvia

Latvia traditionally is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. According to data by the Citizenship and Migration Affairs Department as of 2017 in the country’s population of 2.129 million, Latvians comprised 1.279 million (59.6% of the population), Russians – 557.6 thousand (27.0%), Belarussians – 69.3 thousand (3.4%), Ukrainians – 51. 2 thousand (2.4%), Poles – 45. 6 thousand (2.2%), Lithuanians 26.6 thousand (1.3%), Jews – 8.6 thousand (0.4%), Roma – 7.5 thousand (0.4%), Germans – 5.2 thousand (0.2%). The share of ethnic minorities is especially large in the biggest cities of the state. In the capital city Riga representatives of ethnic minorities comprise more than a half of the population (53.8%), in the second biggest city Daugavpils – more than 80%

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(Latvijas iedzīvotāju sadalījums … 2017; Latvijas iedzīvotāju skaits… 2017; Pastāvīgo iedzīvotāju … 2017). Moreover, the structure of this ethnic diversity itself possesses the significant peculiarities related to the fact that the share of the largest ethnic minority – Russians – more than twice exceeds the number of other ethnic minorities in Latvia in total. Russians in Latvia differ from other ethnic minorities in number and in qualitative factors of organising their own socio-cultural infrastructure, which involves a wide spread of the Russian language in the sphere of Latvian business, the system of private education (including higher education), the entertainment sphere, and mass media. Russian is a mother tongue for a vast majority of Latvia’s Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews. Close interpersonal, as well as informational connections with Russia, its culture, history, and political and information fields significantly influence the reproduction of the Russian cultural environment. 3

The Concept of Social Memory and Ethnic Minorities

Since the early 1990s, the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe have witnessed the development of the politics of memory as an integral part of political transformation that is closely linked to the ethnopolitics of national states. These processes are of interest to researchers of social (including historical) memory. Thus, in her recent works Aleida Assmann singled out an essential feature of post-Soviet culture, which is a rapidly increased significance of collective memory in creating collective identities. After the fall of Communist ideology, forms of collective memory on par with banned historiographic concepts of the pre-Soviet period make their come back and become effective means of collective mobilization (Assmann 2009: 62–63). At the same time, the researchers emphasize that the politics of memory creates new mnemonic differences and even borders between European nations and national historiographies. The gradual process of loosening (in Western European societies) or strengthening (in the countries of Eastern Europe) of national mythology also affects historical research, where, according to Assman, “national myths taken from the era before the two world wars” are being updated (Assmann 2014: 287). In the environment of “fluid modernity” in Bauman’s terms, consumer society and global mobilization bring into existence hybrid forms of spatiotemporal socialization and the layering of identities. In this connection, recent studies have formulated ideas about competing groups of “memory activists” and “entrepreneurs of memory” (Assmann 2013 (1): 261). Of Eastern Europe it is characteristic to perform trauma measurement of their social memory in the 20th century (Troebst 2004). In case of differences

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in social memory of ethnic groups in multiethnic states, it is important to pursue a policy of mnemonic recognition (Assmann 2013 (2):129). However, the process is not so simple, for even in academic discourse social memory is very often considered to be the “collective memory” of one social community and group. The tradition is known to be established by Halbwachs, who followed Comte’s and Durkheim’s principle that society has priority over the individual. It is the belonging to groups (“each of us is a member of several groups, bigger or smaller ones”) that forms and determines the characteristics of social memory of the individual. What is more, collective memory itself is “a group considered from within”. Since the society is divided into different social groups, it “develops original collective memories” (Halbwachs 2016). Still, the understanding of social memory must be supplemented by the sociological approaches developed by Marx, Weber, Spencer, and Simmel. They recognise the active role of individual actors in the formation of their social identity as well as the possibility of synthesizing the types of social memory characteristic of various social groups, including ethnic. It is no coincidence that in social memory Jan Assmann identifies elements of social construction in Berger and Luckmann’s terms. This leads to the separation of “communicative memory” from the social memory array, the former based on unstructured individually experienced biographies (Assmann 2004: 15, 58–59). This approach is especially valuable in multiethnic societies in which ethnic actors actualize and construct their social memory and identity under the influence of the social memory of other ethnic groups as well as under practices of government institutions aimed at securing the social memory of the ethnonational majority as official and normative. As Pierre Nora observed, the most reductive is the normative interpretation of the social memory dealing with contradictory pages of history, for example, with the twentieth century, the “century of ruptures” (Nora 2010). However, Nora argues that in the modern world, with the role of the nation as a “uniting framework” giving way to society, the efforts of the authorities to preserve one “official” social memory will not be successful (Nora 2016 (2): 24, 31). In such a “democratisation” of history, there arise various forms of “memory of minorities, for which reclaiming their past is a necessary part of the assertion of their identity” (Nora 2016 (1)). 4

The Concept of “Social Memory” in Ethno-political Documents and Socio-political Practices in Latvia

The socio-political significance of the concept of “social memory” (also “collective memory”, “historical memory”) and practices associated with it, is testified

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by its inclusion in some official documents of the contemporary Republic of Latvia. Notably, the active use of the term “social memory” in state ethnopolitics falls on the last decade. However, all the documents regulating ethnopolitical issues include provisions reflecting the official interpretation of the twentieth century Latvian history. Thus, the first National programme on the integration of society in Latvia (2001) did not implement this or similar concepts at all. It may have been due to the understanding of Latvian society as multicultural and hence unfit to align with one social memory. For example, under the “essence of integration” this program considered “the willingness to voluntarily accept the Latvian language as a state language and the respect for the languages and cultures of Latvians and ethnic minorities of Latvia”. Overall, the programme emphasised civil and democratic values (Valsts programma… 2001: 6–7, 10). However, the socio-political development of Latvia in the 21st century has been facing many challenges to a harmonious fusion of multiculturalism, civil and liberal values. Right-wing and nationalist forces aim at narrowing down the space for the public realisation of the identity of ethnic minorities, including marginalization of values of their social memory. At the same time, under the current “Guidelines on National Identity, Civil Society and Integration Policy (2012–2018)”, social memory is treated as “a common understanding of history, past events and socio-political processes and their interpretation”, and regarded to be the most important structural element of national identity, integration of Latvian society, as well as of Latvian “cultural space”. It is noteworthy that this and similar documents denoting main vectors of the state ethnopolitics, have been developed and adopted in the climate of acute political struggle, the contest primarily reflecting conflicts between state and Russian population of the country. Thus, in “Guidelines” the social memory protected by the Latvian state is actually understood as an element of the ethnic Latvian identity. Such an understanding stems from the fact that although ethnic minorities are recognized as “traditionally residing in Latvia for generations and belonging to Latvian state and society”, thus, as part of “the people of Latvia”, still they are not considered in the context of “nation” and “state nation” framework, the one exclusively correlating with ethnic Latvians. Although the programme of integration recognizes distinct identities of ethnic minorities, the accepted version of social memory does not say anything about the peculiarities of historical or social memory of these groups of Latvian society. Moreover, the presence of a special social memory among the Russian population is seen as a negative sign of the “bi-communality” of Latvian society. Although there are data that a third of Latvians consider 9 May a festive day, and 79% of Russian youth view Latvia’s Independence Day in a positive light, it is proclaimed

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that “the special attitude [of a part of the Russian-speaking population] towards the events of World War ii threatens not only Latvian national identity but also geopolitical identity, i.e. belonging to the Western world”. In order to prevent “bi-communality”, there has been proposed a set of events meant to form a “consolidated social memory” and including only those oriented towards the official “understanding of the Second World War, Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia” (Nacionālās identitātes … 2011: 5–7, 19–22, 70–73). It should be noted however that attempts made by nationalist politicians, scholars and publicists to introduce similar interpretations into the preamble of the Constitution of Latvia in 2014 did not succeed (Grozījums … 2014). The research of Latvian public space shows the substitution and curtailment of the legal discourse recognising social memory of ethnic minorities. It occurs with the help of discursive “banalisation” practices taking the form of “museumization” and mainstreaming ethnographic heritage of ethnic minorities. The interview cycle, focus group and opinion survey among members of ethnic minorities’ non-commercial organisations and workers of five small local governments in all regions of Latvia conducted by one of the authors of the article in 2012, indicated that bigger part of support for non-commercial organisation of ethnic minorities is linked to the development of folklore events, local history projects or solving urgent social problems in particular places of residence of ethnic minorities. However, legal aspects of the civic participation of ethnic minorities were almost entirely excluded from the very spectrum of activities of their non-commercial organisations (Hanovs 2012: 238). At the same time, over the past decade in Latvia there have been manifestations of the liberal approach to the social memory of ethnic minorities. This approach has been induced by the first few years following the inclusion of Latvia in the EU and of relative social and economic well-being. In 2007, the Saeima and government adopted the Sustainable Development Strategy of Latvia until 2030, which criticizes “the ethnocentric interpretation of official history, which is widely used in political discussions about today and the past. Such an approach “idealises inter-war Latvia and stigmatises the Soviet period … [This] stigmatisation affects … those who came to Latvia in Soviet times and now are popularly called “invaders”, and in political and academic discourse – “Russian-speaking”, “non-citizens” “representatives of ethnic minorities”” (Latvijas ilgtspējīgas attīstības … 2007: 24). As an alternative to “Guidelines”, in 2012 Riga City Council adopted the “Riga City Society Integration Programme for 2012–2017”. In this document, the integration of society is no longer associated with mainstreaming values of national identity, but with the mechanisms of “civic participation, intercultural contacts, equality” of representatives of all ethnic groups. The term “social and

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historical memory” as such is not mentioned, and the differences in the historical memory of Latvians and Latvian Russians are silenced. What is discussed are the importance of forming a “patriotic attitude to the state”, participation in festive events, exposure to Latvian folk traditions in schools of ethnic minorities. Tatiana Day is mentioned in the context of “preservation of cultural heritage”. At the same time, they are Latvian schools that are recognised as less open to other cultures (Riga City … 2012: 4, 28, 29). While positively assessing the democratic and liberal stance of this program, it is still questionable whether silencing the actual problems of historical memory in the multi-­ ethnic society is justified. And it is even more problematic because the silence is characteristic of public and political personas speaking on behalf of ethnic minorities, while ethnic Latvian politicians constantly resort to the issue of historical memory in public discourse. Ethnic minorities seek to supplement Latvian public space with elements of their social memory. This is also important because, for example, the “Canon of Latvian Culture” focuses mainly on Latvian culture and, among the samples of cultures of ethnic minorities, mentions only the work of directors Shapiro and Frank and ballerina Tangiyeva (Latvijas kultūras … 2016). The activism of ethnic minorities in institutionalising the singularity of their social memory on the territory of Latvia is most evidently manifested in the activity of Internet portals of their public organisations. There, information about history and culture of these population groups as well as their historical homeland have one of the central places (see: “The Information Portal of the Russian Community of Latvia” (2016), “The Information Site of the Russian Society in Latvia” (2016), “The Union of Poles of Latvia” (Dział … 2016), the portal of imho-club (imho-club 2016), etc.). The goals of some public organisations of ethnic minorities are directly related to the cultivation of historical memory (e.g., the activities of the ngo 9may.lv). Codification and scholarly analysis of the social memory of ethnic minorities is typical of the materials on the Internet portal “Russians of Latvia” (Russians of Latvia, 2016), of the cycle of humanitarian seminars and anthology “Russian World and Latvia” (Russian World … 2016), the magazine “Baltic World” (Kondrashov 2008: 14–22; Roerich 2009: 32–37), many international academic conferences and scholarly publications devoted to Orthodoxy, including Old Believers in Latvia (New … 2016; Orthodoxy … 2014; Riga … 2010), Latvian Jews (Museum … 2016 ), etc. The topic of social memory of Russians in Latvia is also addressed by Latvian Orthodox Church (Latvian … 2016). The subject of social memory of Latvian Russians, as well as other ethnic minorities in Latvia, is regularly addressed by the daily newspaper in the Russian language “News Today”. In the above-mentioned publications, the most popular is the idea of the continuity of the social memory of ethnic minorities at all stages of the history of Latvia.

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Ethnic Identity and Social Memory

The fixation of boundaries between the types of historical memory characteristic of different ethnic groups in no small measure depends on the place of ethnic values in the system of all social values in multiethnic societies, on the topicality of problems related to interethnic relations for the inhabitants of such countries. The data of “dnb Barometer of Latvia” of October 2014 indicate that problematic issues of interethnic relations are not among those considered by Latvian residents as most topical. So, among the predisposing factors to the identification with Latvia, “normal relations between representatives of different ethnic groups” were marked only by 21% of respondents. At the same time, only 8% of respondents connect frustration with life in Latvia with their low estimate of interethnic relations. (In comparison, dissatisfaction with various aspects of economic life as a factor affecting the identification with Latvia reaches 70%.) “dnb Barometer” also recorded a high rate of respondents who consider themselves patriots of Latvia: 77% of those who speak Latvian at home and 51% of Russian speakers. Thus, in the mid-2000s, approximately 70–75% of citizens perceived themselves as patriots of Latvia. Among noncitizens, this figure was at about 40% (Par Latvijas patriotiem … 2005: 2). Nor public demonstration of symbolic behaviour, for example, “celebrating state events”, is considered to be the most important criterion of patriotism (it turned out to be important for 37% of Latvian-speaking and 25% of Russianspeaking respondents). Thus, the celebration of “The Independence Day” “in the family circle” was reported by 39% of Latvian-speaking and 18% of Russian-speaking respondents (dnb Latvijas barometrs 2014: 12 –16). These and other statistics indicate that at the level of mass consciousness and behaviour of Latvia’s ethnonational majority and ethnic minorities there are no fundamental differences in the cultivation of their social memory. Furthermore, there is no big difference between the main ethnolinguistic groups in Latvia in assessing the role of the main institutions of patriotic education for children (i.e. schools and family). If among the Latvian-speaking respondents the leading role of school in this process is recognised by 27% and family by 25%, then among the Russian-speaking respondents – by 23% and 29% correspondingly (Laba skola … 2013: 8). In some cases, the attempts of ultra-right politicians and journalists to demonise the Soviet period in the history of Latvia meet considerable resistance in Latvian community. For ­instance, according to a nationwide survey conducted in 2013, 71% of ­Latvian-speaking and 84% of Russian-speaking respondents consider the ussr education system to be “very good” and “rather good” (Laba skola … 2013: 28). Simultaneously, national polls indicate the growing need to preserve some Soviet holidays in Latvia, for example, 8 March. Thus, by the mid-2000s, such a wish was

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expressed by 92% of Russian-speaking population and 71% of Latvians (80% iedzīvotāju uzskata … 2005: 2). In Latvia, there has not yet been conducted a nationwide study revealing the relationship between social memory actualization by ethnic groups, its public demonstration and the level of interethnic harmony. To fill this gap, in 2010, one of the authors of this article performed a study on the attitude of ethnic groups towards public discussions of problematic aspects of their joint history. The object of the study was the three largest ethnic groups (Russians, Latvians and Poles) of Daugavpils, the second biggest city in Latvia. (“Antagonism and reconciliation in multicultural regions” is a representative study of ethnic, age, and gender characteristics of respondents. The total number of respondents is 578. The project director is Professor Jacek Kurczewski (University of Warsaw).) Part of the survey questions concern the respondents’ attitude to public discussion of social memory issues. The obtained data show that the majority of respondents in each of the interviewed ethnic groups try to avoid any open discussion of these issues. The strongest urge to refuse to discuss issues of social memory publicly was registered among Russian residents of Daugavpils (76.2–78.7%), for Poles the figure was lower (56.3–63.3%). It is interesting that even Latvians of Daugavpils did not express a particular wish to discuss the history of Latvian-Russian relationships in public (70.9%). On the one hand, these data show that for many respondents open discussions of social memory of various ethnic groups can only damage the interethnic relations practiced in places of their permanent residence. For example, only 8.5% of the Russian residents of Daugavpils considered Latvian-Russian relations in Daugavpils as “bad” and “very bad”, whereas in relation to Latvia as a whole this indicator reached 49.1%. It is obvious that to a large extent the interethnic relations in Latvia are reassessed because of the unceasing juxtaposition of ethno-historical symbols and interpretations of the past, the opposition deployed by the efforts of “ethnic entrepreneurs” and addressing Latvia as an “imaginary community” (B. Anderson). On the other hand, one cannot fail to see the weakness of uderdeveloped Latvian public sphere as an arena for free exchange of opinions and search for socio-political compromises, including issues of interethnic relations and social memory (Volkov, Kurczewski 2013: 67). “Guidelines on National Identity, Civil Society and Integration Policy (2012– 2018)” postulate the existence of a split of Latvian society in relation to the history of Latvia in the twentieth century. But the attitude to the historical past in Latvian society and, what is really important, among Latvians themselves, is much more complex. For example, the data obtained in the research project “Monitoring of Latvian Social Memory” (2013) do not confirm stereotypes

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spread by nationalist politicians, journalists and researchers about the original ethnic conflict – and primarily Latvian-Russian one – in interpreting the events of Latvian history. Thus, “Monitoring” ascertains an increase in the consensus among representatives of all ethnic groups in recognizing the value of the democratic period in the history of Latvia (1918–1934). 82.8% of respondents estimated the fact of the foundation of the Republic of Latvia as a positive development, and the share of Russian-speaking respondents who similarly evaluated the formation of independent Latvia was very high (73.2%). Among the surveyed Russian-speaking youth, the percentage is even higher – 80.9%. No absolute ethnic demarcation was registered in the assessment of the Soviet period in the history of Latvia. As “good” this period was marked by 73.4% of Russian-speaking and 45.4% of Latvian-speaking respondents, which was even a bigger part than the share of Latvians negatively assessing the Soviet period (37.9%) (Kaprans, Procevska 2013: 4, 6). Incidentally, it confirms another observation, that is, in comparison with the Russian-speaking population, the Latvian-speaking community is significantly more polarised in their perception of the Soviet period in the history of Latvia. “Monitoring” records the greatest difference between Latvians and Russians in assessing some pages of the history of World War ii, for example, in recognition of nationwide importance of the commemoration of Holocaust in Latvia (51.4% of the Russian-speaking respondents and 25.6% of the Latvians). But in relation to the events of this war, some assessments of Latvians and Russians were close. It manifested “silent memory” of Latvians of different ethnic identities, the memory partially incorporating the memory of the Other, provided that the nature of the events of World War ii is silenced and their “own memory” in the context of Latvia stays glorified. So, about a third of both Russian and Latvian respondents consider as war victims those Latvian citizens who participated in it on the side of Nazi Germany. However, in Latvian historical consciousness, the inner consensus in relation to certain events and symbols of war is manifested to a lesser degree than for the Russian-speaking inhabitants. Thus, the proposal of nationalists to officially celebrate the day of the Latvian SS Volunteer Legion (Waffen-SS) was voted “for” by 55.0%, and “against” by 30.8% of the Latvian-speaking respondents. The proposal to add May 9 to the holiday calendar is approved by 34.3% of Latvians (“against” – 53.2%), with 75.3% of support from ethnic minorities. Simultaneously, the value of the Monument to the Liberators of Riga is recognized both among the overwhelming majority of Russians (80.8%) and a significant part of Latvians (50.0%) (among Latvians, the negative attitude towards this monument was expressed by 15.0%, and 29.8% did not have an opinion). In comparison with the period of ten years ago, the negative assessment of the Soviet period by Latvians has

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been replaced by “neutral and pragmatic” (Kaprans, Procevska 2013: 18, 19, 25, 45). Common points in the historical memory of Latvians and Russian population of Latvia are revealed when it comes to the role of democratic and liberal values in the history of Latvia, the rejection of state and political totalitarianism, military violence as factors that have affected Latvian society. However, nationalist politicians and publicists are not inclined to take into account elements of such interethnic consensus in the historical memory of various ethnic groups in Latvia. On the contrary, they constantly cultivate the myth about the perennial opposition, even disloyalty and hostility of Latvian Russians in relation to Latvian culture and Latvian statehood. 6

Social Memory Research in Latvian Sociology

In Latvian sociology, studies analysing social memory appeared comparatively recently, namely, in the research in folklore, ethnology, cultural studies (Bula 2000) and sociological and politological research (Zepa et al. 2006; Muižnieks 2011) of the first half of the 2000s. The main subject of ethnological and cultural analysis became performative practices of the Latvian national m ­ ovement of the 19th century, song festivals and the activities of the Riga Latvian society and the press of the national movement. Works on the history of social memory in the twentieth century are mainly devoted to the history of the memory of the Soviet period (1944–1990) and Stalinist deportations of the 1940s, the biographical discourse of the post-Soviet period (Zelče 2010) and the restoration of Latvia’s independence from the perspectives of public leaders of the end of perestroika. As the most influential narrative filling the content of the mutually exclusive discourse of the collective memory of ethnic majority and minorities in modern Latvia, it is necessary to single out the narrative of the Second World War and its outcomes for Latvia. Latvian researchers of collective memory claim that it is this event of European history that circulates in Latvian society as the main traumatic topos and mnemonic watershed (Kaprans, Procevska 2013: 32, 35, 37). A major research project on the analysis of the content of the social memory of Latvian population, including the memory of ethnic minorities, was the interdisciplinary project “Belligerent Memory”, which centred on the commemoration of injuries of the Latvian nation. (Muižnieks, Zelče 2011). Recent studies focus on the interpretation of the burial sites of Soviet soldiers in Latvia as “places of remembrance” that help preserve and reproduce the collective identity of ethnic minorities as well as strengthen the linking of this identity to the identity of Russian citizens (Ločmele et al. 2011: 125; Berdnikov, Hanovs 2013: 359–375). The analysis of the

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history of Latvia in the twentieth century, including the authoritarian regime between 1934–1940, in view of social memory theories, is also conducted by Western scholars (Pourchier-Plasseraud 2015; Platt 2012: 131–152; Wezel 2008: 147–158). Sociological research of social memory was largely included in the widespread studies of national identity and social integration, which aimed to show how the historical values of Latvians, the official interpretation of memorable dates are close to the Russian-speaking population. Multiple data, as well as conclusions of sociologists, demonstrated the absence of a serious value conflict in the national identity of Latvians and Russians, the absence creating conditions for a reasonable compromise between the values of the social memory of Latvians and the Russian-speaking population of Latvia. (Zepa et al. 2006: 72, 73, 80; Muižnieks 2011: 11–13) It could be aided by the “dialogue of historians about contradictory assessments of recent history” (Dribins 2007: 52), as well as by the recognition by Latvians of the importance for the Latvian Russians symbols of their historical collective memory, for example, the Victory Day on 9 May (Ločmele et al. 2011: 123). However, the difficulty in recognizing the values of the social memory of ethnic minorities lies in the fact that some Latvian researchers consider the increase of the number of this population in Latvia after the Second World War in the context of a national historical trauma (Kaprāns, Strenga 2016: 124). In February and March 2014 one of the authors of the article conducted a focus group of experts from the research community to determine the relevance of Latvian collective trauma. This study revealed the polar views of the expert community on the issue, which reflects the situation with the public opinion in Latvia as a whole. Some scholars supported the need to enshrine additional guarantees for Latvian ethnic culture, an official interpretation of the history of Latvia in the twentieth century, and the reference to the national traumatic experience in the Constitution. Their opponents pointed to the strengthening risk of ethnocentrism in society. (Daija, Hanovs, Jansone 2014: 29–31, 34, 36). One of the central tasks in the study of social memory is the need to interpret the differences in social memory of Latvian ethnic minority groups in comparison with Latvians. As a rule, liberal sociologists explain the differences in the perception of Latvian public holidays by insufficient historical knowledge of the Russian-speaking population, their lack of understanding of the symbolic meaning of some festive days, a different interpretation of historical events, and not by the antagonism of the historical memory of Latvian R ­ ussians and Latvians. The authors of the study “We. Holidays. The State (2008)” quote the statements of Russian-speaking respondents, some of which differ from the statements of Latvians in interpreting the significance of public holidays (Zepa et al. 2008: 4, 8–9, 20–23, 66–68, 70–72). Some of them contain less

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d­ etailed information than give Latvians. But the statements show no disdain and hatred to state symbols. 7

Social Memory and Subordination of Ethnic Identities

The differentiation of the social memory of different ethnic groups in Latvia is also correlated with the widespread public perceptions of the place of values of ethno-cultural identity of these groups in the structure of national identity and even with the ideas of the social value of these identities in the life of Latvians with different ethnic origins. Thus, the statement quoted above from the work of A. Assman about the influence of social memory on the construction of collective identities acquires an important clarification. For Latvia, as a traditional multi-ethnic country, the question of the influence of different ethnic groups’ identities on the common sphere of public social memory is extremely relevant. On the one hand, it is an important way of achieving mutual understanding between ethnic groups, when these groups participate in commemoration as equal partners. In order to ensure such equal dialogue, ethnic groups are guided by the principles of political equality (Anderson 1999: 302 – 310; Gordon 2017; Rawls 2005: 60 – 61, 84, 126 – 134). But on the other hand, interethnic commemoration expresses the status differences between ethnic groups and institutionalised differences between the ethno-national majority and ethnic minorities. The expressed ethno-social stratification stimulates the fragmentation of civic culture and enhances the relativity of morality depending on the evaluation of “us” and “they” (Gert 2016). It is obvious that the commemoration is possible when not only individual people – bearers of an original ethnic identity are recognised as its subjects, but it is essential to recognise the potential of a collective identity of ethnic groups in the formation of a civil society. As it is known, the issue of recognising ethnic groups as fully-fledged subjects of the commemoration arouses the largest number of discussions in scientific literature, which review the issue of collective and individual legal relations, national state and pluralistic civil ­society, multiculturalism, liberalism, etc. (Barry 2001: 19 – 55, Kymlicka 2007: 61 – 172). In this sense, the research hypothesis is created taking into consideration the ideas of a long discussion among the representatives of multiculturalism and liberalism (Arendt 1958, Barry 2001, Habermas 1993, Kymlicka 2007, Nozick 1974, Rawls 2005, Taylor 1994, Wieviorka 1995, Young 1999). In the given research the main methodological viewpoint was based on Jürgen Habermas’s theory, according to which, resolution of problems of commemoration in a society, creating circumstances for mutual understanding for individual and collective actors, can be formed through mechanisms of public discourse in

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which its participants recognise each other as responsible actors and do not prejudice their individual and collective identity (Habermas 1993: 128 – 155). In order to demonstrate the attitude of a civil society towards the communication of ethnic groups in public space in Latvia, the author shows some data of representative sociological research “Gender, Culture and Power: Diversity and Interactions in Latvia and Norway” (2016). The number of respondents is 1003 (particular characteristics of respondents in Table 1). It seems that the dominance of Latvian-Russian ethnolinguistic differentiation in Latvian society is even more important than its division into citizens and non-citizens for the peculiarities of social memory. Ethnic identities offered to the respondents for their assessment are of a neutral character within a pluralistic and democratic society with the established principles of ­tolerance towards social and ethno-cultural diversity. However, the research data proves Table 1 

Characteristics of respondents

Total

%

Ethnicity Latvians Russians Other

687 257 49

68.5 25.6 4.9

Citizenship Citizens of Latvia Residents of Latvia Citizens of other states

871 112 12

86.8 11.2 1.2

Native language Latvian Latgalian Russian Other

640 41 292 29

63.8 4.1 29.2 2.9

The language of daily communication in the family Latvian Latgalian Russian Other

673 25 297 6

67.1 2.5 29.6 0.6

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that the respondents essentially disagree with a neutral status of these identities in Latvia’s society, which stratifies them according to the level of their significance for a person’s successful life. But this assessment does not mean that the respondents themselves approve this situation. They more likely believe that these mass attitudes to social identities or stereotypes of them are spread in the society. In fact, the respondents rely on the belief about the existence of not only differences, but also inequality and stratification of social identities. Subordination of ethnic and cultural identities of different ethnic groups in the public consciousness is an important source of subordination and different types of social memory. The data proves that ethnic identities are considered neutral by the majority of the respondents. Moreover, in relation to the largest ethnic groups in ­Latvia – Latvians and Russians – less than a half of the respondents recognised their ethnic identity as having a neutral influence on their life in Latvia. More than a half of the respondents consider only such social identities as Belarusian, Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish as neutral. However, it can more likely be explained by the small number of these groups in Latvia. The only exception is the identity of such a small group as Roma. Furthermore, this is the identity, in the respondents’ opinion, that experiences the most intolerance in the Latvian society (around 45%). Apparently, the underestimated assessment of the significance of ethnic minority identities as compared to the Latvian ethnic identity for the implementation of life goals within the Latvian society is related to a lesser degree of political involvement of ethnic minorities, their representativeness among government, political, economic and cultural elite. The differences in the assessment of the Latvian identity and ethnic minority identities are not so significant but are nevertheless evident. The Latvian identity is considered 1.6 times more favourable than the Russian, Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian identity, twice as more favourable than the Jewish identity, and about 4 times more favourable than the Roma identity. Moreover, these differences exist separately among both Latvian and Russian respondents. A part of the respondents who consider the ethnic minority identities’ influence as negative or almost negative attracts some attention. The largest part is accounted for in the assessment of the Roma identity (around 45%), which is followed by the Russian and Jewish identity (10%–14%), then the ­Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian (from 2% to 9% among Latvian and Russian respondents) (Table 2). The materials of qualitative research, which will be given below, show the motivation of respondents of different assessment of the importance of ethnic identity, which is largely legitimized by the ideas of differences in historical memory.

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SOCIAL MEMORY AND SUBORDINATION OF IDENTITIES IN LATVIA Table 2 

Identities

Influence of social identity and ethnicity to a person’s life in Latvia (%)

All

Latvians

Russians

Positive Positive Neutral Negative Positive Neutral Negative and and and almost and and almost almost negative almost almost positive positive positive negative Latvian Russian Belarusian Polish Lithuanian Jewish Roma

63.6 40.2 36.8 37.4 41.1 30.8 16.3

60.8 39.7 35.1 35.1 38.9 29.0 14.8

36.8 48.9 60.0 61.4 59.2 58.7 40.0

2.3 11.4 4.8 3.4 1.8 12.4 44.9

69.3 41.2 39.9 41.8 45.4 34.0 19.3

28.8 44.1 50.7 52.3 51.3 55.6 35.0

2.8 14.3 9.5 5.9 3.3 10.5 45.8

One of the tasks of the research was to identify the level of private communication between people on the issues of equality among ethnic groups. It was found that no more than a fifth part of the respondents discuss these issues “often” and “sometimes”. The survey showed a significant excess of a part of the respondents who “never” discussed these issues over those who did it “often” or “sometimes”. Ethnic minorities’ issues – 2 times (among the Russians) and more than 3.5 times (among the Latvians). Therefore, the issues of ethnic minorities’ equality are obviously not in the focus of interest for people in Latvia (Table 3). In general, respondents expressed no desire to increase the amount of information about ethnic minorities in different types of social communication (media – internet, radio, television, officials, political parties, ngo, scientists, secondary and higher education system, religious organisations communication with the civil society). Such a desire was expressed by less than half of all respondents (from 34.5% to 48.3%). However, very large differences were found in this interest towards the problems of ethnic minorities among the groups of Latvian and Russian respondents. If 30 – 40% of Latvians expressed a desire to increase the amount of public information on the problems of ­ethnic minorities, the Russian respondents did it in 50% – 60% of cases (Table 4). In fact, the areas of public communication are the most problematic spheres of social life, where the interests of Latvians and ethnic minorities diverge. The sphere of public communication on issues of ethnic minorities

120 Table 3 

Hanovs and Volkov Frequency of discussions on the issues (%)

Topics

All Latvians respondents “often” and “often” and “sometimes” “sometimes”

With the Latvians about the Latvian ethnic minorities’ equality issues With the ethnic minorities’ representatives about their equality issues

Russians “never”

“often” and “never” “sometimes”

19.6

21.3

39.2

15.4

41.2

16.2

14.7

50.7

19.3

40.2

s­ ignificantly adjusts the overall picture of the perceptions of the respondents about a real consolidation of multi-ethnic Latvian society. In order to fully participate in the formation of a common collective social memory, it is important to achieve recognition of the equal status of the ethnic majority and minorities. The conducted sociological research shows that the public consciousness in Latvia is more focused not on the recognition of the equal status of the identities of the ethnic majority and minorities, but on the reproduction of institutional differences between them. Within the framework of this research project, a qualitative sociological study was also conducted, which revealed the motivation of widespread ideas in Latvian society about the “normality” of subordination of various ethnic and cultural identities, their inequality for social self-realization. As it turned out, the arguments of historical consciousness and historical memory of ­representatives of different ethnic groups play a very significant role in legitimizing the inequality of ethnic and cultural identities and in resisting such

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SOCIAL MEMORY AND SUBORDINATION OF IDENTITIES IN LATVIA Table 4 

Necessity to increase information about the solving problems of ethnic minorities in Latvia (answer – “it is necessary”, %)

Communications

All

Latvian

Russians

In the media (internet, radio, television) Officials communication with the civil society Political parties communication with the civil society ngo communication with the civil society Scientists communication with the civil society The secondary education system The higher education system Religious organisations communication with the civil society

48.3

41.3

63.1

41.1

33.5

57.5

42.1

34.9

56.9

43.3

37.6

55.6

39.1

33.0

52.3

46.0

40.9

57.8

44.2 34.5

38.3 27.4

57.5 49.7

l­egitimization. 22 respondents took part in the qualitative research: 15 out of them are Latvians (L), and 7 ethnic minorities’ (mainly Russians) representatives (em). According to their professional characteristics, 5 respondents are members of Saeima (S), 5 respondents are ngo activists (ngo), 5 respondents are secondary school teachers (T), 4 journalists (J), 3 employees at universities or research centers (R). A vast majority of the respondents are famous people in Latvia who have been involved in the implementation of the Latvian ethnic policy, and various ethnic discourses for a rather long time, a few of them since the beginning of the 1990s. Some respondents consider a sheer fact of existence of Russian-speaking environment in Latvia as an obstacle for commemoration in the mutual interethnic communication. The need for preserving a Russian collective ethnocultural identity is considered as Russian chauvinism: There is no communication because of the information environment in two languages, which makes it impossible to come to an agreement about key issues, such as history, language, Ukraine, non-citizens, etc. (L, R)

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The opinion is that the main obstacle to the formation of a common social memory is not cultural, social and historical features of the collective identity of the Russian population, but its susceptibility to “Russian propaganda”: We study the influence of Russian propaganda on the Russian-speaking population’s consciousness who speak about their problems. As far as identity is concerned, the majority of Russian-speaking residents do not feel their full belonging to Latvia L, R According to Latvian experts, the social memory inherited by the Russian population should be reformatted. This goal should be the complete translation of education for ethnic minorities into Latvian only, their orientation to Latvian sources of information, etc.: They discriminate against themselves. It is necessary to know their background with which they turned up here. It is necessary to know how to work with them, and how to speak to them. I can see that students’ parents never communicate in Latvian. They watch Russian television. What can we even talk about? The press, the media give them the feeling that they do not belong to this state. They need to reorient, to realize that it is good here. We need to talk to them, to spread this information. Watch television in the Latvian language! (L, Т) However, there is also a skeptical attitude to all the media in Latvia, including Latvian, as well as politicians, school teachers, etc., which also form myths, and therefore can not serve as a reliable source of formation of the general social memory of Latvians and the Russian population: Russians and Latvians cannot live in myths about each other. But if there are no denials of discrimination on the part of the official authorities, it gives rise to suspicions … I agree, it is necessary to spread information on the problems of ethnic minorities. However, in order to do it, we need to change qualification of teachers and politicians. Media, two information spaces generate politicized ethnic stereotypes, describe ethnic communities in the framework of stereotypes. Media now do not bring communities together. (L, J) For the Russian respondents and important elements in common with the Latvian social memory. The positive attitude to the value of the democratic

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e­ xperience of interaction between ethnic minorities and the Republic of Latvia in 1918 – 1934 is highlighted here. This refutes the beliefs of the Latvian nationalists about the qualitative differences in the social and historical memory of Latvians and ethnic minorities. And it is the appeal to democratic practices in the history of Latvia that is one of the ways to correct the nationalist tendencies of modern Latvian ethnopolitics: The crucial mistake was to transfer all education into one language. It is necessary to study the European and world experience. The issues of ethnic equality are the ones that are crucially relevant not formally. Our children should form the sense of belonging to Latvia. But the political background makes emphasis of the ethnic factor but not a national one. Political parties want to take us back to the past … The First Republic was an example where the state concept was good (the agrarian reform and the laws on cultural autonomy and education of minorities, soon after the adoption of the Satversme (Constitution) in 1919). Now there is a lack of it, there is no general model of the state. People are ashamed of their ethnic origin. (EМ, Т) The respondents-representatives of ethnic minorities believe that the commemoration could be an important resource for the reconciliation of interests of this group and Latvians. But the historical memory must be complete, it is necessary to restore all the pages in the national history of Latvia: In the society Russians are often addressed as “them”. There are a lot of negative ethnic statements about Russians on the Internet … We are offended when Russians are referred to as visitants, outsiders. My family have been living here since the 18th century. (EМ, Т) But in general, the respondents believe that the recognition of the minorities’ right for their collective values, including the values of historical memory can be the condition for normal communication between Latvians and ethnic minorities: We should not “break the backbone” with May the 9th situation. It should not be forbidden for schools to attend the events in honor of May the 9th. The dialogue method is more efficient than the ban method. Ethnic communities have different attitudes, different values, including the sphere of foreign policy. It should not be perceived as anti-Latvian actions. Why

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are textbooks for Russians in Latvian? Children do not understand the text! Russians should step by step be involved in cultural projects, for example, writing textbooks. (EМ, Т) 8

Instead of Conclusion

A set of threads connects social memory to the identity of ethnic groups. However, one cannot help noticing that the actualization of the special interest in social memory in socio-political consciousness is often dictated by the logic of interethnic and even geopolitical confrontation, which is imposed by parties of interest. It is the differences in the social memory of ethnic groups that most often turn into ideological and value points of interethnic conflicts. In such a situation, it is appropriate to take advantage of the ideas of Georg Simmel, who advised to take a closer look at the internal differentiation of each of the groups that are in the state of or being pushed to mutual isolation. Recognizing such an internal differentiation of each of the interacting groups will make it possible to find more common traits between them than differences (Simmel 1996: 412–414). As demonstrated by many sociological studies in contemporary Latvia, the rigid opposition of the social memory of Latvians and ethnic minorities is largely a product of nationalistic fantasies and political technologies. Democratic multi-ethnic states set themselves a very challenging goal: to ensure the commemoration of society based on the culture of ethnic majority with respect for the cultures of ethnic minorities. This implies the structuring of ethnic identities. At the same time a liberal democracy protects the principle of equality of citizens with different ethnic identity. The functioning of the common public space in commemoration without hard barriers is an important criterion for the recognition of multi-ethnic diversity and equality of all citizens, regardless of their ethnic origin and cultivated ethnic  identity. The sociological research has confirmed the relevance of this approach. References 9maia.lv. [9may.lv] (2016) Available at: www.9may.lv (Accessed 18 May, 2016). Anderson, Elizabeth (1999) What is the Point of Equality? Ethics. Vol. 109, pp. 287–337. Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Assmann, Aleida (2013 (2)) Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur. Eine Intervention. Munchen: C.H. Beck.

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Wieviorka, Michel (1995) The Arena of Racism. London: sage Publications. Young, Iris M. (1999) Ruling Norms and the Politics of Difference: A Comment on Seyla Benhabib. The Yale Journal of Criticism. No. 12.2. pp. 415–421. Zelče, Vita (2010) Atmiņas tekstura. Otrā pasaules kara pieminekļi Baltijas valstīs. Available at: www.szf.lu.lv (Accessed 25 November, 2010). Zepa, Brigita; Kļave, Evija; Žabko, Oksana; Krastiņa, Līga; Bebriša, Iveta; Jansone, Zane; Vaivode, Lelde; Beriņa, Liene (2008) Mēs. Svētki. Valsts. Rīga: biss. Zepa, Brigita; Šūpule, Inese; Krastiņa, Līga; Ķešāne, Iveta; Grīviņš, Miķelis; Bebriša, Iveta; Ieviņa, Ilze (2006) Integrācijas prakse un perspektīvas. Rīga: biss.

