Thanks to the generous financial support of the Henry
M. Jackson Foundation, the Russian, East European and Central
Asian Studies Program of the University of Washington Jackson
School of International Studies (REECAS) hosted a symposium, "Changes
in the Legal Environment and International Business in Russia
and the Former Republics" on February 2, 1993.
The symposium attracted a broad audience that included
professionals in the local business and legal communities as well
as faculty, students and staff of the University of Washington.
In addition to the papers published here, those given by Robert
Brumley (Managing Partner, Moscow-Vladivostok offices, Pepper,
Hamilton, and Scheetz) and Vladimir Kuznetsov (Progressor Company,
Moscow), enriched the symposium.
I should also like to thank Dr. Nicholas R. Lardy
(Director, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies),
Carol Vipperman (President, Foundation for Russian-American Economic
Cooperation, Seattle), Margaret Niles (attorney, Garvey, Schubert,
and Barer), and Dr. Judith Thorton (Economics, University of Washington)
for their valuable contributions tot he program. Professor Thorton
and Adele Barker (now of the University of Arizona) deserve thanks
for their enormous help in planning and organizing the symposium.
Special credit is due to Colleen F. Halley, graduate
student in the REECAS program, for her help in preparing these
papers for publication. Finally, thanks to Dr. Daniel C. Waugh,
Chair of the REECAS program, for the many ways in which he supported
the symposium and helped make possible the publication of these
papers.
Glennys Young
The Russian Legal Tradition
By Theodore Taranovski
The role of law and the concept of due process are
integral to Western civilization not only because they undergird
democratic politics and the notion of human rights. Law is also
fundamental to the proper functioning of our economic system based
on private property, free enterprise, and commodity exchange.
Today, when Russia and the former Soviet republics are striving
to overcome the legacy of communism and to become integrated into
the Western world economically as well as politically, the question
remains of whether the burden of the past, the heritage of what
has been called the Russian tradition, places insurmountable obstacles
to that goal. A key element of this tradition is the supposed
disregard for the rule of law and the absence of intellectual
and institutional frameworks within which it could flourish. Accordingly,
lack of an appropriate legal environment for the conduct of international
business might well loom as a significant obstacle to the normalization
of economic and political relations with the successor states
of the Soviet Union.
It is commonly assumed both among scholars and laymen
that the evolution of tsarist autocracy and its political culture,
with overweening state power and subservient society, can be at
least partially explained by the fact that Russia did not partake
of Western legal heritage, which was based on the principles of
Roman and Germanic law as shaped by medieval ideas and practices.
That is one of key reasons why Russia failed to develop Western-style
democracy and a free society. Absolutism, bureaucratic arbitrariness,
a nobility whose lives and property depended on the tsar's favor,
an embryonic middle class, serfdom and the peasant commune with
its collectivist mentality, economic backwardness and cultural
and religious differences, all separated Russia from the West.
Moreover, the October Revolution only intensified these historic
trends. The tsars were succeeded by the commissars and autocracy
by totalitarianism. Historians, political scientists, and popular
writers alike have tended to concentrate on those aspects of the
Russian past that underscored the differences with the West because
the victory of communism in 1917 seemed to justify them. Given
this traditional interpretation, how likely is it then that post-Soviet
Russia will be able to join the world community of nations and
the international economy?
Overcoming Legal Obstacles to Doing Business in
Russia
By Peter B. Maggs
A few months ago in Moscow a Russian businessman
suggested we celebrate his purchase through official channels
of $50,000 dollars at a highly favorable exchange rate of 423
rubles to the dollar. Since he was not a drinking man, we went
to McDonald's, and he went up to the counter and got a couple
of milkshakes with which we toasted his success. A lot of things
have changed in Russia. And it's not just that some people have
quit drinking vodka. First, private business is flourishing. Second,
foreign investment and foreign trade are going forward. Third,
Russians are no longer afraid that the KGB will get them if they
associate with foreigners. Fourth, most prices have been allowed
to float at market levels, which means that it is possible to
buy everything from milkshakes to dollars without waiting in lines.
Fifth, hyperinflation is threatening, which is why my friend was
delighted to turn his rubles into dollars at a good rate.
Prospects for Legal Development in Post-Soviet
By Kathryn Hendley
The development or evolution of a reliable and coordinated
legal system represents a threshold issue for those of us interested
in the interrelationship between law and the economy in Russia.
After all, it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to structure
a transaction if the parties are not relatively committed to obeying
rules that are well-known to both in advance. When that is not
the case, neither side can be sure of the rules of the game and
whether they are operating on a level playing field. These sorts
of questions become even more difficult when one of the parties
to the deal is a foreigner and, as a result, the parties base
their behavior on very different cultural assumptions.
The role of law in the Soviet Union was blatantly
instrumental. Law was regarded as a coercive instrument to be
used by the state and by the political elite. Society was acted
upon and, consequently, was generally uninvolved in the process
of creating law. Society was simply to obey unquestioningly the
law that was generated in this top-down fashion. In the public
realm, in terms of maintaining social order, law seemed to work
pretty well.
But the situation was more mixed in the realm of
private law. Here again, particularly in the economic arena, law
was very much an instrument of the regime. While fairly stable
statutory law existed on a variety of topics, it was subject to
alteration by administrative regulations issued by the ministries.
These were the so-called sub-legal acts or podzakonnye akty.
Within the context of the administrative command system that prevailed
during the Soviet period, this arrangement could be expected and,
indeed, was arguably even rational. From the point of view of
an enterprise manager, predictability stemmed not from the autonomous
force of law, but from the knowledge that the superordinate industrial
ministry could (and would) exert its influence on behalf of the
enterprise. Plan fulfillment, not profitability, represented the
key to success under this system. History demonstrates that the
economic plan was subject to its own rhythms and dynamics that
were often far removed from the dictates of the law.
But it is a new ball game now. The instrumental approach
to law that sufficed during the Soviet period is generally found
wanting in the new Russia. The introduction of market forces and,
perhaps more importantly, the collapse or unraveling of the administrative-command
system, have given rise to demands for law to serve as a societal
touchstone. The idea that the economy should be controlled administratively
has been rejected in favor of what is often referred to as economic
levers. This should not be interpreted as a call for a free market
run amok. There is a general recognition that a truly free market
exists only in theory and that modern economies, particularly
economies that operate on the scale of Russia, are necessarily
highly regulated. But the point is that these regulations now
need to be abstract rules designed to apply universalistically,
rather that the particularistic regulations (which often were
not even published) that were characteristic of the Soviet period.
The passing of Dr. Donald W. Treadgold in December
1994 is a reminder of the rich legacy left to us by this remarkable
scholar in Slavic studies. Those of us who were privileged to
have Dr. Treadgold as a mentor were deeply influenced by his integrity
as a person and his steadfast commitment to the highest standards
of academic and professional excellence.
In May 1993 at the University of Washington, his
former students gathered for a conference in his honor on the
occasion of his retirement. The theme of the conference centered
on a topic at the heart of Professor Treadgold's area of academic
expertise and interest: "Religion in the Life of the State
in Russian History".
There can be no question but that an understanding
of the Russian Orthodox Church is critical to any perceptive assessment
of Russia's past, the dark night of Soviet communist rule, or
the prospects for Russia's future.
In this issue of the Treadgold Papers, Dr.
Robert L. Nichols skillfully examines the Russian Orthodox Church's
interactions with the state in Imperial Russia, while Dr. Henry
R. Huttenbach provides invaluable insights into the checkered
relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Jewish
community.
In addition to these fine presentations from the
1993 conference, there were also notable papers given by: Kent
R. Hill, "The Russian Orthodox Church and Other Christian
Confessions in Russia Today"; Edward J. Lazzerini, "The
Islamic Peoples of the Russian Empire and the State"; and
John McErlean, "Prince Kozlowski and Catholicism in Early
19th-century Russia". These papers have been published elsewhere.
The contributions of Dr. Donald Treadgold to Slavic
studies are significant. But his influence is not just reflected
in his own extensive bibliography, but in those numerous and important
works by his students. The following papers are but two fine examples
of this legacy.
Kent R. Hill
Church and State In Imperial Russia
By Robert L. Nichols
In the eighteenth century the Russian Orthodox church
became an imperial institution, whose leadership sought to develop
the church within the framework of an expanding empire, relying
upon the emperor's traditional protection and promotion of Orthodoxy.
The new formulation of church and state inverted the traditional
Muscovite symbiosis of religion and the sovereign authority of
the tsar which had existed within an ecclesiastical framework.
In Muscovy, the patriarch's role had gone beyond taking part in
public ceremonies involving the tsar and his family and included
direct participation in legislation without regard for any distinction
between the temporal and spiritual realms. By contrast, in the
imperial period, the traditional symbiosis developed within a
secular framework, redefining the role of the church and carefully
compartmentalizing its "spiritual" activity. The change
produced a tension between churchmen ready to play their imperial
part and their royal protectors, whose political concerns increasingly
made them unreliable defenders and promoters of the Orthodox faith.
The tension provides the dynamic for Orthodoxy's development in
imperial Russia.
A growing fear that the tsar and his government might
sacrifice the spiritual well-being of Orthodoxy to the secular
interests of the state produced among churchmen a strong desire
to restate with greater care and clarity the central tenets of
the Orthodox faith, revitalize the charismatic transcendence of
Orthodoxy, and strengthen the church's ties with society outside
the limits set for it by Peter I and his successors.
By the time of the Russian revolution, Russian Orthodoxy
had not found a satisfactory resolution of the dynamic tension,
although some who have studied the religious renaissance of the
early twentieth century, believe it may have been on the way to
doing so. Its imperial role had been called into question by many,
including the episcopate. The church's reaffirmed claim to a transhistorical
charismatic truth limited its ability to make a close bond with
any nationalist or socialist redefinition of Russia. Its social
outreach did not stretch far enough to ensure continued public
support for its experiments in "this world" theology
and social action. As a result, the revolutionary events made
clear what had been achieved and what remained undone or imperfectly
done during the imperial era. Orthodoxy's rethinking of the imperial
relationship made it possible for the church to survive when the
empire collapsed. Its reclaimed charisma, for complex reasons,
impeded any efforts aimed at bringing the church closer to the
emerging liberal, nationalist, and socialist movements. Consequently,
the church's experiments in social Christianity had no opportunity
to continue after the victory of Bolshevik socialism. The new
communist government proceeded to restrict Orthodoxy's "spiritual
domain" exclusively to "cultic" activity, a limitation
far beyond anything ever imagined by Peter the Great and his supporters.
Today, after the collapse of communism, the history of the church
in the imperial era offers important experience to those who seek
to rebuild Russia on the basis of an historic Orthodoxy.
The Cross and the Star: Uneasy Neighbors - Jews
and
By Henry R. Huttenbach
A perennial theme in European history is the ambivalent
relationship between Jew and Christian. In the course of its evolution
it has led, for example, to elegant, harmonious cultural achievements
in Muslim Medieval Spain, to brilliant but controversial synthesis
in Wilhelmine Germany and in Habsburg Vienna and Budapest, and
to radical modernism in Weimar Berlin. At the same time the relationship
led to extreme intolerance and depraved criminality in the same
three loci: from mass expulsions, (beginning in England
in 1290 and culminating with the introduction of the Inquisition
in the Iberian Peninsula in the 1490's), to political, racist
antisemitism in turn-of-the-century Vienna and Paris, and climaxing
tragically with the German National Socialist conceived continent-wide
genocide in the 1930's and 40's. So, where does the Judeo-Christian
chapter in pre-1917 Imperial Russia fit into this polarized record,
in which moments of limited tolerance have led to unparalleled
human creativity, and moments of unrestrained intolerance have
given vent to ferocious Christian and post-Christian-inspired
forces of mass destruction?
