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No 3 | 2013
3 | 2013
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Index: 287210
CENTRAL EUROPE
Aspen Institute Prague is supported by:
CAN EUROPE EVER BE
A SUPERPOWER?
Fyodor Lukyanov, Witold Gadomski, Ivan Krastev, Luuk van Middelaar, Petr Pithart, Oana Popescu
No Chinese Has Ever Been a Communist
An interview with Sir James Mancham
The Future of U.S. Policy in Central Europe
A. Wess Mitchell
w w w . a s p e n i n s t i t u t e . c z
Politics
In a Blind Alley J. Rupnik | A New Oprichnina J. Rogoża
Europe is Another Japan M. Wolf | Precariat G. Standing
Citizen Havel R. Schovánek | Prague Cemetery A. Kaczorowski
Economy
Culture
No 3 | 2013
Advisory Board
Walter Isaacson (co-chairman), Michael Žantovský (co­‑chairman),
Yuri Andrukhovych, Piotr Buras, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Josef Joffe, KaiOlaf Lang, Zbigniew Pełczyński, Petr Pithart, Jacques Rupnik, Mariusz
Szczygieł, Monika Sznajderman, Martin M. Šimečka, Michal Vašečka
Editorial Board
Tomáš Klvaňa (Chairman), Luděk Bednář, Adam Černý, Martin Ehl,
Roman Joch, Jan Macháček, Kateřina Šafaříková, Tomáš Vrba
Editors
Aleksander Kaczorowski (Editor In Chief ), Maciej Nowicki (Deputy
Editor In Chief ), Robert Schuster (Managing Editor)
Tra n s l at o r s
Tomasz Bieroń, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Dorota Pilas, Julia Sherwood,
Michael Stein
Published by
Aspen Institute Prague o. p. s.
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Year II
No 3/2013
ISSN 1805–6806
Price: 10 EUR (incl. VAT)
© Aspen Institute Prague
The ideas expressed in the articles are authors’ own and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board or of the Aspen
Institute Prague.
Content
F O R E W O R D Radek Špicar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
E D I T O R I A L Aleksander Kaczorowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
COVER STORY
Can Europe Ever Be a Superpower?
The Future of European Union—Luuk van Middelaar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Europe and Its Union—Petr Pithart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Central (?) Europe: It’s the Economy, Stupid!—Oana Popescu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Partnership Over the Atlantic—Witold Gadomski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
No Dreams, Europe. An interview with Fyodor Lukyanow by Filip Memches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
C O M M E N T Ivan Krastev. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
THE INTERVIEW
No Chinese Has Ever Been a Communist. An interview with Sir James Mancham by Tomáš Klvaňa . . . . . . . . . 37
C O M M E N T Martin Ehl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
POLITICS
The Future of U.S. Policy in Central Europe—A. Wess Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A New Oprichnina—Jadwiga Rogoża. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In a Blind Alley. An interview with Jacques Rupnik by Maciej Nowicki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Merkel’s Germany—Robert Schuster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Ukraine in the Land of Freedom—Paweł Kowal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What Awaits the Ukraine?—Yaroslav Hrytsak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
C O M M E N T Adam Balcer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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ECONOMY
Austerity the Lithuanian Way—Žygimantas Mauricas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Europe is Another Japan. An interview with Martin Wolf by Maciej Nowicki. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Poland and the Czech Republic: Partners or Rivals?—Sergiusz Najar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Hungary: Oil and Gas Peak or a Renaissance?—Attila Holoda, András Jenei. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
From a Steel Worker to a Maid. Polish Migrations to the U.S.—Anna Sosnowska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
C O M M E N T Guy Standing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
C U LT U R E
Prague Cemetery—Aleksander Kaczorowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Citizen Havel—Radek Schovánek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Nations on Münchhausen’s string—Wojciech Stanisławski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
An Iconoclastic Alternative—Filip Memches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
A Cinema That Was Not?—Jakub Majmurek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Antakalnis Cemetery—Laima Vince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
3
Dear readers,
Indeed, to increase our involvement
and build on the subject of shaping the
urban future, we prepared a panel debate
in September entitled “Transforming Cities:
Towards Smart Forms of Governance,” which
was hosted as part of the Forum 2000 Conference. Over two hundred people attended at
Žofín palace, drawn by the topic itself, but
most importantly by our fascinating guests.
Eva Jiřičná, the architect, Pablo Otaola, the
urban planner, Jiří Devát, the CEO of Cisco
Czech Republic, Tomáš Hudeček, the Mayor of
Prague, and the panel chair, Roger Scruton all
agreed that if a modern city wants to succeed
in the world, it has to offer not only an attractive business and infrastructure, but must also
provide for a culturally rich and family friendly
lifestyle. Successful cities, such as the exemplified Spanish city of Bilbao, have to be places
where tradition blends in with modern architecture, and nature with man-made design,
to be engaging for citizens and visitors alike.
A recurring theme of the debate was that as
Europeans we are largely an urbanized society,
and the quest for the betterment of public
space is the natural and shared responsibility
of us all.
I hope you had a great summer. The fall of
2013 bears further fruitful Aspen events for us
to look forward to together.
In June we were pleased to welcome
to Prague Jean-Claude Trichet, the former
­European Central Bank Governor, who took
part in a public debate entitled “Euro – the
Past and the Future.” The event, which was
organized jointly with Prague Twenty, also
gave a platform to Marek Belka, President
of the National Bank of Poland, as well as
to Zdeněk Tůma, the former Governor of
the Czech National Bank. A recording of the
debate, chaired by Vladimír Dlouhý, Prague
Twenty Chairman and Aspen Institute Prague
Board of Directors member, is available for
viewing on our YouTube channel.
We also partnered with the reSITE
conference, which took place in Prague’s DOX
Gallery. The theme was urban modernization,
specifically the issues of innovative city governance and new strategies for city planning.
The conference showed that an interdisciplinary blending of architectural, economic,
and democratic considerations makes for
a well-considered vision for revitalizing public
space.
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In the last few weeks, our greatest efforts
have been focused on preparing our Annual
Conference “Overcoming Barriers to Growth,”
which will take place on October 9 and 10 on
premises of Czech National Bank. This annual
conference will be an opportunity to remind
ourselves of the 20th anniversary of an independent Czech Republic, and a chance to look back
at the two decades of growth and transformation, which the entire Central European
region has undergone. On the second day, the
conference will focus on the further economic
development opportunities for Central Europe
and the euro-atlantic zone, in the context of the
upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership between the European Union and
the United States of America.
Speakers will include noteworthy guests
from abroad, such as Karel De Gucht, European
Commissioner for Trade, Kojiro Shiojiri, Japanese
Ambassador to the EU, or Matt Blunt, President
of the American Automotive Policy Council and
former Governor of Missouri. Notable Czech
guests include the composer Michal Horáček,
entrepreneurs Michaela Bakala, Gabriel Eichler
and Zbyněk Frolík or the politician and poli­
tical scientist Petr Pithart. As part of our annual
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get-together we will also share with you the
findings of our poll of several dozen successful
and recognized Czechs, who shared with us their
views on the obstacles to, and motive forces
behind, the individual and collective successes
of the Czech Republic. In so doing, we will
combine our stocktaking over two decades of
an independent Czech Republic with a debate
over its future direction, and its prospects as
part of the euro-atlantic community. I am sure
this year’s conference will bring a fresh impetus,
and contribute to the debate on how to move
forward the best and overcome the pitfalls the
Czech Republic may have to face in today’s
world. I will be delighted to have you join us.
I wish you inspiring reading, and I look
forward to seeing you at our Annual Conference.
R ade k Š picar
Executive Director
Aspen Institute Prague
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Photo: Archive Aspen Institute
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E d i torial
What is Europe?
Aleksander Kaczorowski
“The ideologues of modernization see it
as a kind of race, in which, obviously, some are
first and some are last”—writes Boris Kagarlitsky in his book “Empire of the Periphery:
Russia and the World System” (2012).—It
resembles a running contest or a horse race
in a hippodrome. In such a race, it is always
possible to establish why some participant
speeds ahead or is slouching at the back.
But the relations between the centre and the
periphery are shaped by completely different
rules. Resources provided by the periphery
allow the centre to speed up. (…) The more
active the participation of the periphery in this
»contest«, the more backward it becomes and
the more easily the West can »break away«.
On the other hand all the stages the West has
been going through are repeated by peripheral countries, not so much with a delay but in
a different form. In other words, it is not a situation of two independent race participants but
rather a horse-rider relation. Both the horse
and the contestant riding it cross the finish
line, achieving the same goal, but not so much
in different time but in different shape.”
The Soviet Union tried, paying for it with
huge suffering and sacrifice, to bridge the gap
created over centuries and to build a Moscowbased centre of the world economy competing
with the West. In the late 1970s the Soviet per
capita GDP reached 48 % of the American level.
Then the Soviet Union lost its momentum
and in the next decade, which ended with
the collapse of the Eastern Block, it became
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A le k sander Kac z orows k i
Editor in Chief of Aspen Review
Photo: Jacek Herok
clear that the only modernization strategy for
the countries of our part of the continent is
integration with the economic, political and
cultural structures of the West.
From the perspective of the “post­
‑communist East” countries, European integration was perceived as a chance for the “return
to normality.” Only recently we began to
understand that in the case of peripheral countries of Europe the return to normality means
the return to the periphery of Europe. After
a half-century of “Soviet modernization” (which
the Russian scholar compares to an attempt
to shake the rider off and continue to run in
the same direction), the countries of Central
Europe are in the same boat. Or rather, to stay
with the brilliant metaphor of Kagarlitsky, they
run in the same team of horses.
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accession. In addition, the “Occidentalization”
of the Czechs, that is perceiving them as a more
“Western” nation than ours, is connected with
the modernization processes going on in
our part of Europe after 1989. We look at the
Czechs with envy, forgetting that in the 19th
century their country was the most industrialized province of the Habsburg Monarchy.
Sometimes we see them as a model of moder­
nization.
The problem is that the Czechs did not
invent modernization but, so to speak, modernization “invented” the Czechs. There would be
no modern Czech nation without the industrialization of the lands of the Czech Crown, initiated in the first decades of the 19th century by
the local Germans (who were to regret it) and
the resultant migrations of Slav population to
urban centers. Milan Kundera was right, calling
Bohemia a “kidnapped West.” But the price for
odsun and getting rid of more than three million
German co-citizens after World War II was falling
under the Soviet rule and leaving the Western
development trajectory.
Despite that the Czechs still earn more than
the Poles, have higher productivity and twice
as big average savings. However, the once
huge development gap between these two
countries is systematically shrinking. The French
political scientist Jacques Rupnik notes that
while in 1995 the Czechs earned 73 % of the EU
average, now this figure is 80 %. The Poles have
made a bigger leap, from 43 % in 1995 to 61 %
now. The countries of Central Europe are not
only steadily becoming more and more similar
to each other but also closing the distance to
the European centre. So from the perspective
of Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava or Budapest the
European Union is what it is. A new Empire of
the Periphery.
Despite all that—or perhaps because of
that—the Poles and the Czechs like to underline
the differences between them. The Czechs are
traditionally “Orientalizing” Poland, perceiving it
as an even more “Eastern” country than it really
is. Anything can serve as a proof of backwardness but most often named are traditionalist
religion, Catholicism, a high share of rural
inhabitants in the population, affirmation of the
traditions of the nobility, lack of a native middle
class, antisemitism, nationalism, militarism.
The Poles in their turn “Occidentalize” the
Czechs, sometimes imagining them to be more
“Western” than they really are. Anything can
serve as a proof of the Czech advancement
but named most often are the middle class
and industrial traditions, cultural tolerance,
religious indifference, sense of humor, pacifism,
philosemitism and common sense. In such
a scheme of thinking, the Czechs no longer
are an actual nation but a phantasm. “The Lord
created the Czechs for the pleasure of the Poles,”
wrote Mariusz Szczygieł, currently the most
popular Polish author in the Czech Republic.
It seems that this pleasure has a masochistic
undertone.
For in the mutual relations there is a characteristic disproportion: the Czechs are generally
not interested in the Poles while the Poles are
interested in imagined rather than real Czechs.
If need be, cowardly smartasses and plebeians
lacking sense of humor and respect for any
values may turn out to be warm, witty, tolerant
and unprejudiced people who know how to
enjoy life and let others be (read: as opposed
to us). The negative stereotype is replaced with
a positive one, as much divorced from reality.
The enhanced Polish interest in the Czechs
is undoubtedly related to our simultaneous bid
for the EU membership and the subsequent
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cover story
The Future of European
Union: Not a Revolution;
Nor a Break-up
Luuk van Middelaar
The binary logic of op-ed pages would have us choose
between a “United States of Europe” and “Eurocalypse
Now.” I rather suggest that neither fate awaits us: not
a revolution; nor a break-up
Deciding on a date proved as difficult as
deciding what to say. The British prime minister’s political address on Europe that, by sheer
anticipation, grew into “The Speech,” had already
been postponed several times when Number
10 discovered that the chosen day would now
coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the
Franco-German Friendship Treaty, on Tuesday
22 January 2013. A sacrosanct affair, gatecrashing
it might just prove one diplomatic affront too
many. Bringing the event forward by a day would
mean jostling for the limelight with the second
inauguration of the American president, who
that very week had warned the British prime
minister that cutting links with Brussels would
only reduce London’s clout in Washington. Opting
for the apparently safe date of Friday 19 January
and a venue in the Netherlands (preferring its
capital Amsterdam over government seat The
Hague, since that would allow his good friend
the Dutch prime minister politely to keep his
distance), he was forced by an escalating terrorist
crisis in North Africa to re-postpone to the 23rd—
at which point he decided that a packed room at
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the London office of an American news agency
would do just as well. Thus, even before its leader
had spoken, one thing had already become clear
to the British public: an attempt to redefine the
country’s relationship with the rest of Europe
would not be without its constraints.
This is merely the most recent episode in
a long, continent-wide story that is set to continue
for many years to come, but nowhere do the key
questions and contradictions in the European
Union stand in such sharp relief as they do in the
British debate. What is Europe for? It seems we are
faced with a choice between two visions: either
it is just a market, a service provider, a means to
an end, something you can be practical about,
or it is a political project, a dream, a promise, in
some sense an end in itself, an emotional matter.
Or is this the wrong way of looking at it?
What drives the Union and why is it moving at
all? Some would point to a Brussels bureaucratic
conspiracy, others to pragmatic readjustment
in a fast-changing world, yet others to clueless
collective drift. Then there is the ever-more
fraught relationship between the Union and
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the peoples of Europe. Political leaders sometimes seem to vacillate between involving voters
and avoiding any risk of public defiance. Some
commentators suggest that decisions on the size
and shape of cucumbers or on sardine quotas can
be made without the whole democratic jamboree,
but in that case how do such things come to
spark fierce nationwide debates about sovereignty and democracy, about keeping control
and having a say?
The eurozone crisis has exacerbated all
these tensions, as well as making a better understanding of the stakes and probable outcomes
more urgent than ever. Bankers and investors in
the United States and China, trading partners
across the globe, a British prime minister betting
his future on new treaty negotiations—the whole
world wants to know how Europe will get through
this test.
The binary logic of op-ed pages would have
us choose between a “United States of Europe”
and “Eurocalypse Now.” Either the turmoil is
forcing member states to make the “federal leap”
so passionately wished for by a few—so the argument goes—or else all this intense activity aimed
at ending the crisis merely marks the beginning
of the end, a last firework before night comes
down on the old continent. I rather suggest that
neither fate awaits us: not a revolution, since
Europe is patient; nor a break-up, since Europe
is tough. The adventure of turning a continent
into a Union, although spurred on by crises and
dramas, is a slow affair, often taking paths that
nobody had foreseen. Perhaps this should not
surprise us. Even America has seen countless
twists, turns, reverses, crises and fresh starts on
its journey from 1776 to the present.
Recent experience will inevitably leave its
mark, all the more so for being painful. From now
on nobody in the eurozone can ignore the fact
that Greek mendacity, Spanish exuberance or Irish
recklessness may affect their own job prospects,
retirement or savings. This is not just to say that
economies are interdependent. In 2011, a vote
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on the euro in the Slovak parliament made the
headlines all over Europe, as did an election result
in Finland, the announcement of a referendum
in Greece and, a year later, a ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court and a decision by the
European Central Bank. In 2013, national elections in Italy, with high stakes and a formidable
cast, as well as those of the Union’s powerhouse
Germany, are followed with intense interest across
the continent. The discovery that all euro countries share a destiny certainly creates tensions,
but the political will of both leaders and peoples
to stay together has proven stronger than many
predicted—or are able to explain.
As the past sixty years have amply shown, the
Union disposes of unique political glue. The adhesive may be invisible, but it works, and underestimating it can come at a cost (in real money for
those traders who bet on the break-up of the euro
in 2012 and lost hundreds of millions of dollars).
By making both the Union’s cohesive force and
its inner contradictions more palpable, recent
events help us to approach the future, first of all
by resolving misunderstandings and recasting
the terms of the debate. Two elements stand
out: Driving forces of Europe, and the need for
public consent. The two are linked: nothing has
fuelled people’s suspicion of Europe more than
the niggling sense that change is being forced
upon them as part of a Brussels plot.
To anyone who regularly reads their country’s newspapers, national politics appears as
a constant stream of surprises, setbacks and scandals, often with utterly unanticipated outcomes.
It is clear to all that, in a democratic setting, far less
ever goes according to plan than they might fear
or hope. Europe, a club of volatile democracies,
is no different.
Momentum originates in an unpredictable
series of decisions, often by national leaders grappling with events both at home and abroad and
forced to deal with them jointly, sometimes with
obvious reluctance. This political interplay offers
a more plausible explanation than either the
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pseudo-logic of integration theory and federalist teleology or the Eurosceptic worldview of
evil conspiracies and Brussels-led schemes to
impose foreign rule. Since the Greek maelstrom
became evident in early 2010, certainties have
evaporated and taboos have been violated, red
lines crossed and rules rewritten. Dragged along
by necessity, prodded by conflicts of interest and
clashes between political cultures in which no one
has been able to claim authorship of an overall
plan or a common vision, the Union is dealing
with the shock in ways that are deeply instructive.
Pulling the “emergency brake” sometimes
works, but the pressure of events can be such that
it is simply impossible—as a famously inflexible
British prime minister discovered. After the fall of
the Berlin Wall, she fought for a year against the
forces of continental change (“No, no, no!”), only
to meet her downfall as a result. It seems cleverer,
as her successor has recognized after seeing how
ineffective his veto was at an ill-tempered summit
in December 2011, to make the most of evolutions
and try to get something out of them.
In this particular case, London endorsed
change and even encouraged its partners to
pursue further eurozone integration, yet remained
irritated by the amount of diplomatic energy
being spent on preventing a “dangerous monetary experiment” from ending in catastrophe,
rather than on the business of jointly delivering
prosperity. While its partners struggled, London
repeatedly insisted that the single market must
remain ‘at the heart’ of the Union, but the reality
is that with the single currency the Union has
acquired a “second heart,” and most other
governments consider it vital to keep both of
them beating, even if they do not agree on how
exactly to achieve this.
To the majority of member countries it seems
natural for Europe to evolve over time, a view
embodied in the infamous words “ever closer
union,” present from the start. In contesting
this vision, the one European country without
a written constitution often invokes the letter of
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the Treaty, whereas for many on the continent it is
the spirit that counts—a spirit best summarized as
“advancing together.” But when it comes to “doing
stuff together,” this vaguely-defined togetherness
can at crucial moments become more important
than the stuff itself. So when British politicians
complain that their partners are “changing the
rules of the club,” they miss the point: Europe
was—and is—always destined to be a club with
ever-changing rules.
There is a good reason for this. No project,
no treaty can anticipate the creativity of history,
let alone prepare an adequate response.
The founding states’ idea of anchoring Europe
in a system of rules, which they hoped would
provide some civility and predictability to relations
between them, was a visionary plan after the
long, double world war of 1914–45. This strategy
reveals its limitations each time new challenges
arise and the member states feel the need to
confront them jointly. That is the source of the
tension, throughout the past six decades, between
the desire for certainty and the need to face up
to change. It explains why Europe is a club that
loves rules and keeps changing its own.
Even the briefest glance at the Union’s past
shows how improbable it is that we have ended
up where we are today—an observation that
has huge implications for how we approach its
future. Today we are not in a period of flux after
which things will settle down (as some seem
to hope). Global economic and technological
change, shifts in the geopolitical landscape, the
march of neighboring peoples towards democratic equality—all these slow trends can have
sudden repercussions. Events will continue to
produce surprises, and will need to be dealt with
one way or another.
This brings us to the second issue about
which the terms of the debate need to be recast:
the need for public support. In The Speech, the
British prime minister asked for Europe “both
to deliver prosperity and to retain the support
of its peoples,” which immediately makes clear
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that in his mind, even if the Union were merely
a market, political choices would still be involved
and democratic accountability needed. This rather
casts doubt upon the usefulness of the distinction
between Europe as a means and as an end.
Roughly speaking, for the past sixty years
there have been three main goals of European
cooperation: peace, prosperity and power.
All member states subscribe to each of these three
ends, albeit with varying degrees of intensity.
There are variations that occur over time—it is no
secret that the peace motif, decisive at the post1945 founding, has worn thin in Western Europe,
whereas the globalization challenge of acting
jointly in the world has gained in importance—
but variations also occur between states: some
countries have emphasized economic motives,
concentrating on growth and prosperity, while
others seemed more attracted by the ­political
goals of continental stability, entrenched democracy and global influence. It is not always possible
to distinguish precisely between the two, another
point confirmed during the eurozone crisis: Berlin’s
decision to avoid a Greek euro exit was motivated
by both financial and political concerns. Moreover,
even the economic goal of prosperity requires
very political means to achieve it, including the
art of convincing the public.
The advantage of portraying Europe as
a practical means, a tool for achieving results,
is obvious: everything becomes technocratic,
so we should all be able to agree. The politics of
it is masked. The single market—cherished by
the British, but also by the Dutch and the Scandinavians—is the cornerstone of this pragmatic
approach. At first sight, a market resembles
such inoffensive things as a customs union
or a free trade area. The fact is, however, that
building a market, unlike creating a free trade
area, continually requires new legislation, which
even if mostly technical, at times involves deeply
political choices. In Europe’s Internet economy,
who decides the rules on consumer privacy? If
a British family moves to France to set up a bed
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and breakfast, will the parents and children be
able to access local hospitals and schools? What
about their Polish and Lithuanian fellow-travelers
back in the UK? If there is a European market for
financial services, who will pick up the tab when
a bank goes belly-up? These political implications
were precisely why the British walked out of the
first market negotiations, back in 1955. A market is
not a factory delivering results (‘press the growth
button’); rather, it is a playing field for economic
interests, its shape defined by political decisions
and choices that often result from fierce negotiations and conflicts.
This is where the trouble starts: how to muster
public support for market legislation when
a government can be outvoted by its partners?
After all, in the Union, political battles take place
both within countries (between industry and
trade unions, for instance) and between countries (as when some advocate protectionism and
others prioritize cheaper imports). Even if most
European decisions are packaged as compromises, there may be situations in which a country
clearly ends up on the losing side. How to explain
that at home?
Compare this to national politics. Every day
any national government—in Poland, say—
takes decisions that can be contested to varying
degrees by opposition parties, be disliked by
voters, even trigger protests or strikes. As
a general rule, however, even the protesters
accept the legitimacy of the Polish government
itself. They might want the Polish prime minister
to leave office tomorrow, but they would still
consider him “our (infuriating) prime minister”
and speak of ‘our (disappointing) parliament’
and “our (bad) laws.” Political identity trumps the
outcome of the political process. This is clearly
the weak spot in Europe’s case. Few people, and
not only in Britain, consider European decisions
to be “our” decisions or European politicians
‘our representatives.” (Tellingly, in most countries “our commissioner” refers only to the one
national among the European commissioners,
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while members of the European Parliament
are often seen as representatives of ‘Brussels’
rather than as speaking for ‘us’ out there.) Yet
this feeling of ownership—incredibly difficult
to grasp, let alone to create—is exactly what is
needed to confer legitimacy on joint decisions.
Results are important, but they can never do the
trick on their own, both because bad times may
follow good and because outcomes are often the
product of a political battle. This is one reason
why the absence of a national veto increases
the challenge.
In recasting the terms of the debate, an indispensable first step is to acknowledge that the
European game is not taking place primarily on
Brussels terrain. European politics is played out
between the governments, parliaments, jurisdictions and populations of all the member states.
Ultimately, the circle of members comes before
the Union. Europe cannot be reduced to a square
mile of buildings in Brussels, Luxembourg and
Strasbourg.
L uu k van M iddelaar
is a Dutch historian and political
philosopher. Since December 2009 he
has been a member of the cabinet of
Herman Van Rompuy, the President
of the European Council. He was
awarded the European Book Prize
for The Passage to Europe—History of a Beginning (2009)
Photo: Sake Elzinga
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It´s semantics, stupid…
Water of Life and Death
Petr Pithart
Twenty Years On:
Do We Need More of Europe
or More of the Nation State?
Twenty years on we—Czechs, Moravians and
Silesians—are suffering from a conjoined sense of
being both exceptional and outsiders at the same
time. We don’t trust anyone or anything, we feel
alone, abandoned, no one understands us; we
have be on alert, especially if someone appears
to be nice to us—he most likely wants to hurt us,
like that time in Munich...
This sense of isolation is objectively encouraged by our landlocked position: a country,
surrounded by mountains, wedged into a German
world.
Moreover, people suffer from not being
quite sure what we are like. This is a legacy of
alternately taking megalomania pills (we shall
be the post-Communist world’s top achievers!)
and despondency pills (this kind of thing could
only happen in this country...). We don’t know
who we are.
For all these reasons I am tempted to say
that what we definitely need is more openness
and co-operation, i.e. more Europe, but this
kind of statement would lack a subject: who is
it that needs it? Who and where is there a “we“
to speak of? For in this country we first need
to truly become “we“ in order to need, want or
demand anything in a meaningful way. Does
that mean we need to be more of a nation? Or
rather, a motherland?
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Turning for advice to fairytale mythology, let
us ask a key question: what do we need more, the
water of life or the water of death? This mysterious
question is inspired by one of the leitmotifs of 19th
century Czech fairytale, by Karel Jaromír Erben in
this case. One of his tales features two ravens that
carry the water of life and death in their beaks.
The paradoxical meaning of these two attributes
of the fairytale water conceal a general wisdom
that is universal rather than just Czech. This truth
is both concealed and revealed; revealed and
concealed: wise nuggets of wisdom are probably
never presented in a cheap and obvious way but
through the detour of paradox.
Wandering the world and having to undergo
various trials and tribulations in his quest for the
beautiful princess, Prince Jiřík, who understands
the language of animals, saves the lives of two
young ravens (Corpus corax) that have fallen out
of their nest. In return, they promise to help him
if he gets into trouble, as they can carry two kinds
of water in their beaks. The Prince emerges from
his tests victorious but that is what makes the
nasty old king have him killed and his body
chopped to pieces. Jiřík’s loyal friends seek out
the ravens and they come bearing the water of
death and the water of life. When Jiřík is sprinkled
with the water of death, his body heals; after
being sprinkled with the water of life, he comes
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back to life. In fact, he is now younger and more
beautiful than before. The old king is envious
and asks to be beheaded. His servants dutifully
sprinkle him with the water of life to resurrect
him but his head won’t grow back on. Then they
bring the water of death and although his head
grows back, there is no water of life left…
Having returned to the fold of the big world,
which nowadays gives big narratives a wide berth,
they have become doubly broken up, atomized.
And the healing and growing together will be
a very slow process.
The Czech Republic after 1989 resembled
the old fairy tale king, who would love to look
younger and more beautiful, without anyone
giving any thought to making sure that the country’s body needs to heal first. On the menu of
both the Right and the Left were only various
cocktails based on the water of life. These days
nobody is won over by any idea that any of the
political parties in the Czech Republic has to offer.
The body is broken, it has become unresponsive.
What is in short supply in the entire region is
a positive, yet accepted and healing identity that
is not threatening to others. Whenever societies
begin to heal too fast, one has to be on the alert:
most likely there is a Mečiar, Miloševič, Lukashenko
or Orbán behind the healing. All these gentlemen
have been, first and foremost, world champions
in looking for and finding an enemy. However,
another typical effect of this kind of fast healing
process is polarisation: the body never heals in
its entirety, usually it is just the two “halves“ that
grow together, only to show a tendency to fight
against each other until one has achieved victory.
To the point of total destruction. Which in turn,
leads to further break-up.
These days it is often Europe or the ­European
Union that Central European politicians tend
to cast as the enemy. Brussels! The Brussels
bureaucracy! The latter, in particular, is very well
suited for the role of the enemy, being far away
and incomprehensible while seemingly omnipresent and, allegedly, omnipotent. It has become
a handy substitute for Zionist conspiracies.
In order for us Czechs (i.e. Czechs, Moravians
and Silesians) to even begin to want “more“ or
“less“ Europe, in order for us to want anything
and stick to it, we must start healing again as
a community. We have to create and inhabit
a public space and learn to relate to the state
These days it is often
Europe or the E
­ uropean
Union that Central European politicians tend
to cast as the enemy.
Brussels! The Brussels
bureaucracy! The latter,
in particular, is very well
suited for the role of the
enemy, being far away
and incomprehensible
while seemingly omnipresent and, allegedly,
omnipotent.
Breaking up and Growing Together
Who knows if there is any water of life left
in Europe. Or whether there’s any demand for it.
What I have in mind is a positive vision, a grand
idea, a dream. The problem is that, as the empires
of Central and Eastern Europe fell apart, too much
life-saving water has been used up. The alternation of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes
brought about floods, indeed devastating inundations of intoxicating waters of all descriptions.
And they came from every side. And all these
forced attempts at resuscitation by ideology have
robbed local societies not only of their illusions
but, for good measure, also of all ideas and ideals.
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we live in as our own. We have to acquire the
art of sharing power: so far, all we’ve done for
a quarter of a century is engage in class warfare,
that is to say, we have practiced the kind of
politics that regards a political rival as an enemy
who needs to be crushed and eliminated. In
the “noughties,“ the victorious Right promoted
the idiotic slogan of “zero tolerance“: the opposition can’t be right even if it happens to be
right... Therefore public space, rather than being
colonized by civil society, has been subject to
creeping privatization. It is a privatization that
resorts to asocial nepotistic practices ruled by
the neo­‑­liberal deregulation imperative.
Only when society begins to heal together
again, will we be able to ask questions similar
to the one raised in the title of this piece, only
then will we be able to set ourselves goals of one
kind or another.
Unless we make sure this healing process is
taking place and unless we cultivate the awareness of an inclusive “we,“ it is pointless to ask
whether we need more or less Europe. It is just as
pointless as asking whether we should be heading
more to the “Left“ or to the “Right“; whether we
need more “new“ liberalism or “old“ solidarity.
We are still a community that is broken and, therefore, fragile, having been crushed, since the 1930s,
by two totalitarian and repressive regimes. Our
response to any offer of water of life is either
short-lived enthusiasm (albeit only on the part of
a minority) or, more likely, heightened skepticism
on the part of the majority, that tends to hide from
similar issues in the time-proven privatissimo. This
is an art we have mastered to perfection during
the post-invasion normalization period, 1968 to
1989. Well, that’s at least something! Most of us,
i.e. Czechs, Moravians and Silesians, don’t trust
saviors. But these days this is something that
could change overnight...
The shortest and easiest, as well as the
most dangerous, path to new healing is via the
construction of a national state—I mean national
in the sense of ethnic, tribal. Another, longer but
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safe and reliable path, is via the creation of something that is known by a similar name—nation
state—in the West European understanding of
the term, i.e. a political, civil state rather than
a state of “fellow tribesmen,“ a state of citizens
who relate to their state, to its constitutional and
legal order, more or less spontaneously.
At this point, we might well ask what use this
confusing, ambiguous terminology is: why should
we ask whether a nation state is necessary or not,
if the term means something quite different to
Europeans on either side of the Rhine? Those on
the other side of the Rhine might well respond
to a nation state with a “so what?”, since for them
nation means both nation and state. To me a term
like nation state sounds nonsensical.
The price that has to be paid for the first, easy
and faster, path to healing, is the existence of an
enemy, whether imaginary, in people’s heads, or
real, usually across the border. This is a path that
destroys the fragile achievements of a uniting
Europe. Its name is nationalism. In this country, to
embark on this path these days you just have to
join those who have been persistently reviving and
cultivating a fear of the Germans (as “revanchists,“
i.e. descendants of our former fellow citizens who
had been expelled and displaced after the war) or
of the European Union (­incidentally, also dominated by the Germans). They also make use of the
fear or hatred of the Roma. Or of foreigners, as
the case may be. As for the fear of the Germans,
its unexpected side effect is tolerance of and
sympathy, indeed admiration, for Slavonic Russia,
never mind that it is Putin’s Russia.
Old fears and old hopes have started to raise
their heads, just as in May 1945. They haven’t
come back of their own accord but instead have
been revived by those who cannot or do not want
to, share power.
The resulting feeling comes very close to
claustrophobia. We have started shutting out
the outside world, which allegedly threatens us
(just as it happened in Munich back in 1938, an
event that is serving as an universally applicable
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cliché that can be used to abrogate any kind of
responsibility in this country), and living in this
enclosed space has put us in a “bad mood“ (as
Václav Havel once defined it). We feel constantly
irritated, mostly by ourselves. We are suffering
something akin to Cabin Fever.
At the centre, in the east and southeast of
the continent, civilization and culture has yet to
assimilate this diversity, yet so far it has rather
tended to deny it instead, as large states—
empires and later socialist “federations“— in this
region have been crumbling and falling apart
over the course of the past century, engendering
an increasingly large number of new states that
are as ethnically pure as possible. Quite often
this had to be done with the help of a little force.
After 1918, in the course of the Paris negotiations that led to the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia, its founders declared it
to be a nation state (incorporating this in the
1920 Deed of Constitution). In reality, however,
it was a state of nationalities: as late as 1938,
33 % of its inhabitants were of a nationality other
than the so-called state-forming nation, i.e. the
­Czechoslovaks. In terms of ethnic composition,
we were the most diverse country in Europe (with
a slight lead on Poland). And that was before the
Slovaks were taken into account, since they were
regarded as belonging to a “Czechoslovak“ nation
that didn’t really exist.
After 1993, when Czechoslovakia split into
two countries, we have become the ethnically
cleanest (after Iceland, allegedly), or perhaps
also the “most cleansed“ European country. This
happened after more than a thousand years of
never living alone in our country home, whatever
its name and shape on the map may have been!
We have yet to reflect this startling change in the
very foundations of our state’s existence. One
thing, however, is clear: we feel that democracy,
as a way of protecting minorities among other
things, is much less needed than it would be in
an ethnically diverse country. As our present-day
politics make abundantly clear.
That is why, in an EU context, I’d rather not
speak of “nation states“ but rather of “member
states.“ But even more importantly, I wish that
their citizens perceived them as their motherlands. In spite of the fact that the words “motherland,“ “fatherland“ or the Latin “patria“ refer
Nationalism and Patriotism
The longer, more reliable path leads to patriotism rather than nationalism. Or rather to “constitutional“ patriotism. It passes through the stages
of strengthening, or if you like “thickening“ of
civil society, lively local politics and, last but not
least, through people actively participating in
democratic competition between political parties.
The art of winning elections, however, includes
a less obvious willingness and ability to share
power with others.
A precondition for this path is applying, as we
used to say, revolutionary fervor, to strengthen
fraternities. These days sociologists are more
likely to refer to it as “social cohesion,“ those
on the Left as “solidarity.“ Conservatives call it
“compassionate conservatism.“ “Ligatures“ is the
term Ralf Dahrendorf once used for something
that is becoming increasingly rare. One way or
another, this kind of strengthening of internal
social cohesion can exist without an enemy, since
it is based on confidence, not fear.
The shortest and the longest, the easiest
and the most difficult—and yet these two paths
go under the same name, that of nation state.
However, this is a term that means something
quite different in the European West and the
European centre, east and southeast. The difference is not just one of meaning: Behind these two
ways of relating to the state lie several centuries
of E­ uropean, often bloody, history. The European West got over its nationalist, chauvinist and
imperialist forays and convulsions a long time
ago, more or less assimilating and devouring
the nations and nationalities on its territory and
gradually building states of citizens made up of
ethnically varied human material.
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again, albeit obliquely, to the tribe and therefore,
ultimately, to blood. On the other hand, the Czech
word “vlast“ [from vlastní, i.e. “own” Ed.] refers to
the country and its inhabitants, whoever they
may be, to a country we regard as our own. We
own it, we feel responsible for it.
The Czech word “vlast“ thus might provide
a more accurate name for a state of citizens.
We have a beautiful, apposite designation of an
ideal that is painfully absent in reality.
I find de Gaulle’s definition of Europe as
a “Europe of motherlands“ highly acceptable,
apposite and semantically clear, much more than
a “Europe of nation states“ or a “Europe of states,“
or the tautological “Europe of member states.“
a state, just because it has a parliament. For this
is a parliament without a ruling majority and an
opposition minority. That would be possible only
if we had functioning trans-European parties
and that, in turn, would only be possible if Europeans communicated in a single language, read
a single European newspaper and watched European TV... And that is likely never to happen.
Nor is it desirable, since nation states‘ languages
also serve as bearers of cultural diversity, the
most important source of our continent’s wealth.
Often it is the issues particularly important for
one nation that are untranslatable into the
languages of others, let alone into some kind
of European Esperanto.
It is possible and desirable to reduce the
EU’s democratic deficit primarily by means of
its member states: this is where the main reserves
of EU democracy are located. We will have to find
a way of transferring the will of individual states
into EU decision-making that is more credible and
easier for the citizens to comprehend. The voice
of national parliaments in European decision­
‑making has to be much stronger and go beyond
monitoring. Currently this monitoring role, too,
is often merely formal.
Europe and Its Union
So what is it that is most needed in the Czech
Republic? Europe or a nation state? If anything,
we need more of a Europe that is truly uniting,
since this kind of Europe is predicated on the
existence of nation states solely in the West
European sense of the word. In these kinds of
states a nation consists of the most active citizens imaginable, rather than of people sharing
the same blood, the same mother tongue and
self-glorifying (or self-tormenting) national
myths. The reason why a truly uniting Europe
is essential in a globalized world is that this is
not achievable without political, civic nations.
Let me rephrase this in a negative way: because
Europe cannot unite if it is based on states that
are defined ethnically, by blood and myths of
glorious victories and vanquishings. The path to
uniting Europe—particularly in the continent’s
centre, east and southeast—is via the development of liberal democracies, i.e. states with a rule
of law. Such democracies do exist in the West,
which isn’t to say that the West runs no danger
of losing them.
The European Union is and will be a union
of such liberal state motherlands, or it will
come to nothing. It will always suffer a deficit
of democracy if it tries to act as if it already were
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Conservative Values Enhance Healing
The water of life wakes us up, rouses us,
raises us to our feet and gives us courage to set
more ambitious goals. In larger doses, however,
it can intoxicate. On the other hand, without the
water of death we lack a body, a whole body,
including feet. We are unable to get up, let alone
go anywhere.
The water of life is the vague temptation of
something that lies ahead, but it is also blindness.
Without the water of death, without remembering
what we have left behind, what has made us
into the whole “we,“ we don’t know who and
what we are.
Without it, therefore, we don’t know where
we’re coming from and neither do we know where
we are headed—without the memory of our family,
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tribe, village, region, state, Central Europe... It is
good old conservative values (N.B. adding the
prefix neo- to every word that used to be quite
clear only leads to confusion) that contribute to
the healing of broken societies. Respect for the
family, including our ancestors‘ legacies, the cultivation of memories, including of things we’d rather
forget, faith in transpersonal values, yes, including
Christian ones. An affection for the country, rather
than for the nation, a lovingly maintained countryside and urban landscapes, preservation of historical monuments, local patriotism, regionalism,
all this contributes to slow but certain healing.
As does subsidiarity, decentralized politics and
the fostering of local economies.
All the above is the water of death, always so
precious and often seemingly unnecessary. The
only chance of changing something for the better,
of launching the healing process, is to begin, to
keep beginning over and over again from the
grass roots, from the place where we live. The
small is alive, the large is nothing but a machine.
Ideologies, tribal nationalism, chauvinism,
the cultivation of simplistic hostile heterostereotypes (who are the others—those who are
not “us“— and what are they like), this too is the
stuff of the water of life. Sometimes it resembles
illegally home-brewed liquor, usually containing
the odd trace of methanol. Of course, ideals and
noble ideas can also be the stuff of the water
of life. Water of life is always dangerously more
abundant than that of death. And it has always
been in greater demand.
However, it can only bring to life that which
has healed over.
But where can we get hold of it now? Who
can we ask about it? Sometimes I feel there is
no one left to ask. That we have no option but
to turn directly to those who bear both kinds of
water in their beaks—the ravens. That we have
to ask these smart, careful, distrustful birds: how
much water of death is there left at all? Where
can we find it? Which part of our broken bodies
should be sprinkled first?
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I wonder if they will help us the way they
helped the prince. Their first piece of advice is
certainly available to us, even though we don’t
understand the language of animals as Prince
Jiřík did: ravens live as permanent couples in
permanent nests.
But that’s something real conservatives have
always known.
P etr P ithart
Petr Pithart, Czech politician,
political scientist and essayist,
signatory of Charter 77. Prime
Minister of the Czech Republic
between 1990 and 1992. Member
of the senate of the Czech Republic
in years 1996–2012, being chairman thereof in periods of
1996–1998 and 2000–2004.
Photo: Archive Petr Pithart
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Central (?) Europe: It’s the
Economy, Stupid!
Oana Popescu
As both NATO and EU seem to be grappling for their
identities and so is the Euro-Atlantic relationship,
Central European countries find the pillars of their sense
of security gone and their perspectives for prosperity
dimmed
This seems to plunge them into their worst
security nightmare, just as they are traversing
particularly difficult economic times: that of
finding themselves squeezed between two
competing powerful blocs, or in a grey area of
tension at the crossroads of great powers’ clashing
agendas. It is true that their geopolitical position brings along also the advantage of being
important to their Euroatlantic partners precisely
as a buffer zone against Near and Middle Eastern
instability. However, unless they realize that their
security problem has turned largely into one of
economic strategy and that it cannot be solved
without strengthening primarily their economic
influence, they will have to rely on short-term
palliatives.
Not long ago in Bratislava, Zbigniew Brze­
zinski signaled that there is more energy and
enthusiasm for European unity, as well as for
a strong relationship between the US and the EU,
in Warsaw or Bucharest than there is in Brussels,
in Berlin or Paris. For obvious reasons, given the
security gains and economic opportunity that
came with EU and NATO accession, CEE countries
continue to be strong supporters of transatlantic
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partnership and solidarity within the EU. In this,
however, they increasingly seem to be swimming
against the tide, as they now find themselves
both abandoned by their American saviors
disengaged from the region and sandwiched
between an increasingly aggressive Russia, an
unstable vicinity and an EU that marginalizes
them to favor eurozone-driven policies. Most
of their Western allies are competing against
each other on economic policies, ideological
models, political influence in Brussels, cutting
down defense budgets etc.—but also feel a sense
of competition against the “eastern bloc,” seen as
a source of labor migration, political instability,
corruption, economic stress, crime etc.
Having worked hard to overcome development gaps from the West and obtain an equal
seat at the decision-making table, CEE countries
see themselves stripped of the long-coveted
prize and turned instead into a new European
periphery; one which, after being a net beneficiary of transfer of both funds and democratic
practices from older EU members, now feels
its legitimate interests are ignored or outright
rejected.
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The impact is quite serious both East and
West. From the onset of the economic crisis,
Western European states have seen nationalism (economic and political) rise, as have
racism and xenophobia, leading to an ascent
of radical parties to power, social pressure and
disunity. CEE societies have experienced their
own setbacks in quality of democracy and rule of
law once the EU has lost the levers it had during
pre-accession, coupled with a lack of coherent
economic strategies or the ability to enact them.
Euroscepticism “a la Czech” has been replaced
with sheer frustration and disaffection with Brussels/Berlin-led Europeanism.
In this context, the region has recently awakened to a reality it had a hard time swallowing:
that of the EU as a whole no longer nurturing
it to progress and success and of individual
members states engaging in a tooth-and-nail
fight for their own diverging interests. Such new
reality has found CEE unprepared to fight back
just as expertly, inexperienced in the Brussels
game, lacking the financial and economic means
to stand up to powerful Western interests and
less apt to build the much-needed alliances to
advance their goals.
In recent years though, the region has
doubled its efforts to catch up and stand on its
own feet. Poland has a strong interest to brand
itself as the regional leader, main US ally and
major EU power and mobilize the rest of the
former communist states behind it—and has
had the capacity to do it quite effectively during
the past years, given its sustained economic
growth and ambitious military expenditure.
Warsaw has also thrown in its talented political
leaders, like Donald Tusk and Radek Sikorski.
The Czech Republic has managed to project its
economic influence in the region and human
rights expertise worldwide, an efficient soft
power tool. The Baltics, though at times temporarily beset by their own economic troubles,
have made huge reputation gains thanks to
their success stories and smart ways of linking
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up economically, politically and in defense strategies to the Scandinavian north. Though more
of a lone rider in the region, Romania has voiced
claims to be seated with the “big ones” in the
EU, given its size and importance and has used
its strong and loyal relationship with the US and
UK to that end.
EU has lost the levers
it had during pre-accession, coupled with
a lack of coherent economic strategies or the
ability to enact them.
Euroscepticism “a la
Czech” has been replaced with sheer frustration and disaffection
with Brussels/Berlin-led
Europeanism.
Recently, formats like Visegrád meetings
and the Central European summit of heads of
state have attempted to bridge north-south
differences and speak with one voice to make
the EU truly listen, to identify shared problems
and devise common solutions and to establish
itself more firmly into an EU which seems to be
slipping away, as compared to the illusions of
the 2004/2007 wave of enlargement. Some of
these issues, which CEE has found it needs to
push for together if anything is to come out are:
energy (alternative routes and sources, prices),
Russian influence and the way Moscow is now
buying its way into eastern Europe now that
military influence has diminished, the need
for continued American engagement, (i.e. the
missile shield, US bases), EU funds absorption
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and social policies meant to reduce gaps, the
need for firm commitment from the Union that
it will continue to enlarge to the Balkans and
Eastern partnership countries.