Part 2 In Search of European Home and Hospitality

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Chapter 6

The Ideal of Absolute Hospitality and the Reality of Anti-migrant Fences Rūta Bagdanavičiūtė Thirty years ago, East-Central Europeans celebrated the fall of the Iron Curtain in the hope that they will be able to build democracy and capitalism. Then, in 2004, some of these countries joined the European Union and later Schengen – the borderless European Union. But today formerly c\Communist Bulgaria has an anti-migrant fence, which we can call Iron Curtain 2. This time it is on the Eastern side of Bulgaria. Other countries such as the Baltic States have a border with Russia and an EU border – something that was unimaginable in 1989. It was unimaginable in the early 1990s too, as the Soviet Army troops took time to withdraw from newly independent countries. This chapter does not analyse to what extent the new Iron anti-migrant Curtain is legitimate and justified or unjustified both morally and politically; instead the focus is on the ideal of absolute hospitality to the Other and the problem of adopting such hospitality in social reality.

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The Central European countries demonstrated varying attitudes towards the United Nations Migration pact. Some signed, some did not. Signing means that a particular country will accept refugees and migrants, provide humanitarian aid, and help them to integrate into local society. After recent migration streams under chaotic and certainly inhumane conditions – people crossing by foot European lands carrying children without medical assistance – the United Nations offered a pact to convert the situation into humane treatment of migrants. This was an effort to learn from the refugee crisis in 2015. However, when in 2020 Turkey released refugees from Syria opening the door for Europe, the Greek and Bulgarian governments established brutal border controls. The scene turned into violent clashes between refugees and border control forces. Philosophically speaking the refugees are in existential dread, forced to leave their homes and their homelands due to war. They are victims of the war. Being forced from home, people become nomads not by choice, but because of war. Climate change is another force that causes migration without existential security. In this case such a person needs some Other, someone who can help. © rūta bagdanavičiūtė, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_008

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The question is: will the Other, the one in the position of big brother, bring good will and be hospitable? As this structure relates to European politics, the countries of the European Union became exposed to a political, but also to a moral dilemma: to open up for refugees and migrants or not? Not all countries of the European Union accepted the Migration pact of the United Nations. The following analysis looks at the problem from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics as well as from the perspective of absolute/ unconditional hospitality as formulated by Jacques Derrida. Derrida conceives of an absolute hospitality that is beyond hospitality by law or duty. As he has put it: “absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names” (Derrida, 2000: 25). Absolute hospitality is beyond social and jurisprudential conventions. Such hospitality allows and requires that one open up unconditionally to the Other. The “others” are not differentiated, whereas refugees in social reality have to be differentiated according to the criteria of skills, political status, marital status, age group, education, criminal or terrorist record, and religion. Absolute hospitality is based on standards of ethics which do not question and do not differentiate the Other – the Other is unconditionally respected, while emptying the Self of logocentrism (no more logocentrism of my house or my country). Social differentiation of the “others” is related to practical decision-making, but in the philosophy of Derrida absolute hospitality is beyond decision-making on the basis of the Other’s evaluation according to social, political, and religious criteria. One scholar explains that: “there is the law of unlimited hospitality that ordains the unconditional reception of the stranger, whoever he or she is: that is the provision of hospitality to a stranger without conditions, restrictions and returns. The law of absolute, pure, unconditional, hyperbolic hospitality, asks us to say “yes” to the newcomer [arrivant], before any determination, before any prevention, before any identification – irrespective of being a stranger, an immigrant, a guest or an unexpected visitor” (Kakoliris 2015: 146). In this case the arrivant without identification replaces the original host and becomes the new host. When we fulfil the conditions for unconditional hospitality for the Other, then the guest becomes the host of the original host (Derrida 2000: 125). Now the original host becomes the guest, and the original guest becomes the host. Needless to say, it is in sharp contrast to Croatia or Hungary, who both put up fences in 2015–2016 at their borders, or the aforementioned violent clashes

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at the Greece-Turkey border. However, absolute hospitality is also differently constrasted to some non-violent solutions. European commisioner for home affairs Ylva Johansson in March 2020, made an agreement with the Greece goverment to pay 2000 euros to 5000 migrants who are held in Greek camps under condition that these people would return to their countries. In other words, if earlier Turkey was receiving the EU money for keeping migrants in its territory, now migrants on EU territory were paid to leave the EU territory. The “money” offered to migrants to leave Europe might be seem as an alternative to paying Turkey for keeping migrants away from the European Union. This alternative allows migrants to receive financial support directly. Without going into the economic details of what this particular amount of “cash” allows migrants to gain in their native countries once they return, it is certainly not hospitality. Timothy Garton Ash claims that the problem is not the Muslims, but the Europeans who via lack of hospitality do not create favourable home conditions for Muslim co-citizens (Ash, 2006). However, a contrary position has been taken by French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who replied to this by accusing Ash of propagating multiculturalism in the form of apartheid. Multiculturalism that is based on an absolute hospitality is a racism of anti-racists (Bruckner, 2007). In social reality Canada might be as close as possible to the ideal of absolute hospitality. But, nevertheless, even in that country identification of the arrivant is required. The most migrant-friendly rhetoric at the United Nations comes from Canada, which values hospitality to the Other. Lithuania or Estonia – countries that also signed – share a somewhat different rhetoric than that which accentuates Canada’s concerns. Lithuania and Estonia are well behind Canadian enthusiasm for extending hospitality, even though they are in the same club of collaboration. Canadian enthusiasm for Global Compact could be regarded as a benchmark in terms of hospitality to migrants. Here is one notable excerpt from the speeches: The representative of Canada said his country, which has greatly benefited from migration, is proud of its mature and effective migration system. With the adoption of the Global Compact, there will be more opportunities to share lessons learned, to discuss ways to encourage the use of regular migratory channels, and better ensure the integration of migrants into society. (United Nations 2018) The famous “Willkommen!” in German, or “Welcome!” in English, that was uttered by Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel when opening up for migrants, suits that hospitality rhetoric and values. But the famous welcoming hap-

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pened in 2015, when it caused tensions and a sharp polarization of German society. To repeat it in 2020 is more difficult; but the word “Welcome” in 2015 meant that refugees and migrants were welcome in Germany regardless of race, religion, political views, etc. Today German politicians and different parties debate over the need for openness. The Germany of 2019–2020 is not the same as its 2015 earlier self. Corona virus itself has caused closure of the borders, but before the virus affected Germany openness to migration was already a sensitive issue. Because of social issues and cultural differences, not to mention occasional terror acts or violent attacks on peaceful citizens, which Germany has been experiencing since 2015 (not without violent response by German neo-nazis), East-Central European politicians, noticeably Polish and Hungarians in a coalition with Italian and French nationalistically oriented politicians, are demonstrating resistance to global migration. Instead of hospitality, national state interests are declared as top priority. The civilizational Other is regarded as unwanted. Lithuania and Estonia could be seen as standing in between extremes of global hospitality and nationalistic closure. For instance, an Estonian representative wanted to emphasize security of States, not security of migrants, also to solve root causes of migration, not to cheer migration in a Canadian manner: “Effective border management is key to ensuring the security of States” (United Nations 2018). Poland, which is the most Catholic country in Central Europe and perhaps in the EU, conceptually would be consistent with its own Catholicism if it had ever considered endorsing at least conditional hospitality along with the United Nations Migration pact. A Catholic country could and should follow Pope Francis, who encourages to accept immigrants unconditionally, including Muslims. A Catholic country might be expected to share Christian love, unconditional love for humankind. But this is not the way the issue is regarded by the current Polish government. Migration as such is deemed a danger to Catholic dominance and ethnic Polish traditions. This view is also shared in Hungary. As a matter of fact, this migration pact, which is signed with moral defense in Germany, is regarded by conservative national politicians as a form of another colonization of Central Europe. Now a Catholic country wants to be the filter that filters Islam after the Lisbon Treaty, which eliminated Christianity as a fundamental value of Europe in the name of secularism, but then in practice opened the gates for another religion. Christianity is downplayed, but then Islam, not secularism, seems to replace one religion with another, which is much more than a religious issue. It is also about the social contract. It is about the ­Enlightenment

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project that spoke of intellectual freedom and gender equality. It is also about cosmopolitan tolerance for sexual minorities and ethnic diversity as well as about cultural habits and traditions. The current Polish government could hardly be seen as the protector of tolerance when its leaders marched on November 11th Independence day with the radical nationalists, who are clearly and simply Polish neo-nazis. But then the question is what is left of liberal and secular values in France? What European country is the role model for the integration of migrants and preserving its own home values? France used to be the flagman of laïcité, European secularism and liberal values. One scholar notes that: [France] has accepted many migrants over the last decades, and from the very beginning it was not cultural homogeneity that was the core issue but the principle of laïcité. From the origins of the French modern state, religion was constrained to the private domain, whereas in the public sphere, discussions (and even mockery) of religion were totally acceptable. This approach met with huge opposition from the side of Muslim newcomers, who did not want to give up on displaying their sense of religious belonging publicly and treated jokes about the issue as a serious insult. The Charlie Hebdo attack caused an uneasy discussion worldwide about whether France should switch from the assimilative model (subordinating cultural particularities to hegemonic political principles) to a multiculturalist approach perhaps modelled along US lines. Yet, for France it seems to be a matter not of tolerance (as it is often represented to be) but of the legacy of the French revolution and the Enlightenment as the cornerstones of the French nation. (Korablyova 2015) From the perspective of political and cultural anthropology, perhaps it is not incorrect to say that just like France used to be the frontier in Western EU for its secularism, for the principle of laïcité, today Poland intends to be the frontier in Central Europe for Christian civilization in protection of its own nationalism, which is intervowen with Catholicism, not with secularism. The quality of such a nationalistically oriented Catholic frontier is another question, but if Poland to be seen as the Christian civilizational frontier at all, then Poland’s unwillingness to sign the United Nation Migration pact is understandable, at least from the neutral perspective of political anthropology. The rejection of the Migration pact was formulated as follows: “‘(It) doesn’t meet Polish demands regarding strong guarantees for countries to have the right to independently decide (who) they choose to accept’, the government in Warsaw said in a statement” (Reuters 2018).

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Those countries that did not sign the pact held the argument of being small nations that want to maintain homogeneity and to be sovereign in decisionmaking on migration. Such an argument reveals the dominant value: to preserve the nation intact by another nation or other ethnic groups and culture. It is also about the defense of nation-state identity, but not without social and political consequences in Western European countries. When accentuation moves to the Other and abandons “me”, making the Other to more important, when self-effacing takes place according to the ideal of Derrida’s absolute hospitality, the relationship order is reversed. We may also find the reversed relationship order in literature. Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission is a sharp social satire. The novel describes France in 2022 as it elects a Muslim as president. Then he announces Islam to be the official religion in France and state secularism is annulled. The former European-French identity is lost. As Lithuanian philosopher and a liberal Leonidas Donskis observed, recalling the claim by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, absolute relativism and nihilism inevitably lead to totalitarianism and ideocratic rule (Donskis 2016). These words from Donskis come from his review of the novel Submission, which discloses a civilizational concern about the liberal perspective in one potential future of the fate of France. American pragmatist Richard Rorty is critical of unconditional hospitality, because for him social decisions do not cross the boundaries of law and legal norms; but rather the opposite is true. Rorty does not take Derrida’s ideas as applicable to the social realm and considers it romantic idealism that generates utopia. Rorty classifies Derrida’s philosophy of hospitality as something belonging to the private sphere and as something esoteric. Such philosophy would be dangerous even if transferred to the public sphere (cf. Bagdanavičiūtė 2017). We may doubt if signing the United Nation Migration pact is a part of absolute hospitality. Migration laws and rules, conditions for “permission to live” (as it is strangely called in Lithuania) when a foreigner applies for a residence permit, is not absolute hospitality, because it has laws and rules. Derrida himself makes a distinction between hospitality which is above law and hospitality that is in agreement to law (Derrida, 2000: 135). When Canada cheerfully signs the United Nation Migration pact, saying how proud it is to welcome immigrants, but Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic do not sign by grumpily underlying national homogeneity, then these countries differently indicate where they stand regarding not only unconditional hospitality, but also where they stand regarding conditional hospitality that is regulated by law and migration rules. By the same token, we see where these countries stand regarding anti-migrant fences.

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Absolute hospitality, if adapted in political practice, deconstructs not only anti-migrant fences, but borders as such. Borders and passport checkpoints contradict absolute hospitality. Hospitality based on identification and legal requirements is conditional hospitality. Richard Kearney criticizes Derrida and offers discernment of the Other. According to Kearney, aliens have to be differentiated, how otherwise are we to experience alterity? Evidently there are different kinds of otherness. Kearney reflects upon absolute hospitality ethics from hermeneutical decision ethics’ perspective (cf. Bagdanavičiūtė, 2016). He argues that differentiation of the forms of alterity in a social context is a necessity. Otherwise how to differentiate sacred souls from non-sacred souls, those who bring peace from those who bring destruction (Kearney 2002)? Discernment implies that we make decisions. According to Kearny, the host’s right to make a decision is fundamental, otherwise we are talking about something self-effacing. “An ethics of otherness is not a matter of black and white, but of grey and grey. This is not a call for radical indeterminacy or relativism. On the contrary, it is an invitation to judge more judiciously so that we may judge more justly”, writes Kearney (2002: 30). A hermeneutical ethics of otherness integrates contradictory perspectives and offers coexistence. We are talking about multiple petit histoire, small narratives, which do preserve their own “me” and have a right to speak from a personal perspective. Artificial identification with the Other would mean a Procrustean attempt to fit in what does not meet the standard. That would be a sacrifice of one’s own authentic position, a sacrifice in the name of an artificial identification with the Other. Instead, hermeneutical ethics opens up for everyone’s perspective and personal historic memory. The discernment of the Other should stem from the perspective of “me”, while being aware that this perspective is limited, personal, and, therefore, it cannot be final and absolute. With this in mind the host opens to the arrivant’s authentic experience and perspective. The memory of the host and the memory of the guest as well as their identity narratives bespeak of why “me” and “you” are what they are. As Kearney writes, “narrative memory seeks to preserve some testimony of those others – ­especially victims of history – who would, if unremembered be lost to the injustice of nonexistence” (2002: 28). In other words, shall not the host and the guest share with each other their memories about the justice and injustice they’ve experienced? Should they not identify a victim and a big brother in a position to help? Should they not exchange values and beliefs, cultural habits and religions norms, from the perspective of “me” and from the perspective of “you”?

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The 2020 case of the violent clashes between Greek border control and migrants at the Greece-Turkey border shows that the host and the arrivant as a guest did not meet in a civilized way. The offer of money by the EU Commissioner of Home Affairs to the already existing migrants in isolation in Greek territory, asking them to leave, tells us that the narrative and traumatic memory of war in Syria did not affect the attitude of the host, who chose to maintain anti-migrant fences. For those countries that have demostrated a cold-blooded attitude towards the Other, suffice it to recall the Bulgarian pride in forming volunteers at its border with Turkey to catch refugees, paradoxically having ended its own complex conditions. But this is because of the coronavirus. Today walls and fences are back. The virus has become a kind of transcultural, transpolitical power that threatens people’s lives regardless of their ethics. Such a situation shows how fragile the roles of the host and the guest are, how quickly the roles can shift, and how suddenly we all may lose the status of host, because in the face of this pandemic no one is safe. The status of the host in a globally liquid world should not be overestimated or regarded as a guarantee. When the circumstances change, an altered indentification might be ascribed to the host. The position of big brother is conditional. Comprehension of a global world that is in flux should stimulate a hermeneutical understanding of the Other and of the Other’s inferior position. Instead of absolute and unconditional hospitality the host may open to hermeneutical hospitality and hermeneutical ethics of dialogue and memory sharing. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple hosts of the European Union, its nation states, have closed their borders. Schengen closed at the end of March 2020, and temporarily evaporated. Suddenly, because of the pandemic crisis some of the hosts converted into those who are to be isolated in quarantine. Identification of the host is based not on his or her privileged citizenship as an EU member state, but on contingent health conditions. Quarantine as such is a medical limitation of human rights. Thus, by paradox, the one who built anti-migrant fences in rejection of the role of hospitality now accepts a global danger, today in the form of the corona virus pandemic. References Ash, Timothy Garton (2006). Islam in Europe, The New York Review of Books, liii. Bagdanavičiūtė, Rūta (2016). Intersubjektyvi hermeneutinė sprendimo etika: tarp J. Habermaso idealios komunikacijos ir M. Foucault gyvybingos dialogo įtampos [Intersubjective Hermeneutical Ethics of Decision: Between Habermas’ Ideal Communication and M. Foucault’s Vital Tension in a Dialogue]. Logos 89, 14–25.

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Bagdanavičiūtė, Rūta. (2017) Tarp asmeninio dialogo ir socialinio polilogo: skirtingos socialumo sampratos [Intersubjective Hermeneutical Ethics of Decision: between Habermas’ Ideal Communication and Foucault’s Vital Tension in a Dialogue]. Logos 92, 45–54. Bruckner, Pascal (2007). A reply to Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash. Available at: http://www.signandsight.com/features/1263.html. (Accessed 10 June, 2019). Derrida Jacques (2000). Of Hospitality. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Donskis, Leonidas (2016). Pasidavimas ir Europos savižudybė? [Submission or European Self Suicide?] Available at: http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/aktualu/komentarai/ leonidas-donskis-pasidavimas-ir-europos-savizudybe-500-568557 (Accessed on 10 November, 2019). Kakoliris, Gerasimos (2015) Jacques Derrida on the Ethics of Hospitality. In: Elvis Imafidon (ed.) The Ethics of Subjectivity. Perspectives since the Dawn of Modernity. Palgrave MacMillan. Kearney, Richard (2002). Strangers and Others: From Deconstruction to Hermeneutics. Critical Horizons. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. Available at: file:///C:/Users/HP/ Downloads/Kearney%20tekstas.pdf (Accessed 15 May, 2019). Korablyova, Valeria (2015). Pariahs and Parvenus? Refugees and New Division in Europe. Eurozine. Reuters (2018) Poland to snub U.N. migration pact, Slovakia has reservations. Available at: https://www.google.com/search?q=Poland+to+snub+U.N.+migration+pact%2C +Slovakia+has+reservations&rlz=1C1GCEA_enLT847LT847&oq=Poland+to+snub+ U.N.+migration+pact%2C+Slovakia+has+reservations&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.2 62778j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 (Accessed 30 July, 2019). United Nations (2018). General Assembly Endorses First Ever Global Compact on Migration, Urging Cooperation among Member States in Protecting Migrants. Available at: https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12113.doc.htm (Accessed 30 July, 2019).

Chapter 7

“A Home for Our Children”: The Bulgarian (Dis)illusion with Democratic Society Thirty Years Later Valentina Gueorguieva, Galina Goncharova and Slavka Karakusheva 1 Prelude In 1987 Bulgarian National Television broadcast the tv series “A Home for Our Children”, which became popular for its mild criticism of the mores of the late socialist society. In its five episodes, the series depicted the conflict of a loving father trying to defend his high moral standards against the problematic, but largely accepted, tactics of well-to-do individuals with good connections to the party elites and bureaucrats, who benefit from small services to privileged access to resources. The storyline was built on personal relationships between generations in an extended family, their love affairs, marriages, and separations. The moral of the series was that all conflicts and misunderstandings must be overcome in the name of a shared goal – the building of a house for their children, where the house is a metaphor for a healthy and loving environment, social solidarity and bright future. Using the home as an allegory for social relationships and as a project for a common destiny is deeply embedded in the cultural layers of Bulgarian society, where identity is conceived in terms of family and paternalism. A year later paternalistic attitudes came into sight in another, radically negative form, during one of the first public protests in Russe. Mothers concerned for the health of their children were protesting against chlorine air pollution, caused by an industrial chemical complex in Giurgiu on the Romanian side of the Danube River. The protest was covered even in the most controlled mass media, where the powerful imagery of mothers pushing baby strollers appeared under the slogan “We want a healthy generation”. Shortly thereafter, in May 1989, other protesters took to the streets asking the state to return to them “the names given by their mothers”, as seen on one of the placards. These were the protests of the Turks whose Turkish-Arabic names had been forcibly changed to Bulgarian ones a few years earlier. Both protests asked for justice, understood as recognition of the right to healthy life

© Valentina Gueorguieva et al., ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_009

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or identity, at the place people considered their home, i.e., the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Strongly influenced by the euphoric rhetoric of justice and freedom of the democratic movements in the post-Soviet bloc, the slogans from the first democratic demonstration from 18 November 1989 redefined these strong archetypical notions of Bulgarian society towards the notion of dismantling the late socialist system of privileges by integrating different social strata and minorities into the project of the “home” for the people. This idea of the “home” built on the backbone of tradition and in the name of the coming generations, uncorrupted by power and nepotism, a “home” as a metonym for a state where all human rights will be preserved, and where a just distribution of goods, stable living standards and freedom of mobility will be guaranteed, is illustrated by the following slogans: “Activists against fascism, we want your redemption to us, the lost generation!”; “I exchange white Trabant for a black Mercedes”; “Freedom in school, civil rights for students”; “Equal rights for Bulgarian and Turkish population of Bulgaria”; “For clear air, water and land!”; “A Bible for every home!”; “We want church freedom, social work, and charity schools”; “Glasnost, oxygen, sausage!”; “Keep our smiles when returning home from the supermarket, like when coming back from a demo”; “sos – hear the voice of the people!”. In the slogans cited above appeals to human rights and requests for basic wellbeing for all go hand in hand. A decade or two later, human rights and social welfare would be dissociated, and framed in the diverging or even contradicting ideals of “the open society” against “national wellbeing”. 2 Introduction Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall a specific genre of public and media rethinking of the processes of democratisation has evolved in the postSoviet space. It could be described as a kind of almost ritualistic lamentation of the “oscillations”, “vagaries”, “obstructions” or (more radically expressed) “failure”, “collapse”, etc. of the so-called “democratic transition”, i.e., the transition from one-party government, state-planned economic and social activities and controlled mobility to a democratic system, freedom of expression, European citizenship and a free market economy. Thus, the annual celebrations of the velvet revolutions become an occasion for numerous accounts and research about the dismantling of the socialist regime that are circulated in the media and in academia. In the bulk of this literature the strongly negative

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c­ onclusions and generalisations prevail. Thus, the experience of contemporary Russia is discussed in terms of unsuccessful democratisation in the postSoviet period (Fish, 2005; Whitefield, 2009; Guo and Stradiotto, 2014). The examination of what has been occurring recently in Hungary indicates “de-democratization” (Bogaards, 2018), “deconsolidation of democracy” (Brusis, 2016) or “diminished form of democracy” (Bugarič, 2015). Romania is also seen as emblematic of the “idiosyncrasies of economic, political and social transition” (Ghergina, 2015: 1). In Bulgaria, criticism of the decades of democratisation following 1989 has unfolded in a very similar way, with politicians, journalists, political scientists and sociologists reproducing a repetitive set of disillusions about the uses and abuses of the values of freedom and justice after the fall of the Berlin wall. This chapter will focus on the development of these two ideals – “the open society” and “the national wellbeing”. The analysis will correlate their (d)evolution to the political processes that nourish and are nourished by them, and that diverge significantly from what was imagined in the early 1990s. The first issue we discuss is the notion of “open society”, which crystallized in specific historical moments of common enthusiasm for democratic changes, reflecting the collective search for national consensus, high political participation and the symbolism of opening towards Europe and the world. The “opening” served as a beacon through the laborious process of EU integration, at times interpreted quite literally as opening the border towards the richer part of the world where possibilities for a prosperous life could be explored. Very optimistic in the beginning, this notion has gradually become associated with “foreign” economic and (geo)political interests, hostile to the Bulgarian national welfare. What has stayed the same throughout the last three decades is the notion of “home”, understood as the ideal for rebuilding the state in a new way: a state that is respectful towards the rights and freedoms of its citizens; a state that is open to the variety of voices that would supposedly be raised and heard in a democratic society; a state worth living in and worth leaving to “our children”. This chapter will discuss the transformations of the notion of “home” parallel to the disappointments over redistribution of common goods, and the disillusionment of the expectations of wellbeing. The “home” gradually became inclusive for some and exclusive for others, step by step its doors were found closed for “guests” from inside or outside and its “walls” were constructed higher to prevent eventual jumping over. Its “furniture” got reorganised to be comfortable for those that considered themselves “the owners”, but hostile to those who were seen as “unwanted visitors”.

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The Round Table Talks Setting the Agenda for “the Bright PostCommunist Future”

Following the example of a few countries from the former Soviet bloc, Round Table Talks were organised in the period from 3 January to 14 May 1990. The conditions of the transition to democracy and market economy were negotiated during the talks between the still-ruling Bulgarian Communist Party (renamed to Bulgarian Socialist Party in April 1990) and the newly formed coalition in opposition, the Union of Democratic Forces (udf). The possibilities of a “nationwide consensus” and a “nationwide agreement” through a “constructive dialogue” between the representatives of different “organisations, unions, public structures with their diversity, specific interests and autonomous positions” were discussed during the initial consultative meetings. Thus, political and socio-economic issues were equally addressed along with freedom of speech, religious life, “the ethnic crisis” and the “ecological issues in their whole spectrum” (omda, n.d.a). The discussants’ choice of the latter two topics followed directly from the ardent public debates on the severe social effects of the assimilatory campaign towards Turks and Muslims, and the air pollution in Russe. This also revealed the ambition of the participants in the Round Table to deliberate openly in the common interest. On 12 March three agreements were signed: on the role and status of the Round Table; on the political system; and on the guarantees of a peaceful development during the transition period. During the actual sittings, nineteen in total, the incumbent and opposition parties again declared their willingness for a “civilised and deep dialogue” and for “inspiring an optimistic view in people”. They kept this spirit and pathos until the end of May. The immediate results of the Round Table debates included: the scheduling of the first democratic elections; the most important changes in the constitution by the forthcoming Constitutional Assembly; the introduction of the multiparty political system; the decision for depoliticisation of important national institutions; the dismissal of the secret Committee for State Security of the former regime. As François Frison Roche (2012: 19) argues, this is an event with a symbolic value and an act which founded the Bulgarian democracy, inasmuch as it unlocked a specific “political dynamics in the consciousness and behaviour of the population”. What he refers to is the fact that the two opposing sides managed to agree on reforms on a national scale, but we could add the large public response and the new political discourse, which unfolded during the sittings. In contrast to the rally on 18 December 1989, which engaged the enthusiasm of 150 000 people (but only from Sofia and only for one day), the discussions of the Round Table kept the attention of people from across the country for almost half a

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year. The sittings were broadcasted by the leading public radio programme in a report every evening after the news segment. During the meetings, for the first time ever the formal address “comrade” was replaced by “mister” and “miss/missus”; the propaganda for universal peace, supposedly guaranteed by the Soviet Union, was replaced with a promise for “a peaceful transition”. Instead of a “bloody revolution”, like the one that brought Ceaușescu down in Romania, the Bulgarian Round Table offered peace by the former Bulgarian Communist government and the opposition making joint efforts. Also, it envisioned the maintenance of the economic cooperation within the socialist block, yet seeking the support of Western Europe. Thus, Petko Simeonov (one of the prominent speakers at the talks, a sociologist and a со-founder of the udf) recalls: “In the Bulgarian daily life, unprecedented words came in as an avalanche: consensus, qualified majority, privatisation. […] Old words took on a new meaning – democracy, freedom, elections. What was forbidden became allowed. Everything was different” (Simeonov, 2012: 103). The Round Table also contributed to the construction (of the rhetoric) of the so-called “Bulgarian ethnic model” of tolerance towards the ethnic and religious minorities. This widely spread popular self-representation, established by early democratic politicians, was later criticized by various scholars for being neither very typically Bulgarian, nor so tolerant (see for example Pamporov, 2009; Rechel, 2007). Consequently, the representatives of two organisations defending the rights of the Bulgarian Turks – the Independent Association for the Defence of Human Rights and the Committee for National Consent – proposed a review of the “relationships between the ethnic groups”, and required the condemnation of the acts of intolerance and discrimination on religious grounds as an important step on the road to democracy (omda, n.d.b). Last but not least, the Round Table released appeals for new morality in politics, which would supposedly erase the negative heritage of the conformist bureaucrats who had benefited from the power. Dr. Petar Dertliev, a dedicated social democrat, who was persecuted during the Communist regime and initiated the restoration of the Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party in late November 1989, in a long speech about the work of the future National Assemblies insisted on replacing “the abnormal political selection” and “the nomenclature way of growing” with “organised parties with established ideologies” and professional politicians, who would have the integrity and be “smart and brave” enough to take on the unpleasant responsibilities and risks (omda, n.d.c). The extent to which all these discussions with their original political vocabulary received public approval could be seen in a survey, conducted by the

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Center for Observation of Public Opinion. According to the poll, during the Round Table Bulgarians were nearly unanimous regarding the necessity to affirm religious freedom (80%), direct presidential elections (80%), full minority rights (79%), the membership of Bulgaria in the European economic community (75%), the multi-party system (66%) and the elimination of party structures at the workplace (65%) (Radeva, 2012: 128). The official resolutions of the Round Table showed a serious effort towards imagining and guaranteeing a desirable future for the state and the people, contrasting it with the recent past of social alienation, economic stagnation and corrupted order. The framing concept for representing this future was democratic or “open” society, where every individual would have the opportunity for “free realisation and initiative” and where the negative socialist heritage of ethnic divisions and tensions, media censorship, demoralisation and constraints on mobility of the population would be overcome. The participants promised to take legislative measures against “forming parties, political organisations and movements on ethnic and religious grounds”; to promote objectivity, tolerance and accountability in the media; to uphold the model of peaceful transition; to prevent any violence and to bear political and moral responsibility for the actions of their organisations. In a special statement, they also called on all political emigrants outside Bulgaria to return to their homeland for the upcoming democratic elections (omda, n.d.d). Thus, gradually a hopeful agenda for the course of the democratic processes emerged: the socialist way of life, haunted by fears, social alienation and conformism, should give way to the liberal moral universe of politically and socially engaged, civilised, multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, peaceful citizenship. Moreover, this agenda was shared and specified on organisational structures outside the Round Table Talks. The sessions were held almost in parallel with the preparation for the establishment of the Open Society Foundation in Bulgaria, which was extremely influential in the first decade after 1989 and represented the development of the so-called “third sector” (i.e., non-government sector) in the country. One of the first programme directors of the foundation, Rumen Vodenicharov, as well as one of the board members, Dimiter Ludzhev, were active participants in the Round Table Talks. The registration of the organisation with a decision of the court was effective from 26 June 1990, although the statutes had been adopted several months earlier, on 5 April, and depicted the same optimistic scenario as the agreements and the resolutions of the talks: democratisation of public life in Bulgaria, development of the public debate on significant problems and Bulgaria’s accession to united Europe. The following organisational activities would contribute to the maintenance of the so-called “Bulgarian ethnic m ­ odel”

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of tolerance, to the European integration, to the regulation of human rights and to the policies towards social justice. Such types of activities became part of the agenda of many other non-government organisations (ngos) in the country, whose number reached 22 366 by November 2005. 4

The End of the Constructive Dialogue

Both the Round Table Talks and the documents of the Open Society Foundation explicitly provided visibility and support to the democratic and civil society in terms of openness to the political and cultural diversity of Europe, and in terms of openness towards others, meaning solidarity between individuals, communities, organisations, traditions and countries. This course towards liberal order and pluralism in all spheres of social life was validated by the end of 1990. The 7th Constitutional Assembly adopted a decision for Bulgaria’s accession to the European Economic Community. Along with the constitution which it drafted and which, according to the agreements of the Round Table, is grounded in the system of political pluralism, this marked the end of the initial “romantic” or “dream” period of democratisation described above (Kabakchieva, 2012). The work of the assembly was interrupted by civil protests and student strikes against the election results in favour of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (bsp) in the first democratic elections held on 10–17 June 1990. On 26 August, the Party House in Sofia was set on fire. The event marks the profound rupture between the two political poles, with the bsp on the left and the Union of Democratic Forces (udf) on the right, what could be seen as polarisation between Communism and anti-Communism. The bipolar political party system dominated until the turn of the new century, and gradually led to a loss of confidence in “constructive dialogue” and pluralism. The 1990s were also witnessing the creation of mafia power structures. The clear-cut contrast between these turbulent times and the moments of all-embracing exaltation in the aftermath of 1989, the corruption of the idea of the “constructive dialogue” provoked alternative evaluations of the historical significance of the Round Table Talks. The meaning of the Round Table appeared to be ambivalent. Although a decade later, the talks were seen as a serious contribution to the building of democracy (Frison Roche, 2012), nevertheless, the Round Table Talks were also regarded as an instrument of the Communist elites to retain power (Dainov, 2000; Ludzhev, 2009). The civil sector also experienced turmoil. According to the report of the Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation from 2003, the sector “walked the path of euphoric expansion in the number and type of ngos that want to work

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together in order to democratise and civilise the totalitarian state […], went through the rivalry of leading ngos, and reached a position in which there are no longer political blocs and alliances, but mainly informal support and exchange networks that start planning more formalised interactions” (Ngobg. info, 2003). 5

The Call for a New Morality in Politics

At the beginning of the 21st century, however, there was a new outburst of enthusiasm for the prospect of building a democratic society in Bulgaria, and return to the idea of a new morality in politics, of governance based on expertise and not affiliation with narrow party and economic interests. One of the most influential ngos in the country, the Centre for the Study of Democracy, initiated several research initiatives to evaluate and analyse (anti-)corruption practices. Its example was followed by other civil organisations. Measures to guarantee the “moral purity of different employees” in the government, special services and juridical system entered the discussions in the parliament. Indeed, the public debate on the topic intensified in the late 1990s, when journalistic investigations on the abuse of power in the political and economic sectors gained serious popularity. The persuasiveness and wide political and social relevance of this new moralising discourse, however, became more evident with the unexpectedly large victory of the National Movement Simeon ii (nmsS) (later renamed to National Movement for Stability and Progress), formed in just three months before the parliamentary elections on 17 June 2001. Headed by and named after Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha or Simeon ii (the last reigning Tsar of Bulgaria from 1943 to 1946, who lived in exile until 1989 and returned to Bulgaria in 1996), the movement got the approval for 120 out of the 240 seats in Parliament and formed a coalition with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (mrf) and the support of some mps from bsp. In the ensuing sociological and media analyses, victory was defined as a political phenomenon and a special place was given to the pre-election speech of “the king” given on 6 April 2001. In the speech in question, Simeon emphasised the need for “integrity in everything” and “unification of the Bulgarian nation around genuine ideals and values” such as industriousness and enterprise, while seeking a “consensus for their realisation [i.e., change] in search for a better life for each of our compatriots without distinction of party affiliation or ethnic origin” (Mediapool, 2002). Simeon pledged to tackle Bulgaria’s pressing problems in a “developing democracy” in 800 days, and to attract foreign capital with the help of the youth, women and Bulgarians living abroad. Later on, as Prime Minister in his public

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appearances he continued to call for a new morality in politics, strictly adhering to the image of the unifier and saviour of the nation who would bring about a prosperous, economically secure future for the citizens, fight corruption and make Bulgaria a full member of the European family. Within the four-year mandate of the nmss Government, a National AntiCorruption Strategy (Anti-Corruption, n.d.) was adopted and the negotiations for Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union entered a decisive phase, but at the same time the economic crisis was deepening, important privatisation deals were failing and the country’s foreign trade deficit was increasing. As most media outlets noted, “the king brought as much hope as he brought disappointment in society”, and from a messiah he became a foreigner who comes back only to regain ownership of his father’s estates and wreak havoc and unemployment on the country (Mediapool, 2003). The “Simeon ii phenomenon” also marked an important trend in the political attitudes and behaviour of the population: low turnout in combination with a vote for populist parties that brought to power the current ruling party gerb, abbreviation for Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, whose leader and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov was the General Secretary of the Ministry of Interior during the rule of the nmss, and in the 2005 parliamentary elections was an mp candidate with the nmss bill. 6

A Home in the European Union

If there was a consensual public platform that remained intact for the duration of the ups and downs of the various political projects for democratic development of the country, this certainly was the Bulgarian accession to the EU. From the beginning of the democratic changes it was considered by people from different social strata and holding different political views as the most positive effect and outcome of the collapse of the Communist power system. Eyewitnesses recall the New Year’s Eve of 2007 in Sofia, when Bulgarians officially celebrated their entry into the EU, the “euphoria erupted”. Streets and squares were lit by huge floodlights, concerts were performed with the participation of popular singers and artists, people rejoiced and hugged each other. Sociological agencies confirmed the perception of euphoria and registered solid public support for the cause of European integration. A poll conducted in the previous year (2006) by the Market Links agency and the Open Society Institute, Sofia, revealed that 72% of the respondents approved the idea of Bulgarian membership in the EU, and the majority (62%) believed that this would h ­ appen as

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early as 2007. Another 69% envisaged economic growth after the accession and 88% expected an increase of the direct foreign investments in the country (osi, 2006: 7). A nationwide survey of Alpha Research agency related to the assessment of the first year of membership also provided evidence for the stable ground of these optimistic attitudes: 79% of 1148 adult Bulgarians acclaimed the accession, and 52% ranked as a major achievement the opportunities for free travel and work in the EU. The leader of the research team, Boryana Dimitrova, stated that the Bulgarian society demonstrated “one of the highest levels of support among the recently acceded countries” (Alpha Research, n.d.). The Round Table Talks, the successful election campaign of Simeon SaxeCoburg-Gotha and the accession to the EU – all of these drove high hopes, created the illusion of a national consensus and spurred participation of people in governance and management of democratic changes as far as they created common public and discursive space of an attractive, open and promising “home for our children”. In this strongly utopian space, the opening towards the EU was not imagined as an exodus from the current economic hardships. This imaginary Europe was seen as a model society for the development of better social, political and cultural institutions in Bulgaria and improvement of the local social environment. The prominent Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev illustrates this very well in his memories of the student protests against the government of bsp in the midst of political and economic crisis in 1997: During the student excitement in 1997, one of the questions that the students were being asked was ‘Why are you here? What do you expect?’. They replied: ‘We are here because we want a Bulgaria where we can live. We don’t want to emigrate’. (Krastev, 2002: 179) As we can see from Krastev’s memory, the economic and social reality did not meet the dreams of peaceful and successful democratisation. Bulgarians experienced the effects of a severe economic crisis and a long-standing bipolar political model. The attempts to dismantle it brought to power populist parties and leaders, and government mandates marked by corruption scandals and collaboration with mafia structures. The public sector was affected by numerous examples of corruption. For instance, in 2010, Bulgaria and Romania had the highest corruption perception index among the Balkan countries (3,6 out of 10 for Bulgaria and 3,7 for Romania, according to Ganev, 2012).

