From Brezhnev to Brussels: Transformations of sovereignty in Eastern Europe

Abstract

The year 1989 is widely feted as a turning point in the history of Eastern Europe: nation-states were liberated from the tyranny of Soviet rule and regained their sovereign independence. This article challenges the conventional wisdom by arguing that the ‘limited sovereignty’ of the pre-1989 period, formally declared by Leonid Brezhnev in 1968, has been replaced by a new form of domination, this time from Brussels. However, while Eastern European states still face constraints on their political autonomy and self-government, the nature of this domination is different. Specifically, it coincides with the post-Cold War revision of the concept of sovereignty itself, where the attachment to the formal rights of sovereign independence and equality is lost. Eastern European states have found that continued limitations upon their sovereignty are today celebrated as the realization of the essence of sovereignty itself.