Post-communist Space Research Articles

The Kosovo—and Montenegro—effect

The post-communist space continues to generate new internationally recognized states while incubating unrecognized but de facto states. Recent movement in the Balkans—the independence of Montenegro and the arduous deliberations over Kosovo's future —have variously encouraged other secessionist people and would-be states, particularly in the former Soviet Union. This article analyses the impact of developments in Montenegro and Kosovo on several levels, including: their usage by de facto states; the reactions to them by central governments; Russian policy; and western and intergovernmental responses to these challenges. The article further argues that the Russian position on Kosovo and on the so-called ‘frozen’ or unsettled conflicts neighbouring Russia could ultimately backfire on it. Western policy towards both Kosovo and on the post-Soviet frozen conflicts will be best served by signalling to Russia, irrespective of the exact form of Kosovo's independence, that neither its own interests nor broader western-Russian relations are served by using or reacting to any Kosovo ‘precedent’.

Russia's Political Youths

Abstract: Although most Russian youths are politically apathetic, a small cross section is engaged in political activity--mostly consisting of protest actions--in preparation for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Youth-based political and civic organizations can be defined generally by their support for, or opposition to, President Vladimir Putin and the party of power. Ideological differences between opposition youth organizations have prevented the formation of an effective civic movement. Putin's administration has employed a number of tactics, including the creation of the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi (Ours) to counteract anti-Kremlin youth groups such as Youth Yabloko, The National Bolshevik Party, and Oborona. Western nongovernmental organizations, along with youth alumni of the revolutions, have been helping Russian opposition youth to overcome these difficulties, much to the dismay of the Putin administration. Keywords: democracy assistance, elections, Orange Revolution, politics, youths ********** Russia's youths are preparing for battle. With the State Duma and presidential elections approaching, youth-based civic and political organizations, aided by Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and alumni of the so-called colored revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Serbia have been gearing up for a contest against the firmly entrenched United Russia Party (YeR) and the administration of President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has been pumping millions of rubles into its own youth groups with the hope of thwarting a Ukrainian-style revolution. Enhanced focus on youths in Russia has come mainly in response to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Youth-based organizations have played an important role in the colored revolutions that have swept across the postcommunist space in the last five years. The knowledge of organizational techniques and movement management developed in Serbia by Otpor and a host of Western-based NGOs has infiltrated into Georgia and Ukraine, helping to fuel the rise of democratic culture if only in response to flagrant infringements on democratic principles. In Ukraine, organizations such as Pora and Znayu not only provided the passion and sense of purpose that contributed to the spirit of the Orange Revolution, they also played a major role in mobilizing the Ukrainian people to challenge the authorities. Following their success, activist youths from Ukraine have joined their colleagues from Georgia and Serbia, along with a number of Western-based NGOs, in exporting organizational knowledge and democratic participation to other countries in the former Soviet Union. Many of these organizations have focused on Russia as a small number of youth-ased political and civic organizations prepare for parliamentary elections in 2007 and presidential elections in 2008. Activists from Pora and Znayu have held seminars on organizational techniques and movement development with their counterparts in Russia. NGOs from the United States and Europe have provided funding for these activities in addition to running their own programs for Russia's youths. These efforts have drawn the ire of the Putin administration, which has launched its own campaign targeting Russia's youths in an attempt to counteract a potential Orange Revolution in Russia. I have conducted an investigation into the activities of Russian youth-based political and civic organizations and their support network of Western NGOs and colored revolution alumni to assess their political effectiveness in confronting the political monopoly of the Putin administration and YeR in 2007 and 2008. Although an opposition youth movement in Russia has been developing some of the elements that made groups such as Otpor in Serbia and Pora in Ukraine successful civic mobilizers, internal divisions, public apathy, resource deficiencies, and countermeasures by the authorities have all undermined its ability to wage a successful civic campaign. …

Local government transparency in East Central Europe

Decentralisation and democratisation have proceeded simultaneously in the post-communist space of East Central Europe. Decentralisation to elected local governments was encouraged to facilitate democratisation, combat corruption and provide better public services and goods. To evaluate the success of such efforts, I examine recently archived (2001, 2002) surveys of local government chief administrative officers from Romania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia. My analysis suggests variation in local government transparency to be a function of the density of political and civil society, and the institutions that mediate between them, as opposed to socioeconomic development or locality size.

Postcommunist aid negotiation: a review of recent research

The essay synthesises ‘stylised prescriptions’ from review of recent research on interactions of postcommunist countries and the West since 1989. The essay considers aid negotiation by postcommunist recipients and multilateral and bilateral donors in economic reform, democratisation, civil society development, environmental policy, the social sector and science and education, and the effects of East–West interactions on those of postcommunist countries with each other. Drawing on concepts from the study of international negotiations, and on research on postcommunist countries by scholars from social science and policy disciplines in the US, EU and Russia, the essay builds on a dialogue that began during the second Aleksanteri Seminar organised in 2002 by the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. This scholarly dialogue proposes greater attention in transitological debates to the interactive process of aid negotiation, to ‘donor congestion’ in the postcommunist space, and to its (intended and unintended) effects.