No.3: Religion in Russia Since 1917
The passing of Dr. Donald W. Treadgold in December
1994 is a reminder of the rich legacy left to us by this remarkable
scholar in Slavic studies. Those of us who were privileged to
have Dr. Treadgold as a mentor were deeply influenced by his integrity
as a person and his steadfast commitment to the highest standards
of academic and professional excellence.
In May 1993 at the University of Washington, his
former students gathered for a conference in his honor on the
occasion of his retirement. The theme of the conference centered
on a topic at the heart of Professor Treadgold's area of academic
expertise and interest: "Religion in the Life of the State
in Russian History".
There can be no question but that an understanding
of the Russian Orthodox Church is critical to any perceptive assessment
of Russia's past, the dark night of Soviet communist rule, or
the prospects for Russia's future.
This issue of the Treadgold Papers features
Charles Timberlake's indepth research of Orthodox monasteries
and convents since 1917. In addition to this work from the 1993
conference, there were also notable papers given by: Kent R. Hill,
"The Russian Orthodox Church and Other Christian Confessions
in Russia Today"; Edward J. Lazzerini, "The Islamic
Peoples of the Russian Empire and the State"; and John McErlean,
"Prince Kozlowski and Catholicism in Early 19th-century Russia."
These papers have been published elsewhere. Additional papers
by Robert L. Nichols and Henry R. Huttenbach appeared in No. 102
of the Treadgold Papers.
The contributions of Dr. Donald Treadgold to Slavic
studies are significant. But his influence is not just reflected
in his own extensive bibliography, but in those numerous and important
works by his students. The following paper serves as yet another
fine example of this legacy.
Kent R. Hill
The Fate of Russian Orthodox Monasteries and Convents
Since 1917
By Charles Timberlake
Because monasteries were major custodians of Christian
spiritual and cultural values and were significant autonomous
centers of wealth and economic enterprise, the Bolsheviks launched
a direct attack against them on November 8, the first day of Soviet
power, in the Decree on Land. This act, which nationalized monastery
land and all other forms of property, was but the first salvo
in a long barrage of legislative acts with the ultimate objective
of rooting monasteries and convents completely out of the old
Russian culture that the Bolsheviks despised and sought to annihilate.
Building on legislation enacted from 1917 to 1924
that stripped monasteries not only of their land and buildings,
but also of the consecrated objects they used in their religious
services, Lenin's successors added legislation that deprived monasteries
of income, that imposed exorbitant taxes on income and property
of monks, nuns, and priests, and simultaneously deprived them
of government-subsidized social services. Implementation of these
laws justified imprisoning and beating some monks to death and
shooting others. As a result, by 1939 the Soviet government had
abolished--so far as can presently be determined--every monastery
and convent inside the boundaries of the Soviet Union.
For the same reason that the Bolsheviks exterminated
the monasteries--i.e., that they were major custodians of Russia's
spiritual and cultural values, and were autonomous economic centers--the
Russian populace, of virtually every political stripe, had concluded
by the mid-1990s (the date of this writing) that Orthodox monasteries
and convents should be returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The forces at work are well illustrated by events surrounding
Patriarch Aleksii II's visit on August 15, 1992, to the Kirillo-Belozersk
Monastery-Museum in Vologda Province. He accepted an invitation
from local political figures to visit the monastery, but insisted
on calling it "an unofficial side trip" en route to
visit other monasteries of the North, and especially to commemorate
the 600th anniversary of the death of St. Dmitrii of Priluki,
patron saint of the city of Vologda, and the reopening of Spaso-Prilutskii
Monastery which Dmitrii founded on the bank of the River Vologda
some twelve miles NE of the provincial capital, Vologda.
A welcoming party from Kirillov met Patriarch Aleksii
at nearby Ferapontov Convent-Museum (Denisov, 606-09), where a
bell-ringing ceremony was performed for him on bells loaned by
Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery-Museum (Denisov, 583-85) for the occasion.
He climbed the scaffolding being used by artists restoring the
frescoes that Dionysius (Dionisii in Russian) painted here in
the last half of the fifteenth century and studied at eye-level
the original frescoes recently revealed by cleaning that removed
later restorations, and then went with the welcoming party to
Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery and walked through a well orchestrated
program.
After a tour of the monastery grounds, viewing of
the restoration work being done by the Ministry of Culture and
Tourism, and a mid-day meal in the monastery's refectory, a group
of local officials--including heads of the Kirillov Village Soviet,
the Kirillov County (raion) Soviet, Vologda Province Soviet,
and a personal representative of President Boris Yeltsin--formally
presented him a request, supported by some 2,000 signatures of
local residents, to accept the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's
proposal to transfer Kirillov Monastery from its jurisdiction
to the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church which would
convert it into a functioning monastery. The Patriarch graciously
declined, citing as his reasons inadequate financial and human
resources to support such a large monastery (the largest territory
enclosed by monastery walls in the former Russian empire). He
warmly thanked everyone for the invitation, praised all the scholars
and artists for their careful restoration work, and asked them
to continue it. The group invited him to return in 1997 for the
commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the founding of the
monastery. He promised to give the invitation serious consideration.
The local officials pledged more money to complete the restoration
for the 1997 event.
The year 1997 will also mark the eightieth anniversary
of the Bolshevik Revolution. Where the Bolsheviks used the State
in the first decade of their rule to wrench the monasteries from
Church control, state officials now plead for the Church to take
back the monasteries and to revitalize the culture and economy
they once nurtured. Russian history has gone full circle in this
highly visible and emotional arena of human activity. The values
imbedded in monasticism are once again more popular than the values
espoused by the Bolsheviks, and many segments of a bewildered
and socially fragmented population hope the monasteries will become
an instrument for rooting out the remnants of Bolshevik values
and restoring the Russian spiritual and material culture that
the monasteries once perpetuated. As surviving cells, these monasteries
can, in the right combination with other surviving cells and with
aid from local and central government, help rejuvenate a once-robust
Russian civilization and help provide social services so woefully
lacking in the Russian village today.
The first part of this paper establishes some quantitative
and qualitative descriptions of Russian monasteries and convents
that the Bolsheviks acquired when they claimed possession of the
former Russian empire in 1917. The second part of the paper analyzes
the means by which the Bolsheviks nationalized monastery property.
The third part identifies some of the uses the Soviet government
made of these monasteries, with the particular objective of determining
whether those uses preclude readaptation of those buildings and
grounds to typical monastery purposes when, and if, they are returned
to the Church and the latter decides to reopen some, or all, of
the monasteries.
The fourth part of the study illuminates the numbers,
geographic location, and types of religious communities returned
to the Russian Orthodox Church since World War II and their fate
to 1985. The fifth, and final, section of the study examines the
numbers, types, and geographic distribution of monasteries returned
to the Russian Orthodox Church since 1985, and offers some observations
about the roles these monasteries and convents are playing and
are likely to play in the foreseeable future.
No.4: The Mennonites and the Russian
By Terry Martin
Russia's brief experiment with constitutional monarchy
and a national parliament has received contradictory evaluations.
A single large question has focused this debate: did the Duma
period witness a reduction or an increase in the estrangement
between government and society? This question has usually been
addressed by focusing on class and soslovie (status) divisions.
However, there were other important axes of conflict. Constitutionalism
raised doubts about the status of the Russian empire and so highlighted
issues of national and ethnic conflict. The new order also challenged
traditional definitions of Russianness, in particular its link
to autocracy and Orthodoxy, which in turn raised the question
of religious toleration. Finally, responses to the Duma experience
also varied regionally.
In this paper, I will examine the question of popular
reaction to the Duma experience and the issue of society's estrangement
from government though an in-depth case study of the Russian Mennonites'
response to the Duma system. Although the Russian Mennonites were
a very small community, with a population of about one hundred
thousand, they allow one to examine all four axes of conflict
outlined above: religious, ethnic, class (soslovie), and
regional. The Russian Mennonites left behind an extremely rich
source base. They published two national newspapers, almost the
entire population was literate, and an unusually large segment
of the Mennonite community took part in political debates. Therefore,
they provide a unique opportunity to undertake a detailed case
study.
No.5: Corporate Russia: Privatization and
By Leslie Dienes
The far reaching economic changes engulfing Russia
can be evaluated from contrasting vantage points. Anders Aslund,
Senior Economist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
provides an evaluation from the perspective of Poland and Ukraine
in a recent article for the Aspen Institute. Aslund takes note
of the strikingly different transformations of the Polish and
Russian economies and writes, "[i]n many regards, Russia
seems to fail where Poland succeeded and vice versa."
He goes on to detail the respective failures and successes of
the two transformations. For the purpose of my paper, the most
relevant contrast with the Polish (but also Czech and Hungarian)
experience concerns the very different results of privatization.
The development of small scale enterprises in Russia is hardly
impressive when compared to the size of the country and its economy.
(These enterprises are also under criminal control to a lamentable
degree). On the other hand, in Russia huge conglomerates
emerged rapidly and in remarkable numbers, combined with a much
swifter development of the capital market than in Poland.
Advocates of radical reforms should have been on
guard. Even to casual students, it is obvious that Russian history
has not been an evolutionary, organic development. Convulsions,
whether from above or below, have been the nation's experience,
but seldom have they pushed the country onto a higher plane. Thus,
in that experience Russia differs greatly from France, for example.
Two native scholars, Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspenskii, recently
contended that the dynamic fusion of opposites into a new higher
state of social organization (the synthesis of Hegel's tripartite
model) has not been the norm of Russia's history. Rather, an oscillation
between opposite poles, between opposite states of being, has
been the rule: "When the 'new' emerges, it mythically defames
the 'old,' thus changing its valence (what was once positive is
now negative), but also assimilates it" (my emphasis).
If this is true, the convulsive changes happening in Russia today
may again be a manifestation of that historical oscillation. Specifically,
in this writer's view at least, the corporate "empires"
that are emerging today as a result of the "astounding success
of privatization," as described by western pundits, actually
embody the structures of the now defamed but assimilated "old."
The Russian command economy, quasi-feudal in nature,
has transformed itself into a "corporate" state. Its
socialist patriarchal elite has been reconfigured. Some of both
its least energetic members and those still committed ideologically
to the past have doubtless fallen out. Yet, on the whole, the
same class continues to exercise control today as the new owners
of large chunks of the economic sphere. In the past, this elite
exploited the state by virtue of its political-administrative
position; it now exploits the wealth, which it did not create,
through a proprietary relationship. Much of this elite consists
of a parasitic rentier class, but part of it is energetic and
entrepreneurial. The latter would be capable of significant wealth
creation in a Rechtsstaat, in which sufficiently transparent
legality reigns. However, the breakneck speed that destroyed the
old controls precluded the possibility of transforming the country's
mentality and of building institutions for legal controls that
are respected and obeyed. As a result, the parasitic and entrepreneurial
members of the new elite are both overwhelmingly corrupt. They
are also lamentably criminalized, with professionals of the underworld
themselves prominent within the class. Accordingly, time horizons,
analyzed so wonderfully by Alexander Gerschenkron in the Russia
of early capitalism, are even shorter today, which rules out a
commitment to the future.