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From the beginning of the 21st century, local authorities and structures of political parties established connected networks of “foundations”, “associations” and other enterprises disguised as structures of the civil society. These organisations contributed to the strategy of controlling media and local communities on the ground level. They were registered as non-government organisations but operated in close connection with and in the interest of local power. Instead of representing the public interest, these “foundations” channelled the initiatives of powerful local politicians and businessmen. Besides, they had an economic “benefit” from working with public financing using various granting schemes. As early as the first decade of the 21st century, the local lookalikes of ngos started to be seen as a synonym for draining money and trespassing the law (The Civil Society in Bulgaria, 2010). The practices of such organisations, which stood very close to power, contributed to the overall distrust in the working of the civil society. Corruption remains the leading trope of criticism against all governments during the last thirty years. As early as 1994, the political analyst Evgenii Dainov spoke about the “great substitution” of privatisation with illicit bargains in favour of well-connected crime structures (Dainov, 1999: 196). Corruption scandals repeated ad nauseam during every election campaign in the following years. Many citizens see poverty in Bulgaria as a result of corruption on the upper levels of political power. Dainov describes the common zones of memory of the most recent past as the complex political games leading to the concentration of power in the hands of cliques connected with old Communist party elites and criminal structures. Another trope that undermines the grounds for the common “home for our children” is the one that often describes “the failed transition to a rich and democratic society”. It means the broadening gap between the people and the elites: “The transition was for the elite, but not for the common people. This is the widespread perception” (Nicholay Mihaylov in Nedkova, 2019). Michaylov’s generalisation implicitly draws attention to the great drama of the post-socialist intellectual communities. Their high expectations and fervent public speeches during the struggle for change and reforms remained unconvincing and were not embraced by the majority. In a more or less similar way, Dainov and Mihaylov point out the lines of division and distrust that can be observed not only in contemporary Bulgaria, but also in other post-socialist countries, as well as western democracies. In 2007 Ivan Krastev advanced the thesis painting the modern era as a time of structural clash between elites with growing doubts about democracy, on the one side, and the angry society sharing aggravated anti-liberal sentiments, on the other (Krastev, 2007). Elaborating on the steadily declining trust in

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d­ emocratic institutions in post-socialist societies, in his more recent publications Krastev developed the thesis of the disenchantment with democracy (as Nicolas Hayoz and Magdalena Solska have observed in another chapter of this volume). Krastev’s thesis seems even more relevant with the rise to power of the populist party gerb, paving the way to a more recent alliance with national-populism (in 2017) and the conservative backlash (2018–2019). The third trope that undermines the grounds for the common “home for our children” is Euroscepticism. In the last decade, even the most attractive, agreeable and stable ideal of European integration became an object of public doubt and popular distrust. Ascending levels of labour and educational migration triggered fears of the nation. These fears are verbalised in the tropes of “draining brains” and “losing the young generation to Europe”. If in the late 1990s the only rare voices of Euroscepticism came from public discussions on the Bulgarian government support in nato military campaigns and the resulting possible threat to the security of the country,1 now the tide has turned against the EU. Twenty years later, the social media disseminates “the public opinion’s” fears of wasted taxpayers’ money to pay the EU bureaucrats’ salaries, or for the unfair distribution of the EU funds which end up in the wallets of privileged networks of ngos and political actors. There is, however, another important genealogical line in the collapse of the “open home”, which also returns to the first period of the democratic changes and leads to an isolationist vision of living together in the post-Communist future – the rise of nationalist and radical right movements and parties. 7

Liberal Democracy and the “Bulgarian Ethnic Model”

The rise of euphoric energies and optimism that accompanied the first months after November 1989, as well as the enthusiasm around the EU accession in 2007, were just one side of the coin. The roots of present-day far-right movements and parties go back to the pre-accession period or even to the establishment of liberal democracy. The transition to democratic, multiparty governance, following the negotiations at the Round Table Talks, unleashed a proliferation of political parties and organisations. Some of these groups, ­registered as early as 1990–1991, had a pronounced nationalist agenda. They proclaimed themselves in defence of the homogeneous nation, espousing an 1 In May 1999, the National Assembly decided to provide nato airspace. In 2003 an infantry battalion from the Bulgarian Army participated in the fourth phase of the operation in Iraq, “Stabilisation and Recovery”.

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ethnonationalist version of the slogan “one nation – one state”. They would not hesitate to put into effect a radical break with liberal democracy, had they achieved sufficient political power to “do well” on their expressed agendas. These negative agents of open society, as we shall call them, benefited from liberal democracy to subvert the principles of civil rights, freedom of assembly and cultural and religious pluralism, principles inherent in the very agenda of civil society. Was it because citizens lacked a fundamental understanding of the forms of freedom and tolerance that the notion of civil society include (as suggested by Tomas Kavaliauskas in another chapter of this volume), or because they deliberately subverted the agenda of civil society? The answer to this question needs to be grounded in the local context of Bulgarian society in the last three decades. Who are the negative agents of open society? In the beginning, these were minor parties, overshadowed by the two big political formations – the Bulgarian Socialist Party on the left, and the Union of Democratic Forces on the right. Three small nationalist parties emerged on the right side of the political sphere. The Bulgarian Democratic Forum declared itself as the inheritor of the interwar fascist organisation Union of the Bulgarian National Legions. In the 1990s, the Bulgarian Democratic Forum was one of the sixteen member organisations of the Union of Democratic Forces. The Bulgarian National Radical Party and the Christian Democratic Party were two more small nationalist parties on the right side of the spectrum, also gravitating around the Union of Democratic Forces (Cholakov, 2017: 78–79). Throughout the first decade of democracy, the political sphere was dominated by the cleavage Communism / anti-Communism. The parties of the right took advantage of the legacy of pre-Communist regimes to draw their political programmes and ideological claims. Along with tracing historical lines of inheritance with the National Legions, or the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (a historic nationalist party, founded in 1920 with origins going even as far back as 1893, which was restored in 1991), a renewed reverence for anti-Communist figures became vocal and a nostalgia for the authoritarian regime of King Boris iii was openly confessed, while his allegiance to Hitler was forgotten. From an anti-Communist point of view, the pre-1944 regime and ideology can be rehabilitated in opposition to the Communist regime and ideology (Traykov, 2019). “In the 1990s the opportunity emerged to ‘explore’ a fascist past that many in both countries [Bulgaria and Romania] saw as a more indigenous part of their national past than Communism” (Frusetta and Glont, 2009: 561). The very existence of the negative agents of open society was made possible thanks to the principle of liberal democracy. But their emergence and ­legitimacy takes form out of the Communism / anti-Communism cleavage and

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the revisionism against the previous regime by newly emerging formations on the right side of the political spectrum. It is interesting to see the emergence of nationalist factions also on the left side of the political spectrum. Breaking off from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, they embrace rhetoric against minority rights and challenge the so-called “Bulgarian ethnic model” of tolerance. After the protests of December 1989, when members of the Turkish minority reclaimed “the names given by their mothers”, an urgent plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party was summoned on 29 December 1989 by the reformist wing of the Communist party (Baeva, 2004). The resolutions of the plenum condemned the assimilation campaign of the former regime against the Bulgarian Muslims, and restituted basic human rights to the members of the Turkish minority, such as the right to have Muslim names, to perform religious rituals and to use Turkish language in daily conversation. However, the repeal of the anti-Muslim laws ignited nationalist demonstrations in January 1990, organised by local-level Communist party elites and controlled intelligentsia in the regions inhabited by Bulgarian Muslims (Smith, 2016: 440–441; Rechel, 2007: 1203). The nationalist backlash against human rights of the Muslim minority was a considerable threat to the so-called “peaceful transition” (Spirova, 2008: 489). As a consequence of the massive nationalist demonstrations, the National Committee for the Defense of National Interests was formed, with the crucial role of Georgi Parvanov, who later became leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and president of the Republic of Bulgaria (2002–2012). On the opposite side of the ethnic conflict, a community organisation was created by the Bulgarian Turks and later registered as a political party under the name Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The containment of ethnic tension within the opposition between the newly formed political factions became known by the expression “Bulgarian ethnic model”, praised by politicians and contested by researchers who observe and document different forms of violation of minority rights. The new Constitution, voted in July 1991, forbids the formation of ethnically based political parties in its Article 11 (4) and Article 44 (2). In November 1991, 53 mps of the regular National Assembly asked the Constitutional Court to declare the Movement for Rights and Freedoms unconstitutional on the grounds of its ethnic (mainly Turkish) membership. “Of the 12 judges, one was ill, six were in favour of banning the mrf (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and five against it. Because seven votes are required for affirming a petition for unconstitutionality, the petition was rejected and the party remained legal” (Rechel, 2007: 1209).

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The tension against mrf from the early 1990s aligned with various everyday practices and institutionalised forms of islamophobia and romanophobia, manifested in the following three decades. Often ignited by political figures, just like the early nationalist backlash, ethnic tension and xenophobia were part of the political agenda of (national) populist parties emerging in the preaccession period. The definition of civil society as the antithesis to totalitarianism in postsocialist societies puts a sign of equivalence between civil society and the opposition to the older regime. Civil society coincides with the dissident movement, or all the initiatives that contain the “initial dream” of the year 1989 and its liberal values. Hence movements that do not embrace the same set of political values fall out of the field of “civil society”. A variety of populist, nationalist or other organisations with authoritarian or antidemocratic tendencies are regrouped under the heading of “uncivil society” (Kopecký and Mudde, 2003). The popularity of nationalistic groups has been rising in Bulgaria in the last two decades. At least two wings of the nationalist movement can be distinguished. The wing that works on the ground level includes a number of small groups and their associations. Typically, these groups form fraternities or squads in small towns and in the districts of major cities. In their view, change can happen from below when more and more people “work for Bulgaria”, and their fights become a mass movement. The other wing – the political parties wing – sees the desired change in a different way: it will come from above, not as a mass movement, but when a small group of well-trained politicians use the established political institutions to “work for Bulgaria”. This wing includes the political parties Ataka (Attack, founded by Volen Siderov in 2004), the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (imro, restored in 1991) and the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria (nfsb, founded in 2011). These political parties have a vertical structure with a charismatic leader at the head, a core of activists and a periphery of supporters. Nationalist ideology is very important for the structure of these parties, for it provides enough incentive to motivate young people to participate in volunteering, organisation and promotion of events, and various political activities. For both wings, Christian Eastern Orthodoxy is an essential part of the nationalist ideology. Nationalism embraces this religious denomination as one of the pillars of the Bulgarian nation, and nationalist politicians demonstrate ostentatious devotion in practicing religious rituals and in inviting the Church to support various political initiatives. The accumulation of the radical right at the political centre did not appear all of a sudden on a tabula rasa. It was a gradual development after the

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b­ reakthrough of the Ataka party during the parliamentary elections in 2005, when it “became the first antisystemic political actor to gain parliamentary representation on an openly nationalist, anti-minority, and anti-integrationist platform” (Stefanova, 2009: 1534). The party was established proclaiming itself as an antipode of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which was defined by Ataka’s leader Volen Siderov as “ethnic, Turkish and anticonstitutional” (Parliament, 2005). Siderov ended this same talk in the Parliament with “Bulgaria above everything, Bulgaria to the Bulgarians!” (Parliament, 2005), a wellknown slogan from his campaign as well. One year later the electoral support sent him to the second ballot as a candidate in the presidential elections. Although he lost the run-off, the support for his party remained stable in the subsequent parliamentary elections. Since then he and his co-fellows have successfully mobilised and nourished the far-right vote that has secured constant parliamentary seats as well as access to wide publicity in the media. Today the nationalistic political agenda has the strongest presence and representation in the government and the publicity of the country in the last thirty years. With 9.31% of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, the far-right United Patriots (a coalition between Ataka, imro and nfsb) took 27 out of 240 seats in the parliament (cik, 2017a; cik, 2017b) – enough to be invited for a coalition cabinet and given direct access to central political decision making. They also received four ministry positions, including two deputy prime-minister posts for the sector of public order, security and defence and also the one of economic and demographic policy. Both sectors actually correspond well to some of the declared priorities in the political platform of the patriotic coalition’s electoral campaign, such as “demographic programme for salvation of the nation”, “return of the spirit of national revival and national awareness in schools and universities”, “raising the Bulgarian flag in front of every religious place of worship”, “religious rites and rituals – only in Bulgarian language”, “stopping the terror sound from the minarets”, etc. (Ataka, 2017). Despite the extremely exclusionist and discriminatory visions of the coalition’s programme towards ethnic and religious minorities, Valeri Simeonov, the leader of nfsb and the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Demographic Policy, was also assigned the position of Chair of the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues. Nationalist proponents see their mission as “the protection” of the Bulgarian nation from other religious and ethnic groups. They draw the so-called “internal frontier” between ethnic Bulgarians and other citizens of Bulgaria, whom the nationalists symbolically exclude from the nation’s home territory. The attacks of such groups and movements of the “uncivil society” are traditionally directed against Islam, which they consider as a historical threat to the Bulgarian nation. Not coincidentally, the politically romanticised metaphor of

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the 500 years of “Turkish yoke” is evoked to justify modern-day islamophobia. Other groups who are excluded from the ethnonationalist definition of citizenship, and hence from the shared home of “our nation and state”, are Roma people and, more recently, migrants. 8

A House of Our Own – Ethnonationalism and Minority Rights

The logical consequence of the fact that the far right gradually moved from the periphery to the centre of power is the institutionalisation of nationalistic, racist, homophobic, xenophobic and islamophobic rhetoric. This rhetoric creates and operates with external enemies when it speaks about “dealing with immigrant invasion”, but it also relies on anti-minority discourses and designates enemies from within – the most vulnerable groups in a society. Ethnicity as such is radicalised by the populist nationalistic discourses; in addition to it, religious criteria of exclusion are added; then such discourses gain support from the reaction to the high costs of the post-socialist transformation process (Beichelt and Minkenberg, 2002), including insufficient social stability and economic austerity. A recurrent trope in the nationalist-populist discourse is to blame Roma/Turks/immigrants/refugees for the thirty years of broken dreams, lost illusions and expectations, for poverty, depopulation, corruption, oligarchy, etc. In such context labelling and stereotyping of certain groups – often located at the periphery of society – allow transfer to them of all responsibility for the problems in the society. The lack of trust in politicians and the political system as a whole could easily be extrapolated to the rights to political vote of the Turks; the lack of stable economic and social policies and the high levels of poverty in Bulgaria – on the image of the Roma as related to various criminal acts or as passive recipients of social welfare. Who are the minority groups in Bulgaria? Minorities represent a significant share of the population of present-day Bulgaria. In terms of religion, the data from the last Census (2011: 4) shows that 10% of the total population self-identifies as Muslims. The numbers are estimated to be even higher – around 11.1% (Hackett, 2017) – due to the many refusals of answering the question. In terms of ethnicity, 8.8% of those who were willing to answer the question declared themselves as Turks and 4.9% as Roma (Census, 2011: 3). These minority groups have for a long time been part of the population on the lands of the country. The last fact, however, seems to have no importance for the hostile, intolerant and sometimes even discriminative political agenda of the state and the ways it treats its own citizens both back in history and nowadays. As shown earlier, the fall of the regime in 1989 was accompanied by liberal public statements for respect of human and cultural rights, including those of

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the ethnic and religious minorities in the country. The first democratic protests denounced the brutal assimilation campaign of the regime towards the Turkish and Muslim citizens. But the political obsession for “Bulgarization” of both geographical territory and heterogeneous populations (Neuburger, 2004; Marinov, 2009) did not start with the regime of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The efforts of the Bulgarian state for demographic and ethnic engineering could be traced back to the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries in various marginalising or homogenising policies and politics. The politics of the late socialist regime brought this homogenisation to the level of total assimilation of the population with Turkish ethnicity and/or Muslim belonging. As a result what people in Bulgaria witnessed and remembered in the summer of 1989 was the huge migration wave and the struggle of the Turks passing the Bulgarian-Turkish border. The liberal public of the early 1990s criticised the former political regime, emphasising the centuries-long cohabitation of different ethnic and religious groups in the same lands. They required the authorities to return the Turkish-Arabic names of their co-nationals and raised their voices for the establishment of a political climate and public space where personal opinions would be expressed freely and human and cultural rights would be respected. And if minorities hoped that, with the changes from 1989, they would find a place in the house of the nation, on the opposite side of the spectrum radical nationalist formations worked to exclude non-ethnic Bulgarians from “our home”. Their attacks on minority rights escalated after 2010. In 2011 the supporters of Ataka led by Siderov himself handed a petition signed by 30 000 people to the General Director of Bulgarian National Television and organised a protest in front of its building to object to broadcasting of a short news programme in the Turkish language on the public media (bnt, 2011a). It was followed by demonstrations later in the same year organised to coincide in time with the traditional Islam Friday prayers in front of the mosque in Sofia. The mosque was too small to accommodate all the congregants praying, who also used the space on the square in front of it. In one of these demonstrations the tension escalated and resulted in a bloody clash in which a few people were injured (bnt, 2011b) and Bulgaria was sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights for not protecting the right of free expression of religion (Mediapool, 2015). The precedent attack on the Muslims at their place of worship in the capital centre, organised not by some radical nationalist legal or illegal organisations or football fan clubs, but by members of the parliament, unleashed a series of following similar “incidents”. In 2013–2015, various protests at different locations throughout the country were organised against the legal claims of the Grand Mufti’s Office on restoration of ownership of property (including mosques) that had been ­nationalised,

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expropriated or confiscated by the state back in the time. During one of these demonstrations in February 2014, the crowd armed with national flags and patriotic feelings attacked the old mosque at the city centre of Plovdiv, broke its windows with stones and set the cafeteria on the ground floor on fire. Smaller “incidents” concerning Muslim places of worship include drawing crosses, swastikas and vulgar messages on their walls or putting a pig head on the minarets during a religious holiday. The increase of hostility towards Muslims, their institutions and places of worship in recent years, the growing intolerance and discriminatory attitudes of public figures, the violation of human and cultural rights, and the enhancement of hate speech in media discourses have been signalled in various reports (fmd, 2016; Emilova, 2018; Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, 2014: 29–32; 2015: 49–53; 2016: 53–58; 2017: 69–71). They are all critical towards the indifference of the state, understood as a lack of political willingness for accrediting standards of tolerance and non-discrimination and a lack of effective political measures for prevention or punishment of hostile, aggressive, offensive, racist, islamophobic, xenophobic rhetoric and practices. “Spontaneous” protests erupted in September 2011 in the village of Katunitsa near Plovdiv, when a conflict between a rich Roma family and the relatives of a victim of a traffic incident (of Bulgarian origin) escalated into a violent conflict. Hundreds of “unorganised citizens” from around the country gathered in the village provoking civil disobedience. Huge marches in support of the Bulgarian victims and against “the Roma plague” in general were held in parallel in major Bulgarian cities. Antitziganist protests in Sofia were held several times within the months of September 2011, with up to two thousand participants. Protesters carried national flags and chanted racist slogans against Roma. In 2015, two cases of interethnic violence similar to Katunitsa took place: in the village of Garmen, hidden in the mountains near the small town of Gotse Delchev; and in the district of Orlandovtsi in Sofia. In the village of Garmen, tension arose after a scandal between two neighbouring groups over heavily played music. A fight broke out and a larger number of people got involved on both sides of the conflict. The Bulgarian villagers demanded the expulsion of their Roma neighbours. When the Roma villagers opposed these actions, support came from “unorganised” patriots, rockers and football fans. In Orlandovtsi the spark was again a fray between neighbours. It was only the intervention of special police forces that prevented the invasion of the whole neighbourhood by protesting citizens with aggressive behaviour. The inhabitants stayed under siege for a couple of days.

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While claiming that they have not participated in the organisation of these events, nationalist leaders Boyan Rassate, Volen Siderov and Angel Dzhambazki were the most frequent guests in the tv studios during the unrest. They were invited to comment on the events, discuss the problems that ignited the civic anger and propose solutions. By doing so, they received a platform to popularise their discriminative ideas, to justify violence and give ideological support to the attackers. In 2015 in the heat of the conflict, the mayor of the village of Garmen performed evictions of the Roma families, initiating the demolition of more than 120 illegal houses in the neighbourhood.2 Events followed the same scenario the same year in Roma neighbourhoods in Stara Zagora and Varna. Local authorities in many places have not found a solution to the problem with Roma housing. In Bulgaria, the Roma population has been permanently settled for more than a century, and lives in compact, segregated neighbourhoods in more than 160 cities and 3000 villages all over Bulgaria (Pamporov, 2006: 283). According to different estimations, at least 25% of the houses in the segregated and overpopulated Roma neighbourhoods are illegal (Georgiev, 2017: 31; Civil Society Monitoring Report, 2018: 27). At present about two thirds of Roma dwellings are one- or two-storey solid houses built of concrete and bricks. “They may have an unacceptable appearance, many of them may lack hygienic amenities, and they may be of poor design” (Slaev, 2007: 65). But they are most certainly not temporary dwellings. The reasons for the high percentage of illegal housing are complex. In some places, parts of or even the entire Roma neighbourhoods are not included in the urban regulation plans of the municipality. ­Despite the long-standing presence of generations of Roma families in the territories, local authorities are unwilling to start regulation and invest in the infrastructure of these parts of the city. There are good practices of collaboration between mayors and city councils in Kyustendil, Dupnitsa and Peshtera, where good steps were taken in order to legalise the buildings in large parts of Roma neighbourhoods (Civil Society Monitoring Report, 2018: 29). In the small town of Kavarna on the Black sea coast in the northeastern part of Bulgaria, under the mayor Tsonko Tsonev, special efforts were made to improve the living 2 After the demolition of the first five houses in June 2015, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued a restraining order and obliged the Municipality to provide replacement homes for the affected families. Meanwhile, some of the owners provided documentation proving the legality of their homes. Only ten houses were demolished during the first year following the turmoil. In November 2018, again echr ruled that there was no case of discrimination in the actions of the Municipality in the eviction process.

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c­ onditions with significant investment in sewerage and water supply, street infrastructure and social housing (Grekova, 2019: 248). Under the EU-funded Regional Development programmes (the Operational Programme “Regional Development” 2007–2013 and the Operational Programme “Regions in Growth” 2014–2020), there were plans to build modern social housing for vulnerable, minority and socially disadvantaged groups in four municipalities. But these plans faced a number of obstacles. “In some cities there was public opposition to the very idea of building houses for the Roma, and two big municipalities (Varna and Burgas) were pressured by ultranationalists to cancel their plans” (Civil Society Monitoring Report, 2018: 29). Protests of local inhabitants against the so-called “Roma houses” appeared in other big cities. Despite the recommendations of national authorities, and the focussed efforts of civil society organizations in specific communities populated by Roma, the steps towards the legalisation of Roma housing are slow, and local authorities show uncertain political willingness to collaborate in the process. In the last decade Roma communities have been affected by forced evictions from their only homes on a number of occasions, as documented by human rights organisations (eoia, 2017; Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, 2018). Social housing is not provided to the families, and civil society organizations intervene to provide shelter for the children (but not the entire families) and legal help to the affected inhabitants. Local authorities often take action under the pressure of “unorganised” protests, like the ones in Katunitsa in 2011 or in Garmen in 2015. Then in 2019 two such conflicts were ignited by “unorganised” patriots in the village of Voivodinovo and the town of Gabrovo. The mob set on fire a couple of Roma houses in Gabrovo; a number of Roma families were evicted in Voivodinovo in the winter months of early 2019. Local authorities did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the affected families. Human rights organisations filed their cases at the European Court of Human Rights (echr). One such case has already been won, resulting in six families in Plovdiv being placed under the protection of echr in 2017. But this is a very small win, and forced evictions continue to take place. The symbolism of “a home of one’s own” cherished by the nationalists quite literally deprived Roma families of their only homes. The establishment of the coalition formed by Ataka and the other two nationalist parties in 2016 was a step towards consolidation and revitalisation of the far-right agenda. The new political entity relied on the populist points in their political programme to attract support, but also on provocations and scandals that would provide publicity in the national broadcast. An example of this strategy was the illegal blockade of the Bulgarian-Turkish border organised by parties’ leaders and supporters two days before the parliamentary ­elections in March 2017. The aim of the blockade was to prevent border-crossing

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and voting of dual citizens of ethnic Turkish origin who reside in Turkey (Offnews, 2017). Meanwhile the anti-migrant and islamophobic rhetoric has escalated due to two widely broadcasted events that happened at the same border. On 18 February 18 2016, one of the biggest commercial tv channels in the country broadcast a reportage uncritically entitled “Dinko – Superhero” in which it showed a young man, described as “a refugees hunter”, who “bravely” had been inspecting the Bulgarian–Turkish border, who “captured refugee groups three times” and who was gathering “a squad of volunteers to guard the border” together (btv, 2016a; btv, 2016b). The event gained fast and immediate popularity and provoked weeks-long discussions related not so much to the illegality of the heroic border activism, but rather to the incapability of the state institutions to provide security for Bulgarian citizens through strict border control. In this sense the widespread public opinion considered the voluntary refugee hunting as a positive initiative. The tv channel initiated a poll on its website asking its viewers whether they approved of Dinko’s actions; 72% answered positively, 18% expressed support of the actions “if such are needed” (whatever was meant by that) and only 10% expressed a negative opinion arguing that border control should not be a private initiative and that such self-governance activities should be punished by law (btv, 2016c). In a similar vein, another selfproclaimed “hero” uploaded a video on YouTube of himself capturing refugees on the border. It was later broadcast by mainstream media. This “hunter” unlike the previous one was arrested and sentenced, but released shortly after (bnt, 2017). Since in the movements of the “uncivil” society a tendency for strong politicisation over religious issues is highly present, it is not only ethnic and religious minority groups that are excluded from “the home of the nation”. The religious fundamentalists’ fervour has targeted lgbt people, but also women’s and children’s rights in 2018 and 2019, when a heterogeneous coalition of populist parties, nationalist groups, religious organisations and “uncivil” groups was formed to successfully block a series of public policies. In the last decade, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church radicalised its messages by bringing its positions closer to nationalist political movements. For several consecutive years, the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has issued statements condemning Sofia Pride. This conservative stance can be ­expected with regard to the rights of lgbt people. But in January 2018, the Holy Synod intervened in the debate over the ratification of the Istanbul Convention allying with the nationalists. After January 2018, women’s rights came under attack when a massive smear campaign against the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and

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c­ ombating violence against women and domestic violence (also known as the Istanbul Convention) was launched by the joint efforts of nationalist politicians (the two deputy prime ministers, Karakachanovs and Simeonov, from the Patriotic Front) and conservative evangelical organisations (the coalition Family and Values, a branch of the US-based network World Congress of Families). The Bulgarian Orthodox Church denounced the Convention of the Council of Europe against gender-based and domestic violence as “satanic” and its supporters as “liberal scum”. Upon an order of the Holy Synod, a condemnation of the Convention was added to the Sunday service, pronounced in every Orthodox Church in the country. This condemnation was one of the rare examples when the high clergy took a firm stance on sensitive social policy issues and claimed to represent the interests of the majority. For many years, the clergy has been blamed for its loyalty to and cooperation with the Communist government and the church has been treated as a marginal and weak institution, performing a decorative function over the political status quo (Bulgarian politicians with candles in their hands in the big temples on the national holidays was one of the most routine rituals pictures by the media). The public voice of the Church amplified the negative attitudes and the hysterical fears of the “invasion” of gender constructs. The growing distance between the high clergy and the open society became even more evident in May 2019 during the visit of Pope Francis in Bulgaria, who is seen as a cosmopolitan figure, “open for changes”. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church did not accept the invitation for shared prayer service and demonstrated reserved behaviour, in contrast to the admiration shown by both local believers and nonbelievers. The Catholic and Protestant denominations also joined in the chorus against the Convention, and the office of the Grand Mufti issued a statement condemning the Convention. As a consequence of the conservative backlash, the Bulgarian Parliament failed to ratify the Convention, and the constitutional court declared the international document unconstitutional. The alliance of nationalists with conservative religious positions was embraced by the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Kornelia Ninova, who withdrew support for the Istanbul Convention. The political party that is supposed to be the agent of atheism and a historical ally of women’s fights adopted the recent reorientation of its leader towards the “traditional values” of ethnocentric nationalism. Thus, in 2018 the social democracy in Bulgaria, under female leadership, has joined the coalition of conservative religious backlash. More than just a temporary flirtation with national populism, the attacks against liberal values continued throughout 2018 and 2019. The next target was

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the National Strategy for the Child (2019–2030), withdrawn by the government under the pressure of street protests, and the Social Services Act that had the same unfortunate ending. The campaigns against both documents stand in line with the campaign against the Istanbul Convention. Not only were they ignited by the same conservative populist groups, but the protest repertoire, rhetoric, organisation and mobilisation show the same features. Therefore, it would be a mistake to consider these recent developments as isolated events, taking advantage of the momentum. More than a heterogeneous coalition of populist parties, religious organisations and “uncivic” groups, they form a concerted movement against women’s, lgbt and minority rights, a movement with a pronounced nationalist conservative agenda, for a strong traditional “new order” for Europe. The curious alliance between left-wing politicians, national-populists and religious organisations is neither peculiar for Bulgaria nor “new” or “spontaneous” given our previous history of intolerance and ethnic exclusion. It is a centuries-long strategy of creating “a home for the nation” where not everybody is welcome. 9 Conclusion Our account of the building of the common “home” of the Bulgarian society over the last thirty years ends in a pessimistic tone. Our conclusions may be read in consonance with the quasi-ritualistic lamentations about the negative side effects or even “failure” and “collapse” of the “democratic transition” that we started with. Some authors see the “transition” as a problem of adaptation, of catching up with a different and new set of values, different from the “traditional values”. The process of change, initiated with the big event of 1989, is seen as “the creation of specific mixture from old and quasi-new antiliberal and collectivistic values”, as Ladislav Cabada formulated in another chapter of this volume. “Old” and “new”, “liberal” and “traditional”, “ethnonationalist” and “open to difference” are the binaries that cohabitate, yet they cohabitate in competition, in tension, often creating ruptures in the “home of the nation”. At the end, it all comes down to a paternalistic view of family and wellbeing. The history of the country is the following: something is happening and we are adapting to it. But at the same time, there are different things in our culture that are pretty powerful and never die…: the dream of owning a house, the pursuit of education, and the ultimate fixation on children. (Raychev, 2000: 99)

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Thirty years after 1989, Bulgarians stick to this paternalistic formula of social life: a house, probably a car as well, children, who respect a caring father and maybe equal opportunities for children through education. A house of one’s own, to feel safe under strong (state) leadership. The explanation through paternalism is far from optimistic. It rather reinstates the belief that the values of an “open society”, accepting difference and respecting the “other”, stand no chance in a conservative society like the Bulgarian. Some authors even see paternalism as a reason for the success of populist and nationalistic parties in Bulgaria. Their electoral success is due not only to the disappointment with the bipolar party system of the 1990s (Communism/anti-Communism; left and right), but to the rhetoric and the image of the political leader as “a father to the nation”, as the media called Prime Minister Boyko Borissov (now in his third term). Similarly, the “great concern for tens of thousands of our daughters and sons banished from fatherland by the lack of perspectives”, demonstrated by Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha back in 2001 won him numerous supporters. In 2019, Volen Siderov relied on the same message as mayoral candidate for Sofia. At the beginning of the 1990s, nobody probably bothered to question the limits between security and tolerance, between freedom of expression and hate and offensive speech. No doubt, peoples’ imaginations were busy with dreams, hopes and projections about a new order and a bright future where they could fully enjoy the goods of civil liberties, democratic participation, mobility and personal economic growth. They also probably did not consider how many and what exactly rights they would be willing to give to those that were always seen as the stereotypical “others” in their nation state. After a period of fear of repressions, restricted mobility, silence and conformity, they had the instruments and space to experience and practice freedom and equality. And they did use them for their intended purposes at least in some cases/to a certain extent. Gradually the political parties increased in number and the ngos spread over the country. Bulgaria joined nato and the EU. In 2012 the Parliament adopted a declaration which defined the attempt for assimilation against the Turks and Muslims in the country as a form of “ethnic cleansing”, carried out by the totalitarian regime. Today, however, thirty years after the collapse of the socialist regime and within the “European family”, the values that were once identified and proclaimed as liberal and democratic, such as freedom of expression, equality in rights of participation, civil liberties and the multi-­party system, are exactly those that provoke the nationalist backlash, making some citizens of Bulgaria feel threatened, not accepted and not “at home” in their own country. The projects for “a new order” from the beginning of the 1990s and thirty years later are not the same. The “new order” proclaimed by religious

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f­undamentalists, national-populists and the Bulgarian Socialist Party nowadays, far from being simply “traditional” or “national”, is an order of de-­ democratisation. Although it has its roots in our previous history of intolerance, this “new order” is definitely not a local invention. It is deeply influenced by the rise of the far right on the global political landscape, and by the attacks against gender on the European scene. And Bulgaria is no exception to this trend. Epilogue In 2010–2011, one of the commercial channels, btv, aired the four seasons of the series “Home of glass”, a family drama related to the story of the two families who owned the first shopping mall in Bulgaria. The storyline of the series follows the conflicts between the members of the family, their backstage games, betrayals, fights, wins and losses, vengeance and reconcilement; all taking place inside the building of the mall, a contemporary architectural creation made of glass (hence the title of the series). None of the families survives the vicissitudes: marriages are broken, relationships between parents and children are disturbed. The ostentatious lifestyle of the wealthy families is carefully displayed to the audience, but offers no remedy to their troubled emotions. The metaphor of the home made of glass conveys the idea of the fragility of human relationships and of the instability of the family as an institution in a world of individualism and obsession with lifestyle. Back in 1987, the Bulgarian people wanted to build a “home for our children”. But in 2011 and beyond, all that they have is a “home made of glass”. The home remains the guiding metaphor of the (dis)illusion with democratic society thirty years later. References Alpha Research (n.d.) Ravnosmetkata ot pŭrvata godina chlenstvo v ES – “otlozhen” optimizŭm [Results from the First Year of EU Membership – “Postponed” Optimism]. Alpha Research, https://alpharesearch.bg/post/773-ravnosmetkata-na-purvata-go dina-chlenstvo-v-es-otlojen-optimizum.html (accessed 22 November 2019). Anti-Corruption (n.d.) Natsionalta strategiia za protivodeĭstvie na koruptsiiata, prieta s Reshenie No. 671/01.10.2001 [National Anti-Corruption Strategy, adopted by Decision No. 671/01.10.2001], http://www.online.bg/Docs/Anticorruption.htm (accessed 22 January 2020).

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Guo, Sujian, and Stradiotto, Gary A. (2014) Democratic Transitions: Modes and Outcomes, Routledge, London and New York. Hackett, Conrad (2017) 5 Facts about the Muslim Population in Europe, Pew Research Centre, 29 November 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/29/5facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/ (accessed 16 July 2019). Kabakchieva, Petya (2012) Initial Dream – the Moral Pathos of Bulgarian Dissidents (1988–1989), in Civil Society in Bulgaria: Has Our Dream Come True? NGOs versus Spontaneous Civic Activism? (eds. Petya Kabakchieva and Desislava Hristova Kurzydlowski), Open Society Institute, Sofia, 8–20. Kopecký, Petr, and Mudde, Cas (eds.) (2003) Uncivil Society? Contentious Politics in PostCommunist Europe, Routledge, London. Krastev, Ivan (2000) Ivan Krastev, v Otvŭd utopiite. Bŭlgariia, Balkanite, Evropa – vizii za sledvashtoto desetiletie (sŭst. Emmy Baruch) [Ivan Krastev, in Beyond Utopias. Bulgaria, the Balkans, Europe – Visions for the Next Decade (ed. Emmy Baruch)], Deutsche Welle, Sofia, 170–201. Krastev, Ivan (2007) Populistkiiat moment. Kritika i Humanizŭm [The Populist Moment. Critique and Humanism] 23(1), 107–113. Ludzhev, Dimitŭr (2009) Revoliutsiiata v Bŭlgariia 1989–1991 [The Revolution in Bulgaria 1989–1991], Vol. 1., Ivan Bogorov, Sofia. Marinov, Tchavdar (2009) Ot “internatsionalizŭm” kŭm natsionalizŭm. Komunisticheskiiat rezhim, makedonskiiat vŭpros i politikata kŭm ethnicheskite i religioznite obshtnosti, v Istoriia na Narodna Republika Bŭlgaria. Rezhimŭt i obshtestvoto (sŭst. Ivaylo Znepolski) [From “Internationalism” to Nationalism. The Communist Regime, the Macedonian Question and the Politics towards Ethnic and Religious Communities, in History of People’s Republic of Bulgaria. The Regime and the Society (ed. Ivaylo Znepolski)], Ciela, Sofia, 477–529. Mediapool (2002) Obrŭshtenie kŭm naroda na Simeon Sakskoburgotski, 6 april 2001 [Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s Addressing to People, 6 April 2001]. Mediapool, https://www.mediapool.bg/obrashtenie-kam-naroda-na-simeon-sakskoburggots ki-6-april-2001-news15818.html (accessed 22 January 2020). Mediapool (2003) Pravitelstvoto na Simeon se provali, obiavi KNSB [Simeon’s Government has Failed, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria announced]. Mediapool, https://www.mediapool.bg/pravitelstvovoto-na-simeon-se -provali-obyavi-knsb-news20815.html (accessed 25 January 2020). Mediapool (2015) ESPCH osŭdi Bŭlgariia za pogroma na “Ataka” pred dzhamiiata v ­Sofiia [The ECHR Sentenced Bulgaria for the Pogrom of Ataka in Front of the Mosque in Sofia]. Mediapool, https://www.mediapool.bg/espch-osadi-bulgaria-za -pogroma-na-ataka-pred-dzhamiyata-v-sofiya-news230992.html (accessed 16 November 2019).

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Nedkova, Silviya (2019) Kakvo ni se sluchi na Deseti noemvri? [What Happened to Us on November 10th?]. Ploshtad Slaveĭkov, https://www.ploshtadslaveikov.com/­ kakvo-ni-se-sluchi-na-deseti-noemvri/ (accessed 22 January 2020). Ngobg.info (2003) Bŭlgarskiiat nepravitelstven sektor v konteksta na razvitie [The Bulgarian Non-governmental Sector in the Context of Development]. Sofia https:// www.ngobg.info/bg/documents/49/596.pdf (accessed 22 January 2020). Neuburger, Mary (2004) The Orient Within. Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London. Offnews (2017) Taia, pŭlnichkata baba, mezhdu drugoto, niamate predstava kolko nagla beshe [This One, the Chubby Grandma, by the Way, You Have No Idea How Insolent She Was], Offnews, https://offnews.bg/izbori/taia-palnichkata-baba-­mezhdu -drugoto-niamate-predstava-kolko-nagla-651183.html# (accessed 17 November 2019). omda (n.d.a) Krŭglata masa (3.01.1990–14.05.1990). Pŭlna stenograma [The Round Table (3.01.1990–14.05.1990), Full Transcript]. OMDA, http://www.omda.bg/public/ bulg/k_masa/0301oborg/1.html (accessed 23 January 2020). omda (n.d.b) Vtoro plenarno zasedanie, 12 mart 1990, nachalo: 15:15 [Second Plenary Meeting, 12 March 1990, beginning: 15:15]. OMDA, http://www.omda.bg/public/ bulg/k_masa/1203/12.htm (accessed 23 January 2020). omda (n.d.c) Vtoro plenarno zasedanie, 26 mart 1990, nachalen chas: 9:36 [Second Plenary Meeting, 26 March 1990, beginning: 9:36], OMDA, http://www.omda.bg/ public/bulg/k_masa/2603/7.htm (accessed 23 January 2020). omda (n.d.d) Deklaratsiia na natsionalnata krŭgla masa, 14 mai 1990 [Declaration of the National Round Table, 14 May 1990]. OMDA, http://www.omda.bg/public/ bulg/k_masa/dokumenti_round_table/declaration_round_table.htm (accessed 23 January 2020). osi (2006) Analiz na vŭzdeĭstvieto na vŭzmozhnite stsenarii za chlenstvoto na Bŭlgariia v ES, predvideni v Dogovora za prisŭediniavane [Impact Analysis of the Possible Scenarios of Bulgaria’s Membership in the EU Envisaged in the Accession Treaty], Open Society Institute, Sofia http://www.osf.bg/cyeds/downloads/OSI_GEPI_EU-Bulgar ia_May_2006.pdf (accessed 23 January 2020). Pamporov, Alexey (2006) Romskoto Vsekidnevie v Bŭlgariia [Roma Everyday Life in Bulgaria], International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Sofia. Pamporov, Alexey (2009) Sotsialni distantsii i ethnicheski stereotipi za maltsinstvata v Bŭlgariia [Social Distances and Ethnic Stereotypes about the Minorities in Bulgaria], Open Society Institute, Sofia http://opendata.bg/data/file/PUBLICATIONS/ July_2009_SocialDistancesReport.pdf (accessed 23 January 2020). Parliament (2005) Stenogrami ot plenarni zasedaniia, Shesto zasedanie, Sofiia, sriada, 27 iuli 2005, otkrito v 9.02 ch. [Transcripts of Plenary Meetings, Sixth Meeting, Sofia,

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Wednesday, 27 July 2005, opened at 9.02 a.m] https://www.parliament.bg/bg/plena ryst/ns/2/ID/18 (accessed 17 November 2019). Portal Kultura (2015) Bŭlgarskiiat prekhod [The Bulgarian Transition]. Portal Kultura, 03 January 2015, https://kultura.bg/web/%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3% D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82-%D0%BF%D1% 80%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4/ (accessed 22 January 2020). Radeva, Miroslava (2012) Glednata tochka na sotsiologa: Bŭlgarskoto obshtestvo dvadeset godini sled Krŭglata masa ot 1990 g. – Ravnosmetka, v Krŭglata masa ot 1990 g: Osnovopolagasht akt na bŭlgarskata demokratsiia (sŭst. François Frison Roche) [The Sociologist’s Point of View: The Bulgarian Society Twenty Years after the Round Table from 1990 – Evaluation, in The Round Table from 1990: A Founding Act of the Bulgarian Democracy (ed. François Frison Roche)], Sofia University Press, Sofia, 127–136. Raychev, Andrey (2000) Za lisitsata, koiato dŭrzhi nebeto, za printsovete i za braminite, v Otvŭd utopiite. Bŭlgariia, Balkanite, Evropa – vizii za sledvashtoto desetiletie (sŭst. Emmy Baruch) [Of the Fox Holding the Sky, of the Princes and of the Brahmins, in Beyond Utopias. Bulgaria, the Balkans, Europe – Visions for the Next Decade (ed. Emmy Baruch)], Deutsche Welle, Sofia, 78–121. Rechel, Bernd (2007) The “Bulgarian Ethnic Model” – Reality or Ideology?. Europe-Asia Studies 59(7), 1201–1215. Simeonov, Petko (2012) Parviiat krag na spiralata, v Krŭglata masa ot 1990 g: Osnovopolagasht akt na bŭlgarskata demokratsiia (sŭst. François Frison Roche) [The First Spiral Circle, in The Round Table from 1990: A Founding Act of the Bulgarian Democracy (ed. François Frison Roche)], Sofia University Press, Sofia, 93–104. Slaev, Alexander (2007) Bulgarian Policies towards the Roma Housing Problem and Roma Squatter Settlements. European Journal of Housing Policy 7(1), 63–84. Smith, Brian G. (2016) Ethnonationalism as a Source of Stability in the Party Systems of Bulgaria and Romania: Minority Parties, Nationalism, and EU Membership. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 22(4), 433–455. Spirova, Maria. (2008) The Bulgarian Socialist Party: The Long Road to Europe. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 41, 481–495. Stefanova, Boyka (2009) Ethnic Nationalism, Social Structure, and Political Agency: Explaining Electoral Support for the Radical Right in Bulgaria. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(9), 1534–1556. Traykov, Bozhin (2019) From Anti-Communism to Facsism: Ideological Crusaders of the Bulgarian Passive Revolution versus Socio-economic Reality. Diversia, special issue 3, 101–128 https://dversia.net/wp-content/uploads/delightful-downloads/ 2019/06/special-issue.pdf (accessed 23 January 2020).