Set at the crossroads of big actors’ power
play, the region finds itself massively defined
by the security environment rather than the
economic one. This is one of the reasons why
the mere feeling of being marginal is felt as being
so ­unsettling. However, what some of the CEE
states have already started to realize, while others
are only beginning to learn is that security has
become much more a function of the economy
in recent times. Financial and economic strength,
as well as stability have always been important
security factors; of late though, they have become
key in many more ways than before, because of
the global impact of the economic crisis and the
way it has reshaped power relations.
Much of CEE exports currently go to the
EU, because of the ease of doing business (no
barriers, uniform tariffs, but also influence of
large ­European companies, as well as political
lobbying). With the EU market shrinking and
cash-stripped, these states have taken the heat
too. At the same time, much of their economy
is dominated by Western firms and banks. That
leaves them both unable to take enough stock of
their ‘emerging market’ status (tight rules, dependence on EU policies and dynamics which may
suit core EU needs more than their own, weak
homegrown capital and industry) and likely to
keep being affected by resurgent economic
nationalism and general EU economic troubles.
Rising labor costs and competition with non-EU
neighbors are putting an end to CEE position as
the locus of cheap manufacture too—as indeed
it should, if it is to develop beyond that.
Now that the Asian boom (and the upcoming
African and Latin-American!) has made it clear
that much of global development will depend
on the evolution of the eastern continent, it also
becomes clear that the next development cycle
for Europe also largely relies on two key stra-
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tegic achievements: a) how Europe manages to
connect to Asia (cash flows, manufacture, energy)
and b) how the EU and US markets manage to
connect together to balance Asia, the BRICS and
the post-BRICS. Along both lines, CEE is placed
in a privileged position, provided that it can use
this advantage wisely. Should it succeed, that
will also put it back on the map from a political
and security point of view and will throw actual
concrete weight behind its bid for influence
within Euroatlantic structures.
As far as the Eurasian connection goes,
it is time for the region to finally take stock
of its land bridge position between the two
continents, as well as of its maritime and river
communication possibilities. The amount of
trade between Europe and Asia makes it necessary for additional routes to develop beyond
current capacity, both inland, through Turkey,
Russia and also the Caucasus and Central Asia
and by sea (to Black Sea and Adriatic ports).
Currently, around 80 % or more of European
imports arrive in the ports of Rotterdam and
Hamburg, via routes that are both costly and
lengthy as compared to the above-named alternatives, while the purchasing power centre of
gravity is shifting east, to CEE. The region is
therefore a rising final destination for these
imports and it is also placed on both land and
maritime corridors (with the option of the Black
Sea-Danube-Rhine canal and trans-European
corridors from Kiev, Constanta, Istanbul, Varna,
Odessa or Burgas to Germany, Italy or Austria
and beyond). Re-routing trade through CEE
already saves significant time, money and risk
(the main things business looks for).
The chance for the region to leapfrog as the
option of choice lies in infrastructure development (ports, rail, roads, intermodal transport),
logistics parks (which meets manufacturers’
needs to assemble their products as close to
the final market as possible, creates local jobs
and brings in FDI and revenue to state budgets)
and integration (fiscal and customs simpli­fication
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and harmonization, seamless transport). CEE still
lags behind on all these counts, but there is
opportunity in this gap. Investment, which can
be supported by EU funding, can bring in quick
returns; building from zero can make transport
more efficient and ecological with smart use of
modern technology; there is also much existing
but outdated infrastructure to build on. If this
can be a common undertaking, it opens up new
opportunity for increased political cooperation
too, around very concrete objectives which allow
participant countries to overcome differences,
include EU neighborhood partners too and avoid
unnecessary competition or duplication.
Moreover, given the importance all CEE countries attach to energy security and considering the
tight relationship between energy and transport
(with transport capacity becoming even more
important now that the Nabucco project was
called off ), the interplay between the two can
boost security at the same time that it brings
economic gain. Add to that the importance of
military transport routes as part of the ongoing
engagement of the US in CEE as an outpost to
the Wider Middle East and beyond and the result
is a vision for integrated economic and security
development rather than a mere set of transit
routes. Indeed in fact, economic development
along these lines can only take place in corre­
lation with security considerations. Asian actors
interested precisely in linking with Europe as
well as in projecting their influence are making
a push for increased cooperation with a region
they have historically enjoyed good relations
with: China has been seeking entry via Poland
and Hungary; India has tried to stay in the game
too; Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan or Gulf states are
using their financial resources to fuel partnerships
in energy or agriculture; Japan, South Korea or
even Malaysia are seeking new markets. All of
these come with well-known risks, which need
to be carefully balanced, while taking advantage
of the opportunities they open. On top of all
this, there is the aggressive Russian cash offen-
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­ ountering such threats can only be done
through closer regional cooperation, as well as
with US and EU partners.
A further risk comes from within and is
amplified by the centrifugal forces of EU disunity
previously cited. Growing nationalism and populism as a reaction to disaffection with the EU
or distrust in its institutions causes trouble in
older EU democracies but is unlikely to uproot
established institutions. The strain it puts on the
newer democracies of CEE (with still weak civil
society and media) may however seriously affect
rule of law here, internal capacity-building, state
reform, institutional development and state and
business transparency, at a time when these are
seen as crucial to investment and growth. It may
also encourage corruption, cronyism and give
the political class significant leeway to advance
private agendas and concentrate power in the
name of stability and protecting national interest
against foreign influence (see the recent case
of Hungary).
A lot will depend therefore on the capacity
and political will in CEE states to develop their
own strategies and instruments to strengthen
rule of law, as well as the other element essential
to economic strength: home-grown capital. At
this point, there are few indigenous companies
that can both contribute to GDP growth and
jobs creation, as well as project influence beyond
borders—including at EU level in budget negotiations for instance. As multinationals seek to
keep their costs down and Western banks have
been externalizing profits and internalizing losses,
crisis measures have tended to focus on austerity
at the expense of the population, causing more
social tension. Again, given that dependence
on Western finance and companies is here to
stay for a long time, a lot will depend on the
capacity of the region to negotiate interests in
Brussels cohesively, with one voice and find the
right avenues for dialogue.
In this, Central-Eastern Europe has an
important ally—and it is up to it to engage
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it effectively: the United States. This is the
second pillar of its strategic development, as
mentioned above. We will not dwell upon it
extensively, since it mostly consists of developing and making the best of an instrument,
which is already in the making: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
The TTIP aims to link and harmonize American and European markets and add essential
substance to the world’s most solid alliance,
currently under stress from various factors
ranging from differences in defense budgets
to recent NSA scandals etc. The TTIP, if effective,
will not only rebuild a bloc able to sustain Asian
(read Chinese) pressure, but will also benefit
CEE largely: It will re-engage the US in Europe
on economic, not just military grounds—the
most suited perhaps nowadays; it will reduce
the power of strongly protectionist EU countries; it will bring gains to the new members
in sectors where they have been opposing
big states’ policies at EU level without much
success—agriculture, electronic information,
military industry, services liberalization. Active
involvement in negotiations on the TTIP thus
gives CEE a chance to influence decisions while
playing a constructive role which suits them
best, given their strong Euro-atlanticism: that
of strengthening EU-US ties.
The US has a strong interest now in cultivating this partnership with what it once used
to call “New Europe” to contrast it with the less
enthusiastically pro-American “Old Europe.”
This “Old Europe” also has an interest in sweetening the pill of austerity and core-EU oriented
measures to ensure that it doesn’t alienate
new members; German elections, once over,
will allow for more openness in this regard.
Additionally, the rest of the world (China, the
BRICS, Russia, and the Middle East) looks to CEE
as a gateway to the EU. There is risk in being
the focus of everyone’s interest, but there is
also a host of opportunities. If they manage
to effectively cooperate in defining their stra-
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tegic interests, identifying their strengths and
mitigating risks together, the countries of the
region are just about to play their next winning
card, as historic as reintegration with the West
was in the 90’s and 2000’s.
O ana P opescu
Director, Global Focus Center
Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu
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Partnership over the
Atlantic
Witold Gadomski
Europe and the United States are still feeling the
consequences of the global financial crisis. Economic
revival in America is weak and most European countries
experience a second recession in recent years.
The agreement between the European Union and the
United States, called the Transatlantic Partnership for
Trade and Investment (TTIP), is to be the answer to these
problems
The United States and Europe are two largest
and best-developed economic areas in the world,
relatively open to external competition, with
well-functioning legal systems protecting private
ownership and ensuring security of economic
transactions.
The European Union as a whole is the largest
economy in the world, responsible for about one
fourth of global GDP and 17 % of global trade.
For the United States these figures are, respectively, 21.6 % and 13.4 %. Despite the growing
importance of the so-called emerging economies
(above all China, India, Brazil) the European Union
and the US still jointly produce almost half of
global GDP.
The Union and the US, with all the differences
pointed out by political scientists and sociologists,
are close to each other culturally and politically,
which is of no small significance in our turbulent world. These two areas are already strongly
integrated with each other through trade and
investment flows as well as by the presence of
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transnational corporations. Last year the United
States exported to Europe goods worth 265.4
billion dollars, while exports in the opposite
­direction were worth 381.2 billion dollars. In the
last 5 months of 2013, the respective figures were
106.9 billion dollars and 157.4 billion dollars,
which means a slight decline in trade exchange.
Europe is the most important trade partner
of the US (with Canada second and China third).
For Europe the United States is the second largest
partner (after China). But in the last dozen years
the volume of exchange between the two continents has not been growing. This contrasts with
a rapid increase of trade between both the US
and China and the EU and China.
A Free Market with Obstacles
Despite the openness of both markets,
entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic are
complaining of barriers, which make it difficult
to do good business. 46 % of respondents say
that unnecessary regulations impede trade,
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45 % regard tariffs and 38 % custom procedures
as a problem, while 20 % claim that contrary to
what is commonly believed barriers for investment do exist.
Many entrepreneurs doing business on the
other side of the Atlantic complain of regulations concerning transport services, varying and
incompatible technical standards regarding, for
example, cars, machines and devices.
Average tariffs in transatlantic trade are relatively low. The World Trade Organisation estimates
average import tariffs at 3.5 % for the US and 5.2 %
for the EU. For goods from the European Union
the former figure is 2.1 %, while for American
exports the latter figure is 2.8 %. With the falling
profit margins in manufacturing these seemingly
low tariffs might mean that export of some goods
is no longer profitable. Moreover, both these
economic areas maintain much higher tariffs in
protected sectors.
The European Union imposes the highest
export toll—22 %—on lorries, with 17 % for some
kinds of footwear, 14 % for audiovisual products
and 12 % for clothing. The US keeps high rates for
processed food products (exorbitant 350 % for
cigarettes) and some industrial products: Textiles
40 %, clothing 32 %, leather goods and footwear
56 %. But these high tariffs concern a minor part
of transatlantic trade—2 % of EU imports and
0.8 % of US imports.
Still we must remember that European and
American companies are closely connected with
each other. The same distribution channels are
stretched over the Atlantic. European companies
invest in their American subsidiaries and vice
versa—firms based in the US build networks of
subsidiaries in Europe. This means that tariffs
become a tax on internal operations within corporations. They raise production costs and reduce
competitiveness of transatlantic companies.
the details might be surprisingly troublesome.
For example, in the United States, car manu­
facturers cannot sell them directly to clients. And
the European Union maintains restrictive and
not always justified regulations concerning the
quality, packaging and labelling of various goods.
Especially important for the EU are regulations
regarding protected geographic product names,
that is labels suggesting the place of origin of
a given product, such as champagne. Much more
important for the US is protection of intellectual
property.
Research shows that differing regulations
create the most serious barrier in entering the
market across the Atlantic for small and medium
sized companies.
Another problem is presented by incompatible standardisations and procedures involved.
It regards in particular the security of electric
devices. Procedures in this area are different in
Europe. Sometimes we see opposite cases, for
example in car manufacturing—in Europe you
must acquire a certificate to place a product on
the market while in the US a declaration saying
that your product meets security standards is
sufficient.
The services market is much more open in
Europe than in the US. European lawyers, architects or engineers have problems with entering
the American market. European businesspeople
complain that it is difficult to enter the American
market with such services as sea and air transport or courier deliveries. European airlines are
allowed to have only up to 25 % shares in airlines
operating on the US market. In the 1920s, American trade unions successfully fought to achieve
a ban on using foreign ships and ship owners
in transport of coasting cargo, that is between
American ports.
Limited access of European companies to the
market of public tenders poses a serious problem.
Although access for European firms is guaranteed
by an agreement concluded in 1995 under the
auspices of the World Trade Organisation, some
Troublesome Details
Although general regulations on goods and
services are similar on both sides of the Atlantic,
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American federal institutions (for example the
Federal Air Marshal Service) choose their contractors exclusively among American companies.
Moreover, in many tenders American small and
medium size firms receive systemic preferences
and consequently their competitors are virtually
doomed to lose. And it regards such important
areas as construction or supplies for railways.
Thirteen states completely exclude foreign firms,
European ones as well of course, from public
tenders. In other states, there are similar bans
on municipal or county level.
General for Trade in the European Commission)
said that the main goal had been achieved,
which made it possible to… hold another two
rounds. Hiding behind these general statements
are problems, which will be difficult to solve.
The Partnership Agreement will not be a general
declaration but it will concern hundreds, if not
thousands of specific regulations, which impede
trade and mutual investment. Therefore, no one
is under any illusion that the agreement will be
signed quickly.
The talks are confidential, which raises distrust
of certain observers. It is known that the United
States will press on the Partnership to comprehensively cover the protection of intellectual property.
Some fear that the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement) will be introduced through the
back door—this agreement on fighting trade in
counterfeit products was rejected by the E­ uropean
Parliament in early 2012. We already had the first
conflicts during the negotiations. EU negotiators
explained to their American counterparts the
consequences of excluding the audiovisual sector
from the EU negotiating mandate. “We will not
negotiate audiovisual services. We will hear what
the US has to say in this matter if it takes up the
subject”—said Ignacio Garcia-Bercero. Excluding
this sector from the negotiations is, of course, the
result of French pressure.
We know from unofficial sources that so far
the negotiators identified areas where there is
common ground and those where positions differ.
They are also trying to develop procedures for
removing differences. Negotiators have also met
about 350 groups of people interested in the
agreement: academics, trade unions, repre­senta­
tives of various industries and non­‑­governmental
organisations, and heard their “wishes and
complaints” regarding the agreement.
The Beginning of Long Negotiations
American and European politicians hope that
thanks to the Transatlantic Partnership for Trade
and Investment they will succeed in increasing
the volume of trade in goods and services, intensify investment flows and mutually allow companies on both sides of the Atlantic to enter the
market of public tenders.
An important step towards an agreement
was made on 28 November 2011. President of
the European Commission José Manuel Barroso,
President of the EU Council Herman Van Rompuy
and President of the US Barack Obama established a Working Group tasked with identifying
fundamental problems impeding transatlantic
exchange and prepare proposed solutions.
The report of the Working Group was published
on 13 February 2013 and approved by the European Commission.
EU member countries agreed that the
­European Commission will continue the talks with
the US government on their behalf. On 17 June,
during the G-8 summit, the American President,
the head of the European Commission and the
British Prime Minister jointly declared that the
partnership was of crucial importance for both
transatlantic economies.
The first round of talks took place from 8th to
12th July in Washington. The next round will be
conducted in October in Brussels. A ­European
negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero (Director
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Who Will Profit from the TTIP?
The aim of the TTIP is to boost economic
growth in the United States and the European
Union and to create new jobs. American and
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European politicians hope that by eliminating
tariffs and other barriers the Partnership will
increase the volume of trade and investment
flows between the two continents. Companies
from both sides of the Atlantic will gain better
access to the services market of their partners.
Common regulations on intellectual property
and fair competition will be worked out.
Political leaders hope that the talks will be
concluded within two years. The British prime
minister estimated that the agreement would be
worth 150 billion dollars for Europe, 125 billion
dollars for the United States and 130 billion dollars
for the rest of the world.
However, entering into talks on the US-EU
partnership does not mean that both sides will
be fully satisfied. Americans fear that Europeans
will want to protect some sectors from global
competition. Particularly alarming is the attitude of France, its economic potential being
the second largest in the European Union, after
Germany. France is against liberalisation of trade
in cultural goods, trying to protect French film
and music industry. This attitude was criticised by
the head of the European Commission Barroso,
who called it “reactionary.”
In the United States, where the creation of
a free trade zone with Canada and Mexico gene­
rated a lot of controversy more than a decade
ago, the idea of the Transatlantic Partnership is
positively received, although it might change if
the talks get stuck in details.
German economists from the Ifo Institute
claim that the American side will profit more from
the agreement. But it is Europe that needs an
incentive of a more intense competition to wring
itself out of the stagnation it has been mired in
for years. For our continent, the agreement may
be something like letting pikes into a pond full
of lazy carps.
According to Ifo the greatest EU beneficiary
of the agreement will be Great Britain. The partnership may create about one hundred thousand new jobs there. But some countries will
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lose. For example, it is predicted that German
exports to Great Britain and France will drop, for
these countries will turn to American suppliers.
In addition, the great trade partners of the US,
that is China, Brazil or Mexico, may be negatively
affected by the agreement.
So far there is no reliable prognosis of the
effects of the Partnership for the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe. Experience shows
that businesspeople from this region are capable
of leveraging the situation for their own profit
when trade barriers are abolished. It will not be
a big impulse for our economies, for the United
States are further down on the list of recipients
of goods and services from Central and Eastern
European countries but it will probably be a positive impulse.
Estimates of the European Commission
show that by 2027, the partnership will boost
EU exports to the US by 16.16 % and US exports
to Europe by 23.20 %. Such precise calculations
raise astonishment or even distrust. Great Britain
and Germany—the largest European partners of
the US—will probably have the biggest share in
this increase. But if the German economy picks up
the pace as a result, Central and Eastern Europe
will benefit from that. W itold G adoms k i
economic commentator of Gazeta
Wyborcza
Photo: Gazeta Wyborcza
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No Dreams, Europe
The European Union will not be an independent
force. It has abandoned such ambitions and decided
to return under American wings—says Russian
political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov in conversation
with Filip Memches
The European Union has been in crisis for several years. It is not just economic problems,
such as the growing distance between the
EU engine of growth, that is Germany, and
the Mediterranean countries. There is also
something, which we could call a crisis of EU
identity. We hear more and more questions
about what the Union should actually be. Does
this situation have an impact on the relations
between the Union and Russia?
Yes, of course. Let us start with the practical
aspect. The management of bilateral relations
is getting more complicated. The European
Union is preoccupied with internal processes
and its readiness to confront external issues has
weakened. In some respects this is beneficial
for Russia, for example in terms of the situation in the post-Soviet space. The Union lacks
adequate resources to pursue its interests in this
part of the world. Added to that are problems
with developing a bilateral agenda. We cannot
count on such an agenda being worked out, for
the decision­‑making process within the Union
is very complicated. The organization is riddled
with divisions, particular countries have divergent priorities.
Besides the practical aspect, there are also
more general issues. The crisis of the Union,
and hence of the European integration, means
marginalization of Europe in the global context
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F j odor L u k j anov
Russian political scientist, columnist, expert on
international issues. Editor-in-chief of the journal Russia
in Global Affairs, published in cooperation with Foreign
Affairs, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Council for
Foreign and Defence Policy of Russia
Photo: Archive Fyodor Lukyanov
and that also means a decreased influence on
international politics. All this prompts Russia to
shift its priorities from Europe towards Asia. And
this is going to happen, because the importance
of Asia is growing.
This is a quite significant turnabout.
Europe ceases to be the model we used to look
up to. For centuries the assumption of Russian
policy was to maintain the European course.
Europe was a reference point for Russian p
­ olitics.
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Why?
For Germany realizes that the subject of its
potential leadership raises a lot of bad asso­
ciations.
Comparing ourselves to Europe, we learned what
worked and what did not work here. Now Russia
has less and less in common with Europe. Until
recently the European course seemed to be
the only possible one. The Old Continent was
perceived as the source of modernization, cultural
identity and so on. This is becoming a thing of
the past now. If this tendency becomes stable,
in some ten, fifteen years the relations between
Europe and Russia will be quite different. They
will be reduced to pragmatic aspects and characterized by distance typical for strangers.
What model of European integration is more in
Russia’s interest: the federalist one, promoted
by Germany, or the liberal one, put forward
by Great Britain?
It depends on how we perceive Europe.
If Russia decides to tighten the relations with
the Union, then of course the German model will
be more advantageous. Such a model assumes
that there is a core of the community and there
is a group of states, which have some vision of
the development path they want to follow and
with that in mind they integrate, which makes
it possible to decide jointly. As far as the British
model is concerned—EU political power reduced
to a minimum and common economic space—
it has its good and bad sides. In fact we are now
seeing something in that vein. Russia can adapt
to any model.
In the European Union there are countries
regarded as strong players in international
politics. This is above all Germany but we could
also name France or Great Britain. Perhaps
they will become new points of reference for
Russia?
No, but they will be important partners. What
I said earlier does not mean that Europe will disappear from the Russian perspective, because it
will remain Russia’s closest neighbor. You have
to take into account mutual relations, especially
commercial exchange. But the question remains
what course we should take in the context of
future development. And here we look very far
into the future.
Currently in Europe there are no global
players. Those who reveal such ambitions in the
political sphere, that is France and Great Britain,
do not have such status despite all their efforts.
In the economic sphere Germany is a global
player but so far it has not grasped the political
role it could play in the European and global
context. If Germany starts to perceive itself as
a political leader—and so far it is afraid to look
at itself in such terms—it is possible that a new
dimension will appear in the Russian-German
relations. But until now, Germany is concerned
with maintaining its economic advantage over
the remaining members of the Union. At the
same time it is careful not to scare off any of its
neighbors.
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Relations of the European Union with the US
are changing. Some ten years ago the leading countries of “old” Europe—Germany and
France—wanted the Union to have a strong
and independent position in its relations with
America. It meant that they were willy-nilly
becoming an ally of Russia in the battle for
the so called “multilateral world.” Now we
do not see such efforts and the US is less and
less interested in Europe. What does it mean
for Russia?
Indeed, ten years ago in Russia there was
a view that Europe may become independent
and it would open the way for striking some kind
of alliance—mainly economic but also political.
Then it became clear that it was not going to
happen, that Europe would not become an independent force. By all accounts, it has abandoned
such ambitions and decided to return under
American wings, of course if the US would want
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And it seems—at least it looks like that from
the outside—that it has found it. There is
a clear turn towards the Orthodoxy…
Russia itself does not know what it will be like
in ten years. Soviet identity is a thing of the past
and nothing new has emerged yet. Hence this
vacillation between various ideas. For example we
have an attempt to implement the traditionalist
option. But in my view this attempt will fail. Also in
Europe there are some ongoing processes which
have not spent their course yet. I believe that the
wave of according equal rights to everything and
everyone, including sexual minorities, may retreat
and then another wave will come. Public opinion
in European countries is not homogenous and
this produces tensions. Now we have a period
of transition from old notions to new ones. But
the question remains open, which outlooks will
persist and achieve dominance.
that. It seems that America does want that, for it
has understood that in the contemporary world
you will not get far if you act on your own,
depending only on yourself. Countries you can
trust become treasured and there are fewer and
fewer of them. Hence the growing stature of
Europe in Washington and the return to the idea
of a common market composed of North America
and the European Union. Obviously, it is difficult
to predict anything here but in Russia it is thought
more likely that the Union will subordinate itself
to the US.
Europe would
not become
an independent
force. By all accounts,
it has abandoned
such ambitions and
decided to return
under American wings,
of course if the US
would want that.
Nevertheless, you would probably not deny
that the religious context is present in Russian
public life and it has some impact on Kremlin’s
policy, including foreign policy. Russia hoped it
could play some role in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. But in early July 2013 C
­ roatia
joined the Union and the Orthodox Serbia is
following in its footsteps—and since the Balkan
wars in the 1990s Russia perceived Serbia as
its ally. Is this not a failure of Russia’s policy?
First, Russia never put forward an alternative
for Serbia. Obviously Moscow would be happy
to have such a partner but it would have to offer
something first. Second, the future of Serbia and
other Balkan countries is unknown. For we do not
know the future of the Union itself.
In the last few years, differences have appeared
between countries of the Union and Russia
in terms of understanding human rights and
civil liberties. German politicians criticized
the way in which Russian authorities repress
non-parliamentary opposition. And Russian
legislators passed a law prohibiting “propaganda of homosexuality” showing that Russia
does not intend to follow the Western way
of cultural development. Can cultural wars
become a barrier?
Russia and Europe certainly are getting
further away from each other in this area. But
I do not think it will determine their relations.
Russia is seeking its identity.
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So Russia stopped to treat Kosovo as a problem?
Now it is the Union’s concern.
What is the impact of Vladimir Putin’s return
to the Kremlin on Russia-EU relations? When
Dmitri Medvedev became president, Western
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public opinion hoped for a liberalization of
political life. It all came to nothing.
We may forget about Medvedev’s presidency.
It was an interesting but brief episode. The legacy
of Medvedev is negative. He created illusions—
he raised hopes for changes in this section of
Russian society, which we could call enlightened.
But these illusions evaporated. And this resulted
in significant social discontent which culminated
in mass demonstrations. So Medvedev made
some promises he was unable to fulfill. This played
a negative role.
Putin’s return did not produce any sensational
changes although many people thought that this
politician was coming back with a new agenda.
Nothing like that happened. Putin returned with
the belief that he had to defend the measure of
stability that had been achieved earlier. If you
focus on conservation of the status quo, you are
acting against development. And it has a negative impact on the relations with Europe. For
Europe functions in another rhythm, in another
reality than Russia. What is more, Europe does not
understand Russia’s actions, just as Russia does
not understand Europe’s actions. But I think that
this state of affairs will pass.
At the same time, it is worth stressing that in
Europe there is a belief that Russia has nowhere
else to go. This means that after the current turbulent period Russia will realize that it has no other
option than the European course. But it is not
so. Russia does have other possibilities. Europe
does not have to be the only partner with which
Russia will integrate, in contrast to the situation
from the 1990s or even early 2000s.
Is the Eurasian Economic Area project as a kind
of geopolitical alternative part of this tendency?
I do not think so. But it can reinforce it.
Russia does attempt to improve its position
in the face of the changing world. And in this
sense the Eurasian Economic Area may be
treated as an attempt at developing a project
of economic integration which would strengthen
all members. But on the basis of this organization
Russia will be unable to create a solid block,
comparable in terms of economic power to what
is emerging in Asia and to what may appear in
Europe and on the American continent. So it is
just an instrument.
F ilip M emches
columnist of Rzeczpospolita daily
Photo: Archive Filip Memches
Is exacerbation of antagonisms possible?
Not being part of Europe does not mean
that you are its enemy. You may be a distanced
partner sharing the cultural heritage. Let us take
Brazil. It is a country with European roots but it
functions in a different reality and according to
different principles than Europe. It seems to me
that Russia is heading in an analogous direction.
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I van Krastev
How Bulgarian Protesters
are Remaking Europe
T
he “silent man” in Taksim Square,
Istanbul, who stood without moving or
speaking for eight hours, is a symbol
that says something important about the new
age of protests that have shattered the world.
In the last few years millions of angry citizens—
generally young, well-educated and mobilized
through social media—have “occupied” places
as different as Wall Street, Egypt, Russia, Spain,
Brazil, Turkey and Bulgaria, demanding not
simply a change in government but a different
way of governing. What is common between
these vastly different protest movements is that
they trust neither the business or political elites,
nor the government or the major opposition
parties. They captured the public imagination
without bringing to life a new ideology or charismatic political leaders. What these protests will
be remembered for are videos, not manifestoes;
happenings, not speeches; conspiracy theories,
not political tracts.
If these beautiful crowds are revolutionary
movements as some claim, they aren’t simply
protagonists of “democratic revolutions,”
because they strike both democracies and
non­‑democracies alike. While in Egypt and Russia
protesters have demanded new and fair elections,
in Europe protests embody disillusionment with
elections that change governments but leave
public policies undisturbed. These are also not
“liberal revolutions,” because many people on
the streets loathe “the liberals” and blame liberalism (especially its “neo” variety) for the current
crisis. These are not “nationalist revolutions”
either: in many cases, the protesters are less
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I van Krastev
is a Bulgarian political scientist. He is president of the Center
for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Permanent Fellow at the Institute
for Human Sciences in Vienna and a member of the European
Council on Foreign Relations.
Photo: Center for Liberal Strategies
nationalist than the rest of their societies. These
revolutions are also not generational, a sort of
second coming of 1968. In 1968 protesters on
the streets of Paris and Berlin demanded to
live in a world different from the one of their
parents, while the new radicals in Europe today
insist on the right to live in the same world of
their parents. This protest wave is also not an
expression of what Václav Havel defined as “the
power of the powerless;” rather, it stands for the
frustration of the empowered.
In the annals of this global protest movement Bulgaria plays a special role. Bulgaria is
a classical example of everything that is wrong
with democracy—corruption, dysfunctional
institutions and public apathy, and she is a text-
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book case why democracy is still our best
hope—with its potential to mobilize civic
energy and allow people peacefully to topple
governments that must go. In the course of
2013, a government is under siege by protesting
citizens for the second time in Bulgaria. In March
the center-right government of former Prime
Minister Boyko Borissov resigned after hundreds
of thousands of protesters—mostly from the
countryside stormed the streets protesting
against poverty, unemployment, corruption
and the hike of the electricity prices. Seven
people burned themselves in the days of the
protests.
social media ended on the street demanding his
resignation. The opinion poll taken the next day
indicated 85 percent of Bulgarians wanted for
Peevski to go to hell. He resigned but this was
not enough for the protesters. People now asked
for the resignation of the government that came
with the perverted idea to appoint him. So, since
June 14 every night thousands of protesters
(coming out of work) march on the streets of
Sofia asking only one thing-early elections. But
their protest is not a protest only against this
government but against any government that
treats people as a useless furniture.
The strategy adopted by the current center
left government (that was elected with the
votes of only 20 percent of the eligible voters)
is to pretend that nothing important is really
happening and to wait for the protesters to go
on holiday. In the eyes of the government
dialogue is an expression of weakness. But
people did not go away. They continue marching
every day. On the 40th day the protest got bloody.
At ten at night police tried to break the siege
around the Parliament and both protesters and
policemen were wounded. Due to the maturity of the protesters the situation got under
control but remains tense. It is a safe bet that
in not so distant future Bulgaria will have new
parliamentary ­elections. The latest opinion poll
indicates that only 16 percent of Bulgarians want
government to serve a full term. At present, the
government can survive in power but it will be
unable to take any unpopular measures.
What does the summer protests in Sofia
teach us about “the revolution of the global
middle class?”
Paradoxically, what Bulgaria teaches us
is that contrary to politically correct clichés
peaceful protests are media friendly but as a rule
politically effective. After more than 40 days
of protest the beautiful crowd on the streets
of Sofia impressed foreign correspondents
but did not move Bulgarian government. The
second lesson is that in the age of Facebook
Paradoxically, what
Bulgaria teaches
us is that contrary
to politically correct
clichés peaceful
protests are media
friendly but as a rule
politically effective.
Now it is the turn of the government of
the Bulgarian socialist party and the party of
the ethnic Turks to think about resignation.
The story of the latest crisis is as simple as a plot
of a low-budget Hollywood movie. It started
on June 14 when the Parliament appointed
Delyan Peevski as the head of the State Agency
for National s­ ecurity. The appointment of this
gentleman whom the Western Press respectfully
describes as “media mogul with shady connections,” while Bulgarian media (even those few
not owned by him) find it most reasonable not
to discuss the issue, had the effect of political
earthquake.
Just in hours after the decision was
announced thousands of people mobilized via
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the urban middle class risks remaining politically
lonely and incapable of reach out to other social
groups. The third lesson is that the readiness
of the government to use force against the
protesters is proportional to the active public
support it can mobilize. In Turkey police was
ready to crash the protests, because Erdogan
was able to gather hundreds of thousands in
his support. In Bulgaria, the counter protest in
defense of the government never managed to
gather more than 300 people.
The third lesson of the protest is that the
best way to judge on the democratic freedom
in a country is to observe how its media, particularly the public one, behaves in the days of
the protest. In this sense, Bulgaria is a European
democracy and Turkey is not yet. The fourth
lesson, learned after the protest-elections
cycle in Bulgaria earlier this year, is that popular
protests can change almost everything but not
necessary the way people vote. So, if protests
fail to come up with political alternatives that
people are ready to support, they are doomed
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to remain simply moving episodes that those
participating in them could one day nostalgically recollect as their beautiful one-night stand
with democracy. But even failing the protests
succeed. The latest opinion polls indicate that
after almost two months of protests Bulgarians’
support for democracy and the European Union
has increased.
And it is the position taken by Brussels
and the major European capitals that makes
Bulgarian protests stand out in the current
protest wave in Europe. It is in Bulgaria that
contrary to its bureaucratic instincts official
Europe has sided with the protesters and not
with the elites. The ambassadors of France and
Germany wrote on July 4th a joint article strongly
criticizing the political model embodied by the
­government and practiced by previous ones
as well. Commissioner Vivian Redding came to
Sofia and did what Bulgarian prime minister
never did—talk to the citizens.
This is how Bulgarian protesters took part
in reinventing Europe.
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35
No Chinese Has Ever
Been a Communist
Tomáš Klvaňa interviews Sir James Mancham,
former President of the Republic of Seychelles,
on the rise of China, global citizenship, biodiversity
and geopolitics
Sir James, how can historical cities like Prague
learn from the Seychelles’ tourism industry
where you managed to go through a tremendous touristic boom without destroying the
natural beauty of the islands? Many people believe that things must
remain as they are. But we must be realistic.
The very same American tourists who visit
the Seychelles and would originally like to
stay in a coconut leaves’ hut are scared and
unpleasantly surprised, when they encounter
an annoying insect or lizard. We must take
into account what an average visitor expects.
The tourist is after all not an explorer who
must put up with certain discomfort. What
I see in Prague I admire: the architecture is
preserved. It would not be prudent to interfere with original architecture. Nonetheless,
inside a lot of modernization must take place.
People got used to elevators, air conditioning,
certain minimum comfort. It is about a balanced
approach respecting as much as possible the
natural and original beauty and a basic comfort
to which we are now used to.
S ir James R ichard M arie
M ancham ( 1 9 3 9 )
was the first President of Seychelles from 1976 to 1977
when the islands received independence from the UK.
Before that he had been elected as Chief Minister and
Prime Minister. His policies led to the rise of upscale
tourism industry. Sir James’s father, a successful trader,
immigrated to the Seychelles from China. In 1977
Mancham was deposed by a Marxist coup led by FranceAlbert Rene, supported by Tanzania and the Soviet
Union. He then lived in a London exile till 1992. When
he returned to the Seychelles following the lifting of the
ban on opposition he resumed the promotion of tourism.
He ran for president in July 1993 and finished second
behind René with 36.72 % of the vote. In March 1998
he ran again, receiving third place and 13.8 % of the vote.
He is the author of three books, Paradise Raped about the
1977 coup, War on America: Seen from the Indian Ocean,
written after the September 11 2001, and his memoirs;
Seychelles Global Citizen: The Autobiography of the
Founding President.
Photo: Forum 2000
What can you as a Seychellois teach us about
protecting biodiversity? How can you teach
it to the people who have very different life
experiences and perhaps they do not care?
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We were lucky because of our geographic
isolation. When we started to open up to tourism
we were already sure we wanted to protect the
natural beauty. Other nations succumbed to
tourism and development and in the process
damaged their landscape. When we started our
development the world was already conscious
of the fact that before you develop it is good to
have a plan. All governments stuck to relatively
good planning and zoning codes. The Marxist
government of France-Albert Rene destroyed
the rule of law, separation of powers, they started
to confiscate property and were antibusiness.
Therefore very few people wanted to invest in
our country at that time. That changed in the
1990s after my return and my role as the agent
of reconciliation was launched. Now we face the
issue of rising expectations of our people. They
want to travel. Some have become blasé about
life in the Seychelles. I always say that if anybody
complaints about their life, government should
pay for their two-week trip to Mumbai. Then
they would have some comparison.
turtles. Also, the turtle shells were always used
for craftsmanship—for boxes, combs and such.
Politically it was difficult for me in the late 1960s
after the pressure from conservationists to pass
the protection laws. Few months after that I was
invited to London by Lord Mayor. What was on
the menu? Turtle soup! Even now, I was in a restaurant in China and
saw four turtles in the tank. A Chinese businessman ordered one. We let the turtle go but
we have no control of Chinese fishermen. There
must be international observance, otherwise rich
Chinese eat at the expense of our poor fishermen.
And we certainly shall start no war with China
over turtles...
How do you manage these issues on a global
level? Is what is called the global governance
really possible?
It is possible but it is a different matter, how
long will it take. We must always aim for the sky
to get above trees. You may not get to the skies
immediately but you will make progress. Human
beings are very complex. We are shaped by many
circumstances over which we have very little
control. Nonetheless we all remain human and
our aspiration is to be as happy and comfortable
as possible. In our endeavors we must look at our
decisions with realism and maturity.
I was born in 1939 and a bit after my birth
churches were ringing their bells. My mother
joked that they were announcing my arrival
but in fact they were announcing the start of
the Second World War. I am 74 and bells are
still tolling, there are still wars. We have not
learned very much. Most politics is dominated
by national, not global interests. I am a global
citizen because I feel we are all connected, we
can communicate instantaneously.
Most politics is
dominated by national,
not global interests.
I am a global citizen
because I feel we are
all connected, we
can communicate
instantaneously.
Conservation is not easy. For millennia,
people were used to the concept of the survival
of the fittest. Our people have traditionally
enjoyed two delicacies: turtle meat and birds’
eggs. During my time as Chief Minister I came
under pressure to stop fishing and harpooning
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How seriously do we take the issue of the
global climate change? For you, coming from
an island in the Pacific, this issue must resonate especially strongly…
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We must take it even more seriously. Nations
make commitments at international conferences,
but when it comes to implementing them,
they fail. We have big, granite islands in the
Seychelles, and small, corral islands. The big
ones are not that affected, but atolls and the
small ones are threatened by rising tides and
tsunamis. There is a beach on which I played
as a kid, we played soccer. Now the beach has
narrowed and the tide almost covers it. The tide
is higher and higher. Small nations like Seychelles must be very
active on this issue and very knowledgeable
also as tackling the global warming involves
influencing other nations well-being. world, told me that I could use any cabin on
his cruise ships in exchange for lecturing there.
I started visiting the South Pacific and other parts
of the world. So my global perspective was in
a way forced on me by circumstances. Subsequently I became involved in many
peace-oriented organizations, which took me
to many places. Last year a travel magazine in
Tunisia wrote I was the 24th most traveled person
in the world. When you were young on your travels you
made sure you did not visit just conference
venues and fancy resorts but also ghettoes
and slums. Are you not removed from that
experience?
Not at all. Some organizations I am involved
with are focused on alleviation of poverty. The
World Future Council with its headquarters in
Hamburg tries to give voice to the voiceless.
It also deals with issues like the global climate
change. I am also the founding member of the
Institute of Culture and Diplomacy based i Berlin.
We promote soft power. We do not believe that
there is victory in war anymore. Times look for
changes in mentality if we are to improve the
world. The important concept facilitating my
work here is peace of mind. Your thinking is marked by a global perspective. How have you arrived at it? Is it a matter
of temperament, experience or education?
I was deposed from the Seychelles’ Presi­
dency in a Marxist coup in 1977 when I was
in London. I had worked very hard to put the
Seychelles on the map. Before I was President,
I was Chief Minister for five years and five years
Prime Minister. After the coup, I realized I will not
be allowed to return home for a long time. Later
I told the coup leader, France-Albert Rene: You
have taken away the Seychelles but given Jimmy
the world. The chief, prosaic question then for me was
to maintain my living standard. In life what you
don’t know you don’t miss. But you get used to
certain standard and when you do not have it
you are going to miss it. I have made friends in many parts of the
world. I realized that if I asked some of them for
money, perhaps once they would oblige but not
the second time around. However if I enabled to
them to make some money there would be no
reason for me not to take a success fee. I started
promoting joint ventures and transfer of techno­
logies. My friend Lars-Eric Lindblad of Lindblad
Travels, the father of ecotourism, the man who
opened up the Galapagos and Antarctica to the
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Something you also write about in your poetry. Yes. You can have your bed made of gold
but if you cannot sleep, and this fellow who
sleeps down on the floor can, he has better
life than you. The time has come for us to alter
our perspective. For too many years an average
individual has been drawn to believe that if you
make a lot of money you achieve happiness.
This rich American I know is looking for a better
life among the fishermen in the Seychelles or
seeks out a spiritual elevation with a guru in
India. I said that the UN should not just pursue
its development plans but also contentment
plans that would make people more happy
and content. N
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You had been active in regional African politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Where is Africa
headed now?
In terms of land and natural resources there
is no question that Africa is the continent of the
future. There is concern now over the Chinese
who have been penetrating Africa in a clever
political and business way recently. Lots of infrastructure is to be built there. Recently I was in
Australia where the government adopted an
austerity budget. The only area with an increase
was their funding and investment in Africa. Most
of that focused on mining technology. Chinese
are not interested in democracy and have no
colonial baggage. They just want the natural
resources, to bring them home. They are far
more important economically for Africa than
anyone else is.
The other day I was having dinner with the
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, one
of the wealthiest men in the world. He owns
and co-owns Four Seasons Hotels, Canary Wharf
in London, Citibank and many other pieces of
property. He arrived with the entourage of some
twenty media people. After the dinner I was
reflecting on this. Who is happier? He, or I in my
carefree ways, with my ability to move without
security? Peace of mind must be cultivated. If you
live with anxiety, if you have reactive mind, you
cannot be happy.
You write about Earth citizenship. Do you
consider yourself as Earth citizen?
Yes I do. It is sometimes spoken of global
village. We must not make our world into
a village. As the world shrinks we must become
bigger, in our hearts bigger. I also believe that
nobody should have a monopoly on a philosophy
of happiness. Let us consider an African who lives
in a village in Africa. Every day he watches the sun
go down and moon rise. Then CNN arrives and
he suddenly sees the rich world, skyscrapers, and
gets the notion that if you live on the 50th floor
you live nearer to heaven. He does not realize that
you have to take a lift. You may wait a long time
for it. At night you might be woken up by a fire
engine, and your children may not find a playground nearby. The reality of the situation must
be judged in its fullness. Before Africa embarks on
a lifestyle of developed nations Africans should
think twice if this brings them happiness. Yes, we
must close the gap between the rich and poor,
but we must also speak with the poor people
who live their simple lives and tell them that
there is quality in simplicity. There was a time when the boat people were
welcome after arriving in Australia… or in New
York immigrants were welcome with a music
band. People were celebrating their courage,
their bravado to cross the ocean and to arrive.
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It is sometimes spoken
of global village.
We must not make our
world into a village.
As the world shrinks we
must become bigger,
in our hearts bigger.
Your father was Chinese. What do you think
of the rise of China? How does it look from
your corner of the world?
Entrepreneurs are not just money makers but
they should also be promoters of social justice.
All the Chinese who have been indoctrinated
with socialist economics suddenly turned around
and became capitalist agents. Really?
No, in my view no Chinese has ever been
a communist. The biggest fraud China has
committed was to pretend that they were
communist. Chinese will, of course, never espouse
La Democratie Americaine. They subscribe to the
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notion, who pays the piper calls the tune: Let’s
collect as much money as we can and then we will
control leaders of so called democratic nations. French and British were about. That was a privileged vantage point. Certainly someone from
a landlocked country could not have had that
experience. In fact no country is “small” when it is
surrounded by ocean. You think geopolitically.
Islands situated in the Pacific Ocean, like the
ones in the Seychelles, can possibly become
unsinkable launching pads for missiles. Many
people do not realize that most of the war in Iraq
and Afghanistan has in fact been waged from
the base on the Diego Garcia Island. Small does
not mean we do not have a voice, especially in
today’s media age. Today you can come from anywhere. If you
have something to contribute and it makes
sense people will listen and use their own judgments. That is why I like the concept of global
citizenship. That is pretty pessimistic.
It is realistic. Chinese will go to their businesspeople and ask—do you want democracy
and be bankrupt as America is? We do not live
in a fair world. So many fingers can be pointed
at what is going on in the United States too.
The most important American industry is the
armament industry. Thirty times more money is
being spent in the world on weapons than on
human development. I had a conversation with a Chinese manager
the other day and we were talking about the
admiration in the West of what China has been
able to achieve in the last twenty years. It is
simply amazing. But I also told him about the
anxiety about the rise of China. And he said:
Look, do you think that we would want to start
a war after living so long in poverty and destitution
and after now achieving certain standard? It is we
the Chinese who wear the designer labels today.
It sounded persuasive to me.
T om á š Klva ň a
Vice President of the Aspen Institute
Prague and the Editorial Board
Chairman of the Aspen Review.
He lives and works in Prague.
Photo: Archive Tomáš Klvaňa
You have moved from being a politician to
being a statesman. Coming from a very small
nation, was this fact an obstacle, or rather
valuable perspective that people from large
nations lack?
Politicians’ main interest is getting re-elected.
Statesman is not always thinking of the next
elections. The world today needs more statesmen
than politicians. Far too many failed lawyers
become politicians. As a young man I was influenced by two
civilizations, the French and British. Till this day
my French is better than my English. Furthermore we were Roman Catholics and our priest
came from Switzerland and was teaching us more
songs about mountains than the sea. As a very
young man I knew what the Chinese were about,
what Armenians were about, what Americans,
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M artin E hl
Revolution
in the Global Middle Class
W
hat has to happen to make a patriotic Pole leave his homeland and
refuse to have children, to make
a football-loving Brazilian insult Pelé and choose
demonstrations over football, and to make
a wealthy Turk take to the streets, subjecting
himself to tear gas and being beaten by police
batons?
Although Poland, Brazil and Turkey are
linguistically, historically and culturally distant
from one another, they do have one thing in
common: they are emerging markets and
emerging demo­cracies. Their inhabitants individually have it better off, and in spite of the
global crisis, prosperity has risen compared to the
situation 20 years ago. Polish emigration and the
demographic crisis, Brazilian protests against the
poor state of infrastructure during preparations
for the football World Cup and the outbreak of
dissatisfaction in Turkey towards the democratically elected Islamic government have shown that
the large and newly developed middle classes
have clashed against the boundaries that with
varying aims have defined dysfunctional state
institutions, a corrupt political class, an immature
political culture and deceleration of the rapid
economic growth of recent years.