This monograph has three aims: the first is to sketch
in broad stokes the shift of the Russian oil and gas sector to
the new corporate structure; the second is to assess whether corporatization
has improved production prospects in these key industries; and
the third is to appraise these prospects in their relationship
to the economy as a whole and to the world beyond the borders
of the Russian Federation.
No.6: Post-Communist Transitions: The Rise of the
By Andrii Deshchytsia
The countries of Eastern Europe have recently faced
serious challenges in the process of transition from totalitarian
communist regimes with state-controlled economies to free-market
pluralistic democracies. Dramatic political change began in Eastern
Europe in the late 1980s after three years of Gorbachev's policies
of perestroika and glasnost. The Polish "round
table" discussions of 1988-89 signaled the initiation of
new politics in the former Soviet bloc countries. Over the next
few years the situation changed to such an extent and so unpredictably
that even now it is still difficult to say what the results of
the new East European "revolutions" will be. Nevertheless,
some things are clear: in addition to beginning the aforementioned
move toward a western-style democracy with a market economy, the
dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR has both reshaped
the international order and led to the emergence of new values
and new political institutions in Eastern Europe.
Certain countries, namely Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Hungary, have been proceeding through the transition to a
market economy and a democratic political system rapidly. They
have emerged as more advanced than countries such as Romania,
Bulgaria, and former Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Belarus,
which have been less successful in post-totalitarian development.
Different aspects of post-communist development in Eastern Europe
have become the subject of a vast amount of current scholarly
research. Some recent studies on the East European transitions
have focused on the problem of looking for a pattern that could
apply to all post-communist transitions and stand as a universal
recipe or model for a peaceful and painless transition.
Finding such a model is not an easy task due to the
complex nature of the transitions. Transitions can be similar
and yet manifest certain differences. If we compare only the results
of each individual country's reforms after a lapse of five years,
we find remarkable differences among the former "socialist"
countries in almost all spheres of political, economic, and social
life. If, however, we analyze the specifics of each country's
developmental path, we find that the patterns of development are
to some extent uniform, with a number of smaller tactical differences.
Why then do countries which followed seemingly common routes to
achieve change now find themselves in drastically different situations?
The answer to this question lies in each country's
"starting point." By this, one should understand the
political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that each
country inherited from the previous regime. Proving this point
would require a comparative study of all East European countries.
Such a study has not yet been attempted. Furthermore, time is
needed to allow for more stabilization and for the countries'
new situations to become clarified. Only with time will prime
conditions for scholarly research emerge: the availability of
complete access to communist party archives, KGB documents, opposition
materials, and private collections.
Although framed within the larger question of the
importance of a starting point, the aim of this study is to analyze
Poland and Ukraine in order to examine the transition from totalitarian
communist regimes to western-style democracies, with special reference
to the formation of pluralist political party systems.
An examination of Poland and Ukraine, moreover, is
a comparison of two different blocs: Poland as a former part of
the broader Soviet bloc and Ukraine as a former part of the Soviet
Union. The differences between these two blocs were always significant.
Poland, as other countries of the Soviet bloc, experienced domination
by the Soviet Union for a period of forty years, but enjoyed a
relatively high degree of sovereignty; it had more similarities
than differences with other former socialist countries when changes
began in the late 1980s. Ukraine, by contrast, belonged to a different,
though related, system under virtually absolute control from Moscow.
It should also be noted that Ukraine gained independence only
in 1991; before that time it had developed as an integral part
of the Soviet Union, directly influenced by developments that
took place in Moscow.
All of the countries within the Soviet sphere learned
how to cope with the communist system, developing new methods
and tactics for future opposition activities. Polish society,
however, had better access to information coming from outside
the Soviet system and was more advanced in making use of this
information. Ukraine, by contrast, being behind the "iron
curtain," did not have access to such information and was
able to access it only partially, mostly by simply repeating and
copying Polish practices.
Before turning to the analysis of the socio-political
developments in Poland and Ukraine during the communist period,
it is necessary to define a point of comparative reference for
these two countries' recent developments. Undoubtedly, Poland
and Ukraine had much in common in the past, and, according to
Ivan Rudnytsky, "...when surveying the record of Polish-Ukrainian
interaction, one is often struck by the great similarity in attitudes
and behavior of the two communities." After World War II,
both states found themselves under the regime nouveau.
The communist regimes introduced in Eastern Europe were characterized
by one common trait in all countries: the similar form of interaction
between the regime and the opposition. It is this regime-opposition
interaction in Poland and Ukraine which will be examined in this
paper. Although an interplay between an opposition and those holding
power is common also to democratic societies, the nature of this
process was different in the "socialist democracies."
The main difference was the mechanism allowing the opposition
to come to power. Whereas in western-style democracies elections
serve as the main mechanism to change governments, in the Soviet-type
communist regimes, not only was the opposition unable to take
part in elections, but political freedoms were also limited or
in many cases non-existent.
Political, economic, and cultural conditions as well
as the nature of regime-opposition interaction were different
in Poland and Ukraine. Sometimes the regime's level of tolerance
for the opposition was high while on other occasions the regime
oppressed it.
Three distinct time periods divide this examination
of regime-opposition relations in Poland and Ukraine.7 The first
is the communist period, from the end of the 1940s to the early
stages of perestroika in 1986. The second time period,
from 1986 to 1989-90, is distinguished by the birth, or in some
instances renewal, of mass political organizations. The third
period, from 1989-90 to the present, has witnessed the rise of
multi-party systems and the formation of a juridical basis for
the parties' activities.
This monograph will first describe the general characteristics
of both societies during the communist period and then will concentrate
primarily on political developments in the period between 1989
and 1994. These dates were crucial for both Poland and Ukraine.
In 1989, round table negotiations between the ruling Polish United
Worker's Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) and
Solidarity, the opposition movement, led to the first semi-free
elections in Poland and the formation of its first non-communist
government in forty years. In Ukraine, 1989 was the year when
the mass opposition movement the Ukrainian Popular Movement for
Perestroika (Narodnyi Rukh Ukrainy za perebudovu, NRU or Rukh)
was formed. At that time limited liberalization of society was
allowed when the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine
(Komunistychna partiia Ukrainy, KPU) Volodymyr Shcherbyts'kyi
was replaced with the more reformist Volodymyr Ivashko.
Over the next five years political transformations
and economic reforms reshaped Ukrainian and Polish societies.
These processes continue today, although some stabilization in
the political sphere has now been achieved. In Poland, this stabilization
was marked with a new election law, adopted in 1993. This law
allows only those parties with more than 5 percent of electoral
support to hold seats in parliament. In Ukraine, stabilization
has not occurred to the same extent as in Poland. It can be argued,
however, that Ukraine has achieved a certain degree of stability
in relation to other countries of the former Soviet Union.
The same understanding of opposition-regime interaction
is also useful for understanding the rise of new political parties.
The vast majority of currently existing parties in Poland and
Ukraine were formed during 1990-91, but they trace their roots
to either the regime or the opposition of the previous period;
consequently they can be divided into post-opposition and post-regime
parties. Undoubtedly, the programs of the new Polish and Ukrainian
parties, as well as the regime's and opposition's tactics and
aims in the recent past, have been different. These differences
were the result of each society's ability, or inability, to develop
independent political action in conditions of communist organizational
monopoly.
No.7: Russian Banking: An Overview and Assessment
by Kent F. Moors
Russian privatization has reached its most crucial
phase. While remaining the cornerstone in an entire process of
economic reform which began even before the collapse of the Soviet
Union in December 1991, it must now attract sufficient investment
or the government's sputtering move to transform the market will
grind to a halt.
Fundamental to the domestic orchestration of investment
is the Russian banking sector. Still feeling the crushing effect
of the collapse in the interbank credit market which began on
23 August 1995 and facing a wave of institutional bankruptcies,
declining depositor confidence, and genuine concerns about another
liquidity shortfall, its ability to organize and maintain a financial
infrastructure is open to serious question. There is, however,
no alternative. The future of the Russian market will be decided
by a small number of major commercial banks.
At stake is the only method to avoid a certain reversal
of economic priorities, the return of centralized planning, and
the failure of any genuine introduction of private market dynamics
in what remains the largest land-mass nation on the face of the
earth.
The December 1995 parliamentary elections signaled
the return to prominence of a renewed Communist Party of the Russian
Federation. Nationalism has been unleashed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky's
Liberal Democrats on the one hand and a charismatic general-turned-politician,
Aleksandr Lebed, on the other. In the middle, not a single free
market advocate remains in the Russian government.
The capitalization phase of Russian privatization
was to have been highlighted by a late 1995 series of tender auctions.
At stake were major government-owned blocks of primary industry
stock provided for badly needed credit to a deficit-driven central
government budget.
Foreign participation, however, was prevented in
the prized energy sector share transfers (both oil and electrical
power) and in the auctions of enterprises still considered basic
to national security (avionics, petroleum shipping, strategic
metals, and high-tech development). The one highly publicized
exception--an acquisition of a 25% share in Svyazinvest by the
Italian telecommunication giant Stet--was subsequently canceled
when the Russian government refused to reveal what the stock actually
represented in operational assets.
Three Russian domestic banks controlled these auctions,
to the extent of determining access and winners--Menatep, Inkombank,
and ONEKSIMbank. With foreign investment barred from the competition,
huge enterprises were won for a fraction of market value. When
the dust had settled, these banks emerged as the dominant players
in the Russian economy--effectively controlling major vertical
oil companies, the largest metallurgical combinates in the world,
shipping lines, converted military technology, mining, and the
previously government-owned trading outlets of their products
to the world.
These tender auctions produced a wave of protest,
but did demonstrate an unalterable reality of Russian investment.
For the foreseeable future, essential capitalization will be domestic
in source. It is the Russian banks, despite the problems continuing
in this sector, which will hold the key. Unless there is a release
of sufficient investment to produce some industrial stability
and retard the continuing decline in both productivity and employment,
reform will effectively be over.
The following study focuses upon the current situation
in this banking sector. As with any study, it has its own perspective.
It is a view resulting from both practical and analytical experience
inside the rapidly changing Russian market. Anybody involved in
that market over the past several years can attest to the remarkable
transition which has taken place. But all is likely to be for
naught unless an expanding domestic investment base emerges.
If the reform is to succeed, it must produce genuine
private property--the kind that can be bought and sold and valued
at regular market prices. In short, without stable domestic sources
for ongoing enterprise development, privatization cannot hope
to withstand the assault from reactionary political and ideological
forces. The results to be experienced by the end of 1996 will
either place the Russian experience on the road to genuine capitalism
or backwards to a closed economic system. There is now no middle
ground.
No.8: Nationalism and Religion in the
By Peter F. Sugar
The demise of communist rule in the various states
of the Balkans was followed by steadily increasing tensions leading
to a bloody civil war. Some of the events which have attracted
world-wide interest began even before the critical years of 1989-90.
Clever and unscrupulous leaders using the tools which modern media
technology put at their disposal can channel and have directed
popular sentiment and feelings in directions which suited their
purpose. They did this during the long years of communist supremacy,
and even more blatantly during the last few years. Shaping public
opinion and action is easier when the direction in which the leadership
wants events to move coincides with and/or is based on the feelings
and wishes of the majority of those whom the leaders wish to mobilize.
Each group of humans, from the smallest (the nuclear family) to
the largest (nation) is held together by shared self-identifiers.
