Post-communist Eastern Europe Research Articles

On Victims, Heroes, and Gulag-gupvi Survivors

Abstract Employing a biographical, oral history approach, this article documents the life story of a war veteran and gupvi survivor in Hungary to illustrate the multiple synchronic as well as diachronic cleavages that exist between the official, societal, and collective memory regimes in postcommunist Eastern Europe. István Bicskei’s life story highlights, in a tangible way, the fact that the socially constructed notions of victimhood and heroism vary as a complex outcome of the interaction of multiple forms of human, institutional, and political agencies in an ever-changing historical context and in multi-layered cultural milieux. The article argues that these key cultural notions are closely tied to individual understandings of personhood, to national and collective identities, but also to ruling ideologies and political regimes. The article also highlights the glaring gap between official, scholarly, and local narratives about the past that exists in marginalized rural communities and points to the conspicuous lack of cultural “mediators” or “intermediators” between these distinct political, media, and social spheres, and between official and grassroots memory narratives.

György Konrád as a Post-Dissident Public Intellectual Biography, Interventions, Reception

The paper offers a case study of György Konrád, a leading intellectual from post-Communist eastern Europe, who was arguably the most internationally visible and influential former dissident—or post-dissident—from Hungary after 1989. The paper introduces the biography and intellectual activities of Konrád, which stretched from the periphery of interwar Hungary to post–Cold War international fame, and it focuses on his post-1989 public interventions and the reception of his key ideas. The main question it poses is: “How did Konrád wield his post-dissident moral and political authority, and with what effects?” To answer this overarching question, I explore Konrád’s key contributions as a public intellectual in post-Communist Hungary and analyze his high-profile involvement in international discussions via prominent interviews, debate participations, and appearances in various documentaries. I also provide an overview of the scholarly reception of his most influential ideas. The paper concludes that by recurrently dissenting from more mainstream intellectual opinions, at times even those shared in his own liberal milieu, Konrád simultaneously employed and deflected his political and moral authority. More concretely, I show how Konrád oscillated between universalistic and civilizational discourses and between a generous spirit of openness and profound personal fears when his post-dissident authority made his voice so widely audible.

James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák, eds. The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe

James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák, eds. <i>The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe</i>

James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák, eds. The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe

James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák, eds. <i>The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe</i>

Religious nationalism and the dynamics of religious diversity governance in post-communist Eastern Europe

The analysis of the dynamics of the governance of religious diversity in Southeastern and Central Eastern Europe and Russia provided in country studies in this special issue reveals that the countries of the region share several common tendencies but also exhibit significant divergences. This contribution compares the experiences of post-communist transition in religious diversity governance in the countries covered in the special issue. I assess the degree to which liberal regimes of religious diversity governance have been achieved or abandoned. I explore the explanatory factors behind the diversity of regimes in the region and the internal dynamics that these regimes have undergone throughout the post-communist period. I also compare policy issues related to the governance of religious diversity and the subsequent policy approaches adopted to tackle those challenges. The papers in this collection seek to explain a recent turn away from pro-diversity policy orientations by examining the influence of religious nationalism and the securitization of religion. In the conclusion, I argue for the need to consider additional factors related to post-communist transition in analyzing outcomes related to religious diversity governance.

RUSSIAN DOLL OF SUSTAINABILITY: FACTOR ENDOWMENTS, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL EQUALITY AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE POST-COMMUNIST CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The Russian doll of sustainability framework is applied to find income inequality determinants in transition countries. Land endowment effects on institutions and economic outcomes are analyzed using the autoregressive distributed lag approach on ten Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) from 1995 to 2021. Findings suggest land endowment has an income inequality-widening effect, and trade openness reduces inequalities. However, various democratic measures affect inequality differently, depending on the time horizon. For example, while participatory democracy (PARTID) increases inequality, egalitarian democracy (EGALD) decreases it, but a more rural-biased public service provision is associated with higher inequality in the short run and decreased inequality in the long run. Lastly, we do not confirm a robust Kuznets curve over the development path, and we do not find financial development statistically significant in explaining income inequality.

LINE OF MIRACLE OR CONTAMINATION? SFÂNTA PARASCHEVA AS A CONTESTED PILGRIMAGE AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC 2020

Examining the largest pilgrimage in contemporary Romania, this article expands our knowledge of Christian pilgrimage in post-communist Eastern Europe. Ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in 2020 produces a thick description and analysis of the pilgrimage to Sfânta (Saint) Parascheva, Romania’s most important female saint in the Orthodox tradition, held annually in the country’s second city , Iaşi. The unexpected COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 produced a major shift in the pilgrimage. The article also shows how far-right groups, which, through public protest, sought to win mind-space and political legitimacy, exploited COVID-19 public health regulations imposed on the pilgrims. While the basic, well-regulated elements of the pilgrimage remained the same, these unexpected social actors introduced a new chaotic intensity with their contradictory narratives of protest. At Sfânta Parascheva in 2020, religious, nationalist and secular standpoints could be observed, turning the pilgrimage into a polysemic site of competing discourses.

