Leninist regimes kept their subjects ignorant of the real functioning of the political system. Tony Judt observed that “by concentrating power, information, initiative and responsibility into the hands of the party-state, Communism had given rise to a society of individuals not merely suspicious of one another and skeptical of any official claims or promises, but with no experience of individual or collective initiative and lacking any basis on which to make informed public choices.”70 Furthermore, the chasm between official rhetoric and everyday reality, the camouflaging of the way decisions were reached, the anti-elective pseudo-elections, and other rituals of conformity neutralized critical faculties and generated a widespread wariness toward the validity of politics as such. Furthermore, anti-Communism tended to be just another supra-individual, nondifferentiated form of identity. The problem now is that the aggregation of social interests needs a clarification of the political choices, including an awareness of the main values that people advocate. As Martin Palouš put it, “The most important and most dynamic factor in post-totalitarian politics has to do with the way people in post-communist societies perceive and conceptualize the social reality and political processes they are a part of.”71 The difficulties and ambiguities of the left-right polarization in post-Communist regimes are linked to the ambiguity and even obsolescence of the traditional taxonomies.
With the private sector and entrepreneurial class still in the making, political liberalism and the civic center associated with it are under siege. Most political parties in the region are coalitions based on personal and group affinities rather than on an awareness of common interests, leading to fragmentation, divisiveness, political convulsions, and instability. One reason for the rise of populist movements is the paternalist temptation, a response to the felt need for protection from the destabilizing effects of the transition to competition and market. Another significant factor is the perception that the civic-romantic stage of the revolution is over and the bureaucracy now is intent upon consolidating its privileges. The campaigns against historic figures of Solidarity (including Adam Michnik, Bronisław Geremek, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and Lech Wałęsa) as “traitors” and “protectors of the establishment” were an expression of the search for a “second revolution” that would legislate morality. Critical intellectuals seemed to have lost much of their moral aura and were often attacked as champions of futility, architects of disaster, and incorrigible daydreamers. Their status was extremely precarious precisely because they symbolized the principle of difference that neo-authoritarian politics tends to suppress. In the context of widespread disenchantment with political involvement, their moderation remains a crucial element of social equilibrium. It is essential to avoid mass hysteria, to recognize the need for constitutional consensus, and to foster a culture of predictable procedures. If these kinds of attacks gather momentum, they could jeopardize the still precarious pluralist institutions. Ralf Dahrendorf poignantly expressed this imperative: “Where intellectuals are silent, societies have no future.” In a deeply fragmented social and public environment, under the constant pressures of globalization, Dahrendorf believed that, despite its diminished appeal, the nexus of ideas and action had in no way lost its revitalizing potential as a force of freedom.72
Political reform in all these post-Communist societies has not gone far enough in strengthening the counter-majoritarian institutions (including independent media and the market economy) that would diminish the threat of new authoritarian experiments catering to powerful egalitarian-populist sentiments. The main dangers in this regard are tendencies linked to statism, clericalism, religious fundamentalism, ethnocentrism, and militaristic Fascism. These themes appeared clearly in the discourse of ethnocratic populism, as evinced by Vadim Tudor's Greater Romania Party, but also among supporters of Slovakia's Vladimir Mečiar, Serbia's Radical Party, and the xenophobic groups and movements in Russia generically associated with Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party or Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Even Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has resorted to such rhetorical strategies to weaken his liberal and socialist adversaries. Some observers have foreseen a split in the region, with the more advanced countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states) developing a culture of impersonal democratic procedures, while the Southern tier was supposed to be beset by what Ken Jowitt has called “movements of rage.” Yet developments in Hungary, Poland, or Latvia in recent years have shown that such regional divisions are not so clear-cut. Marc Howard's insights on the demobilized nature of the civil societies within the countries of the former Soviet bloc offer a persuasive explanation for the absence of a middle path between apathy and violence. The comprehensive penetration of society by the state under Communism produced a “monstrous autonomy of the political,”73 leading to disengagement, mistrust of voluntary associations, and deep engagement in private rather than public spheres of interaction. Democratic protest and opposition in Central and Eastern Europe have been shaped by a combination of inherited disaggregation and a general disappointment with the reality of nonpaternalistic social life.