In the Balkans (except Albania) the most pronounced differentiation
separating the masses from those who ruled them for about a half
millennium was religion, the main if not only criterion accepted
and enforced by the masters of the Ottoman Empire. Has this enforced
self-identifier survived into the present, or was it changed and
if so why and how? This study attempts to answer this basic question.
By Grigorii Golosov
Preface
One of the most influential accounts of party system
formation in western democracies has emphasized the effects of
pre-existing social conditions on the development of party systems.
It has been argued that contemporary party systems structurally
reflect the social divisions extant at the time of mass enfranchisement.
Since universal suffrage is one of the most characteristic institutional
features of liberal democracy, this theory suggests that pre-democratic
conditions exert a decisive weight upon democracy that comes to
replace authoritarianism, particularly as far as the structure
of the emerging party system is concerned. The goal of this analysis
is to test this theory, which appears to be quite instrumental
when applied to western political realities, by examining its
applicability to the study of the post-communist polities of Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The problem has already received some coverage in
the ongoing debate on the emerging party systems, but many questions
remain unanswered. In particular, the most explicit attempt so
far to open a "Rokkanian perspective" on party system
formation in Eastern Europe has been focused on the "survivals"
from pre-communist political conditions. Of course, it cannot
be denied that greater or lesser amounts of persistence of the
old parties exert some impact on the processes of party system
formation. These parties, however, do not dominate the political
landscape in any of the new democracies. To build a more comprehensive
explanatory model, it is therefore necessary to shift the focus
of analysis to more general patterns of pre-democratic development,
falling under the umbrella category of the mode of communist rule.
It is hypothesized that the mode of communist rule, if theoretically
reconstructed as a sequence of political choices made under structural
constraints specific for political regimes of this type, explains
cross-national variance among the emerging party systems of post-communist
democracies. This hypothesis, influenced by the "structured
contingency" approach developed for the study of democratization
in Latin America, requires undertaking in-depth analyses of several
cases of post-communist democratic transitions. Such analyses
will be provided for the cases of Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria and
the Czech Republic.
For the past several years, specialists on post-communist
politics have been looking at the role played by the "Leninist
legacies" in structuring the fields of political alternatives
with considerable controversy. Some analysts tend to consider
this role as negligible. They assume that post-communist Europe,
being in the midst of a profound political and economic transformation,
has little if anything to owe to the communist regimes. But the
predominant, although not necessarily well-articulated, assumption
is that the legacies of the past cannot be easily discounted by
those striving to attain a better understanding of the present.
The major difficulty with operationalizing this approach stems
from the fact that while the communist regimes were by no means
ignored by the political science community during the decades
of these regimes' existence, their collapse forced the scholarship
on the subject into a "bout of soul-searching." On the
one hand, the once dominant totalitarian model has been accused
of being a misleadingly static concept incapable of explaining,
and hence predicting, the process of political change under communism.
On the other hand, the alternative "modernization approach"
to the study of the Soviet Union and other East European countries has been denounced for misinterpreting the harsh realities of
communism in rationalistic, optimistic terms invented by western
social scientists. To be sure, the purpose of this study is not
to suggest a new grand theory that would eliminate gaps in theoretical
understanding produced by the turbulent state of the field. But
giving some consideration to the relevant theoretical problems
appears to be necessary.
The difficulties evident with both the totalitarian
model and the "modernization approach" may be related
to the fact that they were not sensitive to observable differences
among the communist regimes. The former model, with its vision
of these countries' societies as being atomized by the combination
of repressive and highly centralized state activities, obviously
left little space for any appreciation of the specificity of individual
polities. The latter approach, with its theoretical fascination
coming largely from the theories of convergence, also concentrated
on similarities in occupational and status structures engendered
by modernization rather than on those differences which, as the
logic of this approach implied, could be expected to gradually
lose their significance. True, many scholars objected to generic
characterizations of the East European polities, citing a range
of reasons from the diverse patterns of interest articulation
and institutions observable in the region to cultural differences.
Generally, however, it would not be an exaggeration to say that
the theoretical models which dominated the field of Sovietology
before the start of the processes of democratization tended to
emphasize the discontinuity between the communist regimes, viewed
in a relatively uniform way, and their obviously diverse predecessors.
In this sense, the current tendency to discount the continuity
between the communist dictatorships and the emerging democracies
appears to be entrenched in the intellectual history of the field.
It must be stressed that the theoretical vision that underlies
this study breaks with this tradition.
Of course, no claim is made that communist regimes
in different countries had little in common. Their similarities,
stemming from such fundamental properties as monopolistic political
control and the command economy, were sealed by the Soviet military
hegemony in the region. It is assumed, however, that the mode
of operation available to the communist regime in each of the
East European countries was strongly conditioned by the specific
environments intrinsic to the given society. These environments
not only persisted through the period of communist rule, but they
also influenced the regime itself, making it respond to societal
challenges and pressures with a specific combination of adaptive
measures and overt political repression. Furthermore, these environments,
even though transformed as a result of the regime's activities,
played a significant role in shaping both the process of democratization
and the institutional architecture of the emerging post-communist
polity. Thus, the theoretical perspective of this study may be
best characterized as that of continuity.
The notion of continuity, of course, is too general
to be immediately applied to the specific subject matter of this
study. To make such an application possible, it is necessary to
introduce those concepts which are expected to be instrumental
in examining the preconditions for post-communist party system
formation. Since the most inclusive answer to the question "what
are political parties?" might be that they perform the function
of communication between the elite and the masses it is only logical
to place these two principal political actors, and country-specific
patterns of interaction between them, at the center of the analysis.
In broad terms, any relationship between the ruled and the rulers
may be described as a combination of conformity and dissent. While
the elite engages itself in the process of "authoritative
allocation of values," the masses either conform to or dissent
from the rulers' ideological goals and/or policy objectives. Due
to their authoritarian nature, the communist regimes embarked
on massive institution-building efforts intended to carry the
government writ into the farthest corners of the polity. At the
early phases of the regimes' existence, the scope and effectiveness
of these efforts were contingent upon the level of popular support
to the communist party at the moment of its advent to power. For
the sake of brevity, this factor will be further called the "level
of communist support."
The heuristic payoff of employing the level of communist
support as the basic variable is twofold. First, and most important
from the theoretical perspective accepted in this study, it allows
for establishing a structural linkage between the mode of communist
rule and the pre-communist political conditions in the country.
Second, since in several countries the communists came to power
after evoking relatively free elections, it allows for introducing
a reasonably large amount of the quantitative data into the analysis
of specific cases. At this point, it is still feasible to speak
of the level of dissent in terms of the numbers of votes cast
for non-communist parties. Of course, this becomes impossible
as soon as the study starts to deal with the established communist
regimes. However, the presence or absence of mass political protest
against the regime, as well as the presence or absence of meaningful
dissident movements in the given country, keeps us informed about
the overall balance between conformity and dissent in the popular
attitude towards the regime. It is also worth taking into consideration
that the manifestations of dissent did not remain without response
from the regime. Hence, the level of reform liberalization before
the beginning of political transformation is considered as an
important variable. Finally, during the initial phase of transition
to democracy the relationships between the dissatisfied masses
and the elite are expected to be conditioned by the role played
by the radical reformers within the top communist leadership.
Related to the basic notion of continuity, this study
examines the impact of the identified factors upon the processes
of post-communist party system formation. The choice of comparative
referents is motivated by the need to increase the variation of
the basic variables. It must be mentioned that, for the sake of
case comparability, Russia and the Czech Lands are considered
as nation states directly succeeding the former Soviet Union and
Czechoslovakia, respectively. Any discussion of questions related
to the disintegration of the quasi-federal communist states is
largely avoided, and the cases of other successor states (the
former Soviet republics other than Russia, and Slovakia) are not
discussed at any length. While it cannot be denied that this results
in some loss of information relevant to the purposes of the study,
the strategy of cross-national comparison of whole political systems
unambiguously requires that the units of analysis be uniform,
which cannot be achieved in any other way but by treating them
as nation states without further qualifications.
The case studies are preceded by an introductory
section explicating several theoretical assumptions about the
process of party system formation in post-communist democracies.
The rationale for discussing this subject matter is that, while
the process is hypothesized to be rooted in the pre-existing conditions,
it is also necessary to examine the impact of those conditions
which arise as a result of transition to democracy. To achieve
this, the introductory section of the analysis addresses the following
major questions: What are the likely initial configurations of
the fields of ideological and political alternatives that emerge
in the transformative polities? In what way does the introduction
of free electoral practices shape the development of party systems?
These questions grow in their importance as soon as a case study
starts to deal with the process of transition to democracy, and
they become absolutely unavoidable with the first free elections
held in the country under consideration. Clearly, the impact of
democratic conditions should be examined in a theoretically elaborated
and methodologically uniform way. The goal of the introductory
section of the study is to provide the adequate analytical tools
for meeting this requirement.
Choosing Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria and the Czech
Lands as comparative referents requires a word of caution regarding
the comparability of electoral outcomes in these four countries.
All of them employ electoral systems that include elements of
proportionality. In some important respects, however, these systems
are distinctively different. The data used in this analysis will
represent, unless otherwise stated, the results of the elections
to the Hungarian parliament, the State Duma (the lower house of
the Russian parliament), and the Czech National Council. In Bulgaria,
the Grand National Assembly (1990) had been elected under different
electoral rules than the parliament, Sobranie, first convened
in 1991.
"Pure" proportional representation systems
have been in use in the Czech Lands, and in Bulgaria since 1991.
The 1990 elections to the Grand National Assembly of Bulgaria
were held under a mixed system, with half the deputies elected
by a proportional formula and the other half by a majority system
in single-member districts. A similar system has been employed
in the Duma elections in Russia, with the only difference being
that there, a plurality formula has been used in single-member
districts. Obviously, it is the distribution of votes cast for
party lists which is relevant to this analysis. The Hungarian
electoral law is one of the most complex systems based on hybrid
principles. Three different formulae are used to allocate a total
of 386 seats in the national parliament. 176 seats are distributed
among single member districts through a majority formula with
the run-off. A maximum of 152 seats are distributed among candidates
from parties that have established regional party lists. Each
of the twenty regions is assigned a number of mandates that are
allocated through a proportional representation formula. At least
58 seats are distributed among parties that have established national
party lists. These seats, however, are allocated not by a proportional
formula properly, but in proportion to the parties' so-called
residual votes (those votes that are not enough to gain a seat
either in a single member district or in a regional contest).
From this description, it appears that the only data useful for
this analysis are the results of elections by regional party lists.
The comparative nature of this analysis entails certain
chronological limitations on the scope of the case studies. In
each of them, the examination of post-communist developments is
limited to the period between the event of regime change, often
but not necessarily coinciding with the earliest free parliamentary
elections, and the second free elections held in the given country.
As a result, the upper chronological limits for the case studies
are set at different points: in the case of Hungary, the May-June
1994 elections; in the case of Russia, the December 1995 elections;
and in the case of the Czech Lands, the June 1992 elections. It
is assumed that the period of time between the 1990 and 1991 elections
in Bulgaria was insufficiently long to allow for considering the
latter elections as the "second" ones properly. Therefore,
the analysis of the case of Bulgaria is extended to the December
1994 elections.
