dramatically in the space of two years in Slovakia (down 14 percent),
in Poland (-7), in the Czech Republic (-6) and even in fervently
pro-Western Bulgaria (-4 percent). But it rose exponentially in Ukraine
(up 10 percent) and, most astoundingly, in Russia (+24 percent, albeit
from a very low base).
Still, rising anti-Americanism may have more to do with a nonspecific
wave of gloom and dysphoria than with concrete American policies.
"People who are less well off economically are more likely than those
who are more financially secure to dislike the U.S." - says the report.
Only two fifths of Czechs are satisfied with their own life or with the
state of their nation. Three quarters are unhappy with the world at
large. The figures are even way lower in Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine.
Only Uzbeks are content, probably for want of knowing better.
In Russia, less than one fifth are at ease with their life, their
country, or the world. Bulgaria takes the prize: a mere 8 percent of
Bulgarians find their life gratifying. One in twenty five Bulgarians is
optimistic regarding his or her nation. One in eight approves of the
world.
East Germans are far more pessimistic than the Wessies, their brethren
in the western Lander. East European are exceedingly displeased with
their income, though they find their family lives agreeable and, in the
lands of vertiginous unemployment levels, their jobs appealing.
Nine in ten Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Poles and Slovaks maintain a
negative view of their national economies. In Russia the figure is 83
percent and even in the Czech Republic it is 60. Three quarters of east
Europeans surveyed - including east Germans - do not believe that
economic conditions will improve.
"Will my kids go hungry? Will they be stuck with my debts? ... It looks
bad and it can only get worse. I mean, you can hope it will get better
but it does not look good" - muses a forlorn 69-years old Polish farmer.
Incredibly, these dismal figures reflect a rise in satisfaction
throughout the region since the demise of communism in 1989-91.
Significantly, the young are double as hopeful than those older than
35. Between one third (Bulgaria, Czech Republic) and one half (Ukraine,
Slovakia and Russia) of respondents of all age groups believe in a
better future - far outweighing the pessimists. Only in Poland are the
majority of people are anxious for the future of their children.
Still, "while Eastern Europeans feel their lives are better off since
the collapse of communism, many say they have lost ground over the past
five years. A majority of Bulgarians (55%) believe their lives are
worse today, as do pluralities in Ukraine, the Slovak Republic and
Poland. Again, Czechs are the exception - 41% think they have made
progress while 27% believe they have lost ground. Russians are divided
on this point (37% say they have lost ground, 36% feel they have made
progress)."
Poverty is a potent depressant. The greater part of Russians and
Ukrainians reported that "there have been times in the past year when
they had too little money to afford food", medical care, or clothing.
So did half the Bulgarians, one third of the Poles and one sixth of
Slovaks. Ninety-two percent of the Bulgarians interviewed identified
economic problems as having the most effect on their lives.
Similar figures obtained in Russia (85), Ukraine (79) and Poland (73).
These data are as bad as it gets. Senegal, Mali and Bangladesh are in
the same league. The situation is better in Slovakia (63 percent). At
46 percent, the Czech Republic proved equal to the much richer United
Kingdom and United States.
People everywhere do not blame their economic predicament on inapt
administrations, or on specific leaders. Vladimir Putin is much more
popular in Russia than his cabinet but the government get good marks.
The leadership in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, suffered
precipitous drops in popularity since 1991. East Europeans - except the
Russians - also rate the European Union higher than they do their own
authorities. In Slovakia the ratio is a whopping three to one.
With the notable exceptions of Ukraine and the Czech Republic, east
Europeans approve of their religious leaders. Ukrainians distrust their
military - but all other nationalities are fond of the armed forces.
The media and journalists are universally highly rated as positive
social influences.
Russians and Uzbeks are concerned about lack of housing. Health is a
universal headache: two fifths of Russians, one third of Poles and
Czechs and one quarter of Slovaks listed it as such. Central and east
European education still yields superior results so only one fifth of
Russians find it worrying. Respondents from other countries in the
region did not.
Between two thirds and four fifths of the denizens of the
crime-infested societies of the countries in transition registered
delinquency as a major scourge, followed by corrupt political leaders,
AIDS and disease, moral decline, poor drinking water, emigration, poor
schooling, terrorism, immigration and ethnic conflict.
East Europeans are as xenophobic as their counterparts in the West.
Between half and three quarters of all respondents - fully 80 percent
in the Czech Republic - thought that immigrants are a "bad influence on
the country". Only Bulgaria welcomes immigration by a wide margin. But
nine of ten Bulgarians decry emigration - Bulgarians fleeing abroad.
Three quarters do so in Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland and the former East
Germany.
