srdjan dvornik: actors without society

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A sThe role of civil actors in the postcommunist

transformation

A d b sdan Dvnk

Edited by the Heinrich Bll Foundation


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Srdan Dvornik, born in 1953, is reelance researcher, consultant and translator rom Zagreb,Croatia. He took active part in various civic organisations, taught in high schools and at theZagreb University, and worked as editor in social sciences and humanities in the Naprijedpublishing house. The most recent position was the executive director o the Croatian HelsinkiCommittee. Dvornik regularly publishes political commentaries and analyses or the Novilist newspaper, the Identitet magazine and the ZaMirZine.net and the Pescanik.net e-newsportals.

Actors without Society

The role o civil actors in the postcommunist transormationStudy by Srdan DvornikVol. 15 in the publication series on democracy

Edited by the Heinrich Bll Foundation Heinrich-Bll-Stitung 2009All rights reserved

Graphic design: graphic syndicat, Michael Pickardt (according to designs by blotto Design)Title photo: Hrvoje Polan/AFP/Getty ImagesPrinting: agit-druck

ISBN 978-3-86928-016-5This publication can be ordered rom: Heinrich-Bll-Stitung, Schumannstr. 8, D-10117 BerlinP +49 30 28534-0 F +49 30 28534-109 e [email protected] w www.boell.de


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coNteNts

Preface 7

Introductory note 11

Pa 1

Pmmn vln: makn n fndan

1.1 wa a an ab? 14

The end of postcommunism? 14

Delimiting areas and a comparative view 15

The source of change revolution? 17

Revolution and implosion 21

1.2 w av dma, (ll) dn av 25

The retroactive creation of ones own foundation 25

Together in the third pot: the incomparable destructionof society in the communist regime 27

Transition and democracy as ideology 31

The communist (de)construction of society 32

Democratic potentials? 37

Democratic defects 40

1.3 Pn and al 43

The natural necessity of democracy 43

The problem of the sequence and coordination of reforms 45

The Western optics and the Eastern transformation 52

The meaning of social rights: society under a constitutionalumbrella or society in action 55

Privatization and around it 59


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Pa 2

t n mmn

2.1 t baln, plall pav 64

What was left from the society? 64

The internalized domination 65

The deficit of civilization 73

2.2 P-ylav a and nanal vln 76

The two faces of power withering away 76

The politics go ethnic 78

Decentralization instead of democratization 81

Narod instead of demos 84

(Re)active nationalism 86

Democratic nationalism? 89Defective democracies with nationalist legitimacy 91

Pa 3

cvl and lf-abld a

3.1 cv/vl fm anm plal avm 100

The late-communist awakening and the postcommunistdisappearance of civil society 100

A genesis, rather than a definition 103

The new social responses 106

Two approaches to civil society 108

A definition, anyway 112

3.2 t pa f vl ad n p-ylav n 119

Out of a swamp by their own hair 120

The social reality of civil society 123

3.3 A 133

inad f a nln 143

La 144


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7

PreFAce

Twenty years ater the epoch-making change in 1989, which aected the post-Yugoslavian space in a way entirely dierent rom other ormer real-socialistEuropean countries, this study is an eort toward an analytical view on the pasttwo decades o development o civil society in the western Balkans. The author,Srdan Dvornik rom Croatia, is among those who know the subject well. There-ore, I am proud that I also played a part in motivating him and, with support

rom the Heinrich Bll Foundation, can make possible the realization o thestudy.My connection with Srdan Dvornik comes rom 10 years o proessional

cooperation and riendship during my work as the director o the RegionalOce o the Heinrich Bll Foundation or southeastern Europe and ater. Forthe Heinrich Bll Foundation, a German political oundation, relations with civilsociety are o particular importance. Owing to its close ties with the Alliance90 / Green Party, the Foundation has deep roots in the area o civil society; theattitude o active and responsible citizenship is also the cornerstone o its sel-

understanding. The cooperation with civil actors and support or civil societyare central to the Foundations activities all over the world, where we cooperatein political education and development. My work in the Foundations oce orsoutheastern Europe is aimed at achieving a harmony between the concerns andapproaches o a German oundation and the involvement in local relations, inorder to create a ruitul relationship that would contribute to a stable peace anddemocratization o the region.

Srdan Dvornik represented the Heinrich Bll Foundation in Croatia rom1999 to 2004 as the head o its oce there; he was an ideal, so to speak natural

partner or that venture. In his person he connected knowledge o theory andpractice o civil society, including internal and external actors o its emergenceand development in the last two decades, both in Croatia and in the wider regiono southern Europe. He is a sociologist and activist rom the earliest days o civilsociety in Croatia, continuously concerned with refection o society and politics,as well as sociopolitical position and meaning o ones own activism.

In the late 1980s he took part in the early steps o the civil political commit-ment; he was among the ounders o the Association or Yugoslav DemocraticInitiative (UJDI). When the war broke out in the early 1990s, he took part in

ounding the Anti-War Campaign in Croatia. He ollowed the transormationo organizations o civil society rom civil activism to proessionalization. He

worked or the Soros Foundation in Croatia, where he also ran the activities oPreface


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SrdanDvornikActorwithoutsociety

the Heinrich Bll Foundation in his country. Ater that he returned to the civil-society side, this time as the director o the Croatian Helsinki Committee orhuman rights. Throughout this period, he was also active as a translator o litera-ture in philosophy and social science.

Thereore, it is not an accident that theory and practice together with theinternal and external relations o the development o civil society are inter-mingled throughout the content and structure o this publication. From thestandpoint o activities o the civil society actors and their eects, the principalquestion is that o the social context wherein those activities have been unoldingin the last twenty years. As Dvornik argues in the rst part o the study, this is therst question that needs to be answered.

The development here, as a consequence o the Balkan wars that beell thepost-Yugoslav region in the 1990s, does not correspond to the theoretical outlineso the democratic transition or transormation. The primary reason lies in the

act that in socialist Yugoslavia, like in other societies o the real socialismin the East, the relation between state and society substantially diered romthis relation in capitalist societies, where the theories o transition originated.Secondly, the reasons lie in the specic authoritarian-nationalist transorma-tion o the relations in the countries that succeeded Yugoslavia.

This dierence in the relation between state and society, as Dvornik pointsout, had a decisive impact on the emerging civil societies; the impact was twoold:Firstly, it had a strong impact on sel-understanding o the great number o activ-ists and their activities in their own social environment. Secondly, the dierence

determines a negative impact o international donors on activities o civil society,as presented by the authors disillusioning analysis. Many among the democra-tizers, with their programs, orientation on projects, approaches to empower-ment or capacity-building, and other steps in training and education broughtalso their own normative understanding o civil society rom an entirely dierent,

Western social context, including a wrong understanding o and misguidedinvolvement in the local relations. That had an indirect impact on the local civilactors. Taking over the external (Western) ways o comprehension and the corre-sponding mental patterns led, however, to a loss o touch with their own society,

which Dvornik shows on several cases. The external supporters thereby uncon-sciously contributed to a conormist powerlessness o the local actors. They wereless able to ace the ethno-nationalist ideological homogenization o society inthe conditions where the possibilities o action were limited.

What could be added to this analysis which is central to the publicationsargument is the thought that the conormist acceptance o western norma-tive ideas o civil society among local civil actors also works as a eedback thatsupports a schematic perception in the international community about thesocial and political developments in southern Europe.

These theoretical and empirical insights give a special quality to the summaryevaluation o the development o the civil society activism and its sociopoliticalinfuence in the region. They are not negative, but dierentiated, particularly


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Preface

with regard to the political upheavals in Croatia and Serbia at the beginning othe decade; the uture outlook seems positive.

Altogether, this study is an important contribution to the hitherto insu-cient discussion about the possibilities and limits o the actors o civil society inthe (post)authoritarian societies. At the same time, it oers a lesson that instru-ments o Western politics o democratization still have a long development aheadbeore the point where their current organizational and political potentials areexhausted, thereby enabling more appropriate responses to the challenges set bythe new world (dis)order in the last two decades.

