The Demise of Communist East Europe: 1989 in Context by Robin s> Okey (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 553 Okey, Robin. TheDemiseof Communist East Europe:i989 in Context. Arnold, London,2004. x + 230 pp. Notes.Bibliography. Index.?IJ4.99: $I9.95 (paperback). INthe decade and a half that has followed the Revolutions of I989 that ended the socialist dictatorshipsin Central and Eastern Europe there have, in part due to the closeness of the events concerned, been few attemptsto situate the events of the year in a genuinely historicalperspective. Studies by historians, like, for example, PadraicKenney's excellent historyof oppositional activism in the Central Europe of the late I98os (ACarnival ofRevolution, Princeton,NJ, 2002), have centred only on aspects of the Revolutions. Robin Okey's book constitutes a pioneering attempt to analyse the Revolutions -their causes, natureand consequences- from a genuinelyhistoricalperspective. The book is a clearlyand logicallyconstructedworkof synthesisratherthan a monographic study, drawing and critically assessing an interdisciplinary literature.Okey sets the events of autumn I989 in the context of the troubled history of political development in the region, arguing that they were both a productand reflectionof the difficulttrajectoryof Centraland EasternEurope since the end of theeighteenth century.They were theproductsof 'movements against another flawed system' and as such 'repeated themes in the region's history' (p. I93). This case is well presented through an engaging and convincing account of the causesof I989 in a longer-termcrisisof Soviet-type political systems as they were implemented in the context of Central and EasternEurope. While, arguesOkey, the regimesmodernized society, at one and the same time they were regarded as deeply politically illegitimate and their form of modernization was deeply flawed. Against the background of this long-term political and social crisis, social forces such as domestic oppositions emerged, while the external constraint of the impact of Soviet policy on the countries was transformed with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, as the Communist parties themselves dissolved. The interaction of thesefactorswithin and between countriesacrossthe regionproducedwhat Okey terms a series of 'very distinctiverevolutions'(p. 98) at least in Central Europe. In the south-eastof the continent they produced fragmentation,and in Yugoslavia, a series of bitter conflicts. In the last third of the book Okey attempts the difficult task of assessing the complex and ambiguous postsocialist period in which the states of the region attempted to build new political orders.His analysishere againis broadlyconvincing in thathe points to the highlymixed balance sheetof post-socialisttransitionduringthe decade and a half that has followed the end of socialistrule, drawing attention to its geographical unevenness and the emergence and persistence of deep-seated socialproblems. This reviewer felt that Okey overstatesthe differencesbetween the events of I989 and the transitionsin 'Central Europe' and in the south-east of the continent. While it is impossible to deny that Yugoslavia's tragedy at one extreme, and the relatively smooth transition in, for example, the Czech Republic, constitute fundamentallydifferentpost-socialistexperiences, more stressperhaps ought to have been placed on the fluidity of the boundaries within the region. In Central and South-EasternEurope alikerevolutionwas 554 SEER, 83, 3, 2005 ensured by the demands on the part of the revolutionary crowd that the political system be transformed, as much in Romania or Bulgaria, as in Czechoslovakiaorthe GermanDemocratic Republic. Post-socialisttransitions underline some of the fluidity of geographical borders in the region; authoritariannationalistswere not only to be found, for example, in SouthEastern Europe; one could mention Slovakia's Vladimir Meciar, or even Hungary'sViktorOrb'an. Another smallcriticalcomment might be made regardingOkey's explanation of the survival of post-Communist successor parties in many of the countries of the region. He argues that the survival of such parties is the product of the fact 'thatwhat east Europeansdislikedin communismwas not the egalitarian,welfarist"nannystate" [. . ] but economic stagnationand the repressionof individual and national freedom' (p. i6o). While this statement contains a considerable degree of truth as an analysis of the preferences of post-socialistcitizens,it does not explain the survivalof parties,likeHungary's Socialistsand Poland'sSLD, who have prospereddespitethe factthat in office they have often pursued liberal economic policies. Nor does it explain the differencesin the trajectoriesof, for example, the Czech and Hungarian Left. Insteadwhat it suggestsis that one shouldlook at how thesepartiesare rooted in long-termpatternsofpoliticalidentificationin thesesocietiesand how those patternswere modifiedby the very differentpracticesof Communist rulersin the various countries, despite...