The liberal, urban segment of Turkish society
came out into the streets to protest against the
arrogance of power under Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, who apparently believes that
a hat trick of election victories gives him the right
to forsake one of the fundamental principles
of liberal democracy, which his party, the AKP
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M artin E hl
is the head foreign editor of the Czech daily
Hospodářské noviny.
Photo: Archive Hospodářské noviny
professes to support—and that is listening to
its opponents.
Initially, Brazilians were unhappy with an
increase in ticket prices of public transport, but
their protests sounded mainly like dissatis­faction
with government corruption and the megalomaniacal projects surrounding the football World
Cup, which won’t bring any improvement to
people’s daily lives. Again, the ruling class
assumed it could push everything past its citizens.
Facing a similar case of their government
being too slow to improve infrastructure and
bureaucracy, the Poles chose a different, though
for the Polish state and society potentially more
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destructive in the long term, tactic: two million
of them have left to work abroad and those that
have remained have almost stopped having children. According to statistics, Poles who have lived
abroad a long time have given birth to more
children per capita than those who have remained
at home.
The Polish case is particularly noteworthy
because its large-scale reflects the considerable
challenges of the post-communist world. Instead
cians have promised and promise that it will be
lowered. One of the reasons to emigrate, besides
the small amount of available jobs at home, is
the higher quality of public services and user­
‑friendliness of governments in Western Europe,
where two million Poles are now estimated to
live on a permanent basis.
The dissatisfaction of the increasingly wealthy
people from these three countries (along with
many others) with the performance of the state
also grows depending on the development of
modern technology. It allows a rapid exchange
of information, a clear comparison of earnings,
costs, terms, price or quality as well as a fast and
efficient organization of the protests. It also faci­
litates reporting on the protests, such as when in
Turkey the media felt under threat or there were
other reasons to keep information from being
disclosed. In the case of emigration, it provides
convenient, inexpensive and effective links with
home.
Governments have reason to be concerned
by the protests regardless of the forms they take.
They are not only facing the most technologically
advanced adversaries in the history of social and
political protest but the best educated. The classic
sign of belonging to the middle class is having
a good education, and thanks to the demo­
cratization and economic development of the
last twenty years, this is what Polish, Turkish and
Brazilian malcontents have.
They can’t be so easily duped. That must
be said right off. They are relatively wealthy
consumers. And they have the opportunity to
vote in elections. This last factor is a key one.
In China there are hundreds of similar protests
every year and the world hears nothing about
them. In Russia, the government pacifies the disaffected middle class after elections only slightly
less brutally than the Chinese.
On the other hand, as was pointed out at the
end of June in the Wall Street Journal by wellknown American thinker Francis Fukuyama, the
revolt of the global middle class represented
Governments have
reason to be concerned
by the protests
regardless of the forms
they take. They are
not only facing the
most technologically
advanced adversaries
in the history of social
and political protest
but the best educated.
of analyzing the attitudes of protesters like in
Brazil or Turkey, it can be helpful to look at the
detailed research carried out on a large sample
group by the Social Diagnosis project (Diagnoza
społeczna) since the year 2000. This year’s data
shows some alarming trends. For the first time
in 20 years, the number of Poles who consider
democracy the best form of government has
dropped. In the private sphere, the feeling is as
good as it’s been since 1989, but satisfaction with
public administration and policy is ­dropping.
This is a common feature of the growing wealthy
middle classes in emerging markets and democracies. For example, Poles pay a third more for
medicines and health care even though politi-
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by the protests in Brazil and Turkey shows how
difficult it is to turn a protest focused against
a particular target into a coherent political force.
The young, educated elite initiated and led the
Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt. Yet in subsequent elections they proved unable to reach
a wider audience by joining forces with the more
conservatively-oriented rural and urban working
class populations.
In Poland, similar protests over the ACTA
Internet treaty and its restrictions concerning
online freedom brought together conservatives and internet punks. But aside from a sole
instance of joint action, which legitimately
frightened the government, their coalition
fizzled out.
The traditional division in Turkey is
between the “white” urban liberal supporters
of a secular state and the “black” conservative
rural popu­lation. In recent years, the latter
group has been gaining economic power and
represents Prime Minister Erdogan. Here is
where the problem of the new middle class
becomes rather complicated.
A political program and its implementation
demands perseverance. In this, the emerging
middle class in emerging economies has the
same problems new democracies have with
stability and the effective performance of their
institutions. “Anger is not a program,” was what
the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue
Masaryk once said.
Enemies point to the Brazilian and Turkish
protests as a sign of the weakness of democracy.
They are actually signs of strength that even in
crisis, a subject we often discuss in Europe, drive
development forward. Politicians will either find
something to offer the new middle class or lose
their votes.
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Brazil hasn’t stopped building stadiums for
the World Cup and the Olympics, but the reaction
of President Dilma Rousseff is an indication that
she will have to rethink how the political system
works and invest more in infrastructure. Turkish
Prime Minister Erdogan hasn’t abandoned his
authoritarian excesses, but hundreds of thousands of young Turks have realized that in the next
election it will be better to vote for someone else.
Poles haven’t stopped looking for work abroad,
but the center-right government has at least
started to talk about how to relieve taxpayers
life in order to be able to start a family.
Young democracies are fragile structures,
with weak institutions and various corrupt ruling
classes. But it is still a democracy, where it is
possible to express an opinion and try to influence public policy without endangering your
life. This year Turks tried to walk on the edge
where Russians and Chinese live. Their middle
class may have similar aspirations, but their
government will not even let them publicly
discuss, let alone actually carry out the assertion
of their rights.
But that does not mean things will stay this
way forever. The pressure put on the state by the
new middle class in recent months on the front
pages of the worldwide media hasn’t only been in
Brazil, Turkey and Poland, but also in Bulgaria and
Egypt. And then there will be the growth of the
wealth of individuals that will require improved
governance even in other developing countries
where there won’t be enough taxpayers for the
simple conversion of GDP per capita. The time
of a dissatisfied global middle class is on the
way, which, according to American author Steve
LeVine writing in The Atlantic, will grow by as
many as two billion people in the next seven
years alone.
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The Future of U.S. Policy
in Central Europe.
Regaining American Purpose
in the “Lands Between”
By A. Wess Mitchell
Active American strategic engagement ensured
the success of Central Europe’s post-1989 democratic
order where those of 1919 and 1946 failed. But
the combined effects of economic austerity, strategic
rebalancing and European renationalization are
eroding America’s essential strategic role in the region.
The 25th anniversary of Communism’s end offers
an opportunity for America to renew its strategic bargain
with Central Europe for the 21st Century
As of next year, the post-1989 democratic
order in Central Europe will have lasted 25 years—
five years longer than the independent republics
of the Interwar period. With a combined GDP
of $1.2 Trillion, a quarter-century of peaceful
political transfers of power, and the absence of
an active military threat, the nations inhabiting
the 1,000-mile corridor between the Baltic and
Black Seas that Sir Harold Mackinder once called
the “shatterbelt” of Europe are more prosperous,
secure and free than at any point in their history.
Not since the 17th Century has Poland held the
position of power and influence that it has in
contemporary European politics. Not since the
turn of the last century have the successor states
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire enjoyed the
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geopolitical safety, open borders and economic
growth that they do in the European Union.
Viewed from this perspective, the postCold War “project” in Central Europe has been
a success. To a greater extent than any of the
region’s previous geopolitical configurations,
the Western liberal order has provided stability
and freedom to a group of nations who have
occasionally enjoyed the former, seldom the
latter but almost never both. If there is one place
where Francis Fukuyama’s much-challenged “End
of History” argument would seem to hold true,
it is Central Europe. This success was the result
of many factors—courageous post-Communist
leaders like Václav Havel and Leszek Balcerowicz
who were committed to anchoring their nations’
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political and economic destinies to the West;
an EU whose member states were willing to invest
vast sums of money and political capital in the
risky effort to rebuild entire societies; and an
unusually permissive international strategic environment that allowed these forces of reconstruction to work without the catastrophic interruptions, which have so often short-circuited Central
Europe’s most promising historical moments in
the past.
But one factor was also present without which
all the others, however important, would have
been insufficient: the United States. Though easy
to forget in an era of EU subsidies, it was the
proactive, purposeful, unconditional engagement of America that allowed the post-1989
order to succeed where previous attempts at
regional stability and democracy had failed. But
two and a half decades later, it is not clear if the
United States still wishes to play a strong role in
Central Europe. Confronted with rising powers
and constrained budgets, America appears to
be rethinking its vocation as a European Power.
Increasingly, it lacks the policy direction, political relationships, or strategic vision that made
past U.S. engagement in this part of the world
a success. Coming at a moment of mounting
political and economic entropy in Europe itself,
U.S. strategic drift is part of a duel crisis that could
lead to an unraveling of many of the gains of
the post-1989 moment and the emergence of
a regional order that is very different from what
Americans and Europeans jointly set out to build
in the 1990s.
1946—the United States played midwife to
regional orders that failed to stand the test of
time. On both occasions, America’s entry into
European politics was prompted by wars that
began in Central Europe and ended with postwar
settlements to solve the problems of this region
that overflowed into global geopolitics. Both
times, the United States got it wrong in Central
Europe—in 1919 by creating high-minded but
defenseless and nationalistic states that invited
predation from stronger neighbors and led to
the Second World War; in 1946 by consigning
former democratic protégés to the orbit of an
authoritarian competitor.
The first U.S. interlude in the region brought
freedom without stability; the second brought
stability without freedom. The historic achievement of the post-1989 order has been that it
provided a durable basis for both freedom and
stability in Central Europe for the first time in
its history. The key to success lay in the willingness of U.S. policymakers to apply three lessons
America learned from its past failures in the
region. Respectively, these three lessons would
form the ingredients in the post-1989 strategy
for a “Europe Whole, Free and at Peace” and are
worth remembering as the region’s democracies
turn twenty-five.
Lesson 1: America must keep “skin in the
game.” American withdrawal from Europe was
the “original sin” of 20th Century geopolitics. The
two world wars showed that the traditional European balance of power is a firetrap wired to ignite
in the continent’s center and east. Yet both times
America failed or was unable to stay engaged here
after the war ended. In 1919, America’s abrupt
departure following the creation of Central
Europe’s fragile nation-states under Woodrow
Wilson’s Fourteen Points led the Germans to
joke that Czechoslovakia and its neighbors were
“Saisonstaats”—perennial flowers that would
last for a season but perish. America’s irreplaceable role in the preservation of these states
Third Time’s a Charm
To understand why the present configuration
in Central Europe is so successful we have to
remember what went wrong here in the past.
1989 was not America’s first foray into Central
European geopolitics, but the third in a series
of three great global reordering ‘moments’ that
began in the space between the Baltic and Black
Seas. On two previous occasions—1919 and
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was ­underscored by quick death of the series
of overlapping regional alliances, underwritten
by France, that had been erected in America’s
absence as a kind of First NATO. Similarly, it was
U.S. withdrawal as much as Stalin’s armored divisions that doomed the ersatz democracies of
1945–6. Avoiding this “original sin” of 20th Century
U.S. policy in Central Europe was a conscious aim
of U.S. policymakers after 1989. Though forgotten
today, the impulse to expand NATO ran into stiff
opposition from the capitals of Western Europe,
which saw security pledges to weak frontier states
as a liability and preferred a finlandized Middle
Zone. But America had learned through hard
experience a central truth of European geopolitics: only when the Central European security
vacuum is permanently sealed can the stability
of Europe as a whole be ensured.
of the philosophical merits of integration, its
geopolitical importance for the United States has
been to act as a mediating mechanism that draws
out the toxins of regional ethno-nationalism and
makes the Central European nation-state safe for
itself—and for Europe.
Lesson 3: Central Europe is as much an “Idea”
as a region. Finally, post-Cold War policymakers
recognized that the deficiencies in past U.S.
policy in Central Europe had not only been military or institutional, but ‘spiritual’: the absence
of an animating Idea capable of permanently
cementing Western interests and values to those
of the region’s democracies in pursuit of a broader
purpose. As early as the 1930s, American intellectuals in Prague had seen the potential for the
democracy agenda to provide the foundation for
a common policy agenda between the United
States and the smaller nations of Europe. In many
ways, the very concept of “Central Europe” in its
modern form reflects a confluence of the ideas
of regional dissidents like Milan Kundera and
American strategic thinkers imagining an alternative future for the region other than German or
Russian domination. The Idea of Central Europe
rejects geography as destiny and sees moral
purpose rather than geopolitics as guiding the
future fate of the region—the antithesis, in other
words, of the German concept of Mitteleuropa.
Unlike in previous eras, this shared idea has linked
American and Central European states in the
period since 1989 in pursuit of a common agenda
of consolidating democracy not only in this region
but also in remaining captive nations further East
and around the world.
Lesson 2: Nationalism is as much a threat to
Central Europe as outside powers. Both of the
20th Century’s world wars began in part because
of Central European nationalism. It is irony of
U.S. foreign policy that, after the First World War,
America discovered nationalism as a solution to
supranationalism (especially for the nations of the
Habsburg Empire), only to return after the Second
World War and rediscover supra­nationalism as
a solution to nationalism. The 1919 postwar
settlement encouraged self-determination
without anchoring the resulting nationalism to
Western democratic norms; the 1946 arrangement denied self-determination while allowing
Soviet exploitation of regional nationalisms as
a means of imperial governance. The post-1989
resolved the problem of the Central European
nation-state by linking America’s fulfillment of the
region’s security needs to democratic outcomes
and subsuming the nationalist impulse in the
economic and political structures of Europe.
America promoted EU integration (initially against
European wishes) not only as a geostrategic
imperative for Central Europe but one that was
compatible with regional Atlanticism. Irrespective
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The Great Unraveling
America got it right in 1989 because U.S.
policy­makers and their Central European and
later Western European counterparts were
cognizant of these lessons and incorporated
them into policy. The result was the strategic
concept of a “Europe Whole, Free and at Peace”
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that would remain the organizing template for
U.S. and European policy in the region for more
than two decades. Each of the three components
of this strategy—­institutional (EU), ideological
(democracy) and military (NATO)—are direct
outgrowths of the lessons above. Using this
framework, Western leaders effectively solved
the Central European “problem” in both its geopolitical and nationalist forms for the first time in
history, creating the conditions for an economic
and political revolution that brought 100 million
people into the West.
Fast-forwarding to the present day, all three
ingredients of the post-1989 orders are in varying
states of crisis; only today, unlike in 1989, 1946
or 1919, there is not the end of a war to alert us
to that fact. Consumed with problems at home,
a new generation of leaders seems to assume
that the building blocks of the Euro-Atlantic
order that their predecessors built are more
or less immutable, and that they can therefore
devote their energies to economic and social
problems without worrying about sustaining
the larger edifice they inherited. This is not a safe
assumption. In each of the three areas above, new
trends are emerging in both the United States
and Europe that could erode the foundations of
the post-1989 success story.
relationship. In Central Europe, this void is widely
perceived. A string of recent U.S. decisions—the
withdrawal of two BCTs, cancellation of the fourth
phase of EPAA and low troop commitments for
the fall 2013 Steadfast Jazz exercises—have reinforced the perception that U.S. strategic attention
is ebbing away from Europe. Though obviously
not similar in scale to prior 20 th Century U.S.
retrenchments, the current trend is toward less
of an onshore presence for the United States in
Europe and therefore less of the stabilizing role
along the eastern frontier that was an integral
ingredient in the post-1989 strategy.
Renationalization of Europe
At the same time that the American military
and moral presence in Europe is weakening,
the European federative mechanisms that were
supposed to tamp down nationalism are in a state
of deep crisis. The eurozone sovereign debt and
banking crises revealed serious design flaws in
European economic governance structures that,
together with persistent imbalances between
the EU’s Northern and Southern economies,
threaten to make the eurozone an engine of
recurring economic instability. In some Central
European states, worsening economic conditions
have fueled a resurgence of nationalist politics
reminiscent of the interwar period. International
attention has gravitated to the populist anti-EU
rhetoric and centralizing policies of Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, but the latest international indexes also show lagging performance
on key benchmarks of democracy in several other
Central European states, particularly Romania and
Bulgaria. The crisis of democracy in these states
is similar to the effects of the eurozone crisis
in many Western European countries, but with
distinctive post-authoritarian accents. Regionwide, the democracies of 1989 have struggled
to develop the culture of compromise that is the
hallmark of stable democracy, while showing
a pronounced tendency toward the ‘politics of
revenge.’ The success of populist parties is rooted
American Retrenchment
Long before the economic crisis of 2008,
U.S. policymakers had begun to view Europe
in general and Central Europe in particular as
a “checked box.” Under the Obama Administration,
the de facto retrenchment of U.S. power from
Europe has accelerated. This is partly due to the
combined effect of austerity, strategic challenges
in Asia and the steady hollowing-out of NATO
as a military alliance. But the deeper problem is
the lack of U.S. political will to invest in Europe
strategically. U.S. policy in Europe is increasingly
marked by a combination of strategic drift and
day-to-day crisis management, with little in the
way of a discernible substantive vision for the
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not only in elite attempts to capture nationalist
impulses laid bare by the economic crisis, but the
widescale public perception that the post-1989
constitutional order was flawed in important
regards.
main preoccupation—less ‘Central Europe,’ in
other words, and more Mitteleuropa.
In short, all three of the main components
of the post-1989 democratic order in Central
Europe are in jeopardy. Collectively, the problems above represent a simultaneous stalling of
both the Atlanticist and Europeanist paradigms
that U.S. policymakers envisioned for Central
Europe. While the region’s transition has been
an unmistakable success in many ways, in others
it is still a work in progress. Rather than a group
of consolidated democracies firmly embedded
in a successful EU with backing from a reliable
NATO, Central Europe runs the risk of again
becoming a kind of a Middle Zone in European
politics—a cluster of small and mid-sized powers
with varying degrees of successful integration
with the West wedged between a German-led
fiscal core and a Russian-dominated zone of
corruption and authoritarianism. This is not the
nightmare that the region faced in previous eras,
but nor is it a fulfillment of the vision that post­
‑Communist leaders had in mind in their efforts
to build a “Europe Whole, Free and at Peace.”
Weakening of the Central European “Idea”
The receding of U.S. power in Central Europe
and reemergence of has also gone hand-inhand with a slackening in the shared sense of
historical experience and purpose that animated
regional leaders in the first two decades after
Communism. This is partly due to the passing of
the Havel generation of leaders and the shift in
focus toward issues of economic convergence,
as well as disillusionment following the Iraq and
Afghanistan experiences. But it is also rooted in
the lack of a unifying strategic vision of virtually any kind around which America and Central
Europe might rally. Despite promising ventures
like the Polish-inspired European Endowment
for Democracy—which, along with the Eastern
Partnership program (EaP), is one of the few
examples in which a Central European priority
has become an EU-wide priority—the general
tendency has been toward a submergence of
regional political and economic ideals into the
Western European mainstream. It is hard to
imagine current European leaders evoking the
memory of Wilson, Masaryk and Reagan in pursuit
of a joint policy toward societies close at hand
like Ukraine and Belarus, much less in Egypt or
Burma. Nor do young Central Europeans seem to
have much interest in translating their countries’
hard-won reputation for scrutinizing power and
resisting centralization into an ethos of reform at,
as opposed to merely technocratic compliance
with, the structures of the EU. This reflects a fading
of the ‘Idea’ of Central Europe in European politics.
In its place, the tendency is increasingly toward
an EU-oriented but complacent mindset that has
substituted EU convergence and coming to terms
with German commercial preponderance for the
liberalizing reform mission as regional societies’
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Slowing the Erosion
For the foreseeable future, Americans and
Europeans are likely to remain engrossed in the
economic and political crises that confront their
societies. During this period, the temptation
to retrench—for America, from its vocation as
a European Power; for Central Europeans, from
their vocation as democracies and global role
models for reform—will be high. For both, the
danger is that the unexpected combination of
Western introversion, weakening institutional
“glue” of NATO and the EU, and resurfacing of
the problems of the nation-state will imperceptibly erode integral components of the post-1989
democratic order before their work has been
completed.
This is problem of generational scope that
cannot be papered over by attempting to pursue
a grand project of the kind that drove c­ ooperation
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in the past. The 25th anniversary of the end of
Communism will provide an inflection point for
considering where the post-1989 formula has
succeeded, where work it is incomplete, and
where it needs to evolve to fit the exigencies of
a new era. Western policymakers should use the
current period wisely, as a strategic interlude in
which to achieve re-consolidation where possible
while slowing the erosion of relationship fundamentals and building up political capital for when
their societies are ready to return to larger joint
undertakings. For the United States, the key at
the moment is to not go so far with strategic
retrenchment that it loses influence in regional
politics and faces a high cost of strategic re-entry
in region. There are a number of steps America
can take to regain lost ground in the region.
for bypassing stalled institutions and keeping
America strategically engaged without undermining the EU and NATO.
Strengthen technological and industrial
cooperation
Historically, U.S. commercial investment
in this region has acted as a quiet reinforcing
mechanism to the strategic goal of strengthening
regional security and democracy. One opportunity to strengthen U.S. economic and strategic
relations with the region simultaneously that is
presently under-exploited is in strategic industries like defense and energy, where win-win
opportunities are being impeded and regional
frustrations stoked by arcane trade controls and
under­‑spirited commercial diplomacy. The United
States should revise the Defense Trade Control
System to reduce the obstacles that Central
European states face in attempting to buy U.S.
products. In energy, Washington should work to
better promote alternatives to over-reliance on
Russian sources while walking Central European
countries through the process of licensing agreements with private North American suppliers that
is currently slowing North American LNG from
flowing to Central European consumers.
Encourage regional collaboration
With the EU and NATO in crisis, the United
States should encourage the indigenous groupings that are springing up between the Baltic and
Black Seas as backup mechanisms for anchoring
Central European countries with the West. The
United States should seek to actively encourage
the activities of the Visegrád Group, Nordic-Baltic
Group, Central European Initiative and Black
Sea Synergy Group, while encouraging linkages
between them (a prime role for an outside power)
and encouraging them to widen their agendas
where practicable beyond the security realm to
deeper cooperation in energy, regional democracy and commercial infrastructure. Fostering
a practical bridge between the V4 and NordicBaltic is especially important and overdue, as it
would bring together ten of Europe’s most militarily capable and economically vibrant Atlanticist
states. Among the tools for strengthening these
groupings might include the designation of senior
U.S. representatives to attend Group ministerials
and dispersing U.S. military and other aid in bloc
allotments (the same technique America used
to encourage European integration). Building
up these groups would provide practical outlets
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Re-earn the right to criticize on democracy.
The United States should re-engage in the
effort to strengthen Central European democratic institutions. This will be difficult to achieve,
as American credibility is in short supply due to
perceptions of U.S. strategic disengagement and
the chaotic and gridlocked state of democracy
in the United States. American interventions in
Central European politics can easily backfire and
strengthen radical elements in regional societies.
Ultimately, U.S. policymakers should recognize
that they have a responsibility alongside the EU
to continue encouraging regional states on the
right path, but that their effectiveness in doing
so is inextricably linked to the overall level of
strategic commitment that regional societies
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and elites perceive the United States to have in
their region, which is now at an all-time low. To be
heard on democracy, U.S. leaders must be personally invested in the region, and currently they are
not. Certainly, any effort to take the bully pulpit
at a time when the United States is perceived as
fickle and uncommitted in the strategic realm will
not work. Except in cases of egregious abuses of
human rights or outright authoritarianism, U.S.
criticism should be delivered in the spirit of last
summer’s intervention in Romania—quietly, with
a sense of humility that acknowledges America’s
diminished role and with a conscious delinking
of the political and security agendas. Meanwhile,
the United States should work to rebuild the
credibility that led Central Europeans to see it
as a source of moral authority so that, when it
counts, America can criticize and be heard.
dragons to slay, we also should not let fallout
from the Iraq War experience or constraints of
the eurozone crisis create the impression that
Central Europe has a lessened responsibility to
model its successful transition for the world in
the Century ahead.
Conclusion
It is not an exaggeration to say that the
success of democracy in Central Europe
represents the greatest non-military civilizational
accomplishment (one with many fathers, to be
sure) in the history of U.S. foreign policy. While
Central Europe does not hold the importance
in 21st Century global geopolitics that it did in
previous decades, the history of the 20th Century is
a reminder that achieving geopolitical pluralism,
political freedom and economic prosperity in the
Baltic-to-Black corridor is a pre-requisite to the
stability of Western Eurasia that allows the United
States to be an effective global power. Reflecting
on past lessons in the run-up to the 25th anniversary of 1989 should lead today’s Americans and
Central Europeans to consider what made their
past work together succeed and where they have
unfinished business in preparation for the day
when the history returns. Rekindle the Central European “Idea”
The path to rebuilding lost credibility is
through personal investment. As the 25th anniversary of the end of Communism approaches,
the United States and Central Europe should look
for ways to mark the occasion, not only with celebrations but with reflections on the unfinished
business of the post-1989 moment. President
Obama should travel to Warsaw in June 2014 to
commemorate the anniversary of the first free
elections. In addition, he should consider reconvening the group of Central E­ uropean leaders he
met for dinner on the eve of the Prague nuclear
summit as an annual forum for discussing regional
concerns and the state of global democracy. After
all, if China imploded in revolution tomorrow,
it would be Central E­ uropean democracies,
to a greater degree than any other nation—
including the United States—that would possess
the unique experience and credibility to help
guide it on the path to sustainable democracy.
U.S. and regional leaders alike should reflect on
what prevented the West from utilizing Central
Europe’s experiences more effectively during
the Arab Spring. While not going in search of
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A . W ess M itchell
is President of the Center for
European Policy Analysis (CEPA),
a Washington, DC based foreign
policy institute dedicated to the study
of Central Europe.
Photo: Center for European Policy
Analysis (CEPA)
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A New Oprichnina
Jadwiga Rogoża
Last year harassment and repressions became everyday
reality in Russia, both against the opposition and social
activists, and against elites that form the political backing
of the Kremlin. But the biggest fear can be observed
in the actions of President Vladimir Putin himself,
as the strategy he seems to have employed since his
return to the Kremlin is “defense by attack“
The swearing in of Vladimir Putin for his
third presidential term in May 2012 became
a watershed separating the externally milder
rule of Dmitri Medvedev from the harsh reaction
to the changes, which have been ripening in
Russia for the last dozen years. The main factors
behind these changes were the many-years-long
economic boom, generational shift and technological revolution, while the four years of Medvedev’s “détente” and his modernization rhetoric
provided an additional incentive. The social structure of Russia has become more complex, groups
have appeared expressing demand for a different
model of government than the one personified
by Putin—for a more competitive system, with
mechanisms protecting investments and civil
rights in a broad sense of the term, and lubricating
the mechanisms of social mobility. Even some
part of the elites, which had grown on Putin’s
system, expected its further e­ volution—especially
strengthening the security of capital, which would
not be possible without an independent judiciary.
These expectations run counter to the interests of the “powers that be,” composed of Putin and
his trusted comrades. This group is a beneficiary of
the current system—lacking any real competition,
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lacking transparent decision-making and property-transferring processes, with a politicized system
of justice. The President’s response to the ongoing
changes—especially social ones—is an attempt
to stop and reverse them. He wants to bring back
the status quo ante—a system, which functioned
perfectly during his first two terms, when the
Kremlin was the principal decision­‑making centre,
society’s role in important processes was limited
to passive consent and the ideological sphere was
shaped by the “allied” Orthodox Church. Those
who no longer fit into such an authoritarian matrix
are hounded today.
Fighting the Troublemakers
The first and most obvious target in Kremlin’s
campaign against “troublemakers” is the political
and social opponents involved in street protests
or anti-Kremlin internet campaigns and building
the foundations of a political alternative. The case
of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny got the
most publicity. He was sentenced to five years in
prison after an investigation, which most
observers regarded as fabricated. Less known
outside Russia but much wider in its scope is the
Bolotnaya Square case—an investigation into
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riots during an opposition demonstration on 6
May 2012, which, as an independent inquiry has
shown, was provoked by police forces. The official
investigation involves two hundred functionaries
of the Investigative Committee, the most active
security agency in today’s Russia, sometimes
compared to Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina. About
participants of anti-Kremlin manifestations are
punished.
The campaign also affected the third sector,
perceived by the Kremlin as the fifth column,
financed and commandeered by Western security
agencies. The regime attacks both the financial
capacity of non-governmental organizations and
their reputation, labeling them as “foreign agents.”
According to a new law the status of a “foreign
agent” must be sought by every organization
receiving foreign grants (which is widespread) and
acting in the field of politics—and the definition of
“politics” introduced by this law is so capacious that
the majority of NGOs concerned with protection
of civil rights may be brought under this category.
Very tellingly no organization inscribed itself in the
register of foreign agents, despite possible severe
sanctions for not doing so. But the restrictions have
brought the desired result: financing of NGOs has
been much reduced (also the frightened Russian
donators have backed off), many have been forced
to close down their offices in Moscow, a few were
suspended by the authorities and some moved
abroad. At least for the short term the potential
of non-governmental organizations has been
strongly undermined.
Awaiting its turn is the voluntary sector,
dynamically growing in recent years. During
natural disasters (forest fires close to Moscow,
the flooding in Kuban) young volunteers quickly
convoked through the internet, organized the
necessary help and financial resources, proved
to be faster and more efficient than the relevant
government institutions. The regime treated this
activity, not licensed from above, as a threat.
The response is a bill, which regulates this by
definition of spontaneous activity: volunteers
will have to register, obtain special permits and
sign a contract with a mandated organization
to be able to act.
The harassment also affected the communities of experts and academics. A scandal broke
out around the “frivolity” of experts who prepared
a report on the Khodorkovsky’s second trial,
The randomness of
the punishment is the
key to the approach
of the regime towards
the opposition—the
protesters are so
numerous today that
by way of a general
warning rank-and-file
or even accidental
participants of antiKremlin manifestations
are punished.
twenty people have been jailed for more than
a year, questionings and house searches are
going on. The first sentence has been a harsh
one—four and a half years of penal colony for
a young Moscow businessman Maxim Luzhyanin.
As far as we know, Luzhyanin not so much
“deserved” his punishment (he is supposed to
have shoved a police officer) as he is a perfect
albeit random personification of the wide social
base of today’s “discontented”—young, well off
and critical of the government. The randomness
of the punishment is the key to the approach of
the regime towards the opposition—the
protesters are so numerous today that by way of
a general warning rank-and-file or even accidental
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critical of the regime. The experts, among them
a former judge of the Constitutional Court, Tamara
Morshchakova, and president of one of the largest
universities in Russia (the New Economic School)
Sergey Guriev, were accused of acting on a poli­
tical commission paid from “stolen Yukos money”
and were questioned by public prosecutors, who
also took an interest in their private correspondence and phone conversations. For fear of being
arrested Guriev left Moscow and is staying in
Paris, and the whole affair has been labeled as
the “experts’ plot”—an allusion to the infamous
Stalinist “doctors’ plot.”
art PERMM in Perm, a region associated with labor
camps, where in the Soviet period many famous
dissidents (among them Vladimir Bukovsky and
Sergei Kovalev) and in the 19th century Polish
insurgents served their terms. Every summer,
Perm stages “Pilorama,” the only festival in Russia
combining poetic song with human rights issues.
Under Gelman’s direction PERMM fitted very well
into this atmosphere and became one of the most
innovative art galleries in Russia. One step too
far for the regime was Vasily Slonov’s exhibition
“Welcome! Sochi-2014,” lampooning the organization of the approaching Winter Olympics.
Mocking the preparations to Sochi (especially
the scale of corruption) has long been the staple
of Russian internet. But promoting this mocking
to the rank of art infuriated the powers-that-be
and Gelman was dismissed with a bang.
Artists… Stand at Attention!
The wide-ranging “campaign against disloyalty” has also reached the artistic community.
The first act of political-artistic censorship was
the 2012 case of the Pussy Riot, anarchist­
‑feminist band originating from the community
surrounding the art group Voina (“The War”),
which for years have been shocking Russians with
rather indecent satire directed at the regime. The
Pussy Riot staged a happening called “Mother of
God, chase Putin away” in the Cathedral of Christ
the Savior, which is the “official Kremlin church”
and a symbol of the close alliance between the
Orthodox Church and the Kremlin. For this prank
the court gifted the two girls with “dvushechka”
(two years of penal colony), a slang expression
President Putin used, despite (or perhaps because
of ) intense international protests. The severity
of the punishment undoubtedly also reflected
the place where the happening occurred: desecration of the “chief temple in the country” was
spectacularly punished.
Another piece of the campaign was the case
of Marat Gelman, one of the best known Russian
art dealers and previously a public relations
man close to the Kremlin. Gelman is perceived
as a “man of the system” but his attempts at
maintaining at least some measure of artistic
autonomy finally met with disapproval. For a few
years Gelman had been running the museum of
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“Otherness” Targeted
Kremlin’s campaign against “breaching the
norms” is waged not only in the political and
social domain but has also reached the ideological, cultural and even moral sphere. Wielding the
term “traditional values,” this policy stigmatizes
the opponents as a minority for which there
is no place among the “traditionalist majority.”
Fanning up social resentments and intolerance
towards various kinds of “otherness” is Kremlin’s
way of consolidating this part of society, which
is regarded as Putin’s constituency.
The campaign against values-destroying
sabotage was begun by a law which penalizes
“offence against religious feelings.” The law in
fact strengthens the status of the Orthodox
Church, for it is meant to discourage “slandering”
of Church leaders and may silence the mostly
agnostic opposition community, openly critical of
the Kremlin-Church alliance. One of the “lobbyists”
behind the law is supposed to have been Patriarch
Kirill himself, much perturbed by last-year reports
of web users about his wealth—an expensive
watch (not quite successfully “photoshopped
out” of an official photograph) and a luxurious
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suite in the centre of Moscow, where a female
“distant cousin” of the Patriarch was registered
as a tenant.
The next group to be targeted were sexual
minorities. Since 1st July Russian law forbids
“promoting non-traditional sexual behavior
among children.” Even the proponents of these
regulations have trouble with specifying a list
of such behaviors. So far the law has resulted
in deporting a group of Norwegian LGBTI acti­
vists from Russia, who in July tried to organize
a seminar on tolerance towards sexual minorities
in Murmansk. But far more consequential is not
the law itself but the accompanying—and tacitly
supported by the regime—campaign in the media
and the internet, aimed at “deviants.”The main face
of this campaign is the St. Petersburg city councilor Vitaly Milonov, styling himself as an “ultra-orthodox Orthodox” and hunting down various
manifestations of “sacrilege.” But the most extreme
position was taken by the deputy to the TransBaikal provincial assembly, A
­ lexander Mikhailov,
who stated that “homosexuals should have their
backs whipped by Cossacks on public squares in
city centers.” Russia experienced a series of attacks
against actual or alleged gays, including the killing
of a young inhabitant of Volgograd, who decided
on a coming out and was savagely murdered by
his friends. And the infamous neo-Nazi Maxim
Martsinkevich a.k.a “Hatchet,” initiated the creation
of a whole network of lightning brigades practicing a routine called “safari”—hunting down
supposed juvenile gays and then bullying them in
order to “drive homosexuality out of their minds.”
Recordings of these “sessions” make their rounds
on the internet, leading to personal tragedies of
these young people.
The culturally “different,” that is labor migrants
from the former Soviet Union, also take the brunt.
In recent years they have become an indispensable element of the labor market in all major
Russian cities—they perform the worst paid jobs,
they are often exploited by their employers and
lack elementary health and legal care as well as
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acceptable living conditions. But although their
presence is necessary for efficient functioning of
cites and is based on corrupt networks in the immigration agency and municipal services, migrants
are regularly subjected to hate campaigns by
the government. They are denounced by state
television using the term “ethnic crime,” they are
hounded in Moscow by Cossack patrols, they are
attacked by politicians trying to capitalize on social
resentment. Every now and then the authorities
stage spectacular round-ups in migrant communities, and the state TV threatens its ­audience with
a flood of non­‑Russian­‑speaking and culturally
alien migrants and thus increases the already
high level of hostility towards “strangers.” While
diverging attention from acute social problems,
unresolved for years.
Placing the Bets on “Common People”
Confronted with the “loss” of active social
groups, the Kremlin places its bets on this part
of the Russian society, which does not question its course—the Russia of small towns and
villages, inert, uninterested in public matters,
expecting from the authorities only higher
benefits. Placing the bets on “common people”
is becoming an element of a new ideological
triad, a grotesque interpretation of the Tsarist
triad “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.”
Today, autocracy is expressed by the top-down,
centralized, personalized power vested in Putin.
Orthodoxy is symbolized by Kremlin’s alliance
with the Russian Orthodox Church, which is to
promote “traditional” values contrasting with
“Western moral depravity.” And finally, nationality is illustrated by promoting “sound social
forces” by the Kremlin: workers and budget sector
employees from the countryside juxtaposed to
the “decadent” Moscow middle class.
On this “national” wave, the Kremlin is
building a new structure, which is to replace
the discredited United Russia party as its political and social base—the Popular Front movement composed of the working class from the
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towns and villages. The Front is ostentatiously
distancing itself from United Russia associated
with the corrupt Moscow elite. It is to impress
with its scale: it includes several-million-strong
workforces of huge state-owned companies,
arbitrarily registered by their management loyal
to Putin—Russian Railways, Russian Post, the
numerous arms factories, hospitals and schools.
Last year it was announced that the nominal
number of Front members was 40 million, which
met with ironic comments saying that the Front
would soon become more numerous than the
Russian Federation itself.
Konovalov dared to criticize the law on “foreign
agents” and suggested that his ministry will not
be too eager in its implementation. Part of the
Russian elite also criticized the organization of the
parliamentary election (including the actions of
the Electoral Commission) and the Kremlin-sponsored bill banning adoption of Russian orphans
by American citizens—Kremlin needed some
effort to push this bill through. Part of Kremlin’s
old guard (for example Vladislav Surkov and Gleb
Pavlovsky) said openly that the methods used
by presidential administration went too far and
that the return of Putin instead of Medvedev’s
re-election was a political mistake.
Putin’s response to this dissatisfaction was
a reshuffle, which disturbed the traditional
balance of power between various clans within
the elite. Persons unreservedly executing Putin’s
orders or even guessing what he would like to
be done came to the foreground. The intellectual
Surkov was replaced in the role of Kremlin’s main
political strategist by the bureaucrat Vyacheslav
Volodin, advocate of using harsh methods against
opponents and the founding father of the Popular
Front. The President’s administration was backed
up with Putin’s former intelligence comrades,
including its head Sergey Ivanov and Yevgeny
Shkolov, director of the “super-secret service” for
monitoring financial operations, tracing financial transactions of the elite. The Investigative
Committee, run by Putin’s university mate Alexander Bastrykin, became President’s policing
arm. The Committee launched an avalanche
of accusations against officials and politicians
regarded as “insufficiently loyal” to President’s
new policy. The highest-placed victim of this
policy was the former defense minister Anatoly
Serdyukov, accused of numerous instances of
financial fraud in his ministry. On the regional
level, the harshest punishment was meted out to
the governor of the Tula province, sentenced to
nine and a half years in prison for taking bribes.
The president’s administration forced
through—despite the Duma’s resistance—a bill
Hitting at His Own Base
While fighting opponents in this or other form
has always accompanied Putin’s rule, the wave
of repressions against his own political base is
something really new. The media almost daily
report on abuses of power by Moscow ministers
and regional officials, on investigations, arrests,
house searches and questionings, and news in
the main television channels resemble a criminal
chronicle.
One of the aims of such a policy is disguising
the ineffectiveness of the government and shifting
responsibility for still unresolved p
­ roblems—
rampant and growing corruption, very bad state
of infrastructure, failures of flag projects worth
billions of rubles—on subordinates. But it seems
that an even more important reason for this
“shake-up of the ranks” is the growing distrust
of Putin in the loyalty of his own base. Putin’s
announcement in September 2011 that he would
reassume the president’s office met with murmurings of the administration, economic elites, expert
and media communities. After a “more relaxed”
presidency of Medvedev a major part of the elite
expected further liberalization. Putin’s return and
taking a harder course against the opposition, the
third sector and officials exacerbated the dissatisfaction, openly expressed not only by experts
but also by some ministers, especially from
Medvedev’s circle. Justice minister A
­ lexander
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forbidding state administration officials to
have bank accounts abroad and introducing
strict control of their possessions, income and
expenses. The list of possessions created by the
President’s administration is called “the largest
data-base of kompromat [discrediting materials]”
in Russia, meant to help rein in officials, especially those not always staunchly following the
line. The process of passing the bill was accompanied—perhaps not accidentally—by various
scandals connected with revelations about
foreign real estate owned by several deputies
and senators, who subsequently had to resign.
This policy has already been dubbed the “nationalization of the elites”—that is isolating Russian
officials from the West, where they deposit their
money and where their families live, which
makes them reluctant to support these moves
of the Kremlin which they regard as too authoritarian and anti-Western.
pumping natural gas and governed by a tsar and
by his oprichnina. Omnipotent oprichniks wield
gadgets straight out of a sci-fi movie and burn
down properties of disloyal boyars. Also today,
the fundamental principle of the “ruler” is apparently striking fear within his own ranks, forced
to evince unconditional loyalty by the dictum
“he who is not with us, is against us.” Art dealer
Marat Gelman, spitted out by the system, says:
“It is an oprichnina situation when also your own
people should fear. You may declare loyalty for
the president but you cannot feel completely
safe. Everybody is afraid now, and those inside
the elite are even more afraid than those outside.”
Historical analogies employed to describe
Putin’s era invoke both the times of Ivan the
Terrible and the Soviet era of stagnation under
Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. Both these
epochs, aimed at “long existence,” eventually
came to an end. Today the question “what’s after
Putin” keeps recurring, albeit unofficially. As well
as “who’s after Putin.” If we stay with historical
analogies, we could speculate if Putin’s successor
will be someone like Boris Godunov, by the
way a former oprichnik, or rather like Mikhail
Gorbachev, author of the peaceful dismounting
of the system. Intensifying repressions against
the people around Putin may heighten the risk of
a violent reaction of the elites, who increasingly
perceive their leader as a risk factor. Literature
again suggests dramatic (and hopefully exaggerated) scenarios. The short story opening the
most recent book by Sorokin, called “Monoclone,”
presents a tragic end of a NKVD officer, “cheerfully”
retired but caught up by a rather gloomy revenge
for the sins of the past after many years.
Turbulence Ahead
The repressive policy seemingly retrieves
Kremlin’s dominance, silencing the murmurings and weakening many dissatisfied groups.
However, President Putin governs in completely
different conditions today than just a few years
ago, when his rule had solid foundations in
a widespread social support, economic boom
and support of the elites, for whom the president was a distributor of goods and a warrant
of immunity. Today the continued rule and “old
recipes” of Putin generate a growing fatigue, while
speculations about plastic surgeries, which are
to help Putin in stopping time in its course, raise
increasingly sardonic comments. Putin still holds
on to power but the cost of maintaining it has
considerably grown.
Russia is more and more resembling the
image from Day of the Oprichnik, a novel by
Vladimir Sorokin published seven years ago
and today called prophetic by many. It presents
a vision of Russia isolating itself from the world
and separated by a Great Wall, making a living on
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Jadwiga R ogo ż a
expert on Russia, Centre for
Eastern Studies (OSW) in Warsaw
Photo: Bohdan Wedrychowski
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In a Blind Alley
States no longer control the course of events,
politics is a game of appearances. Therefore, the only
solution is unified Europe—says Jacques Rupnik
in conversation with Maciej Nowicki
Let us start with Central Europe. Solidarity
between the countries of the region is virtually non-existent and the crisis even deepened the differences of opinion. Why?
It is striking that the countries of Central
Europe, although they share the same space
and have similar problems, act in completely
different ways. In the case of Hungary, what
I call the populist backlash appeared late but
since the very start in a virulent form. And it
seems that the Hungarian lunacy will not go
away soon. And the Czech Republic is struggling with the legacy of Václav Klaus. Euroscepticism, presented as new realism, is rife among
the elites. Lead articles in the press assume
a europhobic tone, on a par with British tabloids.
As long as Václav Havel was president, a counterweight existed. When he left office in 2003,
only Klaus remained.
Jac q ues R upni k
political scientist and historian, director of research
at the Paris Centre for International Studies and Research
(CERI). In 1977–1982 he worked with the BBC World
Service. Advisor to Václav Havel between 1990 and 1992.
He specializes in the issues of Central and Eastern Europe.
Photo: Forum 2000
And Poland?
This is the only country in the region with
a genuine foreign policy. Slovaks or Hungarians are completely uninterested in geopolitical
problems, while Poland believes that the space
beyond its eastern border is very important,
that relations with Russia are very significant
and that if you want to mean something in the
EU, you cannot endlessly repeat, as Klaus does:
“What you do is wrong. It will end in a disaster” or
pretend that the problem does not exist. Poland
Will that change now? Klaus was replaced
by Miloš Zeman and all signs show that next
year’s elections will be won by the left.
Yes, but does it mean that the Chech
Republic will have a genuine foreign policy?
The Czechs broke with the Habsburg Empire
but they created a new “Austria.” They have the
following principle: we want to be small, wealthy
and quiet. We want to sit in our own corner and
the outside world should not meddle in our
affairs. And we will not meddle either.
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understands that if there will be no Europe,
there will be Germany and Russia. Therefore
it does not intend to follow Orbán and fight
against communism, which collapsed 25 years
ago or to call for bringing Europe down the
way Klaus does.
German ones. In this way it is playing the role of
a country trying to bridge the divide between
Southern and Northern Europe. This is a key issue
for if this divide deepens, the whole European
project will founder.
Is France strong enough to prevent it?
This is the most important element of the
puzzle. The credibility of France depends on
its ability to implement domestic reforms. And
today many people wonder if Hollande is up to
that task. People need a leader. Hollande should
address the nation and say like Churchill did:
“The situation is bad, you cannot ignore it any
longer. We must make cuts on the labor market
and in the social security system. It will hurt.
But I can promise you one thing: we will do it in
such a way that the burdens are shared equally.”
Instead of such a speech we have a scandal with
the Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzak, who
was hiding his money in Swiss bank accounts.
This is a disaster. After all, Cahuzak was supposed
to guarantee that the cuts would be fair.
I will assume the role of the devil’s advocate.
The Czechs keep to their own turf but so far
they earn more than the Poles, have better
productivity and average savings twice as
big. Their social security system and health
care work better than in Poland.
You forget that in the early 20 th century
Poland was a country of poor peasants tending
their small patches of land while Bohemia was
an industrialized country. The hiatus was huge.