By Michelle Fuqua
Preface
As the basic unit of tsarist society, the family
was a traditional structure upon which were based the patriarchal
authority of the tsarist regime and the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the eyes of the early Bolsheviks the family was, furthermore,
an oppressive institution which subjugated women and children,
a place of male despotism and familial tension, especially for
the woman, that "slave of her family, slave of her hearth,
slave of her children." Considering patriarchy to be a product
of capitalist economic relations, the Bolsheviks viewed the private
familial realm as a sphere of bourgeois social and economic relations
which affected the mores and behaviors of the proletariat. Therefore,
the Bolsheviks believed that the familial sphere had to be transformed
and the party's influence over this realm increased as a means
to combat bourgeois influences within the new Soviet state. Otherwise,
the private, familial sphere, as a spontaneous generator of middle-class,
complacent values, could undermine the working class struggle
to create a new society.
As that part of the population which spent the overwhelming
majority of their lives within this private domestic sphere, women,
whom the Bolsheviks perceived as the most "unconscious"
element of the working class, were considered a potential hindrance
to the proletarian class movement. Women needed to be educated
and brought into the working class struggle, for, as Lenin often
reiterated, the proletarian revolution could not triumph without
the participation of the entire laboring population, including
women. For communism to be achieved, women had to be liberated
from domestic bondage and integrated into the working collective.
The basic tenets of Bolshevik theory on women and
the family were based upon Engels' The Origins of the Family,
Private Property, and the State, a tract written in 1884,
which compiled and elucidated earlier ideas of Marx and Engels.
The patriarchal family, Engels wrote, arose with the evolution
of private property, as the need to bequeath private wealth required
the woman to remain monogamous, enabling the male to identify
his heirs. Women were placed under the authority of the male head
of the household, who was free to conduct extramarital relations,
and the wife was regulated to the domestic sphere, where she became
economically dependent upon the husband. To regain autonomy and
social equality, as well as to combat the tyranny of private property,
women needed to be relieved of the duties binding them to the
family hearth. Once women become employed outside the home and
gain economic independence, the family as an economic unit (based
upon and contributing to the reproduction of capitalist economic
relations) will disappear. Yet, even as they emphasized the importance
of women's liberation as a weapon to combat the capitalist system,
neither Engels nor Marx furnished a specific vision of future
familial relations, which left plenty of room for future Communist
thinkers to extrapolate.
The zhenotdely, the Women's Sections of the
Communist Party, which existed from 1919 to 1930, were established
to bring women into the party's sphere of influence, to educate
women, and to make them productive members of the working class.
Included within this principal mission was the goal of economic,
social, and political liberation of women. The zhenotdely
endeavored to "liberate" women from the patriarchal
family, thereby enabling them to become active participants in
the revolutionary movement.
Significantly, the zhenotdely did not call
for a restructuring of private relations or for more involvement
of the husband in housework and child care (and the transformation
of gender roles which this would have entailed). Such a solution
would have left the private, familial sphere intact. Instead,
they demanded statist solutions, looking to the Soviet state to
direct and fulfill women's domestic duties. Thus, the zhenotdely
called for the transformation and reduction of the domestic realm
as the solution to "liberating" women from "household
slavery." In this manner, the reconstitution of the relationship
between the public and domestic spheres was essential for the
liberation of women: they could not be equal members of society
while they were tied to the kitchen hearth. Consequently, women's
liberation was a component part of the Bolsheviks' goal of increasing
the scope of the public sphere and party authority while reducing
the private realm in Soviet society.
This study traces changing party conceptions of and
policy towards the public and private domains in the years before
the Cultural Revolution (1919-1928), focusing upon the zhenotdely's
attempts to transform the private domestic sphere and to spread
party influence among women, goals which were considered crucial
for women's liberation and the communalization of society. I am
not writing a history of the Zhenotdel, the Women's Section
of the Communist Party Central Committee located in Moscow (the
history of the Zhenotdel and its relationship with the
party has been well documented by Carol Eubanks Hayden). Rather,
via the activities of the zhenotdely, I will examine the
party's implicit redefinition of and changing policy towards the
domestic realm during the 1920s, a policy which was based upon
a combination of ideological considerations and the party's need
to confront social realities.
For even as the zhenotdely attempted to transform
the domestic sphere and women's role within it, they had to contend
with the women they were nominally leading. As women attempted
to carve out a niche for themselves in Soviet society, the zhenotdely
ultimately had to negotiate with these women where the boundary
between the public, private, and domestic realms was to be located.
For the response of these women was crucial in shaping the work
of the zhenotdely; women's acceptance or rejection of zhenotdely
tenets, their reactions to and, in turn, their influence on the
party-state's attempt to redefine the relationship between the
public and the familial spheres were reflected in the changing
policy of the zhenotdely, which altered the meaning of
liberation and modified the image of the "new Soviet woman"
and her role within Soviet society.
Prior accounts of the zhenotdely have focused
upon either the success or the failure of these bodies to liberate
women. The basic premise of Western scholars is that the party
was not truly interested in liberating women, but rather in harnessing
their labor for the benefit of the new regime. Because of this,
the Women's Sections added significantly to women's burdens outside
of the home, while failing to "liberate" women from
their secondary status within Soviet society. According to Soviet
scholars the zhenotdely fulfilled their purpose, having
"solved the woman question" and the issue of women's
subordinate position in both the family and the community. Yet,
the real historical significance of the zhenotdely is not
whether they eliminated discrimination or transformed women's
social position, but how the zhenotdely attempted to redefine
and reconstitute the domestic sphere, placing women's traditional
family roles under state control. The zhenotdely have not
been studied from this angle, yet it is an approach which can
provide rich insights into both the history of the Women's Sections
and the relationship of the party to the public, private, and
domestic spheres during the course of the 1920s. It can furthermore
contribute to an evaluation of two competing and mutually exclusive
paradigms used to conceptualize NEP: the "creeping totalitarianism"
paradigm and the concept that NEP was an era of "pluralism."
As this study traces the shifting boundary between
the public, private, and domestic spheres, these concepts must
be defined at the outset. The public sphere often refers to the
governmental realm, but it can be wider than merely the governmental
sphere and can refer to the nation or people as a whole as well
as to services and activities which aid or otherwise affect a
community. In this sense, the zhenotdely endeavored to
establish public institutions or services, such as nurseries,
laundries, and cafeterias, which would not only transform and
reduce the domestic sphere, but also serve the working class,
especially women.
In a certain sense, the use of the term "public
sphere" can be easier to apply in Soviet Russia than in Western
democracies as the state endeavored to co-opt or eliminate independent
public (but non-governmental or non-party) groups and associations.
This is not to say there were no "autonomous social groups
that [did] not owe their existence to the state"; as historian
Glennys Young persuasively argues regarding the rural clergy under
NEP, "representatives of 'civil society'" did not simply
disappear, but rather found ways to continue their existence under
the new regime. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks endeavored
to eliminate social structures beyond their control and the bourgeois
consciousness such structures produced. With the formation of
commissions for agitation and propaganda among women in December
1918 (which became departments, or otdely, in August 1919),
the party appropriated or disbanded other women's groups, eliminating
women's organizations which were not under party authority. Thus,
a definition of public as being of or related to the government,
state, or party is applicable to Soviet Russia and the history
of the zhenotdely; this is how I will use the term.
The private sphere is that which is unrelated to
or outside the state and can be a difficult concept to apply to
NEP Russia. As the party endeavored to aggrandize the public at
the cost of the private realm, boundaries between these spheres
were redefined and reconstituted. Webster's Dictionary
defines "private" and "private sphere" as
"carried on by the individual independent of the usual institutions";
this definition can be applied to Soviet Russia if one replaces
the word "usual" with the words "party," "state,"
or "state/party dominated."
The domestic sphere is that realm which concerns
the household or the family. This domain is often perceived as
a sub-category of the private sphere, but it is not necessarily
so. If the family becomes allied with or subordinated to the control
of the state, then the definition of "private" as "carried
on . . . independent of the usual [state] institutions" no
longer applies. As the Bolsheviks endeavored to place the domestic
sphere under the tutelage of the party-state, the domestic sphere,
at least theoretically, became a sphere of the party.
No.11: Ethnic Bipolarism in Slovakia, 1989-1995
By David Lucas
Preface
Despite frequent assertions by Communist authorities
that ethnic tensions would invariably decrease with the successful
building of egalitarian societies, the decline of totalitarianism
in East Central Europe in the late 1980s revealed that they not
only persisted, but also constituted a major potential force for
destabilization in the region. Three primary axes of ethnic tension
afflicted Czechoslovakia. The Roma represented a large repressed
minority which has so far been unable to effectively assert its
interests in a political context. More significant in this respect
have been tensions between Czechs and Slovaks on the one hand,
and Slovaks and the Hungarian minority on the other.
While Slovak national sentiment targeted dissatisfaction
with the present Czech-Slovak arrangement as its primary concern
no later than mid-1991, this tension was largely abated by the
peaceful dissolution of the Czechoslovak federation, which resulted
in the formation of two new states-the Czech Republic and the
Slovak Republic-on 1 January 1993. This allowed for an invigorated
and mobilized Slovak political elite to redirect its energies;
and thus, by early 1993, the Hungarian minority became the new
target of its national populist rhetoric and legislation.
In the context of post-totalitarian Slovak politics,
a historically rooted anti-Hungarian bias among segments of the
Slovak populace and electorate first presented itself in early
1990 in the form of protests in Bratislava and Nové Zámky
against the alleged subversive designs of the Hungarian minority.
The Slovak National Party (SNP), an extremist right-wing party
which helped organize these demonstrations, subsequently performed
well in the June 1990 elections, winning twenty-two seats in the
Slovak National Council (out of one hundred fifty) and fifteen
in the Federal Assembly (out of three hundred fifty). The Movement
for a Democratic Slovakia (MDS), formed in March 1991 and since
the June 1992 elections the most powerful party in the country,
adopted a similar stance toward the Hungarian minority. These
two parties have governed together since the 1992 elections, notwithstanding
the periods when the SNP left the government for part of 1993
and when both parties were in opposition during the period of
the more moderate Moravèík government in 1994.
At the other end of the ethno-political spectrum,
the Hungarian minority obtained its political representation in
the form of three main political parties. The Independent Hungarian
Initiative (IHI), later called the Hungarian Civic Party (HCP),
was the first such party to coalesce. It was soon followed by
the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (HCDM) and Együttélés
[Coexistence]. Each of these parties embodied different political
priorities and goals, and adopted distinct strategies to effect
them. The Hungarian People's Party (HPP) formed in December 1991,
thereby becoming the fourth political party in Slovakia representing
the Hungarian minority. However, it did not become a significant
contender in the Slovak political arena, and could be expected
to remain in relative obscurity.
This study analyzes the effects of ethnic bipolarization
in exacerbating or alleviating ethnic tension on a political level.
My goal is to identify those systemic factors which have been
conducive to escalating conflict. As documentation I rely on party
documents, electoral programs, and press reports. I consider both
intraethnic and interethnic relations between parties in the Slovak
political arena. My general approach here is to examine ethnic
politics first from the perspective of the individual minority
parties, and then on the basis of individual issues. In the first
section, I give an overview of Slovak political developments from
the fall of totalitarianism to November 1995, with particular
attention to ethnic issues. The second section outlines a framework
for studying ethnic conflict in the context of an independent
pluralistic Slovakia. Sections three and four describe the histories,
goals, and tactics of the Hungarian and Slovak parties individually.
In section five, I analyze post-totalitarian politics on an issue-by-issue
basis. In my concluding section, I select examples with which
to explore the theory on ethnic conflict elaborated in the second
section. In my finding, I invert the direction of my study, considering
the centrifugal tendencies of an ethnically bipolar party system
in relation to the countervailing forces for dialogue, moderation,
and compromise. It is hoped that by understanding the roots of
ethnic conflict, we can begin to find ways to alleviate it, or
at least its worst symptoms.