Berlin, October 2009

Dr. Azra Dajic-WeberHead o department or Southeastern Europe,

Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus in the Heinrich Bll Foundation


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IntroductoryNote

iNtroDuctory Note

This study is primarily based on experiences during activist commitments andin my working with international oundations. The encouragement to undertakethe study came rom Dr. Azra Dajic-Weber, the director o the Regional Oiceo the Heinrich Bll Foundation in Sarajevo rom 1998 to 2007. The work wasoriginally conceived as a collection and interpretation o the experiences o abroad variety o civic actors in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. In the

early stage, however, it became obvious that it was necessary irst to examine,and even deconstruct, the undamental concepts that have ramed the originalapproach. Rather than assuming that building democracy and rule o law wasalready underway as well as the development o civil society it turned outthat many problems lay in those very assumptions. The most important is theproblem o overlooking the act that in the postcommunist transormation,society itsel had yet to be established.

Thereore, the work in its nal outcome is mostly dedicated to the verymeaning o the basic determinants o the postcommunist transormation, in

order to athom the civic actors place within the newly dened ramework.They are not reerred to as a civil society but as civil actors, because it is theywho, together with other actors, develop a society as a complex o autonomousrelations and transactions, as well as a eld or civic commitment.

It is not possible to list all the people with whom I talked about these issuesand who shared with me their activist experiences, their analyses, and theoret-ical thoughts. I they read the text that ollows, many o them will also recognizesome o their thoughts. I am deeply indebted and grateul to all o them. WhatI made out o it all and what is now oered to the reader is, as always, solely a

matter o the authors responsibility.The research and writing o this study was only made possible by a generous

stipend rom the Heinrich Bll Foundation. Thanks to this support, I was able towork or one and a hal years interviewing activists and getting an insight into atleast a part o the very abundant literature, and on this basis write the work that Inow put orward. It also allowed me to spend one month on a study visit to Berlinand hal a month in Brussels, which provided an opportunity to learn about theviews o various international organizations, political institutions, oundations,and other donors, as well as researchers also involved with this eld. Apart rom

this precious material and logistic support, without which this work would nothave been possible, it is important to point out that my colleagues in the HeinrichBll Foundation Regional Oces in southeastern Europe (in all three cities), in


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the central oce in Berlin, and in the oce in Brussels, have always provideda supportive and, more important still, riendly environment, both during my

work at the Foundation and aterwards. S. D.


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Pmmn vln:makn n fndan


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1.1 whAt wAs the chANge ABout?

t nd f pmmnm?

The two decades that have passed since the revolutions, or revolutions, thatmarked the all o the non-democratic regimes called socialist or commu-nist ater the name and ideology o the parties whose top leaders controlled them present an occasion that serves as an external impulse or many reviews o thepath covered so ar, or taking stock o the changes accomplished, and, o course,

also or memories nostalgic as well as unpleasant. In some o the countries thathave undergone these changes, the expansion o the European Union to the Eastin 2004 was already a reason to demand that books be closed on the very concepto the postcommunism, because o the prevailing opinion that all the substan-tial aairs o transition have been completed, or that the experiences in variousregions are too dierent to be subsumed under a common designation.1 I Italyand Germany were not called post-ascist in 1960, that is, 15 years ater the

World War Two,2 it also seems appropriate to take into account that Poland, theCzech Republic, and Hungary are no longer marked by signiicant eatures o the

regime under which they lived till 1989. As or some other countries rangingrom Lukaenkos Belarus to some post-Soviet countries in the Central Asia it isquestionable how many real changes took place at all.

The optimism o those who proclaim the end o postcommunism reliesmostly on normative and institutional, but also on structural changes rangingrom building liberal democracy through dening the limits o the nation-stateand citizens belonging to a body politic, to the separation o ownership andmanagement o economic resources rom political government. It is possiblethat these changes in the three aoresaid countries (and some others, such as

Slovenia, perhaps Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania ) have been carried through tosuch an extent that there really is no more reason to contain them in a transi-tional context (leaving or later the discussion on the ideological nature o thevery concept o transition).

However, traditions that cannot but encompass more than our decadesunder communist regimes nevertheless cannot be reduced to the economic andpolitical set-up o the society. As long-lasting historic processes, they will keep

1 Thomas Carothers, Western Civil Society Aid to Eastern Europe and the Former SovietUnion, European Constitutional Review55 (1999): p. 55.

2 The argument set orth by Andras Bozoki, The End o Postcommunism (presentationsummary, Meeting Report 306, Woodrow Wilson International Center or Scholars, Sep.24, 2004). http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/MR306Bozoki.doc


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Part1Postcommunistrevolutions:makingtheirown

foundation

leaving their marks on the bright uture o consolidated democracies and rootedmarket economies. Probably the most salient eature o this tradition is the inter-connectedness o cultural implications o communist regimes and the inherited,pre-modern cultural patterns in these societies an interconnectedness which

will long maniest itsel in phenomena such as collectivism, authoritarianism,ethnocentrism, intolerance, etc.

However, against dierent backgrounds and in dierent contexts, thesephenomena sprout up all over the old Europe, which has long been civilizedand until recently still commonly perceived as tolerant. This means that theseremaining loose ends o not quite nalized modernization o postcommunistcountries are not likely to impede their urther integration into the elite club thatis the European Union. It is so with every society; each one has certain limita-tions and bears the markings o its past, and it is possible that in spite o thesemarkings, some countries have crossed a certain threshold o transormation.

This is the transormation that brought about the stabilized structures o liber-al-democratic capitalism, and made it possible to begin integration with thecountries that 15 (now 20) years ago used to be substantially dierent.

It would be extremely instructive and useul or us to examine all the essentialelements and actors o this transormation. Namely, living in the part o erstwhilecommunist Europe, which had been through war along with the postcommunisttransormations, we who come rom countries plagued with a hypertrophy opost- prexes (post-Yugoslavian, postcommunistand post-confict) can assumepretty saely that, even i it has been crossed in the aorementioned countries,

here this threshold o transormation has not been reached. Thus it would behugely helpul to see how some o the diculties we are still witnessing havebeen overcome in more successul or ortunate instances. For example, how i at all was the limiting o the power o the political elite in relation to theeconomy brought about? What empowered the legal norms and institutions othe political system to make them truly act as the instruments o a predictableand responsible unctioning o the government? How was the establishing o acivilized nation-state reconciled with the predominantly ethnic sel-identica-tion o the polity? And so on all o it under the assumption that there even

exists a positive answer to the question o questions: Were the 15 years o inter-ventions commonly summed up as the process o constituting a nation-state,building democratic institutions, setting up a market economy, and creating acivil society really sucient to enable all these changes?

Dlmn aa and a mpaav v

Yet, no matter how important and useul it may be, studying the success storieso transormation cannot be the subject o this work, because its aim is to athom

the events that took place in the postcommunist transormation in certain post- Yugoslavian countries (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia), and the roleplayed in this by the actively committed local actors, all within the limits o a


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reasonable scope, as well as the time and resources available to do the research.Since in some o these countries, as well as in their immediate surroundings,already in the irst months ollowing the ormal introducing o democracy the irst ree and multiparty elections deep ethnic conlicts bordering on armedviolence have burst out, and less than a year ater more intense and deadly wars,many changes that were ollowing the plan or transition were pushed to themargins, thwarted or implemented in a very modiied orm.

In the literature on the changes that ollowed the all o communist regimes, which comparatively traced the transormation o dierent countries andsocieties, Yugoslavia and the products o its breakup (or, to put it more politely,the successor countries) were soon cast out o the lists o comparison, since the

war had placed them in a dierent, hardly comparable, context. Still, in retro-spect, the experiences o some postcommunist countries in the early years approximately until the latter hal o the 1990s can be a source o interesting

insights, even criteria, that might give a hand to cast additional light on what hadtaken place in our region as well, because they show phenomena and processesthat are comparable, and are not contaminated by mass violence, which herehad stifed, deormed, or postponed them.

This is why I will observe the nature o the changes that encompassed thebreak with the communist regime and the setting up o the main political andsocial orms in the immediate atermath in the central and eastern Europeancontext, using the insights into the changes in this region to observe and explainmore clearly what had happened in the post-Yugoslavian countries.

The entire approach hinges on the aspiration to ascertain to what extent, andin which ways, society itsel took part in the changes, that is, the issue o the condi-tions o transormation that reach beyond the ormal legal and institutional transormation. An essential derivative o this approach is the question: To whatextent is the issue here one o building ormal solutions rom the ground upand rom within, and how much is it about adopting existing models, the wayso their transerral and implanting, and the reach o their infuence on the socialenvironment into which they have been implanted?