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The Civil Society in Bulgaria (2010) Grazhdanskoto Obshtestvo v Bŭlgariia: tendentsii i riskove [The Civil Society in Bulgaria: Tendencies and Risks], Centre for the Study of Democracy, Sofia http://www.csd.bg/fileSrc.php?id=20275 (accessed 23 January 2020). Whitefield, Stephen (2009) Russian Citizens and Russian Democracy: Perceptions of State Governance and Democratic Practices, 1993–2001. Post-Soviet Affairs 25(2), 93–117.

Part 3 The Role of Intellectuals and Dissidents

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Chapter 8

Envisioning Europe from the East: À la recherche du temps perdu with Václav Havel and Lennart Meri Maria Mälksoo The illiberal tendencies in various Central and East European (cee) countries have re-invoked concerns about the region sliding back to the “old ways” or, as some surmise, always having lacked fundamental democratic features in the first place. This chapter turns to the political thought of two writers-cum-­ presidents, Václav Havel and Lennart Meri to tap into the early post-1989 ­visions of Europe, democracy and responsibility. Havel’s call for a post-totalitarian “existential revolution” and Meri’s bold propositions about the telos of Europe serve as critical counterpoints amidst contemporary pessimism about the faint grasp of democracy in the eastern part of the continent. Revisiting the visions of Europe articulated by these representatives of cee at a critical juncture in the European history provides an intellectual stimulus for rethinking the current impasse along the East-West axis of Europe. At the time of cee’s increasing association with political regression, the political writings of Havel and Meri offer an important counterpoint to the loudening national populist voices of today’s political entrepreneurs. 1 Introduction The year 1989 is often cast as a critical juncture in European and world politics. Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Kelemen (2007) describe critical junctures as fairly unusual occasions, when structural constraints ease, the pace of events increases rapidly, and political actors face a panoply of choices to reconfigure existing establishments. Quite alike liminal situations at large, critical junctures are moments of great, yet potentially productive uncertainty, allowing for “political agency and choice to play a decisive causal role in setting an institution on a certain path of development, a path that then persists over a long period of time” (Capoccia, 2015: 147). Yet, recent years have resurfaced doubts as to how fundamental a break the year 1989 has actually unleashed in the way the world continues to (be) run. As George Lawson aptly mused a decade ago,

© Maria Mälksoo, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_010

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“1989 has bequeathed an ambivalent legacy” as regardless of the political, economic and cultural orders generated after the fall of Communism constituting a certain improvement on what was in place before, “this has not always been clear-cut” (Lawson, 2010: 2). Assessing the legacy of 1989 thirty years after, one is hard-pressed to disagree with this verdict. Many contemporary analysts are particularly concerned about the health of the “1989 class of democracy”. Eastern Europe is “go[ing] South”, Jan-Werner Müller (2014) laments, as national populist politics, ushered in by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2010 are now spreading throughout many countries in Central and Eastern Europe (cee). As “a new Authoritarian International” is allegedly emerging in the region, the cee is currently “living 1989 in reverse” (Müller, 2016). Notable resentment over cee having failed the expectations about full-fledged democratization and normative socialization into the liberal democratic value-set of the European community is palpable throughout the manifold political, academic and media debates (Mälksoo, 2019). The grand unification of the continent has remained patchy with various economically downtrodden population groups in both East and West of Europe failing to see the benefits of the European Union (EU) and translating their frustration into the protest vote in support of anti-establishment, Eurosceptic and other fringe parties. Hushed during the early debates over the EU’s eastward enlargement, explicit regrets over “the rapid expansion” of the EU to the post-Communist states “which were economically, culturally and politically distant if not incompatible with the European core” have become part of the public discourse of the day (Douzinas, 2017: 182). Set against the backdrop of standard plus ça change, plus c’est la même choseruminations accompanying the anniversaries of global benchmark dates, this chapter probes the relevance of ideas articulated by two cee liberal intellectuals who rose to power during the 1989–1991 window of opportunity1 to provide moral guidance in the contemporary political climate of Europe. Amidst the clamoring over the lack of progressive political visions for the European pro­ ject and the cee’s descent into illiberalism, xenophobia and nationalism, I propose to tap into the early post-1989 visions of Europe in order to reclaim a 1 This is a crucial temporal qualification since the end of the Cold War in 1989–1990 did not yet mark a search for major structural changes in the ussr. Commonly associated with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the reunification of Germany, the usual chronological frames of the end of the Cold War tend to ignore, for instance, the Baltic struggle for independence (which culminated with restoring their independent statehood in 1990–1991; see further Piiri­ mäe and Mälksoo 2016). For more extensive discussions of various perspectives on the multiple “endings” of the Cold War as an international system, see Zubok (2000); Westad (2005); Haslam (2005); Graebner et al. (2008); Kotkin (2003); and Prados (2011).

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modicum of hope for the idea of Europe as imagined from “new Europe”. With this aim in mind, I revisit the political thought of two cee writers-cum-­ presidents, Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia/later Czech Republic and Lennart Meri of Estonia. Havel’s call for a post-totalitarian existential revolution, his appeal to responsibility, and Meri’s bold ideas about the meaning of Europe deserve a fresh look during the current age of anxiety over the future of Europe. Their respective visions, I contend, have remained unsurpassed in their audacity by the later incarnations of the idea of Europe as articulated in the eastern quarters of the European community. The combined critical discourse analysis of Havel2 and Meri’s visions of Europe, democracy and responsibility enables to scrutinize the broader – and timeless – question of the ethical grounding of individual action. This chapter proceeds from the hope that a conjoint reading of Havel and Meri’s political works provides a solid platform for re-initiating a meaningful and empathetic discussion about intra-European processes of identity construction, contributing thus to the advancement of the mutual understanding between the east and west of Europe. Walking the memory lane with Havel and Meri’s political speeches and writings throws into sharp relief the principal concerns of this essay: which values, memories and identity features were central in the early post-1989/1991 European musings of these cee political thinkers? And what could be their message resonating with the contemporary Europe? The chapter unfolds in two main moves. I begin by unpacking Havel’s take on “existential revolution” and the moral conditions for democracy. The next section turns to Meri’s rationale for a new Europe after the collapse of Communism. The conclusion briefly recaps the key messages of these two European visionaries which arguably still matter for Europe thirty years after 1989. 2

Two Visions of Europe from the East

The Czech playwriter-cum-president Václav Havel (1936–2011) and the Estonian film-maker, writer and historian-cum-president Lennart Meri (1929–2006) were political contemporaries, united in their mission to (re)plant their respective states firmly in the European structures and the post-Cold War political map of the world. Václav Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until its dissolution in 1992, and then as the first president of the 2 For book-length treatments of Havel’s political thought, see Brennan (2016), Popescu (2011), Pontuso (2004) and Tucker (2000); see also Casey and Wright (2015) and Lukes (2018).

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Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. Lennart Meri, in his turn, served as the president of Estonia from 1992–2001. Their political works share a recurrent emphasis on a simple idea: small is beautiful. For Havel, this tenet found expression in his theorizing of democracy, underscoring the importance of decentralization and individual civic responsibility. For Meri, this proposition resonated more closely with pursuing a survival strategy for the tiny Estonian republic within the post-Cold War Europe which went through one of the most fundamental re-drawings of the geopolitical fault-lines after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 2.1 Existential Revolution and the Conditions for Democracy3 In his writings and speeches before, after and during his presidency of Czechoslovakia, and later of the Czech Republic, Havel highlighted a number of ethical principles as preconditions for a successful democratic transition and the everyday relationship of citizens to democratic order. Havel’s manifest for civic responsibility, originally developed as an attempt to probe the ways of resisting the everyday demoralizing absurdity of Soviet Communism, has a very modern ring to it in the context of the contemporary avalanche of populist politics where the “good people” and “deplorable elites” are juxtaposed to each other. Havel’s anti-totalitarian ethical maxim – living in truth – has universal resonance for the viability of democracy at large, from the recent debt crisis in Europe to the dilemmas of defending democracy in the contemporary “post-truth” world. Havel redefined with eloquence and wit several concepts which had become distorted during the Cold War years – from Europe’s values and democracy to political responsibility and morality. Notably, he urged the Europeans to revisit the moral dimension of their grand political project – the European Union. As a result, he became one of the most profound and open thinkers defining new Europe (and later also a renewed nato) in the postCold War world. During his dissident years and later as a president, Havel was essentially interested in one problem: how to lead a moral, good and honest life? His political ideal was accordingly something he himself called “antipolitical politics”, namely “politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives, of protecting them and serving them. […] politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow humans” (Havel, 1992[1984]: 269; see also Havel 1997). As an anti-Marxist, Havel emphasized the pre-eminence of consciousness before being. Accordingly, he insisted on a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness 3 This section largely draws on Mälksoo (2012).

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as the key factor determining progress in social existence. In Havel’s book, it was the power of people which brought about systemic changes. Consequently, his emphasis was on the freedom, opportunities, and crucially also responsibilities of human agents, rather than predetermination by structural forces. Havel offered one of the pithiest and most elegant analyses of civic courage, responsibility and meaningful resistance in his essay “The Power of the Powerless” (1978). His concern was with the power potential of people who had been stripped of their power in the context of totalitarianism. The symbolic figure of a greengrocer exemplifies the moral problems of living within the lie and pretense for him.4 Havel showed that the perpetuation of a repressive system ultimately rested on popular willingness to play along, to “live within the lie” (without necessarily believing in the system or accepting it), yet contributing to its permanent recreation and implicit legitimization nonetheless. A totalitarian system is functional only for as long as the people conform to the rules built on lies and pretense. It takes only one human who does not play along and chooses to live in truth to challenge the entire system (or at least its façade). Havel was convinced that the desire for freedom could not but defeat totalitarianism, because of his innate conviction in life’s inevitable striving towards plurality, variety, independent self-assertion, and self-organization. What Havel called for was nothing less but a post-totalitarian “existential revolution” – notably in both east and west of Europe. The envisioned broad “existential revolution” was deemed desirable not merely in the context of the post-totalitarian system, but his imagined “generally ethical” and “ultimately a political … reconstitution of society” was to be pursued in order to overcome “the general failure of modern humanity”, that is, “the global automatism of technological civilization” (Havel 1992[1978]: 207). An “existential revolution” in Havel’s understanding thus indicates a solution that touches not solely upon philosophical, social, technological, and political dimensions, but seeks to reconfigure the human existence, namely the “level of human consciousness and conscience” in the profoundest sense (Havel 1992[1978]: 149).5 Havel called for “a newly grasped sense of higher responsibility and a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community” (Havel 1992[1978]: 210):

4 Cf. Scott’s (1990) concept of infrapolitics, referring to the ways subordinate groups wage a struggle against their subordination in a manner hidden from the view of the dominant power. 5 For a discussion of the Heideggerian traits in Havel’s political thought, see Pontuso (2004); cf. Elshtain (1992). For further discussion of Havel’s existential revolution, see Matynia (2009).

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…it seems to me that all of us, East and West, face one fundamental task from which all else should follow. That task is one of resisting vigilantly, thoughtfully, and attentively, but at the same time with total dedication, at every step and everywhere, the irrational momentum of anonymous, impersonal, and inhuman power – the power of ideologies, systems, aparat, bureaucracy, artificial languages and political slogans. We must resist its complex and wholly alienating pressure, whether it takes the form of consumption, advertising, repression, technology, or cliché – all of which are the blood brothers of fanaticism and the well-spring of totalitarian thought. We must draw our standards from our natural world, heedless of ridicule, and reaffirm its denied validity. We must honour with the humility of the wise the limits of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence. We must relate to the absolute horizon of our existence which, if we but will, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. We must make values and imperatives the starting point of all our acts, of all our personally attested, openly contemplated, and ideologically uncensored lived experience. We must trust the voice of our conscience more than that of all abstract speculations and not invent responsibilities other than the one to which the voice calls us. (Havel, 1992[1984]: 267) Havel’s humanism and his recurrent emphasis on individual moral conscience and responsibility also found expression in his attempts to find something instructive even in the worst human experiences. He derived rhetorical advantage from his conviction that people who had been oppressed by totalitarianism could perceive life from a different perspective from those who had led “normal lives” in the free world. Hence, he offered the experiences of East European “poor relatives” to affluent Westerners in return for admission to the “old European” political clubs. Havel was all but idealizing the West, resisting utilitarianism and seeking a spiritual view of the universe (see further Casey and Wright 2015). His presidency was effectively dedicated to the rebuilding of Europe after the collapse of Communism. As one of the key architects and ideologues of the process leading to the emergence of a new Europe, Havel always stressed both the need to reform Europe’s enlarged institutional organization and to think through the ethical groundwork for the continental political configuration. During his presidency, the Czech Republic (and, before it, Czechoslovakia) held the negotiations for and signed its association agreement, submitted its membership application for accession to the EU in 1996, and started accession negotiations in 1998. Havel was also an ardent Atlanticist

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who laid out the imperative for nato enlargement to the former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltic states. The year 1989 marked a watershed moment in Havel’s personal as well as Europe’s general history: it provided a real opportunity to fill the political vacuum in Central Europe with something meaningful and significant. The pace of the collapse of the Communist system surprised the new democrats who admittedly “were not prepared for the immediate takeover of power”, being “forced to make all essential decisions, under pressure of circumstances, in a matter of days – sometimes even hours” (Havel, 2004: 169). Bringing eastern Europe back to the common European space became Havel’s principal political mission as president. His political rhetoric was driven by a hope to transform Central Europe (and, of course, Prague in particular) into a hub for ­democracy and dialogue between various parts of Europe. In the spirit characteristic to that era, he stressed that East/Central Europeans strived for convergence with Western Europe, but wanted to do so not as recently amnestied convicts, poor and destitute, but as nations that could meaningfully contribute to the development of Europe. The role of east Europeans was to offer the Westerners “spiritual nourishment” – to give an intellectual and moral impetus to the common cause in Europe and to share with the West their so far unharnessed creative potential and the special ethos that had emerged from their latest experiences in their fight for freedom. Havel promoted universal human values, rather than specific “Western values” as he urged the West to reflect on the price it has had to pay for spreading the “one and only” truth among the “barbarians”. Similarly, he stressed the importance of having a strong sense of responsibility not only towards oneself, but also towards one’s fellow citizens; not only towards one’s community or state, but also towards the entire human race.6 Despite his quest for universality, Havel was convinced that Europe had a special mission. In the spirit of John Donne (“for whom the bell tolls”), Havel took every human being as responsible for the whole world. Against the background of human rights violations in Tibet, he asked east Europeans rhetorically whether they actually had the right to demand freedom without demanding it for all the oppressed nations at the same time. Following in the footsteps of the first Czechoslovakian president T.G. Masaryk who had said that, “The Czech idea becomes the idea

6 See further Havel’s call for democracy to “rediscover and renew its own transcendental origins”, as articulated in his speech “Democracy’s Forgotten Dimension”, originally given at Stanford University on 29 September 1994 to mark the occasion of his acceptance of the Jackson H. Ralston Prize (Havel 1995).

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of humanity”, Havel argued that universal humanity as such takes precedence over traditional national interests. In correspondence with the maxim “every man is responsible for the fate of the whole world”, Havel’s politics of the past decisively departed from a narrowly nationalist Czech perspective. He was opposed to the concepts of collective guilt and collective responsibility of entire nations, which led him to stress the significance of personal responsibility, yet again. In his view, it was crucial for the Vergangenheitsbewältigung of east Europeans – as for all people and nations – to turn historical suffering into a desire for justice, not for revenge. Havel’s presidential speeches reflect the increase in perceived political opportunities in cee between the collapse of Communism and the materialization of the EU and nato’s eastward enlargements. Havel started as a man whose rhetoric rather cautiously supported a pan-European collective security system and eventually ended up as a tireless promoter of nato’s eastward enlargement.7 His criticism of such historically charged term as “Eastern Europe” is noteworthy for its outspokenness, at least in the context of the time. As an ideologue of cee’s “return” to Europe, Havel called for the liberation of the concepts of “East” and “West” from their Cold War-era semantic baggage in order to transform both terms into morally neutral ones and rid them of their respective negative and positive associations. In a similar vein, he suggested that the end of the Cold War be interpreted as a victory for sense and reason over the absurd, rather than as a victory for the West over the East. Ever a moralist, Havel saw mutual indebtedness on both sides: the West was responsible for betraying and forgetting the East during and after World War ii, while the East had failed to translate its experience of totalitarianism into a language the West could understand. Pace Havel, the West owed the East its relative unity during the Cold War (as the specter of Communism had enough of a terrifying effect).8 Havel appealed to the conscience of the then gatekeepers in the EU, 7 Consider an earlier sentiment which resonates in its political realism, expressed in an essay entitled Anatomy of a Reticence (1992[1985]), explaining the political reservations of East European dissidents towards West European peaceniks: “Few people would be happier than a Pole, a Czechoslovak, or a Hungarian were Europe soon to become a free community of independent countries in which no great power would have its armies and its rockets. And at the same time, I am sure that no one would be more skeptical about accomplishing this by appeals to anyone’s good will, even assuming someone might get around to making such ­appeals. Let us not forget that few have had such a good opportunity to learn directly about the reason for the presence of superpower armies and rockets in certain European countries. Their purpose is not so much defense against a putative enemy as it is the supervision of conquered territories”. 8 See further Havel’s “The Co-responsibility of the West” (Havel 1994a). Consider also Meri (2000c) maintaining that: “We will not come to Europe. Both Czechoslovakia and Estonia

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claiming that those who were born on the western side of the Iron Curtain were just lucky and did not deserve any special recognition for the mere fact that they were “Westerners”: We must ask what Europe as a whole owes the world. In my opinion, it owes it a certain example. Europe has the opportunity to serve as an example of how to overcome all of the dangers of the civilization with which it has endowed the world – a civilization encompassing the world and entailing numerous threats and dangers, dangers for everyone. Who else should be the first to demonstrate – not forcibly through the exporting of principles, but rather by way of example – how to confront these threats: who else but the party which witnessed the very birth of this civilization? (Havel 1999) 2.2 Inventing a New Europe The moral duty of Europe to ensure democracy and the protection of human rights was also the leitmotif of Lennart Meri’s speeches as the president of Estonia. Even in the early 1990s when the new security order of Europe was yet to be sorted out, Meri did not regard Europe as a “Wonderland” (albeit he asserted cheekily that “it can be Alice”; see Meri 1994a). The creation of a new Europe also called for the invention of a new European (Meri 1992). This task was by and large the gist of Meri’s foreign political agenda throughout his two terms in the office of the Estonian presidency. Asking what eastern Europe could offer to the rest of Europe, Meri suggested a lesson in cultural diversity, but also one of conscience (Meri 1998). Embodying the ethos and soul of Europe is a common theme for Havel and Meri, both occasionally assuming the messianic role of telling Europe “what it has to do in order to remain Europe” (Meri 1993; see also Havel, 1993, 1994a, 1994c, 1996). Their political discourse hence repudiates West’s monopoly of “Europe” (e.g., Meri 1991, 1995a; Havel 2002), stressing that Europeanness is an acquired, rather than inherited by birth-kind of category (Meri 1991). At the ceremony of awarding the prize of the European of the Year in Paris, Meri pondered whether there was a right to call oneself European if one only shared part of Europe’s have always been in Europe. The present developments are not a generous gesture of Europe, but restoration of the integrity of Europe. It has been our tragedy that Stalinist aggression spread like cancer across the borders of its country. But it was also a tragedy for Europe, because it led the life of a one-legged amputee, pretending to be standing on two feet, and it lived in this self-deception for half a century. Therefore the thinking and responsible Europe needs us as much as we need Europe. It is a mutual process”.

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experience (Meri 1999a). This rhetorical question was seemingly supposed to remind the “old Europeans” about their ignorance of the “other” Europe’s experiences.9 Compared to his Czech counterpart’s, Meri’s discourse of Europe was more outspokenly bound to the objective of making the post-Soviet Estonian state as secure in the emerging post-Cold War order as possible. As per standard eastern European political chant of the time, “Europe” was not “a mere geographical concept” for Meri, but “an endlessly expanding process of shared values”, comparable to Fred Hoyl’s expanding universe (Meri 1996). The “depth of Europe” was thus considered to lie in the diversity of its numerous small and big cultures, and by consequence, creativity which made the enlargement of the EU, by definition, “inevitable”: Europe has always lived on contrasts. Her strength is in her capability to unite these contrasts and drive strength from them. […] Europe is still very small. Tell me, how Europe is going to grow, and I will tell you about the strengthening of her identity. (Meri 1999a) Elsewhere, Meri elaborated on his take on the “idea of Europe” as follows: the diversity of languages, and thus also cultures, is the synergetic factor that has made our continent, though poor of natural resources, the global locomotive of European culture. […] What is the force, the principle that has driven this relatively small part of the world, to create a civilization that has by now come to influence even the most remote corners of the world both with its technological achievements and its philosophical ideas, its culture? I think this principle is best defined as unity in diversity, or diversity in unity. (Meri 1999b) In comparison to Havel, Meri comes across as more openly nationalist, concerned, first and foremost, with the fate of his native country rather than that of humanity as a whole. While for Havel, the small is beautiful-maxim finds its expression in promoting a citizens-led (direct) democracy, Meri utilizes this slogan to pragmatically tie the telos of the European community to the protection of small states as part of the Union’s self-proclaimed guardianship of

9 Or as he put elsewhere, “Democracy requires work, it requires intellectual work, it requires remembering. Not necessarily for retaliation, but for avoiding the errors that we have already made”. (Meri 2001a)

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diversity. As Meri maintained in a speech at the 8th International Finno-Ugric Congress in Jyväskylä University: Democratic co-existence of big and small cultures is the precondition for the co-existence of different frames of mind and cultures. Cultural differences, in their turn, are the power supporting and increasing creativity, both humanitarian and technological. The more the bolts, crews and gas stations are standardized, the more time and creativity is saved for deepening national identity and strengthening the diversity of creativeness. Diversity, in its turn, consolidates equality, democracy and stability. (Meri 1995c) In the contemporary EU integration parlance, Meri advocated a Europe of nation-states, reasoning that “[t]he strength of the European Union depends on the strength of the identity of its member states and their regions” (Meri 2000a) and “if Europe wants to remain Europe, it should also take care to support and deepen the diversity of European cultures, or in other words, the internal differences of Europe” (Meri 2000d). Meri’s rhetorical emphasis on the advantages of being a small state (e.g., Meri 1995b) shrewdly served as a tactical re-branding exercise for anchoring post-Communist Estonia to the desirable security-political structures in a difficult geopolitical environment. This aim was strategically presented as mutually beneficial, and indeed critical for both – quite alike to Havel’s discussion on the two-sidedness of the European integration: …we can say that Estonia’s culture and historical experience may contain something that is lacking in Europe. Thus, it is and will be a dialogue. Estonia needs Europe just as Europe needs Estonia. This may sound pretentious, like the arrogant self-justification of a small country. And yet it is not so. […] The variety of cultures […] the variety or diversity of attitudes and world views, has become the most powerful productive force of our time. (Meri 2000a) In Meri’s discourse then, the vulnerability and weakness of small states was accordingly turned into a tactical advantage, a selling point of a small cee country in its courting attempts of the EU’s gatekeepers. Small states are “more sensitive to barometric changes than large ones”, Meri (1995e) asserted; moreover, they are “the lubricating oil of Europe and the mortar of Europe” as “[t]he big ones need the small ones in order to maintain the balance in Europe that drives it further, because there are always certain conflicts between the big

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ones and the presence of the small ones is needed to overcome them” (Meri 2000b). Ultimately, […] this is how the mission of small countries in Europe is manifested. A small country is more vulnerable, and therefore also more sensitive and quicker to respond to the hegemony that is alien to Europe. It is the mission of small countries to be the barometer of European balance. […] If the development of Europe should assume a paternalist attitude towards even the smallest of small countries, such tendency may eventually destroy the phenomenon of Europe. Small countries may be a handful, but they are the bearers of European balance. If there were no small countries in Europe, we would have to invent them. And it is not a coincidence that the European Union was born of the initiative of three small countries. The phenomenon of Europe is the art of maintaining balance, and something more: the art of shifting this balance gradually in the direction favourable for small countries, in the interests of preserving Europe as an idea. (Meri 2000d; see also Meri 1995d) Since Europe itself is rather small, worshipping quality instead of quantity and associating greatness with spiritual features, small nations are deemed to have a special role in the EU (Meri 2000b). During the unsettled times of the 1990s, Meri saw Europe’s renewal critically dependent on not putting its principles on sale (Meri 1995b), or applying human and civil rights standards selectively (“there can be no rubber rulers”; Meri 1994b); in short, on the ability to articulate “clear statements on what is and what is not permitted and acceptable in our new world” (Meri 2001b). These essential truisms ring equally true in Europe anno 2019. 3 Conclusion Havel and Meri are well-remembered and honoured in the intellectual and political circles of their countries and beyond. Both late presidents have the main airport of their respective countries named after them. Estonia’s flagship foreign and security political conference carries Lennart Meri’s name (https:// lmc.icds.ee/) while the European Parliament recently opened an extension to its buildings on the Strasbourg site dedicated to Havel, “a builder of bridges and an architect of our common European identity” (Tajani 2017). This chapter has offered a concise exploration of Havel and Meri’s bygone attempts to define the parameters of democratic responsibility and the contours

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of a new Europe during the critical post-Cold War years. Adopting the taxonomy of Western international thought over the past two centuries as developed by John M. Hobson (2010), Havel and Meri both emerge as “Western idealistrealists”: they embrace a “conditional optimism” which “can only prevail when the West […] engages in neo-imperial interventions in the East – hence ‘things could get better’” – but equally, “‘things could get bitter’” (Hobson, 2010: 26). Taken together, their political oeuvre offers a much-needed historical counterpoint to the contemporary cee “innovators” of the European project, chasing a fantasy of lost sovereignty and “genuine” national community which supposedly needs saving from the EU rather than offers a progressive vision for the advancement of the European polity. Amidst today’s general disillusionment about the cee region’s potential to act as an instigator for positive change in Europe at large, Havel and Meri’s political ideas demonstrate that persuasive political alternatives can emerge also from the Europe’s east. Ultimately, the formidable return of the ingrained patterns of envisioning eastern Europe as a normative challenge for the European political order (see Mälksoo 2019) was not a preordained development in light of the powerful visions for Europe’s future articulated by the foremost European ideologues in cee during the crucial early years after the 1989–1991 watershed moment. Theirs was a search for a fair and democratic Europe rather than a “true” Czech or a “genuine” Estonian. It was a quest for the acknowledgement of cultural diversity as a source of Europe’s strength rather than a sign of the supposed wobbliness of its shared identity. Since such an image of Europe is increasingly under pressure in today’s east and west of Europe alike, revisiting the early post-Cold War visions for Europe inevitably amounts to a search of lost time. But it could also provide a source of inspiration acutely needed in the current impasse along the East-West and nationalist-populist axes of Europe. Reading Havel and Meri’s political writings with the benefit of hindsight in assessing their gravitas in the post-1989 developmental curve of cee, three main insights can be extrapolated for the purposes of this volume. First, individual moral integrity and responsibility are central for a de­ mocratic and responsible political collective. As Havel asserted at the critical juncture within our purview, “[t]he full potentiality of any given moment cannot be known in advance” (Havel, 1990: 114–115). Accordingly, the central importance of the “purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect” cannot be overstated as it can “gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance” (Havel, 1990: 114–115). Hence, every human being’s everyday deeds matter and could make a difference. The ruled are always complicit in their rule, no one is ever completely absolved

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of r­esponsibility (cf. Havel 1978; Lukes 2018). Stretched to the tall order of generating responsible visions for the contemporary European project amidst the increasing pressure from its various fringes, this reminder about the common responsibility for the future Europe is equally pertinent in the post-posttotalitarian times of today. Secondly, the culture of mutual engagement and communication matters as well: “[i]f there is to be a minimum chance of success, there is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance: and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly” (Havel, 1992). The polarization and rampant mudslinging of contemporary political debates of the West could pause for a thought here. Finally, time and timing matters, as Zhou Enlai knew only too well. Thirty years past the critical juncture of 1989 might simply be too early to conclusively declare a verdict on the inevitable success or still possible capsizing of the antitotalitarian revolution of 1989. In that sense, the global benchmark dates “may serve to obscure more important, longer-term trends” and hence “years and dates rarely act as sound guides to complex processes” (Lawson, 2010: 20). 1989 is an equally “inaccurate shorthand” (Kenney, 2006: 114) in assessing the long journey of democratic consolidation in cee and in the EU as a whole. Václav Havel’s reminder about the importance of meaningful waiting while tackling the growing pains of early democracy in his political experience is worth quoting at length here: …only with great difficulties did I come to accept the fact that politics is a never-ending process like history itself, a process that, in fact, never allows us to say that something has been completed, finished, closed. It was as if I forgot to wait in a meaningful way. And then I realized with horror that my impatience with the renaissance of democracy was in fact somewhat Communist. Or more generally: it was marked with rationalistic enlightenment. I wanted to push history forward in a way a child wants a plant to grow faster: by pulling it. I think the skill of waiting has to be learnt in the same way as the skill of creating. The seeds must be patiently planted, the soil must be watered and the plants must be allowed the time they determine themselves. History will not be outwitted in the same way as plants will not be outwitted. But history, too, may be watered. Every day and with patience. Not only with understanding, not only with humbleness but also with love. (Havel in the French Academy of Arts and Political Sciences in 1992, quoted in Havel 1994b)

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References Brennan, Daniel (2016) The Political Thought of Václav Havel: Philosophical Influences and Contemporary Applications, Brill, Leiden. Capoccia, Giovanni and Daniel R. Kelemen (2007) The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism. World Politics 59(3), 341–369. Capoccia, Giovanni (2015) Critical junctures and institutional change, in Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis (eds. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 147–179. Casey, Steven and Jonathan Wright (eds.) (2015) Mental Maps in the Era of Détente and the End of the Cold War 1968–1991, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Elshtain, Jean Bethke (1992) A Man for This Season: Václav Havel on Freedom and Responsibility. Perspectives on Political Science 21(4), 207–211. Graebner, Norman A., Richard D. Burns, Joseph M. Siracusa (2008) Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War, Praeger, London. Haslam, Jonathan (2005) 1989: history is rewritten, in Reinterpreting the end of the Cold War: issues, interpretations, periodizations (eds. Silvio Pons and Federico Romero), Frank Cass and Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 165–178. Havel, Václav (1990) Disturbing the Peace, Knopf, New York. Havel, Václav (1992) Paradise Lost. New York Review of Books, 9 April, 6–8. Havel, Václav (1992[1978]) The Power of the Powerless, in Václav Havel, Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990 (ed. Paul Wilson), Vintage Books, New York, 125–214. Havel, Václav (1992[1984]) Politics and Conscience, in Václav Havel, Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990 (ed. Paul Wilson), Vintage Books, New York, 249–271. Havel, Václav. (1992[1985]) The Anatomy of a Reticence, in Václav Havel, Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990 (ed. Paul Wilson), Vintage Books, New York, 291–322. Havel, Václav (1993) Speech by the President of the Czech Republic at the Council of Europe Summit, Vienna, 8 October. Havel, Václav (1994a) The Co-responsibility of the West. Foreign Affairs (March/April). Havel, Václav (1994b) Five Years Later, Written for World Media, November. Havel, Václav (1994c) Speech at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Summit, Budapest, 6 December. Havel, Václav (1995) Democracy’s Forgotten Dimension. Journal of Democracy 6(2), 3–10. Havel, Václav (1996) Speech at receiving an honorary degree in Trinity College, Dublin, 28 June. Havel, Václav (1997) The Art of the Impossible: Politics and Morality in Practice, Speeches and Writings: 1990–1996, trans. by Paul Wilson, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Havel, Václav (1999) Speech by the President of the Czech Republic at the Conference “Europe – a Culture of Shared Causes”, Berlin, 25 February.

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Havel, Václav (2002) Edvard Beneš: Dilemmas of a European Politician, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Gazeta Wyborcza, Magyár Hírlap, Sme, Le Monde, 19 April. Havel, Václav (2004) Letter to Oswaldo Payá, Prague, 17 November 2003; published as part of The Czech Past and the Cuban Future, Journal of Democracy 15(2): 160–169. Hobson, John M. (2010) Back to the future of nineteenth-century Western international thought, in The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics (eds. George Lawson, Chris Armbruster and Michael Cox), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 23–50. Kenney, Padraic (2006) The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe since 1989. London: Zed Books, 2006. Kotkin, Stephen (2003) Armageddon averted: The Soviet collapse, 1970–2000, Oxford University Press, New York. Lawson, George (2010) Introduction: the “What”, “When” and “Where” of the Global 1989, in The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics (eds. George Lawson, Chris Armbruster and Michael Cox), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1–20. Lukes, Steven M. (2018) Guilt-tripping the Greengrocer. East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32(2), 294–300. Matynia, Elzbieta (2009) Twenty Years Later: A Call for Existential Revolution: Václav Havel in Conversation with Adam Michnik. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 22(3), 255–262. Meri, Lennart (1991) Euroopa kui eesmärk [Europe as an Objective], Remarks by the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 26 November. Meri, Lennart (1992) The President of the Republic at the CSCE Foreign Ministers’ Conference, Helsinki, 25 March. Meri, Lennart (1993) The West Should Not Pamper the Powerful of Moscow, Interview to Die Welt, 5 April. Meri, Lennart (1994a) President of Estonia to the International Conference “Estonia and the European Union”, 3 November. Meri, Lennart (1994b) President of the Republic of Estonia at the CSCE Summit, Budapest, 5–6 December. Meri, Lennart (1995a) Eesti julgeolekupoliitilistest aspektidest [On the Security-Political Aspects of Estonia], Speech at the St. Gallen Forum on Security Policy, St. Gallen, 25 January. Meri, Lennart (1995b) Speech by the President of the Republic of Estonia Turku University, 17 May. Meri, Lennart (1995c) Speech by President Lennart Meri at the Opening of the 8th International Finno-Ugric Congress in University of Jyväskylä, 10 August.

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Meri, Lennart (1995d) President Lennart Meri in the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, 12 September. Meri, Lennart (1995e) Address by President of the Republic of Estonia at the Special Commemorative Meeting of the General Assembly on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, New York, 22 October. Meri, Lennart (1996) President of the Republic at the Dinner in Honour of Javier Solana, Secretary-General of NATO, 16 April. Meri, Lennart (1998) Remarks of the President of the Republic at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, 30 April. Meri, Lennart (1999a) President of the Republic on the Ceremony of Awarding the Prize of the European of the Year, Paris, 23 March. Meri, Lennart (1999b) Lecture of the President of the Republic at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, 21 October. Meri, Lennart (2000a) The President of the Republic of Estonia at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London, London, 8 March. Meri, Lennart (2000b) The Role of Small Nations in the European Union, President of the Republic in the University of Turku, Turku, 25 May. Meri, Lennart (2000c) President of the Republic at the Festive Dinner in Prague Castle, Prague, 30 May. Meri, Lennart (2000d) President of the Republic Receiving the Small Countries Prize at the Herbert Batliner Institute, Salzburg, 23 July. Meri, Lennart (2001a) The President of the Republic at the Opening of the Exhibition “KGB & STASI – tools of totalitarian power”, National Library, Tallinn, 3 April. Meri, Lennart (2001b) Luncheon Address by H.E. Lennart Meri, President of the Republic of Estonia to the Participants of the Aspen Institute Conference on U.S.Russia Relations, Tallinn, 25 August. Mälksoo, Maria (2012) Ida-Euroopa ideoloogi lahkumine [The Leaving of an East European Ideologue], Diplomaatia 101/102, Tallinn. Mälksoo, Maria (2019) The Normative Threat of Subtle Subversion: the Return of “Eastern Europe” as an Ontological Insecurity Trope. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32(3), 365–383. Müller, Jan-Werner (2014) Eastern Europe Goes South. Foreign Affairs 93(2): 14–19. Müller, Jan-Werner (2016) The Problem with Poland, The New York Review of Books, February 11. Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/02/11/kaczynski-eu -problem-with-poland/ (Accessed: 15 August 2017). Piirimäe, Kaarel and Maria Mälksoo (2016) Western Policies and the Impact of Tradition at Critical Junctures: The Baltic States after the First World War and the Cold War, Introduction to a special issue. Ajalooline Ajakiri: The Estonian Historical Journal ¾, 337–345.

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Pontuso, James F. (2004) Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MA. Popescu, Delia (2011) Political Action in Václav Havel’s Thought: The Responsibility of Resistance, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD. Prados, John (2011) How the Cold War ended: debating and doing history, Potomac Books, Washington, DC. Scott, James C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Tajani, Antonio (2017) The President of the European Parliament at the official opening of the Havel building, Strasbourg, 5 July. Tucker, Aviezer (2000) The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh. Westad, Odd Arne (2005) Beginnings of the end: how the Cold War crumbled, in Reinterpreting the end of the Cold War: issues, interpretations, periodizations (eds. Silvio Pons and Federico Romero), Frank Cass and Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 68–81. Zubok, Vladislav (2000) Why did the Cold War end in 1989? Explanations of “The Turn”, in Reviewing the Cold War: approaches, interpretations, theory (ed. Odd Arne Westad), Frank Cass, London, 343–368.