And today? In 1995, Czech average earnings
were 73 % of the European average, now it is
80 %. There is some progress but the Poles are
catching up much faster: from 43 % of the European average in 1995 to 61 % now. Slovakia has
made an even more spectacular leap: from 48 %
to 72 %. And in the early 90s the Czech were
afraid that Slovakia would draw them down.
This is why they so enthusiastically welcomed
the “velvet divorce.” In a word, there is nothing
strange in the fact that the quality of living is
higher in the Czech Republic than in Poland.
The opposite would be hugely surprising. But
it does not mean that the Czech strategy has
proven successful.
You stress that France forms a kind of bridge
between the North and the South. From
­Central European perspective this mediating role is seen much less clearly. When
I spoke to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, he told
me that the economically weakened France
perceives Central Europe as one of the sources
of the German economic power. And that it
translates into a distanced French view of the
countries of our region.
France can neither push away nor attract
Central Europe. The French simply have other
problems. But it is true that we are witnessing
a withering away of the French influence in the
region, which I find very unfortunate. The integration of Central Europe mediated by Germany
means the fulfillment of the ominous prophecy
of those who said after 1989: “What will happen
to the region? This will be Mitteleuropa! The
break-up of Czechoslovakia? The Germans will
You said recently of the EU that it is difficult
to put down fires on the peripheries when
the centre is stricken with discouragement.
Let us begin with France. What does the more
and more evident weakness of this country
mean for the EU?
The French-German engine is becoming
a thing of the past. Until recently, Sarkozy met
with Merkel and then they jointly announced
to the rest what their decisions were. Today
Paris is promoting solutions different from the
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benefit from this. The break-up of Yugoslavia?
They are overjoyed. Mitteleuropa will be the
German sphere of influence.” I fought against
such views but it may turn out that this vision
was not completely false. For the first time we
are dealing with a Germany which is both dominant economically in Central Europe and less
interested in partnership with France. There is
a famous saying by Thomas Mann…
voters’ trust amongst all that? The citizens are
constantly hearing: “Politics no longer exists,
you are functioning in the context of globalization, financial markets have a global character,
you are dependent on them.” Politics has been
drained of content, for the left and the right are
forced to do the same things and if they prove
unable to cope, they are sent a Papademos,
like in Greece, or a Monti. If there is a problem
with Spain tomorrow, a Spanish “Monti” will
be delegated there. And this very idea—that
in the times of crisis technocracy must replace
democracy—is reinforcing populism. For today
the paranoid claim of the populists that the elites
concocted a conspiracy aimed at enslaving the
nation may seem true.
Germany has to be pro-European for Europe
not to become German.
Exactly. Today we have both. Therefore, what
Hollande is trying to do is so important: Germany
is playing more egoistically and he attempts to
fulfill the role of a counterweight.
There is also another element—the conspiracy of the banks.
Exactly. Who is behind the elites? Global
financial markets, which pull the strings. The
claim of the populists is false but sometimes
almost irresistible. For the migration of oligarchs
and corporations to tax heavens has assumed
unimaginable proportions.
Formerly you often wrote warningly about
populism in Central Europe. In fact, populist
parties are getting stronger in the “hard core”
of Europe.
Let us not exaggerate. It we take three largest
EU countries, Germany, France and Great Britain,
in every one of them the choice is between two
mainstream forces. Unfortunately, you cannot
say that about Central Europe. Nevertheless, you
are right, populism is growing. In the times of
crisis, the scope for choice has been narrowed
down. For example, what choice do the Greeks
have if their government does not decide on
anything?
In the case of American companies, it is estimated at one trillion seven hundred billion
euro...
And at the same time people are told, we
will liquidate this or that school, for we are in
debt etc. Woody Allen once said: “Just because
you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to
get you.” The fact that the populists are saying
that a conspiracy exists, does not mean that
the problem is not there. It is. Today we are
discovering a different face of globalization,
so much praised in the last 20 years. This is
no longer the end of history, the triumph of
the market, universal bliss. States no longer
control the course of events, politics is a game
of appearances. We found ourselves in a blind
alley. Therefore, I think the only solution is
unified Europe, with the common currency,
Greece is a small country in the backyard of
Europe. But the situation is similar in Italy—
the founding EU country and the third largest
economy in the eurozone. This is why Mario
Monti failed so spectacularly in the last elections. Italians see him as an agent of Berlin
or Brussels.
I have a great respect for Monti but he
was not elected by the citizens but by European technocracy. Governments are assessed
today on the basis of their ability to gain or
keep the trust of the markets. And where is the
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banking union, common banking regulations,
fiscal convergence, common fight against tax
heavens. Something like a European ­federalism.
Today no one wants federalism...
But this is the only way to mean anything in
the global world. Moreover, without federalization more and more people will be saying: “You
burdened us with a triumph of a total market,
where oligarchs and financiers are pulling the
strings. On the one hand you have been using
Europe as a machine for liquidating our nation
states and on the other hand you brought in
immigrants, who took our jobs away. You put us
between a rock and a hard place. Therefore, we
are voting for parties, which are saying ‘no.’”
M acie j N owic k i
is Deputy Editor In Chief of Aspen
Review Central Europe.
Photo: Maciej Nowicki
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Germany Under a Swabian
Housewife’s Baton
Robert Schuster
Politics of chancellor Angela Merkel is often criticized for
not having clear ideological outlines. However,
one needs to see an utterly clear intention of firmly
seizing the political center, and not letting any
other rival in.
change that perception. While 70 % of Germans
were critical of the head of the federal government for her indecisive attitude and the public
were not really convinced by her claim that she
had allegedly first learned of the surveillance
program from the media, this did not make
any dent in her popularity. On the contrary:
her ­Christian Democratic Union (CDU) actually
slightly increased its lead on the opposition Social
Democrats (SPD).
This factor has further contributed to the
feeling many Germans have had over the past few
months, that their Chancellor has been around,
and will be around, forever. Germany has not
experienced anything comparable since the
legendary Helmut Kohl era, although his rule
lasted for full 16 years, i.e. twice as long as Merkel’s
has so far. Unlike Merkel, however, Kohl never
enjoyed long-term popularity among German
politicians.
The discussion around PRISM and the degree
to which the German government and its leader
might have been involved, is both telling and
ironic. The same applies to the Chancellor’s actual
role in Germany’s unusually good economic situ-
Many commentators as well as politicians—
and not just in Europe—have recently treated
Germany as a universal yardstick, commending
the largest country on the old continent for its
outstanding results in respect of key economic
indicators such as economic growth, the rate of
inflation or export capacity. At the same time,
Germany has managed to hold public debt at
bay and keep unemployment down; the country’s
dual education system, with its parallel apprenticeship track, has been described as exemplary
and held out as a model to other European countries grappling with high youth unemployment.
And to cap it all, Germany’s admirers point out,
all this has been accomplished in the midst of the
global economic crisis that many regard as the
greatest disaster of its kind since 1945.
It is only logical that credit for this success
tends to be ascribed to whoever happens to head
the government, as reflected in the pre-election
polls from which the current chancellor, Angela
Merkel, emerged more popular than ever before.
Even the revelation that citizens of Germany and
other European countries have been under US
intelligence surveillance (PRISM) did nothing to
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ation today. Her political style has been described
as indecisive, insufficiently emphatic and lacking
in clear ideological outlines; in other words, she
has proved impossible to pigeon-hole in terms
of being on the Right or on the Left. To a large
extent, Angela Merkel’s actions have certainly
reflected the skepticism with which a large part
of German public views free market mechanisms
and capitalism as such, an attitude that has always
been entrenched in German society, affecting
virtually all key political movements—including
the self-proclaimed right-wing ones. Suffice it to
recall the resistance Merkel met a few years ago
when she proposed to overhaul the tax system
and introduce a flat tax-rate.
On the other hand, Josef Joffe, publisher
of the Germany weekly Die Zeit, referred to
Angela Merkel in an interview as the first real,
i.e. quintessential post-modern politician, one
who constantly adjusts her palette of political
themes and solutions to public demand. In Joffe’s
view we live in times when people want politics
to leave them alone and not push them into
anything, something he believes reflects the
modern Weltanschauung. That explains why
Merkel, unlike her predecessor Gerhard Schröder
and his Agenda 2010, has not come up with any
groundbreaking reform ideas of whose benefits
she would have to convince her fellow citizens.
However, Joffe believes that at the same time
postmodern politics has to continually rearrange
and restock what its imaginary shopping trolley
has to offer the electorate.
Former British labor minister for European
Affairs Denis MacShane has given a substantive
assessment of the practical impact of Chancellor
Merkel’s economic and reform policies. In late
July, in a commentary for the German daily Die
Welt, he summed up reform policy à la Merkel as
“Merkelnomics.“ He didn’t go as far as to categorically condemn her policies or dismiss them as
completely erroneous—in fact, he did admit that
Merkel was right to strive for a reduction of public
debt. Nevertheless, he reproached the German
Chancellor for a policy that was too rigid and
short on ideas, claiming that her main instrument,
i.e. public debt reduction, was to blame for the
sluggish growth within the EU and hampered
further economic development.
Objectively speaking, one has to admit that
in pursuit of their political goals no chancellor in
Germany’s postwar history has acted differently.
Not even Gerhard Schröder, who may have gone
further than anyone else on the path of reform.
In fact, a look back at the Social Democrat
Schröder suggests interesting parallels with
Merkel. The seven years Schröder spent at the
helm of the German government, can be roughly
divided into three phases. Phase one, immedi-
Angela Merkel
is the first real,
i.e. quintessential postmodern politician, one
who constantly adjusts
her palette of political
themes and solutions
to public demand.
The response to the German Chancellor’s
performance has been quite mixed. Writing in
the New York Times in the summer of 2012, US
historian Steven Ozment suggested that Angela
Merkel’s actions reflect her Protestant background
and “her politics draws unmistakably from an
austere and self-sacrificing, yet charitable and fair,
Protestantism.” Merkel herself has for years used
a metaphor, comparing her political style to that
of a Swabian housewife (“Schwäbische Hausfrau“).
The Swabians of southern Germany are famous for
being resourceful, frugal rather than spendthrift,
and for making sure they put a little money aside
at the end of each month for a rainy day.
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ately after he took office, was marked by an
almost headlong rush to push through, in the
shortest possible time, the Red-Green coalition
government’s key political projects, including,
for example, a new law on state citizenship, or
the decision to phase out all German nuclear
power plants. The second phase, by contrast,
was characterized by the so-called “steady hand
politics“ (Politik der ruhigen Hand): its main tenet
was avoiding a rash response to short-term fluctuations in the country’s economic development.
In spite of this, or maybe precisely because of it,
Schröder was eventually able to embark on his
third, reformist phase and push through Agenda
2010, a comprehensive reform of the welfare
state. On the one hand, this indirectly cost him
the office of federal chancellor and his Social
Democratic party has yet to recover from the
shock caused by the defection of hundreds of
members to the post-communist Left. On the
other hand, these days no one—including Christian Democrats—would doubt that Germany has
benefited from Schröder’s policies.
Some analysts predict that something
similar—something that might be called a period
of austerity—lies ahead for Germany in the near
future even though Chancellor Merkel managed
to clear her desk of all „unfinished business“
well before the September election: the 2014
budget, drafted by her Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schäuble, envisages a balance between income
and expenditure, which meets the formal criteria
of a balanced budget. The euro crisis, or the question of rescuing the euro—originally expected to
dominate the September election—is now hardly
a topic of discussion in Germany. Merkel actually
declared the euro saved as early as last December,
at the last Christian Democrat convention.
However, this may be only the calm before the
storm. In fact, there is a danger that Germany’s old
commitments will come home to roost in the foreseeable future. First and foremost, these include
the cost of bailing out several German banks that
got into trouble through their involvement in
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risky financial operations with non-transparent
financial derivatives. The estimated cost, running
to 23 billion euros, has not yet been officially
reflected in Germany’s books. The country will
have to write off further billions linked to the
earlier bailout of Greece. However, the greatest
disaster would be if the German economy ceased
to grow, as short-term economic forecasts predict.
If the economic situation in EU member countries does not improve, German companies will
lose out on the export market. At the same time,
should the other European countries embark
on a slow road to economic recovery, financial
market investors will be less willing to lend money
to the German government and to buy German
bonds, on which they could expect to pay very
low or even zero interest rates until recently.
As mentioned earlier, the German Chancellor’s policies lack clear ideological outlines.
However, this is not the result of her inability to
articulate binding political doctrines but rather
an obvious reflection of her determination to
However, the greatest
disaster would be
if the German economy
ceased to grow,
as short-term economic
forecasts predict.
position herself firmly in the political middle
ground (which can be identified with the social
middle ground) and not allow any rival anywhere
near it. Among other things, this tactic provides
great flexibility in articulating a political agenda.
One might go so far as to say that there hasn’t
been a big issue that Merkel has not recently
“pinched“ from a rival party. It began years ago
with family policy: having championed the traditional family model for decades her party
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suddenly opened itself to alternative forms of
cohabitation and also lent its support to the
enlargement of the network of kindergartens
and nursery schools, whose advocates had previously been on the Left. Following the Fukushima
nuclear accident Merkel changed her position
on nuclear energy overnight and decided that
Germany would phase out all its reactors, thus
taking the wind out of the Greens’ sails. This seems
to be going down rather well with the German
public. According to internal polling carried out
by the Christian Democrats and published in the
German press, as many as 30 % of Social Democrat voters and up to 10 % of supporters of the
Greens can imagine voting for CDU. This is also
why the election program of the largest ruling
party now includes the promise to introduce
a minimum wage and regulate rents. A further
side effect of these kinds of promises has been
an indirect boost to Germany’s Free Democrats
(FDP). In recent years, their party has quite regularly hovered just below the five per cent mark
it needs to cross to be represented in the federal
parliament. There is some political logic to this:
the more the CDU expands into the space left of
the centre, the more room it clears for the Liberals.
In addition, Angela Merkel made it quite clear
before the election that she was interested in
continuing her government cooperation with
the FDP, forcefully rejecting any speculation of
a potential political alliance with the Greens.
On the other hand, by shifting to the left
the Christian Democrats have opened up some
space for a potential coalition with the Social
Democrats—in case their favored alliance with
the Liberals lacks the requisite majority or if the
FDP fails to make it into parliament. In the past,
the Christian Democrats have found themselves in
this situation in a number of regional parliaments,
having gained a formal victory in the respective
Land elections but, since their preferred government ally didn’t gain a seat in the parliament
while Social Democrats and the Greens held the
majority of seats, they have often ended up in
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opposition. Trying to form a grand coalition with
the SPD has thus often been their only option to
participate in government.
Incidentally, the two largest parties in the
country—the Christian Democrats and the Social
Democrats—might also end up dependent
on each other even if they should not create
a formal coalition government since—in line
with an unwritten rule of German political life—
after a while, two different majorities tend to
emerge in the two chambers of parliament. That
means that the party that wins the majority in
the Bundestag (Federal Diet) eventually finds
itself facing a different majority in the Bundesrat
(Federal Council). And since one chamber of
the parliament cannot outvote the other, the
two largest parties in the country are forced
to reach an agreement. Sometimes this entails
only a compromise in the form of an agreement
on the lowest common denominator. Which is
rather in keeping with the spirit of a Swabian
housewife.
R obert S chuster
Managing Editor
Aspen Review Central Europe
Photo: Kamila Schusterová
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The Ukraine
in the Land of Freedom
Paweł Kowal
Will the Ukraine sign an association agreement with
the European Union in November 2013 in Vilnius?
If it happens, this country will be closest to political
and legal unity with the European continent
in its entire history
Since 22 years independent Ukraine exists
on the map of Europe—inside the best possible
borders for itself, with regulated legal relations
with its neighbors. The state for which not
too many had waited passed the test of time.
Its particular parts originate from various political
traditions and administrative cultures: Russian,
Austrian-Hungarian, Polish, Soviet. Also in the
ethnic, religious and confessionary sense the
Ukraine is not a monolith. And yet in crucial
moments, when the fate of the Ukrainian country
was at stake, the citizens proved to be up to the
challenge: it was so both in 1991 during the referendum on independence and in 2004 during the
Orange Revolution.
They managed to make the use of the
Ukrainian language widespread, to create their
own military, currency and diplomatic network
and to strengthen their international position.
Compared to other former Soviet republics the
Ukraine may boast that elections there are relatively free—the Ukrainians change their regime
at the polls. In line with Western expectations, the
new state abandoned the possession of nuclear
arms. In cooperates with NATO and with ­European
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Union countries under the Eastern Partnership
and is close to signing the association agreement with the EU, a document, which in terms
of harmonizing Ukrainian law with the European
Union almost equals full membership. So what
has failed, since the situation of the Ukraine
raises so many reservations? Who has not passed
the test?
Kuchma’s Triangle
The Ukraine entered the land of freedom with
participation of independent political communities—the National Movement of the Ukraine,
writers and dissidents. In theory, it had the potential to build an independent country based not
only on the nomenklatura elite. But Ukrainian
dissident elites soon proved too weak to impose
their terms of the country’s development. The
development of the party scene under the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk was interrupted by his
successor—the Ukraine did not evolve a type of
democracy based on party-political game typical
for the West, where parties are freely competing
for power. Former dissidents either receded
into the background of public life or decided to
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cooperate with Leonid Kuchma, who strengthened his position on the political scene through
blocking the development of the party system.
But he also strengthened the position of the state
against Russia and supported a pro-European
and pro-NATO course.
Kuchma introduced the model of the party of
power, which thanks to its access to the highest
offices, means of coercion and capital plays the
crucial role in the system, does not make specific
policy proposals to particular social groups
but is perceived as the only actor capable of
governing the country. Just like in Russia, in the
post-Soviet Ukraine appeared a group of people
who in the twilight years of the Soviet Union
became managers of state-owned companies.
It happened in the period of moving towards
more market-based rules governing the economy.
The Comsomol and Communist Party networks,
as well as the support of special forces allowed
this group to privatize a significant part of the
assets they were controlling. If it went hand in
hand with entrepreneurial talents and access
to the new political elite, in numerous cases it
produced surprisingly good financial results.
The triangle: officials (administration)—­
politicians—business, under Kuchma became
the foundation for the Ukrainian oligarchic
system. The president initially consolidated his
power and later, when his position got somewhat
weaker, he became a kind of stabilizer of the
influence of particular oligarchs. He balanced the
impact of the largest groups: the Kyiv, Donetsk
and Dnipropetrovsk clans. The crucial element
of the political and economic game around him
was the possibility to sell natural gas and oil and
the right to transport these resources through
Ukrainian territory.
numerous opposition gathered around Victor
Yushchenko and Julia Timoshenko. They gained
social support expressed in mass demonstrations
calling for repeating the vote. Some representatives of great capital—especially those magnates
whose position was still in the making—joined
the protest movement. It also gained support
of a large part of the international community,
including the United States and the European
Union. International negotiators, Polish president
Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Lithuanian president
Valdas Adamkus and EU High Representative
Javier Solana participated in working out a constitutional compromise in Kyiv and consequently
in ending the political crisis.
The program of those protesting against
Kuchma was based on the publicly stated promise
of speeding up the European journey of the
Ukraine. Responsibility for fulfilling this promise
was assumed by politicians mostly originating
from the political and business circle around
Kuchma but at some stage they distanced themselves from the—former by then—president.
In order to understand correctly the successive
developments, we must realize that the architects
of the Ukraine’s new course were recent associates
of Kuchma, such as Julia Timoshenko. They were
perfectly familiar with the mechanisms of the
oligarchic economy but in the years preceding,
the revolution they were even willing to risk
prison in their fight against Kuchma.
Another key issue is to correctly interpret the
2004 revolution. The domestic program of the
revolution was a catalogue of expectations of
the middle class in its Eastern European version.
From this point of view in contemporary Ukraine
orange turned out to be the color of the bourgeoisie.
The emotional layer of the Orange R
­ evolution,
which in the symbolic sphere had the nature
of a bloodless national uprising, took shape
among Ukrainian national symbols. The movement was led by Yushchenko, personifying the
“perfect Ukrainian.” He came from Sum, that is
Orange—the Color of Bourgeoisie
An attempt at an unlawful guaranteeing the
influence of one business group through making
Victor Yanukovych president, despite the fact that
he lost the 2004 election, mobilized the not very
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from a central region of the country, he spoke
Ukrainian but was an Orthodox, and as a former
president of the Ukrainian National Bank and
former prime minister under Kuchma he personified the ability to communicate with all political
forces. He was not owned by this or other part
of the Ukraine and he was not associated with
the conspicuous wealth of the oligarchs. Highly
regarded in the West, he embodied the dreams
of the Ukrainians about a good hero from an old
Ruthenian fable who brings liberation.1
The pragmatic layer of the political program
of the revolution announced an opportunity for
those who had not received it in the oligarchic
system of Kuchma. Managers and intelligentsia
were looking at the Orange camp with a hope
for opportunities for enriching themselves, to
pursue their personal wellbeing. You can say that
the more power and real profits was captured by
the revolutionized bourgeoisie as a result of the
Orange revolt, the more the Ukraine would have
moved towards the West.
a year or so the slow pace of change and violent
conflicts within the Orange camp seemed
a normal element of the political landscape
in Kyiv and contributed to what we could call
Ukraine fatigue. The Orange rule did not eliminate corruption or even limited it, and it did
not undermine the oligarchic system in politics
and economy. It became a symbol of continuity
that after some initial trouble Victor Yanukovych
retained the privilege of living in a government
villa when he left the post of prime minister and
his main rival Victor Yushchenko kept residing in
a presidential villa in the centre of Kyiv after the
2010 elections, which he lost. Transfers between
the old and new regime were so intense that the
post-revolutionary impression of “new reality
coming” quickly went into oblivion.
Permanent achievements of 2004 were relatively free elections and an enlarged scope of
freedom of expression. In a positive reading the
Orange Revolution remained unfinished, the
plans for changing the system are still waiting
to be implemented. In a more negative interpretation, we witnessed a betrayal on the part of the
elites, which abandoned the program presented
to the demonstrators on the Maidan during the
bitter cold in 2004. One more thing remained from
the Revolution: the support, and in the West of
the country even longing of the Ukrainian society
for “being in Europe.”
In 1991, the Ukrainian citizens said: we want
our own country, different from the Soviet Union.
When Kuchma took power in 1994, pro-independence Ukrainian elites gave him their support.
In the name of various goals and causes they
abandoned their program of democratization
and change. A decade later the Ukrainians
invested their hopes in elections and the possibility of replacing the regime with a better one.
The elites failed again and the West quickly forgot
how delighted it had been with the Maidan.
The Western choice of the Ukraine will not be
realized just by the sheer will of the Kyiv people
or the votes of the Ukrainians at the polls. Another
A Historical Mistake of the West
The events of 2004 in Kyiv were comprehensible for the Kyiv elites—the call to change the
political and economic system and to strengthen
the Ukrainian character of the state was clear.
They were comprehensible also for the West—
as demands of citizens who wanted to have an
impact on how their country is governed. They
were clear in the symbolic sphere, they brought
to mind the events from the late 1980s, called the
third wave of democratization by Huntington.
They brought to mind Solidarity or the Velvet
Revolution in Prague. But the initial interest of
the West in Kyiv did not translate into a quick
offer of abolishing visas for Ukrainians travelling
to EU countries or quick signing of the association agreement. Gunter Verheugen describes
the post-revolutionary lack of an offer for Kyiv
as a historical mistake of the West.
The new regime in Kyiv rapidly started to
provide arguments for Western reserve: in just
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necessary element is the determination of Kyiv
elites, a change in their thinking and support of
the West. This support should find expression
in an official integration of the Ukraine with the
EU—in recognition that the Ukrainians have the
same rights as the rest of the Europeans.
became an asset, an opportunity for keeping
an “equal distance,” for “being in-between” and
so on. This way of thinking was the bane of both
Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Ivan Skoropadsky.
It is usually your neighbors that push you into
being a buffer—Russia is probably interested in
keeping the Ukraine in this role. If we look at the
last centuries of shaping of the Ukrainian statehood, we will see that only during Yeltsin’s rule
the Ukraine gained some time to freely choose
its geopolitical direction and build its state
­structures. The whole policy of Vladimir Putin
is a great comeback to rebuilding the empire,
which—as ­Aleksander Kwaśniewski said after
the Orange Revolution—cannot exist without
the Ukraine.
Russia looks at the Ukrainian game in geopolitical terms. In order to bring the Ukraine under
the rein of “pax Ruthenica,” it is ready to use any
possible means: religion, the tradition of the Holy
Ruthenia,3 gas supplies, culture. The EU looks at
the Ukrainian game in tactical terms. The leaders
of EU countries follow opinion polls on EU
enlargement and eliminate anything resembling it from their actions—and the association
agreement does resemble enlargement. Given
this disparity of determination levels between
Russia and the EU, the pro-European party in the
Ukraine is structurally doomed to weakness and
lack of adequate support.
A New Magdeburg Law
In the Middle Ages the Magdeburg Law
regulated internal relations in the cities of
Central Europe; its adoption offered a chance
for development and prosperity. Thanks to the
Magdeburg Law Chernichov, Lviv or Kyiv created
a class of wealthy burghers, they could afford
to build churches and sponsor works of art.
A legal impulse for change was necessary but it
came from the outside, from the West. Today’s
Ukraine needs not so much an injection of cash,
aid programs or, God forbid, EU bureaucracy.
It needs a new Magdeburg Law in the shape of
the association agreement with the EU.
The experiences of the last 20 years are unambiguous—the Ukraine is unable to make this step
on its own. But the decision “we go West” must
be taken by the Ukrainians themselves.
But here the greatest weakness of independent Ukraine becomes an obstacle—the complex
of being a buffer. A buffer, a grey zone that is
a state or territory between great powers, for
the big players is a guarantee of maintaining the
status quo, and sometimes peace. For the citizens
of the buffer state it usually means a number of
restrictions, which do not allow them to furnish
their country well, in line with their ambitions,
so that their life would be as comfortable as in
metropolitan capitals of great powers.2 Those
wanting to go West did not have political influence or quickly lost it. They were replaced by
leaders who decided to go along with the general
belief of the Ukrainians that it is better to have
good relations with both the West and the East.
The buffer status, in the general opinion of political scientists, not the best possible development
model, in Ukrainian political debate suddenly
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No One is Waiting for the Ukraine?
Perhaps the problem of the Ukraine with
the West is also that no one waited for it when
it was coming into being. Poland was awaited,
as was Hungary, as was the Czech Republic. Only
a handful saw the emergence of an independent
state with the capital in Kyiv as the dismantling
of the Russian empire, most perceived it as
a prelude to destabilization. And no one likes
lack of stability.
The beginnings of Ukrainian independence
more than two decades ago: in 1990 Margaret
Thatcher arrived in Kyiv and announced that
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the Ukraine should be for Russia what Texas
was for the United States. In July 1991 Helmut
Kohl warned the Ukrainians that they should not
destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union.4
He reported on his conclusions from his talks
with Gorbachev and the Ukrainian authorities to
the US president.5 The West did not understand
the processes unraveling in the Ukraine, the key
factors for Western leaders were stability and
concern for the position of the failing Gorbachev.
On 1 August 1991 George Bush arrived in Kyiv
and delivered the famous “Kyiv Chicken Speech”
in the Supreme Council, to a large extent written
by the young Condoleezza Rice. In the context of
the renascent national feeling of the Ukrainians
he talked about the dangers of nationalism. On 24
August 1991 84 % of the Ukrainians voted for
independence in a referendum. To say that Bush
did not grasp the atmosphere in Kyiv would be
a gross understatement.
Just as it was two decades ago, the EU is today
unable to read the Ukrainian moment and offer
a timely reaction. And thus we return to the
problem of Ukrainian leadership. Instances of
Western unconcern encourage Ukrainian elites to
abandon their responsibility for their country. “It
is them, not us”—such an approach dominates in
the descriptions of Ukrainian transformation failures. In fact it is the leaders of the Ukraine as we
know it today—Blue in government and Orange
in the opposition—who must overcome their own
laziness, stop explaining things away with public
opinion, geopolitics, spurious R
­ ealpolitik aimed
at keeping the country suspended “in-between.”
Are they going to shake off the buffer complex
and achieve the signing of the association agreement with the European Union in Vilnius (on
28–29 November 2013)? If it happens, the Ukraine
will be the closest to political and legal unity with
the European continent in its entire history, and
definitely since the 17th century. A great test is
coming—if the Ukraine has made good use of
its 22 years of independence.
P awe ł Kowal
historian, commentator, associate
professor at the Institute of Political
Studies of the Polish Academy
of Sciences. Politician, deputy
to the European Parliament.
Photo: Dariusz Senkowski
1 Anders Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington
D.C. 2009, s. 107–111.
2 See Adam Lelonek, „Geopolityka Ukrainy—między buforowością, finlandyzacją a Zachodem”, (2012), pp. 3–4, mps made available to the author.
3 Andrzej Talaga, „Ukraina potrzebuje własnego mitu”, http://www.rp.pl/artykul/1035613-Ukraina-potrzebuje-wlasnego-mitu.html
(accessed 4 August 2013).
4 See Włodzimierz Sołowiej, „Polityka zagraniczna Ukrainy wobec Unii Europejskiej i Rosji”, (2012), p. 2, mps made available to the author.
5 Memorandum of a telephone conversation of the President with Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany, on July 8, 1991 http://bushlibrary.
tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991–07–08--Kohl.pdf (accessed 4 August 2013).
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What Awaits the Ukraine?
Yaroslav Hrytsak
A new and more European Ukraine may be expected if
positions of power start to be occupied by the generation
of the “peers of Ukrainian independence.” This is going
to happen if the most active from this generation do not
emigrate and do not allow themselves to be corrupted
I was asked to assess where, in what place
the Ukraine finds itself now, after 22 years of
independence, and hence what may be expected
in the next 20 years. I have formulated a similar
prognosis before. At that time (in 2008) it could
be reduced to three points:1
times, returned to or even exceeded the prerevolutionary level. And all this against the backdrop of arguments about language and history,
which almost literally rip the country apart and
increase the fears (or hopes, depending on who
we are dealing with) of a possible break-up of
the country. To some extent, today’s situation of
the Ukraine resembles that of Poland during the
Martial Law. Just as it was then, many people have
a sense of defeat and helplessness. It was said
then that a band of gangsters broke into a lunatic
asylum. In today’s Ukraine, the word “gangsters” is
not a metaphor: many members of the ruling elite,
including Yanukovych himself, have a criminal
past. And regardless of the personal history of
one or another highly placed official the regime
as a whole behaves like a mafia-like structure.
No one feels safe in this country. The position of
the Ukraine in almost all global rankings is falling.
To quote the classic: there have been worse
times but there have been no more ignoble ones.2
The question I should answer in such circumstances is: has the time come to change my
­prognosis?
the Ukraine will remain an independent state
(that is it will not disappear from the map of
the world, as some analysts predicted);
most probably it will remain within its current
borders (that is it will not break up);
it will join the European Union (if the Union
itself does not collapse until then).
This prognosis was formulated after the
victory of the Orange Revolution. Now, after
its fiasco, times have changed. Once the “counterrevolutionary” Victor Yanukovych assumed
power (2010), the Ukraine increasingly started
to resemble the neighboring Belarus and Russia:
Opposition leaders are in prison or seek refuge
abroad; journalists are once more beaten or
even killed; national assets are appropriated
by the elites headed by the Yanukovych family;
corruption, not much reduced in the Orange
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Methodology
Asked to predict the future, a historian should
explain why he or she is an adequate person to
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undertake this task: historians are not prophets
and what they know best is the past; moreover,
history is full of fits, starts, and unexpected turns,
so the future is impossible to predict. Leszek
Kołakowski once wrote an excellent essay on this
subject and his argumentation may be reduced
to one claim: in historical research, there is no
explanatory method.3
Kołakowski summed up the crashing
failure of the “noble dream” of 20 th-century
historians, namely to turn history into a true
science—meaning one which reveals the laws
and tendencies of social development hidden
from the human eye. After the fall of the Annales
School and the discrediting of Marxism in
1970–1980, contemporary historians would
be embarrassed to speak about historical laws.
They avoid speaking about long-term processes
and macrostructures. If earlier they looked at
the past through a telescope, now their favored
instrument is the microscope. Historians not only
shrink from generalizations—instead of studying
actual processes, they look into how they are
reflected in human minds. This is why the titles
of their works are full of such words as “notion” or
“invention” (of nations, traditions and so on), and
it also explains the dominance of the irritating
research on historical memory.
But many a historian nurses a hope that
today’s crisis of history will not last forever and
that it is coming to an end.4 We may agree that
there are no laws in history. But perhaps it can
at least show some social tendencies? And these
tendencies, even if they do not lift the veil of
the future for us, will at least help us to think
strategically.
So far this hope is coming true, not so much
in history but in other social sciences: political
science and economic history. The classics of
each of them, such as Robert Putnam5 or David
Landes,6 independently came to the conclusion
that “history/culture matters,” the development
of a given country depends on its historical/
cultural heritage. For there is something like
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path­‑dependency: where you arrive depends
on where you began your journey.
For me as a historian the most convincing
is the sociological study called “World Values
Survey.”7 Marc Bloch once compared historians
to cannibals: both groups feed on human flesh.8
Historians do not care much for great theoretical schemes. They want to be given empirical
material, from specific human flesh and blood.
The study I quoted above perfectly meets this
criterion, for it is fully empirical. Its conclusions
are based on results of surveys started back in
the 1980s and repeated several times later, and
now they cover all countries of the world except
for a few states in Asia and Africa. After the fall of
communism the survey was also conducted in
Poland,9 Russia, the Ukraine and other post-communist countries—so today we are able to
compare the results.
The respondents were asked very specific
questions, for example, what they think about
abortion or homosexuality. Who do they trust and
to what extent? How often do they go to Church?
The answers were statistically processed for each
country. The project is based on a hypothesis
formulated by a sociologist from Michigan,
Ronald Inglehart, that the quality of our live is
related to what truly and deeply motivates our
actions—that is to our values. This hypothesis
has been confirmed: the map based on survey
results has shown that “values are spread like
butter.” Societies with established traditional and
survival-directed values are usually located in
the group with the lowest per capita GDP. And
vice versa—countries where self-expression and
(often although not always) secular values are
highly esteemed are the wealthiest.
What is the cause and what is the result of this
correlation, do values determine the quality of life
or the other way round? This cannot be established
beyond any doubt. It resembles the chicken and
the egg conundrum. But what is important in the
context of our reflections, this correlation has a clear
historical dimension. The principal factors defining
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The Ukraine on the Values Map
In its history, the Ukraine has been unlucky
in all three respects: it belongs to the area of
Eastern Christianity, it belonged to a problematic
empire from the point of view of modernization
and communism in the Ukraine assumed the
most savage form. The last issue is not limited to
the famine in 1932–33 and regular repressions
against Ukrainian intelligentsia, for there was
also the systematic destruction of civil society,
the strength of which constituted one of the
fundamental historical differences between the
Ukraine and Russia, and there was also the deliberate isolation of the Ukraine and reducing it
to a provincial role, which turned it into a kind
of Albania the size of France. All these factors
combined led to the replacement of savage
communism with savage capitalism and the
“shock without therapy.” The system changed,
the savageness remained.
In any case historical heritage a different
development trajectory predicts for the Ukraine—
different than in, let us say, the neighboring
Poland or Lithuania. This trajectory oscillates
between two poles—on the one hand there is
the scenario of the downfall of the Ukraine as
a state, with a split into a Ukrainian-speaking
West and Russian-speaking East (the famous “two
Ukraines” theory) and a possible integration of
the latter with Russia, and on the other hand
there is the scenario of slow “change without
movement, movement without change” (or, as
Alexander Motyl once summed up this development scenario: langsamabersicher11). The Ukraine
is still struggling with these two extremes and it
seems to be closer to the second pole. Come what
may, fast and effective changes in the Ukraine
do not seem (for the time being?) possible, as
witnessed, for example, by the failure of the
Orange Revolution.
But history is not a prison. It may limit possibilities of development but does not preclude
it. With its historical experience after 1991, the
Ukraine had no chance for becoming similar not
the position of a given country on the values map
are related to history. The most important among
them is religion.10 Unavoidably simplifying a bit,
we could say that if someone wants to be happy
and rich, he or she should be born in a Christian
country (the most important exception from this
rule are Confucian countries); among Christian
countries, the indices are better for those belonging
to the tradition of Western rather than Eastern
Christianity and among Western Christian countries
Protestant ones are faring better than Catholic
ones (Max Weber was right, as we can see).
The second factor is the empire you once belonged
to. As it turns out, states originating from the former
British Empire, regardless of the seas and oceans
separating them, have very similar (high) indices,
while the countries from the two remaining
empires, Spanish and Russian, were pushed by
history somewhere to the sidelines of economic
and cultural development. And finally the third
rule, which sounds almost ridiculously simple: it is
better not to have a communist legacy than to
have it. In 1990 the distance between East and
West Germany on the values map was greater than
between East Germany and Estonia or Bohemia
(see the figure below).
Source: Ronald Ingelhart, Wayne E.Baker, “Modernization,
Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,”
American Sociological Review 65, no 1 (Feb., 2000): 24.
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only to Germany but also to the neighboring
Poland. But it may become similar to Bulgaria
and Romania—countries with Eastern Christian
tradition which managed to join the European
Union.
That history is not a prison is confirmed by
the research quoted. Because the study was
conducted in a number of waves—in the early
1980s until early 2010s—the material for comparisons and generalizations covers the period of
almost thirty years. And this material clearly
demonstrates that countries can and do change
their development trajectories. In some cases,
the changes have the character of great leaps—
as in Poland or East and West Germany in the
1990s. In other places, for example in Russia and
Belarus, we are dealing with a regression (see
map below), which shows, among other things,
that coming to power by such people as
Lukashenko or Putin was not only the result of
political manipulations, but it rather reflected
profound changes in the social awareness.12
elite having the political will to enforce systemic
reforms. Some of these reforms involve changes
of values, for the elite has access to such valueshaping instruments as the educational system
and the media (this may explain, among other
things, the failure of Micheil Saakashvili’s reforms
in Georgia: it seems that the radical changes
“from above” were not backed up by adequate
changes in the system of values “at the bottom”).
The alternative evolutionary scenario is implemented through generational change. The global
values survey covered eight age groups: from
people born before 1921 to those born after 1980,
with ten-year intervals. The general dynamics
shows that all countries except for African ones,
regardless of their history, move towards secular­
‑rational values and self-expression together with
generational change.
Prognoses
How does the Ukraine look from this perspective? It was included in the global values survey
relatively late, in the early 2000s. Since that time
the survey had two further installments,13 in 2008
and 2010–2012, but the data from the last one
are not available yet. But comparison of results
from early 2000s and 200814 clearly shows that in
this decade the Ukraine was moving in the “right”
direction. This movement was particularly visible
against the background of the almost immobile
Belarus and Russia. Moreover, the Ukraine got
close to the external border of the “Russian world”
and if this movement will go on by force of inertia
(we will not be able to verify this until the data
from 2012 are published), it may even leave this
world. In this context the feverish efforts of President Putin and the head of the Russian Orthodox
Church, Patriarch Cyril, to bring the Ukraine back
to the “Russian fold,” assume a special significance:
these dignitaries feel that the moment is remarkable, for in a few years similar actions may no
longer make sense. On the other hand, the fact
that despite deep internal divisions a consensus
around the European integration emerged within
Source: Ronald Ingelhart, Wayne E.Baker, “Modernization,
Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,”
American Sociological Review 65, no 1 (Feb., 2000): 40.
So we can venture certain generalizations
regarding the circumstances and conditions for
these trajectory changes. The first scenario, revolutionary one, is that power is assumed by an
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the Ukrainian elites, finds reflection (and support)
in an adequate shift of socially shared values. And
this allows us to hope that regardless of whether
the Ukrainian government succeeds in signing the
association agreement with the European Union
before this year is out, the integrative ambitions
of the Ukraine will remain unchanged.
Even greater hopes in this area are warranted
by results of surveys among the Ukrainian youth.
In the Ukraine the younger and more educated
you are, the more you want to be part of Europe.
Young age and good education are to the largest
extent combined in the age group called by
commentators the “peers of the Ukrainian independence”—they are young Ukrainians born in
1980–1990 and later as well as those who made
their electoral debut in 2010–2012. The E­ uropean
Values Survey (2008) shows that a kind of a generational gap has sprung up in the Ukraine: young
Ukrainians from the 15–24 group are closer in the
values they believe in to their peers from Slovakia,
Poland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Greece
than to older Ukrainians from the 50–59 group.15
In other words, if we are to formulate a prognosis on what may happen to the Ukraine in the
next twenty years, one of the likely scenarios will
be the following: when the generation of the
“peers of the Ukrainian independence” will turn
35–45, that is achieve an age when people start
to take up leadership positions in public institutions, we may expect a new, more E­ uropean,
“normal” Ukraine. For this scenario to come true,
at least two conditions must be met: the most
active representatives of this generation cannot
emigrate and those who stay may not allow themselves to be corrupted and become similar to the
current Ukrainian political elite.
Both threats are very real. The problem is not
limited to lower living standards—even compared
to the neighbors—and high unemployment rate,
discouraging young people from tying their own
future with the future of their country. In my
opinion, the main problem is the high level of
corruption, which makes Ukraine a rich country
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(based on natural resources) of (mostly) poor
people. Corruption is omnipresent and pervades
all spheres of life. One of the most corrupt areas
is education—both on the primary and secondary
level and (perhaps mostly) on the university level.
And education is a natural habitat for the young,
so Ukrainian youth cannot be free from
­corruption. The survey from 2010 showed that
in the opinion of university students from Kyiv—
one of the most numerous and most important
groups of educated Ukrainian youth—professionalism and leadership qualities do not guarantee success in the Ukraine. They believe that
personal connections are much more important
and the method for success is to “do less but get
more.”16
It is not impossible
that a number of
changes will take
place in the Ukraine
before developments
lead to a measure of
political stability and
emergence of a new
quality in the Ukrainian
politics.
Conclusions
The situation of the Ukraine cannot be unambiguously described. As one of Western analysts
recently put it: “The Ukraine is never as good or
as bad as you think it is.” What is happening in
the Ukraine and with the Ukraine must irritate or
disappoint. But the “path-dependency” perspective shows that the situation is not hopeless.
For all we have said, in-depth and therefore
not very visible changes in values do occur in the
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We will not find the answer to this question
in academic discussions but it is important at
least to formulate the question well. For I am
convinced that the lack of good answers for the
Ukraine results above all from the lack of good
questions. And historians have something to say
in this matter—as I attempted to prove here. Ukraine. Seizing power by Lukashenko in Belarus
or by Putin in Russia resulted from some deep
changes in both countries. And in view of the
in-depth transformations in the Ukraine the rule
of Yanukovych seems an aberration. After every
failed revolution, there is a period of counter­
revolution. But history rarely ends in a counter­
revolution, just as history does not end in general.
It is not impossible that a number of changes will
take place in the Ukraine before developments
lead to a measure of political stability and emergence of a new quality in the Ukrainian politics.
Ihor Shevchenko, professor at Harvard and
a well-known specialist in Byzantium, before his
death in December 2009 predicted: Assuming
power by an authoritarian regime in the Ukraine
is inevitable. The fundamental challenge for the
Ukraine will be to show if in the first 20 years of
independence it has created enough normal,
“European” institutions, leaders and movements
to cope with the authoritarian disease.
Jaroslav H rytsa k
Ukrainian historian, director of the
Institute of Scientific Research at the
Lviv University, professor of the Central
European University in Budapest,
head of the Department of Ukrainian
History at the Ukrainian Catholic
University in Lviv
Photo: Vitalij Grabar
1 See the Kyiv periodical Profi («Профіль»), №31 (50–51), 23.08.2008; reprinted in my book «Життя, смерть та інші
неприємності» (Life, Death and Other Pleasures), Київ, 2008. pp. 218–222.
2 The author of these words is Nikolay Nekrasov (Polish translator’s note).
3 Leszek Kołakowski, “Fabuła mundi i nos Kleopatry”, in: Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań, Kraków, 1983, pp. 68–72.
4 For the expression of this hope see John Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History, New York, London, 1994.
5 Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, 1993.
6 David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York, 1998).
7 See the official website of this project: www.worldvaluessurvey.org. Here and below I am using the results of this survey.
8 Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien (Paris, 1949), p. 18
9 Research under this project—also as the European Values Survey—were first conducted in Poland in 1990, the Ukraine, Russia and
other countries of Eastern Europe joined later (Polish translator’s note).
10 For a general interpretation see Ronald Inglehart, Wayne E.Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional
Values”, American Sociological Review, 65, no 1 (Feb., 2000): 19–51.
11 Alexander J. Motyl, “Will Ukraine Survive 1994?” Harriman Institute Forum 7, no. 5 (January 1994): 3–6.
12 Similar conclusions were reached by Richard Pipes, who analysed the results of sociological research among Russians: Richard Pipes
«Flight From Freedom: What Russians Think and Want» Foreign Affairs 83, no. 3 (May—June, 2004): 9–15.
13 Altogether, there have been more editions of the values survey in the Ukraine within the WVS and EVS: the first in 1996 (WVS), then
in 1999–2000 (EVS), 2005 (WVS) and 2008–2010 (EVS). The data are available at http://www.wvsevsdb.com and GESIS—Leibniz
Institute for the Social Sciences (www.gesis.org) (Polish translator’s note).
14 For the values map from 1994–2004 and 2005–2008 see http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_
base_54.
15 See Владимир Магун, Максим Руднев, «Жизненные ценности населения Украины в европейском контексте» (Life values of
inhabitants of the Ukraine in the European context), http://polit.ru/article/2007/10/10/ukrvalues/
16 Pro.mova. Edinburg Business School. Eastern Europe Potential MSc students. Research results (2010). I would like to thank the director
of the «Pro.mova» company for access to these materials.
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A dam B alcer
The Gypsy Test
It is often said that the integration of the
Muslim diaspora will be of crucial importance
for the internal stability of Europe. For the countries of Central Europe the basic and much more
important challenge will be overcoming the
exclusion of the numerous Gypsy community
About 12 million people of Gypsy origin
are now living in the European Union. An overwhelming majority of them do not regard
themselves as Roma but usually they are not
accepted as members of the nations with which
they identify. Most of them live in Central Europe
and constitute a significant minority in Bulgaria,
Slovakia, Hungary and Romania (from 5 to 10 %).