Ironically, the more xenophobic the society, the more concerned its
members are with ethnic hatred. Almost three fifths of all Czechs
identify it as the major problem facing the world today. Other east
Europeans are equally worried by nuclear weapons, the gap between rich
and poor, the environment and infectious diseases.
The survey reveals both the failure of transition and a decisive break
between central and eastern Europe. The shared brief episode of
communism failed to homogenize these parts of the continent. Central
Europe - including Slovenia - with its history of industrial
capitalism, modern bureaucratic governance and the rule of law - is
reverting to its historical default. It is being reintegrated into the
European mainstream.
The countries of east Europe - Poland included - are unable to catch
up. Their transition is tortuous and unpopular among their subjects.
Their lot is, indeed, improving but glacially and imperceptibly. They
are being left behind by a largely indifferent West. Their erstwhile
central European co-inmates in the gulag of communism are now keen to
distance themselves. They are considered a drag and an embarrassment.
Their unquenched hopes for a better future are smothered by
insurmountable economic and social problems.
European enlargement is likely to stall after the first intake of 10
new members in 2004. Those left out in the cold are excluded for a long
stretch. Rather than relying on the double panacea of NATO and the EU,
they would do well to start reforming themselves by bootstrapping.
Surveys like these are timely reminders of this unpleasant reality.
Left and Right in a Divided Europe
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also published by United Press International (UPI)
Even as West European countries seemed to have edged to the right of
the political map - all three polities of central Europe lurched to the
left. Socialists were elected to replace economically successful right
wing governments in Poland, Hungary and, recently, in the Czech
Republic.
This apparent schism is, indeed, merely an apparition. The differences
between reformed left and new right in both parts of the continent have
blurred to the point of indistinguishability. French socialists have
privatized more than their conservative predecessors. The Tories still
complain bitterly that Tony Blair, with his nondescript "Third Way",
has stolen their thunder.
Nor are the "left" and "right" ideologically monolithic and socially
homogeneous continental movements. The central European left is more
preoccupied with a social - dare I say socialist - agenda than any of
its Western coreligionists. Equally, the central European right is less
individualistic, libertarian, religious, and conservative than any of
its Western parallels - and much more nationalistic and xenophobic. It
sometimes echoes the far right in Western Europe - rather than the
center-right, mainstream, middle-class orientated parties in power.
Moreover, the right's victories in Western Europe - in Spain, Denmark,
the Netherlands, Italy - are not without a few important exceptions -
notably Britain and, perhaps, come September, Germany. Nor is the
left's clean sweep of the central European electoral slate either
complete or irreversible. With the exception of the outgoing Czech
government, not one party in this volatile region has ever remained in
power for more than one term. Murmurs of discontent are already audible
in Poland and Hungary.
Left and right are imported labels with little explanatory power or
relevance to central Europe. To fathom the political dynamics of this
region, one must realize that the core countries of central Europe (the
Czech Republic, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland) experienced
industrial capitalism in the inter-war period. Thus, a political
taxonomy based on urbanization and industrialization may prove to be
more powerful than the classic left-right dichotomy.
THE RURAL versus THE URBAN
The enmity between the urban and the bucolic has deep historical roots.
When the teetering Roman Empire fell to the Barbarians (410-476 AD),
five centuries of existential insecurity and mayhem ensued. Vassals
pledged allegiance and subservience to local lords in return for
protection against nomads and marauders. Trading was confined to
fortified medieval cities.
Even as it petered out in the west, feudalism remained entrenched in
the prolix codices and patents of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian empire
which encompassed central Europe and collapsed only in 1918.
Well into the twentieth century, the majority of the denizens of these
moribund swathes of the continent worked the land. This feudal legacy
of a brobdignagian agricultural sector in, for instance, Poland - now
hampers the EU accession talks.
Vassals were little freer than slaves. In comparison, burghers, the
inhabitants of the city, were liberated from the bondage of the feudal
labour contract. As a result, they were able to acquire private
possessions and the city acted as supreme guarantor of their property
rights. Urban centers relied on trading and economic might to obtain
and secure political autonomy.
John of Paris, arguably one of the first capitalist cities (at least
according to Braudel), wrote: "(The individual) had a right to property
which was not with impunity to be interfered with by superior authority
- because it was acquired by (his) own efforts" (in Georges Duby, "The
age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420, Chicago, Chicago
University Press, 1981). Max Weber, in his opus, "The City" (New York,
MacMillan, 1958) wrote optimistically about urbanization: "The medieval
citizen was on the way towards becoming an economic man ... the ancient
citizen was a political man".
But communism halted this process. It froze the early feudal frame of
mind of disdain and derision towards "non-productive", "city-based"
vocations. Agricultural and industrial occupations were romantically
extolled by communist parties everywhere. The cities were berated as
hubs of moral turpitude, decadence and greed. Ironically, avowed
anti-communist right wing populists, like Hungary's former prime
minister, Orban, sought to propagate these sentiments, to their
electoral detriment.
