Today’s topics

• Central and Eastern Europe
• The history of contemporary CEE politics: from the end of empires to the start of democratic backsliding
  • 19th and early 20th century state formation and liberation from empire
  • The inter-war rise and fall of democracy
  • The post-war transition to communism
  • The communist regimes of the region
  • Transition from communism
  • Transition to democracy (and away again?)

Defining the region

• What precisely is meant by “Central and Eastern Europe” is often a matter of dispute.
• I will use this term to refer collectively to those countries from the former European communist world which have made some progress along the path to democracy.

Map of the region

A mosaic of nationalities under imperial rule

• Central and Eastern Europe is and has been a mosaic of different nationalities that have their own languages, religions and cultures.
• For most of their histories, the peoples of this region did not have their own states.
• They were dominated by the empires of Europe:
  • the Ottoman Empire in the south;
  • the Russian Empire to the east;
  • the Austro-Hungarian and Prussian empires to the west.

The empires of Europe

The Ottoman Empire

• Ottoman Empire
  • The areas of southeastern Europe that became
    • Serbia
    • Montenegro
    • Macedonia
    • Bulgaria
    • Bosnia
    • Albania
    • Parts of Romania
    • Parts of Croatia
  • The Ottoman Empire did little to develop this area, governing over it only loosely.

The Russian Empire

• Russian Empire
  • The Russian Empire encapsulated
    • The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
    • The eastern part of Poland
    • Part of Ukraine
  • Russia’s aim was the Russification of these areas and to maintain control over their populations.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire

• Austro-Hungarian Empire
  • The Austro-Hungarian Empire encapsulated
    • The Czech Lands
    • Slovakia
    • Hungary
    • Croatia
    • Slovenia
    • Part of Poland
    • What is now Western Ukraine
  • The Austro-Hungarian Empire granted a greater range of freedoms, encouraging industrial development and local governance

World War I and the birth of nation-states

• World War I marked the birth of a new constellation of states and the end of imperial dominance.
• After the war, the call for national self-determination for the peoples of Europe was reflected in the carving up of empires into nation-states.
• This process was hastened by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and attempts to spread the revolution beyond Russia.
• The boundaries of several of the new states - Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in particular - brought together ethnic groups that were very different in their religions, cultures, economies and levels of development.

Post-WWI boundaries

High hopes and deep divisions

• The inter-war period began with high hopes of building democracy in the new states.
• However, leaders had to create unified states from peoples who came with very different histories and resources.
• Very often, states were created from national groups whose historical memories included conflict with or resentment of each other.

The disintegration of democracy

• With the exception of Czechoslovakia, the new democracies quickly disintegrated into autocracies.
• These governments were ruled by combinations of bureaucratic and military elites.
• Political pluralism was restricted as authoritarian governments usurped the powers of parliaments, opposition parties were steadily outlawed, and citizens were channelled into movements or parties loyal to the government.

Failed modernisation and persistent agrarianism

• Again with the exception of Czechoslovakia, these countries remained largely agrarian.
• Despite aggressive attempts to industrialise, none of these countries succeeded in developing their infrastructures, building up their industries, or becoming competitive on world markets.
• Economic conflict over land distribution and ownership exacerbated ethnic conflict.
• The bureaucracies of these countries proved incapable of managing the process of urbanisation that modernisation demanded.

The end of the inter-war system

• The inter-war system in CEE came to an end through the actions of outside powers and the beginning of World War Two.
• However, the inability of inter-war leaders either to resolve old issues (such as ethnic conflict) or deal with the new demands of development, made it easier for outside powers to undermine them.

The devastation of World War Two

• World War Two would prove devastating for Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and the Baltic States, all of which suffered great loss of life as well as physical destruction.
• In the other countries, although the physical damage was less, the destruction of the political and social leadership was dramatic.
• In post-war peace conferences, Britain and the United States essentially agreed to let the Soviet Union have a dominant role east of Berlin.

Cold War Europe, 1950

The Soviet sphere of interest

• In the post-war era, CEE countries quickly found themselves under the Soviet sphere of interest.
• Some, such as the Baltic States, were incorporated into the USSR.
• In Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary Soviet occupying forces played a significant role in establishing communism.
• In Yugoslavia and Albania the role of the Soviet Union was negligible, with communist forces coming to power largely through their own efforts.

Consolidating communist control

• When communist governments took over after the war, they took control of the economy, military and police and installed party loyalists at local levels.
• Non-communist political forces were repressed and outlawed.
• The societies of CEE countries were purged of intellectuals and workers for their connections with the West, their connections with the pre-war regime, or their criticism of the new socialist state.

Rebuilding and collectivisation

• At the same time, communist rulers had to start rebuilding after the destruction of the war.
• In some cases (particularly Poland) this required rebuilding most of the major cities and industry.
• In all cases there was a need to create functioning economies.
  • This process involved the collectivisation of agriculture into cooperatives farmed by large groups of farmers.
  • It also involved significant urbanisation, with young people being drawn from the farms to the cities to build and run new industries.

The logic of communist rule

• Communist rule was intended to place everything under the supervision and direction of the Communist Party.
• No aspect of life or politics was to be excluded.
• The logic was to speed up the process of social, political and economic transformation identified by Marx.
• The state, rather than capitalists, would develop and own industry and transform the working class into the ruling class.
• In most cases, the Soviet model was not implemented by the population, but imposed from above.
• It therefore came into conflict with underlying conditions and values in many of those countries.