The weakness of the region's political parties is primarily determined by the general crisis of values and authority. There is an absence of social glue, and the existing formations have failed to foster the consensus needed in order to generate constitutional patriotism. The Leninist “misdevelopment” left the region's societies with the difficult task of reconstituting normal communitarian bounds that allow for overt and unmitigated social interaction. The unmastered past of the totalitarian experience of the twentieth century in Central and Eastern Europe prevents these countries from institutionalizing the logical connection between democracy, memory, and militancy. Joachim Gauck argued that “reconciliation with the traumatic past can only be achieved not simply through grief, but also through discussion and dialogue. ”74 In this sense, Charles Villa-Vicencio, the former director for research of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, defined reconciliation as “the operation whereby individuals and the community create for themselves a space in which they can communicate with one another, in which they can begin the arduous labour of understanding” painful history. Hence justice becomes a process of enabling the nation with the aid of a culture of responsibility.75 A new identity can be based upon negative contrasts, “on the one hand, with the past that is being repudiated; on the other, with anti-democratic political actors in the present (and/or potentially in the future).”76 This process of putting into question the “actual intersubjective liabilities of particular collectives” can lead to a redefinition of “anamnestic solidarity.” The latter would be based upon an ethical framework circumscribed by both the knowledge of the truth and the official acknowledgement of its history. The destructive power of silence and of unassumed guilt would in this way be preempted. To paraphrase political scientist Gesine Schwan, the fundamental abilities and values of individuals are nourished so as to sustain their well-being, social behavior, and trust in communal life. The moral consensus over a shared experience of reality is preserved, making possible the democratic life of the specific society.77 Though some have argued along these lines, I don't believe that some sort of collective communicative silence (kommunikatives Beschweigen) about the past can enable post-Communist countries to evolve into functioning democracies.78 I agree with Tony Judt that radical evil can never be satisfactorily remembered, but, as proved by the German experience, a consistent appeal to history can function simultaneously as exorcism and therapy.79
The transition from an illegitimate and criminal regime to democracy and a culture of human rights is indeed a process dependent on the specific conditions of each postauthoritarian society. It implies a series of compromises and negotiations, but the act of healing a community must not be confused with moral consensus about a traumatic past. The history of violence must not legitimize transition. There is a need for unfettered transparency and total truth. After 1989, the pre
sent and the future must “stand up to the scrutiny of a gaze educated by the moral catastrophe”80 produced by the totalitarian experience of the twentieth century. Otherwise, the web of lies becomes oppressive and the imperturbable fog extends infinitely into a state of moral perplexity. Political radicalization in the guise of historical retribution (“righting the wrongs of the past”) is often used to achieve mass mobilization and delegitimize adversaries. This is not to say that the politics of amnesia, deliberately pursued by former or successor Communists, has resulted in any needed catharsis. On the contrary, as demonstrated by the furious reactions in Romania to President Băsescu's condemnation of the Communist regime as “illegitimate and criminal,”81 the past does not fade away and often strikes back with a vengeance. There prevails a feeling of having been betrayed by the politicians, as well as a quest for a new purity. This is the rationale both for the “radical revolutionism” of the Kaczyński brothers in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary (at the right end of the spectrum) and for the political resurrection of Communist parties in Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also explains the power of Putin's neo-authoritarian politics of “managed democracy” in a memory regime of institutionalized amnesia and historical falsification. As for Putin himself, he has abandoned the Yeltsin era's adamant anti-Leninism and has become, especially since 2006, the proponent of an increasingly aggressive version of neo-Stalinist and neo-i mperialist restoration. The high school history textbook (dealing with the period 1945 to 1991) commissioned by the Kremlin and published in 2008 symbolizes the return to some of the most egregious Stalinist falsifications and a radical break with the legacies of glasnost. Putinism is an ideological conglomerate bringing together Great Russian nationalism, imperial authoritarianism, and a drive to restore the lost grandeur of the Stalin era.82 The narrative about the past offered by the Putin administration is the quintessential formula of “reconciliation without truth.”83 In other words, we are dealing with an apocryphal reconciliation.
The ideological syncretism of Stalino-Fascism capitalizes on delayed political justice. Think of Russia, where much ado about the trial of the old party has not resulted in anything significant. Demagogy, overblown rhetoric, and continual scapegoating undermine the legitimacy of the existing institutions and pave the way for the rise of ethnocentric crackpots. The harmful effects of long-maintained forms of amnesia cannot be overestimated. The lack of serious public discussions and lucid analyses of the past, including an acknowledgment by the highest state authorities of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Communist dictatorships, fuels discontent, outrage, and frustration and encourages the rise of demagogues, leading to vindictive references to the need for purification through retribution. Thus we see the creation of new mythologies to explain the current predicament: “Judeo-Masonic conspiracies” that endanger “national interests.”84 Nations are presented almost universally as victims of foreigners, and the Communist regimes are described as engineered by aliens to serve foreign interests. Russian nationalists, including some of the most gifted fiction writers belonging to the Siberian School, have not tired of blaming the Jews for the Bolshevik destruction of traditional values and structures. Some of the most frantic propagandists for such dark visions are former Communists, including a number of former Communist intellectuals. Writing primarily about the tragic events in his native Yugoslavia, American poet Charles Simic touched a depressing and unfortunately accurate note when he observed, “The terrifying thing about modern intellectuals everywhere is that they are always changing idols. At least religious fanatics stick mostly to what they believe in. All the rabid nationalists in Eastern Europe were Marxists yesterday and Stalinists last week.”85
Several years before the end of Communism in Europe, political scientist and historian Joseph Rothschild argued that “ethno-nationalism, or politicized ethnicity, remains the world's major ideological legitimator and delegitimator of states, regimes, and governments.”86 Since nationalism provides the fuel of identity myths of modernity, more so than Marxist socialism, liberal universalism, or constitutional patriotism, one must see what its main forms are in the post-Communist world. Is nationalism a fundamental threat to the emergence of politically tolerant structures? Is it necessarily a poisonous form of chauvinism, a new totalitarian ideology, a destructive force inimical to liberal values? Are these societies hostages to their past, doomed to eternally reenact old animosities and conflicts? In reality, one needs to distinguish between varieties of nationalism: the inclusive versus the exclusive, the liberal versus the radical, or, as Yael Tamir proposed, the polycentric versus the ethnocentric.87 Ethnocentrism is a form of nationalism that turns the real distinction between the in-group and the others into an insuperable attribute, a fact of destiny that places one's nation into a position superior to all the others.