This percentage will grow in the coming
decades, for they have a much higher birth rate
than the rest of the shrinking population of the
region. The most dramatic is the demographic
situation in Bulgaria and, to a lesser extent,
in Romania: the UN predicts that until 2050 the
population of Bulgaria will fall by 30 % and of
Romania by 20 %. The Gypsy population of the
EU will also increase by hundreds of thousands
of people due to the accession of Western Balkan
countries (especially Serbia). Consequently, we
can expect that the problem of exclusion of the
Gypsies, often separated by a social and economic
chasm from the rest of the citizens, will be exacerbated.
According to a European Commission report
from 2012, entitled “The situation of the Roma in
11 EU member countries,” about 90 % of Gypsies
in Central Europe live in poverty or on the verge
of poverty. An overwhelming majority of them
live in ghettoes, which are slums located on
the outskirts of cities. The average number of
persons living in one room is 2–2.5, while for
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A dam B alcer
lecturer at the Centre for East European Studies
of the Warsaw University, consultant of the Polish
President and the think-tank demosEuropa—
Centre for European Strategy
Photo: demosEuropa
non-Gypsies it is one room for one person. Gypsy
districts are characterised by high incidence of
various social dysfunctions (family violence,
alcoholism, petty crime). EU research shows that
about 35 % of Gypsies in Slovakia and Hungary
and more than 60 % in Romania routinely experience hunger.
Unemployment among Gypsies is two times
higher than for the general population. According
to EU estimates, Slovakia has the highest difference in the region in this respect: Slovak Gypsies’
unemployment rate is five times higher than the
rest of the Slovaks. Poverty is inherited due to very
low level of education among the Gypsy population. In the 20–24 age group the percentage
of persons with secondary education among
Romanian Gypsies was six times lower than in
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the general population. The educational situation
of the Gypsies is by far the worst in Romania and
Bulgaria. From 15 % to more than 20 % Gypsy children in these countries do not go to school and
usually take up unregistered work. Also in terms
of social security the situation of Bulgarian and
Romanian Gypsies is the worst. Only 40–50 % of
them possess health insurance and just 25–35 %
have some prospects of receiving an old age
pension.
The very difficult social and economic situation of Gypsies in Central Europe is not markedly different from that of their kin in Western
Europe. But in the countries of Central Europe
they constitute a much larger section of the
population. Moreover, the countries of Central
Europe have a lower financial and administrative
potential to deal with integration of Gypsies. Their
integration is more difficult than integration of
Muslims in Western Europe, for the material and
social divide separating Gypsies from the rest of
the population is bigger, while their social and
cultural background (for example the very low
status of women or hostile attitude towards the
government) is less conducive to integration.
In addition, the dislike of the Europeans towards
the Gypsies, effectively leading to discrimination,
is more serious than towards Muslims.
Of course, Gypsies pose a less severe direct
challenge for European security than radical
Muslims (terrorism) do. Unfortunately, also their
degree of self-organization and social mobility
is significantly lower. Among Gypsies in Central
Europe, it is very difficult to find great sportspeople, film directors, writers or leading politicians, while in the West it is becoming the norm
in the case of Muslims.
Central European Gypsies were the social
group most painfully affected by the downfall of communism. Since then their situation
improved to some degree but the prospect of
a growing population of young, poor, uneducated and unemployed persons of Gypsy origin
remains a great challenge for Central Europe.
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It is not only an economic and social but also
a political problem. In 2008–2009, a group of
Hungarian skinheads organized a series of attacks
on Gypsies, killing six of them. In 2010 Jobbik, the
extreme right Hungarian party gained an all-time
high 17 % of the votes in the general election.
The main preserve of Jobbik is East Hungary with
the biggest number of Gypsy inhabitants. And
in Bulgaria there have been numerous reports
on buying Gypsy votes (the currency is food,
alcohol or money; such methods were also used
by ­Vladimír Mečiar, the authoritarian ruler of
Slovakia in the 1990s). In the European Union
Bulgaria and Romania are, alongside with Greece,
the lowest-placed countries in the Freedom in
the World ranking. The Gypsy problem also has
an international aspect: in 2009–2010 Gypsies
migrating from Bulgaria and Romania to the West
created tensions in the relations of Sophia and
­Bucharest with France, which started to deport
them. The Gypsy migration also became an argument against accepting these two countries to
the Schengen zone.
In the coming decades the countries of
Central Europe face a whole range of economic
and social challenges connected to catching
up with the most developed Western countries, which requires a second modernization
leap (increasing competitiveness, creating an
economy based on innovation). The alternative is
falling into a trap of medium wealth and margina­
lization within the EU. For Bulgaria, Romania,
Macedonia, Slovakia, Serbia and Hungary success
of the continued process of modernization will
depend to a large degree on strengthening integration of the Gypsies with the mainstream of
society.
There are no shortcuts here. Increased wealth
in the countries of Central Europe does not have
to mean assuaging the problem of Gypsy integration. An example of that is Greece from before
the crisis. The situation of the Gypsies there was
worse than in Slovakia or Hungary despite the
fact that Greece was much wealthier.
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Austerity
the Lithuanian Way
Žygimantas Mauricas
Lithuania will continue to carry out austerity policies
and be among the best-performing European economies.
But more detailed examination reveals that export­
‑driven Lithuanian economy is growing not “because of,”
but “regardless of” implemented austerity policies.
“To tighten or not to tighten“—the question to which Europe does not seem to have
found an answer yet. Sovereign debt crisis
divided Europe not only economically with
prosperous and thrifty North on one side and
allegedly corrupt and miserable South on the
other, but also ideologically with pro-austerity
and anti-austerity policy supporters fervently
arguing over which path Europe should take
to finally escape from the crisis. Nothing
strengthens your argument more than evidence
and so anti-austerity supporters don’t waste
time to remind us time and again about Europe’s
austerity-plagued, ever-depressed periphery
where even the almighty IMF was forced to
admit that austerity failed to work as expected.
Yet pro-austerity supporters have no intention to
surrender and point fingers at Europe’s Northern
periphery—the Baltic countries, which seemingly successfully implemented austerity policies
and became economic growth leaders in Europe.
But the key question here is whether economic
recovery happened “because of” or “in spite of”
the austerity policies. To answer this question
let us examine the crisis-fighting experience of
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the best-performing European economy in the
post-crisis period—Lithuania.
After a decade of spectacular growth,
­Lithuanian economy was severely hit by the
global economic recession: in 2009 alone GDP
fell by 14.8 %, unemployment increased from
6 % to 14 % and those that were lucky enough
to stay employed saw their wage bills shrinking
by 7 % on average. Recession brought not only
economic, but also psychological hardship.
The crisis signified the end of “the L­ ithuanian
dream”—a dream to catch up with the West. After
joining the EU in 2004, many citizens believed
that “the Lithuanian dream” is just about to come
true and the easiest way to take part in it was …
to invest in real estate. But once the dream shattered, so did the real estate bubble. In 2009 alone,
house prices plummeted by as much as 30 %,
construction sector activity contracted by 48 %
and one out of three construction workers lost
their jobs. Thus, Lithuanian economy in effect
was hit by a double-crisis: external one, caused
by global financial crisis, and internal one, caused
by bursting real estate bubble. As the saying
goes, trouble never walks alone.
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Nothing But Austerity
The situation demanded rapid and decisive
action, but neither Lithuanian government nor
the central bank could do much. During the
“economic summer” in 2003–2007, L­ ithuanian
government acted as if “economic winter”
would never come and did not bother to accumulate financial reserves. In fact, Lithuania was
managing its public finances no better than
southern Europeans that loved to live like a careless and short-sighted piggy “Nif-Nif” from the
illustrious fairy tale “The Three Little Pigs.” For
example, Lithuania was running budget deficit in
2007—the year when real GDP expanded by an
impressive 9.8 % and budget revenue increased
by an enviable 21 %. No wonder, then, that
when the crisis struck, budget deficit instantly
approached hazardous 10 % of GDP mark. Under
such conditions, fiscal stimulus was surely not
on the agenda so Lithuania was compelled to
embark on a full-scale austerity policy with tax
increases and spending cuts.
Monetary policy was to no avail either, since
by pegging its currency to euro in 2002, Lithuania
“de facto” became a member of the eurozone
and effectively gave full control of its monetary
policy to the ECB. The only alternative was devaluation, but it was never used fearing that it could
undermine confidence and deepen recession
even further. In fact, keeping the peg was a brave
strategy, since under very similar circumstances
none of the Scandinavian countries managed
to keep their currencies pegged and were eventually compelled to devaluate them during the
early 1990’s recession. Keeping the peg gave
much needed stability, but at the same time it
caused Lithuanian currency to strengthen against
the currencies of its major trading partners in
2009: 19 % against Polish Zloty, 18 % against
Russian Ruble and 10 % against Swedish Kroner*.
Stronger currency weakened Lithuania’s international competitiveness that hurt not only
exporters, but also domestic traders as Lithuanians rushed en masse to Poland to buy cheaper
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products. Moreover, in spite of strong commitment to keep currency pegged, speculations
about prospective currency devaluation drove
up domestic interbank rates with six month
VILIBOR spiking above 10 % mark in the end of
2008. Rising interest rates increased debt burden
for households and businesses and further worsened their financial situation. Hence, instead of
badly needed expansionary monetary policy,
Lithuania de facto was implementing the
contractionary one, which deepened recession
even further.
Seeing that tax
increases and spending
cuts will not suffice,
Lithuanian government
reduced annual
contributions to private
pension funds from
5.5 % to 2 %. In this
way, today’s budget
deficit problem was
effectively solved at
the expense of future
generation.
Molotov Cocktail
Add one portion of global financial crisis,
a few pinches of bursting real estate bubbles,
mix it with contractionary fiscal and monetary
policies and you will get an excellent Molotov
cocktail. It could not be worse—you could say,
and you would not be far from the truth. And yet
Lithuania managed to recover fast and demonstrate indeed impressive economic performance.
Lithuanian GDP per capita increased by a cumu-
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lative 31 % in just three post-crisis years—the
fastest growth in the whole European Union.
As a result, in terms of GDP per capita L­ ithuania
outran Croatia in 2010, Poland and Hungary in
2011, its northern neighbor Estonia in 2012
and it is not going to stop there. Based on the
latest European Commission forecasts, Lithuania
will overcome Greece and Portugal as soon as
in 2014. However, austerity policy supporters
should not hurry to celebrate the victory, since
the underlying causes of Lithuanian economic
growth in fact had very little to do with austerity.
declined by a full 14.1 %. The morale here is
simple: it is virtually a “mission impossible” to cut
budget expenses in nominal terms—the best one
can hope for from austerity is keeping expenses
fixed or increase them at a slower pace than
income. In other words, if there is no economic
growth and no inflation that would increase
budget revenue, austerity is not likely to reduce
budget deficit. Government expenses are like
Hydra—if you cut one million here, two million
are being spent elsewhere. In Lithuania, rising
revenues and not falling expenses allowed to
reduce public deficit from 9.4 % in 2009 to 3.2 %
in 2012. Expenses decreased by a mere 0.7 %
while income rose by 14.1 %.
Seeing that tax increases and spending cuts
will not suffice, Lithuanian government reduced
annual contributions to private pension funds
from 5.5 % to 2 %. In this way, today’s budget
deficit problem was effectively solved at the
expense of future generation. The future gene­
ration will not only have to take care of aging
population problem on their own, but will also
have to pay back public debt, which increased
from 15.5 % of GDP in 2008 to 40.8 % of GDP in
2012. Moreover, in spite of implemented austerity
measures and robust economic growth, Lithuanian public deficit is still expected to be close
to 3 % of GDP in 2013. Hence, austerity did not
seem to work very well in Lithuania.
Pitfalls of Austerity
There are two ways to implement austerity:
cut spending or increase taxes. The problem is
that both of them reduce economic growth,
but the former is reducing growth of a public
sector while the latter—of a private one. It is
not surprising that politicians generally prefer
tax increases to spending cuts and Lithuania was
no exception here. However, increasing taxes in
times of crisis appeared not to be the best idea
in a country with comparably low tax morale
and high shadow economy. Increased VAT rate
from 18 % to 19 % and later on to 21 % as well as
other tax reforms did not help to collect more
taxes. In fact, instead of rising, Lithuanian tax to
GDP ratio fell to its lowest ever recorded level
in 2011 and became the lowest in the whole
European Union. Companies and individuals
became obsessed with “tax optimization” that
became a symbol of fight against the austerity
policies. Shadow economy increased with the
portion of unreported and underreported earnings increasing. For example, “officially” around
40 % private sector employees were earning less
than a minimum wage in 2010 while in public
sector the number was only 20 %—an indicator
that some salaries in the private sector are paid
“unofficially.”
Spending cuts were not so successful either:
Lithuania managed to cut public expenses by
a mere 0.9 % in 2009 whilst budget income
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Austerity Kills Consumption
Austerity also produced quite a few side
effects. Higher tax rates and continuous threat
of potential further increases literally paralyzed
local economy. Obviously, one must admit that
it is not a wise strategy trying to sustain what
is fundamentally unsustainable i.e. consumer
and real estate bubbles. But if you ever decide
to implement austerity policies you need to
communicate it clearly and unambiguously
to the society and do it all at once. Any uncertainty left about the possibility of further tax
increases in the future makes more damage to
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the economy than the increase of taxes themselves. That is because if businesses anticipate
an increase in taxation they tend to employ
“wait and see” tactics: halt their investment
activities, stop hiring employees and stop rising
wages.
Austerity mindset trapped Lithuania into
the so called “paradox of saving,” where more
saving was followed by more recession and more
recession by more saving. Even though Lithuanian economy showed decent growth rates,
wages and investments stalled while unemployment remained elevated. Companies attempted
to insure themselves against the potentially
adverse policy changes by hoarding cash and
increasing their profitability levels at the expense
of investments. Companies also hesitated to
invest in human capital: as a result, compensation to employees as a share of GDP reached
10-year lows in 2012. Even though Lithuanian
nominal GDP already exceeded pre-crisis levels,
­compensation for employees is still 11 % and
investments—even 33 % below the pre-crisis
levels.
Sluggish wage growth reduced the middle
class whereas weak investment activity did not
allow creating new employment opportunities.
Seeing no improvement in economic situation,
many Lithuanians chose to emigrate: over the last
five years, 5.6 % of total Lithuanian population
emigrated. If not for emigration, unemployment
would have been close to 20 % instead of 13 %.
Another big problem Lithuania faces now is structural unemployment. During the crisis the total
number of employees in Lithuania declined by
16 % of which one out of three was working in
the construction sector. Construction workers
found it difficult to change their profession
and thus majority of them remained long-term
unemployed or chose to emigrate. Lithuania had
an excellent opportunity to use this vast pool
of relatively cheap and qualified labor pool to
implement mass renovation project of soviet­
‑style buildings. Regrettably, this opportunity
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was not taken advantage of (it is not as easy as
rising taxes after all).
Export Miracle
There is no mistake to say that it was exports
that saved crisis-hit Lithuanian economy.
During the last three post-crisis years, export
volumes were growing on average by 14 %
whereas domestic consumption—by a mere
1.4 %. Thus, Lithuanian economy was like an
aircraft with only one working engine—exports,
which, luckily, was enough to uplift the whole
economy. Interestingly enough, Lithuanian
businesses managed to create this export
miracle “in spite of” rather than “because of”
restrictive monetary policy. On the other
hand, fiscal policy decisions did not have any
direct negative effect on export performance,
since they were primarily aimed at increasing
consumption and excise taxes as well as making
minor public spending reductions. But more
importantly, by keeping the local market
depressed, austerity policies facilitated “internal
devaluation” i.e. employee wages increased
less than productivity that allowed exporting
companies to increase their cost competitiveness vis-à-vis their neighbors. Hence, austerity
policy killed domestic market, but at the same
time facilitated export growth.
And yet, austerity by no means can be
credited for causing export miracle, since the
upsurge in exports was more a natural phenomenon rather than triggered by some policy
action. After joining the EU, vast consumer
market opened for Lithuanian exporters. Well
­qualified, but cheap labor force, adequate infrastructure and generous EU financial aid were
perfect tools for expansion. However, overseas
markets were of little interest to most ­Lithuanian
companies. During the pre-crisis period, the
primary focus was booming domestic market,
powered by growing credit, consumption and
real estate bubbles. Businesses were fervently
competing with each other on who will build
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higher skyscraper, bigger shopping mall or
fancier amusement park, but manufacturing
for exports was certainly not in fashion. After all,
why would you bother entering highly compe­
titive Western markets if you can instantly get
double, triple or quadruple profits by just selling
(or re-selling) products just around the corner?
However, the economy was clearly unsustainable
and the question was not “if” but rather “when”
the domestic consumption bubble will burst.
For example, Lithuanian current account deficit
reached 14 % in 2007—bigger than in Portugal
and Spain and just as high as in Greece. When
economic recession finally came it changed the
rules of the game: exports became a new fashion
while talking about the real estate and retail
trade became a sign of bad taste somewhat.
Weak demand at home prompted businesses to
seek markets for their products abroad and in
many cases they proved to be successful. Hence,
exports to a large extent naturally became a new
El Dorado—without any support from monetary
or fiscal policy decisions.
hence without growth, inflation or tax increases
one should not expect to reduce budget
deficit. Secondly, do not increase taxes during
the r­ ecession, especially in a country with low
tax morale and big shadow economy. Thirdly,
keep in mind that austerity has many negative
side effects: increasing unemployment, falling
wages and delayed investments. Fourthly, by
increasing emigration and long-term unemployment austerity policies make negative effect on
long-term economic performance. Fifthly, control
sentiment of consumers and producers—do not
panic and do not say that austerity will be here
forever. And finally, internal devaluation helps
exporters to improve their international competitiveness, but necessary condition for this is to
have sufficiently large export markets that are
capable and willing to consume your exported
products, hence this is only valid for small open
economies. The rest is all about quantitative
easing. Ž ygimantas
M auricas
Conclusion
Lithuania will continue to carry out austerity
policies and be among the best-performing
European economies. But more detailed examination of Lithuanian crisis-fighting experience
reveals that austerity supporters have no reason
to be cheerful, since export-driven Lithuanian
economy is growing not “because of,” but
“regardless of” implemented austerity policies.
One should admit that by successfully carrying
out “internal devaluation” Lithuania improved
competitiveness of its exporters, but at the same
time austerity measures, primarily based on tax
increases, killed domestic market and trapped
Lithuania into the vicious cycle of recession and
austerity.
The main lessons that could be learned and
not to be repeated again are as follows. Firstly,
bear in mind that reducing public spending in
nominal terms is virtually a mission impossible,
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Chief Economist at Nordea Bank
Lithuania and Lecturer at ISM
University of Management and
Economics
Photo: Nordea Bank
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Europe
is Another Japan
The austerity policy, instead of limiting the crisis,
only exacerbated it—says Martin Wolf in conversation
with Maciej Nowicki
You wrote recently that austerity policy in the
European Union had turned the “beginnings of
an economic rebound into stagnation.” What
are the proofs for that?
In 2009, the economy in the eurozone grew
by 2 %. The specter of a “great recession” has
receded for a while. And then everything came to
a standstill: in 2010–2013 the European economy
will have grown by just 0.4 %, although in 2010
the prognoses were much better, it is enough to
look into the newspapers.
What has happened? The answer is simple:
the austerity policy, instead of limiting the crisis,
only exacerbated it.
For me there is nothing surprising in that.
Combining cuts in the (already weakened) private
sector and the public one had to result in the
very rapid fall of demand, complete stagnation
in the eurozone and something close to stagnation in Great Britain. It is as if a staggering drunk
was seeking the support of other drunks. Is it
believable that such a structure composed of
a dozen staggering drunks will be stable? It was
much worse than a crime, it was a mistake. Of
course the austerity policy was not the only
reason of Europe’s economic weakness. But it
was this policy which made the fight against the
recession all but impossible.
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British journalist, main economic commentator
of Financial Times.
Photo: Archive Martin Wolf
So why did everybody think that it would
work?
First, the countries, which had experienced
the most severe crisis, that is Greece, Portugal
and Ireland, simply had no choice. If they wanted
help—and they desperately needed it—they had
to tighten their belts. Otherwise, no one would
lend them money. Second, the Germans were
intransigent in that matter and they are the main
payer in the EU.
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It was decided that without the cuts everybody
could follow in the footsteps of Greece?
Yes, Greece was regarded as a warning to
all. This story is incredibly sad, for this whole
masochism, which ended in an economic standstill, was simply unnecessary. It is true that it
initially seemed that it was to some extent
sensible, you were entitled to assume that the
Greek crisis was the first sign of a European fiscal
pandemics. But it soon turned out that even the
countries with all-time low interest rates stopped
reaching for new loans. Those who had to tightened the belts but also those who had no reason
to do it went the same way. Entire Europe was
dominated by a certain ideology: everything
which smacked of Keynesianism was denounced
as evil and accursed. The result was that economic
growth in Europe came to a halt for three years.
It will definitely leave a permanent mark. Let us
assume that in near future the Spanish and Italian
economies will develop at an annual rate of 1.5 %.
This is certainly an optimistic assumption, euphemistically speaking. But even then these countries
will achieve their GDP level from 2007, that is
from before the crisis, as late as 2017 or 2018. In
short, they will have wasted ten years.
will have to emigrate. We do not have much room
for maneuver. The only way to increase competitiveness is a rapid growth of productivity but an
increase of productivity results in bigger unemployment, and certainly nobody wants that. To
sum up, I think that the EU has reached the
bottom. Things will not get any worse. But those
who believe in a quick rebound can only count
on a miracle. Or that all countries will show an
incredible determination in fighting the crisis.
I believe in neither.
The situation in the EU
is almost the same as
in Japan (except for
the deflation). We have
very low interest rates,
very unconventional
monetary policy and
a permanent budget
deficit. We want to
bring it down but
because the economy
is weak, we decrease it
at a lower rate than we
would have wished.
And in which point do we find ourselves today?
There is a chance for a very, very feeble
rebound in the eurozone. I do not expect the
growth level in the immediate future to reflect
our potential. It is true that monetary policy has
been loosened, the European Central Bank is
finally doing things until recently considered
a complete heresy. And this is what makes growth
possible at all. But on the other hand France and
Spain continue the policy of budget cuts and
they will probably not abandon it in the next few
years. This is important, for we are talking about
very large economies. Their weakness is spreading
on the rest of Europe. This is why in countries
under pressure, that is Spain, Portugal, Italy,
Greece or Ireland, the situation on the labor
market will continue to be dramatic and people
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What is more, you claim that we are witnessing
an economic war between particular countries
of Europe.
I have always stressed that a vision of Europe
as one big Germany will not produce anything
good. And this is becoming more and more
apparent. The Germans believe that they owe
their success to the reforms undertaken by
Schröder’s government and encourage everyone
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Are you sure it will last no more than ten years?
No. When you say that the epoch of rapid
growth is perhaps coming to an end, you are
treated as a madman. But how do we know that
growth has to go on indefinitely? For the last
two centuries today’s developed countries have
been taking advantage of a wave of innovations, which brought them previously unknown
wealth and great power. Today we do not have so
many innovations and those which do come up,
concern a relatively narrow sphere of technology,
connected with communications and entertainment. This has nothing to do with the “second
technological revolution,” which brought a huge
increase of productivity from late 19th century until
mid-20th century. Later things were progressing
at a slower rate. The last spectacular productivity
leap in the developed countries took place in the
1990s. But its effects have already evaporated.
to follow their example. But this is nonsense. First,
Germany has always been an economy founded
on strong exports; as early as the 19th century it
had a wonderful industrial base. Nobody can
create such a base overnight. Second, what kind
of exports are we talking about? Today in almost
all EU countries domestic demand is feeble, you
have to recover your losses somewhere, you have
to make money, which you cannot find at home.
As a result everybody is trying to wrestle the
shallow markets from each other, which in practice means a beggar-your-neighbor policy. Will
Germany suddenly start to buy things in other
European countries, because these countries
have been buying from Germany? I would not
count on that. The economic policy pursued in
the eurozone is leading to another global crisis.
You have written that we are faced with an
era of “global Japan.” What leads you to such
a conclusion?
The situation in the EU is almost the same as in
Japan (except for the deflation). The similarities are
really striking. We have very low interest rates, very
unconventional monetary policy and a permanent budget deficit. We want to bring it down
but because the economy is weak, we decrease
it at a lower rate than we would have wished.
In Japan, it was the same: very low interest rates,
unconventional monetary policy and a permanent
budget deficit. And, just as in today’s Europe, very
low growth, almost stagnation. In the last twenty
years, the Japanese economy has been growing
by 1 % a year. This is a very low level if we compare
it to historical standards.
And what about the agreement which is now
negotiated, intended at creating a huge free
trade zone composed of the US and the EU—
is it going to change anything?
I am doubly skeptical here. First, I have enormous doubts if it will really be signed at all. We
have already dealt with easy issues but when it
comes to the contentious ones, hassles will start.
Second, even if there is a successful conclusion,
I do not believe that the agreement will produce
any fundamental changes. In the last several
dozen years we have managed to liberate huge
areas of our economies. The US has access to
the majority of EU markets and vice versa. There
are, of course, trade barriers in agriculture but
from the economic point of view, they are not
very important. And this is the vital thing: the
partnership will boost the GDP by some 1 %.
In other words, the stakes are much lower than
the enthusiasts claim. It will not be a watershed
in any sense.
In the EU it will also last for twenty years, as
in Japan?
I am not saying that. But we are certainly
faced with a quite long period; I would bet on
ten years of weak growth, with all the political
and economic side-effects. For some time we
will be experiencing what my friend Mohamed
El-Erian calls “new normality.”
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And what do you think about the eurozone?
You have never been its admirer...
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It is true. It has been twenty years since
I wrote that an attempt to tie European countries with a monetary union would only increase
the tensions. And the crisis has clearly shown
that. The euro split the European nations apart
rather than brought them together. Those who
finance the EU started to despise the nations
which are up to their necks in debt because of
their own irresponsibility. And those who are
in debt despise the net payers because of their
ruthlessness. The euro was a terribly risky idea,
it established a union of countries which had
completely different economic potentials and
sources of competitiveness. Happy marriages
are those which the spouses would enter once
again if they could start from scratch. And only
masochists would join the eurozone this time
round.
Let us stop kidding ourselves. In the last
decade, labor costs in Greece grew by 80 %
compared to Germany. No devaluation will
make up for that. In the case of Spain and Italy
this figure is between 30 % and 40 %. It is similar
with Portugal. Frankly speaking, Greece has to
rebuild its entire economy, Portugal has to rebuild
almost entire economy and Spain and Italy have
to rebuild large areas of their economies.
You mentioned the political risk connected
with the continuation of the crisis. How big is
this risk? Everywhere we see a growing support for radical parties.
I am a moderate optimist here. Unemployment among young people is terrifying but statistically in Europe there are not so many young
people. Countries are old, the average age is very
high. It is true that parents are worrying about
the future of their children but sixty-year-olds
rarely start a revolution. This is not the Springtime of the Nations. Europe is dominated by
conservative forces. Of course, extreme parties
in many ­countries gain more and more votes but
never enough to assume power. And in Germany,
which is, after all, the most important country in
Europe, they do not play any role. In short, the
risk connected with the extremists is exaggerated.
On the other hand, the role of political will is
underestimated. Politicians often behave as if
nothing depended on them and nothing could
be changed. The EU countries are threatened with
an implosion, not a revolt. As a result, the young
and the most talented will have to emigrate.
So you would like to see its end?
No, for its break-up would be even worse.
The costs of such an operation are beyond imagination. I will express it with the following metaphor: creating the eurozone, they made a financial
and monetary omelette. And it is rather difficult
to “turn back” an omelette to its previous state.
But something has to change—or rather
a lot has to change. Everybody sees that the
existing structures are unstable. In 2020, we will
have either a completely different eurozone than
today or it will not exist at all. I estimate the
chances at fifty-fifty. The countries of the Euroland are in a recession, so the euro is becoming
a hated symbol of impoverishment. The United
States could perhaps cope with such a political
risk, for they constitute a much stronger union.
The eurozone may not be able to cope, for it is
too fragile.
The crisis has changed the global economic
balance of power. Developed countries have
lost, developing countries have gained. It has
become very fashionable to bet on their victory. Even the majority of Americans think
that China already is the largest economy in
the world.
In the emerging economies, there is a view
that they can no longer count on the economies
Many economists argue that when the eurozone breaks up, the member countries will
gain a greater room for maneuver, they will
be able to devalue their currencies and hence
improve their competitiveness.
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I know that you are very skeptical about
­Turkey. But what do you think about Poland?
Poland coped very well during the crisis.
Today its economy is still growing, although
not as fast. Your country has certain problems,
such as an aging population. And I do not think
that you should rush with joining the eurozone.
You are a neighbor of Germany, which makes
your position easier. And you are relatively well
governed. You still have a lot of catching up to
do and catching up is always easier. I do not know
if Poland will make up the ground to Western
countries, this challenge may prove too difficult.
But in the immediate future you will cope quite
well, provided you will not do something very
stupid.
of the developed countries. And this is one of
the most important changes brought about by
the crisis. In 2000 the contribution of developed
countries in global GDP was 63 %. This year, as
the IMF predicts, it will be about 50 %. If we take
the 2005 GDP level as 100, in 2010 the GDP in
the US was 105, in the eurozone 104, in Japan
and Great Britain 102, while in Brazil it was 125,
in India 147, in China 169… The Chinese must
have been asking themselves the question what
crisis we have been talking about.
What conclusions should be drawn from that?
As I have already said, we do not have too many
innovations and this is why the development
rate of the leading economy of the world, that
is the US, has fallen. But catching up has become
easier—thanks to globalization. Catching up
may serve as the engine of global growth in the
immediate future. After all, the average GDP per
capita in the developing countries is just one
seventh of the American level (if we account
for the purchasing power parity). There is a lot
of distance to cover.
And one more thing. The crisis produced
certain corrections in what people think but
the most important problem has not been
understood. Developed countries must become
exporters of capital. Otherwise we cannot count
on stability in the global economy. The truth is
that we do not have an efficient way of utilizing
resources in our private sector. There is simply
nothing sensible to do with the money. We have
been able to use this money only in a destructive way, as shown by the subprime bubble,
which had finally burst. We face a clear choice:
exporting capital or wasting it. And this is what
global discussion today should be about. But we
do not see any discussion. And therefore, the crisis
will definitely come back in a while.
M acie j N owic k i
is Deputy Editor In Chief of Aspen
Review Central Europe.
Photo: Maciej Nowicki
In a very famous book “Breakout Nations,”
concerned with emerging economies, Ruchir
Scharma has particularly optimistic predictions for two countries: Turkey and Poland.
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Partners or Rivals?
Sergiusz Najar
Since 1989 the Republic of Poland and the Czech Republic
have been pursuing a sort of race. For each of them,
the respective neighbor serves as a reference point against
which they evaluate their own successes and failures
Despite different economic histories in the
90’s, both states joined the European Union on
May 1, 2004 with similar concerns about their
competitiveness, scarcity of capital, poor energy
and transportation infrastructure, unemployment, low innovation and a banking sector mostly
controlled by foreign banks.
Poland had a slight competitive edge at
this time because of the size of its internal
market, far higher capitalization of the Warsaw
Stock Exchange and a number of assets offered
on it—yet this was offset by the largely pro-export
oriented economy of the Czech Republic and
better quality and level of industrial manufacturing connected with it. Czechs Petr Kellner,
Zdeněk Bakala or Karel Komárek were actually
ranked higher by Forbes than Poles Jan Kulczyk,
Zygmunt Solorz or Ryszard Krauze. GDP per capita
in Poland constituted 66 % of the EU-27 average,
whereas the respective figure for the Czech
Republic was 79 % (2012). However, it is Poland
that came away unscathed from the 2008/2009
crisis, thanks to substantial EU funding and
internal consumption.
Poland has begun its first decade of EU
membership with a successful attempt to
purchase Unipetrol, a Czech state holding of
refinery (Kralupy), petrochemical (Paramo)
and distribution assets (Benzina). Hence, the
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Polish PKN Orlen initiated the establishment of
a Central-European refinery, petrochemical and
fuel group, and soon acquired a German-based
distribution network and refinery, and gas station
chain in Lithuania. There is speculation about
more acquisitions of gas station chains in the
Czech Republic. Other major Polish investors on
the Czech market are: Prokom (currently Asseco)
in the IT sector, Tauron in the energy sector and
mBank in the banking sector. The total value
of Polish investments in the Czech Republic in
2012 almost reached 2 billion euros (there are
1010 companies with over 25 % Polish capital
operating in the Czech Republic). The Chairman
of Polish Information and Foreign Investment
Agency Mr. Sławomir Majman stated at a conference in April 2013, “For Polish entrepreneurs the
Czech Republic is de facto the second largest
investment market in the world.” According to
the figures of the Czech National bank for the
end of 3rd quarter of 2010, Polish investments
made up for 1.3 % of the total Foreign Direct
Investments in the Czech Republic. In fact, Poles
have invested more in this market than Italians
(0.7 %), yet much less than e. g. the French (6.5 %)
or Spaniards (3.7 %).
Czech investments in Poland have not
achieved this scope. Besides the New World
Resources capital group (investments in three
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development projects in coal mines in the border
area) of Zdeněk Bakala and Energy and Industry
Holding (Energetický a průmyslový holding) of
Daniel Křetínsky, no major private investor has
decided to undertake investment activities in
Poland yet or to list their shares on the Warsaw
Stock Exchange. Still, investments totaling over
390 million euros have been initiated by the state
energy giant ČEZ, which acquired 75 % of the
shares in the Skavina power plant (post 2009:
100 %) and in the Elcho combined heat and power
plant, with an eye to a further investment of over
400 million euros. The Czech and Slovak Penta
group invested in retail and pharmacy chains, as
well as property development projects. It also
intended to participate in the aviation sector but
with no success. Generally, the Czech Republic
makes up the largest investor among the new EU
member states with 480 Czech enterprises registered in Poland as companies or representative
offices, whereas on the Warsaw Stock Exchange
shares and debt securities of seven Czech companies are offered. The atmosphere for investment
is positive. Following a slight crisis in 2008, in the
following years it bounced back when Polish
investment in the Czech Republic went up by
over 83 million euros and Czech investments in
Poland went up by 90 million euros, as indicated
by the Polish National Bank.
Czech and Polish politicians are considerably
optimistic: “9,000 Czech companies take part
in economic cooperation with Poland, which
shows its scope and size,” commented Martin
Kuba, the Czech Minister of Industry and Trade
at the Czech Republic-Poland Forum in 2012.
From the moment both countries joined the
EU, the trade flow of 3.978 billion euros in 2004
went up to 14.452 billion euros in 2012. Polish
exports are dominated by electromechanical
manufacturing (27 %), metal producing industry
(21 %), chemical products (13.4 %) and agricultural and food products (12.3 %). As far as the
Czech exports to Poland are concerned, electromechanical manufacturing constitutes 32.3 %,
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with the share of chemical industry amounting
to 18.3 %, and metals to 17.9 %, with a much
lower share of agri-food products (8.5 % in 2012).
Czech Republic is the third biggest recipient of
Polish exports and the seventh biggest exporter
of commodities to Poland. In case of the Czech
Republic, Poland is third both with respect to
export as well as import. Poland has achieved
a record trade surplus worth 3.368 billion euros
(the EU total is 5.9 billion euros), which in 2012
increased by 18 % compared with 2011 (preliminary data for 1st quarter of 2013 indicate further
improvement by 95 million euros; also due to
the drop in imports from the Czech Republic by
5.3 %). From this angle, both states are mutually
leading trade partners—joining top ten states in
this respect, along with Germany, China, United
Kingdom, Italy, France and Russia.
During the last year, media in the Czech
Republic had a bragging contest about alleged
poor quality of Polish consumer products. Polish
authorities along with the food sector keep
refuting those charges as groundless and sometimes far-fetched; for example pointing out the
role played in this campaign by a major investor
in the Czech food sector—and recently also in
the media sector—Andrej Babiš. Despite the
media fuss of 2012, a 6.7 % growth of export of
Polish agri-food products to Czech Republic was
observed, totaling 1.092 billion euros. In line with
declaration of the Polish Ministry of Agriculture
from May this year, this trend has been constantly
on the rise, since the 1st quarter of 2013.
The government of Petr Nečas (2010–2013)
claimed that the sale of Unipetrol to ORLEN was
a strategic mistake and, in accordance with the
new fad for national oil security, it considered
establishing a national oil company built on stateowned companies ČEPRO and MERO (pipeline
and product base networks). Recent comments
by President Miloš Zeman and Prime Minister Petr
Nečas published in the press do suggest a search
for new solutions. Thus, a joint energy policy
might be expected. This could mean merging PKN
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ORLEN with Unipetrol and MERO and ČEPRO into
a Polish-Czech oil and energy holding company),
a common approach to the construction of
a nuclear power plant in Poland and additional
nuclear reactor in Temelín, a joint national project
with state energy giant ČEZ and Polish energy
companies to modernize and extend coal power
plants and expand crossborder grids. Yet, a lot
depends on the shape of future coalition government in the Czech Republic, ability of the Polish
government to clearly formulate its priorities with
regards to energy policy and the will to search
for solutions implying shared understanding of
European energy policy and security of oil and
electricity supplies to both countries.
the 800km borderline). The remaining border
crossings are either wholly or partially closed for
vehicles weighing over 3, 5, 6 or 9 tons. Despite
a number of social initiatives and cross border
projects, supported with EU funds, as well as the
operation of four Euroregions, the climate for
economic activity on both sides of the border
leaves much to be desired.
And still, mutual understanding of markets,
legislation (including new EU regulations and
standards), trade culture and—most importantly—aspects of technology and transport,
have enabled increasingly small economic entities to participate in trade and establishment
of companies—this however applies mostly to
Polish companies active in the Czech market.
The Czech-Polish Chamber of Commerce in
Ostrava and the Club of Polish Business in the
Czech Republic based in Prague, which have
been operating for many years, demonstrate
considerable potential for small and middle sized
enterprises which are active in a multitude of
sectors in both markets; those include construction and agri-food industries. In Poland, as part
of the annual Economic Forum in Krynica held
in September and of the European Economic
Congress held in Katowice in May, a number of
events and meetings are organized which are
targeted exclusively at the business sector in both
states, as well as to potential investors from other
states and world regions. In the Czech Republic,
besides the traditional participation of Polish
companies in various events organized as part of
the BVV fair in Brno, it is hard to find a permanent
point of contact or discussion for businesses from
both countries.
A few hundred Polish managers work in international corporations in the Czech Republic (the
author of this text has done so twice). Also Czech
managers, like the current CEO of T-Mobile Poland
Miroslav Rakovski, hold high-level positions in
Polish branches of international corporations.
This new generation of thirty and forty year-olds
is creating new spaces for business around them.
Cooperation is
obviously hindered
by disastrous rail and
road infrastructure in
the border area. The
cross border mobility
of Poles and Czechs is
the lowest among the
EU 27 (according to
surveys from 2009).
Cooperation is obviously hindered by disastrous rail and road infrastructure in the border
area. The cross border mobility of Poles and
Czechs is the lowest among the EU 27 (according
to surveys from 2009). Generally, regular access to
job markets or retail and service facilities is hardly
viable even though they are often created with
customers from the other side of the border in
mind. People move mainly by car which increases
the cost, risk and environmental burden. Additionally, only four road border crossings are not
subject to traffic limitations (out of 40 along
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Experience gathered by them is highly useful for
other emerging private, investment or corporate
projects. And this happens due to their efforts,
with no governmental or political support—given
that Polish and Czech politicians don’t know their
counterparts, they do not cooperate or create
their own political community despite a number
of official declarations and promises, as well as
shared or parallel experiences of transformation and the existence of institutional mechanisms such as the Visegrád Group. Due to a lack
of programs for student and youth exchange,
the process of getting to know each other and
activities undertaken by both sides may draw out,
but the experience of professional and economic
successes and defeats will ultimately give birth
to new capital for joint use.
Business people are the ones who make
trade and investment decisions. It is their flair
for b
­ usiness and inclination to take risks, which
are the decisive factors determining whether
a particular contract will be concluded and implemented or not. And so it is worth taking a look at
the economic cooperation from the perspective
of culture and social convention.
Czechs and Poles have a different culture
approach to entrepreneurship, which can be seen
in micro scale, but also in local markets, media or
in stereotypes. “The Czech media keep exposing
cases of theft committed by Poles. When a group
of bums from the Polish side of the border started
pestering Czech households located in the vicinity
the Kłodzko Valley, local Czech decision-makers
were considering the option of closing the border
with Poland again. Yet, when a group of Czech
thieves was apprehended in Rybnik, no one even
mentioned these kinds of solutions in Poland.
Campaigns directed against “Polish dealers” have
been taking on alarming proportions. Mayor of
the Czech Cieszyn Vít Slováček told me that
once a delegation of citizens met with him to
demand a ban on Polish companies which cruise
around villages in Czech Republic and sell food
from buses. The mayor was quick to react that
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under free market economy there is no option
of prohibiting operation of legal entities. “Why
haven’t you come up with this idea for business
in the first place” he asked the delegates of the
Czech trade, which only put them out.”—the story
was described in Rzeczpospolita daily dated 4th
February 2013 by Rafał Geremek, in a text entitled
“Unrequited liking.”
It’s also worth mentioning that the Czech
culture of work and the level of technical education are more advanced and self-aware (there is
a widespread Czech notion of zlaté české ruce or
golden Czech hands), whereas Poles are known
for their flair for business, courage or bravado
and peculiar slyness in doing business. Poles
and Czechs also have a different approach to
the European Union and deeper economic integration. It seems that Poland is keen on banking
and fiscal union and more eager to enter the
eurozone as it aspires to be able to participate in
decision making. Czechs, aware of the size of their
state and its economic potential, and at the same
time living in a country wholly “immersed” in the
European Union (the only state in the region
whose neighbors are exclusively EU members),
see things just like their famous countryman:
it will be somehow since “however it used to be,
it used to be somehow, it never happened yet
that it was no-how.”
S ergius z N a j ar
is a Polish manager and economic
advisor; former Deputy Minister
of Infrastructure (2002–2003)
and Foreign Affairs (2003–2005);
banking expert since 1992, member
of the Program Council of the Czech
Republic-Poland. He had stayed in
Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic and
Slovakia almost 12 years for various
reasons; currently he lives alternately
in Warsaw and near Broumov in
eastern Czech Republic.
Photo: Kamil Wróblewski – Radio
TOK FM
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Hungary: Oil and Gas Peak
or a Renaissance?
Attila Holoda, András Jenei
Can Hungary further exploit its hydrocarbon potential,
or is oil and gas import dependency an inescapable fate
just the same as for the Central Eastern European region?
Oil and gas import dependency is the major
issue for CEE countries and is the key former of
energy policy, not just in the region, but on the
EU level as well. With the shale gas revolution
in the United States, the existing conventional
policies have been challenged by an unconventional method, technology, business model and
thinking which created huge expectations and
controversy as well. During the shift from the
oil age towards renewables, can Europe or its
member states switch from an uncompetitive
and constrained subsidiary-based energy policy
towards a competitive and market based model as
seen recently in the US combining GHG-emission
reduction with reindustrialization? Or is it our
inescapable fate to do it in the old fashioned
way, straining obsolete policies and remaining
uncompetitive?
On one hand, there is Germany, which chose
to be a trailblazer with its renewables policy
where the results are interpreted as a poster child
by the greens with low GHG-emission and cheap
electricity prices possibly serving as a greening
model for other countries. But the majority of the
experts are worried that this poster child can also
be a basket case where export based German
economy simply loses its competitiveness in the
midterm. And the truth lies somewhere between
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the two sides: CO2 emissions are rising in Germany
since last year despite the efforts of greening the
energy production and low electricity prices are
present only on the wholesale market which does
not affect end user prices yet, but instead the
seasonally cheap German green-electricity simply
crushed the CEE electricity wholesale market. This
left many countries in the region to simply give
up the more effective power generation strategies and choose the electricity import instead or
even worse to get back to using black and brown
coal which is definitely not the way to reduce
GHG-emissions. This mess is just a side-effect of
the forced renewables policy of Germany where
the grid infrastructure simply could not keep
up with the ultra-fast expansion of wind and
photovoltaic power generation dumping the
production—regardless of whether it is needed
or not—on the surrounding countries. This
reflects on the paradox how a single member
state policy and its effects can be outsourced
to other member states through free trade and
liberalized markets—forcing many other member
states towards higher energy imports instead of
self-dependence.
On the other hand, there are member states
who choose the path of US trying to ease the
problem of growing energy import by extracting
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Energy Strategy 2030 adopted in 2011, moreover,
stating “we cannot yet lose fossil fuels,” also takes
into account the various available hydrocarbon
resources in Hungary and identifies that the most
significant exploitable stocks are of natural gas.
Based on MBFH estimates, Hungary has 3563
BCM of gas lying under the surface, of which 2393
BCM are exploitable reserves. Considering that
in the 75 year history of Hungarian hydrocarbon
production only 210 BCM of natural gas has been
extracted, the numbers in the strategy appear
quite high; it also notes “the technology is not
ready to exploit this type of gas yet.” This is due to
the fact that, based on an estimate which is still
debated amongst professionals in the industry,
most of the assets (97.6 %) are of unconventional gas in the Makó basin. Hungary has 56.6
BCM of natural gas available and, according to
the current production and consumption ratio,
it will enable production to go on for 21 years
with a strong downward trend, which basically
means that—in the absence of further exploration—domestic natural gas production could
become irrelevant within 5–7 years; at present
it supplies one-fifth of the country’s total natural
gas consumption.
Conventional and unconventional energy
sources are fundamentally different from each
other based on their origin and production
methods while in the end, the extracted gas is
the same. The most widely accepted theory on the
creation of hydrocarbons is the biogenic theory,
whereby organic matter (plant and animal) is
derived from sedimentary rocks over millions of
years, and due to high pressure and temperature,
converted into a variety of hydrocarbons. Due
to the laws of physics, these hydrocarbons start
their millions of years’ long migration among
various rocks until they reach a place where there
is damage in the rock’s permeability and therefore it is here the migration is interrupted, and
the hydrocarbons trapped in various structural
positions. The hydrocarbon miners (geologists,
geophysicists, engineers, mineral oil producers)
the conventional hydrocarbon reserves and
exploring the newly discovered unconventional
resources. Poland is truly a pioneer in European
shale gas development with the promise of independence from natural gas imports by the 2020’s.
Also the United Kingdom, where the underlying
unconventional hydrocarbon resources can be
compared to the wealth of the North Sea which
discovery placed the UK and it’s economy on
a much more thriving—and repriseable—path
a couple decades ago. Hungary’s hydrocarbon
assets can also contribute to a much lower rate
of energy import dependence where the size
of the problem can be easily demonstrated
through comparing last year’s energy import
bill to the personal income tax return where
the import check was 30 % higher than the tax
return. Hungary—as any other country in the
region—is in a need of rebalancing its budget
not just through budget cuts and tax raising but
by simply lowering the cash paid for expensive
energy imports.