The party’s ‘leading role’ and democratic centralism

• Political and economic organisation
  • The Communist Party had a ‘leading role’ in the system.
  • It was organised hierarchically from party organisations found in the workplace up to the Presidium led by the First Secretary.
  • The organisational principle was ‘democratic centralism’, which required all decisions made at the top to be supported and carried out by all party members without question.
  • Decisions were not made by the membership but by a party bureaucracy.
  • Party leaders supervised and directed the workings of each state institution.
  • A system of mass organisations, ranging from trade unions to children’s organisations, served as “transition belts” to carry the party’s directives to the population.

Central planning and state ownership

• Political and economic organisation
  • This model also included a system of economic institutions and policies that subordinated economic life to the party’s direction and control.
  • These economies were centrally planned, with a large, party-directed planning apparatus.
  • Decisions about what would be produced, how much, where, and for whom, were made by the state.
  • All parts of the economy from agriculture and industry to social welfare and the arts were owned and run by the state.
  • Economic strategy was based on rapid industrialisation, in particular in the area of heavy industry.

Growth, welfare and inefficiency

• Economic development
  • This model of economic development produced rapid growth rates and urbanisation in the least developed countries of the region.
  • The population received cradle-to-grave welfare, low-cost housing, guaranteed employment, and subsidised prices.
  • However, centralised economies were doomed by inefficiencies.
  • Shortages of basic goods and a lack of adequate services resulted in poor worker morale and low rates of productivity.
  • A lack of emphasis on innovation meant these economies could not compete on the world market.
  • Shortages and disappearances of goods led at best to the emergence of illicit bartering systems, at worst to social unrest.

Conformity, loyalty and the collective

• Social and value change
  • The communist system also demanded public conformity and loyalty.
  • Social change initially helped achieve this, with the new economic system altering inherited social hierarchies.
  • Political leaders also used education, art and culture, and leisure activities to change popular values, including anti-religion campaigns and an emphasis on subordination to “the collective”.

The vicious circle of communism

• The political, economic and social system of communism was founded on a vicious circle.
• In an economy of shortages, there was little incentive for productivity.
• As productivity dropped, less and less became available, and public alienation grew.
• As shortages persisted, those with power claimed as much as they could for themselves.
• The decisiveness of corruption and connections undermined the egalitarian ideology behind the system.

Reformists, hardliners and the weakening of Soviet control

• Attempts were made by a new generation of reformists to expose and fix the dysfunctional elements of this system.
• However, these attempts were rebuffed by hardline communists whose positions of power were under threat.
• For a time, the hardliners were kept in place by the threat of Soviet intervention.
• However, as this threat weakened during the 1980s and pressures for reform continued unabated, a space opened up for fundamental change.

Four patterns of transition

• The end of communism in the region differed in
  • the speed of the process
  • the extent of citizen involvement
  • the level of violence involved.
• Four main patterns can be observed:
  • Negotiated transitions (Poland, Hungary)
  • Citizen protest (Czechoslovakia, Romania)
  • Two-stage transition with reformist communists initially taking over (Bulgaria, Albania)
  • Breakup and reconstitution (Yugoslavia, Baltic States, Ukraine)

The challenges of democratic transition

• Regardless of their path from communism, each country had to:
  • create or re-create democratic political institutions, values and practices;
  • undertake profound economic reforms;
  • re-orient their foreign policy, joining European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.
• At the same time, they had to cope with the social and psychological challenges of transition:
  • social inequality, poverty and unemployment
  • the division of society into the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of transition’
  • the exacerbation of social pathologies such as alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, organised crime and people-smuggling
  • the resurgence of extreme nationalism.

Three types of post-communist regime

• The deregulation of the political, economic and social monopoly of the Communist Party did not necessarily lead to democratic politics.
• By the mid 1990s, it was possible to identify three types of political regime in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Democratic regimes with free and fair elections, the rule of law, and civil liberties (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia).
  • Authoritarian regimes lacking competition, individual rights, and procedural consistency (Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro).
  • Hybrid regimes with formal characteristics of democratic regimes, but which have unfair elections, extensive corruption and irregular recognition of civil liberties (Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine).

Convergence, new states and democratic decline

• From 1996 onward three trends could be observed:
  • The emergence of new states in the region (Montenegro, Kosovo) alongside the persistence of existing states.
  • The growing homogenisation of regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, with the consolidation of democracy in early adopters and the liberalisation of regimes that were initially dictatorships.
  • The decline in democratic performance in Ukraine, Hungary and Poland.

Map of post-communist CEE

Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland

• The cases of Hungary and Poland have in particular raised concerns about the stability of democracies after transition, as both were once considered “front-runners” of democratisation in the region.
• In both countries, parliamentary majorities have been used to attack the pluralistic foundations of liberal democracy, by
  • undercutting civil liberties and political rights,
  • purging the judiciary and bureaucracy,
  • exerting more state control over the media and civil society groups,
  • using extremist rhetoric in the service of culturally conservative and nationalist agendas.

V-Dem indices: East-Central Europe

V-Dem indices: Czech Republic

V-Dem indices: Poland

V-Dem indices: Croatia

V-Dem indices: Romania