Postcommunism

Slovakia’s relations with the states of Eastern Europe not only have a bilateral impact, but contain geopolitical, security and economic dimensions as well. This article analyzes the domestic, bilateral and multilateral aspects of relations between Slovakia and Russia before and after the parliamentary elections of 1998, when Slovakia adopted a pro-Western course aimed at EU and NATO membership. The article also focuses on bilateral relations with Ukraine, where Slovakia is among the most active supporters of Ukraine’s future EU membership. The final sections analyze the Eastern policy of Slovakia – particularly within the framework of the EU’s Eastern Partnership and the Visegrad Group – as well as Slovakia’s relations with the new Eastern European partners, such as Belarus, Moldova and Georgia, as target countries of Slovakia’s “soft power.”

The authors develop and implement a method for measuring the frequency of changes in power among distinct leaders and ideologically distinct parties that is comparable across political systems. The authors find that more frequent alternation in power is associated with the emergence of better governance in post communist countries. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that firms seek durable

I argue that the general epistemological conservatism, typical for the post-socialist “transition,” taken together with the imagined or experienced feeling of radically limited spatial choices, gave rise to a series of interesting symbolic shifts. An urgent search for a “new beginning,” a perceived state of semantic “indeterminacy” and “cognitive vacuum,” a recognition of the loss of all meaningful bearings was often represented as a disintegration of speech, as a deficiency of symbolic forms that could no longer express essential qualities of the current condition. The absence of comprehensive cognitive “maps” capable of representing the trajectory of development led to a pronounced preoccupation with the domain of minutiae, with tangible yet fragmented context. Also, this “being at a dead end” precipitated a move from the symbolism of space to the symbolism of time: “geography” gave place to “history.”

How do ‘new’ and ’old’ Islamic actors in contemporary Albania define religious legitimacy, the nation and religious otherness? This chapter uses Olivier Roy’s analytical distinction between accommodationism and neo-fundamentalism as a compass to navigate through Albania’s complex religious landscape by exploring different sets of beliefs promulgated by a selection of Islamic groups (2010).  These are the Muslim Community of Albania, which represents ‘official Islam’ , and ‘mainstream’ Sunni Muslims, who are typically accommodationist. I also analyse a Sufi subgroup thereof, which is equally accommodationist, but in a slightly different manner. As a neo-fundamentalist counterpoint, I explore the ideas of a competing organisation composed of Salafi imams.

Accommodationism means that the bond between religion and a specific territory and culture of origin is tight. In this context, ‘culture’ refers to Albanian historical tradition and the language-based, secular nation-building project engineered by modernising state elites since the early 20th century. Neo-fundamentalism, conversely, is a globalised form of religion that emphasises the gap between faith and culture. As such, it represents a reformatted, exportable form of religiosity, which stands in contrast to cultural ethno-national ways of being Muslim. Neo-fundamentalist religious identity is faith-based, and seeks to ground itself solely upon explicit religious norms, at least in principle. Accordingly, these believers make their religiosity visible through a global uniform of religious markers detached from the surrounding culture.

In the Albanian Islamic context, the theoretically informed labels, neo-fundamentalist and accommodationist, roughly correspond to the ‘Albanianist’ versus the ‘Salafi’ forms of Islam. To some extent, this resonates with mainstream distinctions adopted in Albania and in the Balkans. A popular Albanian term for Muslims associated with neo-fundamentalist forms of Islam is ‘fanatic’ (fanatik). Accommodationism is commonly related to ‘old’ forms of Islam, which many be deemed as local, rooted, and European as well as tolerant and moderate. Neo-fundamentalism, conversely, refers to certain ‘new’ forms of Islam, i.e. those perceived to be imported, transnational, alien, ‘fanatic’ and a threat to local religious customs. This cultural distinction between what are deemed acceptable and unacceptable forms of Islam is often politicised and securitised. As I will show, the association between neo-fundamentalism and violence is not necessarily correct, and the Salafi community under scrutiny here can be defined as pacifist and purist (Wiktorowicz 2006). These two formats, moreover, clash and merge together as different local actors seek to recast and legitimize their respective positions.

The text looks into the importance of sate capture for the stability of hybrid regimes from the Serbian post-2000 perspective. It argues for an integration of these two research fields. Part one gives a list extractive institutions related to political state capture. These institutions provide better measurement of state capture. Part two emphasizes
the importance of state capture for other hybrid regimes’s critical areas such as elections and media. Although rigged elections and controlled media are important pillars of
hybrid regimes, they depend to a large extent on the public funds by which they can be financed. Extraction of public funds matters because these are used to pay both activists
who manipulate the electoral process in the field and the media that hide information on the basis of which citizens can decide how to vote. The issue of extraction has been understudied in the debates on the consolidation of democracy in Serbia after 2000 but also in the discussios on democratic decline.