Communism was an urban phenomenon - but it abnegated its "bourgeoisie"
pedigree. Private property was replaced by communal ownership.
Servitude to the state replaced individualism. Personal mobility was
severely curtailed. In communism, feudalism was restored.
Very like the Church in the Middle Ages, communism sought to monopolize
and permeate all discourse, all thinking, and all intellectual
pursuits. Communism was characterized by tensions between party, state
and the economy - exactly as the medieval polity was plagued by
conflicts between church, king and merchants-bankers.
In communism, political activism was a precondition for advancement
and, too often, for personal survival. John of Salisbury might as well
have been writing for a communist agitprop department when he penned
this in "Policraticus" (1159 AD): "...if (rich people, people with
private property) have been stuffed through excessive greed and if they
hold in their contents too obstinately, (they) give rise to countless
and incurable illnesses and, through their vices, can bring about the
ruin of the body as a whole". The body in the text being the body
politic.
Workers, both industrial and agricultural, were lionized and idolized
in communist times. With the implosion of communism, these frustrated
and angry rejects of a failed ideology spawned many grassroots
political movements, lately in Poland, in the form of "Self Defence".
Their envied and despised enemies are the well-educated, the
intellectuals, the self-proclaimed new elite, the foreigner, the
minority, the rich, and the remote bureaucrat in Brussels.
Like in the West, the hinterland tends to support the right. Orban's
Fidesz lost in Budapest in the recent elections - but scored big in
villages and farms throughout Hungary. Agrarian and peasant parties
abound in all three central European countries and often hold the
balance of power in coalition governments.
THE YOUNG and THE NEW versus THE TIRED and THE TRIED
The cult of youth in central Europe was an inevitable outcome of the
utter failure of older generations. The allure of the new and the
untried often prevailed over the certainty of the tried and failed.
Many senior politicians, managers, entrepreneurs and journalists across
this region are in their 20's or 30's.
Yet, the inexperienced temerity of the young has often led to voter
disillusionment and disenchantment. Many among the young are too
identified with the pratfalls of "reform". Age and experience reassert
themselves through the ballot boxes - and with them the disingenuous
habits of the past. Many of the "old, safe hands" are former communists
disingenuously turned socialists turned democrats turned capitalists.
As even revolutionaries age, they become territorial and hidebound.
Turf wars are likely to intensify rather then recede.
THE TECHNOCRATS / EXPERTS versus THE LOBBYIST-MANAGERS
Communist managers - always the quintessential rent-seekers - were
trained to wheedle politicians, lobby the state and cadge for
subsidies and bailouts, rather than respond to market signals. As
communism imploded, the involvement of the state in the economy - and
the resources it commanded - contracted. Multilateral funds are tightly
supervised. Communist-era "directors" - their skills made redundant by
these developments - were shockingly and abruptly confronted with
merciless market realities.
Predictably they flopped and were supplanted by expert managers and
technocrats, more attuned to markets and to profits, and committed to
competition and other capitalistic tenets. The decrepit, "privatized"
assets of the dying system expropriated by the nomenclature were soon
acquired by foreign investors, or shut down. The old guard has
decisively lost its capital - both pecuniary and political.
Political parties which relied on these cronies for contributions and
influence-peddling - are in decline. Those that had the foresight to
detach themselves from the venality and dissipation of "the system" are
on the ascendance. From Haiderism to Fortuynism and from Lepper to
Medgyessy - being an outsider is a distinct political advantage in both
west and east alike.
THE BUREAUCRATS versus THE POLITICIANS
The notion of an a-political civil service and its political - though
transient - masters is alien to post communist societies. Every
appointment in the public sector, down to the most insignificant
sinecure, is still politicized. Yet, the economic decline precipitated
by the transition to free markets, forced even the most backward
political classes to appoint a cadre of young, foreign educated,
well-traveled, dynamic, and open minded bureaucrats.
These are no longer a negligible minority. Nor are they bereft of
political assets. Their power and ubiquity increase with every jerky
change of government. Their public stature, expertise, and contacts
with their foreign counterparts threaten the lugubrious and
supernumerary class of professional politicians - many of whom are
ashen remnants of the communist conflagration. Hence the recent
politically-tainted attempts to curb the powers of central bankers in
Poland and the Czech Republic.
THE NATIONALISTS versus THE EUROPEANS
The malignant fringe of far-right nationalism and far left populism in
central Europe is more virulent and less sophisticated than its
counterparts in Austria, Denmark, Italy, France, or the Netherlands.
With the exception of Poland, though, it is on the wane.