No.12: Literacy and Reading in 19th Century Bulgaria
By Krassimira Daskalova
Preface
There have appeared, during the last 25-30 years, a number of historical works on literacy and on the modern transition to mass literacy in particular. The intensified interest in the history of literacy and of elementary education in general is largely due to the appreciation of its important links with social change and modernization. The publications on literacy result from either individual or team research and statistical analyses. A variety of documents used in the pursuit of this research: brides' signatures on marriage records, signatures on wills, petitions, job applications and applications for the granting of pensions, documents of land transactions, military recruit records and criminal records, and the official census data of more recent times. Following the initial enthusiasm over this type of research, revisionist critiques of the "literacy myth" have appeared, pleading for a more critical attitude and specification of the social context of acquiring literacy and education, as well as for a closer relation between theoretical sociological reasoning and detailed historical research. Research on literacy and education is associated with the interest in readers and reading, popular culture and literary history. Parallel research in these intertwined fields strives to create a more accurate picture of the level of education and the reading habits of the various social strata in different historical epochs and national contexts.
While Bulgarian historiography abounds in works on the history of education, research on the history of literacy is scanty. What is available is based upon a small number of sources and refers to limited geographic areas or particular communities. As far as the Bulgarian mediaeval kingdom and the Ottoman period are concerned, this omission may be attributed to the scarcity of sources. There is no valid reason for the subsequent period. Though official statistics about Bulgaria are available since the end of the nineteenth century, no systematic research has been carried out on the level of literacy of the population and the connections between literacy and the demand for books (and the use of books). One may only point to the pioneering publications by Georgi Minchev and Kiril Popov, in which literacy was discussed in other contexts, but no one has followed up on these preliminary considerations.
The present publication attempts to give a general outline of the level of literacy and the attitude toward books and reading among various strata of the Bulgarian population during the nineteenth century. In surveying this subject, I draw upon available statistics as well as upon literary sources; the latter, though fragmentary and "impressionistic", contribute to creating a livelier picture of the issues under consideration.
No.13: Critical Theory and the War in Croatia and Bosnia
By Thomas Cushman
Preface
Critical sociological theory emerged in the wake of World War II to offer explanations for the rise of fascism in Europe and the dissolution of the Enlightenment project in the twentieth century. The practical aim of critical theory was to understand how the modern project could be realized. Yet history keeps setting up barriers to such a project: at a time when the culture of Western liberal democracies seems poised to become the universal model for human societal development, Europe has been the site of a genocide against the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Genocide has been perpetrated, this time, against another defenseless population, this time in full view of the world, and this time without being stopped by those who witnessed it and who possessed the means to do so. At the very time when the Enlightenment project seems alive in the ethos of the new European Union, social processes within supposedly enlightened societies have contributed to the toleration of genocide and other manifestations of "anti-Enlightenment" in Europe itself. Theodor Adorno asked the question: how is poetry possible after Auschwitz? We can now ask the question: how is the idea of Europe possible after Bosnia?
In light of what has happened in Bosnia, another set of questions emerge for the critical theorist: how is it possible that in the midst of Europe - which recently unified around the very enlightenment ideal of a civilized Europe - a genocide of the magnitude as that which occurred in Bosnia could have taken place? How could this genocide have occurred when so much media attention was devoted to it? Why were so many Western intellectuals ambivalent about Western intervention to stop Serbian aggression against defenseless civilians? Why did so many Western intellectuals and political leaders adopt relativistic and equivocal interpretations which refused to assign primary responsibility for the war and mass killing to any major party in the conflict and instead chose to see the conflict as a product of "age old tribal hatreds" in which "all sides were equally guilty?" Why have so many prominent intellectuals and politicians taken positions that actually blame the victims of military aggression for their own misfortune?
Answers to these questions form the core of a critical theory of the war in Bosnia. What distinguishes these questions from those laid out by members of the Frankfurt School is that they focus to a large extent on understanding events outside of Bosnia as the key to understanding events in Bosnia itself. This is necessary, in the first instance, because the conduct of the war was directly related to the perceptions of local political elites as to what the West would or would not do in relation to concrete political or military decisions. Acts of Serbian aggression against Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance, were clearly related to the subjective perceptions on the part of Serbian elites that the West would not intervene. Yet there is another reason why a focus on events external to Bosnia is necessary: the process of globalization, which includes the mass production and distribution of instantaneous news, has dramatically transformed the ways in which wars are waged. Knowledge about world conflicts is available immediately to politicians and publics through a plethora of sources and this knowledge has a direct bearing on political action and public opinion. The theorists of the Frankfurt School had little to say about the relationship between the rise of fascism and Western liberal capitalist societies. To be sure, the Allies could have intervened against Hitler long before they did and Europe's toleration of Hitler's rearmament and initial acts of aggression could be seen, in some part, as responsible for the carnage that came later. The core of their critical theory was the analysis of the internal social dynamics which gave rise to fascism, such factors as the authoritarian personality, the family fractured by industrial society, mass culture, and propaganda.
While the dissolution of the Yugoslav federal project and the subsequent war and genocide in the former Yugoslavia can best be understood by looking at social forces in the former Yugoslavia itself - class structure, resentment, ethnonationalism, the breakdown of community, the mass psychology of Serbian or Croatian varieties of authoritarian neo-fascism, the unequal distribution of political, economic, and military power -- critical theory must also focus on the analysis of the Western response to genocide in Bosnia, not only in terms of how that response affected concrete developments in the Balkans, but for what it tells us about the culture of the West itself. It is rather clear that Western political leaders and mass publics knew exactly what was happening in the former Yugoslavia, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia. Yet, for a variety of reasons, they chose not to use military force to intervene until most of the killing was over. The exploration of why this was the case is a central task for critical theory. The development of such a theory is fundamentally a reflexive exercise which sheds light on the central dynamics of late capitalist society as well as the intellectual's place in it. Some contemporary theorists refuse to decouple the analysis of events in Bosnia from the analysis of the nature of postmodernity: the analysis of the Western response to Bosnia reflexively leads them to a critical commentary on cultural trends in Western societies. The kind of unchecked aggression which has occurred in Bosnia has appeared and will continue to appear in other parts of the world; the cultural dynamics of Western modernity have in no way extirpated barbarism, but have and will exert a strong independent effect on international relations and political conduct far into the next century.
This paper is a first step in the development of a critical theory of the war and genocide in Bosnia. It focuses on one element of the conflict: the responses of Western intellectual elites to the conflict. In this respect, the critical theory developed here moves beyond the Balkans itself and makes the central object of study the objectifiers of the objective history of war and genocide in the former Yugoslavia. In this regard, the focus is on the sociology of knowledge produced by Western intellectuals about the war and the concrete relations between those forms of knowledge and Western political practices in relation to the war. The sociology of knowledge is not a usual complement to international relations theory, or even to political science more generally. Yet it is clear that particular types of knowledge produced by Western intellectuals about the conflict in the Balkans had a decisive, independent influence on the outcomes of the war in the Balkans. While there are many types of knowledge produced about the Balkan war, the focus of this analysis is the relativistic "styles of thought" that have been a central part of Western thinking since the beginning of the Balkan war in 1991.
There have been many bloody conflicts in the twentieth century and intellectuals have made much commentary on them. Yet the hallmark of the recent Balkan war is the prominence of equivocal or relativist positions among interpretations of the war. It might even be said that perhaps in no other conflict has so much "balance" in interpretation been demanded by so many Western intellectuals. A comparison of the present Balkan war with the Spanish Civil War is instructive. Because the facts of Franco's aggression were so clear to the world, it would be difficult to imagine in the moral context of the times a conference or a volume on the Spanish Civil War in which the points of view of representatives of the Franco regime were represented in equal measure to the points of view of the victims of Francoist aggression. Still more difficult to imagine would be positions in which Francoist positions were actually affirmed and ratified by prominent Western intellectuals. Even though western powers imposed an arms embargo on Spain, among Western intellectuals, there was a great deal of consensus about the moral dimensions of the war and most critical, liberal intellectuals distinguished themselves from apologists for fascism by adopting critical stances toward Franco. Similarly, if we consider the main bodies of intellectual work on the destruction of European Jewry by Nazi Germany, we would not expect that representatives of the point of view that the Jews provoked the Germans and therefore brought about their own extirpation would be given credence by serious scholars. One could not imagine, for instance, at a contemporary conference on the Holocaust that those who deny the Holocaust or seek to revise its proportions would be given any credence at all.
Yet in the 1990s, when the facts of overwhelming Serbian responsibility for the war and genocide in Bosnia are quite well known, when evidence for planned military attacks on civilians and systematic extirpation of people based on their ethnicity abounds, conferences, volumes, scholarly papers, media coverage, and editorials which comment on the war regularly feature empathetic accounts of Serbs as victims of such things as Croatian nationalism, Bosnian Muslim fundamentalism, and Western imperialism. The attempted systematic extirpation of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian forces surely represents one of the most significant acts of barbarism in the twentieth century. What is different in this case is the response of the West: perhaps in no other conflict in the twentieth century have Western intellectuals proven themselves so willing and able to offer accounts that occlude, obfuscate or even deny the central historical facts of military aggression and mass killing. Many Western intellectuals who ordinarily espouse quite liberal or even radical positions quite unproblematically echo the sentiments and political propaganda lines of individuals who have been indicted for the most prolific war crimes to occur on European soil since World War II. In some cases, prominent intellectuals go so far as to praise the actions of individuals who have been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for heinous war crimes and genocide. If in a previous age intellectuals were characterized by an almost overzealous degree of commitment to various causes, the present age is characterized by a stance of almost "aggressive ambivalence " on the part of many Western intellectuals. This is a trend which demands critical interrogation and concrete sociological analysis. It cannot be understood solely by examining the "objective facts" of the history of the war - a history which is admittedly complex - but also by examining the culture of late capitalist societies which frames intellectual activity and political policy. Critical interrogation of this trend toward relativism and equivocation is all the more important since relativist reinterpretations are likely to increase as the temporal distance from the Balkan war increases. In this respect, the task of critical theory is to keep relativist positions from receding to the political unconscious where they solidify and become taken-for-granted parts of the stock of knowledge about the origins and consequences of the war. Critical theory is thus an act of raising a certain variety of untruth to the level of consciousness and thus, it is an act of conscience as well.
No. 14: Nation, State, and Economy in Central Asia:
By Paul Kubicek
Preface
The Central Asian republics of the former USSR, like other post-communist states, are beset with numerous crises. These states must invigorate their near-moribund economies, remedy severe environmental problems, manage inter-ethnic relations, and incorporate new forces, actors, and demands into the political system. They are severely handicapped in accomplishing these tasks since they are politically underdeveloped, meaning they lack the political institutions capable of managing a diverse set of political demands and engaging in policy innovation necessary for modernization. Central Asians must build their new states from scratch, which means devising new constitutions and effective institutions within the state and autonomy vis-a-vis foreign powers. As the experience of post-colonial states demonstrates, this is no mean task.