‘Normalization was anything but normal’. That is how oral historians Miroslav Vaněk and Pavel Mücke introduce the era between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989 in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Reflexively withstanding the temptations of the ‘grand narrative’, the authors provide a complex and highly contextual interpretation of everyday life activities, including work, education, family life, leisure time and consumption. In this scope, we can see how the apparently black-and-white dichotomy between communism and post-communism becomes grey-scaled, multi-faceted and in many details, even contradictory – because that is how people make sense of their daily lives, regardless of the regime.

In a relatively short period of time, Romanian political science has made considerable progress, moving from virtual obscurity to unchallenged local prominence. This article examines the efforts to date to institutionalize political science as a separate teaching and research discipline by presenting recently established political science university-level programs, the major groups of authors carrying out research on political phenomena and the recurrent themes emerging from relevant literature. Though the present article is concerned mainly with current developments, occasional references to the political science's position during the communist period are also made.

This paper analyzes changes in regional electoral behavior and attitudes towards separatism and foreign policy orientation in Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution” and the “Euromaidan,” which turned into a violent internal conflict and one of the biggest international conflicts involving Western countries and Russia. The research question is whether the regional divisions concerning domestic politics, separatism and foreign orientation have changed significantly in Ukraine since the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 and the “Euromaidan” in 2014. This paper employs comparative and statistical analyses of voting results of the 2012, 2007, 2006, and 2002 parliamentary elections, and the 2014, 2010, and 2004 presidential elections, to examine effects of historical legacies, ethnicity, language, age, and economic factors on regional support for pro-nationalist/pro-Western and pro-Russian/pro-communist political parties and presidential candidates. The study also analyses support for separatism in Crimea and Donbas after the “Orange Revolution” and the “Euromaidan.” It uses a brief survey, conducted for this study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in April and May 2014, to examine determinants of pro-separatist attitudes. The paper also employs Razumkov Center and KIIS surveys to analyze changes in 2002-2014 in regional preferences for joining the European Union (EU), NATO, and a union with Russia. The analysis shows that Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution” remained divided along regional lines in terms of support for political parties and presidential candidates and attitudes towards joining the EU, NATO, and a Russia-led union. After the “Euromaidan,” such divisions in foreign policy orientation and, to a lesser extent, support for presidential candidates and political parties remained. A significant rise in separatist sentiments helped to fuel separatist takeovers of power in Crimea and Donbas and Russian military intervention in these regions.

Qui connaît en France l’existence d’une «Convention européenne du paysage», qui fait de celui-ci «une com- posante fondamentale du patrimoine culturel et naturel de l’Europe»? Aujourd’hui les paysages européens con- naissent des transformations accélérées du fait de la mondialisation.
Cet ouvrage permet de mieux comprendre les enjeux multiples (politiques, sociaux, économiques, écolo- giques, mais aussi culturels et artistiques) de cette évolution. C’est pour mieux les comprendre dans leurs spécificités et dans leurs interactions que ce volume réunit des spécialistes de plusieurs pays et de diverses disci- plines (droit, sciences politiques, sociologie, urbanisme, économie, histoire, géographie, philosophie, arts plas- tiques, cinéma, littérature...), offrant un très large panorama, abondamment illustré, des paysages européens et de leurs représentations.

The book is based on the author's recurrent guest lectures at the U. of Warsaw delivered throughout the past decade. It examines political processes in Eastern Europe after the fall of the communist system and collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989-1991. It explores both the structural factors that determined very different development of postcommunist states and the role of domestic and international actors that influenced the direction and speed and scope of postcommunist transformations. While the author keeps all the East Europe in mind, the main focus is on the post-Soviet part of the Eastern Europe, specifically on Ukraine as the most complicated, ambivalent, and graphical case of both the decommunization and decolonization. The process tracing is combined in the study with political analysis of historical developments in the postcommunist Eastern Europe drawn primarily on the theories of hybrid regimes, illiberal democracies, path-dependence and revolutionary breakthroughs.