These questions have once again returned the ocus onto the question o the

nature o the changes, but now it is not just descriptive, but also generative as the question o the carrying orces and the motives or change. Opposite thetendency in some currents o social sciences to ocus either on structures or onactors, I take it that none o these are given as ready-ormed and present, butare merely constructs o an observer who uses them to try to recognize and haltcertain congurations in their historical fow i saying so is not too ambitious.In other words, i both o those the structures (whether they be embodied ininstitutions and ormal norms, or be they social and economic) and the actors are producedin the course o their very unctioning.

It will show that the message rom this observation is that very little can betaken or granted i one attempts to comprehend just what happened during thepostcommunist changes, especially i the intention is to take part in these changes


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foundation

with understanding. Concepts such as society, civil society, democracy,state, law, and others, ormed through refection on the experiences o thedevelopment o the society, economy, and politics o the modern West throughthe past several centuries, are not directly transerable and applicable. However,the stress is on the directly, not on are not. The dependence o the societieso postcommunist transormation on an initial state and the specic paths odevelopment in this part o the world should be taken into consideration, but it

would be absurd to see it as absolute because i so, why speak o transorma-tion at all, which is evidently taking place? Thus, these concepts are by no means

without meaning in these exotic lands, but this meaning should be reconstructedrom the authentic context o the societies in question. The meanings that arose

when constructed rom other, dierent i need be said: more advanced anddeveloped contexts, should be used or comparison only.

Speaking o constructs, the opposite is also valid: One must not omit the

infuence o the notions that many Western observers the numerous explorersand scientic interpreters o transition as well as the once-numerous aids indemocracy-building and other components o transormation whose numbersare now shrinking tacitly transer rom their own social contexts and applythem with a doubtul appropriateness in their observations and/or modicationso postcommunist changes. What matter here, o course, are not idiosyncraticand contingent methodical and logical errors and distortions, but the system-atic infuences o the contexts rom which observations are being made. Just likesociology and political science themselves, the undamental concepts o society

and politics have come to existence in conrontation with a particular socialreality the reality o the modern societies o the West, societies which, based onsome nalized or highly advanced historical transormations, have been under-stood as a separate phenomenon. These transormations include the develop-ment o society as opposed to community, the distinguishing between (political)state and (civic) society, the development o the political capacity o civic societythrough the public and through democracy, and generally a certain level omodernization. The ways in which basic sociological and politological catego-ries travel east are the topic o discussions that are theoretically intriguing, and

here will be demonstrated on certain instances bearing a much more practicalsignicance, and o a shorter range.

t f an vln?

Although the series o signiicant political changes which in 1989 (with additionaltremors in the ollowing years) have taken the world aback by knocking downthe seemingly immobile communist regimes have already made the moverom live happening into recent history, covered by historiography and politico-

symbolically commemorated on its twentieth anniversary, it still has not beeniled in memory under a widely accepted common designation. There is (was)talk about revolutions, ar more about the all o old regimes, and perhaps most


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oten all, this is metaphorically put away or concealed behind a wall thoughalso destroyed the Berlin wall. Oten with a capital: W.

The ambiguity o the name depends not only on the diversity o the countrieswhere these signicant changes took place, but also on the ambiguity o thechanges themselves. Their one most striking eature was that citizens actionshad undamentally broken with the long and deep-rooted pattern o behavior osubjects o totalitarian regimes, and brought about sudden change the all o agoverning order that had or decades succeeded to nip all opposition in the bud.

As rapid and radical changes, they rightully bear the name o revolution.Another eature o these changes in many ways contrary to the ormer

is that they did not actually bring orth any new order to the global scene, nonew concept o a social system, and their actors had explicitly expressed the ideabehind their action either as being the introduction o what the world o liberaldemocracy had or so long been practicing, or initially airly seldom, later on

more commonly as the renewal o identities and traditions that the repres-sive communist regime had suppressed hal a century earlier. In this sense, itwould be more appropriate to label them somewhat neutrally, as in postcom-munist changes, or wittily and ironically: compensational3 revolutions orreolutions.4

So what had happened? Although much time has passed since, and the laterchanges had probably surpassed in depth the initial ones which were spectac-ular but short-lived the nature o this historical shit that in 1989 and 1990

saw the removal o communist regimes in central and eastern Europe tells ussomething about the social changes, whose consequences are elt even today.O course, this is not the story o the concept itsel and the meaning o the

word revolution, nor is it a probing into whether the revolutions o 1989 werereal. The verity o a mode o using or dening a term cannot be proven orreuted, because terms are conventions o meaning (tacit, by usage, or authori-tatively denitory), not assertions o things. I neither the denitions nor themodes o use have been generally adopted, splitting hairs will not be o muchuse. The question that begs commitment is simply: What happened? And words

with certain habitually adopted meanings may help to note and gather certainimportant eatures.

3 Nachholende (or even rckspulende, which swivels backward), catch-up. JrgenHabermas, Die nachholende Revolution, Kleine politische Schriten, 7, (Frankurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1990).

4 A combination o reorm and revolution. R. Dahrendor, Betrachtungen ber dieRevolution in Europa, in einem Brie, der an einen Herrn in Warschau gerichtet ist 1990(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1992).


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However, the word revolution will not help much here, within the rangeo its current use.5 As Zygmunt Bauman begins his refection on the meaningo postcommunist revolutions, one can hardly consume a daily measure oTV are without ingesting the news o a revolutionary toothbrush or moisturecream; thus, he contents himsel with trivial attributes o breaking the routineand sudden change and gives advantage to researching dierences, and notthe similarity o dierent kinds o usage, on the plane o political revolutions.

Against this background, he introduces the distinction between politicaland systemic revolution, more on which below. On the other hand, SabrinaP. Ramet bases her interpretative overview o thinking about Yugoslavia onSigmund Neumanns denition, which she suggests is probably the most widelyacceptable. He denes revolution as a comprehensive, undamental changein political organisation, social structure, control over economical propertyand dominant myth o the social order, which thus presents a major break in

the continuity o development.6

This denition is indeed plausible, because besides pointing out the comprehensiveness and undamental nature o changes it encompasses essential spheres o societal lie: the political, the social, and theeconomic, as well as cultural (as a orm o mythical apprehension o relationsin the aorementioned spheres). So let it serve here as a small, tentatively adoptedconventional ramework.

What immediately jumps out in connection to the pivotal events surroundingthe all o communist regimes is the partial nature o the changes. The tumul-tuous actions, condensed into very short periods o time, have brought about a

change o government and changed its makeup; the dominant public notion odesirable and legitimate nature o the social order has also changed. So, a polit-ical revolution has been carried out. This, in its turn, was neither preceded, norollowed, by any change in economic and social structure worthy o mention.Moreover, i one attempts to identiy the main social carriers o this politicalrevolution, they will not be denable by any socioeconomic determinants. Onthe scene, the center o attention was occupied by dissident groups ormedsome 10 to 20 years earlier, which had survived in secrecy, some o them even(perectly sensibly) avoiding any attempt o public political conrontation in a

5 On the widespread (mis)use o the word revolution, see Z. Bauman, A Post-ModernRevolution? in From a One-Party State to Democracy: Transitions in Eastern Europe, ed.J. Frentzel-Zagorska (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1993), p. 3. This contribution byBauman is really a slightly expanded chapter, Communism: A Postmortem, in his bookIntimations o Postmodernity(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 15674.

6 Sigmund Neumann, The International Civil War, World Politics 1:1 (Apr. 1949): pp.3334; Sabrina P. Ramet, Thinking About Yugoslavia (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2005), quoting on p. 42 rom: Michael McFaul, Post-communist Politics, p. xiii.(Washington: Center or Strategic and International Studies, 1993). (The author asks thereaders to take these multiple indirect citations, which would not be permissible in ascholarly work, as a small indicator o the diiculties aced by anyone rom these partso the world not involved in proessional scientiic networks, who attempts to come bysources in literature.)