Chapter 9

The Rise of the Public Relations Man and the Decline of the Soviet “Intelligentsia” after 1989 Gintautas Mažeikis 1 Introduction The purpose of this article is to expose the radical split between a Public Intellectual and a Public Relations Man, who in this chapter will be abbreviated as pr-Man. The pr-Man is not a result of manipulation and he or she is not an audience person, but a master of manipulation. The pr-Man belongs to the creative class, which (among other things) produces political advertising. Is it possible that the pr-Man is also a Public Intellectual? The ambiguities of the split between a Public Intellectual and a Public Relations Man will be analyzed from the period of the end of the Soviet Union (1985–1991) until today. The main theses of this chapter are: the ambiguous manifestations of Public Intellectuals and pr-Men create various conflicts between the state’s ideologists, critical intellectuals and commercial pr entrepreneurs. the market of political opinions functions differently than that of the marketplace of ideas of Public Intellectuals; when the ideas of a Public Intellectual and of a pr-Man are analyzed in the light of public communicative actions, then we discover that both of them are competitive participants in the same sphere of social reason; pr companies create images, which have to compete with the true intellectuals, thus they experiencing the effect of intellectuals as specters who haunt them (i.e. their pr-companies). As long as the Public Intellectual follows the ideals of the intelligentsia and the interests of political power, s/he cannot become a pr-Man because s/he does not operate correctly; s/he operates neither according to the rules of a market nor according to the rules of realpolitik. All three participants of the public sphere – an ideologist/propagandist, a devoted intelligentsia person and a commercial pr-Man – may act completely differently and have their separate interests. © Gintautas Mažeikis, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_011

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However, we should ask the following question: is a pr-Man a Public Intellectual? Following the classification of Richard Florida, s/he is a representative of the creative class. The contemporary post-Soviet Public Intellectual models his or her personal behavior according to the style of the Soviet intelligentsia and has some experience resisting the state ideological propaganda, but the post-Soviet Public Intellectual is more helpless in the face of the contemporary technologies of Public Relations. If post-soviet Public intellectual follows the examples of dissidents, then s/he rejects soviet sentiments and seeks to be honest, virtue oriented on the basis of conscience. These attitudes are against the needs of pr-companies and against the needs of realpolitik. It means that the pr-Man originates not from the attitudes of dissidents (truth, devotion to the people, belief in the idea of Russia, or Poland, etc.), but from the free market of opinions, where communication is instrumentalized. There is good research about pre-revolutionary and Soviet intelligentsia, about conflicts between soviet technical intelligentsia and dissidents; also there are volumes published about the “militants of the ideological front”. However, the authors of such studies pay little attention to how their historical ideas function in the free market of opinions. Members of the Intelligentsia do not accept the fact that their books and principles have been transformed into communicative commodities in the marketplace of images and opinions. For them it is a culture shock that they have become a kind of naïve domestic manufacturer of ideas for communicative free market. The consciousness of market value comes only through copyright system which was absent in the late Soviet Union. In many cases the members of the intelligentsia forgot or did not understand that their images and slogans were involved in “mechanical reproduction”, following the Walter Benjamin’s idea. The price that has to be paid in this market is the loss of any spiritual aura. Intelligentsia was in its cultural habit to have spiritual aura around philosophical and critical dialogues. The thing is that this aura of the philosophically meaningful discussion is supposed to be embraced naturally as the result of honest conversation. Needless to say, this does not happen when the aura is reproduced artificially for the pr-Man’s purposes. For honest former dissidents and post-Soviet Public Intellectuals it is shocking that the aura could be imitated, simulated and reproduced for commercial purposes according to the skills of the creative class. If intellectuals understand the difference between the distribution of their ideas and the purpose of the idea to produce an aura about the conversation, then there is space to manipulate communication. The produced simulacrum of aura is good for sales in the marketplace of opinions, but that is something that the Public Intellectual might have difficulty accepting, whereas for the pr-Man it is the goal.

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Dreams that the Soviet dissidents had about freedom of speech under the coming conditions of democracy became the harsh reality of a “manufactured consensus” of liberal society. In order to influence the audiences, critical public intellectuals need to play on the field of media industries as well as on the field of pr companies. They must imitate their ideals, values, and principles. The modern public intellectual who responds to the challenges of the pragencies is more a cynical nihilist with a deep sense of irony than a dissident. So, pr-agencies are producing their own antagonist in the new media: a very critical nihilist intellectual, an intellectual gamer, so to speak. The media in 1989 glorified dissidents, but thirty years later the media market transformed the same dissidents into elements of “commercial spectacle” (following ideas of Guy Debord), or into the machines of political popularity rating. For example, Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 2007 was organized only for pr purposes and for rating machines’ purpose. Dissident Gleb Pavlovsky was used as a personal political adviser by Putin and his administration until 2011. Having in mind that Pavlovsky was familiar with many opposition figures and the activities of publishers, we can assume that he was more of a person in agreement with Putin rather than a true dissident who would help the opposition. Putin publicly visited the famous dissident Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva on her 90th birthday in July 2017. She is one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. Putin visited her despite her longstanding protests against his regime and presented himself as a supporter of fighters against Communism (Coalson 2017). There are many of attempts to use former dissidents for propaganda purposes or as instruments for the control of opposition. It also serves as an instrument for political advertising. Post-Soviet people encountered the new reality of public relations, being unable to make a separation between honest voices of intellectuals and influential opinions of new leaders as the products of public relations. Post-Soviet people had no understanding of the technologies of mass media communication. They also did not understand what it means to form normativity in an environment of constantly distorted communication – something we might call pathological communication in the situation of the imitation of liberty in post-Soviet countries. We should also mention the very different disproportions of freedom of speech in the post-Soviet countries. According to “Reporters without borders” for freedom and information, in the year 2019 Russia was in 149th place in the World Press Freedom Index between Venezuela and Bangladesh; the case of Belarus is even worse: 153rd place, whereas Estonia was 11th, Lithuania 30th, and Poland 59th. The rank of freedom refers to the level of manipulation, censure, and the role of propaganda (Belarus) and pr manipulations (Russia). How did such a bad situation come to be in the post-Soviet

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countries such as Russia and Belarus? The question is also about the role of Public Intellectuals in the media market. However, to answer the questions we need to interpret what “publicity” means, and only later examine the role of intellectuals. What is the difference between publicity and the media market, then? 2

The Origin of Publicity: The Public Intellectual versus the pr-Man

Perestroika, which was started by Gorbachev in 1985, was meant to renew the socialist economy. Only later, starting in approximately 1987, did he understand that the censorship and the strict control of freedom of speech was slowing to a stop due to the economic reforms. The critique of public life forms became encouraged in order to speed up the process of re-building socialism, i.e. making Gorbachev’s Perestroika work. Thus, at the end of 1980s the Russian word “glasnost” [in cyrillic: гла́сность] was used, meaning openness and transparency, which was used as the other style of Communist party reports. Only later, approximately 1988, did glasnost begin to presuppose the growth of freedom of speech. That opened the door not only for the critical voices of various intelligentsia, but it opened the window for previously illegal literature, films, and liberal ideas. First journal and later book publications increased from 1987–1992 to quench the thirst for reading the forbidden literature. In this time, the author of this chapter was occasionally selling books in the period of 1990–1992 in the book bazaar (officially the book fair) in the former Leningrad, today’s Saint Petersburg, in the Palace of Culture at the Vodokanal. From 1992 the author had the anthropological privilege to continue this “book business” in the Palace of culture N.K. Krupskaya. It is interesting that the famous cultural spaces of Leningrad that had propagandist significance were transformed into wild book markets. When the soviet propaganda collapsed fully, the inertia of freedom carried the audience to the bazaar of books. People believed in books. I and other sellers watched the changes of interests and the subculturization process: we witnessed changes in those groups that wanted to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then we witnessed changes in the groups of special interests in mystics, music, semiotics, antiquity, etc. Now we see even more diversity: a multiplicity of communicative groups on the various social platforms. If intellectuals of 1989 looked like they were expressing a common opinion that coincided with their internal world or with their conscience, so today thirty years later speaking “from the heart” is interpreted as a self-advertisement, also as being subjective and personal. Speaking from the heart no longer means Václav Havel’s telling the forbidden truth, which he explained in his

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famous essay “The Power of the Powerless”. What was important in the period of 1989–1991 was the sense of changing interests of the intelligentsia and the diversity of intelligentsia in the free market of communication, opinions, and ideals. Instead of the truth coming from the dissident’s heart, contemporary pragencies consider the imagined truth as a particular product for certain groups. The imagined truth is constructed with the tools of rhetoric and discourse. Nihilist intellectuals regard the truth of a dissident (Havel’s type of truth that comes from the heart of an existentially committed dissident) as naive. Because of the naivety of public intelligentsia of the idealistic year 1989, the postSoviet people did not envision contemporary cynicism in the techniques of pr-agencies. Aleksandr Nevzorov and Vladislav Surkov are examples of a post-Soviet prMan. Nevzorov was a producer and journalist at the program 600 Seconds on the Leningrad tv channel from 1987 to 1993. During the period of 1993–2007 Nevzorov was a member of the Russian State Parliament as an independent deputy. These connections gave him opportunities to work in the sphere of pr: first as a public relations advisor for the governor of Sankt Peterburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, and later as a political commentator. Today he works closely with the opposition network Echo Moskvy, where he leads a tv-radio show oriented towards Russian intellectuals, “Nevzorov’s Wednesdays”, in which he shares his insights as a public intellectual. Surkov’s story is different. In 1988 he founded the first Soviet communication company for pr, called Metapress. In 1992 he was invited to work as a pr consultant to the Russian government. Then he became Vladimir Putin’s pr consultant, helping to prepare for presidential elections. Surkov was the Kremlin’s ideology man. But, unlike Nevzorov, Surkov himself has never been a public intellectual. These two persons represent two versions of the transformations of the pr-Man during the post-Soviet period under the circumstances of Russian propaganda, which creates its own fake truth. The question is: what is normative ground for such positive or negative attitude towards the truth? The answer depends on our understanding what public space means and what the role of critics in the public space is? According to Jürgen Habermas, Öffentlichkeit (public space or just publicity) is not something given, but rather an opposition between polis and oikos, between public and private. Contemporary Öffentlichkeit is based on open parliamentarian debates, freedom of media and speech, and on public protest movements. Contemporary Öffentlichkeit was developed in the second part of the 19th century in democratic Western countries. Habermas maintains that the conditions of the Öffentlichkeit are debates and competition amongst public

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intellectuals (sceptics, true believers, and nihilists). However, he is not interested in the influences of manufactured consent by pr companies, in competition between intellectuals in the media market, or in the autonomy of dialogicity in Mikhail Bakhtin’s sense. There are differences between Habermas’ and my approach to public space. For Habermas communicative competition demands the principles of normativity, which could be based on sufficient reason, data and analysis of sources. But the post-Soviet Russian case tells us a different story, where the principles of normativity and communication ethics as such are negated. The recognition of the competition among public intellectuals, pr agencies and ideologists in the post-Soviet territory took a lot of time and academic research: the entire period from 1989 to 2019, i.e. thirty years. The problem was recognized by a few philosophers of post-Soviet countries. One of them was Vladimir Furs, from the Byelorussian European University. Furs has analyzed Hebarmasian considerations and maintains a view on the origin of publicity in the post-Soviet countries. Furs, being a philosopher, analyzed the problem of normativity, critical theory, and communicative conditions (Фурс 2000). A thoughtful concept of publicity was absent in the Soviet Union, even though it had “public spaces”, its “public”, and “publicity”. The Soviet Union had obligatory demonstrations of the First of May – Workers Day – and obligatory May 9th parades to celebrate the end of World War ii. Publicity didn’t function as a significant political concept, because of the absence of protest actions using freedom of speech. There were no free trade unions without Communist workers trade union that had to be loyal to the regime. Understanding the value of individuality and dissent did not exist nor was it left for heroes to risk ending up in mental hospitals or in prison. At this point it is important to note the conceptual difference between the Russian way of understanding ­publicity  – obchestvennost (in cyrillic: oбщественность) – and Western publicity. The Russian-Soviet content of the concept obchestvennost denotes organized opinion and the interests of working collectives and Communist trade unions, but not a public space for open debate. During the Soviet period, the conversation about public spaces was replaced by slogans about public events – общественное мероприятие, which were organized in accordance with the needs of propaganda and political power. The Communist government built the social reality in such a way that publicity was not considered a value and, therefore, was excluded as a civic debate form. The state of communicative reason was not sufficient for an appearance of the political agora, which would give an intellectually free platform for a local Socrates; whereas public speeches by nomenclature representatives, such as the chair of the proletariat trade union, were encouraged and unanimously approved.

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Gorbachev announced transparency (glasnost) and openness (otkrytost), but still not a freedom of speech, not publicity by Western standards, available for individuals. There were no ngos and their small politics. However, positive development for free opinions and publicity gradually took place and was supplemented by the birth of pr organizations. By the end of Perestroika the postSoviet Russia witnessed pr organizations offering manipulation techniques for the purpose of manufactured public opinion. The emergence of pr organizations in the Soviet Union began in 1989, which is the time of maximum popularity of dissidents, when they presented themselves as the speakers of truth for the people – “narod”. The two parallel events determined each other: the new interactive competition among devoted true believers, on the one hand, and instrumental, market oriented manufactured consent, on the other hand. However, the freedom of media gives birth to the media market, therefore, the genesis of pr agencies begins here (Шишкина 2002). Some offices of international pr agencies in Moscow were opened in the late 1980s. Probably the first “domestic” agency was “Nikkolo M” established as a “center of political consulting and professional consulting agency” in March 1989. A bit later, other pr agencies were created: “Image-Contact”, “Mission L”, then a bit later “The Image land of Public Relations”. In 1991 the idea arose to unite companies that would engage in the sphere of public relations. A Russian Association of Public Relations (rapr) was established. The idea was to overcome the trends of “dirty” pr with “black-and-white” rhetoric, because now the goal was to support the Russian manufacturers of media images. Their growth and success demonstrated technological advantage compared with the “naïve” dissidents, who continued to believe in the power of the honest persuasiveness of their talk, which, needless to say, was supposed to contain the truth. It is a paradox: the dissidents, who cared about the truth, didn’t pay attention to the conditions of the audiences for understanding their ideas, whereas pr agencies, who were not interested in the truth, were very precise in controlling how the audiences were to accept their messages. “Nikkolo M” concentrated its interests in the political elections and image making. This agency was also interested in the typologization of intelligentsia, leadership, and development of their own pr-Man. From the beginning, they followed Western leadership theories that were in opposition to the essential attitudes of the Soviet intelligentsia and were very anti-historian. Leadership was understood not as the result of one’s intellect, but as collection of characters, images, and styles of communication, including the input of the team that works to create the pr-Man. The agency also did not pay attention to the problem of normativity of Öffentlichkeit, but rather focused on the pragmatics

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of interrelations of power and the State, and later on the “verticallity of power”. One of the first books edited by “Nikkolo M” was: Politicians are not born: how to become and remain an effective political leader (Абашкина, ЕгороваГантман, Косолапова Ю, Разворотнева, Сиверцев 1993). The book presented the pr attitude: reality is a complex construction according to rational and irrational needs; they are ready to train leaders and their political character in the face of the new challenges. The role of history and considerations about the destiny of Narod (the Russian version of German Volk) was of secondary concern, since it was regarded as mere content, the only one model from many possible ones. “Nikkolo M” is still working now and is mainly oriented to regional power elections. It is interesting that “Nikkolo M” collaborated with the former Lithuanian president Rolandas Paksas in the period of 2003 before the impeachment of Paksas due to his submissiveness to Russian interests. The beginning of the 1990s was the time of discovery of techniques that had to be used for political identity formation. Prototypes were transformed into some marketable characters. Political roles were created by pr machines and pr specialists. The origin of the pr-Man is reflected in the novel written by Viktor Pelevin, titled Generation P (Пелевин 1999), where the writer presented the genesis of political advertising in parallel with the new consumerism. He also showed the post-Soviet Russian situation of the absolute absence of any stable political or economic or moral ground when chaos and corruption is present. If Andrei Sakharov’s criticism of society was based on conscience of civil responsibility, so the pr-Man was based on the idea of moral emptiness as described in Pelevin’s other book, titled Chapayev and Void, published in 1996. Emptiness and nihilism signify the absence of strong ideologies and values. Emptiness opens the space for both critical nihilism and commercial interests. The beginning of the post-Communist transitional period in Russia opened the free market and elementary democracy, however, it did not become a strong ideology; therefore, this period marked with the feeling of emptiness eroded previous values of the intelligentsia. Any self-representation of former intelligentsia or dissidents step by step was interpreted as some form of political self-advertising. Thus, since 1989 we have been watching how all previous “essentialisms” of the intelligentsia transformed into models, roles, and into some sort of commodities for pr. The new-old masks could be: continuation of being a Soviet intellectual in the humanities (an honored teacher, a respected librarian etc.) as if such a social role would compensate for the disorientation under new conditions of raw democracy and wild capitalism; the imagination of the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia or Eurasia, or continuing to be

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in the role of a dissident, as if such roles would be equally respected in post1989 era just as in the era of pre-1989. These groups underestimated that the post-1989 era is to produce new critical public intellectuals or political leaders. Those who were produced and reproduced by the pr agencies were wrapped in certain discourses and introduced to the society on Russian tv Shows. In this kind of commercial approach through tv shows, the Russian audience no longer needed to study the history of intellectual movements in order to understand the content of the new pr-Man, who was a wannabe social critic; for the audience now it was enough to be acknowledged with the cliché or models of them. pr agencies stereotyped the new social critics by applying short slogans. However, the invisible side for the audience successfully managed to hide the analytical work that was prepared for a pr-Man’s usage. More precisely, the audience did not know that a pr-Man is trained in research of mass consciousness, values, discursive stereotypes and symbols. Now the pr-Man was capable of providing the audience with historical examples of intelligentsia, illustrating his or her speeches with attractive pictures of pre-revolutionary idealists, respected soviet intelligentsia, or with the heroic struggles of the dissidents. The late Soviet intelligentsia, because of its deep historical education and thirst for new discourses, was ready to absorb many historical prototypes in order to form and present their own position. This could partly explain the future behavior of intellectuals after the early 1990s. The role of history in pr discourses is highly important not only for Russia, but for all Central-Eastern post-Soviet Europe. 3

The Diversity of Connotations of the Russian Word “Inteligient” and Its Counterpart the Western Intellectual

Mirroring repetitions are not just ideological manipulations, but correspond to the needs of intellectual commodities in the free market of symbols. The role of the pr-Man in the inversion of the dissidents’ images is hidden, because the dissidents present themselves as intellectuals or as a part of the intelligentsia. In order to understand this manipulative substitution, we must recall the history of the intelligentsia. Only a types of intelligentsia are associated with it: (a) pre-revolutionary intelligentsia characterized by their religious messianism and missionarism1 accompanied with the absence of a critical or pragmatic approach; (b) the Soviet intelligentsia characterized as a spineless group, partly indoctrinated; (c) the dissidents characterized as principled, wise, and brave 1 Missionarism – missionary attitudes.

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intellectuals; (d) contemporary Public Intellectuals, who work in the media and present their own critical interpretation of the current processes. Their differences are reflected in their language. The pr-Man presents them as possibilities for political roles. However, he could as well supply other models: religious, mystic, or Western. Many contemporary English books about the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia analyze mainly the pre-Perestroika period in an attempt to emphasize a linguistic cohesion, whereas we should be looking for the disagreement and misunderstanding in terms of linguistic meanings. For our analysis this separation of the Russian concept of “интелигент” (pronounced as “inteligient”, in English meaning a person of manners and higher level of education, the equivalent would be intelligent, but not an intellectual, who has education and independent thinking, but someone unconcerned with manners or appearance, the forms of etiquette), the critical Public Intellectual, and the pr-Man, is crucial. In the 19th century, Polish philosopher and Freemason Bronisław Trentowski coined the concept intelligentcja to support educated people ready to sacrifice in order to liberate disenfranchised and oppressed people. Polish messianism was related with the ideas of the divine nation, individual commitment, and collective resurrection. Władysław Tatarkiewicz provides a list of Polish messianists of the 19th century: “Wronski, Goluchowski and Trentowski, Kremer, Libelt and Cieszkowski, as well Mickiewicz, Krasinski and Slowacki – they were messianists” (Tatarkiewicz 1999). The history of Polish messianism demonstrates that from the beginning it had nothing common with the ideas of awakening of Narod (people, Volk), but it had more global ideas (messianism versus missionism). Andrzej Walicki explains this: […] an important mission of the Poles in defending the West against the Russian barbarians and spreading the light of Latin civilization in the Slavonic East […]- National aims were subordinated by them to the universal, religious aims. (Walicki 1978) Religious and civilizational messianism as an idea was formulated by Bronislaw Trentowski and Henryk Sienkiewicz. An especially interesting twist of messianism was formulated in terms of it no longer being the classic nationalist messianism, but a positive releasing of the society’s mission. Such development was based on the Polish idea of “organic work” (praca organiczna) ­(Blejwas 1994). The idea was that rebuilding the Polish nation and its sovereignty should transform messianist rebellions of aristocracy into a pragmatic mission of the “intelligencja”. The movement of “praca organiczna” characterizes the appearance of a new sort of a man: an “intelligient”.

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The process of nation-building and sacral liberation (not to be confused with liberal liberation) included many intellectual missions: primary education, the development of the national language and literature, the first steps of self-government, discussions about the constitutional monarchy and political mysticism. The Polish examples of “intelligentcja” and “organic work” influenced Russian “pre-Zapadniki” such as Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev in their last period of life. Herzen was much older than Sienkiewicz and didn’t use the concept of intelligent, but formulated ideas for critics of power and for the legal liberation of Narod. Herzen symbolized the transformation of messianism into pragmatic missions and originated Narodniks and Zapadniks. His later influence on the status and behavior of contemporary critical intellectuals is also important. Herzen became a sort of ideal for intellectual emigrants, romantically supported the future rebellion of Narod and invested in education and in the mission of political critics. Very soon his ideas were taken, adapted, and changed by the Russian movement “Narodniki”. 4

pr-Specters as Useful for the Manipulation of Memorials

Persuasive prototypes of the pr-Man correlate with the ideas that are popular in the marketplace of identities. To make matters more complicated than they are already, the persuasive prototypes function not only on the basis of historical data that is adapted for communication and pr management, but also as ghosts or specters, if we are to recall the title of Jacques Derrida’s book Specters of Marx. The ghosts of Derrida (from his Specters of Marx) appear on the margins of “desirable history”, i.e. the kind of history that one wishes to remember, glorify, and cultivate as some sort of the order, law, and internal principle. The heroes of such “desirable history” historically remain in the past tense, with its dead soldiers or dead innocent civilians; but today they echo the precept of honoring them in the name of justice. And it becomes a matter of personal and often of public conscience, if we are to mention national commemorations of the victims in wwii. In such cases, one has to feel that someone from an important part of history has given a precept, a kind of command to fulfill a certain duty. But if one fails, then conscience will be restless, troubled. For example, and this example comes from Derrida’s book, Shakespeare’s Hamlet receives from his dead father (who appears as a ghost) a command to take revenge on those who killed him. Thus, political rituals are supposed to invoke desirable ghosts or specters, and those rituals are meant not only to honor the dead, but more importantly

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to fulfill the command that they have given in the past tense. Let us call it “the duty of Hamlet”. The duty of Hamlet is to take seriously the ghost’s commandment. Although the father as the heroic king is dead, nevertheless for Hamlet the ghost and his commandment are alive. The entire communication of Hamlet is infected with the father-ghost precept or commandment to disclose the killer and revenge him. Thus, to fulfill the commandment of those whom one respects as heroes of the desirable history, which, of course, is gone, becomes topical. Moving away from the literature of Shakespeare to the reality of political commemorations, we may notice quite a similar thing: Russian glorification of the imagery of heroes of the October revolution 1917, then massive glorification of the millions of dead heroes of World War ii, was meant not only for the creation of a cult, but also for a replacement of the cult of religious communion. Monuments to heroes and parades of glorification to leaders became a public cult that invokes the ghosts. The May 9th parades (as wwii commemoration in Russia) recall a post-religious paganism. The Soviet people were brought up on these ghosts and rituals. Following Derrida, we can say that the origin of socially and politically significant ghosts requires appropriate rituals and distribution of the characters, and a repetitive structure of the ghost narrative. Above all, none of this can work well without pr projects that stretch nationwide. In the case of wwii glorification of the dead heroes – a wonderful example is when thousands of elderly women gather together with grandsons in Moscow on the annual May 9th parade carrying enlarged photos of the dead relatives – we see how the ritual is filled with characters and that the annually repeated structure of the ghost narrative is successfully broadcast by Russian tv and distributed on various internet media. More importantly, the commemoration parades for the occasion of May 9th are used by Putin as a platform for his own public relations. May 9th in Russia is the most important day ideologically for Russian identity as Europe’s liberator from the evil of Nazism. Putin personally congratulates the war veterans and commemorates the dead ones. He gives a speech about the role of the Red Army and the Soviet Union liberating Eastern European countries, including Berlin. Acting not only as the president, but also as a pr-Man, he uses the May 9th platform for his popularity. Although May 9th parades are militaristic for the memory of the dead ones, nevertheless, the parades have the mood of ­festivity – after all the main emphasis is on the victory in wwii. According to hauntology, the ghosts of history live together with our desires, memories, rituals, communication and they are afraid of critical psychoanalysis. The ghosts are also afraid of nihilism. Russian ghosts have become an important political argument and an element of public memorials since the

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Soviet times. The situation is not unique, because very similar techniques of reference have been used before. One example is from France, where the myth of Voltaire and the Enlightenment is used. When Jean-Paul Sartre was actively involved in the 1968 student revolt, he was arrested, but immediately released by the order of de Gaulle, because “one does not imprison Voltaire”. Maurice Blanchot commented in winged words: We know de Gaulle’s verdict, according to a rumor: ‘One does not imprison Voltaire’. What a strange confusion and what a regrettable exclusion. De Gaulle forgot – was it disdain for culture or the momentary lack of it? – that Voltaire precisely was imprisoned in the Bastille for close to a year because of satirical verses attacking the Regent, who well deserved it. (Blanchot 2010) Blanchot presented an excellent example how the imaginary models work in politics. De Gaulle used the image of Voltaire for arguing in favor of his own solution. In order to prove the legitimacy of Perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev made many references to Andrei Sakharov and his memorials after his death: “They were suppressed and expelled from the country, but their moral stand and their proposals for change (for example, the ideas of Andrei Sakharov) played a considerable role in creating the spiritual preconditions for Perestroika”(Gorbachev 2000). Historical-political argumentation became an example for political rhetoric and pr, also for the speechwriters. They separated everyday pragmatics from the spirit of time and ideals. Pragmatic argumentation sought economic and security benefits for society, whereas the Russian spirituality was left for history issues and the domain of morality (Voltaire, Sartre, Herzen, Sakharov), and arguments about the ideals opened the ultimate goals: from socialism with a human face to strong Russia in a multi-polar world (Vladimir Putin’s ideology today). All the differences had to be recognized by the speechwriters and pr agencies. The phenomenon of speechwriters resembles the actions of the pr-Man, because they seek to find the best arguments, including references to famous intellectuals. Gorbachev’s speechwriter Anatoly S. Chernyaev remembers: “I told him that in this case he would love Solzhenitsyn… He has depth and mystery of Russian meaning not only in every word, but in the spaces between the words. Gorbachev did not say anything. He has not read “October of 1916” or “March of 1917” […]”(Chernyaev 2010). Voltaire was an aristocrat and did not have much to do with “people”. Herzen, Sakharov, and Solzhenitsyn were the exceptions. And they are used for the

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legitimization of the new national Spirit. It was not about desires and hopes of social groups, not about the psyche of the masses, but about the imagined “truth of history”. It was the period when political myths were influential without strong propaganda by the state. The famous names helped to promote the imagined “truth of history”. It is convenient to construct contemporary power by demonstrating friendship with famous writers or philosophers. However, there are some semiotic and mythic subtleties. First of all, we should pay attention to the aristocratic prototypes during the decline of the Soviet Union. The most influential prototypes of aristocracy in Russia in the phase of late Soviet Union were the Decembrists and the people close to them: Aleksander Pushkin and Pyotr Chaadaev. If to compare with other countries, the most influential prototypes of aristocracy in Lithuania and Poland during the phase of the late Soviet Union were the aristocracy of uprising of 1785 and 1831, and those who were close to them, for example, the writer Adam Mickiewicz. The other Russian examples were Herzen and Leo Tolstoy, who really were a part of the awakening movements for liberation of the people. Because V. Lenin wrote articles about them (Lenin 1973), these names became a cliché for the soviet speechwriters and Communist leaders. To quote Herzen and Tolstoy with reference to Lenin was a literal style for popular speeches. The aristocratic references practically disappear during the Perestroika reforms of 1987–1990, but they start to reappear again to the publicity in 1990– 1991 together with the birth of Public Intellectuals and key persons for the public space (Öffentlichkeit). Former Soviet dissidents who in the 1990s already were post-Soviet dissidents supported freedom of speech. The new political individuals didn’t need aristocracy references. However, the Russian nationalists of late Soviet Union and of early post-Soviet Union quoted slavophiles, including raznochintsy (in Cyrillic разночинцы), i.e. people of miscellaneous ranks, who also included aristocracy. Dissidents, nationalists, and Soviet intelligentsia argued differently. I remember this from when I was a student of the faculty of Philosophy of Leningrad State University, where the thought of Decembrists was taught. The Decembrist revolt took place in Russia on December 1825. Aristocratic officers from famous families, about 3,000 soldiers, went to protest against Tsar Nicholas I. The revolt was cruelly suppressed. The Soviet propaganda presented the Decembrists as an example of heroic devotion of a small part of the Enlightened aristocracy and criticized them for the absence of class ideology and the absence of resolution and actions. The Decembrists became one of the icons of the Soviet propaganda and pr models. The other and even more important figures for the Perestroika period were the noblemen, and specifically the philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev. He was a

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friend of a poet Alexander Pushkin and supporter of ideas of the Decembrists (in the period of the revolt he was abroad). Chaadayev presented a radical critique of the political and mental attitudes of Imperial Russia. From 1988 to 1990 he became a very influential political example for the new public intellectuals. Chaadaev’s texts were read as those of a contemporary thinker, as a direct predecessor of Berdyaev, but not of Solzhenitsyn and not of Sakharov, because the Soviet system of education tried to separate historical past from the present. However, the media market transformed Chaadayev from A to A’, to the commodity, to the spectacle or a discursive icon. It no longer mattered what he had actually said himself. The more important thing was that at the end of the Soviet Union he represented “glasnost” in terms of Perestroika times. Contemporary pr technologies manipulate the specters of the past by using it as one of the most significant elements of persuasion. The simplest examples are: memorial plaques, which accumulate symbolic capital and re-signify urban spaces. More effective and the most significant case for manipulating the specters is the marches of the “Immortal regiment” (Бессмертный полк). During those marches participants carry photos of soviet soldiers killed in World War ii. The marches are organized in Russia and abroad, especially in the post-Soviet countries since 2012 and serve as significant propaganda events. Thousands of photos of dead soldiers create the atmosphere of mysterious ghosts, who are invoked and have their influences. However, the manipulation with the specters are much greater than that – it includes the p ­ re-Revolutionary aristocracy, and not only the family of Tsar Nicolai ii, but many of “dvoryans” (landlords having aristocratic identity). 5

The Origin of the Russian Intelligentsia and the Social “Layer”

The first Russian “inteligients” were raznochintsy (in cyrillic: разночинцы) – people of miscellaneous ranks, as mentioned earlier.2 Becoming a man of rank (chinovnik a kind of bureaucracy person in administration, a functionary) was 2 The title “Raznochintsy” sometimes is translated as a “people of various ranks” or “people of diverse origins”. I think the concept of miscellaneous is better, because it emphasizes one characteristic of them instead of the multiplicity of the group. Wirtschafter, E.K. Imperial Russia’s “People of Various Ranks”. Northern Illinois University Press, Year: 1994. I agree that from point of the history of origin, raznochintsy were people of various ranks. Wirtschafter emphasizes a legal negative description of the concept in the 18th century: they are not noblemen, nor they are peasants, nor they are merchants. They belonged to other identities. And they were invited for work in the state apparatus and could get an education, including university. Step by step raznochintsy subsumed some united characteristic, which we call a miscellaneous.

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essential in imperial Russia, in order to complement the concept of a nobleman. A nobleman was understood by his origin and blood status. Chinovnik was accepted by position in the state; it was a rank. The concept of “intelligentsia” was not used for the description of him: a rank was an essential characteristic of a person. If one did not have the identity of a rank, then that person was nobody. Today the concept of raznochintsy isn’t used for the description of new members of an apparatus of power or state bureaucracy system in Russia, but the schema of understanding of “chin” in “chin-ovnik” (function-ary) is still the same: this is the essential characteristic of a human being in the system of bureaucracy. Contemporary Russian chinovniks, those functionaries in the State apparatus, portray themselves as a prestigious and hegemonic political class with some elements of pr in combination with corruption. Because of the logic of the nomenklatura class, the concept of raznochintsy became topical in our time. Contemporary political imaginary tries to interpret raznochintsy from spiritual perspective, also revealing raznochintsy as mobile strata in the social ladder of ranks (Феофанов 2014). Ordinary raznochintsy were educated children by personal tutors, who were hired by dvoryans (landlords having aristocracy identity), or by discharged military, but also and quite often by bastards of the aristocracy. The latter were not noblemen, nor were they peasants, nor Jewish, but had a good education and were angry about the civil condition of society and their rights. The famous raznochintsy – miscellaneous persons – were writers and literary critics as well as soft critics of political power, including: Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Dobroliubov and later Nikolay Leskov and Anton Chekhov. In the Soviet times, after the social estates of the Russian Empire (called soslovie) were demolished in the name of proletarian equality, a new concept of a social layer (прослойка) originated. Today the diversity of social layers has some similarities with the miscellaneous persons. The Soviet idea to insert a social layer between the class of proletariat and the class of peasants show how important it was for the Soviet authorities to hide the class of intellectuals. The concept of raznochintsy expresses the problem of educated and creative individuals better: they were not inferior and they belonged to chinovniki. The question is as follows: is the contemporary Russian State in the 21st century an essential condition for the existence of the chinovniki class? From the beginning chinovninki were in the search of their roots, but in the end some of them ended up with a myth of (and for) their roots. One of the answers to the question is that they were those who served the nation, its people, which in Russian, as mentioned before, means Narod. Hence

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the term Narodniks (in Russian: народники, populists). In the 19th century Narodniks were more than just individuals, they also created a politically conscious movement of the Russian educated people. This political movement, mostly after the 1860s, provoked thinking about the essential mission for the people, mostly peasants (Ляшенко 1989). They became the first representatives of the national revelation of unique Polish, Lithuanian, or Russian spirit. Their visionary was known as narodnichestvo, in the sense of going to the masses of people, to the peasants to embrace their community nature. Although uneducated, the peasants spoke like Communists willing to share in the Spirit of Christianity (Prokofieff 1993). At this point of the 19th century Communism and Christianity do not contradict one another, but they are complementary. Contradiction comes later, after the Bolshevik revolution that introduced militaristic atheism, by force closing churches, arresting church servants, and forbidding religious literature. The common slogan among populists was “walking to the people”. Although their movement has achieved little in its time, Narodniki were largely intellectual people and had enormous influence on Russian history later in the 20th century. Narodniki inspired the radical intelligentsia of pre-October revolution of 1917, including the Vekhi, Smenovekhovcy and pre-war Eurasianism. Vekhi (Вехи, 1909) is a collection of essays mainly focused on the role of “inteligients”. Solzenitcyn developed his own position from Vekhi and unsuccessfully tried to continue them in a more or less nationalistic direction after the decline of the Soviet Union: The fatal ideas of the Russian pre-revolutionary educated strata were thoroughly considered in the Vekhi – and indignantly rejected by all intelligentsia, all party directions from the Cadets to the Bolsheviks. The prophetic depth of the Vekhi did not find (and the authors knew that they would not find) sympathy for readers in Russia, did not affect the development of the Russian situation, did not prevent disastrous events. Soon the title of the book, exploited by another group of authors (Smiena Viekh – “Смена вех”) of narrow political interests and low level, began to mix, fade and disappear from the memory of new Russian educated generations, especially the book itself from the state Soviet libraries. But even in 60 years, the testimony has not faded away: Vekhi seem to us as if they were sent from the future…. (Солженицын 1974) The main idea of the populists-inteligients was to awaken the spiritual revelation of the peasants. For that purpose the peasants had to be educated, civically awakened and encouraged to strive for a “bright life”. The same idea was

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used not only among Russians, but among many of peoples of the Russian Empire: Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, etc. It was an application of the abstract idea of Narod dignity and Christian divinity to the uneducated masses, of course, without deep analysis of the peasants’ desires, their capabilities, or their labor ownership relationships. The idea was so strong that even some aristocrats, such as classic Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, disbelieved in salvation through the king or tsar, and turned to the awakening of the spirit of the people. Was it possible for the Narodniks to evolve into public intellectuals? It seems so, as in Berdyaev’s case with his transformations. Why and how did the Bolsheviks use brutal power to transform the concept and the movements of the Narodniki intelligentsia, who had their successful pre-revolutionary 1917 intelligentsia experience by awakening the spirit of the peasants? The Intelligentsia was considered by the Bolsheviks to be representatives of the petite bourgeoisie. Marx, Trotsky and Lenin were also its representatives. So why did Lenin hate them so much, if he himself had a similar social class identity? The answer is not so much about the class struggle, but rather, I think, it was about personal hatred based on many traumas related to a lack of recognition. According to Leninists, the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia was opportunistic, and this sort of intelligentsia did not feel the spirit of revolution or the spirit of the proletariat, and it didn’t understand the materialistic tendencies of history and class struggle. The real reason of this hatred was hiding behind such arguments, i.e. subjective reason, and not the objective needs. The decline of Communism from 1989–1991 meant the resurrection of the ideas of the Narodniks – suddenly, with the process of the collapsing of the Soviet Union and its failed socialism of Bolshevik origins, the ideas of socialism that belonged to the Narodniki before the Revolution of 1917 temporarily became alive yet again in spite of the fact that Russia eventually turned towards the Western ideology of free marktets and a neoliberal economy. Nevertheless, we encounter the situation of transformation of the historical Narodniki (N) into N’ (some model of pr presentation, some mask for media market). However, later, from 1991 to 2019, their ideas became marginal and were used mostly for regional pr persuasion. N’ is mostly important for the regional political imaginary. The same is true of the soviet intelligentsia. The images of them (S’) could be popular for the election of municipalities, for the smallest self-governing. In contemporary Russia we see many pr strategies: for the Kremlin, for big cities (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg), for regional and smaller cities. Different rhetoric is provided. The oligarchs present themselves as devoted to aristocracy,

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whereas poor intellectuals are invited to imitate the Narodniks: to serve the spirit of “simple people”. 6

The Soviet Intelligentsia

As we search for the origins of the Soviet intelligentsia we should look at the period of the decline of the Narodniks. The need to create Soviet power demanded new people who would be educated in industrial technologies and construction engineering. This demand was expressed in N. Bukharin’s multiple texts that were devoted to technical propaganda in the period of industrialization of the Soviet Union. He emphasized the need of the Soviet Republics for a new sort of technical or instrumental “intelligentsia”. In his program’s speech we find the slogan: “School, public, technical propaganda”(Бухарин 1931). Later, in 1932, the newspaper “Technical propaganda” (edited every two weeks), under editorship of Bukharin, began a persuasion strategy for the development of new sort of soviet engineers. The newspaper was the body of the technical Program of People’s Commissariat of heavy industry of the Soviet Union. Technical propaganda formulated the tasks for the new type of the Soviet intelligentsia: to prepare qualified labor power for the needs of socialism and to provide rapid industrialization of the country (Kendall 2015). Later they received more and more technical tasks: to make a nuclear weapon, to produce military missiles, and to build nuclear power stations. The agitation was to develop the intelligentsia on the platform of industrialization without any ideas of active participation in the sphere of the political life. Later every General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (cpsu) formulated the demands for the Communist nomenclature and intelligentsia. For example, Yuri Andropov in 1982 and later Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, formulated the principle of the Uskoreniye (acceleration) of the economy, first of all the production of heavy industry, including the development of nuclear industries. This was not only the task for all Communist party committees, engineers and economists, but also the main task for the entire “technical” propaganda for the masses of engineers. The catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 in the territory of the former Soviet Ukraine stopped the illusion of separation of intelligentsia from being active citizens, who should be involved into the sphere of the politics. The failure of uskoreniye – economy acceleration – determined new content for the project of “Perestroika”. However, the images of the technical Soviet intelligentsia – engineers and teachers – are still alive and are usually used for the persuasion of geologists,