Islam in Post-communist Eastern Europe. Between Churchification and Securization, written by Egdūnas Račius

Islam in Post-communist Eastern Europe. Between Churchification and Securization, written by Egdūnas Račius

The Representative Potential of Interest Groups: Internal Voice in Post-Communist and Western European Countries

Why do some interest group systems provide group members with more elaborate voice opportunities than other systems? We argue that evaluating membership voice is important for understanding the representative potential of interest group systems. An adequate understanding of “voice” forms the basis of “context”-embedded assessments of benchmarks such as interest group bias, interest group representational distortion, and interest group-driven policy overload. We examine two competing hypotheses on the differences in internal voice in Eastern and Western Europe. Primarily, case-specific arguments lead us to expect a weaker internal voice in post-communist Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe. Conversely, some theoretical approaches, such as population ecological organisational theory, lead us to expect a relatively weak membership voice in the organisationally saturated Western European systems. We assess these two hypotheses on the basis of an international survey of interest group leaders and observe, in line with the population ecological hypothesis, that members of Western European interest groups, compared to those in post-communist countries, are perceived as having less influential voices in internal decisions on policy positions. We conclude, neither optimistically nor pessimistically, that there is a meaningful representative potential of interest group systems supporting democratic societies, also, or even especially, in the post-communist countries studied.

The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Ed. James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák. New York: Routledge, 2022. xiii, 340 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $175.00, hardbound; $48.95, ebook.

The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Ed. James A. Kapaló and Kinga Povedák. New York: Routledge, 2022. xiii, 340 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. 48.95, ebook. - Volume 81 Issue 4

Islam in Post-communist Eastern Europe: Between Churchification and Securitization By EgdŪnas Račius

<i>Islam in Post-communist Eastern Europe: Between Churchification and Securitization</i> By <scp>EgdŪnas Račius</scp>

Legitimation crisis, memory, and United States exceptionalism: Lessons from post-communist Eastern Europe

The article examines how the experiences of post-communist transitional justice policies could inform current controversies in the United States regarding its reckoning with the past. To lay the ground for this analysis, three facets of American exceptionalism—the dual state reality, the triumphalist myth, and the denialist myth—are identified as principal obstacles that have preempted any substantive reparations for the crimes against humanity perpetrated against enslaved Africans and their descendants. This is followed by a presentation of how the 1989 revolutions in East and Central Europe failed to promote an inclusive and pluralistic model of the past. Instead, current representations of the past rooted in essentialist and ethnocentric historical narratives are weaponized by non-democratic political actors. Finally, the authors caution against misguided representations of historical trauma and memory wars in the United States that could potentially reproduce White supremacist ideologies and escalate existent political and cultural divisions.

Egdūnas Račius, Islam in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Between Churchification and Securitization

Egdūnas Račius, Islam in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Between Churchification and Securitization

Building the BBC-branded NGO: Overseas Development, the World Service, and the Marshall Plan of the Mind, c.1965-99.

Overseas broadcasting has been an integral part of the BBC's remit since the creation of its Empire Service in 1932. Throughout its history, the BBC has consistently argued that its services for overseas listeners should not be classified as a form of British propaganda, but instead understood as a fundamentally benevolent undertaking, providing objective, impartial, and trustworthy news and information to hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide. In the post-imperial era, the World Service increasingly depicted itself as not just a 'global public service broadcaster', but also as a kind of humanitarian endeavour, an 'Oxfam of the Mind' which made a significant contribution to Britain's wider efforts in the field of overseas development. This article critically evaluates this vision of the BBC World Service as a post-imperial 'gift to the world'. It outlines how, in the early 1990s, the World Service created the first BBC-branded overseas development NGO, the Marshall Plan of the Mind (MPM), which used both UK government and external philanthropic funding to help promote British commercial and diplomatic interests in post-communist Eastern Europe. MPM is then contextualized in relation to the World Service's longer (and largely overlooked) history of overseas development work and its relationship with the NGO sector, both before and after the end of the Cold War. By exploring how and why the World Service inserted itself into the NGO sphere, this work contributes to ongoing historical debates regarding the BBC's relationship with the state and the role(s) that global development NGOs have played in shaping Britain's post-imperial 'place in the world'.