Under post-Communism, ethnocentric nationalism, rather than the liberal version, prevailed. Resistant to rational analysis, it appeals to sentiment, affect, and emotion. Truth-content is practically irrelevant in narratives intended to foster dignity and pride. Beliefs, values, and mores are thrust into the straitjacket of a specific “regime of truth” that produces and sustains specific power alignments. The social framing of nationalism crystallizes into “ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.”88 It therefore functions as universal truth. Idealized interpretations of history turn into identity markers because they provide us with gratification, satisfaction, and perceived magnitude. They create a sense of authenticity. Considering that for Central and Eastern Europe the past is “not just another country, but a positive archipelago of vulnerable historical territories,”89 the incessant reliance on mismemory rather than on Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) deepened the already widespread cynicism and the privatization of memory. Such escapism in counterhistories produces divisiveness rather than cohesion and regional antagonism rather than integration. Nostalgia in the former Soviet bloc often took the form of “regret for the lost certainties of Communism, now purged of its darker side.”90 These falsified narratives have the function of remaking and denying the facts. The truth is argued away and the characters of the traumatized and guilty past are deprived of their real identities. Victims and heroes are assigned pejorative counterimages, while perpetrators and bystanders find refuge in the absence of atonement.91
Delays in the coalescence of a political class in the region are linked to the weakness of a democratic core elite: political values remain vague, programs tend to overlap, and corruption is rampant. Think of the short life expectancy of some political parties in the region. In fact, parties that were dominant in the first years after the collapse have either lost electoral significance (e.g., the Hungarian Democratic Forum [MDF] or the National Peasant Christian and Democratic Party), or significantly altered their orientations and allegiances (e.g., the Hungarian Civic Union [FIDESZ] or the National Liberal Party in Romania). Other problems are related to delays in the coalescence of a political class. This is particularly dangerous in Russia, where there is a conspicuous absence of political competition between ideologically defined and distinct parties. The public is thus inclined to see privatization as the springboard for the rise of a new class of profiteers (a transfiguration of the old political elite into a new economic one). The political arena is still extremely volatile, and the ideological labels conceal as much as they reveal. The decisive choice is between personalities, parties, and movements that favor individualism, an open society, and risk-taking, and those that promise security within the homogeneous environment of the ethnic community. Strategy is as important as tactic, and the will to reform is as important as the articulation of concrete goals.
MEANINGS, OLD AND NEW
I would like to return now to Ralf Dahrendorf's memorable statement that citizens of Central and Eastern Europe are still trying to make sense of their existence. As mentioned earlier, a constant of the recent history of the regi
on is the recurrence of charismatic politics and of pseudo-party politics. If these societies are to move past these problems, they must overcome two fundamental elements of the legacy of the Communist past: anomy (which led to fragmentation, neotraditionalism, and uncivility, to what Romanian philosopher Andrei Pleșu termed “public obscenity”) and lies (which led to dissimulation and the disintegration of consensus, and ostentatiously brought forth a human type characterized by Russia sociologist Yuri Levada as homo prevaricatus, the heir of homo sovieticus). Since forewarned is forearmed, I believe that it is better to look into the real pitfalls and avoid them rather than play the obsolete pseudo-Hegelian tune of the “ultimate liberal triumph.” Indeed, what we see here is not the strength but rather the vulnerability of liberalism in the region—the backwardness, delays, and distortions of modernity, as well as its periodic confrontation with majoritarian, neoplebiscitarian parties and movements.92 The lesson of the 1989 revolutions is therefore multifarious. It refers to the rebirth of citizenship, a category abolished by both Communism and Fascism,93 but it also involved re-empowering the truth. What we have learned from 1989 represents an unquestionable argument in favor of the values that we consider essential and exemplary for democracy today.
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