Currently, natural gas is the most significant
of the hydrocarbon assets beneath our feet in
Hungary. However, at present Hungarian gas
fields can supply only 10–18 % of the country’s
daily gas demand. Even though gas consumption has fallen drastically over the past five years
(from 2006 to 2012 falling from 14 to 10 BCM/
annum), it is a fundamental interest of the government to use all means to increase investments
which reduce energy import dependency and
encourage domestic gas production.
Yet for almost three years, hydrocarbon
exploration companies have not been able to
engage in exploration activities due to the fact
that in October 2010 the Hungarian Mining
Bureau (MBFH) declared the entire country off
limits for hydrocarbon exploration. The reason
behind this decision was to take more into
account the interests of the state (ultimately the
public) in future concession procedures instead
of the previous—said to be liberal—practice of
“giving away exploration rights.” The National
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find these traps and open them to bring the
hydrocarbons up to the surface.
In the case of unconventional hydrocarbons,
this migration process is interrupted in the very
beginning due to the rocks’ permeability, which
is so low that it does not allow any movement,
so mineral oil or natural gas gets trapped in the
pores of the rocks. This makes the extraction of
these “stuck” hydrocarbons more difficult because
it is not enough just to open up the flow to the
surface with one or two drillings, but also necessary to make artificial channels to bring up the
trapped hydrocarbon molecules. For this purpose
hydraulic fracturing is used, a technology developed in the last few years, which has triggered
strong opposition from green organizations and
politicians heavily influenced by environmental
groups.
However, exploration and production of
hydrocarbons compared to traditional mining
sectors still leave a significantly smaller environmental footprint, since they do not open mine
shafts, nor mountains are broken down to access
the minerals; instead a point-open method of
boreholes (wells) is used to bring hydrocarbons
to surface.
Hydraulic fracturing technology has been
used since the 1950’s to improve flow into the
well. Until now, there have been thousands of
hydraulic fractures carried out in Hungary without
any soil or water contamination. The mass proliferation of the technology has been induced by
shale gas production, as in the case of unconventional hydrocarbon production, it is the only
production technology that can be applied
successfully, so not only has the number of wells
increased drastically, but hydraulic fracturing has
become a daily routine.
Mineral oil and natural gas exploration is very
capital intensive and high risk. The biggest risk
for investors is drilling success. As the cost of one
domestic drilling is higher than HUF 1–1.5 billion,
while the probability of a discovery on average is
between 20–30 %, meaning 70–80 % of the time
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the incurred costs will not bring any returns. Due
to the high financial risk, governments typically
invest in hydrocarbon exploration and production
only in countries where there is a high chance
of drilling success.
National oil companies have mainly been
developed in major oil provinces (Arabian
­Peninsula, South America, Africa, etc.), where
the vast majority of revenues are from petroleum and natural gas production. Although it
was typical of socialist governments in Central
& Eastern Europe to have large state-owned oil
producer trusts representing the people’s property, after the fall of communism the privatization
process began almost everywhere and a growing
number of countries opened their borders to
foreign companies with appropriate technical
and financial capabilities, since the low level
of domestic financial resources did not allow
governments to put taxpayers’ money in jeopardy.
Hungarian domestic hydrocarbon exploration got a boost in the second half of the 1990’s
when more investors with international experience appeared on the market and brought
new methods and financial resources to the
declining mineral oil and natural gas production
industry. The previous state-owned monopoly
transformed into MOL, its dominance on the
exploration market has persisted, and due to its
country-wide exploration infrastructure it was
almost the only gas production company on the
market. But nowadays there are more and more
foreign—mostly with English-speaking mana­
gement—companies that carry out successful
drillings in the country.
The greatest successes have been achieved
by Hungarian Horizon Energy Ltd., who not only
drew attention to themselves by successful drillings in “abandoned” areas, but also established
fruitful cooperation with MOL, both in the fields
of exploration and production.
However, the most publicity has been
received by TXM Ltd., the Hungarian subsidiary
of the Canadian enterprise, Falcon Ltd., for its
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several hundred million dollar reinvestment in
the exploration of unconventional gas in the
Makó basin.
The worst situation for an exploration
company is when it does not have the opportunity to explore. This uncertainty was caused by the
state closure of the exploration areas, which not
only has a negative effect on foreign companies
but also on MOL. Exploration rights, which were
given out in the 1990’s, after being extended
by the maximum time that the law allows, are
expiring and there are no new areas for hydrocarbon exploration. This carries major financial
and technical risks for hydrocarbon exploration
companies who are able to invest and take high
risks, if their exploration licenses expire and they
cannot acquire new areas for explo­ration. Their
exploration portfolios narrow below the level of
economies of scale, which means new discoveries and service companies (drilling, geophysical, geological modeling companies and their
supporting industry) cannot work—the industry
withers.
In the hydrocarbon mining industry investments, the value of assets and the risks involved
are all exceptionally high; meanwhile, welltrained, foreign language speaking professionals’
emigration is very high, therefore to reverse the
possible decline of the industry would be difficult
as we have already experienced in the last two
decades in the coal mining industry.
In addition to the moratorium on licensing,
domestic environmental regulation also poses
difficulty. Currently there are several oil and gas
exploration companies, which are struggling
with the environmental authorities to obtain
a permit. While the governments declared aim
is to contract the remaining exploration areas
within concession procedures and to bring in
approximately EUR 1 billion of foreign working
capital into the economy in the next 5–7 years,
there are several domestic companies whose
exploration operations are stalled because of the
environmental authorities—not due to technical
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reasons in most cases. It is as if one hand of the
government does not know what the other one
is doing and they are working against each other.
The authority, in addition to disabling operating companies, is also lowering the chance
of successful concession processes, because if
it is problematic to receive an exploration and
production license on time, then potential investors will stay away. In the last three years the
Environmental Authority’s budget suffered major
cut backs so the numbers of those in charge of
authorization has shrunk drastically; they presumably use a “pre-emptive strike” tactic, prohibiting licenses rather than judging applications,
as for the latter they probably do not have the
resources. Still, the essence of environmental
regulation is not necessarily about strictness,
but more about enforcing the rules well. The
cost of a ban that is not based on professional
requirements to the nation’s economy is much
higher than it would cost to provide additional
funds for the E­ nvironmental Authority to execute
appropriate control. Geothermal concession is
also worth to mention here: if there is a ban on
any kind of hydrofracking, then not only does it
affect the hydrocarbon projects but eliminates
the chances to create a proper business environment for deep basin geothermal projects—
practically all attempts on power generation
from geothermal sources. This has a double
impact: while the Environmental Authority is
wanting to protect the environment at any cost—
outsourcing the risks on the nation’s economy by
freezing all hydrocarbon upstream investment,
they are also making it impossible to extract one
of Hungary’s most promising renewable energy
source with the second largest potential after
Iceland.
The stakes are high: In the last decade,
approximately EUR 1 billion in capital arrived in
Hungary for hydrocarbon exploration projects,
and if we add MOL’s portfolio as well then this
amount would be double. From the concession
procedures—beyond their immediate revenue—
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the same amount of direct investment could
come by 2020, and if MOL can re-activate its
domestic exploration and production portfolio
then this amount could reach HUF 500 billion by
the end of the decade. From this amount, HUF
250 billion would enrich the country’s budget
through mining royalties, taxes, and dozens of
other indirect payments (it’s an unwritten law of
trade that HUF 1 of foreign investment in the oil
industry provides HUF 0.53 to the government’s
budget).
Furthermore, current gas production could
be doubled which, accompanied by energy
efficiency projects, might supply half of Hungary’s domestic gas demand by the end of the
decade. Conversely, if domestic hydrocarbon
mining is disabled, besides the loss of the
amount mentioned, by 2020 we can say farewell to the Hungarian oil production industry
and gas production would drastically shrink as
well to provide only an insignificant supply to
the demand. Finally, it is important that these
investments not be made from public funds,
not putting public revenues at risk. Exploration
enterprises fund these very high-risk projects
(over 70 % with no chance of returns) from their
own assets, therefore from the owner’s point of
view, as geological property is owned by the state,
but is the property of Hungarian citizens, this is
definitely a worthwhile opportunity.
To elaborate on the overwhelming opportunities described previously, this is a more
complex issue and we have reviewed it from the
geological, business and in part, the regulatory
side. But as every issue this size—especially in
our region—has to be put into context not only
from the aspect of policy but also that of politics. From this perspective every strategy, policy
and market common sense can be overwritten
in a matter of weeks by the interests of short­
‑term politics. In Hungary for example energy
is now one of the most important campaign
elements—for the first time in the country’s
history—of the upcoming elections in early
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2014 resulting in utility price cuts. And governments are fast learners: Bulgaria just announced
a 5 % utility price reduction and many other CEE
and SEE governments are thinking about the
same. No doubt this is just the beginning and
will not stop at any borders, creating a whole
new world for the global energy industry making
the combat seen between the Seven Sisters and
the NOC’s (National Oil Companies) just a sham
battle compared to the upcoming war between
governments and the energy industry—a clear
effect of constantly rising energy prices mixed
with skyrocketing demand and the public need
for conserving the low utility prices. Oil and gas
upstream has proven to be a good investment
for both companies and governments in the past
decades and even today, as can be seen through
the example of the US, providing a middle and
long-term solution for energy eagerness. It is
everyone’s interest no to sacrifice for the sake of
short term politics or as a result of distrust any
opportunity—even if it is “dirty” fossil fuels—to
provide a sustainable transition towards the age
of renewables.
A ttila H oloda
Ex Deputy Secretary of State,
Ministry of National Development
of Hungary
Photo: Archive Attila Holoda
A ndr á s Jenei
Director, CFPA Energy Workshop.
Photo: Archive András Jenei
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From a Steel Worker
to a Maid
Anna Sosnowska
Over the last century, there has been a significant
amount of continuity (rather than diversity and change)
in patterns of Polish labor migrations to the U.S.,
and more generally –there has been lots of continuity
in East Central European labor migrations to the economic
centers in the West
I look at the Polish migrations as just one
out of many cases of labor migrations from
the peripheral, economically less developed
regions to economically more developed regions.
The special character of Central Eastern European
labor migrations is that those in the late 19th
century were among the first, paradigmatic ones,
labor migrations. In the next 100 years, they were
to change the world as labor migrations became
an available option for people from most of postcolonial areas. Central Eastern Europeans, with
Poles as the largest group, along the Irish and
South-Eastern Europeans (e.g. Southern Italians,
Greeks) were the first international labor migrants.
Italians and the Greeks ceased migrating in the
1970s, the Irish—in the 1980–90s and these countries have become the countries of immigration
themselves. While in the late 20th and early 21st
century, majority of the world labor migrants
come from the non­‑European, post-colonial
countries of Asia, Latin America, the C
­ aribbean
and North Africa, Central Eastern ­Europeans keep
migrating inter­nationally. (Okólski 2012) Labor
migrations remain as important life strategy for
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Central Eastern Europeans now as in the late
19th century.
Migrations to Industrial America
Industrial capitalism—the process initiated in Great Britain in the late 18 th century
that spread in most of North-Western Europe
and the United States in the course of the 19th
century—introduced the mass migrations from
countryside to industrial towns and cities; migrations from less economically developed regions
and countries to regions that were more developed and industrialized. It became true for both
internal migrations and international migrations.
It is only the unprecedented pace of development brought by industrialization, that moved
masses of people from European countryside to
towns—in their countries or abroad. Peripheral
regions of Europe in the East and South joint
the process only in the late 19th and early 20th
century (Bobińska 1976, Nugent 1992). Abolition of serfdom in the mid to late 19th was an
important precondition for migrations from
Central Eastern Europe (Bukowczyk 1987).
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I want to stress that this direction of migrations—from peripheries to the developed
countries—that we now take for granted was
a novelty in the world of the 19th century. Before
that, in the pre-industrial Western world, the
direction of migrations was o
­ pposite. People
usually migrated as conquerors, colonists—
traders, settlers, farmers, religious missionaries
or specialists (teachers, artisans, artists) from
more developed areas to peripheries; from
expanding Europe to regions and continents
scarcely populated and considered culturally
inferior. Such migrants were pouring from
Western to Eastern Europe from Middle Ages
to the early modern times (Małowist 1973).
European colonists and settlers migrated in this
way to the Americas between the 16th and 19th
century, and to Asia, Australia and Africa at the
end of this period (Chirot 1988). Until the late 19th
century, such was a character of migrations to
the United States from British isles, Scandinavia
and Germany. The conquerors and traders were
followed by settlers who would populate and
civilize the allegedly “no man’s lands” (Walaszek
2007, Zolberg 2006). In the industrial era, the
position and role of migrants in the new country
radically changed. These were peasants from
the backward regions that migrated to work
as unskilled workers in the newly established
industrial centers. New migrants were bringing
cheap and unskilled labor and not the ideas,
skills, capital or demographic potential as earlier
migrants (Nugent 1992).
Unlike during the phase of settlement
migrations in the U.S., the expanding industry
expected young and healthy men. The earlier
settlers were expected to be a young, reproductive family of farmers with a set of cultural values
similar to those dominant in the country and
able of self-sufficient existence. Industry, on the
other hand, preferred men, ready to perform
routinized tasks for long hours, rather patient
and docile, ready to conform to hierarchy and
obedient to the already existing rules (Zolberg
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2006). The usefulness of this unskilled labor
force was proportional to the degree of mechanization and specialization. In the Fordist era,
with its high specialization and routinization of
labor symbolized by the factory assembly line,
Eastern and Southern European often illiterate
laborers were ideal labor force (Pacyga 1991).
They were needed just as raw muscle power,
not as carriers of ideas, not as future citizens,
not even as carriers of reproductive potential
(Zolberg 2006).
As Aristide Zolberg convincingly showed
in his study on how the immigration policies
shaped American nationalism Nation by Design
(2006), this was the industrial age at the turn of
the 19th and 20th century when American elites
articulated the immigration dilemma that was
to be repeated in all countries of labor immigration in the next century. When confronted with
the shortage of labor for expanding industry,
American industrialists decided for importation
of laborers that were considered racially and
culturally inferior. The action was organized
with support of the government which recognized industrial development as the national
priority. The repeating immigration dilemma was
therefore: how to acquire cheap labor without
carrying the burden of these laborers’ biological and cultural otherness; how to get laborers
without making them voting citizens?
Central Eastern Europe at the turn of the
19th and 20th century was, along Italy, the major
region where immigrants in the U.S. originated
from. About 4 million Italians, 2.5 million Poles
and 2 million Eastern European Jews migrated
to the U.S. at the time. (Daniels 1996) Polish
peasants, like Slovak, Lithuanian or Hungarian
ones (and unlike Jews) were most often unskilled
laborers in heavy industry. These were sectors
where male labor force dominated: steel works,
coalmines, in leather and chemical industry, in
meat-packing industry, all with “intense heat,
great danger, high accident potential, exhaustion, fatigue, death” (Golab 1977, 105).
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They settled typically in towns and cities
with heavy industry: coalmines, steelworks and
factories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio,
New Jersey in traditional industrial area in the
northeast of the U.S. (Bodnar 1982, Golab 1977,
Greene 1980, Morawska 1985, 1996).
The mechanism of recruitment was based on
ethnic networks, that is older immigrants recommended newer immigrants and introduced them
to their boss and their job (Morawska 1985,
Bodnar 1982, Bukowczyk 1987, Roediger 2006).
In factories, coalmines and steel works, where
departments were organized ethnically, Slavs
were at the bottom of this hierarchy of pay,
prestige, security of employment and safety of
work conditions. The position in industry was
in accord with their position in racial hierarchy
worked by the “scientific racism.” This school
of thought, now discredited, developed in best
Western universities by recognized scholars such
as Madison Grant, and was very influential in
the U.S., as in the rest of the West, at the turn of
the centuries (Gabaccia 2002, Foner 2000). Slavs
were perceived as strong as and docile as bulls
and also as intelligent (Vecoli 1996). Only black
workers, fresh internal migrants, descendants of
the slaves emancipated only a generation ago,
were located below the Slavs in the scientific­
‑racist and industrial hierarchy (Golab 1977: 109,
Gabaccia 2002).
forthcoming) show that non-industrial jobs have
become their specialty. Although immigrants
that arrived in the US in the late 20th century are
better educated that those 100 years ago, their
position on the job market is relatively weak.
In New York City, their earnings and prestige
are higher than those of the newest and poorest
labor migrants from Latin America, but worse
than those of older immigrants from Italy and
Greece, new highly skilled immigrants from India,
Philippines and former Soviet Union (Sosnowska
2010a). In terms of predominant occupations
and socio-economic position, Polish immigrants
are slightly similar to a new group of immigrants
from the English and French speaking Caribbean—a bulk of them work in working class jobs
but as within this group, have relatively high
earnings. As I elaborate elsewhere (2013), their
position on a New York City job market could be
described as “working class aristocracy” or “top
rank laborers.” Construction and building maintenance for men and cleaning—in private apartments and offices—for women are, according
to both official statistics and Polish immigrant
community leaders’ opinion, the most popular
sectors of Polish employment (The Newest New
Yorkers 2004, Sosnowska 2010a).
Polish immigrants’ position in the U.S.
society has changed slightly since the early
20 th century when peasants were coming to
work at the bottom of American industrial hierarchy. However, changes in Polish migrants’
position in the American labor market and—
more generally—within American society and
culture result from the context change rather
than from the change of position in the world
that Poland has been able to secure for itself
and its migrants. These have been changes in
the world and changes in the United States
itself as well as over a century old ethnic and
immigrant networks that are responsible for
Polish relative upward mobility in the U.S. Below,
I characterize the most important dimensions
of this context change.
Migrations to Postindustrial America
In the beginning of the 21st century, there
are about 450 thousand Polish immigrants in
the US, according to the US census. Most of
them arrived in the 1980s and 1990s. More of
them settle in large metropolitan areas (like
everybody else in the US) than a century ago,
and Chicago and New York City are the largest
places of Polish immigrants’ settlement.
The research on contemporary Polish immigrants in Chicago (Erdmans 1998: 74, Sakson
2005), Philadelphia (Morawska 2004) and New
York City (Sosnowska 2010a; Sosnowska 2013
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1. Poles work more often in service sector
and not in industry first, because the character
of the American economy has changed since the
1960s. Secondly, their top rank position among
immigrant service laborers results from the long
tradition of immigration. Well developed ethnic
networks in working class niches provides them
with advantage over newer immigrants of similar
occupational profile (Sosnowska 2010a, 2013
forthcoming).
The development of the new postindustrial
economy, based on media, symbols and knowledge created by the 1980s brought a demand
for a new type of immigrant. Industrial workers,
although still employed in American industry, are
not anymore the most desired labor providers.
As Richard Alba and Victor Nee (2005) argued,
new American economy needs either a highly
skilled professional or an entrepreneurial service
provider (shopkeepers, small business e.g. laundry
or restaurant owners) or a service laborer who
could serve this newly created, educated and busy
middle classes (Alba and Nee 2005). Immigrants
from Poland—legal immigrants, wakacjusze
working with expired tourist visa and political
refugees of the 1980s—have performed mostly
the role of service laborers. As Rumbaut and
Portes show (2006), laborers dominate among
immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, while immigrants­‑entrepreneurs are typical
for newcomers from South Korea, Middle East as
well as South Asia while among professionals
Indian engineers and Filipino or post-Soviet
Jewish physicians are overrepresented (Portes
and Rumbaut 2006). Polish immigrants in New
York City are ready to work hard as hired laborers
in low prestige sectors like other groups with no
entrepreneurial traditions and not much formal
education—from Spanish speaking countries
of Central America and from English and French
speaking Caribbean (Sosnowska 2010a).
My study on Polish working class immigrant
community in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, including
interviews with 26 cleaners (2013, forthcoming)
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indicate that cleaning jobs are quite appreciated
by the cleaners themselves. Although jobs of
office cleaners or maids and housekeepers in
private apartments bring them no respect either
from New York Polish community leaders or
American society they are seen as better than
alternative available employment in industry,
sales or clerk jobs. As I elaborate elsewhere
(Sprzątanie w wielkim mieście, manuscript),
private apartments’ cleaners, even if they are
unauthorized immigrants, often see themselves
as small business owners and feel less tired,
more autonomous and better paid than industry
or sales workers although with less prestige.
Especially those employed in office cleaning are
considered to be trendsetters in Polish Greenpoint. Their work is respected as legal, well
paid, unionized and therefore based on secure
employment contract including ­insurance,
pension plan and paid vacation. My interviews
indicate that Polish immigrants compete there
with other Central Eastern ­E uropeans and
Latinos. As Roger Waldinger’s study (1996)
on the New York City immigrant labor market
shows, this kind of jobs is a dream for uneducated immigrants (or those unable to translate
their credentials into American job market) with
no entrepreneurial traditions.
2. Now, Polish immigrants are not anymore
among the numerically dominant groups of
foreign laborers, like they were along Italians
and Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.
They constitute a numerical minority among the
migrants from non-European countries. Unlike
100 years ago, when East and South E­ uropeans
were considered biologically different and racially
inferior to the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic population, their whiteness is not questioned, as they are
in minority in a much less white crowd. The United
States became in the 1960s a country of formal
racial equality as racial segregation in the South
was forbidden and antidiscrimination measures
were i­ ntroduced in schooling, employment and
public life. However, whiteness and Europeaness,
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is still appreciated culturally (Bean and Lee 2010).
My Polish immigrant respondents clearly discovered upon arrival in the U.S. their whiteness that
they were unaware of in the native country where
everybody is white. They also learnt to see it an
asset in the job market and social life. They felt
that their whiteness gave them (and even more
their children) advantage over non-Europeans
(Sosnowska 2010b).
My respondents who worked as cleaners
and maids as well as some community leaders
thought that ‘a Polish maid’ is a recognized and
appreciated brand in New York City and that
employers prefer them to maids from other
nations (Sosnowska 2010a). The research
shows that these are rather English speaking
­Caribbean women who secured themselves
a niche of maids and baby sitters in New York
City homes (Coble 2006: 158–160). However,
I find some support for Polish immigrants’ intuition in popular culture. The image of Polish (and
Eastern European catholic) maid in American
popular TV series equips them with ethos of
hard work, a sense of hygiene and order but also
with traditional European female wisdom. Characters such as Dorota from Gossip Girl and Magda
from Sex and the City are good examples here.
In both series, Central Eastern European maids
represent what American women have lost in
the course of emancipation, getting rich and
staying sexually attractive. They moralize and
advise, substitute for absent mothers and know
how to fix both practical and psychological problems without spending money on specialists or
technological devices. In both series, Central
Eastern Europe—through its immigrant maids
in New York City—represents a romanticized
and nostalgic version of the Western past, lost
in the course of expansion of modernity, capitalism and urban culture, almost as in Herders’s
writings on Slavic culture (Wolff 1994). On the
other hand, in criminal affairs where Polish
maids appear as thieves of their employers’
jewelry, the fact that they are white is quite
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exposed. Lucyna Turyk­‑Wawrynowicz, a maid
to New York City celebrities such as Robert De
Niro and Isabella Rosselini, who was sentenced
to 3 years of prison for theft in 2006 is the best
known case (Hartocollis 2006). Such criminal
cases still rather promote (who would not like
to have a housekeeper similar to the one who
cleaned for De Niro?) than undermine “Polish
maid” as a valuable trade mark.
3. More women migrate globally than
100 years ago because the new economy in
the post-feminism societies of the West needs
not primarily male workers but female service
workers (Portes and Rumbaut 2006; Slany and
Ślusarczyk 2012; Kindler and Napierała 2010).
This demand has increased in Western societies
since the 1970s, that symbolically mark the era
of both the new economy and new society of
counterculture ideals moving into the mainstream. Western women, including American
ones, have massively entered a job market
since then. As they disappeared as domestic
workers and care providers, new vacancies in
these sectors were created and they were filled
by female immigrants. More home attendants,
maids, baby sitters and elderly care providers
are needed. Women from peripheries play
these roles. Central Eastern European women,
like Afro-Caribbean ones, have a strong position on this market. As much as being native
English speakers, familiar with British middle
class culture of self-improvement and discipline
(Vickerman 2001) is an Afro-Caribbean women’s
advantage, Polish women take advantage of
their whiteness, European cultural background
and well developed ethnic networks.
4. Finally, low status of Polish immigrants
has not ended with the accession to European
Union and change of the direction of Polish labor
migrations from the United States to Europe.
In the EU countries, where most Poles migrate
after admission to the EU in 2004, their situation
is similar to that in the United States. Here again
they make together with other Eastern ­Europeans
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Poland has remained an undeveloped country
that exports cheap labor to the centers of the
world economy; a country whose economic
development, in its pace and character, is not
able to address aspirations of a significant part
of its population. Emigration remains the only
or most reasonable life strategy for this group
as it did to hungry peasants from overpopulated
villages of Galicia and Mazowsze over a century
ago (Kaczmarczyk 2005). Both in the U.S. and
in the new destination countries, Polish immigrants remain typically migrants-laborers (in
opposition to professionals or entrepreneurs)
whose comparative advantage in postindustrial
service sectors is whiteness, European culture
and in some countries, such as the U.S., well
developed ethnic networks.
from smaller nations the only European immigrant group and compete with non-European
migrants. “Despite positive selection (…) they
work in secondary sectors of labor market (…):
construction, agriculture, hospitality, as well as
cleaning” where pay, prestige and security are
low (Fidel, Kaczmarczyk, Okólski 2007: 82).
Significant changes in the world economy,
demography and culture activated non­‑­European
peripheries in the 1970s. Since then, they have
been globally a major source of labor migrants.
Because of that global development and because
of ethnic networks shaped in the course of
over 100 year long tradition of Polish migration
to the U.S., the relative position of Poles has
improved. Between the industrial and postindustrial era, they have moved from the bottom
of the working class to the position of “laborers’
aristocracy.” However, despite the changes in
the world economy, and dramatic changes in
the region itself (the two world wars, changes in
social and ethnic structure in result of Holocaust
and changes of borders and political systems),
A nna S osnows k a
scholar, University of Warsaw,
author of Zrozumieć zacofanie.
Spory historyków o Europę
Wschodnią (1947–1994)
Photo: Nikola Jordanovski
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Massachusetts, London, England: Harvard University Press.
Bean F. D., Lee J., 2010, The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in 21st Century America. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation Press
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Bodnar John et al.; 1982, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900–1960. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
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G uy S tanding
The Precariat Grows and Stirs
T
he ranks of the precariat were swollen by the
shock of 2008, both directly and as a result
of policies adopted by governments in its
aftermath. The precariat is a class-in-the-making
and is a threat to the established order in ways that
mainstream public opinion has yet to appreciate.
The precariat must be understood as part of
the global class structure that has been taking
shape since the onset of globalization in the early
1980s. That structure is unlike what predominated
in the industrial era of closed economies.
At the top, there is a tiny plutocracy, with
their billions and vast power, a tiny number of
global citizens, who have manipulated politicians
and much of the media. Below them is an elite of
very wealthy people, some aspiring to reach the
plutocracy. A long way below them in terms of
incomes is the salariat, those with employment
security, good salaries and an array of non-wage
enterprise-based benefits. The number in the salariat is probably shrinking, but they feel detached
from the old welfare state. Alongside them in
terms of incomes is a group best described as
­proficians—part professional, part technicians—
living on their wits, not wanting employment security, with portable skills, making good money but
in danger of burn out.
Below those high-income groups is the proletariat, the oldcore working class. The number in
that category has been shrinking for decades, and
many people in jobs that put them in it have found
that their jobs have disappeared or have taken
on the character of what the precariat beneath
them find typical of their lot. We must not forget
that European welfare states and its social model
was built by and for that class. Yet today they are
a fading minority.
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G uy S tanding
is Professor of Economics, SOAS, University of London,
and author of The Precariat—The New Dangerous Class,
published by Bloomsbury.
Photo: Archive Guy Standing
It is the precariat that has been growing for
the past three decades. It is not an underclass,
although that exists beneath it as an unsavory
zone of lost souls, in chronic unemployment,
detached from society, mostly homeless, suffering
from social illnesses such as alcoholism and drug
addiction.
Unlike that lumpenized stratum, the precariat
has been wanted by the new productive system.
It began to grow when economic liberalization
took off after 1980, and when governments of left
and right pursued policies of labor market flexibility. With a globalizing labor market, firms and
governments wanted workers who were flexible
and adaptable. But as more people were put in
insecure forms of labor, a threat hung over the
early part of the Global Transformation.
A globalizing economy with open labor
markets meant that what should be called a Global
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Convergence was initiated, with wages tending
towards global equalization. Governments in
Europe or other OECD countries could not allow
wages and worker benefits to plunge towards
levels prevailing in China and other emerging
market economies, where in the 1990s they were
about one-fiftieth of what a median wage earner
in Europe was receiving.
Consequently, as real wages at the lower end of
labor markets declined in the OECD, governments
made a Faustian Bargain, disguising declining
earnings by providing cheap consumer credit,
labor subsidies and the new tool of the age, tax
credits, which were a subsidy to low wages. The US
Earned Income Tax Credit became the world’s
biggest welfare scheme, and countries such as
Britain followed suit with an array of tax credits that
soon grew to dwarf their other welfare programs.
The Faustian Bargain ushered in an orgy
of consumption and growth of three forms of
­indebtedness, corporate, government and household. It was folly. And as with all Faustian Bargains,
it had to end, as it did with the crash of 2007–2008.
We must appreciate what had happened
in the interim. The precariat had taken shape,
encompassing many millions of people globally.
It is defined not solely by having insecure labor,
being in and out of short-term jobs, with volatile
incomes. The precariat is faced by chronic uncertainty, having no occupational career or identity
to give their lives.
Above all, those in the precariat are increasingly supplicants. They are denizens, not citizens,
in lacking the range of rights regarded as normal
by the salariat or old working class. For instance,
if you are in the precariat, particularly but not only
if you are a migrant, you will find you can suddenly
be denied social benefits by arbitrary decisions of
local bureaucracies. They do not have assured state
benefits. For instance, only a small minority have
entitlement to unemployment insurance benefits.
They do not have access to paid medical leave or
paid holidays, let alone the assurance of an occupational pension to offer hope for a secure future.
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A feature of the precariat is that those inside
it do not have access to insurance-based social
security. This was bound to happen, since the
social and national insurance base of the ­Beveridge
and Bismarckian variants of the welfare state was
eroded by the shift from labor forces consisting
largely of employees in stable full-time jobs to
workforces consisting of more and more casuals,
part-timers and contract labor. Those in such
situations cannot build up an adequate contributory base. Governments have turned to meanstested social assistance that automatically puts
the precariat in poverty traps, i.e., where going
from benefits to low-wage jobs imply an effective
marginal tax rate of 80 % or more.
Up to 2008, the insecure incomes and lives of
the precariat were concealed to some extent by
the frothy economy. After the shock, there was
a sucking sound as millions more were plunged
into it, and the insecurities were intensified. But
it was not just the Great Recession that enlarged
it. The policies that governments and the international financial agencies instituted automatically
expanded the precariat and made conditions
much worse.
The austerity era has allowed governments
to take a more utilitarian approach, and in doing
so they have increased structural inequalities that
are greater than revealed by measures of income
inequality. For instance, the inequality of security
has rarely been greater than it is today. Security is
a vital part of income and living. But, for instance,
when the crash hit, governments bailed out banks
and provided more subsidies to the financial elite,
giving them enhanced security. Bonuses were
restored. Those living with share incomes were
aided by quantitative easing. Stock markets have
done remarkably well. Meanwhile, state benefits
and public social services have been slashed, with
benefit levels being eroded and benefits made
much harder to obtain and retain. Conditionalities
for benefits have been tightened. Poverty traps
are worse. While someone in the precariat faces
marginal tax rates of over 80 %, governments have
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cut standard income tax rates to something close
to 40 % (with tax reliefs to add) and corporation
or capital tax towards 20 % (with even more tax
reliefs).
Increasingly, the lower rungs of the precariat
have had to rely on charity rather than on rightsbased social protection. The young inside the
precariat—and we are talking about a majority
of the youth of many countries—have had to
rely on informal protection from family, friends
and support networks. Most have been unable
to rely on much, and have been plunged into
chronic indebtedness. Payday loan sharks are an
ugly feature of financial rent seeking. The precariat
faces decades of debt without realistic chance
of escape.
The social picture looks gloomy. But it is
just the beginning. The precariat is the new
dangerous class because its modus vivendi means
its members are detached from all the old mainstream political agendas. That is why, despite the
horrors of the crises, they have not mobilized to
support social democrats, whose prescriptions
of “jobs, jobs, jobs” and the trappings of laborism
seems neither attractive nor realistic. A piece
of graffiti on a wall in Madrid was wonderfully
subversive: “The worst thing would be to return
to the old normal.”
Part of the precariat is drawn by the populist far
right. This is a minority, and is linked to the demise
of the old working class. Part of the precariat
does consist of young and old in working-class
communities who no longer have working-class
occupations. They can be lured to see others in the
precariat, particularly migrants and minorities, as
the cause of their plight.
The utilitarian politics of commodified politicians also sounds attractive to them. In the UK,
for instance, the manipulation of public opinion
has been frightening. When we know that high
unemployment is due to economic mismanagement and the global economic crisis, a majority
has been persuaded by political rhetoric to think
that most of the unemployed are that way due to
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their own fault, and that benefits should be cut,
when they are much lower than they used to be.
All the official and unofficial data show benefit
fraud to be minimal, but media manipulation and
political assertions have managed to have the
precariat demonized. More and more tests are
devised, more and more sanctions are applied,
hitting minorities, the disabled and the young
particularly hard.
Migrants and minorities make up a second
block in the precariat. They are not drawn to
neo-fascism but tend to follow political leads,
occasionally participating in days of rage when
particularly egregious policies are launched.
However, it is the third and rapidly growing
part that is the biggest long-term danger to the
political establishments, and where all progressives
should pin their hopes. It consists of the young
educated, and some not so young, who are experiencing intense status frustration, knowing their
educational qualifications exceed the sort of labor
they can anticipate obtaining and knowing that
there is a deep corruption in the politics around
them.
They regard neo-fascism as ridiculous and evil.
In the outpourings of 2011, they found a voice, as
primitive rebels, in the sense that they combined
in the squares and streets, knowing what they
were against, but unable as yet to define what
it is they wanted instead. The primitive rebels
phase is a necessary one in the formulation of
an alternative political agenda. It establishes
an identity, a sense of pride, a movement from
one of self-pity and defeat to one of dignity and
renewed struggle.
In meetings of the Occupy Movement and
in meetings of the indignados and other groups
across Europe, I have found many people able
to stand up and say with defiance, “I am in the
precariat!” When you can do that, you begin to
have agency, an inkling of social power. Defiance
is growing, anger is building, and as they do, so
patience with the inegalitarian nature of the
austerity era will wear thin.
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Aleksander Kaczorowski
The Prague Cemetery
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery.
Translated by Richard Dixon.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011
1
From the Kampa side the Marysko Bridge looks
like a bathtub, with passers-by gliding across it
/ on their rear ends on rollers, wrote Bohumil
Hrabal in his long poem Bambino di Praga (1950).
As everyone knows, there is no such bridge in
Prague—it is just Hrabal’s joke, a playful wink in
the direction of his closest friend, Karel Marysko.
Years later, when Hrabal uses extracts from the
poem in his story Kafkárna (1965), there will be
a mention of the Charles Bridge which “looks
from Kampa like a long bathtub, on which the
passers-by are gliding along on their rear ends
on rollers.” Either way, the rollers take us to the
neighborhood of the UPM—the Prague Museum
of Decorative Arts.
This is one of my favorite places in Prague.
Josef Kroutvor works there, essayist and art historian, whose article Central Europe: Anecdote and
History expressed one of the most interesting
views in the debate prompted by Milan Kundera
when communism was in its decline.
“As Hrabal once said to me at the Golden
Tiger: ‘I do love your snap judgments’,” Kroutvor
told me when we met shortly after Hrabal’s
suicide, when the writer was pictured on the
front page of a Prague tabloid, wearing a railroad
man’s cap with a gold band, with a photograph
of the hospital next to him; a red arrow pointed
to the spot where he had fallen from a window
on the fifth floor. The caption read: “Here ended
the life of one of our greatest modern authors.”
“I try to retain the things Hrabal said to me,”
Kroutvor continued. “Besides, making snap
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j­udgments is one of our national characteristics—it’s typically Central European,” he added
after a pause for thought.
His neatly knotted, unchallenging bowtie
made him look like an Austrian bookkeeper
from the turn of the century, or a home-grown
philosopher from the same era, someone like
Ladislav Klíma, who called himself a continuator
of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas, but was famous
as the author of brilliant aphorisms, philosophical tales and the novel The Sufferings of Prince
Sternenhoch (1928). One of its main characters,
a German general, claims to know the perfect
way to halt an attack by the Czech infantry—you
have to fire knedle (potato dumplings) at them.
“We haven’t the time to think everything right
through,” said my interlocutor, picking up the
broken thread. “It is because Europe is divided
into three parts: the West, where real history
happens, the East, where there is no history at
all, and Central Europe, where history appears
to be absurd, and falls apart into individual,
meaning­less events. It might look as if history
dwindles from West to East—as if the mechanism
of time known as history operates far more efficiently in the West, while in the East time slows
down, and sometimes even comes to a standstill,
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or vanishes entirely. That’s why our part of Europe
is typified by those periods in history when, after
long stretches of stagnation, time seems to break
free of its chain and race forwards to catch up.
For in a short while we’ll be back to times when
nothing happens”.
As I listened to him, I realized that we
do not find Kroutvor and his compatriots’ “snap
­judgments” offensively superficial, thanks to the
self-irony that is a typical feature of Prague intellectuals—Hrabal even spoke of “Prague irony.”
A person can only cultivate this sort of self-irony
and the tendency to make snap judgments by
spending long hours over a cup of coffee or a pint
of beer—not on one’s own, of course. That is why
kavárny (cafés), hospody (inns) and výčepy (bars
the size of a goods elevator where you only drop
in for a glass of beer) are an intrinsic element of
the Prague environment, often situated in quite
surprising places. For instance in the long (as
a bathtub?) basement of the UPM, from where
you can only see the rollers… I mean feet of
the passers-by. To use the restroom you have to
climb the marble steps in the main hall to the
second floor of the building. From the restroom
windows, you can see one of the most unusual,
least expected views in such circumstances—
looking over the old Jewish graveyard. The very
one that Umberto Eco writes about in his latest
novel, The Prague Cemetery.
Eco was on a visit to Prague in August 1968—
just when the Warsaw Pact troops, a force of
300,000 soldiers and 6,000 tanks, brought their
‘fraternal aid’ to Czechoslovakia. Throughout
1968 (annus mirabilis, annus horribilis, as Josef
Škvorecký described it), “time seemed to break
free of its chain and race forwards to catch up.”
Alexander Dubček’s attempt to create ‘socialism
with a human face’ ended in Moscow’s military
intervention. Socialism as understood by Dubček’s
successor, Gustáv Husák, looked more like one
of Arcimboldo’s fruit and vegetable portraits.
It is no accident that the hero of Václav Havel’s
famous essay, The Power of the Powerless (1978),
who so convincingly explains to himself that there
is nothing wrong with displaying a sign reading:
“Workers of the world, unite!,” is the owner of
a greengrocer’s store. Dubček became a gardener,
Havel was an assistant at a brewery, and the future
Czech primate was a window cleaner. Kundera
kept himself going by writing horoscopes, while
Hrabal became a “writer in liquidation,” who
wrote his most famous books: Cutting It Short
(1970), I Served the King of England (1971) and
Too Loud A Solitude (1975) “for the drawer.” They
were fetched out of it by Ludvík Vaculík, who
founded the underground publishing house Hasp
(Edice Petlice). It was reading these books that
prompted me to travel to Prague for the first time
in the spring of 1990.
I only spent five days there, but actually
I stayed for ever. Not until many years later did
I realize that one of the main reasons why this
happened was a desire to participate—if only
in the role of an observer—in an exceptionally
egalitarian model of national community, unfamiliar to us Poles. This egalitarianism certainly
does not mean that Czech political culture is
thoroughly democratic; on the contrary, this is
the very reason why the Czechs gave in to the
temptations of totalitarianism so easily, identifying egalitarianism with so-called uravnilovka—
literally “equalization,” or artificial egalitarianism.
Disproportions in ownership have been rising
non-stop in the Czech Republic, just as they have
in Poland. And yet the lack of any division into
gentlemen and louts is still a typical feature of
Czech society. And it is this feature, to do with the
model of “national revival” (“from the bottom up”)
which was adopted in the nineteenth century,
that invariably surprises visitors from the rest
of Europe.
We also find echoes of this fascination in
Umberto Eco’s notes from his visit to Czechoslovakia, My 1968—On the Other Side of the Wall
(only published in Polish as Mój 1968. Po drugiej
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stronie muru, Krakow, 2008). This little book is
a collection of “snap judgments” made by Eco
at the age of thirty-six, when he found himself
in Prague by accident—the actual goal of his
journey was Warsaw, where he was going to take
part in a conference organized by a semiotics
society. “I was on my way to Warsaw by car with
my wife and two friends to attend a congress.
It was meant to be a cultural trip,” he recalled.
‘First we stopped in Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy
Vary, where we enjoyed a dose of Habsburg glitz
in the cosmetics of folk tourism, then Prague,
where we were to meet up with friends from the
writer’s union. …we stopped in Libeň, a working­
‑class suburb in the north east of the city, on the
highway that goes to Poland. When we woke
up on Wednesday 21 August, we saw columns
of tanks outside.’
Once the initial shock has passed, Eco calls
his Czech friends, who advise him to get out
of Prague immediately. However, there is not
enough gas in the car to get to the border, and
there are already “endless lines” at all the gas
stations (and grocery stores). So he goes back to
Libeň, from where he and his friends decide to
walk into the city center—”about ten kilometers.”
At two, they have lunch at the restaurant in
the Hotel Paris (where Hrabal’s wife Eliška worked
as a cashier). “Through the windows we can see
tanks going down a narrow street, heading for
the downtown area. We’re on our way there
too, to Old Town Square, where there is a ring
of machine guns surrounding the statue of Jan
Hus, aimed at every building.”
By three they are “at a café near the castle,” on
the other side of the Vltava river (it looks as if our
Italian friends were pretty good walkers). There
they meet a writer friend; the three hours they
spend with him are “infinitely sad.”“It’s the end of
socialism,” says Jan K. “The people I’ve talked to
had no doubts about socialism as such,” adds Eco.
“They regarded it as something obvious, and
they were simply demanding different conditions
within its framework—they were challenging
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authoritarian politics. ‘But now it’s over,’ says K.
‘From now on my son will be just as much of
a skeptic as I am’.”
Two days later Eco reaches Vienna. He calls
the editors of the weekly L’Espresso and dictates
a report from Prague (his article, headed Dancing
Among the Tanks, will appear in the issue dated
1 September). ”We are in Austria,” he ends his
account of the four days during which he saw
‘everything needed to understand the style of
this nation.” “The danger is over. In a way, we are
at home. What am I to do? Play the March of the
Marines? But the betrayed socialists whom I left
behind in Prague would not want that.”
3
Eco’s account was not the only one to
appear in the Italian press at the time. His
fellow countryman Angelo Maria Ripellino was
also in Prague in those days. His Magic Prague
(1973), ‘a historical and literary prose-poem in
116 chapters,’ is perhaps the most famous book
about mythical Prague. But for as long as I can
remember I have been more interested in histo­
rical Prague—a Central European city which in
the nineteenth century was the site of the difficult
symbiosis of Czechs, Germans and Jews.
We have grown used to associating that
century with ladies in crinolines and gentlemen
in top hats. Yet it was underneath those top hats
that all the twentieth century’s most monstrous
ideologies, conspiracy theories, prejudices and
deranged projects were incubated. The ­Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, the history of which—
from Maurice Joly’s pamphlet (1864) through
to Sergei Nilus’s The Great Within the Small
(1905)—is presented in Umberto Eco’s novel, is
the quintessence of all those lethal myths. Thus
although its main protagonist, the brilliant Italian
forger Simone Simonini, is a fictional character,
The Prague Cemetery reads like a faithful record
of the events that led to Europe’s greatest crime.
It is like the read-out from the black box of the
twentieth century’s greatest catastrophe.
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The story is swarming with double agents
and international spies, impostors and plagiarizers, devious Jesuits and Masons, Satanists
in priest’s cassocks and Russian mystics in bast
shoes, crowned heads and suicide bombers, as
well as a whole crowd of supporters and creators
of conspiracy theories. The Protocols was Adolf
Hitler’s favorite reading matter, and also that of
the last tsarina of Russia. Henry Ford himself had
half a million copies printed and distributed at
his own expense. In the modern day, those who
believe in its authenticity include former Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, members of
the Palestinian organization Hamas, and terrorists
belonging to Al-Qaida. It is required reading for all
anti-Semites, not just in the Arab world or South
America, but even in exotic Japan.
In Europe and America, which experienced
the atrocities of the Second World War, only
a complete fool would now refer to The Protocols.
In the West books such as The Da Vinci Code enjoy
popularity, in which the roles of the baddies are
played by members of the Catholic organization Opus Dei. By this token history has turned
a circle, as the negative characters in the original
Protocols were Jesuits, as Umberto Eco reminds
us in his new novel.
Franz Kafka was born and spent almost his
entire life in Prague’s Old Town. He attended the
German high school within the Kinsky Palace.
This is one of the buildings in Old Town Square
at which the Russians aimed their machine guns,
positioned around the statue of Jan Hus.
Twenty-five years after Kafka’s death, Bohumil
Hrabal, then a thirty-four-year-old poet, doctor
of law, insurance agent and soon to be manual
laborer at the Poldi steelworks in Kladno, moved
into the nearby Stone Bell House. He was fascinated by surrealism and existentialism, and read
Breton and Camus. Kafkárna is a compilation
of several poetic works, which Hrabal wrote in
those days, at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s.
The a­ llusions to Kafka only appeared in the final
version of the story; the title itself is an expression
of the “Kafkamania” prevalent in the mid-1960s in
Prague. It is really just a harbinger of the Prague
Spring, yet another period in Czech history, when
‘time seemed to break free of its chain.”