Moreover, states need underpinning from the population, a source of legitimacy. In the modern world, most vividly perhaps in certain post-communist states, nationalism functions as this buttress, the glue that binds the population of a given territory together. In particular, the development of nationalism is indispensable for new states, ones that are not "historical nation-states" and therefore may have weaker claims to legitimacy. One Kazakh writer notes, "The independence of a young state depends upon the political stability of society, the unity of the nation in its aspirations, its devotion to a common national idea." These sentiments are echoed in much of the scholarly writing on nationalism, in particular the important role that cultural unity and national myths and symbols play for new, developing states.
Unfortunately, Central Asians, lacking well-established national traditions linked with any historical state or popular movement, as well as ethnic homogeneity, are handicapped on this score as well. In fact, it was the Soviets who carved out the current borders of these republics, and the Soviets who played an important role in the early stages of nation-building, including the construction of written languages, national myths, and educational systems. Despite these efforts, however, tribal or clan identities, in addition to the supernational identity of Islam, remain powerful as compared with a "national" identity based more upon sentiment toward those residing in one's own republic. Leaders in these states must therefore pursue state and nation-building in order to secure their own positions, as well as the position of their republics.
How can this be done? In order to answer this question, many Central Asian leaders have begun to search for and speak about different "models" of development. Particular attention has been given to the Chinese, Korean, and (contemporary) Turkish models. Without going into great detail at this point, what is notable is that each is predicated upon a strong state with a national base. Any serious effort to model contemporary Central Asia on these modern states, however, would be putting the cart before the horse because Central Asians lack the very prerequisite-strong nation-states-necessary for these developmental paths.
This monograph will suggest that one might find some answers to questions of state and nation-building by examining the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. This is not to say that Atatürk's reforms were a cure-all, or that his legacy did not create new problems. However, his was a success story compared with many of his contemporaries, and his efforts helped transform the "Sick Man of Europe," made even sicker by war, into a stronger, more developed state based upon Turkish nationalism. Among his accomplishments were the creation of a modern, secular republic and a political party as an agent of modernization, numerous social reforms, and the replacement of old forms of loyalty and identity with one based upon fealty to the Turkish nation. Despite these accomplishments, Atatürk and his state and nation-building efforts remain relatively neglected in the study of comparative politics.
The general issues of state and nation-building have also been given inadequate attention in much of the literature on post-communist transitions. The emphasis in the sage advice of the IMF and Western governments is that all states should liberalize and democratize, which, it is assumed, will lead to economic growth and stability. By this point, however, it should be obvious that this simple equation does not work out quite so easily.
One major shortcoming of this viewpoint is that it fails to take both state-building and the state itself seriously as a necessity for social stability and policy implementation. If there is no authority to manage the diverse demands unleashed by the collapse of the old system and capable of making and implementing authoritative decisions, there will be neither growth nor stability. Moreover, this authority need not be democratic. Borrowing from Samuel Huntington, what may really matter is the degree of government, not its type. In fact, one could raise questions about the feasibility (and prudence) of democratizing these largely traditional societies. A multi-party political system could easily degenerate into clan, tribal, or ethnic battles, a result not unlike that currently in Tajikistan. This is the argument made by authoritarian leaderships in Central Asia, and this claim needs to be taken very seriously because as of yet there are no other clear lines of cleavage in these societies that could form the basis for a multi-party system.
Moreover, while nationalism receives much attention as a divisive force in the post-communist transitions, it is often overlooked as a necessary source of political community and legitimacy. Nationalism, a political expression of commonality among the citizens of the state, must be cultivated in order to develop viable, secure states. Of course, nationalism can assume many forms, some more constructive than others. The point, however, is that rather than making a blanket statement that there should be both a smaller state and less nationalism, one should note that what is really needed is an effective, authoritative state that can claim to be representative of the national community. This is what Atatürk built in Turkey, and it is something that is urgently needed in Central Asia.
Before proceeding, two caveats are in order. First, foreign blueprints can not be imported wholesale into a new environment. Local contexts and traditions must be taken into account. This statement, while perhaps obvious to those sensitive to particular historical and cultural conditions, is not always heeded, most particularly by those pushing for the Western model of democracy for all. It is apparent that this would have great difficulty working in Central Asia, where conditions are very different from those that facilitated the gradual development of Western systems. However, states can learn from others' experiences and selectively adapt and adopt approaches that have been successful elsewhere. What is needed, therefore, are more careful comparisons that take into account the current conditions of Central Asian states.
Secondly, any comparison among countries-especially those divided by decades as well as miles-is fraught with problems. Conditions will never correspond exactly, and differences must be taken into account as much as similarities. Comparisons must therefore be used with circumspection, but they are necessary if one is to engage in comparative politics and learn from historical experience.
I hope, in what follows, to demonstrate that re-examination of Atatürk's Turkey, while far from providing all the answers, will nonetheless serve to inform the way we think about state and nation-building, both in general and in the Central Asian context.
By Alexander Agafonoff, Dilnara Isamiddinova, and Galina Saidova, editors
Preface
This monograph has been designed to bring together in one volume a comprehensive collection of data and information on the labor and income situation in the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was prepared under the auspices of the UNDP Macroeconomic Policy Analysis and Training Project. The contributors' team included Dilnara Isamiddinova (Chapters 4-7), Omon Ergashev (Chapter 1), Zavikhulla Nasritdinkhodjaev (Chapter 2), and Galina Saidova (Chapters 1-4). Statistical assistance was provided by Yulduz Abduganieva.
The period covered comprises the years 1991 to 1995, inclusive; we also provide an indication of trends and developments during the first phase of transition by the Republic to a market economy. The study largely allows the facts to speak for themselves, and we have not, at this stage of the program, engaged in deep analysis on particular issues. Major issues have, however, been identified and listed at the end of each section.
Uzbekistan has adopted the gradual approach to economic reform. For this reason the effort has been made to bring about the necessary changes in the structure and conditions of the work force gradually and with minimal - although, in come cases, unavoidably serious - dislocation in the short term. Sufficient information is available to identify the following major issues deserving further research and analysis, and for the development of strategic and policy options for consideration by the government.
Statistical data and calculations are based on the information provided by Goskomprognozstat, which is the statistical body of the government of Uzbekistan.
Notes on terminology
The terms used in this study necessarily reflect the definitions of the State Committee on Statistics and Forecasting (Goscomprognozstat). Set out below are the main items.
Data regarding employment in the state sector and in large enterprises such as corporations, unions, associations and others, are based on comprehensive surveys and fully reflect the present situation. On the other hand, data regarding employment in the non-state sector, especially in small enterprises and in the sphere of individual labor activity, is imperfect. For these reasons, employment analysis in this report is based on both official data and unofficial estimates.
No.16: German-Bashing and the Breakup of Yugoslavia
By Daniele Conversi
Preface
Since the inception of the Yugoslav crisis, the major Western powers have been unable to provide adequate or united responses to the maelstrom of calamitous events. The EC decision to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia on 16 December 1991, can be identified as the first coordinated attempt to find a way out of the impasse. According to its critics, this step was premature and precipitated the ensuing dramatic developments. According to its apologists, if anything, it came too late, only after the invasion of the JNA (Serbo-Croatian acronym for Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija, Yugoslav People's Army, also known as YPA) of nearly one third of Croatia and a ten-day war with Slovenia.
This monograph aims to consider and analyze both viewpoints. In doing so, it will try to answer the two main questions underpinning each position: Why did Germany exert particular pressure to recognize Slovenia and Croatia? Why did the notion of Germany's responsibility for these events gain widespread acceptance? The sources will be both primary, such as statements by political leaders and diplomats, and secondary, such as academic literature touching upon the topic. The latter is still at an embryonic stage and critical research discussing the topic is still relatively limited.
As is known, several countries had been pressing for recognition since the start of the war on 27 June 1991. However, it was only as a result of Germany's political and economic weight that the European Union found the will to move towards that end. This step was Germany's first bold foreign policy initiative since the end of World War II. Moreover, it occurred in the wake of another dramatic development, German reunification. The latter, although not openly contested by other Western powers, created a chilly sense of threat among some European countries, reviving far-reaching memories of a renewed German expansionism. Nowhere within the EC did this fear find such fertile ground as in the British popular press and in talk shows, where 'anti-Hun' rhetoric about the purported re-emergence of a Fourth Reich sprang up in popular political culture.
This monograph argues that such a political atmosphere deeply influenced and inhibited the debate over new developments in the Balkans, and in Eastern Europe in general, in the aftermath of the Cold War. Focusing on Germany's foreign initiative (often associated with Germany's Foreign Minister at the time of the crisis, Hans D. Genscher, who led the diplomatic initiative among his European partners) provided a convenient all-encompassing rationale to make sense of an international event -the war in Bosnia- which defied most received wisdom and accepted explanations.
Effective analysis has also been inhibited by another factor: a split between international relations in practice on the one hand, and socio-political analysis on the other. There has been a tendency, if not a will, to play down the internal socio-political factors within Yugoslavia in favor of grandiose international explanations about a new carve-up of the Balkans. This shortcoming is particularly evident in works by international diplomats, who, rather than focusing on the internal events leading to the war, give an exaggerated importance to external factors, in which there seems to be often a desperate apology of their profession's mistakes. Sociological and political interpretations of the war's domestic origins are often ignored. The result is that journalistic reports and other insider accounts have often conveyed the issue more reliably than analyses by International Relations scholars or practitioners. In the last two years, however, studies by a younger generation of scholars, not from International Relations, have started to analyze in depth the internal causes of the war, while providing a balanced consideration of external factors.
A brief chronological outline on recognition and its opponents will establish that the former came long after Yugoslavia had begun its slide towards disintegration, and many months after the war started. The role of Lord Carrington's initiative will be given a particular weight. The ensuing section will attempt to answer the question of why Germany apparently exerted more pressure for recognition than other European countries. Western responses to the German initiative are put in the context of a widening rift among - and within - the main European powers on how to deal with the crisis. A full section is dedicated to "German- bashing" as a resurgent Western - particularly British - malaise.
As used in this study, the term "German-bashing" refers exclusively to international reactions to the breakup of Yugoslavia. I will not imply that it refers to other dimensions of Germany's foreign or internal politics - even though I will mention the more general "anti-Kraut" hysteria pervading the British tabloid press and government milieux. This essay fully endorses the principle that Germany's postwar sense of guilt in the wake of the Shoa helped to shape and give direction to Western politics since the end of World War II. This sense of German guilt is central to the entire postwar effort of pan-European unification, and indeed, of world peace. On the contrary, by chastening Germany for an excessive concern over human rights in the Balkans, as happened during the pre- and post-recognition debates, German-bashers have played into the hands of neo-revisionists and in general, of those who argue that Germany has been unjustly framed for past misdeeds. What characterizes contemporary attacks likening post-German unification to a new Reich is the extreme unscrupulousness of the attackers. Neo-revisionists have been only too happy to use the cynicism of German-bashers against the bountiful evidence that points to the relative success of Germany's early initiative in the Balkans - as opposed to that of other Western partners - to extrapolate more generic self-victimizing sequiturs. In other words, the attacks have risked rekindling a kind of petty wounded pride which had supposedly been laid to rest.
The most extreme form of German-bashing can be identified as the belief in a "Fourth Reichconspiracy," which in Britain was occasionally reinforced by fumblings about a "Papist plot" to revive World War II alliances. German-bashing is ergo a form of anti-Europeanism. A subsequent section identifies the process of German unification as the main catalyst of this new fear of Germany, which disproportionately influenced British and French perceptions of the Yugoslav crisis. How and why German-bashing was finally utilized by the US State Department is the question which the following section attempts to answer. A particular Western weakness is then diagnosed in the lack of knowledge of internal dynamics and cleavages in the former Yugoslavia. This concerned particularly the misunderstanding of the sequel of events leading to the breakup: while most early analyses originally identified its main causes in Slovenian and Croatian nationalism, it is now increasingly clear that separatism was rather mustered up in Belgrade by duping the international community and deceiving the JNA's initial task of defending the country's unity. Finally, the marginalization of Germany's foreign politics will be identified as a critical factor impinging on the unfolding of the Bosnian war.