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engineers, railway construction builders, who work hard in the harsh climate conditions of Siberia and Arctic parts of Russia; the images of the technical Soviet intelligentsia are also used for the glorification of the Soviet and postSoviet natural resources of the gas, oil, and coal industries – the core of the Russian economy. Thus, this imagery of the technical intelligentsia still functions as one of the instruments for pr of political-economy. Moreover, the company “Russian Railways” has till today been investing into this sort of technical persuasion in order to support the motivation of exploitation of technical labor in Siberia. However, officially the technical Soviet intelligentsia was an imaginary layer between peasants and workers, something of a “smaller value”. There were two de-classed strata of society: technical intelligentsia and Lumpen proletariat, which consisted of millions of refugees and homeless after the civil war in the Soviet Russia. World War ii also added refugees and homeless people. On the contrary, the nominated proletariat – the builder of socialism – was full of respect and portrayed as the architect and even as the engineer of the bright future. The Soviet type of intelligentsia could appear only in socialist countries. Soviet intelligentsia couldn’t seek to enlighten the ruling Central Committee of the Communist party (cpsu), which was considered all-knowing and a­ ll-seeing. The intelligentsia couldn’t sacrifice itself and the people, because the workers were considered more advanced. Their only mission was to educate future workers and party workers or to play a supporting role in the economy. However, the development of the consciousness of the intelligentsia developed differently from the cpsu. The history of the rebirth and decline of the Soviet intelligentsia was described in the book by Vladislav Zubok titled Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Zubok 2009). An important feature of the Soviet intelligentsia was its resistance to any financial speculation for additional profit, because they considered themselves to be the guardians of the Soviet or Communist morality. The lack and denial of entrepreneurial skills, criticism of the nomenclature bureaucracy and at the same time full dependence on the nomenclature, made the Soviet intellectuals completely apathetic to any reforms, but ready to respond positively to any call of the Communist party. And when Gorbachev announced Perestroika in 1985, they fervently supported him even without really understanding what it meant. The entire Perestroika period from 1985–1991 was a slow awakening. 7

The Origin of a Critical Public Intellectual

I relate the origin of public and critical intellectuals, who would be of a liberal Western type, with the Congress of People of the Soviet Union (Съезд

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народных депутатов СССР) in 1989–1991. The Congress of People presented a conflict between the Communist nomenklatura, nationalist intellectuals (for example from the Baltic states) and the first public intellectuals, like Andrey Sakharov (in 1989). Sakharov was the deputy and had the privilege to express not only his own, but also the opinion of many other dissidents (e.g. Sergei Kovalev, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Yelena Bonner and others). All of them represented historically significant intellectuals as well as the re-birth of the spirit of Shestidesyatniki (the persons of 1960s) – everything from sympathies towards the imaginary humanist socialism to the dissidents and critics of Soviet authoritarianism. The discussions and drives between soviet intelligentsia, representatives of nomenklatura, nationalist intelligentsia and critical intellectuals were presented on newspapers and tv screens and became models of selforientation for many of Soviet intelligentsia and the first interest of pr companies. One of the examples of the conflict between dissidents and nationalist intelligentsia is a dispute between the philosopher Merab Mamardashvili (1930– 1990), who presented the critical spirit of Shestidesyatniki, and Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1939–1993), Georgian dissident, later nationalist and President of Georgia (1991–1992). The main split was between an existential understanding of freedom as a continuous individual attempts and actions (Mamardashvili) and a political understanding of independence as an ordering and ruling (Gamsakhurdia). It shows how the concept of a “dissident” is unclear and many dissidents supported the idea of the power of rulers, some sort of national substitution of nomenklatura. Mamardashvili considered freedom as a critic of the internal soviet man, as a soviet style of thinking, whereas Gamsakhurdia emphasized “philological nationalism” with references to the Georgian mythology of the intelligentsia of the 19th century and his own true knowledge of national discourse and power (Майсурадзе 2007). Those who disagreed with his national idea he called Communists, or traitors, or representatives of the kgb. The conflict shows how difficult it was to separate the positions of a critical Public Intellectual and that of a nationalist intelligentsia member (Sabanadze 2010). However, I don’t agree with the opinion that Nationalism could be equated to Bolshevism: “As the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili commented on the victory of nationalists: “in Georgia, Bolshevism won in its purest form”, echoing Adam Michnik’s characterization of nationalism as the last stage of Communism”(Sabanadze 2010). For us more important is the fact of strong separation between new public intellectuals, like Mamardashvili (existentialist, Georgian philosopher) or Adam Michnik (Polish dissident, defender of democratic ideals) and nationalist dissents, like Zviad Gamsakhurdia (Georgian politician) or Romualdas ­Ozolas (Lithuanian philosopher, nationalist) in 1990. At the end of the Soviet

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Union the new media market was interested in representation of similar conflicts, in explanation of the disputes. The media market needed analysis of political identities, a political imaginary. The new media had to find a new approach to historical, philosophical, and psychological differences. In contrast to the classical history of philosophy or the history of ideas, political imagemakers were not looking for truth or essence, but for a specific character, ways or roles of thinking, life and storytelling, regardless of historical truth. It was not about lies or meanness, but about result-oriented actions. Many magazines, newspapers, and publishing houses used the image of Shestidesyatniki: for example, “Novyj Mir” [The New World] or “Literaturnaja Gazeta” [Literature Newspaper], became profitable because of publishing the dissidents, like Solzhenytsin (Солженицын 1990). However, Shestidesyatniki had split into nationalists, public, and critical intellectuals. The first political advertising presented the road of dissident people as an attractive form of liberation; they were a living example of the principles of freedom of speech and critical thinking, but only for the very short time of the Velvet revolution: 1989– 1991. Did they present real success stories for people after 1992? They did not, because after 1992 people, i.e. the audience, understood success only in the terms of real political power, big money, or entertainment popularity. The other needs were presented by the new state’s ideology in order to legitimize new forms of administration for the ruling class and to implement new forms of behaviour for the citizens. And the state needed pr and Media agencies as well. At the same time, some people were in search of a new intelligentsia character of their own, because the old prototypes of intelligentsia were broken. The new-old narratives of intelligentsia were presented immediately by publishing and pr agencies. It was books by Chaadayev (Чаадаев 1991), as an example of western oriented critical aristocracy, as pre-Zapadnik. For example, the edition of the two volumes of Chaadayev’s full collected works printed 58 000 copies were sold out immediately. But what of its influence, and its effect on the Russian imperial mentality? The books were read not only by regular citizens but also by philosophers who afterwards wrote many comments that were useful for pr needs. Later, journalist and public critic Victor Shenderovich frequently emphasized that he follows the ideas of Chaadayev, Herzen and Sakharov. No doubt Shenderovich read slowly and carefully the above-mentioned authors. However, many of the political activists made reference to following the Soviet quotes. For example, Mikhail Khodarkovsky (Селин 2010)3 made references similar to Lenin’s in the article: “On 3 Селин О.В. (сост.). Михаил Ходорковский. Поединок с Кремлём. Москва: Алгоритм. 2010.

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the memory of Herzen” (Lenin 1975). This means that the discussions about the aforementioned historical references are still relevant. 8

Piárscik – the pr-Man

The critical intellectuals were step-by-step shoved aside by the pr-Man starting from the beginning of 1990s. As a result, the media market grabbed the majority of power and it continues until today. The Russian slang name piárscik (which comes from the piar consulting company) means a public-relations manager, public-relations specialist, or even an activist, also a public intellectual, but with the skills of manipulation, game, and art. As we can see, the concept of a pr-Man is more instrumental, less philosophical than the dissident and the public intellectual. Institutionalization of pr companies, developing of their policy, politics, strategies, tactics, methods, technologies, researches, and data-collection, transformed them into influencers. The real power of the pr-Man began somewhere around 1997 or 1998. Symbolically, the Russian rapr became a member of the European Confederation of pr (cepr), in cooperation with the American pr society (prsa), starting in 1997. Later, many intellectuals were involved in this media sphere. For example, one of the members of rapr is a philosopher, pr analyst, writer and Kremlin lobbyist, Roman Maslennikov (Szucs 2018). We can find numerous examples of highly qualified intellectuals who are involved in the pr sphere. Piárscik also means any participant of the media market with a professional attempt of advertising, propaganda enforcing, counter-propaganda making, the promotion of ideas or leaders, branding, or counter-branding. This is a new situation: pr companies start to care less about the content and more about moderating platforms and rules for mass pr. It started somewhere around 2003 in the United States. It was approximately 2008 when the social networks in Russia began spreading out. The importance and technical possibilities of the internet social networks allowed pr-writers and users to become ­p r-males-and-females – whatever their true or fake identity is provided on their true or fake internet account. I call this situation to be self-spectacle or even the self-spectaclization, because the “account user” of Facebook or of Twitter transforms personal attendance in public life into personal entertainment. Now everyone can be his or her own piárscik. Piárscik transforms all human reality into members of the global market of news, or infotainment. And pr companies pay more attention to the regulation, promotion, and re-selling of their activities. Even war and blood become elements of infotainment. And the “wonderful sorcerer” is piárscik. In his or

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her essence s/he is empty: no values, no ideologies, no religion, he is a creature of the media market, it’s a fish in a lake of pr companies. S/he needs the desire to be in the info-media. Thus, the situation in 2019 is completely different than in 1989. In contrast, the dissidents of “truth” dreamed of how to liberate civil society from totalitarian propaganda in 1989, how to liberate every person; they, i.e. the dissidents, were thinking from the personal depth of internal enslavement (Mamardashvili). However, the social and technological transformations directed the internet users towards the acceptance of the matrix of the pr promoters and content producers. For example, the Deputy of Russian Parliament Vladimir Zhirinovsky – ­essentially he is the only charismatic political showman. Political content performances help him to be not only the leader of the ldpr party, but one of the most influential politicians in Russia. Who developed him? Many media platforms. One of the most influential is the Russian propaganda television channel Russia-1, which is the number one of all of the channels of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (vgtrk). This is the most powerful media network in Russia. One of the most famous programs is a political tv talk show: “Duel on Rossiya 1” and “An Evening With Vladimir Solovyov”. Vladimir Solovjov is the host of the show. He frequently invites Zhirinovsky on his show. For what reason, if the Russian audience knows that Zhirinovsky is a political clown? Apparently being a political clown is much less important than the level of popularity. Zhirinovsky’s popularity ranking has influence on the popularity of Solovyov’s tv show during which the righteousness of Putin regarding his policies is debated. This is how the political ideas of the Kremlin work. What is the possible role of the critical intellectual in this situation? Would it be participation in tv propaganda duels? This is surely naïve. There are other possibilities: e.g. to be an ironic nihilist inside of the Matrix and to support the Others outside the media market. For example, we may take the example of one of the leaders of radical Kremlin opposition, Alexey Navalnyj. He does what we are here discussing. He is completely ironic and nihilistic, and is a harsh critic of Russia’s vertical system of power, including the media market. Being in this position of opposition, he participates in the matrix. Being outside of the Kremlin’s matrix and being against the current goverment, Navalnyj, in spite of many arrests, supports protest actions and tries to create an alternative dissident political network. The same tactics are used by many other protest activists in contemporary Russia. Contrary to Solzhenitsyn, many hard-core true-believers of the Soviet intelligentsia and critical Public Intellectuals didn’t accept the pr rules of the media market and as a consequence they lost their political influence. An good

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example of this is the famous dissident Sergei Kovalev, who still believes in the heart and mind of the conscience of the people. This is morally beautiful, but politically insignificant. Public intellectuals like him lost their political influence prior to the 21st century, sometime around 1998, at the time of the victory of pr companies. The dissidents lost their influence in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and later in the post-Soviet Asian countries. An exception is, for example, the activism of the Polish dissident Adam Michnik, who is the founder of the daily Gazeta Wyborcza (“Election Newspaper”) from 1989, and who invested his criticism into the media market. Václav Havel is another example of an exception, who became the last President of the Czechoslovakia and the first of President of the Czech Republic in the post-socialist era. This was a very painful political situation and he solved these challenging tasks in the media market. But Havel and Michnik are not from the cultural and political territory of Russian Eastern Europe, with its heritage of the Soviet Union; they are from the Warsaw Pact Central Europe. It is hard to imagine that Sakharov or Solzhenytsin would have managed to use the media market for promoting their legendary personas so successfully that they would become the presidents of post-Soviet Russia. It is hard to imagine that their names would function successfully during the presidential elections in the successful ways that the name of Václav Havel did, just because they were famous dissidents. 9 Conclusions The Soviet education was always aimed at educating “true believers” in the Communist party leaders – the iconic Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The Soviet education was completely rejected after its collapse: public intellectuals demanded alternatives and the pr-market provided new images of pr-Men. At first, when the public intellectuals and critical thinkers refused to accept the services of pr-agencies, it was the refusal on idealistic grounds of a true believer in human essence and in the meaning of a dissident who believes in the “truth”. Soon the refusal and the critique of pr-Men and pr-agencies became fruitless, and the true essence of an authentic public intellectual became an illusion. The post-Soviet education had no critical tools for analysing contemporary Russian public relations and how public consent was manufactured along with “democratic opinions”. Many Narodniks and persons of the Soviet intelligentsia considered themselves to be “mature” and devoted intellectuals. They passionately yet blindly

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followed the ideas in which they believed as “mature” intellectuals. The Soviet system presupposed that you couldn’t become “mature” by your own efforts in your own family or in your private life. Only the workers class or state control could turn you into a mature person – a representative Builder of Communism. But what difference does it make if we turn the Builder of Communism into the Builder of a Good Society or an open neoliberal society? What changes then in terms of a “true belief”? In this sense, the pr-Man is more honest and tells us that we will never be mature, that Enlightenment in the Kantian sense is impossible. However, the pr-Man doesn’t give us a chance to be self-­ responsible in the process of continuous becoming, continuous transformation. The pr-Man declares that s/he will care about our essential immaturity for pragmatic purposes as piarsciks would do. Now the critique reaches citizens in a different way, i.e. for inability to create self-piar and gain popularity via the techniques of a pr-Man. We are no longer criticized for the lack of maturity in terms of Communist expectations (to sacrifice for one “true” political system) nor in terms of nationalistic expectations (to sacrifice for one “true” nation, your home land) nor in terms of religious fundamentalism (to sacrifice for one “true” God). Naturally we may talk about the crisis of an authentic Public Intellectual during the last thirty years. The Critical Public Intellectual, whose social and political critique in Russia comes from his or her heart, experiences deeper and deeper crisis due to the lack of skills to accept, analize, and criticize the new media reality created by the pr-Man. The hope is for a new generation that knows how to criticize the regime using new media technologies and possibilities. The case of the Pussy Riot, which was supported by Madonna, gives hope that there is a way for honest dissent. References Blanchot, M. (2010) Political Writings, 1953–1993. Fordham University Press. Blejwas, St. (1974) “Organic work as a problem in Polish historiography”, in: Slavic Studies, Nr. 19: pp. 191–205. Chernyaev, A.S. (2010) The Diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev, 1990. The National Security Archive. Coalson, R. (2017) “Putin and Alekseyeva: A Study In Contrasts”, July 21, 2017, Radio Free Europe, – https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-alekseyeva/28630962.html (Accessed 07 April 2019). Gorbachev, M. (2000) On my country and the world. Columbia University Press.

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Kendall, B. (2015) Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin. Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941. Princeton University Press. Lenin, V. (1973) “Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution”, Proletary No. 35, September 11 (24), 1908. (Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1973, Moscow, Volume 15, pp. 202–209). Lenin, V. (1975) “In Memory of Herzen”, Sotsial-Demokrat No. 26, May 8 (April 25), 1912. (Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 18, pp. 25–31). Prokofieff, S. (1993) The Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe, and the Future Mysteries of the Holy Grail. London: Temple Lodge Publishing. Sabanadze, N. (2010) Globalization and Nationalism. The Cases of Georgia and the Basque Country. Budapest: ceu Press. Szucs, I, Maslennikov, R. (2018) Explosive Pr. North Carolina: Lulu Press, Inc. Tatarkiewicz, Wł. (1999) Historia filozofii. Tom iii. Wydawnictwo Naukowe pwn. Walicki, A. (1978) “Polish romantic messianism in comparative perspective”. The Slavic Studies, No 22, pp. 1–15. The Hokkaido University. Wirtschafter, E.K. (1994) Imperial Russia’s ‘People of Various Ranks’. Northern Illinois University Press. Zubok, Vl. (2009) Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Абашкина, Е., Егорова-Гантман, Е., Косолапова, Ю., Разворотнева, С., Сиверцев, М. (1993) Политиками не рождаются: как стать и остаться эффективным политическим лидером. Москва: «Никколо М», «Антиква». Бухарин, Н.И. (1931) „Школа, общественность, техническая пропаганда“: [речь на Всероссийской конференции по производственному обучению в ФЗС, 13 августа 1931 г.]. Москва: Учпедгиз. Чаадаев П.Я. ( 1989) Статьи и письма. Москва: Современник. Чаадаев П.Я. (1991) Полное собрание сочинений и избранные письма. В 2 томах. Москва: Наука. Вѣхи ( 1909) Сборникъ статей о русской интеллигенціи. Феофанов. А.М. (2014) “Духовное сословие и социальная мобильность: феномен «разночинцев» как предмет социальных исследований”, – Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. Серия 2: История. История Русской Православной Церкви. C. 139–145. Фурс, В.Н. (2000) Философия незавершенного модерна Ю. Хабермаса. Минск, Эконом-пресс. Ляшенко, Л.М. (1989) Революционные народники. Москва: Просвещение. Майсурадзе, З.А. (2007) „Грузия-1990: филологема независимости, или Неизвлеченный опыт“, НЛО No: 83. – http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2007/83/an10 .html (Accessed 05 May, 2019). Пелевин, В.О. (1999) Generation «П». Москва: Вагриус.

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Селин О.В. (сост.). (2010) Михаил Ходорковский. Поединок с Кремлём. Москва: Алгоритм. Солженицын А. (1974) “На возврате дыхания и сознания”, in: «Из-под глыб», Париж: ИМКА-Пресс. Солженицын А. (1990) “В круге первом”, Новый мир, № 01. Шишкина, М.А. (2002) Паблик рилейшнз в системе социального управления, Санкт-Петербург: Паллада-медиа, СЗРЦ РУСИЧ.

Chapter 10

From Ideology of Culture to Cultural Critique: Kultūros barai Journal and the Changing Roles of Lithuanian Intellectuals (1989–2019) Almantas Samalavičius 1 Introduction The aim of this essay is to analyze how the roles and responsibilities of intellectuals have shifted since 1989 when Lithuania set out on the road to freedom and broke away from the Soviet Union that had occupied and eventually colonized the country in 1939 using the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and again at the end of wwii in 1945 under the pretext of “liberation”. The focus is on the journal Kultūros barai [Domains of Culture], a monthly publication with a lengthy publishing history. This journal has contributed significantly to the making of public space for intellectual issues and debates since the spectacular fall of the Soviet regime in the Baltics and East-Central Europe. Intellectuals have always been important in the cultural and political contexts of East-Central Europe. Lithuania is no exception. The enduring importance of Eastern European intellectuals is verified by their ambiguous situation, controversies, and moral choices under Communist regimes (Konrad and Shelenyi , 1979; Milosz, 1991; Bauman, 1989) and the changing roles they had to perform after the fall of totalitarianism and experience of post-Communist transformations (Bozoki, 1998; King and Shelenyi, 2004; Samalavičius, 2007; Bradan and Dushakine, 2010). Journals have been extremely important for East-Central European intellectuals not only as tools for dissemination of ideas and opinions, but also because periodicals allowed them to communicate with both their peers and larger layers of their societies. The role of various publications in giving voices to dissenting intellectuals is well known: the well-researched samizdat tradition in East-Central Europe has played its part in exchanges between intellectuals and their audiences under Communism as well as its subsequent avatars in the region (Saunders, 1974; Kovacz and Labov, 2013). In addition to samizdat publications, however, there were some important official journals supervised and controlled by the authorities that, nevertheless, contributed to establishing a certain level of

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intellectual culture in the era when control and censorship prevailed. Their role in reshaping the intellectual culture in various countries deserves a closer scrutiny. Kultūros barai journal seems to make a perfect case for this kind of analysis. The journal was founded in the year 1965 and was considered to be an important cultural periodical during the Soviet period. Moreover, it became the largest and leading cultural journal reflecting on society, and culture and its values after the epochal rupture in 1989 when the Iron Curtain of Communism fell down. By timely reconsidering the journal’s structure, contents, and a new profile, the editors of Kultūros Barai reshaped the journal into an open forum for the most essential discussions on culture and society. As a consequence, its aspirations, tone and goals have shifted from constructing and disseminating an ideology of culture to consolidating cultural criticism. By reflecting on the development of the journal and focusing on some of its most important publications, the chapter attempts to analyze how the values and identities of intellectuals shifted from disseminating cultural ideology to the practice of critical analysis. 2

Kultūros barai in European Public Space

Kultūros barai is generally known as one of the oldest and largest (in terms of circulation) cultural journals in Lithuania. Unlike most cultural periodicals of this kind that mostly lost their previous readership after the post-Communist social shift in the early 1990s, the journal managed to secure a strikingly large circulation and its current print run is no less than 2700 copies. Established in a period when Eastern European societies cherished some short-term hopes about the possibility of “socialism with a human face”, it eventually developed into one of the most important cultural publications of Lithuania’s era of Soviet dependence and post-Soviet-dependence period. In a few years after the fall of Soviet power, Kultūros barai underwent significant changes and acquired a European intellectual format. The journal’s European profile and the level of its intellectual contents attracted the attention of Eurozine – the association and network of European cultural journals. Kultūros barai journal was invited to join this pan-European organization and became an official partner of the Eurozine network on January 10th, 2003, after rigorous, peer-review expertise. Since then, the journal has been actively participating in the activities of this association by contributing a large number of analytical, political, and cultural essays to its website, taking part in its annual meeting and also co-organizing a memorable meeting of

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European cultural journals under the title “European Histories” in Vilnius, Lithuania on May 8–10, 2009. The key-note speakers at the event were Czech-born writer, academic and founder of Lettre International, Antonin Liehm, and the renowned Yale historian Timothy Snyder. The opening event of this meeting was hosted in Lithuania’s presidential palace, and the then-president, Valdas Adamkus, gave an impressive welcoming speech to more than one hundred European editors as well as to the invited intellectuals and academics who attended the 22nd European meeting of cultural journals in Lithuania’s capital city, Vilnius. Among many other things, the meeting happened to be a turning point in the intellectual biography of Timothy Snyder, who rose to international fame after his essay “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality”. This important essay was published in the New York Review of Books just a couple of months after he delivered it as a key-note lecture in Vilnius to the members of the Eurozine network. In his memorable key-note address, Timothy Snyder exposed the neglected aspects of the Holocaust, arguing that Auschwitz – a symbol of Jewish genocide during wwii – in fact marginalizes the fates of non-Western European Jews, who were murdered in other and far larger Nazi death factories. He further drew parallels between Nazi and Soviet regimes as mass killing performed by both, and containing a certain evilly rational background, the theory that Snyder later elaborated in his book, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. He insisted that the ideology that legitimized extermination of human beings was also linked to a vision of economic development that was rationally combined with mass killings. The essay of Timothy Snyder was eventually translated into Lithuanian and published in a book that contained papers and discussions presented in the 22nd meeting of European cultural journals (Fredriksson and Samalavičius, 2010). Beyond any doubt, it provided ample food for thought to Lithuanian historians and intellectuals reflecting on the burdensome legacy of both of these bloody regimes in Lithuania, especially having in mind the historic stain of Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust as well as the historic honor for those Lithuanians who took part in saving Jews. The partnership with Eurozine turned out to be mutually beneficial. Via Eurozine’s online website, Kultūros barai reached an international audience and a number of Lithuanian authors transmitted their ideas and political positions to their peers all over Europe and beyond. These numerous essays penned by Lithuanian authors – cultural, literary and art critics, philosophers, historians, sociologists, linguists etc. – being now available in English as well as in some other languages, raises the awareness about important insights that are born on the fringes of “the other Europe”. Because of the multilingual Eurozine’s

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website, the European readers for the last two decades have been getting a better understanding of cultural developments in Lithuania and the true pulse of its intellectual life along with its public debates. On the other hand, the Lithuanian readers and contributors to the journal have been provided access to the European public space where important and timely discussions are going on. Those authors who contributed their essays to www.eurozine.com had an opportunity to circulate their ideas wider than they perhaps initially expected. Some of these writings were also translated into many European languages and published in other partner journals of Eurozine’s network. No less than 200 essays contributed by the authors of Kultūros barai are available on Eurozine’s website in English, German, French, as well as in Lithuanian. The essay “The Non-Efficient Citizen” by the editor of this volume was translated not only into English, but also into Slovenian and Bulgarian (Kavaliauskas 2008). His academic conversations with Catalonian intellectuals touched Catalonian independence and cultural identity issues (Arenas, Arrufat, Kavaliauskas, 2017). He also conducted an important conversation with Tatiana Zhurzhenko on Ukraine (Zhurzhenko, Kavaliauskas, 2013). Kavaliauskas also paid special interest to Bulgaria and its place on the European map (Ditchev, Kavaliauskas, 2010). These conversations often cover inconvenient, yet pressing political issues that deal with geopolitics, regional identity, and the traumatic historical past. The conversation with Boris Kapustin on Russia and post-Communist transformations is translated into English and Russian (Kapustin, Kavaliauskas 2011), whereas the conversation with Ivaylo Ditchev is translated into English and Hungarian (but strangely not into Bulgarian). Other essays by Lithuanian authors also received attention on the Eurozine website, e.g. on Lithuanian identity (Kuzmickas, 2015) as well as on the renowned Lithuanian theatre director Eimuntas Nekrošius and Lithuania’s theatre culture (Vasiliauskas, 2018). Also the theme of uncertain future of the Lithuanian language became an important contribution to Eurozine (Subačius, 2013). 3

The Origins and Challenges of the “Singing Revolution”

Kultūros barai monthly was established in 1965 during the period of dependence by a small group of Lithuanian intellectuals (including the philosopher and would-be politician, one of the leaders of the Sąjūdis movement, Romualdas Ozolas) who cherished hopes about the possibility of “Socialism with a human face” and who were trying to shape the vision of a new kind of cultural

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journal during the so called “Khruschev’s Thaw”. However, in that same year, the first issue of the journal was immediately attacked by the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party. Under the orders of the political establishment, Emilija Kulakauskienė – its first (and female!) editor in chief was fired after just several months in the office and was replaced by a supposedly more loyal person – the novelist and journalist Aleksas Baltrūnas, who turned out to be also somewhat too liberal for the authorities and was forced to resign in 1972. Finally, after the succession of two more editors, who served short-term periods without any significant contribution to the journal’s profile, Vilhelmas Chadzevičius was appointed to be the journal’s editor in chief and stayed in the office from 1968 until early 1992. Then, he was replaced by the renowned philologist and linguist Bronys Savukynas. Savukynas proved to be the journal’s elan vital during the two post-Soviet decades. After Savukynas passed away in 2008, the editorial duties were taken up by Laima Kanopkienė, former deputy editor, who continues the journal’s tradition of intellectual debates and critical inquiry into cultural, social, and political issues. When Gorbachev famously announced an era of perestroika and glasnost, the general climate of Lithuanian cultural publishing was stagnate and gloomy. Few believed that a newly appointed Soviet functionary was indeed implementing a program of changes that finally ended the Cold War; however, a couple of literary publications caught up with the challenging atmosphere of glasnost. The literary monthly Pergalė [Victory] (that later was renamed and today is known as Metai [Years]) responded to the persistent plea for more openness and reconsideration of the Soviet history initiated by Gorbachev with several ground-breaking texts, like the Gulag memoirs titled “Lithuanians by the Laptev’s Sea” by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė (published in the Spring, 1988) and a novel titled “Memoirs of a Young Man” by Ričardas Gavelis (published the following year, 1989). Other periodicals soon followed: the leading literary weekly Literatūra ir menas [Literature and art] (published by the Writers’ Union together with Pergalė) began publishing critical reflections on social and cultural issues. Kultūros barai eventually joined the route taken by these pioneering publications. During these transitory years, the journal expanded its readership through reprinting the formerly forbidden history of Lithuania, edited shortly before the Soviet occupation in 1940 by Adolfas Šapoka. It was serialized and re-published in Kultūros barai. It was done together with some other material, which contributed to the journal’s sky-rocketing circulation, reaching more than 70 000 on the eve of the Singing Revolution.

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A crucial turn in Kultūros barai policy came when the journal published a declaration “A Road Towards Sovereignty” (the more exact word “freedom” was still largely avoided during that period). The document signed by the editors and editorial board members of the journal reflected upon the topical, political, and social changes going on in Lithuania. It was a highly explicit statement announcing that the journal welcomes and supports the route taken by the national reform movement Sąjūdis, and is not going to change its course even under possible pressure from the Soviet authorities. Among many other things, the declaration said that “For the first time after many years we can openly say what we think, we can defend our beliefs, openly discuss and reflect not only on technologies and natural causality, but also on social justice, democracy, and religion, and to inquire into the history of our country, to analyze its current condition, and to join action defending Lithuania’s sovereignty. We are starting to recover human and national dignity”. (Kelias į suverenitetą, 1989: 2) The authors of the declaration concluded that “our land belongs only to us, and the Lithuanians together with people of other nationalities residing in Lithuania have the right to a sovereign state like all other nations of the world” (Kelias į suverenitetą, 1989: 3). This bold and timely declaration made it clear that the journal was going to support Lithuania’s struggle toward independence. Many contributors of the journal made efforts to further articulate ideas of freedom and the importance of epochal social and political change. 4

Cultural Ideology and Political Upheaval

Consequently, the journal’s scope broadened to include most of the topical issues of the day, including discussions on cultural heritage, badly neglected during the Soviet decades, as well as debates on ecology. Some authors reflecting upon ecological protest movements in Lithuania on the eve of 1990 and the critical state of affairs in this field, attempted to relate these issues to questions about the legacy and future of the nation as such. For example, Jonas Tauginas emphasized that the expanding ecological movement in Lithuania had no common theory or strategy, as well as no tactical approach and was mainly chaotic in its character. Typical of many authors insisting on the need of a social and political shift, Tauginas somewhat romantically appealed to Lithuania’s historical roots, claiming that in the old days Lithuanians had a harmonious relationship with nature. He referred to the writings of the philosopher Antanas Maceina and to the research of the renowned American-Lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas. According to the latter, the Earth was ­considered

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to be the Big Mother by the ancient Balts. The Earth for the ancient Lithuanian tribes of the Balts was “saint, pure and just” (Tauginas, 1989: 5). Seizing the importance of the moment, the journal’s editors gave timely attention to historical issues, especially to the themes related to Lithuania’s 20th century history and a need to reconsider the official historical narrative of the Soviet era. A round-table discussion that was organized by the journal in 1989 featured academic historians, who confirmed the necessity of rewriting Lithuania’s history. For example, one of the participants of this discussion, historian Liudas Truska, insisted that the modern period of Lithuania’s history needed to be “completely rewritten”. Another participant went even further by acknowledging that everything in Lithuania’s history “should be rewritten”; he also reflected on the importance of public historical discourse – i.e. publications in cultural journals, weeklies, and other popular press had a considerable impact on “restoring the historical memory of the nation”. Another publication in the same issue of the journal, targeted the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The author of the essay, historian Vytautas Žalys, commenting on the content of the secret Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union agreement in 1939, argued that there was substantial evidence that while signing this pact, Stalin and Hitler “divided between themselves the sovereign states and condemned them to destruction” (Žalys, 1989: 11). Other issues strongly related to history, were discussed by the journal’s contributors. Historian Ingė Lukšaitė mused on the importance of bringing cultural history to the educational programs of high schools. According to Lukšaitė, history should be understood more broadly, and historical studies extended beyond agrarian society and culture so that this revised approach would “help to model our contemporary culture, to make less mistakes when confronted by the tasks to modernize life without losing oneself – sustaining ethnicity” (Lukšaitė, 1989: 5). Ethnologist Kazys Grigas emphasized the importance of linguistic memory and folklore for national consciousness. He claimed that if properly used, linguistic memory and folklore legacy can help to educate contemporary national consciousness (Grigas, 1989: 53). Sociologist Algimantas Valantiejus, distancing himself from metaphors and liquid discourse, typical to many writers of the period, attempted to discuss the idea of a nation from a sociological perspective (Valantiejus, 1990). American-Lithuanian sociologist Vytautas Kavolis also offered a well-balanced view of a nation and national identity (Kavolis, 1992). Speaking in more general terms, many contributors during this early transitory period from dependence to independence wrote about “national ­consciousness”, “spiritual values”, “national school” and “national education”,

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“­ethnic traditions” and the like. Reflections on ethnic culture persisted for several years, and were provided by ethnographers and ethnologists, philosophers, writers and poets. Issue no 6, 1989, featured several articles that confronted the urgent issues of ethnic culture. Some of the topics were examined by renowned Lithuanian poet and former member of the editorial staff of Kultūros barai, Marcelijus Martinaitis, who claimed that the Soviet regime used folklore for its ideological purposes, establishing official, professional groups to perform quasi-folkloric songs and dances, the aim of which was to glorify the Communist party and its establishment, but that these Sovietized forms had nothing to do with the authentic folkloric traditions. According to Martinaitis, neither culture, nor nation itself is contained by any rigid forms. “Culture lives when it is regularly recreated. We have to prepare to become members of the nation and of the world”, – insisted Martinaitis (Martinaitis, 1989: 4). The poet’s position coincided with the ideas of the philosopher Krescencijus Stoškus, who argued that the society of progress – i.e. of the Soviet Union that exalted technical and scientific progress – has finally encountered “not even a dead-end, but found itself on the abyss” (Stoškus, 1989: 6). According to the philosopher, the blind search for novelty was now “being replaced by a simple wish to stay alive” and since nations like the Lithuanian nation have been on the verge of extinction for several centuries, Lithuanians find no contradiction to appeal to tradition, because it was tradition that kept this nation alive and performed the functions of self-defense. This position was shared by a renowned Lithuanian researcher of mythology, Norbertas Vėlius, who in the same issue acknowledged the importance of ethnic culture to the Lithuanian nation and suggested that because it is an inexhaustible phenomenon that survives through time, “ethnic culture is nothing else but perfect creation” (Vėlius, 1989: 10), further insisting that it should be a source and resource of national values and national dignity as well as the background for professional culture. Literary scholar Viktorija Daujotytė, claimed that “Lithuanian culture, especially literature, was formed as the most distinct form of Lithuanian self-defense and a way of spiritual consolidation” (Daujotytė, 1990: 2). Back in those days, many contributors to the journal were very much concerned with the the concept of a nation and how a nation state came into being. This persistent interest is hardly surprising since Lithuania was deprived of its independence with the Soviet occupation in 1940 which ended a brief period of interwar independence that had lasted from 1918 to 1940. The other important issue was the fate of the Lithuanian language. Marcelijus Martinaitis, a regular contributor to the journal and public debates during

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these years of change, reflected on how the Lithuanian language was marginalized during the Soviet era’s attempts to introduce bilingualism in the Soviet Lithuania – a project that was finally not implemented. However, the administration language in Russian and the obligatory Russian language at schools, and the predominant Russian tv had its say. The death of a language to Martinaitis, so redolent of Subačius essay in Eurozine in the 21st century referring to this never-ending concern, was equal to the death of a nation (Subačius, 2013). “Extinction of even the smallest nation is no less catastrophic as the extinction of a vegetation or animal species, the degradation of its genetic fund. When nations are dying, a part of humanity dies” (Martinaitis, 1990: 15). The period between 1988–1991 was generally marked with a somewhat exalted belief in the healing power of independence and the unlimited potential of society to create new institutions successfully. Such categories and concepts as “nation”, “national culture” or “ethnic culture” were taken for granted and remained almost undisputed. However, after a short period of self-inflicted illusions and shared visions, more sober, more critical attitudes toward Lithuanian society and its future were offered by intellectuals and academics contributing to the journal. Last but not least, the emphasis on the need of critical reflection, rather than continuing or eschewing altogether popular nationalist ideology, was a result of the shift in the journal’s policies largely due to changes in its leadership. 5

Timely Transformation: Criticism Takes Command

Bronys Savukynas – a well-known linguist and philologist (among many other things an author of an etymological dictionary of Lithuanian names), and translator (notably from German), joined the staff of Kultūros barai in 1970 and was responsible for copy-editing. However, he soon became an informal leader among the journal’s younger editors to whom he extended expertise advice beyond linguistic issues. After taking over the journal’s contents and management in 1991 as editor in chief, Savukynas largely reshaped the journal, significantly reorganizing its structure and giving more room not only to historical themes but also to immediate cultural and social issues. More attention than ever before was given to international and European dimensions: the journal regularly published its overview of cultural developments in Europe and elsewhere in addition to its primary focus on national cultural issues. In restructuring the journal’s profile, Bronys Savukynas worked closely with Lithuanian émigré sociologist Vytautas Kavolis (1930–1996), who taught at

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Dickinson College in the USA for several decades and chaired an Association of Comparative Civilizations. Their regular correspondence and exchange of ideas as well as the editor in chief’s ability to secure a large circle of contributors, coming from a dozen disciplines, contributed to the journal’s remarkable intellectual growth. The journal acquired a scholarly character during the period when Bronys Savukynas acted as the journal’s editor in chief. Since then, Kultūros barai has become a venerable public scholarly journal open to academic discussions and exchange of opinions, publishing not only critical reviews and opinions, but also academic and research articles that could well be published in peer-reviewed publications. On the other hand, as an editor, Savukynas was highly impressed by such legendary publications as the journal Kultura, published in Polish in Paris by renowned intellectual Jerzy Giedroic. Savukynas received copies of the Parisian Polish journal regularly. Nevertheless, he was shaping Kulturos barai as a journal with intellectual aspirations in its own right, rooted in and reflecting on Lithuanian culture rather than a bleak copy of some famous Western European periodicals, but, needless to say, first-hand knowledge of Kultura and some other scholarly journals that he was regularly reading, strengthened his own vision of what an intellectual monthly was all about. When Bronys Savukynas took the lead, the journal’s profile was strengthened by critical reconsiderations of its thematic repertoire. Savukynas – a liberal linguist and no less liberal yet demanding editor – welcomed critical voices and often took efforts himself to trigger discussions on a variety of cultural issues. He welcomed round-table debates on various topics with participants representing different opinions. These regular discussions were usually held in the office of the journal. Eventually the discussions would be published in a forthcoming issue. He was also quite able in recruiting prospective young authors as contributors to the journal. At the time, a young philosopher and cultural critic, Leonidas Donskis (1962–2016), became a regular contributor to the journal, publishing more than a dozen essays within a few years. He established his reputation as a public intellectual and took an active part in discussions, often initiating new issues for public scrutiny. In the 1990s, Donskis became an advocate of an open society, at the same time acknowledging some limits to its conceptualization. Donskis argued that the “concepts of open society and open culture can successfully become mythologisations if they are not incorporated into a critical context. Not a single society is free from ideology More than that – in reality there is no paradigmatically open societies absolutely free from power and protectionism, ruled exclusively by market and competition in the same