""During the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe came close to a violent break-up similar to that in neighboring Moldova, which witnessed a violent secession of the Transdniestria region. Numerous elections, including the hotly contested 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, and surveys of public opinion showed significant regional divisions in these post-Soviet countries. Western parts of Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Muslim Crimean Tatars, were vocal supporters of independence, nationalist, and pro-Western parties and politicians. In contrast, Eastern regions, as well as the Orthodox Turkic-speaking Gagauz, consistently expressed pro-Russian and pro-Communist political orientations. Which factors ? historical legacies, religion, economy, ethnicity, or political leadership ? could explain these divisions? Why was Ukraine able to avoid a violent break-up, in contrast to Moldova?
This is the first book to offer a systematic and comparative analysis of the regional political divisions in post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. The study examines voting behavior and political attitudes in two groups of regions: those which were under Russian, Ottoman, and Soviet rule; and those which were under Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule until World War I or World War II. This book attributes the regional political divisions to the differences in historical experience. This study helps us to better understand regional cleavages and conflicts, not only in Ukraine and Moldova, but also in other cleft countries.""

The question of foreign oppression and its nefarious effects on subdued cultures is usually discussed by postcolonial critics belonging to the dominating West or the formerly colonized Third World. I am troubled by my situation as a Romanian academic and critical intellectual who has been teaching or publicly debating postcolonial issues and has been engaged for a while now in American or British Cultural Studies projects. Where do I really belong in such confrontational fields?  And can my/our postcommunist experience contribute to the understanding of (post)colonial experience and thus provide a critical warrant for a comparative treatment of these two hypostases of subalternity?

In trying to answer these questions I found myself confronted with several difficulties. Eastern Europe is uncomfortably placed inside a baffling area of polarized instances of otherness which is nothing like the usual binary oppositions employed by most postcolonial criticism. My critical and ideological agenda as a postcommunist intellectual from Eastern Europe is much more complicated than that of my counterparts from the former colonies of the West. The conceptual vocabulary of coloniality is riddled with ambiguities and accounts of colonialism stereotypically pair it with the modern Western colonial and imperial conduct.

Readers can expect to find suggestions for a more consistent use of the terminology of coloniality and for a reconsideration of coloniality outside the traditional Westcentric schematics. Western critical idioms—sometimes mimicked by Third World authors just as they are trying to liberate themselves from Western hegemony—are in the habit of annexing the domain of coloniality to the Western variant of modernity. The Sovietized world is thus robbed of its claim to a colonial status which would enable post-Soviet subjects to better understand and resolve their colonial trauma. An important part of the book is dedicated to understanding the significance of Romanian nationalism (no more than a local example of similar East European discourses) and of its figurative assertion of identity.

This study explores the literary-cultural relation of Eastern Europe – particularly its communist legacy and post-communist trajectory – to postcolonial studies, interrogating the extent to which postcolonialism can function as an enabling theoretical construction that can help illuminate instances of ‘mind-colonisation’ in non-Third World contexts. It argues that colonisation is to be understood principally as a condition of ideological domination that has engendered similar forms of literary and cultural resistance; consequently, it offers a comparative framework which enables a reading in differential contexts of texts that ostensibly have little in common, but which, on close examination, reveal a shared imaginative space, rhetoric and narrative agency.

Structurally, the book consists of two interrelated parts. Part one is a critical discussion of the ideologies, cultural imaginaries and representational practices articulated in a diverse range of representative postcolonial and post-1945 East-Central European texts; these are shown to share, despite dissimilar conditions of production, uncannily related narrative modes and thematic emphases. The second part is a comparative literature case-study which discusses two authors whose work is both highly representative of the cultural formations I compare (Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie) and, at the same time, highly controversial.

The book thus straddles three main disciplinary areas: East-Central European studies, Postcolonial Studies and Comparative Literature. This is one of its major strengths, for it brings into dialogue fields of inquiry which, more often than not, tend to rationalise their lack of interest in each other’s problematics by elaborate arguments of historical and cultural incompatibility.

My approach, on the contrary, capitalizes on points of confluence (among which the construction of colonialism/communism as ambivalent processes, triggering differential moments of resistance, accommodation and complicity; post-imperial symptomatologies; exile and immigration) and analogous cultural nodes (the role of memory in the re-writing of the past; resistance as a complex of doubly-inscripted or overcoded discourses, ranging from overtly oppositional to carnivalesque and magical realist). Postcolonialism is not used as an ‘interpretive matrix’ for a unified theory of post-communism; rather, the study aims to show how these two different “posts”, both marking the wake of an empire, can inform each other within the space of differential ideological and cultural contexts, and thus work towards a more open and nuanced response to post-1989 geopolitical polarizations.