Bank ownership and drivers of credit growth in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

AbstractIn this paper, we analyse the determinants of credit growth for banks operating in 20 countries in the post-communist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE). We focus on foreign-owned banks and the parent-subsidiary nexus against the background of all banks operating in this part of Europe. Our goal is to determine whether the macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants for host countries have a similar impact on the entire group of banks operating in CESEE and on its subset of foreign-owned banks and whether the rate of credit growth could be considered ceteris paribus equal across the foreign-owned and the complete set of banks in the CESEE. To this end, we use panel data regressions on approximately 4,600 bank-year observations over the period from 1995 to 2014. We conclude that the determinants of banks’ behaviour in the CESEE countries are consistent regardless of these banks’ ownership, the period and their EU membership. Although having a foreign investor expands the set of relevant determinants, the presence of such investors does not overshadow the importance of local conditions.

Real Effective Exchange Rates and deindustrialization: Evidence from 25 Post-Communist Eastern European countries

ABSTRACT For the past three decades, Eastern European countries have exhibited a noticeable decline in their share of the industrial production sector overall, but not uniformly. Simultaneously, trade liberalisation and integration in international production networks were intensified, bringing different export sophistication levels and economic development to countries in this region. This paper aims to examine the real effective exchange rate (REER) impact on the deindustrialisation or reindustrialisation process in 25 post-communist Eastern European countries. The paper employs a heterogeneous panel common factor approach for the period 1995–2018 to exploit the effect of diverse levels of export complexity, stage of economic development and intensity of participation in global value chains on the REER–industrial production relationship. The results establish a heterogeneous yet significant negative relationship between currency strengthening and industrial production. Our findings also indicate that this negative effect of appreciation is less pronounced with the country’s higher economic complexity and its broader participation in global value chains.

Transitional justice and democratic consolidation in post-communist Eastern Europe: Romania and Albania

Transitional justice and democratic consolidation in post-communist Eastern Europe: Romania and Albania

The end goal of the post-communist transition in Bulgaria: societal transformation or EU membership?

The end of the Cold War resulted in an unprecedented geopolitical situation in Europe, presenting a challenge to the security in the continent and the integration achieved so far. The only solution to this geopolitical problem was the integration of the post-communist Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) into the European Union (EU). The CEE countries therefore had to undergo deep societal reforms, while simultaneously pursuing a new foreign policy agenda away from the orbits of Russia. The EU was perceived as a solution to all existing problems. The results of the research conducted in Bulgaria, presented in this article, demonstrate that preparation for meeting the membership criteria which on the surface seemed to correspond to the aims of the transition, substituted the due structural reform. Thus, the EU accession instead of being an instrument for achieving sustainable long-term goals, became an end goal in itself, as if it would be an international testimony of a successful transition. The reforms carried out became a formality, were partial and superficial, and therefore reversible. As a result, the rule of law is deteriorating, and we can observe a facade democracy.

“Pravda for Playboy”: David Edgar’s The Shape of the Table and the Eastern European Roundtables

Abstract David Edgar’s The Shape of the Table (1990) is a near-contemporaneous dramatization of the process of regime concession and opposition conquest of power that characterised the negotiated transitions in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. It is interesting in and of itself as an example of how one of the UK’s most notable socialist playwrights saw the varying elements of accommodation and confrontation in roundtable dialogues around 1989. However, it has further interest because in adopting an agent-centred, voluntaristic, and bargained conception of transition, Edgar reflected and anticipated the initial scholarly response to these processes. Similarly, Edgar anticipated problems of democratic disillusionment, economic liberalisation, and ethnonationalism as post-Communist Eastern Europe undertook the unprecedentedly complicated triple-track transition in economy and society as well as politics.

The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

This short essay explores the ways in which the visual and symbolic repertoire of cosmopolitan Holocaust memory has become appropriated to represent other types of historical crimes. Specifically, I examine to what extent has this instrumentalization of Holocaust memory fed into a crisis in cosmopolitan memory and the rise of its nationalized, particularized and populist variants. Focusing on post-communist Eastern Europe, I demonstrate how the familiar narratives and images of the Holocaust have been repurposed for two main goals: firstly, to normatively elevate the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities and equate it with the Holocaust; and secondly, to reposition the crimes of communism as the dominant criminal legacy of the twentieth century on a par with, and sometimes overtaking, the legacy of the Holocaust. I illustrate these arguments with brief examples of revisionist museum and commemorative practices in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Serbia. I conclude by thinking through some methodological and ethical dimensions of this research.