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conscious anti-political choice. Aside rom them, in the 1980s more permanentgatherings o citizens or peace, human rights, or the protection o the environ-ment have gotten their start.7 Now, in an unexpected turn, these have becomethe pinnacle o mass protest gatherings. In the paradoxical situation in whichnegotiations were called or because, luckily, regimes have mostly given up onusing the still overpowering police and army orces and there were no mecha-nisms and procedures or electing peoples representatives, these alternativegroups who had gathered to critically discuss the undemocratic regime and itsalternative have ound that, in this situation, they were occupying the role onatural speaker or the entire suppressed, discontented society.8

Poland was the exception, where, already at the turn o the decade, theSolidarity trade union had developed into a large, non-regime syndicalist organi-zation, and become the core or gathering and expressing discontent with theregime. At the end o the 1980s, it had returned to the public scene, having

survived the persecutions o the state o emergency and military-party dictator-ship. However, in the meantime, Solidarity had grown rom an illegal trade unioninto a general popular movement, so its representatives chosen rom withinthat movement have also stepped orward in the name o the entire nation,

without general elections.The other exception where there was a peaceul transition to electoral

democracy was the Socialist Federal Republic o Yugoslavia. Ater some hesita-tion, and seeing that, in case o resistance, the trend o democracy would onlycompound mass dissatisaction, the regime leaderships in republics have

decided without negotiations to legalize a parliamentary system based ondirect elections and political pluralism, that is, to revoke the prohibition againstounding political parties and their unctioning. However, it did not work that

way at the level o the ederal state, or the reasons and with the consequencesthat will be discussed later.

However, in all these instances as well as in those where orce was applied inthe perturbations around maintaining the regime or its collapse (as in Romania,or in the coup attempt in the then still-existent Soviet Union) shared one visible

common trait. Those who carried the changes through were the dissatisiedmasses and those in small alternative movements. They were mostly intellectual-dissident and occasionally newborn civil elites, in some places also those rom

7 See Gideon Baker, Civil Society and Democratic Theory (London: Routledge, 2002),especially part I, The Parallel Polis. Central-East European Models o Civil Society.

8 In all the countries o Central and Eastern Europe except Romania and Yugoslavia, round-table talks were held as a way o inding at least tentatively legitimate institutional solutions(only in Czechoslovakia were negotiations not about an institutional arrangement, butsolely about elections. J. Elster, C. Oe, and U. Preuss, Institutional Design in Post-com-munist Societies(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 57. In Romania therewas a coup, which judging by all was a reaction to an eruption o mass discontent, and inYugoslavia the transition had started with the assent or decision o the republican partyleaderships themselves.


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the top or elsewhere in the ruling elites, but to put it in an old-ashioned way nowhere was there a revolutionary class. Not in one o the countries in whichuntil the end o the 1980s or beginning o the 1990s socialism reigned be itreal, sel-governing, or some other was there any social group on the rise

whose economic power would conlict with the restrictive political rameworkand which would be both interested and strong enough to introduce changes.Moreover, at least 10 years o economic stagnation, and even regression, along

with continued political-party and ideological monopoly, had resulted in peopleturning to private survival and the widespread de-politization and leveling othe societies in which no alternative interest could be ormed.

In this sense, the overthrows o communist regimes in countries ruled bythem did not ollow the pattern o historically paradigmatic, bourgeois revolu-tions. These had arrived gradually and almost invisibly, taking even centuries,in the economy and in social relations. They were prepared in theories o civil

society, social contract, and the rule o law, mediated to reach wider social aware-ness through communications in the civil public, which had developed gradu-ally, and then, rom the end o the seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth century,had erupted in political action to depose absolutism, and install electoral govern-ments. In a given society, this political act was in no way nal, as many dilemmas,turbulences, conficts, and ghts around the constitution o the barely inventeddemocratic orm o state had ollowed. Yet each o these political revolutions hasmarked that rupture o Neumanns, in so ar as it conrmed that a new politicalconstitution must carry the unction o securing the rights o ree citizens, and

must be responsible to them. Their reedom and the autonomy o mutual social(above all, market) relations were established rom outside the political struc-ture itsel, through ownership o ones own person and possessions and in theirproductive use. The political revolution was the conrmation o a revolution thathad already largely unolded (although it never stopped) in the economy.

rvln and mpln

The overthrows o communist regimes were also political. They were directed

at bringing down both those who were then in power as well as the politicalsystem that had suited them and to the establishment o a new one, likewisedemocratic and based on the rule o law. But they were not grounded in any kindo a new growth; they were preceded neither by gradually accumulated changesin the modes o production, nor by the rise o new social orces. What is more,the state o all the segments o the society had been deteriorating, as well as theirincapacity to ix it within the ramework o their ascribed systemic roles. Theserevolutions were not even solely produced by a negative social energy takingthe shape o mass dissatisaction. It had existed or a long time, even occasionally

erupted in rebellion, but the regime always held it, or quickly restored control.The toppling o a regime cannot be understood as an expression o the indepen-dent orce o the society, because it did not exist in the true meaning o the word.


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The regime did not have success in organizing production, but it did in incapaci-tating all autonomous horizontal social relations that is, society itsel.9 For along time, it also had success in ideologically closing up the epistemologicalhorizon, preventively making it impossible not only to spread undesirable inor-mation or ideas, but also to establish the very criteria o judgment that would betailored to human needs or reedom.10

Contrary to the Western paradigm,11 even mass dissatisaction does notturn into political pressure and action rom an interest in change. The dissat-isaction had lasted or decades,12 without having yielded such pressure andaction. Although it is very tempting to retrospectively discover some necessaryhistorical fow leading to rupture and overthrow, and to nd some orces that

would have been relentlessly pushing in that direction, nevertheless it is morerealistic to apply Occams razor and look the general social breakdown undersocialist regimes in the eyes, along with its implications. The decisive actors that

9 Ferenc Miszlivetz, Illusions and Realities. The Metamorphosis o Civil Society in a NewEuropean Space(Szombathely: Savaria University Press, 1999), pp. 15960.

10 arko Puhovski, Socijalistika konstrukcija zbilje [The Socialist Construction o Reality](Zagreb: kolska knjiga, 1990); Puhovski, Wizard o Oz, Socijalistika, pt. 2.4, pp. 145.eslav Milo,Zarobljeni um, prev. P. Vujiic, (Belgrade: BIGZ, 1987).Nadeda Mandeljtam, Strah i nada, Znanje (Zagreb: 1988), gives an impressive example o

people in the era o the heaviest Stalinistic repression, who take consolation in the thoughtthat people are still worse o with capitalism. Oe et al. (Institutional Design) speak o the derisory and degrading conditions o commu-

nication and association and, as a consequence o that, widely spread semantic incompe-tence and sel-doubt, which had stood in the way o orming the ability to act, and whichhave led to the majority o people actually cooperating in their own repression most o thetime (p. 13).

11 Ramet (Thinking About Yugoslavia, p. 40) places her interpretation o the literature aboutthe postcommunist transormation and Yugoslavia between the opposites o elitocentricand sociocentric approaches, pointing out the latters merits in taking society seriouslyas a source o changes and accepting that no government can interminably remain insen-

sitive to dissatisaction and pressures rom below. However, this leaves open the questiono the nature o this orce o the society beyond dissatisaction, be it diuse or ocused,whether expressed by way o unoicial cultural patterns, or through mass protest gather-ings.

In her article Who Killed the Cold War?, Mary Kaldor opposes the notion that revolu-tions in Central and Eastern Europe were basically just spontaneous expressions o thedesire to live like they do in the West, with no grounding in their own societies and bereto new ideas. One o these new ideas, born in the dialogue between Western and Easternpeace movements, was the idea o a transnational civil society. She bases her stance on aclose amiliarity with alternative movements in these countries in the 1980s, on coopera-tion and dialogue with them, but she also cannot show just how these groups and organi-zations expressed the desires o, or inluenced the wider segments o, the society; see TheBulletin o the Atomic Scientists(July/Aug. 1995): pp. 5760.

12 That is, as Dahrendor says, communism has never unctioned (Betrachtungen, p. 21).


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coincided during the 1980s were all negative,13 and ound themselves in contin-gent circumstances. The incapability o the regime to ensure that production isin the least bit ecient and basic needs are satised, along with the endeavor tokeep controlling everything, would indicate that it really is not capable o ruling.14However, an ideological and inormational blockade has long kept it capable opreventing the realization o this consequence, and so it went on securing itsown legitimacy.