No.17: Romanian-Hungarian Economic Cooperation and Joint Ventures
By Erica Agiewich
Preface
As the institutional pillars of the Communist bloc collapsed one after another in the late 1980s and early l990s, the governing economic regime, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), was among them. The CMEA, which had controlled inter-bloc trade for decades, decreed itself out of existence on 1 January 1991. Since then, bilateral trade among countries in the region has remained a fraction of what it had been in the CMEA years.
Why does inter-regional trade remain so low, especially between the Central European and Balkan countries? First, since 1991, trade has been conducted in hard currency rather than transferable rubles and the whole region faces hard currency shortages. Second, the countries desperately desire to reorient their trade to the wealthier west, with its large consumer and industrial markets. Third, it's a question of comparative advantage; many of the former Communist countries built identical economies based on heavy industry and agriculture. Now, few of the countries have attained the capacity to manufacture consumer goods to satisfy domestic demand, forcing them to run trade deficits with non-bloc countries. Finally, the political value of disassociating themselves and their countries from their Communist past puts pressure on politicians to focus their energy on building political and economic relations with non-bloc countries.
Despite these constraints, there are some unacknowledged benefits to inter-regional trade which are easily overlooked in the rush to put the Communist era and all its institutional trappings in the past. Due to the complicated history of Transylvania, Romanian-Hungarian bilateral trade and Hungarian investment in Romania are examples of how inter-regional trade and economic cooperation may be important not only in economic terms, but also may play a potentially positive and negative role in post-Communist social and political development. From the sixteenth century on, Transylvania was a province of the Habsburg empire in which the Hungarian minority was the landed upper class and the Romanian majority their peasants. The Treaty of Trianon at the end of World War I awarded Transylvania to Romania. A leveling process then began in which the Hungarian aristocracy lost much of its economic and political power. The Communist regime intensified the Hungarian disenfranchisement process; by the end of the Communist period, everyone in Romania was "equally poor."
Presently Hungary is the most politically stable and economically well-off of Romania's neighbors and could provide Romania, and especially Romania's ethnic Hungarians, with an opportunity to diversify its trading partners and increase its economic activities. Besides the financial benefits, cross-border cooperation could help to soothe tense ethnic and diplomatic relations between Hungarians and Romanians. If one assumes that many social ills are born out of economic problems and can be solved - at least in part - by economic growth, increased economic cooperation may assist rapprochement between traditional ethnic enemies and heighten regional political stability.
Without a doubt, the conditions for discrimination exist in Romania. Ceausescu's nationalist communist regime blatantly discriminated against Hungarians. At the end of the 1980s, ethnic Romanians dominated the country's political and economic apparatuses. After the revolution in December 1989, managers of the state companies successfully retained their positions of power as heads of the newly autonomous state companies and continue to maintain "connections" throughout the economy. If these individuals were inclined to discriminate against ethnic Hungarians or foreign investors of any nationality, including those from Hungary, they now would be in a position to do so. There is also a potential for backlash against ethnic Hungarians if they are perceived to be prospering in the midst of Romania's economic crisis. The question is, however, whether the traditional ethnic tension between ethnic Romanians and Hungarians has translated itself into systematic institutional discrimination and reluctance to cooperate together in the business world. Or, can the two communities overlook their traditional problems and do business together fairly?
An important consideration is that Romania, like its neighbors, does not have a "perfect market." In 1990, Romania had the most centralized economy in Europe and the second most impoverished population after Albania. It will take decades for a market economy to function properly. In the meanwhile, most Romanian citizens will suffer in the transition period and from the inherent inequities and fluctuations of a market economy while a small group will prosper. Throughout the former Communist bloc, various communities have been blaming their collective troubles on another group, be it the perceived "oppressor" or a "troublesome minority." For a society unaccustomed to a market economy, those suffering may wrongly put the blame on the so-perceived "oppressors" or achieve some sort of personal, social and/or political gain achieved by ascribing economic hardship to the majority. Conversely, a minority group sometimes becomes more assertive and "troublesome" as it advances economically. For example, it is sometimes, albeit simplistically, argued that Slovenia, the wealthiest republic in the former Yugoslavia, seceded in part for economic reasons. Moreover, in any situation in which there are majority and minority ethnic communities in a country, there will be a degree of tension and isolated or even numerous cases of discrimination.
After conducting interviews in three cities in three counties in Romania, each with various proportions of Hungarian residents, economic structures and geopolitical conditions, I have concluded that systematic institutional discrimination against Romania's Hungarian minority and foreign investors from Hungary does not appear to be a widespread problem significantly affecting the Hungarians' ability to participate in the Romanian economy. Two well-known maxims essentially explain the low level of ethnically-directed economic discrimination in a post-Communist world rife with ethnic problems: "money talks" and "don't mix politics with business." The majority of people are struggling financially in post-Communist Eastern Europe and, put simply, most members of the business community in Romania recognize it is not profitable to discriminate in business.
In fact, the Hungarian minority's familial and collegial relations in Hungary, the common language, and the promise of Romania's 22 million strong market for the relatively more advanced Hungarian economy have facilitated steadily growing trade flows between the two countries. This includes the establishment of nearly 2,000 companies in Romania using Hungarian capital investment. While the majority of Romanian citizens involved in these joint ventures naturally are of Hungarian ethnicity, some firms have ethnic Romanian partners and staff. In any case, businessmen from both ethnic groups claim that there are no "hard feelings" against Hungarian entrepreneurs and economic cooperation with Hungary is considered to be a way to get ahead and to learn from the experience of Hungary, which has had a head start in its economic transition to a market economy. Common opinion among both Romanians and Hungarians in the Romanian business community is that further economic cooperation can potentially contribute to the stabilization of economic and political relations between the two countries. In turn, this should help strengthen relations between the ethnic communities within Romania, thus benefiting all countries and communities involved.
Methodology
The material for this research project was collected over a 10 month period, from October 1995 to July 1996. Information came primarily, but not exclusively, from the following sources:
Using lists of joint ventures and foreign firms provided by the NTO and various Chambers of Commerce, I interviewed business owners and representatives in Cluj, Satu Mare and Miercurea-Ciuc. The study focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises where the majority of indigenous ethnic Hungarian entrepreneurs and investors from Hungary in Romania are concentrated. The semi-formal interviews were conducted using a standardized questionnaire. The names of the interviewees and the companies they represent are confidential and will not be disclosed in this report.
Following the completion of this study, Romanian national elections in November 1996 brought Emil Constantinescu and a reform government to power. The new government has already initiated a number of new laws that should further liberalize the Romanian economy and may attract higher levels of foreign direct investment in the country. In February 1997, Constantinescu's government proposed legalizing ownership of natural resources, including land, by foreigners in Romania.
These recent changes, however, are not addressed in this study and do not negate any of the conclusions drawn on the period in question, that is, the seven year reign of the immediate post-Ceausescu government of Ion Iliescu.
No.18: Energy and Mineral Exports from the Former USSR:
By Leslie Dienes
Preface
In the aesthetic experience of humankind, the quest for the holy grail produced works which truly are triumphs of the spirit. In the conduct of the species, that quest produced n
Assistant Professor of History and International Studies
Chair, 1992-93 REECAS Speakers Series
Russia: Reflections on a Case Study
No.2: Religion in Imperial Russia
President, Eastern Nazarene College
January 1995
Christians in Imperial Russia
President, Eastern Nazarene College
State Duma, 1905-1914
Prospects in the Oil and Gas Sectors
Multi-Party Systems in Poland and Ukraine
Balkans Since the 19th Century
Does Ataturk Provide a Model?
* Although population growth rates are lower than they have been, further effort needs to be directed at family planning, particularly in rural areas.
* Employing organizations have had to carry surplus labor, so the real situation regarding the level and extent of unemployment in Uzbekistan is somewhat obscured. This raises at least two issues: the production of more accurate information on unemployment and under-employment, and programs for dealing with excess labor.
* Job creation programs need to take account of the need to both relocate and retrain surplus labor as well as to absorb net additions to the labor force. This is a particularly serious issue as it relates to the rural sector.
* So far, the authorities have attempted to deal with aspects of the labor market problem through special arrangements which have limited labor mobility and wage differentials, rather than relying on market forces to provide solutions.
* Income structure by source is being changed due to transformational changes. The wage influence as a source of income is decreasing. Relevant wage policies can improve disproportions and contradictions in both wage distribution and income formation.
* The income differentiation is deepening in Uzbekistan. It is especially significant in rural areas, and the main remedy of this problem is to develop an effective agricultural sector.
* The savings of population have been negatively influenced during the transformational period. Factors of instability, like banking situation, changes of national currency, inflation, decrease of living standards and others led to sharp contraction of savings which is the internal source of investment.
Industry - includes heavy and light manufacturing, power production and mining.
Material services - transportation related to production, communications, trade and commerce, information services.
Non-material services - refers to housing services, health, education, culture, science, finance and State administration, as well as public transport.
Construction - refers to industrial as well as housing construction. Construction of economic infrastructure is accounted within transport and communications.
Agriculture - conventional coverage, but includes forestry and fishing.
State sector - comprises state owned enterprises and organizations.
Non-state sector - refers to enterprises and organizations with other than state ownership, including collective, mixed, joint enterprises and individuals.
Employed - refers to persons who receive wages in cash or in kind for labor.
Unemployed - for definition see section 3.1 in the text, below.
Hidden unemployed - covers two groups of population: first, those who want to work but are not actively searching for work; and secondly,
Under-employed - people who are involuntary working part-time or those on involuntary leave without pay or paid partly.
Balance of money income and expenditure - is an official source of information on income and expenditure of the population. Until 1991 this balance was included as a part in the integrated macroeconomic balances system of USSR planning economy. Currently this balance is used as macro-level information source on income and expenditures of population and also for elaborating indicators and accounts of household sector. Total income comprises income of the population from different sources: as wages, money income from collective farms, income from sales of agricultural productions, income from transfers to population, and other income from labor. The amount of income and their sources are determined on the basis of macro-level statistical and financial information. Total expenditures include population purchases of goods including retail trade items and services: as rent and municipal services, transport and communications, health care, transfers from the population and savings, and other purchases. [Household Budget Survey data is a base for analyzing real income of the population, calculating consumer price indices and other calculations in regard to household sector. The survey sample is fixed and it includes 4,500 households on the entire territory of the Republic. Information on money income and expenditures is taken on a monthly basis.]
in Post-Ceausescu Romania
- Semi-formal interviews with indigenous Hungarian entrepreneurs and investors from Hungary in the Transylvanian cities of: Cluj, in Cluj County; Satu Mare, in Satu Mare County; and, Miercurea-Ciuc, in Harghita County;
- Statistical data from and interviews with representatives of the Romanian National Trade Office (NTO) in Bucharest and county level Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Cluj, Satu Mare and Harghita;
- Statistical data from and interviews with representatives of the Romanian Development Agency;
-Regional newspapers and economic publications.
Philosopher's Stone or Fool's Gold?