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way as paradigmatically open culture does not exist”. (Donskis, 1992:10:11). Yet for Donskis, this acknowledgment does not mean that the culture should remain closed. On the contrary, a conscious and mature culture should seek to become open and inclusive of elements that enrich it, instead of restricting and reducing its content and forms. This means that culture as well as its individuals enter into a dialogue with each other and this dialogue constantly evolves. In another article, titled “Kultūra likimo ir pasirinkimo visuomenėse” [Culture in the Societies of Fate and Choice], Donskis offered his critique of ideology. According to the author, who cited the French sociologist and anthropologist Louis Dumont, “Ideology is a closed sum of beliefs, values and ideals. Ideology always functions as closed system of values, dominating toward the reality itself. Generally, ideology always means a domination of principle over fact, domination of idea over reality, domination of word over idea, that is domination of language over thinking and meaning” (Donskis, 1992:3:3). In some other articles published even earlier than these two, Donskis argued for an open society and open culture, placing himself among intellectual debates about Lithuania’s mediating role between the West (Western Europe) and the East (Russia and the project of Eurasia), discussed by philosopher Stasys Šalkauskis after wwi in his influential essay “Sur le Confin de Deux Mondes” originally published in French. In his article, Donskis provided a critique of “Baltophilia” or “Balto-centrism”, which he described as a tradition of monadic cultural vision that could be compared to “national fundamentalism” (Donskis, 1990:9:2). Rejection of a nationalist perspective and persistent appeals to a model of society and culture labelled as “open”, made Donskis largely unpopular among the older intellectuals, who would refuse to agree with his interpretation of cultural nationalism. The opponents took some of his categories such as e.g. “ethnic fundamentalism” or “national fundamentalism” as an unjustifiable offense, rather than an intellectual challenge that required an adequate response. Though other authors who joined the discussions about Lithuania’s cultural model and intellectual aspirations that often resurfaced in various forms during the first post-Soviet decade, did not share his somewhat exaggerated view that “ethnic fundamentalism” was entrenched in Lithuania’s culture, the dominant ethno-centric cultural concepts were regularly challenged by writers and intellectuals, who were dissatisfied with exalted views of culture and musings about the “inherent spirituality” of Lithuanian culture. Contrary to such a critique of “inherent spirituality”, professor Viktorija Daujotytė in one of her essays published in Kultūros barai claimed that “We live in the period of the death of ideas. We are trying to mitigate the situation by saying: the crisis of

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ideas. We don’t even feel when our thoughts and actions are shackled by the idea of crisis … Where there are no big ideas, small caricatures of big ideas come into being and finally a big idea – one of crisis – emerges” (Daujotytė, 1994:3). Her essay was typical of the period when some vague and fluid categories were not even questioned. 6

Intellectuals Scrutinized by Themselves

Discussions of the peculiarities of post-Communist society, social and cultural transition as well as ambiguities of the rising elites, were often addressed in the first post-Soviet decade. Generally, the roles of intellectuals were taken seriously, not only in Lithuania but in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well, especially during the national upheaval in 1989 and the years of transition when local intellectual elites were supposed to provide some guidance to a society facing inevitable change. A well-known and provocative novelist and short story writer Ričardas Gavelis (1950–2002) targeted such timely issues as the post-Communist transition and provincialism of Lithuanian culture. He addressed these issues in a couple of essays published in the period of 1992 and 1996. In his essay “Brandaus diletantizmo epocha” [The Epoch of Mature Dilettantism] Gavelis discussed the roots of Lithuania’s failure to mature as a society and concluded that they are to be found in pre-war Lithuania when the state structures and cultural institutions were established hastily by people who had will and ambitions, but lacked education and expertise. The professional culture that came into being before wwii was eventually dismantled, as most qualified professionals and intellectuals were forced to choose exile. The others ended up in Siberia. An anti-professional ethos ascended in the years of transition since the Soviet system did not produce large quantities of experts. Those tiny numbers that it did, became suspects because of their roles and functions under the previous regime, and thus, dilettantism got into full swing. “The experience of the world, however, allows one to formulate an interesting hypothesis. It suggests that dilettantism like any other radioactive material has a certain critical mass. When this mass is exceeded, the process goes beyond any control – and a chain reaction comes into being. And then the explosion happens”. (Gavelis, 1992: 3). What will eventually come into being after the explosion remains only to be seen, claimed the writer, insightfully diagnosing the problem that was to burden Lithuanian society years to come. Gavelis likewise had little hope for the post-Communist society to educate an influential elite of professionals and intellectuals with adequate roles and

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identities. “The post-totalitarian crowd always looks for leaders who can take it out of a universal swamp. It is a feature of a crowd in each and every postCommunist country”, argued Gavelis in a lengthy essay, “Tamsioji šviesuomenė arba elito gimdymo kančios” [Uneducated Intelligentsia or a Painful Birth of the Elite] (1996–11:5). And yet, the Lithuanian “crowd” is peculiar in this sense, because it “only craves for such a leader or experts, but does not make any single attempt to locate them”. This inability to act was due to the ­anti-intellectual tradition, deeply rooted in Lithuanian culture. “Intelligent ideas and reason itself has no market”, Gavelis further insisted, and warned that this anti-intellectualism is bound to generate a dangerous consequence: the absence of a historical future. Disgusted with the “post-­ totalitarian crowd”, he had a skeptical attitude towards Lithuanian intellectuals, who in his opinion were equally short-sighted and lacked the ability to explore the long-term consequences of their activity. Generally, he had strong reservations about further developments of post-Communist society, especially, the Lithuanian one. Leonidas Donskis was also highly critical toward Lithuanian intellectuals, albeit for different reasons. According to Donskis, there were two “cultures” in transitory Lithuanian society that were in opposition to each other – the tradition of the intelligentsia and that of the emerging class of intellectuals. He saw both of these groups burdened by their own ills: the members of the intelligentsia claiming their right to the notion of a “nation”, a “homeland”, a “Lithuanian language”, etc., whereas these notions were plagued by their inherent inclination toward preaching and moralizing. The second group were intellectuals whom he saw distancing themselves from their society and proselytizing their “Western” attitudes, but at the same time having no deeper social affinities than an interest to sell their discourse for the Western market (Donskis, 1995:14). Other Lithuanian contributors to such debates on post-Communist society and the roles of intellectuals, commented on how post-Communist intellectuals could restore their fading reputation and what directions the social critique provided by them could take. Back in 1996, cultural criticism embracing postColonialism together with post-Communist studies was advocated in order to deepen and expand the sociopolitical analysis of the intellectuals without falling into a stale narrative full of complaints about the loss of short-lived status or of their occasionally successful ways to power (Samalavičius, 1996). Throughout the Soviet period, most intellectuals chose legal ways of resistance, avoiding open opposition to the totalitarian regime, but such a format inevitably set limits to public reasoning and free expression (Samalavičius, 1995: 63–64). These peculiar circumstances contributed to a somewhat obscure

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understanding of the role (as well as realistic possibilities) of intellectuals in Lithuania during the first post-dependence decade in the 1990s and had an even more lasting effect. Some of these insights seem to have been durable and were revisited on several occasions (Samalavičius, 2002). Even though cultural and social criticism eventually took stronger roots in Lithuanian culture, there were new factors setting limits to the performative roles of intellectuals, since many of them chose to focus on their academic careers and on academic publishing rather than public discussions with their inherent inconveniences and occasional controversies. Neglecting some of the pressing issues, like, for example, the need of restructuring universities and other institutions of higher education in the public sphere, finally had cultural and social consequences. Quite interestingly, Kultūros barai was the only cultural journal in the country regularly discussing problems and issues in and around higher education in the public sphere over almost three decades (Kubilius 1990; Nekrašas, 1995; Vengris, 2000; Aleksandravičius, 2000; Samalavičius, 2000, 2019; Daujotis, 2004; Ščavinskas, 2017). Though this chapter does not aim to give an overview and discuss all the important themes that were covered by the contributors to Kultūros barai, it can be noted that some of them have been provoking important discussions as well as provoking an exchange of political values regarding a complex history, like for example, the painful issue of collaboration with the Soviets during the years of dependence (Wittig-Marcinkevičiūtė, 2004; Klumbys, 2004). On the other hand, a number of important problems approached by some ­intellectuals were unfortunately by-passed, and this might be one of the symptoms of conformism that took various shapes in post-Communist Lithuania (Samalavičius, 2004). Symptoms of conformism still continue in a parallel with the brave and independent voices of social critics. 7 Conclusion Due to such complex publishing history and circulation, the timely revised structure, form and contents, Kultūros barai emerged as the leading Lithuanian cultural journal immediately after 1990 and maintained its intellectual format during the three turbulent decades of independence. During the social transition, the journal provided a platform for intellectuals to exchange opinions on the most essential and enduring social, cultural and/or political issues. Previously the journal was largely a tool for disseminating cultural ideology built around various concepts like “nation”, “national culture”, “ethnicity”,

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“ethnic culture”, “spiritual values” and the like, typically characteristic of progressive members of the Lithuanian intelligentsia that backed Gorbachev reforms before the fall of the Communist regime; however, the journal gradually adopted more reflective, more critical strategies by triggering debates and discussions on a number of socially and culturally important issues. It must be admitted that critically minded intellectuals and writers had started to question Communist ideologically “ready-made” certainties even before the social change of 1990; however, it was in post-Soviet period that the journal established its intellectual format and performed its role in creating a public space open to critical reflections on society and its culture. The authors, who come not only from Lithuania, but also from the Lithuanian diaspora in other countries, regularly question state policies and controversial historical “truth”. For several decades the journal continues to provide space for critical exchanges, bold visions. Remaining a non-partisan publication, it is committed to openness, (self)reflexivity and dissenting views. It can be added, that the journal contributed to the change of the self-perception and responsibilities of Lithuanian intellectuals. If some of them used to present themselves as self-appointed spokesmen for the nation state or for the entire nation in the name of its salvation, today most of them have retreated to less imposing, but the more realistic roles of well-informed experts, persistent social observers, and often insightful cultural critics. References Aleksandravičius, Egidijus (2000). Kodėl Letuvai vėl reikia ,“specialistų kalvės”? [Why Lithuanian Needs A Factory of “Specialists”] Kultūros barai, 8–9. Arenas, Carmen & Arrufat, Jordi & Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2017). Catalonia and Eastern Europe: a false comparison? Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/ catalonia-and-eastern-europe-a-false-comparison/. Bauman, Zygmunt (1989). Legislators and Interpreters: On Morality, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals, London: Polity, 1989. Bradan, Costica and Dushakine, Serguei A. (Ed). (2010). In Marx’s Shadow: Knowledge, Power and Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Russia. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Bozoki, Andras, (Ed.) (1998) Intellectuals and Politics in Eastern Europe. Budapest: ceu Press. Daujotytė, Viktorija (1990). Kultūros argumentai [Arguments of Culture], Kultūros barai, 7–8:2–5. Daujotytė, Viktorija (1994). Už ko laikytis, kad išliktum? [Holding on to Survive], Kultūros barai, 3: 2–4.

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Ditchev, Ivaylo & Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2010). Territory, Identity, Transformation: a Baltic-Balkan Comparison. Eurozine. Available: https://www.eurozine.com/territ ory-identity-transformation-a-baltic-balkan-comparison/. Donskis, Leonidas (1990). Atviros visuomenės ir atviros kultūros kūrimas [Creation of Open Society and Open Culture], Kultūros barai, 9:2–5. Donskis, Leonidas (1992). Monologinio žmogaus ir monologinės kultūros drama [Drama of Monological Human and Monologic Culture], Kultūros barai, 3:2–9. Donskis, Leonidas (1992). Kultūra likimo ir pasirinkimo visuomenėse [Culture in Societies of Fate and Societies of Choice], Kultūros barai, 3:2–9. Donskis, Leonidas (1995). Dvi Lietuvos kultūros: intelektualų ir inteligentų kolizijos ir ateities dialogo galimybės [Two Lithuanian Cultures: Collisions Between Intellectuals and Intelligentzia], Kultūros barai, 1:8–16. Fredriksson, Carl Henrik and Almantas Samalavičius, (Editors) (2010). Europos istorijos: Rytų ir Vakarų patirtis [European Histories], Vilnius: Kultūros barai. Gavelis, Ričardas (1992). Brandaus diletantizmo epocha [The Epoch of Mature Dilletantism], Kultūros barai, 12:10–12. Gavelis, Ričardas (1996). Tamsioji šviesuomenė arba elito gimdymo kančios [Uneducated Intellegentzia and Birthpains of Elite], Kultūros barai, 11: 2–5. Grigas, Kazys (1989). Ką byloja frazeologija apie tautos pasaulėjautą [What Phraseology Tells About A Nation’s Emotional Attitude], Kultūros barai, 10:7–8. Grigas, Romualdas (1994). Tautos stiprybė – dvasinis-intelektualinis potencialas [Nation’s Strength – Its Spiritual-intellectual Potential], Kultūros barai, 4:5–8. Kapustin, Boris & Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2011). In Search of a Post-Communist Future. Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/in-search-of-a-post-Communist -future/. Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2008). The Non-Efficient Citizen: Identity and Consumerist Morality. Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/the-non-efficient-citizen/. Kavolis, Vytautas (1992). Nuolat atsinaujinti, neprarandant tapatybės [To Renew Without Losing Identity], Kultūros barai, 7–8:2–4. Kelias į suverenitetą [The Road to Sovereignty] (1989). Kultūros barų redakcijos kolegijos ir redakcijos deklaracija [Declaration of editorial Board and Editors], Kultūros barai, 1: 1–3. Konrad, Gyorgy and Shelenyi, Ivan (1979) Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power: Sociological Study of the Role of Inteligentzia in Socialism. Branch Line, 1979. King, Lawrence Peter and Shelenyi Ivan (2004). Theories of a New Class: Intellectuals and Power. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Klumbys, Valdemaras (2004). Dar kartą apie kolaboravimą (ir konformizmą), arba koks gi skirtumas tarp Nijolės Sadūnaitės ir Antano Sniečkaus [Again on Collaboration or What is the Difference Between Nijolė Sadūnaitė and Antanas Sniečkus], Kultūros barai, 2: 21–25.

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Kovacz, Friederike and Jessie Labov (Eds.) (2013). Samizdat, Tamizdat and Beyond: Transnational Media During and After Socialism. New York: Berghahn. Kubilius, Vytautas (1990). Pervertinimo situacija [Situation of Re-evaluation]. Kultūros barai, 7–8: 6–8. Kuzmickas, Bronislovas (2015). From a Distance: Postmodern Identity in an Increasingly Postmodern Reality. Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/ from-a-distance/. Lukšaitė, Ingė(1989). “Kultūros istorija tautinėje mokykloje” [Cultural History in National School], Kultūros barai, 9: 5–7. Marcelijus Martinaitis, Marcelijus (1989),“Tai mums duota vieną kartą” [It Was Given Once], Kultūros barai, 1989, 6:2–5. Martinaitis, Marcelijus (1990) ,“Kalba tarp kalbų” [Language Between Languages], Kultūros barai, 1990, 7–8: 15. Milosz, Czeslaw (1991). The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage Books. Nekrašas, Evaldas (1995). Socialinių mokslų Lietuvoje būklė ir perspektyvos [Perspectives of Social Sciences in Lithuania], Kultūros barai, 8–9:19–22. Daujotis, Vytautas (2004) Mokslo rezultatai ir jų imitacijos [Results of Research and Their Imitations]. Kultūros barai, 2: 15–19. “Pakeliui į tikrąją Lietuvos istoriją: pokalbis prie apskritojo stalo” [On the Way to Real History of Lithuania: a Round Table Conversation] (1989). Kultūros barai, 8:2–6 Samalavičius, Almantas (1996). “Postkomunizmo studijų klausimu” [In Quest of PostCommunism Studies], Kultūros barai, 1996, 11: 11–14. Samalavičius, Almantas (1995) “Letter from Lithuania”, Partisan Review, 1: 61–65. Samalavičius, Almantas (2000). “Trys žvilgsniai į tris universiteto idėjas” [Three Glimpses at Three Ideas of a University], Kultūros barai, 8–9: 6–14. Samalavičius, Almantas (2002). “Postkomunistinė visuomenė ir jos intelektualiniai elitai” [PostCommunist Society and Its Intellectual Elites], Kultūros barai, 6: 10–14. Samalavičius, Almantas (2004). “Postkomunistinės visuomenės atmintis ir amnezija” [Memory and Amnesia of Post-Communist Society], Kultūros barai, 2: 11–15; 3: 2–6. Samalavičius, Almantas (2007). “Farewell to Post-Communism? Reflections on the Role of Intellectuals in Society”, in Halina Taborska and Jan Wojciechwski, Where Europe Is Going? Leadership, Ideas, Values. Pultusk: Akademia Humanistyczna im. A. Gieyshtora. Samalavičius, Almantas (2019). Aukštojo mokslo reforma, suklupusi ties neoliberalios ideologijos slenksčiu [Neoliberal Reform of Higher Education], Kultūros barai, 5: 2–7. Saunders, George, (Ed.) (1974). Samizdat: Voices of Soviet Opposition. New York: Pathfinder Press. Stoškus, Krescencijus (1989). Etninė tradicija ir dabartis [Ethnic Tradition and the Present], Kultūros barai, 1989, 6:12–15.

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Subačius, Giedrius (2013). The Death of a Language. Eurozine. https://www.eurozine .com/authors/giedrius-subacius/. Ščavinskas, Marius (2017). Aukštojo mokslo reformos miražas arba kur dingsta svarstymai apie kokybę? [Reform of Higher education and Where Reflections on Quality Disappear?]Kultūros barai, 2017, 2: 6–10. Tauginas, Jonas (1989). Tautos gyvybės ir energijos šaltiniai [Sources of A Nation’s Life and Energy], Kultūros barai, 7: 2–5. Valantiejus, Algimantas (1990). Tautos idėja [Idea of a Nation], Kultūros barai, 7–8:20–21. Vasiliauskas, Vladas (2018). The Drama of Independence: Eimuntas Nekrošius and Lithuania’s Youth Theatre. Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/­ authors/vasiliauskas-valdas/. Vengris, Saulius. (2000). Apie patriotizmą, Europą ir Lietuvos aukštąjį mokslą [About Patriotism, Europe and Lithuanian Higher Education], Kultūros barai, 8–9: 2–4. Vėlius, Norbertas (1989). Etninė kultūra ir tauta [Ethnic Culture and Nation], Kultūros barai, 1989, 6: 5–7. Zhurzhenko, Tatiana & Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2013). Post-Orange Ukraine: Lost Years? Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/post-orange-ukraine-lost-years/. Žalys, Vytautas (1989). Pabaltijo dalybų slaptas sandėris [Secret Agreement on Sharing the Baltics], Kultūros barai, 8:7–11. Wittig, Marcinkevičiūtė, Eglė (2004). Tai koks gi skirtumas tarp kolaboranto ir konformisto? [So What is the Difference Between Collaborator and Conformist?], Kultūros barai, nr. 5: 20–24.

Part 4 Political Travelogues

∵

Chapter 11

From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum

Achieving Statehood through Peaceful Protest: Two European Models Face to Face with 30 Years between Them Jordi Arrufat-Agramunt 1

Context Note

The writing of this chapter was finished in the first week of December 2019, mainly taking into consideration publications and data released until late September 2019. On 14 October 2019, the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan pro-independence leaders to jail, facing sentences ranging from nine to thirteen years and unleashing massive protests all over Catalonia ending in riots and clashes with the police, something which had hardly been seen linked to the Catalan independence movement until then. The article doesn’t take into consideration any changes in public opinion within Catalonia related to these recent events. 2

The Baltic Way 30 Years Later, as Seen by a Catalan

From 1 May to 6 June 2018 , I walked 692 km from the Pikk Hermann tower in Tallinn, capital of Estonia, to Gediminas’ Tower in the historical city centre of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in thirty-one stages, going through the Freedom Monument which lies in the centre of Riga, capital of Latvia, on my way. I did this following the route where, on 23 August 1989, about two million people joined hands in order to denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on the day of its 50th anniversary. It was because of this pact that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (ussr) spread their spheres of influence in Europe, and the ussr illegally occupied the Baltic republics. The reasons why I decided to do so are multiple and complex, but as a Catalan who had lived through the failed process of self-determination in C ­ atalonia, working for the partnership known as the Public Diplomacy Council of ­Catalonia from 2013 until I was fired by a decision of the Spanish government in April 2018, there was one particularly important reason for me. It was a sign of personal appreciation to all the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians that I had had the opportunity to meet and know during those five years of my p ­ rofessional © Jordi Arrufat-Agramunt, ���1 | doi:10.1163/9789004443587_013

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life, for their personal commitment to self-determination in Catalonia, and for the personal stories that I learned from each of them about how they had lived and experienced the independence process of their respective countries between 1989 and 1991. In addition to that, it is also important to remember that on 11 September 2013 the Catalan National Assembly organized a human chain from the border with France to the administrative limits of Catalonia with the Valencian Community. Some former Baltic way organizers who came from the Baltic States provided logistical knowledge to the Catalan organizers. All in all, what I was trying to do was to take the concept of a long-­established activity in south-western Europe, a long-distance walk following a well-known artistic and cultural itinerary known as the Saint James Way, and transfer the idea to the north-east of Europe, visiting the different cities and towns along the Baltic Way, as well as all the museums and monuments which remember that feat. There was an additional reason thanks to my professional background as a former public diplomacy practitioner: I wanted to meet and interview as many people as possible whom I could find from Tallinn to Vilnius and who were willing to talk to me about their experiences of the Baltic Way and their thoughts on the development of their respective countries in the last thirty years. In the end, I carried out thirty-three interviews altogether, eleven in each country, some of which were completely improvised, finding out about the interviewees thanks to the intermediation of local newspapers who knew what I was doing. Others were planned beforehand, aiming to speak to people with a very specific profile that I was particularly interested in. Having said that, I asked the same questions to almost everyone: – Where were you on 23 August 1989? – Thirty years ago Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania regained their independence. Did you imagine back then that these three Baltic countries will look the way they look now? – How do you see your country 30 years from now? – What do you think about the EU? – Is there a message that you think your country can teach to the world after these 30 years? I didn’t ask anyone about the political situation in Catalonia, but I always introduced myself to them as a Catalan and I also told them the reason why I was walking the Baltic Way. For identity protection purposes I have codified the interviewees as follows, revealing only the names of the three elected representatives at that time. Among the profiles I interviewed there were three elected representatives, namely: Artur Talvik, the then leader of the Estonian Free Party and a M ­ ember

243

From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum Table 1 

Codes of interviewees, first part

Estonia

Latvia

lt1

Museologist

lv2

Cultural manager Journalist

lt2

lv3

Designer

lt3

ee4

Baltic way organizer, journalist Businesswoman

Retired, former English teacher Rytis Mykolas Račkauskas

lv4

Historian

lt4

ee5

Businesswoman

lv5

Writer and gardener

lt5

ee1 ee2 ee3

Baltic way organiser, retired it translator

lv1

Lithuania

Lithuanian language teacher, former member of Sąjūdis Local leader of the Romuva religion

Source: Author

of the Estonian Parliament (opposition), Ainars Latkovskis, historian, then a spokesman for the Parliament’s Defence Committee in Latvia and a member of Vienotība (Government) and Rytis Mykolas Račkauskas, then mayor of the Lithuanian city of Panevėžys (Independent). Only 1 out of the 33 was born after 1989, 20 were men and 13 women, 11 lived in one of the 3 capital cities, 12 in cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, where the Baltic Way was carried out such as Viljandi, Valmiera or Panevėžys, and the 10 r­emaining interviewees were from cities or towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Most interviews were held in English with the exception of the following ones where a voluntary translator helped me for that purpose: ee3, ee8, lv1, lv10, lv11, lt1, lt3, lt4, lt5. All interviews were audio recorded. It is, as you can see, research that can hardly be defined as scientific. However, having done it twenty-nine years after the organization of the Baltic Way and having met either some of the protagonists of that historic event or people who live near the itinerary of the human chain, I think it is interesting to explain the results of what I found because of its historical and sociological interest. Also, given my origins and the evolution of political events in Catalonia in recent

244 Table 2 

Arrufat-Agramunt Codes of interviewees, second part

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Baltic Way organiser, businessman Cultural expert and researcher

lv6

Ainars Latkovskis

lt6

Businessman

lv7

Baptist priest

lt7

ee8

Cultural activist

lv8

lt8

ee9

it expert, businessman Estonian kitchen expert, business manager

lv9

Artur Talvik

lv11

18-year-old student, local history researcher Publicist and writer 2 organizers of the Baltic Way interviewed together. Both retired. Member of the anti-Soviet resistance. Imprisoned in Siberia from 1983 to 1987.

2 organizers of the Baltic Way interviewed together, an artist and a forest manager lgbt activist

ee6 ee7

ee10

ee11

Source: Author

lv10

lt9 lt10

lt11

Lithuanian Jew tv presenter and writer

Member of the Lithuanian paramilitary organization Lietuvos šaulių sajunga

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From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum Table 3 

Estonia

Gender and residence of interviewees

Live in capital cities Live in cities other than the capital with more than 10,000 inhabitants

Live in cities or towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants

Male

Male

Female

ee1, ee11 ee2

Latvia

lv3, lv7, lv9, lv11 Lithuania lt8, lt9, lt10, lt11

Male

Female

Female

ee6

ee5, ee7, ee3, ee9 ee4, ee10 ee8 lv6 lv4, lv5 lv8, lv10 lv1, lv2 lt3, lt5, lt4 lt1, lt6, lt7 lt2

Source Author

years, from my experience with the protagonists of the Baltic Way, I will also try to answer the question “Thirty years after the Baltic Way, and in view of the similarities and differences between the case of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the case of an hypothetical independence of Catalonia, what are the meeting points and points of discord between the values that led to the Baltic Way, the current ones in the Baltic States and those of Catalan independentism?” Comparing the case of Catalonia with the Baltic States in 1989 is not easy, It is obvious that we are talking about very different political and social realities. In order to understand the context, we must look back at the moment when Spain became a democracy. It is not clear exactly when this happened, as Kavaliauskas points out in this very same book. Some might say that democracy started the very same day Franco died in 1975, others will state that it was as late as 1986 when Spain joined the EU. However, there is a general consensus in Spain that democracy started there around late 1978 when the Spanish Constitution was approved. This Constitution, arising from a pact between the moderates of the Franco regime and Spanish democratic forces, which had been “underground” for almost forty years, recognized, based on the demands that came from the so-called “Spanish historical nationalities” such as Catalonia and the Basque Country, the right to configure Spain as a State made up of Autonomous Communities. Despite that, the Spanish model of Autonomous Communities of 1978 can hardly be considered a federal model similar to the Belgian or Canadian ones insofar, as Professor Ferran Requejo says, that the

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autonomous communities have a very limited power of financing, they are not constituent units of Spain, decentralization of legislative power is unclear, judicial power is centralized, the upper house is not linked to the Autonomous Communities, and these Communities are not considered as political actors in relation to the European Union (Requejo, 2017). Add to that the fact that Article 2 of the Spanish Constitution establishes that the Constitution “is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”, and you realize we are in a legal context in which, in accordance with the precepts of law and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, Catalonia cannot become independent from Spain through a referendum, unless there is a change of doctrine establishing Article 1 of the Constitution, which states that Spain is a democratic State, to prevail over the other articles. However, this is not the view held by either the current members of the Spanish Constitutional Court nor recent Spanish governments, led by the People’s Party and Social Democrats, which have stood against the recognition of this democratic demand coming from Catalonia. To contextualize how we have arrived to where we are now: during the 1980s and most of the 1990s, in Catalan parliamentary elections voters chiefly supported a Catalan nationalist party, CiU, which adopted a pragmatic position of collaboration with the institutions of the Spanish State, while substantial changes were taking place in Europe as a result of the events that began on the continent after 1989. In 1996, the cis, a public research centre in the field of social sciences based in Madrid, asked in Catalonia “Are you in favour or against the independence of Catalonia?” 33.6% supported it and 53.5% were against it (cis, 1996). In 2001, when the same question was asked, 35.9% supported it while 48.1% were against (cis, 2001). Since then, the cis has never asked this question in a binary response format again. It was not until the beginning of the year 2010, more than twenty years after the Baltic Way, when support for the independence of Catalonia grew exponentially. The cis in 2012 asked Catalan public opinion what option they prefer from among three possible answers: this time, independence had 41.1% support, more autonomous powers, 26%, and to remain in the current situation, 16% (Sarroca, 2012). Parallel to this, the ceo, a public research centre working in social sciences but based in Barcelona and linked to the Government of Catalonia, has asked four times a year every year since the second semester of 2005 what the preference of Catalans is: an independent State, a federated State forming part of Spain, an autonomous community like the current one, or to simply become a region of a more centralized Spain. The results are interesting, and I’ll show them later in detail. We can see that there has been strong progress towards the independentist option which emerged clearly in 2012 and

From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum

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has remained fairly stable since then. However, before focusing even more on Catalonia, I would like to return to the Baltic States in order to evaluate the results of the thirty-three interviews that I did. In order to try to give an answer to the question referring to points in common and differences between Catalonia and the Baltic States, first I will offer qualitative results of these interviews. Following that, I will use the results of opinion polls to see how steady the support of Catalans for independence has been over more recent years. After that, in the next part of the article I will have a look at how the Baltic States have officially reacted to the Catalan independence quest. I will also present opinion polls regarding the profile of people in favour or against independence in Catalonia. Finally, by taking all the previous analysis into consideration, I will answer the afore-mentioned question at the end of the article. 3

A Mosaic of Views 690 Kilometres Long

One common feature that I would like to point out to begin with is that among all those who participated actively in the organization of the Baltic Way, whether Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian, is that at that time, in August 1989, they were not scared, and if there was any risk for their involvement, they were either unaware of it or were willing to take those risks. For the Estonian organiser ee1 “There was then no option to get involved only partially, it was clear that either we became free or they sent me to Siberia, knowing that the police were everywhere”. The level of idealism that existed in those years was high; for ee1 “It seemed so impossible to do what we had conspired to do”. ee2 wanted to point out that even though 1990 and 1991 were very tough years, “We were committed to resist in order to get our Estonia back even if we had to live off eating potato peels”. For ee2 participation in the Baltic Way was a civic duty, “I was determined and happy to do something that felt so right”. Latvian historian lv4, remembering those days, told me “the good thing is that we were doing this with our Baltic neighbours in full solidarity”. lt4, an active leader of Sąjūdis in 1989, believes that there is a before and an after regarding the Baltic Way, “The Lithuanian nation was reborn after the Baltic Way, we were no longer Soviet citizens”. Regarding the future, many of these participants are concerned about the lack of civic and national commitment they detect in their country, specifically among young people. ee2 emphasizes that “I am not sure if the young generations give our freedom its due value”. Of a similar view, is the young 18-year-old Latvian lv8, “Young Latvian people in general are not interested in the events of 1989”, and also the Lithuanian lt4 who said “We are now more focused on

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­ aterial wellbeing and our values are more individualistic”. lt5, a member of m Romuva, a re-born pagan religion in Lithuania, told me “I hope in the future we will not be as individualistic as we are now”. The Lithuanian artist and member of the paramilitary organization “Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union”, lt11, has a stronger view: “Lithuanians do not take seriously the fact of being an independent country, they do not give it the value that corresponds to it. I hope that this will change”. This lack of collective commitment is usually linked to a concern about the future viability of the country due to the possible loss of identity of a country with few inhabitants, mainly because of strong emigration to other countries, globalization, or the European Union, which some of the interviewees point to. Estonian filmmaker and politician ee11, Artur Talvik, gathers this concern and transforms it into a positive message for the rest of the world. “The more languages ​​and cultures we have, the richer and funnier the world is”. An Estonian businesswoman based in Viljandi, ee5, told me “I hope some people will live here 30 years from now”. In the same city of Viljandi, the cultural expert ee7 told me “I hope that in 30 years Estonia will still be a country as I am particularly concerned about whether the Estonian identity can survive in a global world; I trust in the stoic character of the Estonians to survive”. In Riga, lv11, a member of the anti-Soviet resistance and imprisoned in Siberia from 1983 to 1987, regrets that “This is not the Latvia for which I fought. The Liberals, like the Communists, live without principles. I am suspicious of some EU leaders who talk about a Europe without nations. I do not see in the West the support we need to survive as a nation like I saw during the Soviet era”. The publicist and writer lv9 is especially worried about the demographic situation in Latvia, a theme he is a specialist in: “We have the worst demographic situation in Europe, we have lost 40% of children in schools in 15 years, it is necessary to give social support from the State to families with young children”. Further south, lv10, a Baltic Way road organizer in the border area with Lithuania, said: “Everything is fine in Latvia, but it would be better if the living conditions of the people living in the countryside were better”. In Lithuania, lt2 tells me that the main problem in the country “is mass emigration, this is a problem especially for the elderly who are left alone in the countryside”. lt4 is concerned about how the EU affects national identity, “I would like the identity of small nations such as Catalonia or Lithuania to be preserved within the EU”. lt7 was quite straight-talking and told me that “EU leaders take too much power from sovereign states”. Not everybody necessarily shares this vision, there are also optimistic visions linked to the fact that they belong to the EU. Thus, for example, Estonian journalist ee3, an organizer of the Baltic Way, says “I am optimistic about the future of my village, since the Rail Baltica project, funded by the EU, will have a

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logistics base here in the village”. In the other part of the country, Estonian cultural activist ee8, a resident of a small town next to the border with Latvia, is very pleased with the evolution experienced by the Estonian culture in the last thirty years and makes a prediction: “The future of Estonia is linked to access to more and better European funds for research and development”. A few kilometres across the border from the village of ee8, in a Latvian town, cultural manager lv1 told me “Being in the EU is not a mistake, living in a border area we receive many EU funds for cross-border projects”. A little more to the south, the Latvian journalist lv2, despite being worried about the future of her country, considers that “to be part of the EU is positive, because of the freedom it gives to study and work in other countries, as well as the economic progress it brings”. lt1, who lives in a small Lithuanian town near the Latvian border, despite being concerned about emigration to other EU countries, also says that “the EU is very positive for us, as a border area”. lt8, a lgbt rights activist in Lithuania, is one of the few who talked to me about the EU regarding the fundamental rights that belonging to the EU is about: “For me the EU is the guarantee of my rights”. Many of them have a message for the rest of Europe and the world when they give value to the fact that small countries can leave a great footprint. For example, ee2, currently working as a translator in the it sector in Estonia “It does not matter how big you are in order to set a footprint for good in the world”. The former deputy and chairman of the Defence Committee in the Latvian Parliament, Ainars Latkoviskis, lv6, from another perspective, told me: “If the Baltic countries, being so different, can cooperate with each other, here there is a lot for the EU to learn from”. Lithuanian businessman lt6 is also optimistic, “We are an open-minded country that has developed very rapidly and we want to integrate into the global system even more. We must continue to attract foreign investment”. LT9, a Lithuanian Jew, told me “In Israel we say that the best ones come from Lithuania: Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuven Rivlin, Ehud Barak, Ben Yehuda, etc”. The reference to small nations raising their voice against the great and mighty, and the determination to be free in a peaceful way was also mentioned by many of the interviewees. For ee9 “Estonia demonstrated that it is possible to get rid of dictators peacefully if history gives you an opportunity” and for ee6, who was the organizer of the Baltic Way in the Viljandi area, “Each nation, no matter how small, has the right to decide its own future”. In Latvia, the historian lv4 believes that the message that Latvia should give to the world is “Do not give up, we did not think in 1986 that in five years we would be free”. Baptist priest lv7 is aware of the deed of his country in a comparative context: “National freedom is a gift from God and not all nations of the world have this gift” and

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specifically mentioned the case of Catalonia. lv10, an organizer of the Baltic Way in the south of Latvia, believes that Latvia’s message to the world is “You can change your life and political power in a peaceful way, but do it quickly, do not give the great powers time to react”. In Lithuania, the Mayor of Panevėžys, Rytis Mykolas Račkauskas, lt3 told me that the main message from his country to the world is that “major changes in society and politics can be carried out peacefully”. About peaceful resistance, lt4 states that if you want it to be successful, then you have ​​“to act in accordance with your values, and in our case, this meant Catholic values”. A common feature of the transversal Baltic identity in the three countries is the desire to live close to nature, or, at least, being aware that it is a value that must be preserved and promoted, remembering, at the same time, the link between the environmentalism of the 1980s and the peaceful movements of national liberation. Thus, the Estonian businesswoman ee4 told me from her farm near Türi, “The digitalization of Estonia allows the desire for contact with nature to be easier to achieve”. In Latvia, the trend continues, and the resident writer in Cēsis, lv5, states that “Latvia’s future is optimistic, I foresee a green country looking to the countryside, there is no other way”. Similar views were also shared by lt5. When compared to another area of Europe ​​ or the world, few had doubts – Nordic Europe quickly comes to mind. The Estonian kitchen expert ee10 affirmed from Viljandi that “We have young passionate chefs, who travel a lot to other Nordic countries such as Sweden to improve their skills”. Without leaving Viljandi, the businessman ee6, head of the organization of the Baltic Way in Viljandi, says “I am optimistic about the future of Estonia, we will soon be at the same socioeconomic level as Finland and Sweden”. Education is a clear bet for some of the interviewees. The Latvian designer lv3 believes that the future of his country “is to be open to the world and continue our commitment to being a green country and for education”. This is also seen by Lithuanian journalist lt10, “We have the best prepared young generation in history, and everyone agrees in Lithuania that education is a key issue”. In short, my interviews gave me the vision of optimistic countries whose future lies within Nordic Europe. If they can overcome the demographic challenge, this future is to be achieved by investing in education and promoting and respecting nature. I have also found many people happy to belong to the eu, especially if it is compatible with the maintenance of their national identity, and, at the same time, proud of the deed that they carried out thirty years ago, as well as the route they are marking out in the current situation in European and international contexts despite the relative economic and demographic weight of their respective countries. In some specific cases, not the

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majority, I also found a strong conviction that peaceful resistance and a firm will can allow your nation to gain recognition as an independent state and this is a lesson that can be extrapolated to other parts of the world. 4

Do Most Catalans Really Want Independence?

Moving onwards from the Baltic Way, in 2012 we find a small nation, on the other side of the map of Europe, that is asking for independence in a different context. But is Catalonia really asking for independence? As mentioned briefly before, support for the independence of Catalonia has been seen in different surveys since 2012. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the ceo survey, the only poll that has been asking about the question periodically since 2005. However, as you can see, when voters are offered to choose between independence and other formulas for Catalonia to fit within Spain, support for independence never exceeds 50%. Quite probably, though, in a referendum with a binary question, like the one celebrated in Scotland in 2014, the support would be clearer, but Spain has so far refused to hold one for the political reasons mentioned above. What we do know is that despite the fact that support for the independence of Catalonia is not as large as it was in the Baltic republics in 1991, or in other parts of Europe at that time, such as in Slovenia, it is true that there has been a clear and stable majority over the last few years in favour of a consultation to determine the political future of Catalonia, including the option of independence, as long as the vote is agreed upon with Madrid. For example, on 13 March 2013, 77% of the Members of the Parliament of Catalonia, including the 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Independent state Federal state

Figure 1

July 2019

July 2017

July 2018

July 2015

July 2016

April 2014

June 2013

June 2012

July 2010

June 2011

July 2009

July 2007

July 2008

July 2006

June 2005

Status Quo Region of a centralized Spain

Evolution of support for independence in Catalonia from 2005 to 2019. Source: Author with ceo data

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mps of the Catalan branch of the psoe, approved a declaration in favour of the “right to decide of Catalonia” through an agreement with the central state (La Vanguardia, 13 March 2013). A few months later, on 16 January 2014, 64.4% of Catalan mps formally requested the Spanish central government institutions to transfer competences to Catalonia in order to organize a referendum similar to the one being organized in Scotland (Gisbert, 16 January 2014). The Spanish Parliament answered negatively in April that year (Eldiario.es, 8 April 2014). More recently, some Catalan newspapers have commissioned surveys so as to find out the social support that a referendum of independence has in Catalonia. For example, in January 2017, the La Vanguardia newspaper, based in Barcelona, published a survey in which 76.6% of Catalans were in favour of a referendum asking about independence as long as it was accepted and agreed upon with the Spanish central government (La Vanguardia, 9 January 2017). This figure rose to 82% in September 2017 in a survey published by the ­Madrid-based newspaper El País (El País, 22 September 2017), and dropped to 80% in a survey published by the Ara newspaper, based in Barcelona, in December 2018 (Moldes, 15 December 2018). In short, social support for independence is more or less tied with support for remaining part of the Spanish kingdom in the case of a referendum with a binary question, but social support for actually holding a referendum as an instrument to solve the conflict is very high, as long as the consultation is agreed upon with Spain, a scenario that has not been accepted so far by the various governments to hold power in Spain. 5

Catalonia as Seen from the Baltics: A “Very Strange” Stance

In 1991, the then President of the Government of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, said “Catalonia is like Lithuania, but Spain is not the ussr” (Antich, 4 September 1991). This “Spain is not the ussr” still resonates thirty years later and may help understand to a large degree the reason why, despite the Catalan fascination for the Baltic States, the aspirations of a corner of the Western Mediterranean do not find mutual political reciprocity on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It did not seem like that in September 2013, just after the organization in Catalonia of a human chain about 400 km long to peacefully claim for independence inspired by the Baltic Way of 1989. This was organized, in part, thanks to the logistical knowledge provided from the Baltic States, specifically, as far as is known, by the Estonians Henn Karits and Ülo Laanoja (Europapress, 19 June 2013).