However, the genesis of the concept kafkárna
dates from a much earlier period, namely the
1930s, when the Czech translation of The Castle was
published. Although the book did not sell particularly well (apparently during the war it was still
possible to buy it under the counter), the Prague
surrealists saw Kafka as their forerunner. And it
was at an exhibition by one of them, on seeing
paintings depicting the grim arterial roads of the
big city, tangled in a steel cobweb of wires, cables
and God knows what else, with passers-by furtively
darting along, that one of the spectators cried: “To
je kafkárna!”—”That’s pure Kafka!”
From then on Kafka was always present
among the Czechs: the surrealists discovered
a pre-surrealist in him, the existentialists a pre­‑­
‑existentialist, and the Christians a religious writer.
There was only one way in which it was quite
impossible to interpret him—as a “pre-socialist
realist.”
Pavel Eisner, who translated The Castle and
was a leading expert on Kafka’s work, defined
it—without a shadow of malice—as “clerical­
‑metaphysical.” Since the time when his book,
Kafka and Prague, was published in 1958, the
theme of the Kafka’s relationship with his native
city and its Slavic citizens has spawned a copious
literature. And yet following the “Czech trail” is
bound to lead scholars of Kafka’s work astray.
Even though he knew Czech (Milena Jesenská—
at his request—wrote to him in her native
tongue), even though he was a contemporary
and near neighbor of Jaroslav Hašek (whom
he never met), even though he undoubtedly
read books in Czech, and in The Castle one can
discern a similarity to Božena Němcová’s The
Grandmother (1855), a novel which he rated
highly, in fact no feature of the Czech identity,
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however we understand it, left its mark on his
writing.
He might just as well have lived on the moon.
And there is something relevant here, in that
Prague is an “unearthly” place which each person
sees differently, but which everyone finds fascinating. A place where people pass each other by,
knowing nothing about one another.
This is exactly what happens to the narrator
of the story Kafkárna, whom we accompany on
an evening walk about Prague.
Not all of it fits, because from Old Town
Square we go straight into Uhelný Trh (meaning
“Coal Market”) near Wenceslas Square, and from
there to Maiselova Street (which is in the Josefov
district), then back to Štěpánská Street, in other
words the New Town, whence we return to Old
Town Square, where a militiaman sternly instructs
us: “Please don’t shout like that, Mr Kafka.”
We must have been on our rear ends on rollers
(as Hrabal put it) to fly round such a large part of
the city in a single evening. On top of that, a major
portion of the events described in Kafkárna actually takes place not in Prague, but in Nymburk.
But that is a completely different story, on which
there is no need to elaborate here (the story of
a poet’s proscribed love affair and his resulting
flight from his native city to Prague).
What matters is that in the fall of 1949 Hrabal
moved from the Stone Bell House to Josefov,
where he settled near the Jewish cemetery. And
there he began to write fiction.
made such a strong impression on me”), in the
course of a few years dozens of modern tenement
houses appeared, with spacious apartments and
elevators.
The most impressive buildings were erected
along Pařižská Street, running from the Old Town
Square to Čech Bridge. In 1914, it was in an apartment on the top floor of one of these tenements
that Kafka wrote Metamorphosis. The name of the
street—an elegant Prague boulevard where even
today aficionados of window shopping from all
over the world gaze at the displays exhibited
by the most expensive clothes stores between
Milan and Moscow—testified to the ambitions
of the constructors, who wanted to transform
Prague into a modern metropolis modeled on
Paris. For instance, the tourists were to be carried
up to Hradčany by a funicular railway similar to
the one that takes willing customers up neighboring Petřín hill to its miniature Eiffel tower
(one-fifth the size of the original). The railway
line was to run along Nerudova Street, from near
the Tomcat inn on Malostranské Square as far as
a good restaurant called the Golden Star.
Josefov, which dated back to the days of
Charles IV, was not the only district due to fall prey
to the destructive passion of Prague’s imitators of
Haussmann. So was the Old Town, including its
most famous streets, Karlova and Husova, where
in a fourteenth-century house at number 17 there
had already been a café 200 years earlier, among
whose regular habitués were the Romantic poet
Karel Hynek Mácha and the historian František
Palacký (it is now the Golden Tiger beer cellar).
There was also a plan to fill in the Čertovka, the
branch of the Vltava, which divides Kampa (then
still an island) from Malá Strana. And this would
surely have happened, if not for a protest initiated
by the writer Vilém Mrštík, who wrote a series of
articles entitled Bestia triumphans. The leading
artists, intellectuals and politicians of the day
sent countless petitions to the city authorities,
demanding a stop to the mindless devastation,
and when this brought no effect, they created
5
Nowadays it seems unbelievable, but the
Prague cemetery was once due to disappear
in the early years of the twentieth century. In
1893, Emperor Franz Joseph I signed a sanitation
decree, which envisaged the demolition of about
six hundred houses in the former Jewish district.
In place of buildings including the Gothic ones,
which had delighted Franz Grillparzer sixty-seven
years earlier (“I liked Prague beyond all comprehension. No city, apart from Venice, had ever
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a voting bloc, which in 1898 took charge of the
city. The defenders of old Prague rescued the most
valuable historic buildings in Josefov, including
the Old New Synagogue and the Jewish cemetery.
But not entirely. Within the limits of the cemetery
the UPM building had appeared.
How does the Prague cemetery come to
feature in the title of Umberto Eco’s novel? One
of the most absurd motifs in The Protocols is the
scene describing a secret meeting of twelve rabbis
at the Jewish cemetery in Prague. At conferences
like this one, held once every 200 years, the
Jews supposedly established the future fate of
the world. Like all the themes exploited in The
Protocols, this one too was taken from another
source. In 1868, and thus barely four years after
the publication of Joly’s pamphlet, a novel entitled Biarritz was published in Prussia, apparently
written by someone named Sir John Retcliffe. The
man hiding behind this pseudonym was called
­errmann Goedsche, a counterfeiter, fraudster and
agent of Prussian intelligence, who also happened
to be a prolific scribbler. In a chapter entitled
The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council
of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel
he described this secret conference of rabbis,
deliberating on how to take over the world.
This is the most famous and the most often
cited motif relating to Prague in world literature.
It bewitched Adolf Hitler, among others, whose
Mein Kampf was defined by American literary
scholar Peter Demetz, not without reason, as
“magic Prague’s most poisonous flower.” The
legend of the Czech capital, city of mystics and
alchemists, of Rabbi Loew, the Golem and Emperor
Rudolf II, was born at the turn of the 1860s and
1870s; it was then that travelers from England,
America and Germany—among them such celebrities as the English writer George Eliot—discovered the Jewish district in this city, the only one
in Europe (apart from Venice), preserved since
medieval times in an almost untouched state.
Delighted by it, they created one of the most
enduring literary myths in modern Europe, the
crowning of which was the posthumous career of
Franz Kafka’s fiction. And the death of six million
Jews, including Kafka’s sisters, gassed in the Nazi
extermination camps.
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Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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Radek Schovánek
Václav Havel’s
Theatre of the
Absurd
Jiří Suk, Politics as the Theatre
of the Absurd: Václav Havel
1975–1989. Paseka 2013
Jiří Suk’s “Politics as the Theatre of the Absurd“
captures Václav Havel’s journey from a “powerless“ intellectual, author of an open letter to the
Secretary General of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia Central Committee in a “normalized“ and stagnant society to its culmination
during the Velvet Revolution, which saw the
“powerless“ political prisoner take over the
presidential office from the very man to whom
his urgent appeal had been addressed fourteen
years earlier. Havel wrote this letter at a time when
communist bloc representatives attending the
Helsinki talks hoped to gain economic concessions, while democratic Europe hoped to achieve
some liberalization in the area of human rights.
Future developments were to prove fatally wrong
the communist representatives‘ claim that “we
are the masters in our own yard.“ In this instance,
as elsewhere in his book, the author quotes extensively from archive materials, illustrating Havel’s
thought processes and the reasons why he chose
the open letter format. This, Suk argues, was the
point when, whether intentionally or not, Havel
stepped onto the political stage. Publishing his
account of the state as a normalized society in
Western Europe and the émigré media turned
him into a sort of informal spokesperson for the
nascent opposition.
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The investigation and subsequent trial in 1976
of the punk band Plastic People of the Universe
presented Havel with a challenge. Would it be
possible to mobilize public solidarity with the
accused? What strategy would be effective
against the powers-that-be, prepared to jail
young artists merely because they refused to
conform? Havel knew immediately that more
was at stake than just the fate of a single banned
band. Together with Jiří Němec1 he set out to
organize support and call for the release of the
persecuted musicians. He approached Jaroslav
Seifert,2 asking him to speak up on behalf of one
of the accused, Svatopluk Karásek.3 The regime
unleashed a barrage of propaganda, vilifying the
young musicians as drug addicts and authors of
obscene lyrics. However, the trial failed to have
the effect its instigators envisaged. Many prosecution witnesses retracted their testimony and
the defendants refused to plead guilty. Almost
eighty independent intellectuals spoke out in
their defense.
Havel realized it would be a mistake not to
exploit this potential. The “Plastics“ trial was not
to be the only one. As early as April 1975 the
State Security (StB) initiated proceedings, codenamed “Káča,“ against sixteen intellectuals and
historians suspected of hostile activities; they
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were charged with “subversion“ under Article
98 of the Criminal Code. Following an investigation, a series of interrogations and twenty-two
house searches lasting over a year, a trial was
set to begin. However, it never took place, for
in November 1976, i.e. one month before the
birth of Charter 77, the StB investigators halted
the criminal proceedings. “The criminal investigation... failed to secure material that would
warrant the pressing of criminal charges...“ It
was no accident that this decision coincided with
the debacle of the musicians‘ trial: the regime
simply could not afford a second judicial failure.
One might say, with slight exaggeration, that
the relative success of the show of support for
the underground musicians provided writers
such as Ivan Klíma and Ludvík Vaculík, historian
Jan Křen and several other intellectuals with at
least temporary protection from imprisonment.
“I support the Charter 77 declaration dated
1 January 1977.“ This magic formula was to alter
the history of Czechoslovakia’s opposition. Jiří
Suk gives a detailed account of the genesis of the
Charter 77 declaration and the role Havel played
in the wording of it. Suk mentions a meeting held
in Havel‘s flat on 3 January 1977, at which the final
strategy for handing over the signatures to the
Czechoslovak parliament, the Federal Assembly,
was decided. Collecting signatures during the
1976 Christmas holidays proved to be a very
fortunate idea. In spite of the fact that the first
242 signatories included five StB agents (Egon
Čierný, Josef Hodic, Václav Hyndrák, Jiří Kořínek
and Vladimír Škutina), State Security was unable
to lay their hands on the text. It is now obvious
that the StB informers had signed the Charter
in consultation with their controllers. However,
the author is mistaken when he claims that “the
birth of Charter 77 was kept secret.“ Havel’s flat
was quite certainly bugged at the time of the
3 January meeting and the StB had detailed information of the signatories‘ immediate plans. In this
case, holding the meeting in his flat, Havel was
guilty of a serious breach of conspiracy rules.
Based on their surveillance information, the
StB was able to plan the subsequent arrest of
Charter 77 spokespersons and Jiří Suk is wrong
to state that “copies of cards with personal signatures had been inadvertently left in the briefcase
seized“ [by the police, Translator’s note]. In fact, the
StB had seized the original signatures, and they
were included in the Charter 77 investigation file.
Also inaccurate is the statement that “by the
end of March every single one of the signatories
had been questioned.“ The Communist Party
apparatus had compiled a brief list of signatories
who were not to be subjected to questioning,
including, for example, Jaroslav Seifert. Havel
himself discouraged some signatories from joining
Charter 77, especially Vlastimil Třešňák and Jaroslav Hutka.4 The two men were still occasionally
able to perform, in spite of harsh censorship, and
Havel argued that the opportunity to make public
appearances was more important than one or two
additional signatures. He was right to predict that
the regime would unleash all the resources at its
disposal, particularly the StB, against Charter 77.
Josef Kafka, the StB officer dealing with Vlasta
Třešňák, was particularly brutal, subjecting him to
physical torture several times. After Třešňák was
made to leave Czechoslovakia his tormentor was
promoted to StB‘s intelligence unit. The author
thoroughly documents the hate campaign against
Charter 77, highlighting the particularly active
role writer Tomáš Řezáč played in the slanderous
activity. It is a pity though that the author neglects
to explain that this man was a communist intelligence officer who had returned to Czechoslovakia
after several years in exile, to continue his services
as a Judas at home.
Havel was arrested as early as 14 January 1977
and remanded in custody. The regime realized
it could not charge a Charter 77 signatory with
the attempt to hand in a petition and therefore
“linked“ him to the case of Ota Ornest,5 whom
the StB had long had in its sights because of his
close contact with Pavel Tigrid.6 Although their
cooperation dated back to the 1960s and Ornest
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was being quite cautious, he paid the price of
Tigrid’s carelessness. The latter had revealed the
role played by Ornest to a StB agent, the rheumatologist Václav Rejholec (a.k.a. by the codenames
Seagull, Assistent and Kafka) who lived in the
same block of flats as Václav Havel and enjoyed
Tigrid’s full confidence. This top-ranking agent
collaborated with the StB from 1957 until the fall
of the communist regime and was introduced to
Tigrid in 1959 by Father František Planner.
Several years‘ worth of surveillance and
bugging yielded a rather clear picture of Ornest’s
activities. With the help of a handful of Western
diplomats Tigrid smuggled into Czechoslovakia
books including from émigré presses, as well as
money and much needed duplicating equipment. The contacts were monitored by the StB.
It took StB operatives several years to “plant“
Rejholec on Václav Havel. As someone who regularly travelled to the West this agent became
a key link between Havel and Tigrid. The State
Security operatives had quite a good overview
of Havel‘ s contacts with Tigrid and Jiří Pelikán7
but were not able to use this information in court.
In his memoirs Ota Ornest recalls the smile his
mention of Václav Rejholec brought to the interrogator’s face. He says he knew straight away
that this was the traitor who put him into jail. In
a private conversation, Václav Havel confirmed
that he saw through Rejholec’s treachery in 1986
and although he did not warn Pavel Tigrid, the
State Security had to find another informer. The
role of Havel’s connection was taken over by
another neighbor, Milan Sloboda, whom Havel
did not manage to unmask. A further explanation for Havel’s discretion regarding agent
“Kafka’s“ (Václav Rejholec’s) role may have been
the fact that his daughter, also a police informer
and codenamed “Ája,“ was Havel’s mistress who
passed his messages to Lech Wałęsa during her
trips to Poland.
Jiří Suk gives a detailed and thorough account
of the StB interrogations and Havel’s appeal to
the State Procurator asking to be released from
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custody. However, Suk‘s reading of the investigating officer’s comment on the StB operatives‘
involvement in the investigation is erroneous:
“It meant that Havel would be cross-examined
and his mental state would be used to induce
him to give more detailed statements.“ In fact, the
operatives‘ involvement could have meant one
thing alone: the assumption on the part of the
investigating officer that Havel was ready to cooperate with the StB. Obviously, the thought of even
attempting to recruit Havel had never crossed
the mind of the operatives, who knew Havel very
well. The investigating officer‘s assumption was
wrong. In the 1960s, a file was briefly opened on
Havel as a potential secret informer. This, too, was
more likely based on an erroneous assumption
on the part of the relevant officer than the result
of a concentrated effort. It was quite common
for StB officers to misinterpret someone’s polite
and reticent demeanor as weakness and draw
the wrong conclusions from it.
After a few months of detention, a humiliated
Václav Havel was released. The detailed account
of his last few days in prison before being released
is among the most powerful sections of Jiří Suk’s
book. He goes on to describe a meeting at Pavel
Kohout’s8 summer residence on the Sázava river.
He wrongly assumes that the StB report from the
meeting was based on information from one
of their agents. In fact it was the transcript of
a surveillance tape, as a remark in the document
quoted makes clear.
Following his release Václav Havel made
a concerted effort to restore his reputation
and overcome his blunder. He became actively
involved in opposition activities, helping to found
the Committee For the Defence of the Unjustly
Persecuted (VONS). These activities resulted in
several years‘ imprisonment. However, as befits
Václav Havel, the key “breakthrough“ moments of
his life were also reminiscent of the theatre of the
absurd. Having arrested members of VONS, the
StB started preparing a fresh political trial. At that
point, nobody could have predicted that it would
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be the last one of the communist era. The only
one of those VONS members who were arrested
and charged, who responded to the interrogation, was Charter 77 signatory Dana Němcová;9
she suffered from severe back pain and was
worried about her family and young children.10
The imprisonment of her husband made her situation even more precarious. The State Security
intercepted a conversation, in which Havel said
he was prepared to “give them five years of his
life.“ Otherwise, he would accept the offer to go
into exile. Havel‘s state-assigned defence lawyer
Josef Lžičař confirmed this information to the
StB. When he told Havel that he was likely to be
sentenced to 6 or 7 years in prison, Havel said he
could not bear six years and would agree to go
into exile once the sentence came into force. In
this way Havel brought upon himself the most
absurd event in his life, ensuring a sentence of
four and a half years‘ imprisonment.
The authorities did not want Havel to
emigrate because, based on the experience
from his previous incarceration, they assumed
they could break him and permanently destroy
him as a leader of the opposition. They were
wrong again. The person they imprisoned now
was a completely changed man. The trial had
enormous resonance. Jiří Pelikán and Pavel Tigrid
did an excellent job of keeping the international
community informed. The StB’s foreign intelligence complained that their officers abroad
were constantly being questioned about why
Charter 77 and VONS activists were being handed
down heavy prison sentences if they represented
only a handful of isolated enemies publishing the
odd document. The Rome branch went as far as
to organize an operation codenamed “Aviator.“
The chief intelligence officer’s deputy in Rome
arranged for Italian journalist Giuseppe Scanni to
visit Prague and file a positive report on the VONS
trial. Scanni agreed to report on the trial without
attending it provided all other foreign journalists
were barred from it to ensure the ruse wasn’t
discovered. The foreign intelligence section
even intervened with the then Czechoslovak
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bohuš Chňoupek, to
help secure Scanni a visa. After returning from
Prague, a disgusted Scanni did publish a report
in the journal Avanti but informed the StB agents
that the sentences were disproportionately high
and that the trial was clearly political. Meanwhile,
the StB tried to block access to the Italian media
by Jiří Pelikán who was attempting to drum up
the greatest possible international publicity for
the imprisoned defenders of human rights.
Following his early release, Havel rapidly
became the leading figure of the opposition.
Jiří Suk charts painstakingly and patiently every
aspect of his dissident life and the gradual weakening of the communist dictatorship. In the
middle of July 1988 Havel gave an interview to
Ivan Medek11 and Pavel Tigrid, who travelled to
Vienna specially for this purpose. By pure coincidence the author of the present review [Radek
Schovánek, Translator’s note] was in Vienna at the
same time and agreed to cooperate with Pavel
Tigrid via Hungary, which was more liberal. In an
interview that was broadcast later, Pavel Tigrid
mentions young people who had just arrived
from Czechoslovakia. A few weeks later, Václav
Havel made an appearance at the folk festival in
Lipnice in southern Bohemia and Voice of America
“happened to“ broadcast the prerecorded
interview right on the eve of the festival. Havel
expressed lively interest in the situation of the
exiles and specifically in Pavel Tigrid. His festival
appearance was hugely popular and the State
Security failed to confiscate a video recording
of it. In an article for the communist party daily
Rudé Právo Zdeno Pavelka characterized Havel’s
first public appearance in nineteen years with
the now legendary sentence that was later set
to music: “Shame about the blot on an event
that was otherwise certainly meaningful.“ The
audience at Lipnice clearly thought otherwise.
In early 1989 Václav Havel again found himself
in prison. This time the pretext was his attempt
to honour the memory of Jan Palach.12 But it
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was no longer possible to stem the decline in
the public’s fear of the communist dictatorship.
The police and the people’s militia, who treated
peaceful demonstrators with particular brutality,
were met by the chanting of slogans. One of
these, which Jiří Suk’s book does not mention,
was “Gestapo, Gestapo.“ People were now losing
their fear of the authorities.
The book provides a good account of the
disagreement between the opposition in exile and
abroad, which occurred in the course of 1989. In
the middle of August Radio Free Europe broadcast
Havel’s declaration, in effect calling off the planned
protests to mark the anniversary of the 1968 invasion. Jiří Suk lists the initiatives and individuals
who disagreed with Havel. However, he does not
mention anyone who actually shared his views. It
is obvious that it was particularly former communists—people who had been expelled from the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after 1968 and
never lost hope that the powers-that-be would
take them back into the fold—who found it hard to
come to terms with the quickening pulse of history.
The StB regarded Havel’s defeatist statement as
a great victory. However, the future was soon to
prove that it was their last. In September 1989,
when I phoned Pavel Tigrid in the Paris office of
Svědectví, the first thing I heard was the question:
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“What do you make of this stupid nonsense?“
My baffled response was followed by a 20-minute
rant against Havel and assorted Czech dissidents
for expecting that someone else would again fight
their battle for them, that freedom would drop
from heaven on its own accord, that we didn‘t
have to make an effort , etc. When Tigrid got over
his rage he calmly asked: “Well, what’s new, what
have you got for me?” I would never have dreamt
that my next encounter with him would be that
very Christmas in Prague.
The final section of the book charts Václav
Havel’s ascent to the very pinnacle of the power
pyramid. It is masterful, as Jiří Suk is absolutely
on top of his subject and his account of the Velvet
Revolution reads like a detective thriller. In spite
of a few minor errors, his book Politics As the
Theatre of the Absurd makes for a fantastic read
and provides an excellent guide to our recent
history. R ade k S chov á ne k
is a specialist in the digitisation of documents
at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
in Prague. He has been studying StB materials since
1993, when he joined the Institute for the Documentation
and Investigation of StB Activities.
Jiří Němec (1932–2001), psychologist, Catholic philosopher and journalist, a key figure of Czech dissent and one of the initiators of Charter 77.
Jiří Seifert (1901–1986) Czech poet and Nobel prize laureate
Svatopluk Karásek (1942-) a Protestant priest and singer of contemporary gospel songs critical of the communist regime.
Vlastimil Třešňák and Jaroslav Hutka, folk singers and songwriters, who were banned from public appearances and eventually forced
into exile.
Ota Ornest (1913–2002), Czech theatre director and actor, imprisoned in 1977
Pavel Tigrid (1917–2003), Czech journalist, from 1948 a key figure of Czech anti-communism in exile, editor of the acclaimed monthly
Svědectví/Témoignage published in Paris; from 1994 to 1996 he served as the Czech Minister of Culture.
Jiří Pelikán (1923–1999), Czech communist journalist, one-time director of Czech State TV, who emigrated in 1968 and edited
the Rome-based exile journal Listy; later an Italian politician and Euro MP.
Pavel Kohout (1928–), Czech poet and playwright, formerly an ardent Communist, later dissident and Charter 77 signatory, forced into
exile in Austria in 1978.
Dana Němcová (1934–), Czech critic, psychologist and dissident, former wife of Jiří Němec, a Charter 77 spokesperson, Member
of Parliament after 1989.
Dana Němcová had seven children
Ivan Medek (1925–2010) Czech journalist and dissident, a Charter 77 signatory, forced to emigrate to Austria in 1978
Jan Palach (1948–1969), Czech student who self-immolated in protest against the general apathy following the Soviet-led invasion
of August 1968.
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Wojciech Stanisławski
Nations on
Münchhausen’s
String
Rigels Halili, Naród i jego pieśni.
Rzecz o oralności, piśmienności
i epice ludowej wśród Albańczyków
i Serbów [A nation and its songs.
About orality, literacy and popular
epic poetry among Albanians and
Serbs], Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu
Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2012
Michał Łuczewski, Odwieczny
naród. Polak i katolik w Żmiącej
[An eternal nation. A Pole and
a Catholic in Żmiąca], Wydawnictwo
Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika,
Toruń 2012
A low ceiling sticky with soot, a stove, a few
earthen pots, a mud floor. On a bench—a minstrel
with a bizarre “instrument” with a short arm,
a V-shaped sound box and a single string making
a jarring sound. Before him, on the floor or on
a stool, a “master”: sometimes a scribe, of peasant
origin himself, sometimes a village teacher or
a Franciscan, and half a century later the image
gets even more grotesque: a foreigner, namely
an American, with a phonograph bullhorn,
which seems sewn from leathery wings of a bat.
A powerful stench of sheep is hovering in the air.
Or, in another narrative, the walls are a bit thicker,
the patterns on earthen mugs are a bit different
(but the odor of sheep is the same), sitting on
a stool is a priest in a thread-worn cassock, the
cottage dwellers looking at him both with respect
and distrust. And this is supposed to be the stuff
from which states will emerge—with silvery jets,
university departments of native history, closely
cropped recruits and martyrs standing with their
backs against a wall and waiting for the shooting?!
Breakthroughs in humanities are more difficult to notice than in natural sciences, and the
two works under discussion had all that it takes to
gather dust on one of the least accessible shelves
of an academic bookshop. A monographic history
of some backwater village? Arguments of folklorists on the origins of some folk songs? Mon Dieu,
who reads such books today besides a handful of
ethnographers or regional historians?
And yet… Michał Łuczewski may already
speak about a grand slam: in the course of six
months he received the Stanisław Ossowski Prize,
the most important distinction awarded by the
Polish Sociological Society, the highly valued
Józef Tischner Prize awarded by publishers, and
he has been nominated to three other prizes.
The other freshly baked Ph.D., Rigels Halili, is still
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waiting for such honors—his book, published
in Poland and in Polish, has yet to find its way
to readers in Belgrade, Sarajevo and Tirana but
its reception may lead to revolutionary consequences.
And yet there is no denying that they chose
arcane subjects, seemingly being too literal
in their understanding of the aphorism which
recommends to people intending to impress
the world that they should start with their own
village. Michał Łuczewski described the story of
Żmiąca—a village in the Beskid Wyspowy mountain range, seventy kilometres from Krakow—
and he investigated the process of national
identity being formulated. It is true that Żmiąca
enjoys certain renown in the narrow academic
­community—sometimes it is half-jokingly called
“the longest researched village in the world,” for
the first monograph on it was published in 1903
by the great Polish sociologist Franciszek Bujak.
Half a century later, in the heyday of Stalinism,
research work in Żmiąca was started by Professor
Zbigniew Wierzbicki (he published the results
ten years later), and in 2002 Michał Łuczewski
appeared on the banks of the Żmiąca Stream,
also publishing his work a decade later. But
even among Polish historians or ethnographers
(until now at least) it would be futile to expect
familiarity with the life of the village, which for
centuries functioned in the orbit of the St. Claire
Sisters Monastery in Nowy Sącz.
It is no different in the case of Rigels Halili,
who as a starting point for his investigations chose
the argument of Serbian, Bosnian and A
­ lbanian
scholars concerning the time and place of origin
of a corpus of epic songs sung in Albanian in
Kosovo, in the north of Albania and in the part
of Montenegro inhabited by Albanians, known
as “kreshnik songs” (kângë kreshnike). Just like
in the case of Żmiąca, the phenomenon of epic
songs from the Balkan territories is not unknown
to many humanists: most of them have heard
about the “Kosovo cycle,” the titanic figure of
Vuk Karadžić, one of the 19th-century “founding
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fathers”; philologists and historians, who had to
do some reading about Homer, surely remember
how important for understanding of The Iliad and
The Odyssey was the research on the functioning,
transmission and modification of epic poems in
the community of illiterate minstrels. But Gorna
Trnova, Sjenica, Brisë or Gjakova/Ðakovica—
villages in eastern Bosnia, Albania, Sandžak
or on the Kosovo plain—remain as unfamiliar
to the general public as Żmiąca. It is true that
these names cropped up for a while in j­ ournalist’s
reports and on military maps during the post-Yugoslav civil wars a decade ago—which, by the
way, clearly shows what the stakes are in the
ethnologists’ arguments and what processes
were unleashed by “awareness raisers,” latter-day
followers of Herder wandering around a century
and a half ago with notebooks and looking for
the national spirit. “Dressed in sheepskin coats,
wandering from village to village, they were nursing
folklores and other knick-knacks. Until they spawned
a lot of strange national signs. It was a hook—and
now they are themselves hanging on this hook”—
wrote Miłosz perhaps too sardonically in his poem
“A toast.”
The two works, treating two ends of the
Central European maelstrom or perhaps nationalist magma, differ in methodological excursions
and fascinations of the authors. Michał Ł­ uczewski,
who started with the classic toolset of a sociologist—the poor inhabitants of Żmiąca had
to answer dozens of questionnaires and they
were subjected to participant observation!—
was enchanted with classic historical research,
pouring over source documents: hence the
visits to Małopolska archives and the story finely
weaved from dozens of extant memories and
documents. Rigels Halili, a cultural anthropologist, casts an even wider net, reaching for the
communication theory and collective psychology
theory, setting the discourse on south Balkan
songs and their evolution in the familiar dramatic
dichotomy orality-literacy, not sparing us detailed
linguistic analyses but also gifting us with real
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jewels—biographies of bards, “awareness raisers”
and bibliologists, painstakingly reconstructed in
the footnotes. At the same time behind the investigative curiosity of both authors, like a plumb
core, lies the most important question, once
asked by Renan: when does a nation start? How
is it possible that it emerges at all, turning the
“locals”—illiterate, dialect-speaking, territorially
(mountain villages) and socially isolated, lacking
any wider agency or historical awareness—into
obedient soldiers, voters, social activists and, let
us repeat it once more, martyrs?
Seeking an answer, both researchers had to
wade through whole libraries of relevant literature. As we know very well, the debate on “ethnogenesis,” especially of the people living east of
the Rhine, in the 19th century mostly deprived
of their own states, has been going on—even
if we ignore Meinecke and Znaniecki—at least
since the times of Ernst Gellner, Will Kymlicka,
Andrzej Walicki or Miroslav Hroch. Both authors
had done their homework diligently and took
this opportunity to relate—excellently—the
arguments between the schools of modernists,
ethnosymbolists and primordialists (the last term,
imported by them into Polish, does not sound
too elegant in our language but is indispensable
for people discussing the origins of the nation).
But both of them clearly wanted to remain loyal
to the cases described, returning from theoretical
considerations to the description of the nationmaking phenomenon on the example of Żmiąca
peasants—or classifying, rectifying and adapting
the corpus of songs which served as a kind of
“blueprint” for shaping modern national identity.
In their investigative toil, both researchers
experience growing amazement: how is it
possible that a certain phenomenon came into
being (Łuczewski does not even refreain from
using the term “miracle”), that a thing happened
which did not have to happen at all? In the middle
of the 19th century in Żmiąca there were “Imperials”—peasants regarding themselves as loyal
subjects of the Austrian Emperor and looking
at “Poles” (meaning the feudal lords with their
retinues) with fear and hate, which they were
to express during one of the most dramatic
episodes in the 19th-century history of Poland.
During the “Galician revolt”—a peasant uprising
instigated in February 1846 by the imperial Vienna
fearful of rebels and revolutionaries among the
nobility—Galician villagers destroyed several
hundred manors and viciously killed almost three
thousand landowners, clerks and priests.
In the same period the Ottoman Empire
was retreating from the Balkans at glacial pace,
leaving behind resentment of the Christian raja
towards the “Turks” (as all Muslims were called
then), megalomaniac ambitions of the leaders,
dreaming about “Great Serbia,” “Great Bulgaria”
or “Great Albania” with completely phantasmagoric borders but also communities practically
without any elites capable of managing the
nation-making process. Two facts are worth highlighting, mentioned by Rigels Halili in the footnotes: The first is the agenda suggested by Vuk
Karadžić to the Serbian prince Miloš Obrenović
in 1822 (teaching to read and write the prince
himself and a few other nobles; opening a school
for their children; publishing books about Serbia
in European languages and decreeing some laws
by the prince so that “Serbia would to some extent
look like a European state”). The other fact is even
more striking (and even more carefully hidden
in the footnotes): the first collections of Albanian folk songs compiled by researchers were
published from mid-19th century to early 20th
century in Florence, Vienna, Trieste, Alexandria
and Sarajevo. It shows the circle of connections
and influences, the orbits along which the first
Albanian scholars were moving—but also the
scale of dispersion, “unrecognition,” the make-believe nature of the being of the nation whose
fragility and almost underground existence bring
to mind the Khazars from the famous novel by
Milorad Pavić.
When writing about issues as delicate—and
at the same time variously mythologized by
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every generation—as the origins of the nation
it is impossible not to enter into arguments
with the legion of researchers and ideologues
sitting on their shoulders—however, both authors
evinced both tact and courage. Michał Łuczewski boldly confronts the conceptions dominant
in Polish historiography, claiming and arguing
that—at least in the case of Żmiąca but also,
pars pro toto, the whole “peasant Galicia”—the
most important role was played not by emancipatory ideologies focused on modernization
and spreading rational and civic-minded attitudes but—as the author himself puts it—by
“conservative ideologies.”“So instead of the dominant conception »reformers from the ranks of the
nobility—Kościuszko—Romanticism—radical
democrats—popular (progressive) movement«,
I propose the following conception: »Barzans—
proponents of ultramontanism—popular (conservative) movement«. In this sense Kościuszko had no
impact at all on the development of the national
ideology among the peasants. He was not so much
the reason but the consequence of the nationalisation of the masses. The peasants invoked his
heritage when they were already Poles”—writes
the author of “The Eternal Nation,” to some extent
explaining why the subtitle of his book is “The Pole
and the Catholic in Żmiąca.”
In an endearingly unbiased way, Rigels
Halili recreates the increasingly bitter argument between literary scholars supported by
their governments as to “which songs were first”:
Albanian ones, written down since the second half
of the 19th century, or those, which were known
to the European elites two generations earlier—“Slavenoserbian,” soon to be called Serbian?
It is true that Albanian songs were perceived in
terms of the earlier known Serbian or New Greek
epic works and they were regarded as derivative.
Similarities of motifs, execution and metric forms
are striking—analyzing the work of successive
generations of scholars, Halili shows that tracing
the origins and connections between anonymous works is an effort which overshadows the
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achievements of paleontologists: after all jaw
bones or mitochondrial DNA are much easier to
measure than dispersed fragments put down by
far from unbiased amateurs. At the same time he
leads us to the conclusion that any reflections
on the precedents for the songs are doomed
to a high degree of arbitrariness, given the fact
that—at least since the time when they entered
the living stream of culture—we are dealing
with constant borrowings, influences, “creative
contamination.”
In their conclusions—which do not take the
form of noisy declarations—both authors put
the ultimate lie to any “primordialist” reflection,
that is an analysis preserving the belief that the
nation is an eternal and homogenous entity characterized by special moral virtues. It is difficult
not to hear history chortling at the fact that in
contemporary Poland such a belief is held most
staunchly by the peasants from Żmiąca—fifth
or sixth generation descendants of those who
spoke with horror about the “Poles” and when
the good Emperor gave them such an opportunity, they did not hesitate to hack them with
a saw. Michał Łuczewski is not even trying to
hide the fact that the title “The eternal nation” is
delicately ironic, no less than the triumphalist”
cover with the heraldic Polish eagle spreading its
wings against a nobly golden background. Also
Rigels Halili’s reflections on how the myth of the
Kosovo Battle of 1389—eagerly used in Serbia
and both Yugoslavias (the royal and communist
one)—was created in the second half of the 19th
century, through reshuffling and appending the
existing corpus of songs, will not be especially
uplifting for the uncomplicated Serbian patriots.
And yet—and I see it as one of many great
virtues and distinctive features of both works—
these half-smiling books are not derisive and
their authors do not take particular satisfaction
from their “deconstructive” efforts. It would seem
that having accumulated such knowledge on
nation-making processes, their contradictions
and meanders, nothing would be easier than
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pop the balloon with adequate media publicity,
announce not even the “death of the nation” but
simply its nonexistence. Careers of contemporary pop-intellectuals—late grandsons of the
19th-century “great masters of suspicion”, that is
Nietzsche, Marx and Freud—show how trendy it
is to take values, faiths and loyalties into pieces,
to triumphantly jerk the tails of dead or at least
much ailing lions.
But both Łuczewski and Halili are too honest
for that. For in the course of their research they
realized that this peculiar union—even if born
of a dream, of aspirations of might, of well-intended fabrication, even if “»the nation« is in fact
a movement of national ideologues,” as the Polish
scholar aphoristically puts it at some point—does
exist, more than any other idea shaping the life
of large communities and their members.
„I would like to know at last—sighed Zbigniew
Herbert, writing a poem with an untypically literal
title “Reflections on the problem of the nation”—
where self-delusion ends / and a real union begins,”
to state resignedly:
to label and hence exteriorize values. The
charming 18th-century liar and cosmopolitan,
Baron Münchhausen, regaled us with stories
about pulling himself out of a quagmire by his
own hair and about weaving together a string
while climbing on it—but since Łuczewski’s and
Halili’s books concern an illiterate people, which
become a nation, would it not be more appropriate to invoke the eminently rustic image of
a lump of butter appearing in a swinging pail of
milk?
W o j ciech S tanis ł aws k i
Ph.D. in history, columnist of the “Rzeczpospolita” daily
„frankly speaking I don’t know
I am only recognizing
the existence of this union
it is revealed in the paleness
in the sudden rushes of blood to the face
in the roar and flailing arms
and I know that it may lead
to a hastily dug pit”
“Each one of us is wrestling and we are fighting
for what it means to be a Pole and the process
leading to that—as I have tried to show—is chaotic
and unpredictable. Only with the benefit of hindsight we can show how it happened in particular
cases—writes Łuczewski in line with Herbert.—
Why at the end of it all are we Poles anyway? Whatever you say, it is a miracle.”
This is not a capitulation of a researcher, this
is a recognition of the multiplicity of paths but
also of the peculiar ability of the human species
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Filip Memches
An Iconoclastic Alternative
Piotr Zychowicz, Pakt Ribbentrop­
‑Beck czyli jak Polacy mogli u boku
III Rzeszy pokonać Związek Sowiecki
[The Ribbentrop-Beck Pact, or how
Poles could have defeated the Soviet
Union alongside the Third Reich],
Dom Wydawniczy REBIS, Poznań
2012
Dealing with alternative history might seem
to be a futile pursuit. After all, the past cannot
be changed. And yet there are people who dare
to try. The reason for their undertakings is the fact
that they treat the scenarios which they create as
a key to understanding the present and the future.
For Poles, alternative versions of historical
events are comparable to what the novels of
Henryk Sienkiewicz meant for the 19th century; the
aim of that literature was to “strengthen hearts.”
That epoch was an especially tragic episode in
Polish history. Fantasizing about what could have
been done differently and what could have taken
a different course might be yet another way of
coping with national trauma.
Does the book by writer and historian Piotr
Zychowicz, provocatively entitled The Ribbentrop­
‑Beck Pact, meet those requirements? In a way
it does. But this is not its essence. The author
does not deny that what he actually decided to
do is to give Poles a lesson in political realism;
an approach which, to his mind, Poles chroni­
cally lack.
The argument presented by Zychowicz is
simple: in 1939 Poland could have prevented
the aggression of Germany and the Soviet Union.
How? Warsaw should have given in to Berlin’s
demands: to allow the Free City of Danzig to
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join the Third Reich and to construct exterritorial
roads connecting Eastern Prussia with the rest of
Germany. Poland would have also entered the
Anti-Comintern Pact.
And this is precisely the scenario which, in
the eyes of Zychowicz, might have—at least
partly—come to fulfilment, if in 1939 Joachim
von ­R ibbentrop had concluded a diplomatic
agreement not with Viacheslav Molotov but
with Józef Beck.
Assuming that instead of a German-Soviet
alliance against Poland and the Baltic States, there
had existed a German-Polish alliance against
USSR, World War II would have started in 1940
with the successful aggression of the Third Reich
against Denmark and Norway. The next move
would have been Hitler’s conquest of France,
Belgium, Netherland and Luxemburg.
In this scenario, 22 June 1941 is the turning
point. On this day, Germany and Poland attack the
Soviet Union (from the East an attack is carried
out by Japan). Then, following the capture of
Moscow, Stalin commits suicide and Beria is assassinated by a Polish sapper. After bloody battles,
the aggressors triumph over the enemy (following
the secret protocols of the Ribbentrop-Beck Pact).
The Soviet Republics of Belarus and Ukraine are
incorporated into Poland—the area, which used
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to belong to the pre-partition Polish Republic.
Germany, in turn, annexes the Baltic States and
Russia proper.
Yet, both winners differ as to the treatment
of the populations in the annexed territories.
Poles introduce a liberal order and grant considerable autonomy to Belarusians and Ukrainians
(the ultimate vision involves the establishment
of a Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian federation
under the leadership of Warsaw). This makes them
popular with the masses. They had so far been
living in extreme poverty and fear of the NKVD.
At the same time, Germany considers Russians
and other peoples of the Soviet Union as “inferior.”
Repression and terror are stepped up—mostly
directed at Jews. Thus, Gestapo violence has
replaced NKVD violence.
In contrast to Poland, the Third Reich is
involved in conflicts in many countries. Their
enemies are Great Britain and the USA. Since
military operations are happening on the seas, in
the Middle East and in Northern Africa, expenditures are growing. When Berlin insists that Warsaw
should actively participate in the war with the
Allies, it politely (but firmly) refuses. In neutral
Lisbon, secret negotiations are held between
Warsaw, London and Washington. The Allies
promise Poland that if it resists pressure from
Hitler and, instead of deploying its army in the
West, attacks Germany, all territorial gains made
by Poland in the East would be recognized after
the war.
Poland takes the offer. Thus, alliances change.
In 1945 the British and the Americans capture
Berlin (Hitler commits suicide following the steps
of Stalin), Poles are still fighting in the East against
weakening German troops. The war ends with
the undisputed success of Poland. Prussia is
annexed to the Polish Republic, and so the dream
of Józef Piłsudski comes true, with the Baltic
States voluntarily joining the Polish, Belarusian
and Ukrainian federation. Zychowicz comments:
“Poland becomes a power. At a peace conference
held in the Polish seaside resort of Jurata, all the
cards are held by Winston Churchill, Harry Truman
and Edward Rydz-Śmigły. A photo presenting the
three gentlemen sitting in wicker armchairs goes
down in history.”
Consequently, the dark character of the book
by Zychowicz turns out to be Józef Beck. As we
know, in reality Poland rejected German demands
and entered into alliances with Great Britain and
France: states, which did not rush to help when it
was attacked by the Third Reich. The essence of
this political move was explained by the Minister
of Foreign Affairs in his famous speech in the Sejm
on the 5 May 1939, in which he declared: “We in
Poland do not recognize the concept of ‘peace
at any price.’ There is only one thing in the life of
men, nations and states which is without price,
and that is honor.”
Still, in the book authored by Zychowicz there
are some inconsistencies and simplifications.
On one hand, he condemns idealization of political reality, on the other however, he also takes
an idealistic view of the Second Polish Republic.
Irrespective of what one may conclude from
arguments developed by the author, ethnic
minorities in the Kresy were in fact not eager
to implement Piłsudski’s federalist vision. It is
also a good idea to consider critique directed
at Zychowicz by an accomplished researcher of
the history of Polish-Russian relations Andrzej
Nowak. For Nowak, the “Ribbentrop-Beck Pact”
corresponds with the theses of Russian propagandists who wish to prove that “Poland with all its
soul wanted to go hand in hand with Hitler and
murder Jews. It was only due to its stupidity that
it did not. Thus, Poland (according to this vision)
stands for a mixture of wickedness and stupidity.”
Zychowicz’s work reaches its high point of
iconoclasm.
Following World War II different social groups
successfully resisted equating Auschwitz with the
Gulags; and at the same time they never ceased
to recall the gigantic contribution of the Red
Army to defeating the Third Reich. And after all
the Soviet Union was—to use Alain Besançon’s
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words ­referring to Soviet Communism and
Nazism—a twin brother of the Third Reich. And
what is meant here is not only the massive purge
performed by Stalin and Beria within the party of
Bolsheviks. Between 1937 and 1938 the authorities of USSR orchestrated the killing of the Polish
minority inhabiting its territory (this went down in
history as the so called “Polish Operation”), which
could be classified as genocide comparable to the
­Holocaust. While collectivization of agriculture in
the USSR in the 30s, driven by ideological factors,
brought about mass famine and resulted in cases
of cannibalism.
Does the huge contribution to the victory
over the Third Reich justify the acts committed by
the Bolsheviks earlier? If the possibility of Poland
joining Hitler against Stalin is deemed immoral,
how come it is moral that Great Britain and the
USA allied themselves with Stalin against Hitler?
Such questions seem to be shocking only
because history is written by the victors. F ilip M emches
commentator of the Rzeczpospolita daily
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Ja k ub M a j mure k
A Cinema That Was Not?
The period after 1989 in Central and Eastern
Europe seemed particularly attractive for socially
engaged cinema. Themes were there to be
picked up.
Under socially engaged cinema I understand
realistic, non-genre films presenting “ordinary
people” confronted with economic and social
transformations and with (usually inadequate)
workings of institutions. The themes were really
there to be picked up: the economic crisis which
affected most countries of the region in the early
1990s; deindustrialization and the resultant decline
of the industrial working class and its characteristic forms of collective life, culture, attitudes and
values; expansion of the market and the social
classes thriving on it; changes in the traditional
“contract of the sexes” enforced by all these
developments, in patterns governing intimate
and married relations (producing an anti-feminist,
often religiously motivated reaction); return of
politically mobilized religion to the public sphere;
and finally migrations of inhabitants of the region,
not always economically motivated and made
possible by opening of the borders.
In Western Europe cinema was tackling
analog­ous issues in many different ways. The
twilight of industry and the accompanying working
class culture was portrayed, for example, by the new
labor cinema in the 1990s; gender themes found
expression in several films by female directors; in
French cinema we could find many pictures on the
situation of immigrants from the former colonies,
trying to arrange a new life in their new homeland.
In contrast to that, in the Czech Republic,
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia social cinema
seems muted, incidental and avoiding many issues.
The reasons lie both in the changing production
models in the cinemas of the region and in the
Abusing Conventions
The idea of certain social commitments of
cinematic art and its political engagement was
largely rejected after 1989 as characteristic for
the old system. This process has been the most
visible in Poland, where cinema has on the one
hand been turning towards historical themes,
previously unable to cross the barrier of censorship
(the best example is The Crowned-Eagle Ring by
Andrzej Wajda, an argument with his own Ashes
and Diamonds), and on the other hand towards
co-productions undertaking universal, “meta­
physical” themes, capitalizing on the legacy of
cinematic modernism (The Silent Touch by Krzysztof
Zanussi, The Double Life of Véronique by Krzysztof
Kieślowski), as well as towards genre cinema.