Competition and Confusion in the Discourse on Organized Crime in Russia

Throughout 1990s, crime was a familiar topic in Russian, Western, and international political and economic forums. The reasons for this are partially known. Not only had end of bipolar context undermined a vision of world based on a stable form of international order, but it had also prompted emergence of new concerns linked to opening of borders and internal disintegration of numerous post-Communist states, particularly Russia. The loss of its familiar foe and appearance of new threats connected with post-Communist space helped to integrate expressions Russian mafia or red mafia into U.S. rhetoric about national security. (1) Rather than deconstruct Western discourse regarding red mafia threat, aim of this article is to understand how such a topic emerged in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts before spreading to Western world. This article will examine how problem related to crime in Russia was constituted and how it has contributed to shaping Western beliefs. Particular attention is paid to how knowledge about crime accumulated in Russia, which sources were used, and, more precisely, how so-called scientific knowledge could feed, confirm, or invalidate discourse on this topic by political actors. Research on Russian crime has been carried out since late 1980s: numerous publications, doctoral dissertations, journal articles, and symposiums have been devoted to topic. The aim of assessment of such material is not to judge research conducted, but to understand how specialized knowledge related to crime has come about. The term problem is used here in reference to Murray Edelman's work. It implies a distressing situation that constitutes a political issue owing to differences among its definitions, the diversity of meanings ... stemming from range of concerns of different groups, each eager to pursue courses of action and call them solutions. (2) A problem focuses upon a name for an undesirable condition or a threat to well-being. The governmental activities such a focus rationalizes comprise a sequence of ambiguous claims and actions that change and are frequently inconsistent with one another because they are responses to different group interests. (3) Edelman, in introduction to French-language edition of one of his works published in 1991, suggests that his positions, which initially applied to industrially advanced democratic countries, are likely to be heuristically relevant for study of post-Communist countries insofar as construction of social problems relies principally on development of media and greater public access to political information. (4) The approach that I wish to apply to discourse on crime as an objective social fact should not lead to excessive relativism. The wish to understand way political discourses and actions related to this form of delinquency are produced cannot entail denial of existence or seriousness of heterogeneous practices involved in different definitions given to organized crime. (5) Yet, from my point of view, to use expression crime is not to validate it or suggest that it refers to an indisputably constituted social phenomenon, (6) but merely recognizes that literature, discourse, budgets, and specialized law-enforcement agencies are explicitly associated with it. Moreover, importance granted to analysis of discourse in an article devoted to knowledge about Russian crime does not imply a lack of interest in their possible expression as practices. (7) In Russia, crime is a recently constituted issue, using scarce sources. It is based on cognitive references that were confused by competing and confused meanings of term mafia in Soviet context. In late 1980s, crime or mafia problem had already become a significant political stake in struggle that opposed hard-liners to reformers. …

History Teaching in Romania

Relationships to time through memory or projection form a particular axis along which the post-communist space reshapes, constructs and understands its identity. Caught between a public rejection of the communist past and a need for roots in the recent past, if only for narrative reasons, and cornered by the near future in the name of transition, the postcommunist societies face a dilemma in their search for identity. The weight of this dilemma can be directly measured by the level of consensus around the passing of certain ‘reparation’ laws, such as the restitution of nationalised property or ‘lustration’, however it can also be seen in other public debates. This sheds light on the difficulties that a society may experience in adopting a collectively-accepted narrative, which then forms the basis on which it constructs its identity.

Conceptualising the Reconstruction of Identities in the Postcommunist Countries

In this article I propose to explore the meanings, mechanisms and issues at stake in the reconstitution of identities which can now be seen taking place in the countries of the post-communist space. We shall consider this space not as a thing in itself, but in terms of its old and new interactions with the countries of western Europe, in order to understand the phenomena of reconstructed identities in general, in the context of their relationship to the period of globalisation in which we now find ourselves.

Czech Attitudes Towards the Roma: 'Expecting More of Havel's Country'?

EVER-GROWING IS THE ISSUE OF RIGHTS FOR ROMA and their relations with majority nations throughout Central and Eastern Europe. If one group of people seems today to be consistently verbally derided, subjected to physical abuse, social marginalisation and even legal disenfranchisement in the post-communist space, it is them. While hardly unique, this situation nevertheless has become particularly evident in the Czech Republic. Few incidents in the fate of contemporary Europe's Roma have seized the international imagination-rightly or wrongly-as much as those that have occurred in the Czech Republic. These issues, which not only require careful examination but also some qualification of foreign media coverage, include the 'wall' built effectively segregating Roma from Czechs, a series of killings, a 'citizenship' law condemned internationally as intentionally denying Roma Czech citizenship, the departure of Roma from that country and their claim of asylum in several states, and the continued operation of an industrial pig farm on the site of a World War II concentration camp for Roma.' All these incidents should be striking in themselves and call for explanation and analysis, as well as in some cases clarification of how they have been presented in the West. They are perhaps all the more unusual because of a paradox: the ethos of liberalism and tolerance accorded to Czech society by many of its own citizens, intellectual and law makers, and especially by its admirers and supporters abroad. Indeed, the present author would be among these, and this article carries some concern for the prestige and reputation of the Czech Republic.2 The importance of this assessment is multidimensional. The Romani issue has captured international media attention, if perhaps in a simplified manner. Its ramifications are numerous, affecting the Czech Republic's relations with several

Geographic Diffusion and the Transformation of the Postcommunist World

Since the collapse of communism the states of postcommunist Europe and Asia have defined for themselves, and have had defined for them, two primary tasks: the construction of viable market economies and the establishment of working institutions of representative democracy. The variation in political and economic outcomes in the postcommunist space makes it, without question, the most diverse “region” in the world. What explains the variation? All of the big winners of postcommunism share the trait of being geographically close to the former border of the noncommunist world. Even controlling for cultural differences, historical legacies, and paths of extrication, the spatial effect remains consistent and strong across the universe of postcommunist cases. This suggests the spatially dependent nature of the diffusion of norms, resources, and institutions that are necessary to the construction of political democracies and market economies in the postcommunist era. The authors develop and adduce evidence for the spatial dependence hypothesis, test it against rival hypotheses, and illustrate the relationships at work through three theoretically important case studies.