With the accumulation o negative signals that were beyond its reactivecapacity as not even the regime o total control was able to constantly detectsignals o economic perormance15 the top o the regime nomenclature wentinto attempts at liberalization, thus showing its subjects that it did not havecomplete control.16 In Gorbachevs reorms in the USSR, that was the sign o aproound turning point in the very center o socialist regimes (other than inthe case o Europe Albania and Yugoslavia). It was particularly encouraging or

the malcontents in Central European socialist regimes, especially once the USSRleadership let it be known that it no longer intended to determine its ormerdominions political paths through military pressures and interventions. Besides,slightly beore that, on the other side o the cold war ence, another ideologicalinstrument with clear universal messages began to assert its place aside therhetoric o war human rights. Their institutionalization in the shape o theConerence on Security and Co-operation in Europe, however ormal, declara-

13 Oe et al. (Institutional Design, p. 52) point out three main common causes: 1) huge

economic ineiciency, 2) the complete destruction o the ideological legitimation o thesystem, and 3) structural incapacity to adapt to new problems due to insuiciencies oinstitutional mechanisms or observing and learning.

14 The systematic anti-economicalness o the socialist societal ormation is shown belowmore concretely.

15 Oe et al. (Institutional Design, Introduction, p. 2) points out that these regimes o completecontrol actually had very weak inormation on the real state o their critical variables.Dahrendor (Betrachtungen, p. 25) writes: We now know that in communist countriesthere never existed, and still doesnt, a neat total account or the national economy.

Their control did not consist o an Orwellian all-seeing omnipresence, but in preventiveobstruction o independent organizing and communication what . Puhovski calls the

production o surplus power which works in advance to preclude the orming o anyeicient alternative.

As Adam Przeworski, says, dictatorship is not endangered by the absence o legitimacy, butthe presence o opposition (quoted in Sten Berglund, Tomas Helln, Frank H. Aarebrot,eds., The Handbook o Political Change in Eastern Europe, p. 5; reerring to the bookDemoc-racy and the Market: Political and Economic Reorms in Eastern Europe and Latin America.Studies in Rationality and Social Change(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

16 For Gorbachevs experiment with liberalization that went too ar, and which could onlyhave been set in motion because its consequences could not have been wholly oreseen,see Oe et al., Institutional Design, pp. 123. Gorbachevs revolution rom below ischaracterized as the only exit or a regime that had rested on preventing even top-to-bottom reorm, and the complications and destabilization that his own top-to-bottomreorm that resulted had rightened him Claus Oe, Capitalism by Democratic Design,Social Research 3/2004 (71), p. 502.


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tory, and lacking real power, had the eect o encouraging alternative groups insome socialist countries.17 With the dissipation o ear rom absolute domina-tion o the regime, and in a context where many countries o real socialismstill do receive inormation about a dierent lie in the West, which presents anappealing alternative,18 the regime appears to resemble the exposed wizard oOz19 the little man behind the apparition that merely presented him as omnip-otent, whereas he was powerul only in the extent to which others had perceivedhim as such.20

So these were the circumstances in which the population had ceased tocooperate through its own ear.21 In keeping with the endemic paranoia o theundemocratic rulers, this ear was internalized and directed at the ruling nomen-clature, which did not dare apply orce. Mass protest gatherings and negotiations

with the representatives o the civil society nished the job. The regime wasnot toppled by a stronger social counter-power; it caved in, imploded,22 because

it was blocked on the inside; this blockade was made all the harder by the eectso an appealing alternative rom the Western side o the borders. The dissatis-action that had its condensed expression in the months o 1989 was not theculmination o a development that would have had set up some sort o counter-elite, which would start a revolution and impose an alternative project o (re)constructing the state to t an already transormed society. There was neitherelite, nor such a project.

17 Without it, such initiatives as the Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia would certainly be muchless likely to have happened.

18 Especially under the inluence o the act that in the past quarter-century or so, the Westhad made the transition rom a modernist style economy to postmodern (consumers),a competition in which the East had no chance whatsoever. The post-modern challengeproved to be highly eective in speeding up the collapse o communism and assuring thetriumph o anti-communist revolution in its supremely important, yet preliminary, polit-ical stage. Bauman, A Post-Modern Revolution? p. 17.

19 arko Puhovski, The Wizard o Oz Unveiled in Politics and Economics o Transition, ed.. Puhovski, I. Prpic, D. Vojnic (Zagreb: CSTE and Inormator, 1993), point 2.2, p. 13.

20 Puhovski, Politics and Economics, point 4, p. 17. On the change in the deinition o thesituation, which was abruptly seen by a large number o subjects o communist regimesin a dierent light precisely like Puhovskis exposed wizard; see Jerey C. Goldarb, 1989and the Creativity o the Political, Social Research 68:4 (Winter 2001).

21 Dahrendor quotes the unnamed person who wittily talks o the arrival o a younger gener-ation, whose members didnt know that it was impossible (p. 19), so they tried to topplethe regime, and succeeded.

22 George Schplin also points to the contingent circumstances in which the communistregime ell in eect, its internal unctioning, its capacity to sustain coherence, had becomeblocked. It was no longer capable o sel-reproduction, it had lost its capacity or legitima-tion and pivotally as ar as the rulers were concerned, sel-legitimation. In sum, the liteshad lost their will to rule. G. Schplin, Liberal Pluralism and Post-Communism, inWill Kymlicka and Magda Opalski, eds., Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported(Oxord NewYork: Oxord University Press, 2001), p. 109, italic by S. D.


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foundation

1.2 we hAVe DeMocrAcy,we (stiLL) DoNt hAVe society

t av an f n n fndan

Thus, as Z. Bauman suggests, these undoubtedly political revolutions shouldbe seen in a dierent light, in which, surprisingly, certain signiicant similaritiesemerged with the revolution that had brought orth just the regime that had tobe brought down 70 years later the communist regime. Namely, the Bolshevik

revolution in Russia in 1917 was also carried out by a small revolutionarygroup using a huge wave o mass dissatisaction, instead o being the politi-cally crowning o previous social and economic development. It, too, saw theimmediate goal o conquering power as a means not only or political, but alsoor all-encompassing economic and social changes. Bauman suggests that wecall such revolutions systemic, because they do not content themselves withpolitical change, but, ollowing a successully executed political stage, they stillhave to pursue a thorough transormation o the entire socioeconomic system.

O course, the dierences jump out immediately: In the Bolshevik case, there

was a well-organized revolutionary party, which took preparations to take overthe state, while in the democratic revolutions, small groups o intellectualsmerely expressed the general mood in the shape o basic principles o democracyand human rights, and were only partly prepared to step into the political struggleor leadership. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks intended to implement changes inRussian society, which would not only engage it with the fow o moderniza-tion (in that way, that was a sort o catch-up revolution, an attempt to graba hold on events) and thus bring it closer to developed capitalist countries, but

would equip it or a global innovation: the worldwide proletarian revolution. In

contrast, the democratic revolutions did not rest upon any sort o innovativesolution or their societies, but had set or themselves the goal o introducing thebenets acquired by the development o civilization that were long present inthe advanced and prosperous countries o the West.

Still, what they have in common is what should especially be kept in mindwhen interpreting the meaning and atermath o the postcommunist revolu-tions: These are political turning points in the name o something that, in a givensociety, still does not exist. The new political leadership has a temporary legiti-mate mandate or this because (a) in the right moment, it expressed a widespread,

nearly general dissatisaction as a concrete set o political demands, and (b) putorward a general ormulation o the desires o signicant parts o the society asa positive program. With this mandate, political power is directed at economic


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and societal structures it intends to thoroughly reshape, and it is this path wherehard curves and diculties await it.23

Although Baumans suggestion o dividing revolutions into political andsystemic is plausible as it points to the real and relevant peculiarity opostcommunist revolutions as systemic and to the act that, unlike historicallyknown democratic revolutions, they happen without their own social ground-

work it still contains a catch. The beneits o civilizations whose paths intosocieties that were reed rom communist regimes should be cleared by theserevolutions consist o three essential components: democracy, the rule o law,a market economy. Democracy, even i it cannot naively be understood as therule o the people, nevertheless denotes an order where the people have indirectcontrol over state authority by way o direct elections o the legislative body as itsrepresentation, orming political will in public, and various channels o inluence

by special interest groups. The rule o law limits governments agency throughgeneral laws that are equal or all, and makes it transparent and predictable tothe citizens. In its turn, a market economy implies the reedom o autonomousdecision-making in business, orming prices, and investing capital accordingto market signals, as those authorized to manage economic resources, be it asowners or managers, will interpret them in their best interests.