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As a result of the success of this human chain, the then Prime Minister of Latvia, Valdis Dombrovskis, said that “the Catalan Way towards independence” human chain is a “powerful signal” that is “worth paying attention to”. Asked in the same interview whether Latvia would recognize a hypothetical independent Catalonia, his response was “if there is legitimacy in their process, then I would say, theoretically, why not?” (Segura, Pous & Scully, 13 September 2013). In Lithuania, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius was not as specific as his Latvian counterpart, but he still said that “each country has the right to self-determination” and “I am very happy that the Lithuanian model inspires people from other places”. He also added “The Baltic Way now belongs to the whole of humanity” (Catalan News Agency, 14 September 2013). Obviously, these responses cannot be understood without understanding the emotions that arise among the Baltic people, who were the protagonists of their own history, when they see similar images elsewhere in the world. The reaction from Madrid was not long coming, immediately calling on the Latvian and Lithuanian ambassadors in Madrid. Soon afterwards Butkevicius said that his words on Catalonia had been distorted by the press (bns, 17 September 2013) and sided with Madrid. In Lithuania, there have been no significant voices in the political sphere defending the independence of Catalonia, only the alde Member of the European Parliament Petras Auštrevičius who said at the beginning of 2018 that “if people believe and have willpower, independence will be achieved, sooner or later” (Catalan News Agency, 11 January 2018). To better understand this silence there is a clue in a recent poll. A survey was conducted in September 2015 by Professor Gediminas Vitkus of Vilnius tspmi in which he asked whether Lithuania should recognize an independent Catalonia. The results indicated that 30% of Lithuanians would be in favour, 15% against and a significant 54% did not have an opinion on the matter (Vitkus, 2019). However, a more recent poll by “Baltic Surveys” in October 2019 and reported in the Lithuanian press in late November 2019, stated that 59% of Lithuanians now support Catalan independence, 15% are against and 26% do not have a position on this issue (Lithuanian National Barometer 319, 2019). There are four years between the two polls and many events have happened in that time – most significantly, the failed independence referendum of October the first 2017 and the images of Spanish Police violently clashing with voters which were seen around the world. Also the surveys were carried out by different teams, with different samples and different questions but they do seem to show a clear positioning of the Lithuanian public opinion influenced by their own experience under Soviet occupation as sociologist Romas Mačiūnas pointed out (Jaruševičiūtė, 24 November 2019). In Latvia, where no survey has been published similar to the ones of Lithuania, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement rectifying the words of

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Valdis Dombrovskis, but the Prime Minister’s office then reaffirmed his words “The Prime Minister said what he said and he has not changed his mind” (Catalan News Agency, 16 September 2013). In Latvia, there have been voices in the national parliament defending the self-determination of Catalonia. For example, Imants Parādnieks, an mp from the National Alliance, expressed his support for the independence of Catalonia in a parliamentary session in January 2014 (Parādnieks, 2014) and once again in January 2018 (Delfi.lv, 25 January 2018) asking the foreign minister about the Latvian position on Catalan independence. Outside of the political sphere, the gesture of the Latvian composer Mārtiņš Brauns, who gave up the rights of his choral song “Saule, Pērkons, Daugava” in order for it to be adapted to a Catalan context, was especially appreciated in Catalonia (Public Broadcasting of Latvia, 9 September 2014). Latvian columnist and writer Otto Ozols has also been very active supporting Catalan independence in different Latvian and Lithuanian media (Ozols, 18 October 2017). In Estonia there were no statements of support from any member of the government. In spite of that, a Catalonia support group was constituted in the Parliament of Estonia led by the filmmaker and mp Artur Talvik. The Member of the Reform Party Eerik-Niiles Kross also regretted the lack of historical memory and solidarity of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs while recalling the courage that Iceland showed with Estonia in the past (Tambur, 2 October 2017). Indeed, everyone in the Baltic States knows and respects Jon Hannibalsson, the former Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs, who recognized Baltic independence in 1991 before anyone else. Hannibalsson himself, in October 2017, shortly after the Catalan referendum, said that the position of the Baltic States regarding Catalonia “is very strange”. He did not expect them to recognize Catalan independence but did expect that “they defend the rights of the Catalans, or of any other people, to self-determination by democratic means” (leta/tbt, 16 October 2017). To try to find an answer to this “very strange” stance we should have a look at the current political situation in Europe. It is true that we are in a difficult geopolitical context. Within the European Union, the Baltic States are among the most critical voices of the Putin regime in Russia and, all over Europe, there are suspicions that Russia could be taking advantage of the situation in Catalonia for its own interests. This is, of course, something which could generate mistrust within governmental circles of the three Baltic republics, even though no clear statement has been issued by any official representative. This possible interest from the Kremlin for Catalan independentism may well be real, making the most of a lack of commitment

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from Spain to finding a political solution so far. However, should Catalan independentism be understood as a collaboration with Russia or following an agenda that could be considered close to the Kremlin? Suspicions have mainly arisen as a result of statements made in May 2018 by the chairman of the home security agency of Germany, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Hans Georg Maassen and published by the newspaper El País. Maassen said that he had plausible and convincing information, although not firsthand, that Russia had been giving propaganda support to Catalan independentism (Carbajosa, 14 May 2018). What do we know about possible links between Catalan independentism and the Kremlin’s current foreign policy? We know for sure that on 26 November 2017, former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, displeased with the support of the EU given to Mariano Rajoy and their siding with the unity of Spain, told an Israeli media outlet that “The EU is a club of decadent and obsolete countries” and that Catalonia should vote on whether it wants to continue in the EU (Cymerman, 26 November 2017). Twenty-four hours later he rectified this and said in a tweet that “Catalanism is pro-EU, it has always been so and will continue to be”. (krls, 27 November 2017). To understand this statement, the result of the autumn 2017 ceo survey (ceo, October 2017), carried out after the referendum of October the first, will help. There was a question: “In case of independence, would you want Catalonia to continue to be part of the European Union?”. The results are interesting. Although the results show that the citizens questioned who are against independence have stronger pro-EU preferences than independentists have, we can also see that pro-independence citizens are still predominantly in favour of continuing to form part of the EU. This is relevant because the question was asked following recent statements by the leaders of the European Union contrary to the interests of Catalan independentism. As an example, Frans Timmermans, then EU Commission First VicePresident, said on 4 October 2017, three days after the images of Spanish police hitting Catalan voters were broadcast, that “it is a duty for any government to uphold the law, and this sometimes requires the proportionate use of force” (Politico.eu, 4 October 2017). In spite of these statements, polls show that Catalonia is still, alongside Scotland, as Kavaliauskas mentions in his chapter of this book, a cosmopolitan, pro-EU independence movement. In addition to that, recent comments have been added by Carles Puigdemont himself demonstrating that he is supporting Ukraine national independence against external aggressions, although not specifically in relation to the current context, but from a historical perspective. Thus, for example, we find that Puigdemont on 25 November 2018 tweeted in solidarity with the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine (krls, 25 November 2018), and in the wake of

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Don’t know / No answer

Voters of parties against independence

No

Voters of pro-independence parties Catalans

Yes 0% Figure 2

20%

40%

60%

80%

In case of Catalan independence, would you like to stay in the European Union? Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll from autumn 2017 after Catalan Referendum of 1 October 2017

c­ riticism he received for this tweet, he wrote another tweet reminding people that the Parliament of Catalonia made an Institutional Statement in 2007 describing the Holodomor as genocide (Parlament de Catalunya, 2007). Therefore, it can hardly be said that Carles Puigdemont, clearly the best-known leader of Catalan independentism on an international level, can be considered someone close to the current Kremlin theses. To conclude, I should mention that there are reasons to think that, while Russia is trying to take advantage of the situation in Catalonia to spread arguments questioning the legitimacy of Western democratic institutions, it is no less true that Russia, when it has had the opportunity, has officially backed Madrid in the conflict with Catalonia and justified its own actions on an internal level by pointing to the practices of the Spanish government on 1 October 2017. As an example, on 2 October 2017, the Kremlin press secretary Dimitry Peskov, when asked about Spanish police violence in Catalonia, sided with Madrid and added that the Russian authorities would not accept someone questioning the methods of the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation either (Gazeta.ru, 2 October 2017). 6

Catalan Independence Values: Young Democratic People, Open to the World, Who Mainly Speak in Catalan

Having shown the social support that the referendum on self-determination has in Catalonia, I would like to present the values behind the Catalans who

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consider the option of independence an attractive one, bearing in mind also, as we have already seen in Figure 2, that membership of the EU is not called into question, unlike other political movements present in other parts of the European continent in our days. To begin with, one of the most powerful claims made about Catalan independentism is its similarities with Brexit, due to fact that independentism has a very powerful support in rural areas. This is stated in a document in PowerPoint format that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent to all its embassies (Olmo, 7 October 2018). Is it really like that? There are reasons to believe this is not so. While the similarity between the urban and rural world is true, it is no less true that Brexit has the support of older people or sectors of people with a low level of education (Alabrese, O. Becker, Fetzer and Novy, 2018), while Catalan independentism receives more support from the young population and citizens with a high level of education, as shown in the survey of the ceo, the most recent one from autumn 2018 on a sample of 1,500 people resident in Catalonia. Catalan independence has also been linked to xenophobia. Many have claimed this, but the most important voice was the current leader (July 2019) of the Spanish People’s Party, Pablo Casado (Publico.es, 30 January 2017). Actually, the truth is that recent data shows that pro-independence activists feel less identified with the phrase “With so much immigration, you no longer feel at home” than supporters of staying in Spain. An important fact that one cannot help commenting on: support for independence is linked to having Catalan as a language with which respondents feel identified. Those who have the Catalan language as their own language, 60% 50% 40% 30%

Yes to Catalan independence

20%

No answer

No to Catalan independence

10% 0%

18–24 years

Figure 3

25–34 years

35–49 years

50–64 65 years or years older

Support for Catalan independence by age in Catalonia, Autumn 2018 Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll from autumn 2018

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No answer University studies Post-compulsory studies (nonuniversity) Compulsory Secondary education or less

Against Catalan independence Supports Catalan independence 0% Figure 4

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Level of education and support for independence in Catalonia Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll from autumn 2018

70% 60% 50% 40%

Supports Catalan independence

30% 20%

Against Catalan independence

10% 0%

Agree or Neither agree Strongly agree nor disagree

Figure 5

Disagree or strongly disagree

No answer

% who agree in Catalonia with the statement “With so much immigration, one no longer feels at home.” Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll from autumn 2018

their mother tongue, tend to support independentism, as opposed to those whose first language is Castilian (often just known as Spanish). The language people consider to be their first language is therefore an indicator to know which segment of the population supports independentism. Finally, I’d like to offer one more relevant figure. Those in favour of independence clearly prefer democracy as a political system, while those in favour of

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From the Baltic Way to the #CatalanReferendum 70% 60% 50%

Supports Catalan independence

40%

Against Catalan independence

30% 20%

No answer

10% 0%

Catalan

Figure 6

Spanish

Both Catalan and Spanish

Other language

Supporters of Catalan independence depending on first language Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll from autumn 2018

100% 80%

Supporting Catalan independence

60% 40%

Against Catalan independence

20% 0%

Democracy is It doesn’t matter preferable to any whether we live under other form at a democratic regime or government an undemocratic one

Figure 7

No answer

In some circumstances an authoritarian regime is preferable to a democratic one

Opinion regarding wether democracy is preferable to authoritarian regimes among Catalan public opinion Source: Author, with ceo data. Poll made autumn 2018

continuing to form part of Spain, although they also support democracy, do not do so as strongly as those who support Catalan independence.

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In conclusion, pro-independence supporters are mostly pro-EU, although the same feeling exists among Catalans in favour of being part of Spain. Pro-independence Catalans have a higher level of education than non-independentists, they are younger, they can hardly be considered as being opposed to immigration, they feel strongly identified with democracy as a system of government, and their first language often indicates their identification with being Catalan. Therefore, in the light of the data provided, the Catalan independence movement is hardly comparable with eurosceptical movements present in other parts of Europe at the moment as it shows many significant differences. 7

Baltic States and Catalonia, Closer Than You Might Think

To summarize everything I have tried to explain, it is true that we begin from a starting point with obvious differences, between what happened in the Baltic countries thirty years ago and the current situation in Catalonia. The first difference is that support for independence in Catalonia is not so strong as it was in the Baltic republics in relation to independence from the ussr in the early 1990s. It is also true, and this is where most of the Baltic political class focuses their opinions, that in the Baltic case we are talking about an illegal occupation of their countries during World War ii and that the ussr itself recognized in Article 72 of its Constitution, the right of secession of its republics, although in practice this right was not so obvious. This is the opposite case of the Spanish Constitution and its famous Article 2 which impedes self-determination. Having said that, we can find some interesting similarities between the two situations. There is a clear support of those who defend the independence of Catalonia for democracy as a system of government, although this is also quite relevant for those who oppose independence. There is also an evident Europeanism among Catalans, which remained strong among independence supporters even during the toughest weeks when there was a clear and direct rejection by the European institutions of the Catalan independence process. And there is also a broad social support within Catalonia to find a solution through a referendum accepted and agreed upon with Spain. We therefore see a movement with clearly pro-EU and democratic values, similar in that regard to the values​​ favourable to the European Union and to democracy that I observed during my route along the Baltic Way. At the same time, people interviewed along the Baltic Way, most of whom were over forty years old, were concerned about a loss of identity, either caused

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by globalization, by external threats of a warlike nature, or by demographics. A clear link was observed by this author between these worries and Catalonia independence, with the fact of speaking the Catalan language, and thus the Catalan identity, being the main factor behind supporting Catalan ­independence. This situation, though, is not an ethnical one as there is a ­minority, but still significant, number of Catalan speakers who are against independence and the opposite case exists too – Spanish speakers supporting independence. If we add to this the lack of xenophobia of the Catalans, demonstrated in the survey of the previous section, we are clearly dealing with a cosmopolitan liberal political movement that moves along values considered as soft (better democracy, a claim defended by all independentist leaders) and that would have as its central identity element the allegiance to a language that is neither defended nor recognized by the central institutions of the Spanish State. However, it is not my aim here to explain the reasons behind this dissatisfaction. To understand this, I recommend reading the reports of civic entities defending the Catalan language such as the Platform for the Language (Plataforma per la Llengua, 2018). The point that I consider most significant to remark on are related, in my opinion, to the generational difference between those who participated in the Baltic Way and those who support Catalan independence today – this support is higher among young adults as we can see. According to the Romas Mačiūnas poll (Jaruševičiūtė, 24 November 2019), in Lithuania support for Catalan independence is stronger within the generation younger than thirty years old, whereas in the older generations there are many more people who do not have a clear position. However, in any case, support for Catalan independence is the preferred option in all segments of Lithuanian society. This is a point that is even more significant if we take into account the concern about the lack of commitment of the younger population in the Baltic countries with the values​​ that made older generations recover sovereignty thirty years before, according to some of the interviewees. My argument is that this bigger support among younger generations of Lithuanians for Catalan independence is due to what they saw in the media and on social media. The clashes of Spanish police with people who were trying to vote were broadcast and shared on social networks worldwide, which may have affected the perception of many people regarding Catalan independence. Having said that, more data would be needed to back up this argument which I believe may be true using the data from the two opinion polls carried out in Lithuania mentioned above. I invite future researchers to work on that. If the argument proves to be true then it would be demonstrated that the values of those who took part in the Baltic Way have been

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transmitted to younger generations and so the memory of their own past is kept alive. Having seen all this, is there a meeting point between the Baltic people who took part in the Baltic Way of 1989, regardless of the driving values among younger generations, and Catalans supporting independence, beyond the common values in Europeanism and democracy? I think it would be good to answer the question, by referring to the words and intellectual heritage of former Estonian President Lennart Meri, so well summarised by Maria Mälksoo in this book. As Mälksoo said, Meri often adressed Europe in terms of moral duty and conscience. According to him, Europe must preserve the cultural identity of small nation states because the diversity of Europe is the strongest cultural asset of European soft power towards the rest of the world. Lennart Meri’s commitment to a diverse Europe is very clear, although little is known about what President Meri said about those small nations which had not achieved statehood yet. One clue can be found by recalling what was said by Lennart Meri, in his speech of 23 July 2000 in Salzburg upon receiving the Small Countries Prize from the Herbert Batliner Institute Our world is not growing, but the number of countries in it increases. There are no signs of this tendency abating. The number of small countries is continuing to grow, and it would be light-minded of the world to close its eyes to this reality. (Lennart Meri, 2000) If Lennart Meri’s words continue to be true, then perhaps what was said by the Liberal and pro-EU mep Petras Auštrevičius recently in relation to the case of Catalonia (as quoted above) may also come true – the independence of Catalonia will come sooner or later if Catalan independentists continue to believe in it, and who knows whether this will be with the support of those who are aware of the importance of small countries in Europe and the current world. The ball is now in the Catalans’ court. References Alabrese, Eleonora, O. Becker, Sascha, Fetzer, Thiemo and Novy, Dennis (2018). Who voted for Brexit? Individual and regional data combined. https://www.sciencedirect .com/science/article/pii/S0176268018301320 (accessed 11 May 2019). Antich, José. (1991). Pujol afirma que Cataluña tiene iguales derechos que Lituania pero los ejerce por la vía autonómica. El País. https://elpais.com/diario/1991/09/04/ espana/683935217_850215.html (accessed 19 May 2019).

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Index of Names Abramović, Marina 102 Ágh, Attila 7 Alyosha 49 Anderson, Benedict 112 Anderson, Elizabeth 116, 124 Arendt, Hannah 116, 124 Ash, Timothy Garton 133 Assmann, Aleida 106–107, 116, 125 Assmann, Jan 107, 125 Ataka 154–155 Augustinčić, Antun 96, 99–101, 103 Auštrevičius, Petras 253, 262

Charlie Hebdo 135 Che Guevara, Ernesto 97 Chirac, Jacques 15 Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria – gerb 148, 151 Comte, Auguste 107 Connerton, Paul 93, 103 Czech 177, 181–182, 184, 187 Republic 177–178, 180 Czechoslovakia 177–178, 180–181, 182 n8 Čapo Žmegač, Jasna 92, 103 Čolović, Ivan 94, 103

Babiš, Andrej 17 Baltrūnas, Aleksas 225 Barak, Ehud 249 Barry, Brian 116, 125 Bauman, Zygmunt 51, 106 Bebriša, Iveta 128 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer 249 Berdnikov, Andrey 114, 125 Berger, Peter 107 Beriņa, Liene 128 Berlin, Isiaih 34–35 Blair, Tony 17 Blanchot, Maurice 205 Bohutinsky, Emil 98 Bossi, Umberto 17 Boyko Borisov 148 Brauns, Mārtiņš 254 Bringa, Tone 96, 103 Brkljačić, Maja 93, 103 Broz Tito, Josip 93–104 Broz, Jovanka 100–101 Buha, Boško 99 Bula, Dace 114, 125 Bulgakov, Mikhail 101, 103 Bulgarian Communist party 143–144, 150, 153 Bulgarian Socialist Party – bsp 143, 146–147, 149, 153, 165 Butkevičius, Algirdas 253

Dahrendorf, Ralf 13 Daija, Pauls 115, 125 Daujotytė, Viktorija 228, 231 Derrida, Jacques 132, 203 Dombrovskis, Valdis 253–254 Donne, John 181 Donskis, Leonidas 47, 136, 230–231, 233 Dribins, Leo 115 Duda, Andrzej 48, 68 Dumont, Louis 231 Durkheim, Émile 107

Capoccia, Giovanni 175, 189 Casado, Pablo 257 Chadzevičius, Vilhelmas 225

Enlai, Zhou 188 Estonia 182 n8, 183–187 Fico, Robert 17 Fijolić, Ivan 97–102 Fortuyn, Pim 17 Foster, Hal 97–98, 103 Franco, Francisco 245 Frank, Herc 110 Gavelis, Ričardas 225, 232–233 Gert, Bernard 116, 125 Giedroic, Jerzy 230 Gimbutas, Marija 226 Giordano Christian 41 Gorbachev, Mikhail 30, 196, 199, 205, 235 Gordon, John-Stewart 116, 125 Grigas, Kazys 227 Grinkevičiūtė, Dalia 225 Grīviņš, Miķelis 128 Gušić, Marijana 95, 103

268 Habermas, Jürgen 116–117, 197–198 Halbwachs, Maurice 107 Hannibalsson, Jon 254 Hanovs, Deniss 109, 114–115, 125 Havel, Václav 10, 21, 37–39, 54, 175, 177–192, 217 Herzen, Aleksandr 203, 214 Hjemdahl Mathiesen, Kirsti 94, 104 Hobson, John M. 187 Houellebecq, Michel 136 Hope, Anthony 11–12 Hoyl, Fred 184 Ieviņa, Ilze 128 Ivanuša, Dolores 99, 103 Jambrešić Kirin, Renata 92, 103 Jansone, Ilze 115, 125 Jansone, Zane 128 Jensen, Jody 27, 49 Johnson, Boris 17 Juncker, Jean-Claude 15 Kaczyński, Jarosław 16–17, 19, 42–44, 66, 69–70, 74, 79 Kanopkienė, Laima 225 Kaprans, Miķelis 113–115, 126 Karits, Henn 252 Katunarić, Vjeran 99, 103 Kavaliauskas, Tomas 245 Kavolis, Vytautas 227, 229 Kearney, Richard 137 Kelemen, Daniel 175 Kelemen, Petra 95, 104 Kennedy, John F. 102 Ķešāne, Iveta 128 Khruschev, Nikita 225 Klaus, Václav 17 Kļave, Evija 128 Kockel, Ullrich 54–55 Kolakowski, Leszek 136 Kondrashov, Dmitry 110, 126 Konrád, György 13 Krastiņa, Līga 128 Kritzman, Lawrence D. 94, 103 Kross, Eerik-Niiles 254 Kulakauskienė, Emilija 225 Kundera, Milan 10, 13, 52 Kurczewski, Jacek 112, 127

Index of Names Kurtz, Sebastian 17 Kymlicka, Will 116, 126 Laanoja, Ülo 252 Laclau, Ernesto 61 Latkovskis, Ainars 243–244, 249 Lawson, George 175–176 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 17 Le Pen, Marine 18 Liehm, Antonin 223 Ločmele, Klinta 114–115, 126 Luckmann, Thomas 107 Luhmann, Niklas 77 Lukšaitė, Ingė 227 Maassen, Hans Georg 255 Maceina, Antanas 226 Mačiūnas, Romas 253, 261 Macron, Emanuel 15 Madonna 218 Magris, Claudio 13 Mälksoo, Maria 39, 262 Martinaitis, Marcelijus 228–229 Marx 210 Marx, Karl 107 Masaryk, T.G. 181 Meerkel, Angela 53 Meri, Lennart 175, 177–178, 182–187, 262 Michnik, Adam 13, 45, 54, 56, 213 Miszlivetz, Ferenc 27 Morawiecki, Mateusz 67 Mouffe, Chantal 61, 77 Movement for Rights and Freedoms – mrf 147, 153–155 Muižnieks, Nils 114–115, 126 Müller, Jan-Werner 176 Nausėda, Gitanas 48 Navalny, Alexey 216 Nekrošius, Eimuntas 224 Netanyahu, Benjamin 249 Nevzorov, Aleksandr 197 Nora, Pierre 94, 103, 107, 126 Norkus, Zenonas 31, 44 Nozick, Robert 116, 127 Orbán, Viktor 15–17, 53, 60, 67–68, 73–74, 78, 80–81, 176 Osiatyński, Wiktor 69

269

Index of Names Ozolas, Romualdas 224 Ozols, Otto 254 Parādnieks, Imants 254 Pavlovsky, Gleb 195 Pelevin, Viktor 101, 103, 200 Peskov, Dimitry 256 Platt, Kevin 115, 127 Podmazov, Arnold 127 Ponta, Victor 17 Potkonjak, Sanja 93, 103 Pourchier-Plasseraud, Suzanne 115, 127 Presley, Elvis 99 Procevska, Olga 113–114, 126 Puigdemont, Carles 255–256 Pujol, Jordi 252 Putin, Vladimir 195, 204 Račkauskas, Rytis Mykolas 243, 250 Rajoy, Mariano 255 Rawls, John 116, 127 Requejo, Ferran 245 Rigney, Ann 93, 103 Rihtman Auguštin, Dunja 92, 103 Rivlin, Reuven 249 Roerich, Svyatoslav 110, 127 Sakharov, Andrei 200, 205, 207, 217 Sarkozy, Nicolas 15, 17 Sartori, Giovanni 83 Savukynas, Bronius 225, 229–230 Schlögel, Karl 127 Schmitt, Carl 74, 76–77 Schröder, Gerhard 17 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 99, 101 Shakespeare 203–204 Shapiro, Adolf 110 Simeon ii, king 148–149, 164 Simmel, Georg 107, 124, 127 Snyder, Timothy 223 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 195, 205, 207, 216–217 Spencer, Herbert 107 Staller, Ilona Cicciolina 101 Stallone, Sylvester 99–101 Stoškus, Krescencijus 228 Strenga, Gustavs 115, 126 Subačius, Giedrius 229

Surkov, Vladislav 197 Šalkauskis, Stasys 231 Šapoka, Adolfas 225 Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena 91, 93–95, 103, 104 Šūpule, Inese 128 Talvik, Artur 242, 248, 254 Tangiyeva, Jelena 110 Tauginas, Jonas 226 Taylor, Charles 116, 127 Timmermans, Frans 255 Tismaneanu, Vladimir 34 Troebst, Stefan 106 Trotsky 210 Trump, Donald 82 Union of Democratic Forces – udf 143–144, 146 Vaivode, Lelde 128 Valantiejus, Algimantas 227 Vėlius, Norbertas 228 Venclova, Tomas 47 Verdery, Katherine 93, 104 Vitkus, Gediminas 253 Volen Siderov – 154–155, 157, 159, 164 Volkov, Vladislav 112, 127 Vuco, Miro 101 Warhol, Andy 99 Weber, Max 107 Wezel, Katja 115, 127 Wieviorka, Michel 116, 127 Wilders, Geert 18 Wright Mills, C. 98 Young, Iris M. 116, 127 Žabko, Oksana 128 Zanki, Josip 91, 100, 104 Zelče, Vita 114, 126 Zeman, Miloš 16, 17 Zepa, Brigita 114–115 Zhurzhenko, Tatyana 224 Žalys, Vytautas 227 Žanić, Ivo 92, 104

Index of Subjects Academic historians 227 Absolute/unconditional hospitality 132, 137–138 alde (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) 253 American superhero 99–101 Antipolitical politics 178 Ara (Catalan newspaper) 252 Arrivant 132, 137 Artist as ethnographer 97, 103 Auschwitz 223 Authoritarian/authoritarianism 60–62, 70–71, 74–75, 77 Baby Boom (Ivan Fijolić's sculpture) 98 Balkans 91–92, 102, 104 Baltic republics / states 241–242, 245, 247, 251–254, 260, 261 Baltic sea 252 Baltic Surveys 253 Baltic Way 49, 241, 243–247, 249–253, 260–262 Baltophilia 231 Balts 227 Barcelona 246, 252 Basque country 245 Berlin Wall 102 BfV (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) 255 Bomber (Emil Bohotinsky's sculpture) 98, 102 Brexit 257 Brotherhood and unity 92–93 Bulgaria 224 Bulgarian ethnic model 144–145, 151, 153, 171 Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Church 154, 161, 162 Bulgarian society 140–141, 149, 152, 163 Catalan independence 241, 247, 253–254, 256–261 Catalan National Assembly 242 Catalan Way 49, 253 Catalonia 241–243, 245, 246–248, 250–254, 256–258, 260–262 Central and Eastern Europe (cee) 175–177, 182, 185, 187–188

Central Europe 27–28, 46, 48, 49, 51–56 Central European 91–92, 104 ceo (Centre d’Estudis d’Opinó) 246, 251, 255, 257–259 Cēsis 250 cis (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) 246 CiU (Convergència i Unió) 246 Civic responsibility 178–179 Civil sector 141, 152 Civil society 146, 150, 152, 154, 159, 160, 167 Civil society 13–14, 17 bad 19–20 weak Cold War 225 Collective memory 106–107, 114–115, 120 Colonialism 233 Communism / anti-Communism cleavage 152 Communist Party 225, 228 Communist regime 96, 223, 233, 235 Conformism 234 Conscience 179–180, 182–183 Consensus 142, 144, 147, 149 Conservative/conservativism 59–63, 65–66, 68–71, 73–74, 76–80, 82–84 Core 8, 11 Corruption 17, 146–150, 156 Coronavirus 138 Covid-19 pandemic 138 Croatian War of Independence 96 Cross-border projects 249 Day of the Republic (29th November) 100 Day of Youth (Josip Broz Tito’s birthday, 25th May) 94–97 Decembrists 206–207 De-consolidation 24 De-democratisation 17, 24 Democracy consolidated 17, 19, 20, 24 defect 18 liberal 22 new 18 old/traditional 8, 19 quality of 17, 19

271

Index of Subjects Democracy 175–178, 181, 183–185, 188, 245, 258–262 Democratisation 141–142, 165 Democratura 45, 55–56 Demographics 261 Dissidents 194

Foreign investment 249 Foreign policy 255 France 242 Freedom Monument (Riga) 241 Friends and enemies 62, 76–77 Fundamental rights 249

East (of Europe) 175–177, 179–182, 187 East 29, 30, 32–33, 37 East-Central Europe 36, 37, 41–42, 45, 221 Eastern European 221–222 Easternisation 23 Ecological movement 226 Education 250 El País (Spanish newspaper) 252 Elite 232–233 Enlightenment 9 Estonia 241–245, 247–250, 254 Estonian Free Party 242 Estonian Parliament 243 Ethnic 143–145, 147, 151, 153–158, 161, 163, 164 Ethnic culture 228 Ethnic fundamentalism 231 Ethnic groups 105, 107, 109, 111–113, 116, 118, 124 Ethnic minorities 105–106, 108–111, 114–116, 118–120, 123–124 Ethnonationalism, ethnonationalist 152, 156 eu-15 7, 10, 15, 20–21 Euro-optimistic 13 Europe 175–188, 223, 242, 250–251, 254, 262 Europe in-between 10 European 91–92, 104, 222–224 European Food Safety Authority (efsa) 19 European funds for research and development 249 European integration 146, 148, 151 European Union (eu) 242, 245–246, 248–250, 254–255, 257, 262 Europeanisation 7, 19, 21 Europeanism 260, 262 Europeanness 20 Euro-sceptic 13 Euroscepticism 151 Eurozine 222–223, 229 Existential revolution 175, 177–179 Experts 232

Gediminas’ Tower (Vilnius) 241 Genocide 256 Geographical proximity 22–23 Geopolitics 224 Germany 255 Glastnost 225 Globalization 248, 261 Government of Catalonia 246 Gulag memoirs 225

Family 140, 148, 163, 164, 165 Fidesz 59–60, 63, 67–72, 74, 78, 80 Finland 250

Habsburg Empire/monarchy 10–12, 23 Herbert Batliner Institute 262 Hermeneutical ethics 137 Historical memory 227 Holocaust 223 Holodomor 255, 256 Home 140–142, 148–151, 155–157, 161, 163–165 Homophobic 156 Hospitality 134, 136, 138 House of Flowers 100 Human chain 242, 243, 252 Human rights 21, 141, 144, 146, 153, 159, 160 Humanism 180 Iceland 254 identification 132 Identity Central European 12, 22–23 European 8, 10, 14, 19–21 national 8, 10, 19 Identity 140–141, 242, 248, 250, 260–261 Identity-building 91–92, 95 Illiberalism/antiliberalism 60–62, 65, 73 Immigrants 134 Immigration 257, 260 Independence 229, 234 Inferiority complex 10, 15 Insecurity 9–10, 23 Intellectuals 223, 232–235 Intelligentsia 194, 200, 212, 233 Intermarium 10 Iron Curtain 13, 222 Islamophobia 154, 156

272 Israel 249 Istanbul Convention 161–163 it (Information Technology) 249 Kremlin 254–255, 256 Kultura (journal) 230 Kultūros barai (journal) 221–222, 224–225, 228, 234 La Vanguardia (Catalan newspaper) 252 Land of workers and peasants 92, 95 Language 243, 257–261 Latvia 241–245, 248–250, 253–254 Latvians 105, 108, 110–124 Law and Justice 16 Lettre Internationale (journal) 223 lgbt 161, 163, 249 Liberal 145, 146, 150–152, 154, 156, 157, 162–164 Liberal democracy 60, 62, 65, 67, 78, 82 Liberalism 60–65, 67, 74, 82–84 Lietuvos šaulių sajunga 244 Liquid liberalism 49 Lithuania 229, 241–245, 248, 250, 252, 253, 261 Lithuanian 223–229 Madrid 246, 251–253, 256 Mass emigration 248 Mediterranean 91, 103 Memories 91–92, 94–95, 99–103 Migrants 156, 161 Minority rights 145, 153, 156, 157 Modernisation 11–12, 14, 21, 22 Modernity unfinished 8, 11, 23 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 227, 241 Movement anti-political 18 national 10, 12 populist 16 Multi-cultural society 105, 108 Multiculturalism 133 Multi-ethnic society 105, 107, 110–111 Narodniki 209 Narodniks 203, 210, 217 Nation 228, 229

Index of Subjects National Alliance (Latvia) 254 National Front 18 National identity 105, 108, 109, 115, 116 National wellbeing 141–142 Nationalism 231 Nationalism, nationalistic 151–156 Nazi 223, 227 Nazi Germany 10, 241 Neo N.O.B. (Ivan Fijolić's exhibition) 98–100 Neo-liberal capitalism 91 New Europe 177–178, 180, 183, 187 New morality 144, 147, 148 New order 163–165 New York Review of Books 223 Newcomer party 18 nob – Narodnooslobodilačka borba (People’s Liberation War) 93, 97–99, 101 Non-governmental organizations (ngos) 146–147, 150–151, 164 Nordic Europe 250 Oligarch 17–18 Oligarchy 12 One-party political system 91 Open society 141–142, 145–146, 148, 152, 162, 164 Opportunity window 23 Ostleute 12 Panevėžys 243, 250 Parliament of Catalonia 251, 256 Parliament of Estonia 254 Partisan 93, 96–99, 101 Paternalism, paternalistic 140, 163, 164 Peaceful resistance 251 Perestroika 225 Periphery 8, 9, 11, 24 Pikk Hermann tower (Tallinn) 241 PiS 60, 63, 66–68, 70, 72, 74–84 Platform for the Language (Catalonia) 261 Plebeianism 16 Polarization 69, 61–62, 73, 78–79, 83–84 Political discourses 105, 109 Political School 95–96, 99 Populism 60–62, 73, 78–79, 82 Populist 148–149, 151, 154, 156, 160–161, 163–165 Post-colonial 102

Index of Subjects Post-Communist 221, 222, 224, 232, 233 Post-socialism/post-socialist 91, 93, 94, 97, 101 Post-Soviet 222, 231 Power 180–181, 185 of the powerless 179 Prague 1968 33 pr-Man/Men 193–194, 215, 217–218 Professionals 232 Propaganda 255 Protests 140, 146, 149, 153, 157–158, 160, 163 psoe (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) 252 Public intellectual 230 Public Intellectual(s) 193, 194, 212, 213, 216–218 Public Relations Man 193 Rail Baltica 248 Referendum 246, 251 Reform Party (Estonia) 254 Relocation quotas 8 Riga 241, 248 Roma 156, 158, 159, 160 Roman Catholic Church 92 Romanophobia 154 Romuva (Lithuanian neopagan religion) 248 Round Table Talks 143–146, 149, 151 Rule of law 21, 60, 76, 82 Ruritania 12, 22 Russia 61–62, 70–71, 74, 254, 255, 256 Russians 105, 106, 108–115, 117–123 Sąjūdis (Lithuania) 247 Sąjūdis movement 224, 226 Salzburg 262 Samizdat 221 Saule, Pērkons, Daugava (Latvian choir song) 254 Scotland 251, 252, 255 Self-determination 241, 253, 254, 256, 260 Semi-periphery 11, 12, 23 Siberia 232, 244, 247, 248 Singing revolution 44 Slovenia 251 Slovenian 224 Small states 184–185

273 Social Darwinism 99 Social memory 105–109, 111–112, 114, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124 Social networks 261 Socialism 91–94, 97–102, 222, 224 Socialist 140–141, 143–145, 150–151, 154, 156, 157, 164, 166 Socialist bodies 93 Sofia Pride 161 Soft power 262 Solid liberalism 49 Solidarność 34 South Slavic 92 Soviet 222–223, 225, 226, 228 Soviet intelligentsia 21, 194, 201, 213, 216 Soviet Union (ussr) 241, 252, 260 Soviet Union 227–228 Spain 245–246, 251–252, 255, 257, 259–260 Spanish Autonomous Communities 245–246 Spanish Constitution 245–246, 260 Spanish Constitutional Court 246 Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 257 Spanish Parliament 252 Spanish People’s Party 257 Spanish Police 253, 255, 261 Spanish Supreme Court 241 State capture 17–18 State/statehood 60, 62, 64, 66–79, 82–84 State-directed 91, 102 Subordination of identities 105, 116, 118, 120 Sweden 250 Systemic implosion 41 Štafeta (baton) 94 T&to (Ivan Fijolić's sculpture) 100 Tallinn 241–242 Three Kings (Ivan Fijolić's sculpture) 99 Totalitarian regime 233 Transition 91, 101–102, 141–145, 150–151, 153, 163, 234 Triple transition 13 True Finns 18 tspmi (Tarptautinių santykių ir politikos mokslų institutas) 253 Türi 250 Turks, Turkish 153, 155–157, 160–161, 164

274 Ukraine 224, 255 Uncivil society 154–155, 161 United Nations Migration pact 131, 135–136 Valencian Community 242 Valmiera 243 Values 142, 147, 154, 162–164, 245, 248, 250, 256, 260–262 Velvet revolution 4, 441 Victim-syndrome 9–10 Vienotība (Latvia) 243 Viljandi 243, 248, 249, 250 Vilnius 241–242, 253 Visegrád Group/V 12, 18, 47 Vlaams Belang 18

Index of Subjects Welfare 141–142, 156 West 29–33, 37–39, 175–177, 180–183, 187–188, 231 Western Mediterranean 252 Westernisation 10, 13, 21–24 World War I 10, 14 World War ii 260 World War ii 99 Xenophobia 257, 261 Xenophobic 156, 158 Yugonostalgic 96 Yugoslav People’s Army 96 Zapadniks 203 1989 - 175–177, 181, 187–188