This paper analyzes public perceptions of Joseph Stalin and Stepan Bandera in modern Ukraine. It uses data from a national representative survey conducted in September 2013 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology for this study. The analysis reveals major determinants of attitudes toward the leaders of, respectively, the Soviet Union and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, amid continuing attempts to recast their political identities in contemporary Ukraine.

After three decades since the 1989 revolution, is postcommunism still a relevant concept for understanding Romania's profound transformations after the fall of Ceaușescu's national-communist regime? For a number of reasons detailed in the introductive section, I aim to offer a positive answer to this question: postcommunism is still a valid theoretical tool in apprehending this new stage of Romania's development, although its relevance is not so powerful as it was back in the 1990s. This study tries to differentiate several major directions of analysis regarding Romanian postcommunism. The typology it proposes is by far not a complete one, not even a very complex one; it just tries to identify, grosso modo, what I consider to be the main dimensions of this complex social phenomenon. Of course, the debate can go on, and it is highly recommendable to go on, both by expanding and/or contesting the present typolo-gy. After I analyze the ideological, political, economical, social and cultural components of Romanian postcommunism, the idea I try to bring forward is that of the irreducible particularity of this ideology, the more prolific as its discursive efforts to present itself as the 'end of history', common sense, reality or non-ideological universalism-were more intense. Introducere: controverse și clarificări/delimitări conceptuale În ce măsură mai este relevant conceptul de postcomunism la aproape trei decenii de la revoluția din 1989? Discuția este una am-plă și merită redată, cel puțin în parametrii săi esențiali. Astfel, în sensul deja clasic al termenului, așa cum transpare el din ana-lizele lui Leslie Holmes, postcomunismul ca reacție imediată și critică la ideologiile și practicile teoretice ale fostelor regimuri comuniste este în mare măsură epuizat (Holmes, 2004). Anii 1990 sunt cu mult în urma noastră, și avem deja un deceniu de când ne-am integrat în structurile politico-economice și de securitate ale Occidentului. În același timp, criticii lui Alexandru Polgár, conform căreia termenul de postcomunism este impropriu deoarece regimurile est-euro-pene aflate la putere între 1948 și 1989 nu au fost comuniste, falsificând nucleul doc-trinar al marxismului originar (Polgár, 2015, 91-94)-i se poate răspunde prin aceea că nicio filosofie politică sau ideologie nu poate avea o practică perfect identică în raport cu propriul conținut teoretic. Nici capitalismul contemporan nu este atât de dereglementat, de inovativ și de dispus să își asume riscuri pe piață pe cât este prezentat în acest fel de autori ca Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek sau Milton Friedman. Sigur, critica lui Polgár se susține prin simplul fapt că ex-periența istorică a comunismelor real-exis-tente nu anulează pe viitor posibilitatea unor noi proiecte emancipatoare, indiferent de terminologia prin care acestea vor fi identi-ficate și interpelate pentru a produce reali

This article explores photographic works produced by key members of the Minsk School of Photography before and after the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s. Mostly reworking found images from the Soviet past, these artists employed the visual language of that period to disassociate themselves from Soviet practices of photographic recording. Appropriating conventions of the portrait genre, the Minsk photographers used them to create a stream of obfuscated representations in which individuals are presented devoid of their originary contexts, biographies, and, frequently, faces. Through their de-facing tactics, these photographers visualized forms of indirect postcolonial presence. Erasing subjectivity and abstracting imprints of lived experience, their vicarious photography articulates a model of dealing with history that allows presence without identity or identification.

For 35 years Yugoslavia was ruled by one of the most glamorous dictators of the 20th century, Marshal Josip Broz Tito. When in June of 1948 he split with Stalin, the western world compared him to the biblical David, who not only dared to face, but also defy, the Soviet goliath (Beloff 1985:129). The winner developed his own style of dictatorship called Titoism, which was the “consequence, not the cause, of the clash with Stalin” (Pavlowitch 1988:41). However, his monopoly on the regime, which was based on the original Soviet model, remained unchanged and could be called autocratic rather than totalitarian. Tito’s main focus was on controlling the Party as well as the armed and security forces, leaving more autonomy to the economy and an illusion of freedom within cultural activities (Ibid.:44). As Milovan Djilas – who later on also took the role of David and unfortunately failed – stressed, Tito’s achievements are inseparable from his personality and “when all is said and done, the achievement makes the man, not the man the achievement” (Djilas 1981:179).
In Tito’s case the achievement was the spectacle of mainstream camp culminating in the personality of the communist dictator himself. Yet despite this he was not included in any of the western publications, like, for example, in Philip Core’s encyclopedia of camp called "Camp. The Lie that Tells the Truth", published in 1984. For Igor Perišić, who reviewed the translation of the above into Serbian in 2003, it was obvious that the book lacked a chapter on Tito (Perišić 2013). It is fascinating to note that Tito’s camp was developing as time passed, reaching its peak in the decade before he died.
Although there were many highly individual and excessive despotic leaders such as Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Nicolae Ceaușescu, Tito was arguably the only one who could be interpreted as a camp icon. As a communist, he was known for his glamorous style and for rubbing shoulders with sheiks, queens, kings, princesses and movie stars while at the same time playing the most sophisticated aristocrat. As Richard West observed, “unlike these other dictators, who glorified their own egos, Tito preferred to enjoy the pomp and luxury of his life at the top” (West 1996:196). His country became a theatre, where he played whatever role was required of him – “a communist with [a] human face,” a generous king, a fashion dictator, a rebel and a heretic. The scale of his show was unprecedented and even his funeral was the most exaggerated and pompous spectacle of any leader and probably the biggest gathering of statesmen in human history. After his death the longing for the world Tito created was so overpowering that it was called Yugonostalgia, while yearning for its leader received the name Titostalgia.

