Totalitarian Past Research Articles

Democratization Backwards: The Problem of Third-Wave Democracies

Countries in the third wave of democratization have introduced competitive elections before establishing basic institutions of a modern state such as the rule of law, institutions of civil society and the accountability of governors. By contrast, countries in the first wave of democratization became modern states before universal suffrage was introduced. Because they have democratized backwards, most third-wave countries are currently incomplete democracies. Incomplete democracies can develop in three different ways: completing democratization; repudiating free elections and turning to an undemocratic alternative; or falling into a low-level equilibrium trap in which the inadequacies of elites are matched by low popular demands and expectations. The significance of incomplete democratization is shown by analysing public opinion survey data from three new democracies varying in their predecessor regimes: the Russian Federation (a totalitarian past); the Czech Republic (both a democratic and a totalitarian past) and the Republic of Korea (formerly an authoritarian military regime).

The Russian Economy under El'tsin

I want to ask you for forgiveness, because many of our dreams have not been realised, because what we thought would be easy turned out to be painfully difficult. I ask for forgiveness for not fulfilling some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the grey, stagnating, totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilised future in one go. I myself believed in this. It seemed that with one spurt we would overcome everything. But it could not be done in one fell swoop. In some respects I was too naive. Some of the problems were too complex. We struggled on through mistakes and failures. In this complicated time many people experienced shocks. (B.N. El'tsin, Russian President, 1991-99, resignation statement, 31 December 1999)

Post-Cold War Narratives of Nostalgia

There is more memory than remembrance. We do not reign over the past. It contains as many secrets as thefuture. Adam Zagajewski, Der Verrat iV Since the momentous changes of 1989 in Eastern Europe, developments in each of the former East Bloc countries have been uneven. Those countries situated at the greatest distance from the geopoUtical center of Europe—in the east and southeast—are also furthest removed from the goals ofWestern-style democracy and market economy. In countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia, which had initially started down what the West has labeled the path of nostalgia, postcommunist rule is only now, in the late 1990s, declining. East Bloc countries closer to Europe's center—the former East Ger- many, Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia—seem to have moved further in their Westernization efforts. But even this group is marked by major differences in the history of their transitions, in the makeup ofthe poUtical and business eUtes after 1989, as well as in cur- rent government structures and the development of a civil society. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have made enough progess toward a market economy and democracy to have been invited to join NATO by 1999 and to have been promised membership in the European Union. (Unification with West Germany has already brought the former East Germany into both organizations.) And yet, with the exception of the Czech RepubUc,2 aU these countries witnessed in the late 1990s the emergence of narratives ofnostalgia for the socialist past. This nostalgia for the East in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, which I wul label by re-appropriating a primarUy derogative term coined in Germany, has resulted in the election ofpostcommunists in 1993-1995.3 The importance ofthese new narratives has so far been overlooked or dismissed in the West. In Germany, Ostalgie is predomin- antly seen as a useless sentiment for an irretrievable temporality or, at its worst, as the longing to return to a totalitarian past. Alternatively, Ostalgie has been characterized as a waU in the heads ofeast Germans4 who have not yet managed to assimilate. In his short story entitled Die vier Werkzeugmacher (The Four Toolmakers), the east German writer Volker Braun describes how this typical view of Ostalgie characterizes east Germans as being glued to something theywere always indifferent to and from which they now have to become unglued violently (36). TheAmerican researcher Richard S. Ebenshade has caUed East-Cen- tral European nostalgia another variation ofever more powerful forget- ting (84). His view of Ostalgie reiterates a common assumption among

Fishing in the Neighbor's Pond: Mission and Proselytism in Eastern Europe

A good way to describe the situation in Eastern Europe today is to say that yesterday's dreams have turned into today's nightmares.' This holds true not only in politics and economy but also in church life. One need not be an expert in Eastern European Christianity to know that at the very center of the religious turmoil are the issues of mission and proselytism. What precisely is the problem? One way to put it is to say that what Protestants (mainly of the evangelical kind) consider to be legitimate mission Catholics and Orthodox (whom I will refer to as established churches) consider to be illegitimate and culturally damaging proselytism. For all churches in Eastern Europe the peaceful revolution of 1989 seemed a dawn of a new era. They had been discriminated against and even persecuted under Communist totalitarianism; now under democracy they were hoping for unhindered flourishing. Instead, new conflicts emerged, this time not with the government, but with each other. Churches were now politically free to pursue their respective goals, but they became trapped in the battle over their own colliding goals. Catholics and Orthodox were hoping that some of the significant social influence they had before the Communists came into power would be regained. After all, for centuries they served as guardians of various Eastern European cultures, preserving the identity of their peoples. Hence to be Croatian was to be a Catholic Christian, to be Serbian was to be an Orthodox Christian, and so forth. Yet the years of Communist domination had partly de-Christianized Eastern European cultures. Moreover, the new democratic order has brought a wide variety of other cultural shapers (both Christian and non-Christian) into play and indeed guarantees them the right of existence. The same historical change that freed established churches to exert themselves again as a major cultural force has provided space for a wide variety of other forces that compete with the established churches. Conflict was preprogrammed. Itwas only a question of how it would be carried out: within the bounds set by the new democratic order, or using the skills honed in the totalitarian past; through civil dialogue, or through brute force; with regard and love for one another, or with indifference and even hate. Evangelical Protestants, always a small minority in Eastern European countries, also had great hopes for democracy. Above all, they wanted freedom to worship God and proclaim the Good News to non-Christians. The trouble was that their definition of who were non-Christians included most members of the established churches. What compounded the trouble, however, was the zeal of various Christian groups from abroad who saw the lifting of the iron curtain as the unique opportunity to proclaim Jesus Christ within what they used to call an evil empire. In a 1993stud y, the Centerfor Civil Society in Seattle determined tha t

‘We Asked for Justice and got the Rule of Law’: German Courts and the Totalitarian Past

(1995). ‘We Asked for Justice and got the Rule of Law’: German Courts and the Totalitarian Past. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 70-83.

Japan's Subversive Activities Prevention Law

APAN'S Subversive Activities Prevention Law1 was the first major piece of legislation to be enacted following the end of the occupation on April 29, 1952. It is of particular interest because it has afforded us our first opportunity to observe Japan in political action as an independent and presumably democratic society. The law empowers the government to restrict the activities of or even to dissolve organizations involved in certain terroristic subversive activities. Consequently, it was bitterly attacked as an active threat to basic rights guaranteed in the new Constitution and as the first step backward to the hated peace preservation laws of the totalitarian past. Even its supporters were reluctant to do more than to advocate it on the grounds of recent terroristic activity by the Japanese Communist party and of the potential threat of its international connections. Yet the issues raised by its critics and the government's willingness to write constitutional safeguards into the law indicate a healthy development of constitutionalism. The Diet debates also revealed promising signs of developing democracy. But up to the spring of 1953 there was no concrete evidence to justify either the fears or the hopes expressed before the law went into effect, because there had not been a single instance in which the law was applied. Nevertheless, because it may presage either a step backward to the totalitarian past or a step forward to a democratic future, the law merits examination. II