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film scholar, editor of Krytyka Polityczna
Photo: Artur Kot
cultural or even ideological changes in perceiving
the role of the cinematic medium, produced by
the retreat from the “socialist realism.”
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None of these currents in the Polish cinema
took upon itself the presentation of changes
resulting from the political transition. Such issues
sometimes found their way to genre cinema,
usually inserted in the plot of action movies
(early works of Władysław Pasikowski). But socially
engaged cinema in the strict sense of the term
remained of marginal importance. An additional
reason for that was that the film community, largely
sympathizing with the democratic opposition from
the late communist period, strongly identified
with the new order built after 1989 in Poland by
the former “Solidarity” elites, including the freemarket reforms. This is why filmmakers refused to
look at the effects of these reforms. And when they
did look, when they did—occasionally—reach for
the convention of socially engaged cinema, they
often abused it, to use Jarosław Pietrzak’s term.1
One example could be Hi, Tereska (2001) by
Robert Gliński. The film takes up a theme typical
for social cinema—it presents the life of the
epo­­nymous heroine, a girl from an urban block
of flats. Her father is drinking but the family is
not dysfunctional: Tereska and her sister sing in
a church choir, Tereska dreams about art school,
although she finally ends up in a textile vocational
school. The film was made on a black-and-white
tape, in a raw, naturalist, anti-spectacular mode.
But in contrast to European socially engaged
cinema Gliński does not target his polemical
edge at social inequalities or governmental and
non-governmental institutions unable to address
them. The problem of deprivation of the protagonist and the people around her (their exclusion, relative poverty, lack of access to social and
cultural capital) is not taken up at all by the director.
The institutions surrounding Tereska—school,
Church, family—often reach out to her, they want
the best for her. But she behaves irrationally, makes
the worst possible choices, rejects the chances
offered to her by fate. Which ends in a tragedy—
she murders a friend, a revolting, older, disabled
alcoholic caretaker. So instead of a social critique
we get a spectacle of symbolic violence directed
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at the plebeian protagonist, conforming to the
class prejudices of the intellectual audience, to
which this film is addressed.
A similar example of “abusing” the aesthetics
and subject matter of socially engaged cinema
is provided by the work Dorota Kędzierzawska.
In Nothing (1998) a powerful theme straight out
of social cinema (a female victim of domestic
violence is seeking money for an illegal abortion) is drowned in an overly cute, almost tacky
form. The director presents the protagonist as
haunted by reality but she is unable to turn the film
into a critique of the Polish reality here and now.
In Time to Die the story of an old woman living in
an old, wooden house near Warsaw, abandoned
by her family and doomed to solitude, turns into
a naïve apology of the pre-war elites, juxtaposed
both with the people owing their advancement to
the communist system and to the equally vulgar
new rich. The former are represented by plebeian
lodgers dumped on the owners of the house by
the communist authorities (early on the old lady
gets rid of the last of them with a sigh of relief );
the latter are represented by a neighbor trying to
buy the house and the vulgar daughter-in-law and
granddaughter of the main protagonist.
Genuine social cinema started to emerge in
Poland only recently. Of all Polish artistic disciplines,
long after literature, theatre or visual arts, Polish
cinema finally rediscovered the society and its
duties towards it. In feature movies an example of
such a rediscovery could be Women’s Day (2012) by
Maria Sadowska. The film is a fictionalized version
of events which took place in a discount grocery
store. A female cashier is made the manager of
the store. The advancement (or rather its promise)
to the middle class is to be paid for through the
necessity to tamper with the working time records,
to exploit her former friends. But when the heroine
herself loses her job, she enters into a fight against
a large corporation, in which she is seemingly
doomed to fail.
The film raises many reservations, some motifs
are naïve, some sequences play a purely illustrative
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role. But as Jacek Dobrowolski aptly writes, “the
accusatory message of the film may be reduced
to the clearly formulated charge against the
economic and social system which we have built in
Poland in the last quarter of the century. Its nature
is such that the price of advancement from the
working class to the middle class is—or at least
often can be—debasement. (…) This critical mode
of Sadowska’s film makes it far removed from the
intellectually facile way in which individual career
is usually spoken about in our country, where class
conflicts and mechanisms of exploitation are by
and large framed as matters of relations between
particular persons. These relations are presented as
matters of “conscience” or, even worse, the human
world is pictured as consisting of the “good” and
the “bad”, and the latter can only be redeemed if
they return to “true moral values.” In Sadowska’s
film there are no “good” and “bad” people. And
everyone is more or less “back to the wall.”2
But one film does not constitute a strong
current of socially engaged cinema in Poland. It has
a constant problem with social issues, it ignores
them, it does not respond to events demanding
to be described. This stems both from the attitude of the artists and the institutional realities of
production—the time span between the idea and
its implementation lasts several years in Poland,
films belatedly react to events, they take up social
issues long after they cease to be relevant (the
best example is Made in Poland by Przemysław
Wojcieszek).
The City of the Sun and Czech Grotesques
If we were to look for a model example of
socially engaged cinema in our region, it would
be The City of the Sun (Slunečni stát, 2005) by
Martin Šulik. The film brings into focus all problems bred by the transition: deindustrialization,
the decline of the working class and its lifestyle,
with the resultant change of the “contract of the
sexes.” Šulik—in the 1990s in Slovakia a maker
of visionary, poetic, creative films (Orbis pictus,
A Garden)—seemed an unlikely candidate for
such a role. But he succeeded. The City of the Sun is
clearly inspired by the British “new labor cinema”
from the 1990s, depicting the social landscape
after Thatcher’s reforms. Just as in The Full Monty
(1997) by Peter Cattane, in The City of the Sun
we observe a group of workers from a former
industrial preserve (the bankrupt centre of heavy
industry in Ostrava) trying to reinvent their life in
the conditions of deindustrialization and structural unemployment.
Like the director himself, the protagonists are
Slovaks living in the Czech Republic. When the
factory fires them under a redundancy program,
they try different things, which would save them
from unemployment and social exclusion. They
buy an old lorry and attempt to found a transport
company. But first, one of them is unable to realize
his commission, namely to expel a family which has
nowhere else to live, and then the lorry is stolen
by a dishonest client.
The men also have family problems, they cease
to be the main providers in their families, their
qualifications are not highly appraised by the labor
market and their spouses, formerly working mostly
at home, have to replace them, which radically
alters the balance of power in their marriages,
forces them to renegotiate the relationship model.
Šulik looks at all these processes with empathy,
humor, an understanding of his protagonists.
He does not paint a black picture of ruin and
collapse, he shows people who, confronted with
the decline of the world in which they grew up
and functioned for most of their adult life, try to
find a new place for themselves.
But such a cinema, despite the tradition of
the Czech “small realism” from the 1960s, did not
enjoy a particularly strong position in the Czech
and Slovak cinema after 1989. It was dominated by
the surrealist comedies by Petr Zelenka (Buttoners,
Year of the Devil), light social drama epitomized
by Jan Svěrák (Kolya, The Elementary School) or
films analyzing various moments of Czech history
(Pelíšky by Jan Hřebejk about the Prague Spring or
his Divided We Fall about the end of World War II).
In all these films we occasionally see glimpses of
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social issues. In The Ride (Jízda, 1994) by Svěrák,
a Czech road movie, the changing Czech Republic
from the early stages of the transition serves
as the backdrop for the principal plot. In the
comedy Up and Down (Horem pádem, 2004) by
Jan ­Hřebejk—a story of two smugglers finding
a Hindu boy in a car and selling him to a childless
Czech couple—social issues also turn up, headed
by migrations and the new economy of the border.
But it is impossible to disagree with Peter
Hames, who observes in his monograph on Czech
and Slovak cinema that Czech and Slovak cinema
in the first two decades after the watershed of
1989 tended to refrain from criticizing the post­
‑communist reality.3 Hames quotes two films as
exceptions by the classic director of the Czech
New Wave, Věra Chytilova—The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodbye (Dědictvi aneb Kurvahošigutntag,
1992) and Trap (Pasti, pasti, pastički, 1998). In the
former, we see a boy from Moravia, who receives
a huge inheritance and turns into a rabid capitalist,
threatening (promising) the audience in the last
sequence: “I will buy you all out!” The other film is
a story about a woman raped by representatives of
the new reality, who takes revenge by castrating
them. Although critical of the new Czech reality,
these pictures are kept in the aesthetics of the
grotesque rather than social realism.
This combination is already working in the film
by Puiu quoted above. His eponymous hero is an
old man leading a solitary life in a block of flats with
three cats. One day he is feeling faint, his neighbors
call an ambulance but the hospital does not want
to take him in (for “he looks like an alcoholic”) and
neither does the next one. The ailing old man is
driven from hospital to hospital. On the one hand,
we have a subtle grotesque, a cinematic theatre of
the absurd, invoking the absurdity of the human
condition as such. On the other hand, we get an
excellent picture of an individual helpless against
dysfunctional institutions, old age, poverty and
exclusion in the heart of the 21st-century society.
A fascinating image of a struggle of an individual with a dysfunctional institution is also
brought by Police, Adjectiv (Politist, adjectiv, 2009)
by Cornel Porumboiu. The film presents a few
days from the life of a policeman named Cristi,
serving in the Romanian countryside, resisting
the order to arrest a young schoolboy accused
of possessing marihuana. Cristi does not want to
ruin the boy’s life in the name of a law, which will
probably be changed in a few years. But his superiors put pressure on him, the conflict with them
forming the dramatic axis of the film, showing in
the background (in the micro scale of a small town)
the conflicts of power and social inequalities in
Romania during the building of liberal democracy
and free-market economy.
The final confrontation between Cristi and his
boss takes place in the pre-ultimate scene, ascetic,
crude, filmed in one take with a static camera. The
boss makes Cristi sit down in his office, hands him
a dictionary of the Romanian language and asks
him to read aloud the definitions of such terms
as “law”, “moral law”, “conscience”, “policeman.”
Through sheer “terminological violence” he forces
him to acknowledge that his moral doubts are
absurd.
The likely fate of the boy arrested by Cristi is
shown in Florin Serban’s If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
(Eu cândvreausăfluier, fluier, 2010). The main prota­
gonist, Silviu, is an inmate of a centre for juvenile
The Romanian Wave
Until the middle of the last decade, hardly
anyone had heard about Romanian cinema. Since
the premiere of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moarteadomnului Lăzărescu, 2005) by Criti Puiu the
Romanian wave flooded European festivals and
garnered numerous prizes. The Romanians started
to create films characterized by a certain aesthetic
coherence: naturalism, realism in presenting the
life of “ordinary people” (from the working class and
the unfledged, economically uncertain, emergent
middle class), rejection of drama and spectacular
effects, long, often static takes, combining social
and existential themes, combining cinematic social
realism and modernism.
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criminals. We do not know what crime he has
committed, he is to be released in a few weeks.
But his awaiting of this moment is disturbed by
the visit of his mother, who wants to take his
younger brother with her to Italy. Silviu is ready
to do anything (including the risk of a long term in
prison) to prevent that—the mother abandoned
the family long ago, took the boy with her to Italy
but sent him back to Romania once his presence
started to interfere with her immigrant life.
Serban not only shows the reality of migrations breaking up Romanian families but also the
two-fold oppressiveness of the institution of prison.
For the official structures of repression are accompanied by unofficial ones, built by the inmates
themselves—in the last weeks of his term the latter
are more dangerous for Silviu, who stops fighting
for “what is rightfully his” (with dramatic consequences for his position in the prison hierarchy)
so that his punishment would not be prolonged.
Silviu, brilliantly played by George Piştereanu,
belongs to the most powerful cinematic images
of a young man confronting institutions, worthy
of being placed side by side with Antoin Doinel
from The 400 Blows by François Truffaut.
The most famous festival success of the Romanian new wave is the film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2
Days (4 luni, 3 săptămânişi, 2 zile, 2007) by Cristian
Mungiu, awarded the Golden Palm in Cannes.
On the one hand, the director takes into account
the communist period in Romania, as do other new
Romanian filmmakers. Among other prominent
representatives of this historical, account-settling
trend one could name The West (Occident, 2002)
also by Mungiu or 12:08 East of Bucharest (A Fostsau
n-a fost?, 2006) by Poromboiu. But 4 Months…
is not a historical film only a deeply moving social
drama, a powerful voice in the debate on the reproductive rights of women going on all over Europe
particularly intense in Poland. In a dispassionate
manner, without resorting to moral blackmail,
Mungiu presents a system nationalizing female
bodies and reproductive forces, a system where
abortion brings a series of humiliations on two
young girls, including the necessity of succumbing
to sexual violence on the part of the physician
conducting the operation.
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A Digression: Creative Strategies
Of all cinemas in the region, the Romanian
cinema has been tackling social issues in the
most comprehensive way, combining it with an
innovative form. But the subject matter proper
for socially engaged cinema also existed within
creative cinema, far removed from realism. One
example is provided by the works of the Hungarian
director Béla Tarr, especially his short feature from
the compilation movie The Visions of Europe (2004)
produced by Zoentropa and made to commemorate the expansion of the European Union in
2004. The short film by Tarr presents a kitchen
soup (for the homeless?) where poor people, most
of them old, are crowding. They are queuing for
a sticky brew served on tin bowls. There are no
dialogues, the music is jangling, spooky, and the
feature is filmed on a black-and-white tape. It is
not the poetics of social realism, we do not know
the social context of this scene, it has a rather
surrealist, grotesque character. But is it not an
excellent allegory for the situation of our region
in the “unified Europe?” For the fantasy of our inferiority and the EU “land of luxuries,” which we all
cultivated before the accession?
An equally creative, unrealistic filming technique is adopted by another film-maker from
Hungary, György Pálfi, in his movie Taxidermia
(2006). The break-up of the communist world is
observed here through a peculiar metaphor, a story
of a family comprising athletes competing in a fictitious Olympic discipline, namely speed eating.
The times of the communist proletarian ideology
(and the accompanying industrialism as a form of
socializing) are invoked through images of absurd
“Spartacus Games,” where representatives of particular countries of the “Eastern Block” compete in
eating dozens of kilograms of red caviar arranged
in a shape of a five-armed star. And the decline
of industrialism and the Hungarian p
­ roletariat is
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depicted through images of a monstrously fat
former competitor, immobilized in front of the TV
set by his weight, watching with resentment an
American competition in speed eating of hot-dogs
and hamburgers.
Perhaps in the light of this situation our “good
old” socially engaged cinema is not sufficient?
Perhaps to fulfill the role of socially engaged
cinema and to show the post-communist break-up
of society we need a different aesthetics?
Intimations of this break-up appear in the
Romanian cinema, of which I spoke most extensively. They are most prominent in the terrifying
film by Cătălin Mitulescu Loverboy (2011). We see
there a stagnant Romanian countryside, where
the only organization capable of generating any
social capital is a small local mafia involved in
human traffic. We observe its operations on the
example of two young people, a boy and a girl.
What looks like a love affair between them in fact
is an intrigue, an attempt to make the girl fall in
love with the boy and accept the job of a prostitute
in Italy—allegedly to pay off her lover’s debt and
save him from the mafia’s death sentence.
Similar intimations of break-up are expressed
by the Lithuanian filmmaker Šarunas Bartas. In his
Native of Eurasia (Indigène d’Eurasie, 2010) he
­presents a story—in the film noir convention—of
a drug dealer from the former Soviet Union, living
in the south of France and falling in trouble with
the Russian mafia. In Bartas’s film the collapse of
the Berlin Wall does not create a space of peace and
stability but turns entire Europe into a post-social
wasteland, a Eurasian social steppe, inhabited not
by citizens of the free world but by natives forced
to struggle for survival in a new state of nature.
Perhaps this is a truth, which the cinema in the
region should take up beyond the conventions of
the domesticated social cinema?
Post Social Cinema?
As can be seen from the above essay, unavoidably brief, socially engaged cinema has not become
the principal mirror for changes in the region after
1989. Perhaps one more reason for that is that
it was not an adequate instrument? For socially
engaged cinema presupposes the existence of
a certain norm, which we can contrast with the
inefficiencies of the system. Is it not true that in
Eastern Europe, such norms collapsed?
This is how Boris Buden describes the situation in the region in his book Zone of Transition.4
The Croatian-German philosopher claims that the
1989 watershed was one of the episodes of the
“twilight of society.” the break-up of the form of
socializing formed around the industrial civilization and the accompanying political and social
structures of the welfare state in the West and
its authoritarian counterparts in the countries of
the “people’s democracy.” This break-up puts us in
a void, it brings us back to the “state of nature” (to
the expansion of the principle of unconstrained
competition, the techniques of power reinforcing
the advantages of the socially strongest players,
etc.), forces us to reinvent society. These processes
are occurring in both the West and the East of
Europe but in our region they are more intense
and dramatic.
1 See Jarosław Pietrzak, Cześć Tereska Roberta Glińskiego, czyli defraudacja kina społecznego, [in:] Piotr Marecki, Agnieszka
Wiśniewska (eds.), Kino polskie 1989–2009. Historia krytyczna, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, Warszawa 2011.
2 Jacek Dobrowolski, Walka klas wraca do kin, “lewica.pl”, 04.03.2013, http://www.lewica.pl/?id27837&tytulJacek-Dobrowolski:-Walkaklas-wraca-do-kin.
3 See Peter Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema: The Time and Tradition, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2010, pp. 90–92.
4 Por. Boris Buden, Strefa przejścia. O końcu postkomunizmu, przeł. Michał Sutowski, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, Warszawa 2012.
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L aima V ince
Antakalnis Cemetery
Death is the great equalizer. Like the bones
of the dead, layers of history intermingle in
Antakalnis Cemetery. The cemetery’s incongruous
monuments and grave markers reflect varying
points of reference—religious, political, cultural,
ideological—as they have played out here in
­Lithuania over centuries of humanity. “Antakalnis”
in Lithuanian means “on top of the hill.” Here, from
its hilltop location the cemetery bears witness to
the overlapping stratums of human life, and strife,
in this northern European country of three million.
This is a land that has known little peace, a crossroads between Eurasia and Europe, a tiny country
surrounded by three giants, Russia, Poland, and
Germany. The cemetery holds the remains of
foreign occupying armies and armies passing
through; the peacemakers and the traitors; the
priests and the atheists; the artists and the pragmatists. My grandparents, Ambassador Anicetas
Simutis and Janina Čiurlytė Simutienė, are buried
here. I am the family caretaker of their grave. I am
the keeper of their memory.
In the spring of 2007, my mother and I had my
grandparents’ remains cremated and the ashes
packed into a small metal container about the size
of a jewelry box, something shiny and decorative
that my grandmother would have liked. We flew
from New York City across the Atlantic with the
box tucked deep inside a quilt carrying bag, each
of us holding one handle, as we negotiated American, and then European, airports.
My grandparents’ burial took place in the
spring of 2007 on one of those May days when
the sky is aquamarine and crowded with cumulous clouds, and the northern sun draws out the
deepest purples and brightest yellows from the
wildflowers creeping up the cemetery’s hillsides.
As our family walked the cemetery path flanked
by tall pines behind an honor guard sent by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my mother whispered
to me, “If she can see us, Bobutė will like this.”
My grandmother liked pomp and circumstance.
I could not remember eating a meal at my grandmother’s table, even a casual one, when she did
not set out silver and cloth napkins. My grandfather was modest, preferring to ride to United
Nations sessions by subway rather than in
a limousine at his struggling country’s expense.
My mother was born in New York City in 1939.
I was born in 1966 in New Jersey. Although I was
born two generations removed from Lithuania,
my grandparents taught me to love and respect
my heritage and to make it a priority to return to
live and work in an independent Lithuania. In the
past twenty-five years of my life, I’ve returned
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L aima V ince
is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts
award in Literature; two Fulbrights, and other honors.
Currently she is Head of the English Department
at the American International School in Hong Kong.
Photo: Archive Laima Vince
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to Lithuania twice as a Fulbright lecturer and
have worked, conducted research, and lived
in Vilnius in a variety of capacities. I maintain
a second home in Vilnius. I have dual citizenship.
I have cultivated the same social circle since I was
a student at Vilnius University in 1988 and 1989.
To reach my grandparents’ grave from my
apartment in the center, I exit the building’s gated
cobblestone courtyard and step onto Saint John’s
Street, into the shadow of the bell tower of the
baroque Church of Saint John. I enter the flow
of pedestrian traffic on narrow winding Castle
Street, a medieval cobblestone way that wends
from the Gates of Dawn, where Catholics pray on
their knees on the street below the miraculous
painting of the Virgin Mary, to where it ends at the
foot of Gediminas Castle, situated on a forested
hill towering over Vilnius.
Vilnius is a city built on a dream. As legend
goes, in the early fourteenth century, after a weary
day of hunting in the hills, Grand Duke Gediminas
lay down to sleep on the ground in the forest
and had a vivid dream of an iron wolf howling
at the top of the hill. The wolf instructed the
Grand Duke to build a great city nestled between
these hills and protected by three rivers. Centuries
before Jungian dream interpretation, the Grand
Duke sought out the help of the pagan shaman,
Lizdeika, who instructed him to heed the iron
wolf’s message. Vilnius is first mentioned in the
letters of Grand Duke Gediminas as the capital
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1323.
I weave between a myriad of café tables set
directly on the street, populated with lingering
coffee-drinkers and wine tasters, heads bent
together deep in conversation, or tilted back,
laughing easily. The usual beggars and con men
work the tables.
I pause to listen to the street musicians;
cross the street to Cathedral Square. Here, in the
shadow of classical Vilnius Cathedral, with its tall
white columns and statues of saints and angels
on the roof, beside the elegant slim bell tower
painted white with ancient copper bells that
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resound across the city every evening precisely
at six, I take a brief hiatus to let the local chapter
of Hari Krishnas glide across the square on their
evening procession, swirling in their scarlet and
purple robes, beating drums, and singing harihari
with a distinctly Lithuanian inflection. I stop in my
tracks to let the occasional marching band pass,
or uniformed school group, or to guard against my
shins being run into by teenage skate boarders
gliding down the white marble stairs designed
five hundred years ago for pause and reflection.
I glance up at Gediminas Castle, tenacious
and steadfast. If I climbed the cobblestone road
up to the castle, from the battlements I would
see Antakalnis Cemetery, and just beyond the
cemetery, the forest that extends 33.8 kilometers
to the Belarussian border.
I cut through the leafy green park that
stretches along the Vilnelė River—perfect for
idyllic summer afternoon boating in the style of
nineteenth century impressionist paintings—
and walk at a brisk pace down Antakalnis Street,
dividing the suburb of Antakalnis in half—one
side populated by crumbling Soviet-era brick
and cement apartment buildings and their
similarly crumbling occupants; the other side
sporting mirror-image crumbling buildings, only,
interspersed between them, are charming side
streets with even more charming names, like Sea
Goddess Street (Jurates Gatve) or Street of the
Goddess of Love (Mildos Gatve), that lead up the
steep hill towards well-maintained cozy wooden
one-family homes that are populated by “new”
Lithuanians—young families in their twenties
and thirties with West European educations and
promising careers.
Once I reach the baroque Church of Saint
Peter and Paul with its ornate interior of pudgy
angels and crystal ship that hangs above the altar,
I know I am almost at my destination. Situated
in front of a precarious (and infamous for fender
benders) traffic circle where for some reason the
traffic lights have never been switched on, the
Church of Saint Peter and Paul is my landmark for
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the road that leads up the hill and into Antakalnis
Cemetery.
Between tall swaying pines, in the shadow of
the forest that was once the Sapeigine hunting
grounds of the medieval Grand Dukes, I find my
grandparent’s grave. Here is my point of reference.
Here I remember my grandfather, two meters tall
and as a broad as a refrigerator. My grandfather,
who for half a century represented a country that
had been wiped off all the maps of the world.
My grandfather, who struggled to support a family
of four on a symbolic income from the Lithuanian
émigré community while hunted by the KGB,
badmouthed by traitors and informers, glorified
by patriots. He stubbornly maintained his post as
Consul General of prewar independent Lithuania,
working out of a rent-controlled apartment on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side. My grandfather
issued pre-War independent Lithuanian passports
to political refugees; helped displaced persons
find work and shelter after World War II; gave fiery
anti-Soviet speeches on The Voice of America and
Radio Free Europe and pressured the State Department not to recognize Lithuania’s incorporation
into the Soviet Union. With his voice of reason,
making the argument that drains on the Soviet
economy would eventually cause the Soviet Union
to implode, Anicetas Simutis led his community of
postwar refugees through the long dark years of
the Cold War until 1991, when at the age of 85, he
was appointed newly independent Lithuania’s first
Ambassador to the United Nations by Lithuania’s
fledgling democratic government.
I once asked my grandfather if he was an
idealist.
“No,” my grandfather answered, “I am not an
idealist. I am duty-bound to my country.”
He and my grandmother were duty bound
to a country they could never return to while the
Soviets were in power—unless they were willing
to face imprisonment or a death penalty. They
waited fifty-five years to be able to come home.
In the meantime, I went home for them. At the
time, I was studying at the Lithuanian Gymnasium,
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a high school in Germany that taught courses in
a combination of the German and ­Lithuanian
languages, a carry-over from the post-war refugee
schools. I traveled to Soviet-occupied Lithuania
for the first time in 1983 as a guest on a KGB­‑­
sponsored tour for the children of Lithuanian
émigrés. I visited again in that Orwellian year,
1984. I was one of the hand-picked students
selected to go. I knew immediately that I had been
selected because the KGB was very interested in
my grandfather’s activities.
I wrote in my journal about my trip to
­Lithuania when I was seventeen:
My first thought was that I absolutely could
not go. I could not compromise my grandfather’s
principles and life work. How would it look? The
granddaughter of Consul General Anicetas Simutis
traipsing off an all-expense paid propaganda tour
of Soviet-occupied Lithuania?
I went to our dorm supervisor’s apartment and
paid her five Deutsch marks to use the phone to
call America. I told my grandfather that I had been
selected as one of the students to go on the trip to
Lithuania. I told him that obviously I would refuse
the trip.
“Laima, you must go,” my grandfather said.
“No matter what you do, people will talk about
me. You must go and stick your nose everywhere
possible and then when you come back you will
report everything you saw and heard to me.”
Dissidents who worked at Radio Free Europe
in Munich gave me a stack of Bibles, political
books, papers, letters, and medicine—all of it
contraband in the Soviet Union—with instructions on how to deliver them once I was behind
the Iron Curtain to the appropriate sources, political prisoners and underground dissidents who
were working to undermine the Soviet Union
from within. I was warned that at the border
between Poland and the USSR our luggage would
be checked. Each coupe was allocated fifteen
minutes time for inspection. To get around the
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inspection I buried my “illegal literature” deep
on the bottom of my suitcase. On top I scattered
copies of light porn magazines and lingerie. When
the soldiers came in to inspect our coupe—two
young boys around my age—they became
engrossed in leafing through my “contraband”
magazines and never dug any deeper in my
­suitcase. They curtly informed me that they
needed to confiscate the magazines and admonished me for trying to bring “pornography” into
the Soviet Union, where such corrupt magazines
were outlawed. That was how I delivered necessary medicines, letters, and political and religious
materials to people working the underground in
Lithuania, my grandfather’s people. At the same
time, I dutifully attended every propaganda tour
and session.
Perhaps the propaganda did rub off on me,
because in 1988 and 1989 I returned to Lithuania to study Lithuanian Literature for a year at
Vilnius University. I arrived just in time to witness
the “singing revolution” that led to Lithuania’s
indepen­dence from the Soviet Union. It was
a carnival­‑like time when it seemed as though
the entire country poured into the streets to
speak their minds. The revolution was dubbed
the “singing revolution” because massive crowds
sang folk song after folk song, protest song after
protest song, as they peacefully gathered in the
spirit of Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
By car Antakalnis Cemetery is no more than
fifteen minutes’ drive from the center—providing
there is no traffic. At a brisk pace this distance
can be walked in forty minutes.
Or longer, if thousands are walking in procession together, as was the case on January 16,
1991, when the remains of fourteen peaceful
demonstrators (thirteen of them students in their
early twenties) were laid to rest in Antakalnis
Cemetery in the bitter cold and twilight darkness
of a northern winter afternoon. The demonstrators gathered on the night of January 12–13,
surrounding the Vilnius Television tower in
a human chain, to protect the tower from Soviet
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troops, who were ordered in with tanks and
machine guns. They had been singing folk songs
when they were attacked and killed. Their graves
are laid out in a sweeping arc, nestled against
a protective hill, with a marble Pieta in the center.
After independence in 1991, my grandparents were finally able to go home. Friends they
had parted with in 1936, when as newlyweds
they sailed to New York to fill my grandfather’s
post as a young diplomat, students and young
professionals then, greeted them at the airport in
1991 leaning in over their canes to shake hands.
The few who were still alive, that is. Almost all
of them had been through the Gulags of Siberia.
After my grandfather died, my mother and I found
a manifesto written out by hand in elegant script
on the back of a black and white photograph
of my grandfather and his three closest friends
taken in 1933. The foursome were in their twenties, had just completed their university studies,
and had embarked on a tour of Western Europe.
Inspired by the sights of Europe, they wrote their
manifesto. They vowed to remain close friends
until death parted them and to always choose the
decent, courageous, and righteous path in life.
Ten years later only my grandfather was still alive.
Tucked behind the photograph and manifesto
there was a letter dated 1953, the year Stalin
died. The letter was from Siberia. In the letter the
daughter of one of the friends in the photographs
describes how her father died of starvation in
a concentration camp in Siberia in 1943; how
his dying wish was that she write to his friend,
Anicetas, and let him know.
In the spectrum of an extended family’s gene
pool, I connect most with my grandfather. I knew
this from the age of sixteen. We look alike. We
think alike. We intuit alike. We obsess alike. And
we shared the same birthday, February 11, which
we always celebrated together with tea and cake.
When I read through my grandfather’s personal
journals after his death, I felt how the space he
carved for his own private reflection reminded
me of my own fingerprint of thought.
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After my grandfather’s death in March 2006,
I was cleaning out his house in Long Island. In the
garden shed I found cartons and cartons of his
writing, accumulated over the years. He wrote
for Lithuanian newspapers before the war and
émigré newspapers after the war. He wrote
detailed diplomatic pro memorias to his boss,
Stasys Lozoraitis, in Washington. But he worked
out his private thoughts in his personal journals.
It was just like him to store his work in the garden
shed. My grandfather was a modest man, a practical man. Once the writing had served either its
public purpose or private function, it was relegated to the garden shed.
Antakalnis Cemetery was established in 1809.
In the early nineteenth century mostly soldiers—
Russian, German, and Polish—were buried here.
On the left side of the sandy footpath that divides
the cemetery into two halves the remains of Polish
soldiers from Józef Klemens Piłsudski’s army are
laid to rest in diagonal sweeping rows marked
with identical white stone crosses that plummet
and dip across the sloping valley. They fought to
annex Vilnius to Poland in 1919–1920. Vilnius and
its environs remained under Polish control until
1939 when Stalin returned the historic capital and
surrounding areas to the Lithuanian republic in
exchange for permission to station Soviet troops
on Lithuanian soil.
Every year on All Soul’s Day members of
the Polish community honor the fallen Polish
soldiers by placing three simple white candles
on each point of each cross, creating a sweeping
visual image in the ink-black November night.
Some Lithuanians take the gesture as a reminder
that although the Poles have retreated for the
moment, they will be back. After all, they reason,
Piłsudski’s heart is buried in Vilnius and his body
in Poland. Certainly one day he will have to come
back to retrieve his heart.
Footsteps from the remains of Piłsudski’s army
lie the remains of 3,000 soldiers from Napoleon’s
Grand Armee. Their bones are consolidated into
one mass grave marked with a common marker.
In 2002 a construction company was excavating in the suburb of Žirmūnai when workmen
uncovered layers of bones. At first they thought
the worst, the typical story in this region, either
Holocaust victims killed during the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944 or Lithuanian resistors to
the Soviet occupation killed during the 1944–
1956 partisan war. But testing proved those
first guesses wrong. The bones dated from the
early nineteenth century, when Napoleon left
his Grande Armee to fend for themselves on the
streets of Vilnius after his retreat from Russia in
the deep of a northern European winter. Further
testing revealed that Napoleon’s soldiers had
frozen to death, died of exposure, or died of starvation. When I wander through the cemetery,
I often think of these men of the Mediterranean,
of warmer climes, and of the reckless futility of
their winter march on Moscow.
For Lithuanians, living so deep in the hinterlands of Europe, any brush with greatness, no
matter how infamous, is noteworthy. Once when
visiting a friend’s dacha, my friend’s mother
enthusiastically pointed at a trench in their backyard and proudly said, “Napoleon’s army marched
through here.” On my father’s side relatives boast
a dash of French blood, thanks to Napoleon.
My great-great grandmother found a wounded
French soldier in the fields and nursed him back
to health, later becoming his wife. Subsequent
generations point fingers at this distant French
ancestor as the cause of any family lunacy and
the explanation as to how in this gene pool of
blonds some of our relatives have black hair and
an olive complexion.
My grandparents’ grave is located in my
favorite part of Antakalnis Cemetery—a hilltop
devoted exclusively to dreamers. Here creative
people are laid to rest: artists, poets, writers,
actors, musicians, theater directors, and alongside them, émigré diplomats who served as
Lithuania’s diplomatic corps in exile during
the Soviet occupation. They had all grown old
together united by their cause, the fight for
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Really—
She holds my hands from slipping out of hers.
Autumn orchards burn red.
Wild drakes fly south; their wings
Smolder bronze.
Then I say good-bye.
The path through the rushes hunches in.
The sedges are like sharpened knives.
Toothless trunks gape at me;
My joints shake.
But I do not turn back.
independence for Lithuania, and now they all
rest together.
The creativity of the people laid to rest here
is reflected in the graves themselves. There is no
such thing as a “standard” or “uniform” or “traditional” grave stone. Each grave is a sculpture and
the sculptors who create them strive to create
monuments that are works of art. The grave of an
actor is expressed as a stone sculpted tastefully
in the shape of the comedy and tragedy masks.
Another grave, of a writer who committed suicide,
consists of a simple circle of stones with a slender
linden tree growing gracefully through the center.
Beside my grandparents’ grave is the grave
of Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė, a writer and poet of
my grandparents’ generation, who was also
an émigré in America. She corresponded with
me, commenting on my poems when I was first
learning the craft as an adolescent. In 1992,
before I gave birth to my first son, Birutė wrote
me a letter in which she described the dichotomy
between birth and death: “When a woman gives
birth, death hovers close by.” She enclosed this
poem about her own birth, which I translated
into English:
On the second tier of the hill lies my dear
friend, the poet Nijolė Miliauskaitė, who died
in 2002 at the age of 50 from breast cancer.
I remember our last visit together in May, 2001.
She wore a big floppy wig with bangs that fell
too far down on her forehead. Nijolė prepared
a table full of Indian delicacies for my visit. Nijole
and her husband, the poet Vytautas Bložė had
embraced Eastern teachings, mantric singing,
dietary control, and an enhanced sense of transcendent mystical connection to the world made
possible through their belief in Hindu t­ eachings.
They never ate in restaurants because they
could not be sure of the karma of the cooks
who prepared the food. The especially never
ate store-bought bread because the process of
kneading the bread ensured that a stranger’s
karma would enter it and by eating it that karma
would pass into them.
After lunch, we drove to Nijolė and ­Vytautas’s
cottage in a nearby village. I was amazed at
the amount of renovating and gardening the
couple had done—he in his seventies and in
poor health and she with her chemotherapy
and radiation treatments that required long
hospital stays. Nijolė showed off her kitchen.
She had painted every appliance aquamarine
blue, along with the kitchen floor and walls.
Blue was a healing color, she told me, a divine
spiritual color. Months after her death, Vytautas
said to me: “Everywhere I look, I see her unfinished work.”
Bird-Cherries
My mother was slender, like the bird-cherry.
Heavy with me, her misfortune ripened.
Wide bowls filled with wild flowers—
The yellow painted shutters remained
Closed: she was painting for me.
I came during the very Consecration—
When all the roads are empty, the organ still.
Throughout the night my cradle filled
With jagged, fallen, harvest stars.
And my mother cried out bitterly
For the first time.
Because I had broken away,
Like a land-slide, and will rush
Down. Without her.
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About a year before her diagnosis, I translated one of Nijolė’s poems. Now, upon reflection,
I believe she sensed then that her time had come:
Time to Transplant
this spring I must transplant, it’s about time.
my aloe, old, gnarled,
aloe vera treasured beyond words
by those who know its healing qualities
hidden deep within
what a tangle of roots, tiny ones, thick ones
so tight that there is no way
I can remove them no matter what I do—
I grab a rock and smash the vase
and why after all
were you so stubborn clinging
to those clay walls with all your strength?
what was it that you were holding onto?
stop scratching me, stop scraping my arms
don’t tell me you liked your prison narrow and poor as it was
where you never had enough water or food, after all
you’ll get a new vase, spacious and beautiful!
my soul, don’t tell me that you too
are clutching at the unstable
temporary walls of your prison
Nijolė’s grave marker consists of a playful angel
with pudgy cheeks carved by a local woodcarver.
The angel wears a smirk on his face. Knowing Nijolė,
I think this poem could have been her epitaph:
ach, not again! I cannot
do two things at once:
if I’m writing a poem
then there’s no doubt
that I’ll burn the potatoes
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A few footsteps down the path, the writer
Jurga Ivanauskaitė rests. She earned her stripes
as a controversial post-Soviet writer when she
wrote a novel about priests having sex with young
girls. After independence, when Lithuanians
could travel for the first time, she hitchhiked to
Dharamsala, India, to study Buddhism with the
Dalai Lama. She wrote a nonfiction trilogy about
Buddhism and Tibet. Jurga died of cancer at the
height of her career at the age of 45. I translated
her last book of essays, The Sentence, written
during the two years of life she “borrowed” after
her cancer diagnosis by getting specialized treatments in a hospital in Lund, Sweden. The essays
are honest, spare, written in a race against death,
and in my opinion, are her best work:
On the same evening I find out that I have
cancer, I find out that I have been awarded the
National Prize for Culture and Art. … On that
memorable evening I did not feel pain or fright or
even panic. … My only wish—to get home from the
hospital and to cry my heart out in the kitchen, chain
smoking—was fated not to happen. I had barely
got a good cry going when the phone rang and
a cheerful voice congratulated me on winning the
National Prize. Again, just as the tears managed to
come and get me past my rock hard wall of self-control, the phone rang again, and I was obligated, as
winner of the prize, to give a blitz telephone interview to a journalist. My cry gets lost in the emotional
underbrush and does not return, like a stepchild
led out into the forest, who has tossed away his
breadcrumbs in vain. During my year of overtime
I rarely cry. I laugh much more. And I smile almost
all the time…
Jurga’s mother often comes to tend her grave
while I am tending my grandparents’ grave.
We share a common water spigot. She is my cemetery friend. When we each finish our weeding
and watering, we take a stroll together around
the cemetery, and Jurga’s mother advises me
on what plants grow best in this harsh northern
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climate and which plants to avoid. She speaks
softly, pointing to this shrub, that groundcover,
offering me sound advice. She sometimes speaks
of her daughter. One time she brings me a book
of her poetry. It is not natural for a mother to
outlive her daughter, she tells me.
The bard Vyautas Kernagis is buried a few
plots away from Jurga. On the All Souls Day after
Vytautas died, also of cancer, a fan sat beside
Vytautas Kernagis’s grave, strumming a guitar,
sipping dark beer from a glass bottle, tears
streaming down his face, making toasts, crying
out, “Oh, Vytautas, I miss you so!”
The Catholics honor their dead on November
1st and the communists honor theirs on May 9th,
the anniversary of the end of World War II and
Russia’s victory over Germany. One May 9th, forgetting the date, I made one of my usual Sunday
afternoon trips to Antakalnis Cemetery to tend
to my grandparents’ grave and found myself in
the middle of a sea of Russian-speakers, dressed
in suits and formal gowns, carrying bouquets of
blood red carnations to their people’s graves.
Painful as the Soviet occupation was for
many Lithuanians, a percentage of the population collaborated with the Soviet regime and
intermingled with the Russian colonists brought
in by train to occupy the homes and jobs of those
exiled to Siberia. Many of them are buried in
Antakalnis Cemetery as well. The entire hilltop
directly behind the graves of the students killed
during the demonstrations for independence is
populated by the graves of Soviet communist
aparatchiks and collaborators. These graves reflect
the aesthetic of social realism, an aesthetic that
now comes across as absurdist, or even comical,
but at the time conveyed the symbolism of a very
concrete ideology. Besides the expected hammers
and sickles and red stars, these graves are adorned
with carvings of social realist depictions of the
working man or working woman. For some odd
reason, communist party leaders are sculpted into
stone still wearing their square-rimmed spectacles perched, even after death, on their noses, as
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though they’d forgotten to remove their glasses
before dozing off to sleep.
There were people at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs who questioned my choice to lay my grandparents’ remains to rest just a few hundred meters
away from the communists my grandfather dedicated his life to fighting against. However, my
grandfather was liberal-minded man who took
a measured view of other people’s convictions
and did not hold their political views against
them personally. I read in his diaries about how
he would secretly arrange to have lunch with
former Soviet citizens who had escaped from
the Soviet Union in order to learn more about
life behind the Iron Curtain. He wrote that he felt
sorry for them because of the poor living conditions they endured. When the occasional Cold
War escapees came trickling into the L­ ithuanian
émigré community in New York City in the seventies and eighties, he opened up his home to them,
setting politics aside and helping them establish
themselves in America. For the entire duration of
the Cold War, my grandparents mailed packages
to relatives in Siberia and Lithuania, even in the
years when they had very little for themselves
and their own children.
A friend once showed me a secret burial
ground situated in a patch of forest just beyond
where the cemetery grounds end. In a forgotten
corner overgrown with thick tangled weeds KGB
officers and NKVD soldiers of the postwar period
lie in communist peace. No religious ornamentation here. A single red star decorates each of
the identical graves bearing names in Cyrillic.
A year later I came back to this spot and was
surprised to find the weeds cleared out and the
graves restored. A new memorial plague dated
from 2009 read that the Russian government had
funded the restorations: Putin’s steely fingers
reach even this far.
I once took a group of writing students
from Concordia University through Antakalnis
Cemetery. I showed them a monument built
for Lithuania’s first Soviet puppet president
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Antanas Sniečkus, a cement wall with his larger
than life Big Brotheresque image carved into it.
He was a real traitor, disowned even by his own
mother, who fled to the West when the Soviets
invaded Lithuania in 1944. Sniečkus organized
the mass deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia
and I suppose she felt that he would not have
spared even his own mother.
In the group there was an Inuit woman from
Greenland. She had grown up in a small tribal
community in northern Canada. After I narrated
the story of Lithuania’s traitor, Antanas Sniečkus,
she asked:
“Was he a Russian?”
“No,” I answered.
“If that is so,” she insisted, “how could he have
betrayed his tribe? In our culture, you do not
betray your tribe.”
Unfortunately, sometimes we do betray our
own tribe.
In interviews I conducted with Lithuanian
Holocaust survivors, I listened to stories about
how before World War II Jews and Lithuanians
and Poles and Germans and Russians lived in
Lithuania peacefully, side by side, for centuries.
Then, during World War II, during the four-year
Nazi occupation of Lithuania, ninety percent of
Lithuania’s Jewish population was murdered by
the Nazis along with local help. At the same time,
other Lithuanians sheltered and hid Jews. There
are no Jewish graves in Antakalnis Cemetery,
however. The Jewish cemetery is located in the
center of Vilnius and was destroyed during the
Soviet occupation.
During the years of the Soviet occupation
people could not openly celebrate All Soul’s Day,
a holiday in Catholic countries where families
visit the graves of their loved ones and decorate them with carnations and candles. In fact,
my good friend, Dalia, now a mother of six, was
arrested when she was a student, on November
1, 1987, by the KGB and almost expelled from
Vilnius University for secretly lighting candles and
placing them on the grave of the great L­ ithuanian
poet and 19th century nationalist leader, Jonas
Basanavičius. A year later the Lithuanian communist party, in an attempt to placate the rapidly
growing independence movement, allowed
people to visit their family graves on All Souls
Day. Today All Souls Day is an official state holiday
and schools and businesses shut down for the
entire week so that families can travel to their
home villages to honor their ancestors.
Every November 1st, Antakalnis Cemetery
is flooded in a sea of candles carried by people
who come to the cemetery after dark to visit the
graves of their family members and the graves of
people they admire. My brother once flew into
Vilnius on All Souls night and saw thousands
of twinkling candles down below in Antakalnis
Cemetery from the airplane window.
When I fly out of Vilnius, I look down from the
oval of the airplane window at the patch of forest
green where I know the Antakalnis Cemetery
lies. I think of my grandparents lying beneath
the deep dark, under thick vines that I dug up
from my friend Virginia’s garden and replanted on
their graves, a tangled green blanket to comfort
them. While living in Vilnius, there have been days
that I have lain across my grandparents’ grave
and cried—like a character out of a nineteenth
century novel.
A few years ago, I flew into Vilnius very late
from London on the night of All Soul’s Day.
Although it was already ten o’clock, I asked
Thomas, who is French and not familiar with
Lithuanian culture, if he would mind visiting the
cemetery with me. I had bought candles a week
before and had set them aside.
“You want to visit the cemetery ten o’clock
at night?” he asked quizzically.
I explained the tradition. Although it was
unfamiliar to him, for my sake he agreed to go.
We parked at the small parking lot at the foot of
the hill and walked through the ink black night to
my grandparents’ grave. By five o’clock, when darkness descends, this cemetery is packed, making it
difficult to get up the hill at anything faster than
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a crawl. Now the cemetery was deserted. Only
candles flickered in the darkness surrounding us.
I lit three candles and set them down on my
grandparent’s grave. Thomas gazed around him
at the sea of candles flickering in the night. Many
of the graves were covered with dozens, even
hundreds, of candles.
“Laima, why did you bring so few candles for
your grandparents?” Thomas asked.
“One for the father, one for the son, one
for the Holy Ghost,” I answered, my Catholic
upbringing kicking in.
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“Your grandfather was a great man,” Thomas
said reflectively. “He was a leader, like Martin
Luther King. He deserves more than three candles.”
At Thomas’s insistence we drove down the
hill in search of a supermarket that was still
open. We went to three supermarkets before
we found one that stayed open late and had
not run through their stock of candles. Thomas
bought an entire case. We returned to the cemetery, climbed back up the dark hill, and spent half
the night patiently lighting each candle until my
grandparents’ grave was bathed in light.
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No 3 | 2013
3 | 2013
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