In short, an authority established through ree pluralistic elections should work on the development o norms and institutions, by way o which it willimpose on itsel the control o the people by means o democratic mecha-

nisms. Furthermore, through rule o law and the division o government, itshould relinquish the possibility o arbitrary application o power. And nally,it should deprive itsel o control over economic resources until ully enjoyed bythe previous communist authority, to the benet o the market economy. What

would impel new, even reely24 elected governments to do all that? The control othe voters? O the society? O the public?

But i that control had existed, there would have been no need to talk o ademocratic revolution. The only thing we have got as the incipient orce orchange is that the ormer regime o total state control has been totally discred-

ited. However, there are two potential paths rom here: actual transormationinto democracy, rule o law, and a market economy, or recycling control withpartial liberal concessions, crony privatization, and ormal democracy where astill powerless society can only reconrm authoritarian government. It is thisvicious circle that necessitates this discussion. It has to be shown what sort orevolution we are talking about, what orces have carried it through, what

23 In eastern and central Europe the task is particularly diicult because, unlike in westernEurope, it is not about revitalisingdemocracy and the institutions o civil society, but tocreatethem. Miszlivetz, Illusions and Realities, p. 82.

24 As an institutional and normative democratic system had not yet been established, theinitial elections cannot be considered democratic, but i the voters could make theirchoices without orce and threats, the elections were at the very least ree.


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it has brought orth, and how much o what had to be overcome remains inpower.

t n d p: nmpaabl dn f n

mmn m

Another important distinction should be noted. Not only in journalism, but inscholarly literature as well, the democratization o the postcommunist countrieso Central and Eastern Europe and ex-USSR in the late 1980s and 90s is situated

with the so-called third wave o democratization, according to Samuel Hunting-tons periodization o these changes.25 The irst two waves reerred to the democ-racies arising ater the World War One or Two respectively, and the third waveencompasses at least three large groups: the irst group being countries in theso-called southern Europe Portugal, Greece, Spain which in the 1970s reed

themselves o military or political dictatorships; the second group the countrieso Latin America, which mostly reed themselves o military dictatorships in the1980s; and the third one consisting o postcommunist countries, which begandemocratization in 1989.

Subsuming such diering situations and processes under one single waveis a sign that in democratization, a process is seen o establishing a ormal institutional and normative arrangement, which sooner or later awaits everysociety (or at least society belonging to a Western civilization) as a matter oa natural, or predestined fow, no matter what the conditions in the society

may be. Such simplication may not be unexpected, coming rom the authorothe Clash o Civilisations, but the widespread acceptance o this supercial,ormalistic division is nevertheless a symptom o systematic, ideological distor-tion in observation and interpretation. Namely, there is a substantial dierencebetween the rst and second, and the third group within the third wave. Beorethe transormations toward democracy, the rst two were under authoritarianregimes, while the third one was under totalitarian regimes. Unlike totalitarianregimes, authoritarian ones do not preclude any orm o pluralism, do notabolish private ownership and turn it entirely into state ownership, and they

do not abolish the market and impose a monopoly ideology.26 Thus, even asthey turn to democracy, these countries start with some degree o a ree market

25 S. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Normanand London: University o Oklahoma Press, 1991).

26 Juan Jos Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers,2000), p. 159 and below.


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economy,27 and with a society that is not completely wrecked, with social groups with pronounced interests, who, in a newly established democratic order, arecapable o acting as autonomous actors vis--vis the state.

On the other hand, communist totalitarianism mostly thoroughly penetratedall the social links, imposed itsel upon all horizontal relations as a mediatorand controller, and subordinated awareness o social reality to a monopolisticideology. The management o all productive resources was subordinated tothe plan and direction rom the top o the political hierarchy. The distributionaccorded no place to any sort o autonomous decision-making on purchases andretail. Social services existed, but they were not provided as a right but a discre-tion, as an act o regime patronage, with imperative expectations o loyalty inreturn. Fear rom straying rom the obligatory ideology, rom uttering a wrong

word, which someone whos party to the conversation will eagerly report to theauthorities in charge, stretched the regimes controlling tentacles into the most

intimate private spaces. In this, the eager inormers themselves have acted outo the same ear, because keeping quiet is being an accomplice. The society itselwas party to its own oppression.

With the destruction o the autonomy o horizontal interpersonal relations business as well as private society itsel was eectively destroyed. The worddestruction is not ar etched, it is not used or eects sake. It is true that italso connotes physical ruin and demolishment, but even without these two,destruction is what this is. Following the consolidation o Stalins governmentin the USSR in the 1930s, and the establishment o satellite regimes ollowing

World War Two, this destruction did not aect physical objects. (Although, it istrue, that this was eected by a non-unctional planned economy, incapable omaking production suit the needs, and which had expressed the regimes disdaino concrete individual lie through lethal exploitation and pollution o nature.)

27 Oe (Capitalism by Democratic Design, p. 504) thinks that including postcommunistrevolutions in this group would be inappropriate and illusory. The essential dierencesamong them are: 1) With the exception o divided Germany, the transition into democracyollowing World War Two (Italy, Japan, and West Germany), in the countries o southernEurope in the 1970s (Portugal, Greece, and Spain) and in Latin America in the 1980s

(Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay) did not involve changes in territory andlarger migrations o populations. In postcommunist countries, there was territorial rictionand migrations, conlicts around minorities and nationalities, secessionist tendencies. 2)Much more importantly, the transormations in the irst three groups were a process omodernization that had a strictly political and constitutional character (to do with theorm o government and the relation between state and society), whereas at the end osocialism the main task was to reorm economy to create a whole new class o entre-preneurs, by way o a political decision. In the article Political Liberalism, Group Rights,and the Politics o Fear and Trust, published 10 years later, Oe explains that (besidesmainly uncontested state borders), in democracies o the real third way, there existeda capitalist market economy rom beore the democratic changes (while the privatizationo companies owned by the state was underway), so he places postcommunist countriesunder a ourth wave; see Studies in East European Thought53 (2001): pp. 16782, esp. p.168.


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The destruction in hand was directed at the social sotware peoples relationsand minds. Namely according to Karl Marxs poignant ormulation society isnot composed o individuals, but their relations. I the interpersonal, horizontalrelations among the members o a society cannot be established and autono-mously practiced, without authorization, mediation, and control rom thosein political power, the society will not unction, and the population within thispolitical powers area o reach makes up a society, as much as the potatoes in asack Marx again make up a sack o potatoes.

Truth be told, by the 1980s many o these totalitarian regimes had more orless made the transition into what Juan J. Linz and Alred Stepan mark as post-totalitarianism28 in their periodization. As is the case with many terms createdusing the prex post-, post-totalitarianism does not denote some sort osituation atertotalitarianism assuming totalitarianism to be dead and gone but its later phase. Unlike ull totalitarianism, the intensity and reach o terror

are reduced, and certain spaces or benign ree (although always overseen)action are selectively allowed. In Hungary, a certain opening to private initiativewas also adopted.29 In Yugoslavia, a regime where the state and the communistparty have ormally almost completely withdrawn rom managing the economyand social activities was developed over nearly 40 years, and in all this time anydevelopment in social autonomy was successully obstructed. On the otherhand, some regimes remained in state o rozen totalitarianism, although theintensity o repression would have suggested that they, too, had toned down theterror.30 However, the essential eature was still going strong everywhere: the

power o the political regime to direct all essential segments o social lie, that is,rom another perspective, the inexistence o a oothold or any sort o autono-mous power o the society.

This dierence reaches its expression precisely when countries belonging toeither group attempt to establish a democratic order. It does not even necessarilymaniest in all cases in ormal tests o consolidation (which may speak moreo the methods and criteria or examining consolidation),31 but it is an unavoid-

28 J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems o Democratic Transition and Consolidation: SouthernEurope, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore and London: The Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1996).29 Miszlivetz (Illusions and Realities, p. 83) writes o this as o an East European paternalistic

state, dierent to totalitarian dictatorship. The paternalistic state also retains monopolyover political decision-making, but leaves be the individual reedoms that do not endangerthis privilege.

30 In the authors interview with Reinhard Weihuhn, who 20 years ago was an activist o theEast German Initiative or Peace and Human Rights (now the oreign policy adviser or theGreen party in the Bundestag), Weihuhn said that in the 1980s, the repression has beenso ar perected that it no longer needed to be brutal.