*I would like to thank "Balkanistica" for permission to post my article here.

Національна доповідь, підготовлена колективом фахівців Секції суспільних і гуманітарних наук НАН України, є спробою в сучасних геополітичних умовах обґрунтувати концепцію національної стійкості (резильєнтності) як стійкості цивілізаційної суб’єктності країни. Визначити її стратегію забезпечення збалансованості розвитку та успішної протидії зовнішнім і внутрішнім загрозам, у тому числі гібридним. Досліджено питання взаємодії національної резильєнтності й національної безпеки держави, поставлено проблему інституційного забезпечення стратегії національної резильєнтності.
The national report, prepared by the staff of the Section of Social Sciences and Humanities of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The report seeks to justify the concept of national resilience as resilience of the civilizational subject of a country in modern geopolitical conditions. The report also aims to define country’s strategy for ensuring the balance of development on the one hand and successful counteraction to external and internal threats, including hybrid ones on the other. The question of interaction of national resilience and national security of a state is investigated, the problem of institutional maintenance of strategy of national resilience is set.

Nation branding -- a set of ideas rooted in Western marketing --gained popularity in the post-communist world by promising a quick fix for the identity malaise of "transitional" societies. Since 1989, almost every country in Central and Eastern Europe has engaged in nation branding initiatives of varying scope and sophistication. For the first time, this volume collects in one place studies that examine the practices and discourses of the nation branding undertaken in these countries. In addition to documenting various re-branding initiatives, these studies raise important questions about their political and cultural implications.

In this book chapter we took a close look at the Sziget as a “very European Fair.” Its onset in 1993 made it the heir of both the counterculture and of a re-unifying Europe. Its twenty-three years’ history exemplifies often rehearsed contradictions between “the dream”—a free, diverse and creative youth culture—, on the one hand, and the political economic context of its realization, on the other. The most worrisome aspect of the Sziget, however, is not its commodification but its apparent failure, as of 2016, to integrate Hungarian youths into its version of “Europe”.

""This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokaster with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics
constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross-border road section as my main ethnographic
point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

[roads, globalization, transnationalism, development, postsocialism, materiality, Albania]""

Komar and Melamid are often described as ironic ‘jokers’. This assessment rings true but does not encapsulate the intellectual density of their oeuvre. Behind the artists’ strategic comedy lurks conceptual rigor, critical engagement with Russian cultural history – from Gogol to Stalin, to Kabakov – and a keen sense of pathos. This article endeavors to measure the weight of their humor as it touches upon the idea of a ‘people’s art’ – probing its limits.

This chapter examines the political system, attitudes towards democracy, and their determinants in Ukraine before, during and after the “Euromaidan.” The research question is as follows: What type of political system has emerged in Ukraine since the “Euromaidan?” The related research question is to what extent political values in Ukraine are supportive of democracy. This study is based on theories of democratic, semi-democratic, and authoritarian political systems, democratization, and political culture. This chapter compares political systems in Ukraine before, during and after the “Euromaidan.” It uses data from different waves of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems surveys, the Pew Global Attitudes surveys, and the World Values Surveys to examine attitudes towards democracy in Ukraine before and after the “Euromaidan” and to compare democratic preferences in Ukraine with those in Poland and Russia. This study also implements multiple regression analysis of the determinants of attitudes towards democracy. It discusses implications of its findings for the prospects for liberal democracy in Ukraine and for the international conflict over Ukraine.