Populists of all stripes combine calls for a thinly disguised "strong
man" dictatorship with exclusionary racist xenophobia, strong anti-EU
sentiments, conspiracy theory streaks of paranoia, the revival of an
imaginary rustic and family-centered utopia, fears of unemployment and
economic destitution, regionalism and local patriotism
Though far from the mainstream and often derided and ignored - they
succeeded to radicalize both the right and the left in central Europe,
as they have done in the west. Thus, mainstream parties were forced to
adopt a more assertive foreign policy tinged with ominous nationalism
(Hungary) and anti-Europeanism (Poland, Hungary). There has been a
measurable shift in public opinion as well - towards disenchantment
with EU enlargement and overtly exclusionary nationalism. This was
aided by Brussels' lukewarm welcome, discriminatory and protectionist
practices, and bureaucratic indecisiveness.
These worrisome tendencies are balanced by the inertia of the process.
Politicians of all colors are committed to the European project.
Carping aside, the countries of central Europe stand to reap
significant economic benefits from their EU membership. Still, the
outcome of this clash between parochial nationalism and Europeanism is
far from certain and, contrary to received wisdom, the process is
reversible.
THE CENTRALISTS versus THE REGIONALISTS
The recent bickering about the Benes decrees proves that the vision of
a "Europe of regions" is ephemeral. True, the century old nation state
has weakened greatly and the centripetal energy of regions has
increased. But this applies only to homogeneous states.
Minorities tend to disrupt this continuity and majorities do their
damnedest to eradicate these discontinuities by various means - from
assimilation (central Europe) to extermination (the Balkan). Hungary's
policies - its status law and the economic benefits it bestowed upon
expatriate Hungarians - is the epitome of such tendencies.
These axes of tension delineate and form central Europe's political
landscape. The Procrustean categories of "left" and "right" do
injustice to these subtleties. As central Europe matures into fully
functioning capitalistic liberal democracies, proper leftwing parties
and their rightwing adversaries are bound to emerge. But this is still
in the future.
Forward to the Past
Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
The core countries of Central Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary and,
to a lesser extent, Poland) experienced industrial capitalism in the
inter-war period. But the countries comprising the vast expanses of the
New Independent States, Russia and the Balkan had no real acquaintance
with it. To them its zealous introduction is nothing but another
ideological experiment and not a very rewarding one at that.
It is often said that there is no precedent to the extant fortean
transition from totalitarian communism to liberal capitalism. This
might well be true. Yet, nascent capitalism is not without historical
example. The study of the birth of capitalism in feudal Europe may yet
lead to some surprising and potentially useful insights.
The Barbarian conquest of the teetering Roman Empire (410-476 AD)
heralded five centuries of existential insecurity and mayhem. Feudalism
was the countryside's reaction to this damnation. It was a Hobson's
choice and an explicit trade-off. Local lords defended their vassals
against nomad intrusions in return for perpetual service bordering on
slavery. A small percentage of the population lived on trade behind the
massive walls of Medieval cities.
In most parts of central, eastern and southeastern Europe, feudalism
endured well into the twentieth century. It was entrenched in the legal
systems of the Ottoman Empire and of Czarist Russia. Elements of
feudalism survived in the mellifluous and prolix prose of the Habsburg
codices and patents. Most of the denizens of these moribund swathes of
Europe were farmers - only the profligate and parasitic members of a
distinct minority inhabited the cities. The present brobdignagian
agricultural sectors in countries as diverse as Poland and Macedonia
attest to this continuity of feudal practices.
Both manual labour and trade were derided in the Ancient World. This
derision was partially eroded during the Dark Ages. It survived only in
relation to trade and other "non-productive" financial activities and
even that not past the thirteenth century. Max Weber, in his opus, "The
City" (New York, MacMillan, 1958) described this mental shift of
paradigm thus: "The medieval citizen was on the way towards becoming an
economic man ... the ancient citizen was a political man".
What communism did to the lands it permeated was to freeze this early
feudal frame of mind of disdain towards "non-productive", "city-based"
vocations. Agricultural and industrial occupations were romantically
extolled. The cities were berated as hubs of moral turpitude, decadence
and greed. Political awareness was made a precondition for personal
survival and advancement. The clock was turned back.
Weber's "Homo Economicus" yielded to communism's supercilious version
of the ancient Greeks' "Zoon Politikon". John of Salisbury might as
well have been writing for a communist agitprop department when he
penned this in "Policraticus" (1159 AD): "...if (rich people, people
with private property) have been stuffed through excessive greed and if
they hold in their contents too obstinately, (they) give rise to
countless and incurable illnesses and, through their vices, can bring
about the ruin of the body as a whole". The body in the text being the
body politic.