31 So it appears that some postcommunist countries consolidated their democracies asterthan some Latin American countries did. See W. Merkel, Plausible Theory, UnexpectedResults: The Rapid Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe, Interna-tionale Politik und Gesellschat/International Politics and Society, Newsletter der Friedrich-Ebert-Stitung, no. 2/2008, p. 12, http://www.wzb.eu/zkd/dsl/pd/03_a_merkel_gb.pd


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able act that neither Spain, nor Portugal, nor Greece, nor many Latin Americancountries had to solve the issue o setting up a market economy out o thin air,an issue that oten amounted to squaring a circle how to extricate somethingrom the grip o politics by a political decision, when it still has to turn rom astate-run estate into a ree economy, and when it still demands the creation oprivate owners. In literature on the postcommunist countries transormation,it is practically a truism that not only the members o the new political elite, buto the old nomenclature as well, turned their political (ormally even bankrupt)capital into the literal, economic capital by using contact networks and throughknowledge o the constitution and workings o the administration (which, unlikethe parliament, it is not possible to entirely transorm in several months, eitherin personnel or in organization).

This in itsel is not the crucial problem (except perhaps or moralists) i it is amatter o primary accumulation. It would not be the rst nor the last time that

some people acquired riches in a way that would hardly succeed in conditionso legality. A more permanent problem arises when the mutual ties o politicaland economic power become structural. That is, when it continues to thrive inurther development in the middle, and even in the long run, when there lingersthe kind o relationship in which capital is not only acquired merely thanks topolitical links and perks, but can only be retained, that is, economically utilized,through dependence on the political elite. This is a characteristic that has alreadybecome a permanent component o relations in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, andCroatia, and has displayed sturdiness in the ace o such proound transorma-

tions like the war, the post-war normalization and, nally, the 10 years o reormsunder signicant international infuence, particularly o the European Union.Countries in which a market economy had already been unctioning even

when they needed to reduce the scope o rms owned by the state had theminimum conditions at their disposal: that environment o norms, institu-tions, and procedures, which, together with the market, make up the economicsociety.32 These are measures o value determined by competition, institu-tions, and mechanisms o trading shares and transerring ownership; admin-istrative and judicial institutional surroundings; and at least some ree capital

that could be invested or perhaps channels o entry or oreign capital. Noneo this had to unction anywhere near the level o desirable standards, but there

was a minimum opluralistic social structure, with a division o unctions and

32 Linz and Stepan (Problems o Democratic Transition) methodically implement this conceptthrough a comparative analysis o changes precisely among the third wave democrati-zation countries (in its wider sense). On the importance o this institutional subsystem,without whose support there the ree market cannot work either (applied to Croatiaas well), see Maja Vehovec, Evolucijsko-institucionalni pristup razvoju poduzetnitva[The Evolution-Institutional Approach to the Development o Entrepreneurship], inPoduzetnitvo, institucije i sociokulturni capital [Entrepreneurship, Institutions, andSocio-cultural Capital], ed. Drago engic and Maja Vehovec, (Zagreb: Institut drutvenihznanosti Ivo Pilar, 2002), p. 15 and below.


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a sphere o ownership that was not at the immediate disposal o authoritariangovernors.33

tann and dma a dl

What is symptomatic in the oversight o this proound dierence could best beinterpreted by a preconception that democracy holds a certain orce, with

which sooner or later it will reairm itsel as the only appropriate political orm,and thus as the necessary outcome o every countrys historic development,

which has to arrive sooner or later. In this way, it can be all the same as to howsocial preconditions work: Do they work and do they exist at all or the construc-tion o something that should be no more and no less than a system o societysinluence over the state and the states responsibility toward the society: Fromthis perspective, a term was born, a term which had become the most common

designation o postcommunist changes: transition.34

Since lexically it merelydenotes a passage or bridging, even in such condensed orm this term points tothe notion that the end to the process that began in the breakup o communistregimes is already known. The starting point and destination o a passage are, ocourse, amiliar.

Where democracy has long been practiced as a political way o lie that isunderstandable and natural, it has come to be because in one time, during acertain period, some people have ought or it. This is a mark it still bears today,not only visible in the struggle among parties competing or places in parlia-

ments and, indirectly, government, but also through various and numerous ways in which political will is publicly ormed in the society, and in which itsdierent parts send signals o their interests be it to state bodies or to thepublic. This mark is not an atavistic drawback, an indigested and not-yet-over-come remainder o the previous, undemocratic order, but the very bloodstreamo democracy, a game (as a metaphor or non-violent struggle) between special

33 This dierence is well-illustrated in an anecdote. In an interview with the representativeo a European oundation considered to be conservative, which is active in Bosnia-Herze-govina, Croatia, and Serbia, I asked a question about evaluating activities and inluences o

civic actors in these countries. My interviewee, who not long beore had taken over respon-sibility precisely or this region, replied that the engagement and the actual inluenceseemed too small to him. Given the conservative image o the oundation, which indeeddoes work much with elites and state institutions, I was surprised by the response. Onmore thorough discussion, we also arrived at the act that the interviewee had spent yearsearlier working in one o the Latin American branches o the oundation, and that he hadacquired entirely dierent notions o civic actors modes o working. The basic dierencewas that, although societies there were oten signiicantly poorer, with greater presence odirect violence, largely thanks also to a never entirely quenched private capitalism (evenwhen the links o corruption had deeply interwoven it with the spheres o political power),they were never completely closed in their unctioning, which let many cracks and spacesor gathering and public agency.

34 Tom Carothers, The End o the Transition Paradigm, Journal o Democracy13:1 (Jan.2002).


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interests or the acquisition o non-violent prevalence based on the ree convic-tions o citizens-voters, and a game o reconciliation between special interestsand common policy necessary to sustain the whole.

In societies the likes o which have come out o decades-long rule by commu-nist regimes and short political revolutions, there was no such potential with

which to ght to obtain democratic institutions. Although, i it is known howwide a consensus existed in avor o adopting democratic constitutions, consti-tutional and legal guarantees o civil and political rights, in avor o the rule olaw as voted in a democratically elected parliament, the thesis o lacking poten-tials may seem at least paradoxical. However, democracy is not only a matter ocommitment, a set o principles and an institutional orm that can be picked oninclination, but a set o principles and institutions that are practiced actively,that is, which given actors use: principles that are eectively rendered into legalguarantees o reedom and institutions that serve as the ramework or working

to produce and implement norms and policies.Whose reedom? O whose agency? O that same society that until yesterdayhad been so thoroughly and systematically destroyed? Just as it is dicultto resist the ideological belie that democracy is the natural cause o historicadvancement, so it seems to be easy to all into the trap o another prejudice:That societies o communist regimes were really not-yet-developed, but essen-tially capitalist societies, squeezed under the heavy mantle o the regime, but stillcarrying a liberal-democratic potential energy, whose again! natural modeo connection that is, the market, and the likewise natural mode o human

agency, enterprise, and market exchange will sprout the moment the unnat-ural totalitarian mantle is removed. And with them, the interests providing thenecessary motivational energy or democratic institutions o social control andtrue limitation o state power will also develop.

t mmn (d)nn f

However, the society is not market-capitalist by nature, nor is it a neutral basison which dierent systems can be superimposed at will; rather, it is a whole.

Thus, the reign o the communist regimes also generated a societal ormation inits own right.35 This was accomplished in a seemingly contradictory manner, bythe pre-emptive and actual destruction o the very abric o autonomous societalrelationships, but that is exactly the reason why it was prooundly eicient.

35 It is a mistake not to realize that the so-called real socialism that is, the system thattook shape in the Soviet Union and in European socialist countries is a social system inthe strong sense o the term; it has its own equilibrium mechanisms, its own dynamics,and the ability to reproduce its constitutive characteristics. Edmund Mokrzycki, TheLegacy o Real Socialism, Group Interests, and the Search or a New Utopia, in Escaperom Socialism: The Polish Route, ed. Walter Connor and Peter Ploszajski (Warsaw 1992), p.269, quoted in: Linz and Stepan Problems o Democratic Transition, p. 246.


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foundation

In economy, not only external control was established, but also a genuinedependence o economic transactions on political mediation, to the extent wherethere emerges an integral political-economic system o reproduction in its ownright,36 which is indeed a system o built-in political dominance that cannot bediscerned rom the economy.37 The regime o the policies o planned economyprooundly inormed the entire complex o production, exchange, distribution,and consumption, and turned it into a distinct political-economic ormation,dominated by the ormer part o the syntagm the political38 not because thecommand economy really worked according to the doctrine o planning andintegration o the entire economy rom the supreme political center, but exactlybecause the plan can never be realistic,39 so the whole system depends on acombination o political bargaining and a network o inormal connectionsor nudging.40 In such a system, the agency o an integrated political powerapparatus, separated rom the society and economy, is a necessity.41 This inextri-

36 Thus, Puhovski (Socijalistika konstrukcija) deines the basic structure o reproductiono the socialist order not as a production o surplus value but as production o surpluspower: Since those regimes were not able to directly control everything through a kindo monstrous system o monitoring, gathering, and processing all inormation on all thatis being done and happening in a given society, they ocused on preventive disabling onon-regime thinking and action. That was accomplished not only by omnipresent surveil-lance (or by maintaining the rightening perception thereo) and by constant anxiety romincalculable repression, but also, and primarily, by a closed ideology.

37 A paradoxical but typical development has taken place in the Croatian language relatedto this issue. In the last two decades the wordgospodarstvo has completely displaced the

word privreda, both meaning economy. Paradoxically, the older word that was usedduring the period o the communist rule in Yugoslavia was composed in the way thatdesignated acquiring or producing a new value, which pertains to a market economy. Incontrast, the word that has been put into use in the last two decades is composed exactlylike the German Wirtschat, coming rom Wirt, i.e., master, possessor, or landlord;thus, it indicates dominance over things, rather than exchange relationships in a market,wherein the objective is not mastery but production o value with a surplus. In this sense,gospodarstvo is closer to the ancient meaning o the Greek (the closed householdeconomy) than to a market-driven production. The linguistic shit resulted rom the overallnationalistic eort to make Croatian as dierent as possible rom Serbian, but the choiceo words unintentionally reveals that political dominance over economy has survived the

democratic revolution.38 [] under the societal conditions o the Soviet system the economy does not contain

or generate any principle o its own dynamism whereby the dynamism is substantiallydetermined by the will o the politocracy; Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller, and Gyrgy Markus,Dictatorship over Needs, especially the part whose main author is G. Markus, Korpora-tivna svojina i komandna ekonomija, quoted rom the Serbian translation, Diktatura nadpotrebama, translation by Ivan Vejvoda (Belgrade: Kosmos, 1986), p. 95.

39 Ibid., pp. 92 .40 Diktatura nad potrebama, pp. 13536.41 [] when the market plays no role in establishing balance, only the corrective agency o

the central apparatus is capable o continually re-establishing relative harmony amongormerly divided spheres o the economy (ibid., p. 150); Thus, the abolishment o thebalancing role the market plays creates an integral economic oundation or the socialdomination o the apparatus (ibid., p. 151).


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cable connection between the political regime o planned economy reaches itsull expression in the so-called third economy. Namely, apart rom the ocial,planned economy o the state-owned companies, the socialist regimes alsoallowed the restricted second economy, which operates in the market (mostlylimited to handicrat services and production or very small enterprises) andserves as a necessary supplement to the rst one. However, in the need to llthe gaps o the organization o the ocial, rst economy, a third one alsoemerged, which operates by systematically circumventing the ocial channels,the circumventing being built into the real operation o the rst economy. 42Having to ulll the unrealistic tasks set by the economic plans, managers o statecompanies continuously resort to relationships that are, in Gyrgy Markus words,more amiliar rom the area o economic anthropology than rom descriptionso modern societies, and consist o personal, inormal relationships amongmembers o the bureaucratic apparatus, by means o which problems like short-

ages or other disturbances are dealt with.43

Furthermore, the third economymediates between the rst two, or example by hiring small private enterprises toll the gaps in the ocial planned economy. This is how a system is inormallyinstitutionalized, which heavily relies on networks o personal contacts that arear too complex to be simply conceived o as corruption; such a system madeit possible to organize and integrate complex activities in a sphere that is parallelto the ocial institutions and capable o penetrating them. These relationships

would also play a signicant role ater the change o the political regime, thatis, the implosion o communism either in the orm o the breakthrough o

organized crime into the national economy in Russia in the early 1990s whereit turned out to be surprisingly well-equipped to take over relatively legitimatebusiness activities or as the aorementioned continuous, structural intermin-gling o political power and economic interests in the deective postcommunistdemocracies.

What made Yugoslavia dierent rom the regimes under Soviet domina-tion was a considerably higher autonomy o enterprises (which were consideredsocial, rather than state-owned) and a considerably stronger role o the marketin integrating the economy although the market was much less ree in the area

o investment than in the areas o commodities, services, and (to the extentallowed or by the low geographical mobility o the population) labor. Namely,long beore the discovery o post-totalitarianism, the system was developed

42 Diktatura nad potrebama, p. 158.43 Ibid., pp. 1589. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, media occasionally ran exotic stories

about a special, unoicial proession in the Soviet economy, called pushers. Whena manager o a socialist company came under particular pressure to deliver productsrequired by the plan, at the same time depending on equally unrealistically planned deliv-eries o raw material, components, or equipment, he had to ind unoicial ways out o sucha squeeze. Thus, the pushers reportedly travelled throughout the country with suitcasesull o cash, buying other managers cooperation in the companies whose deliveries wereneeded. Although they could not be checked, such stories, which really resemble a kind oeconomic anthropology, at least illustrate the model at work in such societies.


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foundation

in the manner that relegated the decisions that were not substantial or theoverall control to decentralized instances (either geographically, or unctionally,through the system o the so-called workers sel-management in companies).Furthermore, the real locations o control were obscured and concealed, insteado exposing them clearly as in the regimes o direct commanding domination.Thereore, unlike the markets just mentioned, the capital market, i it existedat all, was o merely second-rate importance compared to political arbitrationin investments. Nevertheless, despite the higher level o the business decision-makers autonomy rom the political apparatus, political control was present inthe less ormal shape o the activity o the network o the League o Communistsrom behind the ormal institutional screen o sel-management in all socialcompanies and institutions.

This party (insoar as an organization which encircles the whole, rather thanbeing just a part and/or a side within a pluralist political spectrum can be called

a party) infuenced both the selection o managers and the business decisions(particularly on capital investment and other major measures) and it alwayshad some extraordinary means at its disposal (in the orm o the compulsorymanagement) in cases where the discrepancy between autonomous business-making and the interests o the local or republican political center grew too big.That is the reason why not even in SFR Yugoslavia in spite o the much highercapacity o autonomous business management, which had raised expecta-tions among certain sociologists and economists was it possible or a separatebusiness elite to develop, emancipated rom the dominant political impact. Given

that the change in power apart rom the act that the mode o its establishmenthas changed to ree, multiparty elections was also carried out as the replace-ment o the dominant political elite, the business managers could not becomea nucleus o a potential uture capitalist class on the basis o their positions inthe relatively autonomous enterprises.44 Ater the change in power (in Croatiaand Bosnia-Herzegovina), or the shit in the basis o legitimacy (like in Serbia),the political elite openly takes over the powers o ownership and launches cronyprivatization allocation o property to political allies or dependents andimposes new masters on the non-emancipated business elite.

Both in its real and sel-managerial versions, the socialist regime did notleave room or dierent positions in the society and economy to emerge as inter-ests. It is true that armers, managers, industrial workers, clerks, and others used

44 How the new, democratic (and indeed reely elected) power holders did everything intheir power to prevent the creation o such independent elite, is described by Vesna Pusicin Vladaoci i upravljai [Rulers and Managers] (Zagreb: Novi Liber, 1992), especially thethird part, to su vladaoci uinili upravljaima [What the Rulers Did to the Managers], pp.129 . On directly corrupt and criminal practices, see Darko Petriic, Kriminal u hrvatskojpretvorbi[Crime in the Transormation o Ownership in Croatia] (Zagreb: Abakus, 2000).So the destruction o autonomous, auto-regulatory mechanisms o the society, which hadbeen partly developed, but at the same time constantly suocated and obstructed undersocialism, continued even ater the ormal establishment o democracy and transition toprivate ownership and a market economy.


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to have rather dierent problems and corresponding needs in t

srdjan dvornik: actors without society

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