1 Communism and democracy – a problematisation (original) (raw)

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy

2007

Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This 2007 book connects the study of democratisation in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratisation is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.

Communism and the emergance of democracy

The long crisis of communism was a powerful impetus for the development of critical social theory, but critical social theory has not had much to say about the end of communism and what has followed in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. There are some monographs and edited collections on post-communism that use ideas and concepts from critical social theory, but they are few in number in comparison to work that starts from mainstream social science perspectives. This is especially the case for the study of post-communist politics where perspectives from 'mainstream' comparative politics have shaped debate about the nature of post-communist political development. Harald Wydra's Communism and the emergence of democracy should therefore be welcomed for attempting to apply ideas from critical social theory to the study of post-communist politics and filling in a significant intellectual lacuna. There is a need for a volume written from this perspective, ideas about transition should and can be criticised, and there is nothing wrong with interpretation of events through secondary sources. Unfortunately, Wydra's book fails at almost every level: it fails as a critique of conventional wisdoms, which are parodied rather than rebutted; it fails as a theoretical alternative because of the confusion of ideas and terms used and the avoidance of any effort to establish the relationship between the concepts deployed in the book; and it fails as interpretative analysis because analysis takes second place to the avalanche of concepts that Wydra deploys and what is left of it after the theoretical deluge is often conventional, frequently simplistic and sometimes erroneous.

Democratisation as Meaning-Formation - Lessons from the Communist Experience

This paper argues that the democratic breakthrough in 1989-1991 was prefigured by meanings of democracy that emerged during the political evolution of communism. Meanings of democracy are not understood as variations of a universal model but as contingent interpretive acts following the existential uncertainty of political crises under communism. Whilst institutional perspectives associate democratic freedom with abstract principles of individualism, autonomy, or the rule of law, the anthropological perspective on the experience of democratisation proposed here emphasises the power of spirit and consciousness in the formation of meanings. This argument is developed by elaborating three propositions: Historically, communism was not simply an undemocratic, totalitarian system but a social organism in gestation; The emergence of communism in 1917 in Russia and 1945 in eastern Europe, but also major challenges to its power in 1956, 1968, and 1980, created new democratic aspirations at the level of symbolism and political consciousness; Democratisation was prefigured both in the political imagination of democracy as an undifferentiated good and in the "power of the powerless," by which Eastern European dissidence aimed to make a political choice at the existential level of recognising the people as a political subject.

Introduction to the Special Issue: "Down with Communism -Power to the People": The legacies of

Social Science Information, 2020

This special issue brings together reflections that mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Revolutions of 1989 and their consequences for understanding European and global society. What seemed for some at least the surprising and rapid collapse of Eastern European state socialism prompted rethinking in social theory about the potential for emancipatory politics and new modes of social and political organization. At the same time there was increased reflection on the nature of varieties of capitalism and the meaning of socialism beyond the failure of at least its etatist and autarkic mode. The five articles here and the editors’ introduction address themes such as utopian hopes, civil society, the transformation of Europe, the world beyond 1989, and new configurations of power and conflict.

Democracy in the Post-Communist World: An Unending Quest?

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 2007

Fifteen years after regime change swept across the former Soviet bloc and contrary to the widely held hopes and expectations at that time, liberal democracy has emerged and taken root only in a small number of post-communist countries. In the majority of former communist states, political transformations have either lost their momentum and resulted in partially democratic systems or have been reversed and brought new authoritarian regimes. Hence, the fundamental puzzle of post-communist politics: why have some countries succeeded and others failed, totally or partially, in building and consolidating liberal democracy? Understanding and explaining this puzzle is a challenge for both scholars and policy makers. The IV General Assembly of the Club of Madrid held in Prague on 9-11 November 2005 brought together academic experts and political leaders to examine the unfolding trajectories and contrasting outcomes of democratization in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, as well as post-Soviet Central Asia. The Club of Madrid members and experts evaluated political lessons emerging from the region and reviewed reform and policy measures that have been relevant for promoting democracy and improving its quality in post-communist Europe and elsewhere. This special issue of EEPS presents nine articles that were originally commissioned as background papers for the Club of Madrid's meeting. Our introduction, drawing on these articles and on the wide-ranging and insightful discussions that took place during the conference, is divided into five parts. 1 The first offers a sketch of the "state of democracy" in postcommunist Europe and introduces our central question: what factors are key in explaining the success or failure of democracy in the post-communist world? The second part reviews some of

Difficulties for democracy in the former communist area

Democracy is currently being challenged internally in the West by forces of the radical populist right and externally by a set of authoritarian regimes whose leadership is contested by Putin's ultra-nationalist Russia and Xi Jinping's Confucian-communist China. It is the third historical counter-wave that has special characteristics. The book of which this chapter is a part is devoted to analysing the conditions that make the existence and survival of democratic regimes possible, their historical development and the challenges they have had to face, especially in the current counter-wave. The book's chapter, which is freely available for reading, focuses on the difficulties that democracy has encountered in establishing or maintaining itself in the former communist space and, more especially, in the former Soviet space. This analysis is most topical in helping to explain how these difficulties have led to Putin's autocracy in Russia that has ultimately led to the war of aggression against Ukraine and to its becoming a nuclear threat to the world.

The Ghosts of the Past: 20 years after the Fall of Communism in Europe.

Twenty years after the fall of communism in Europe, the post-Soviet countries have not achieved a similar stage of democratic development. They have shown to be too diverse and historically too independent to follow one path of consolidation. This volume questions the premises of transitology, homogeneity, and path dependency theories and suggests an insight into the continuities and discontinuities within particular contexts of the given countries (Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland and others). The latter quite often collide with each other and with the Western democratic values, thus putting a concept of a harmonious dialogue or a definite democratic solution for Europe into doubt. This volume challenges one-directional analyses of both communism and capitalism and offers an examination of their inner contrasts and contradictions that are a part of transitions to democracy. The irreconcilable differences between the two systems of ideologies determined by universalisms, such as utilitarianism, liberalism, harmony, and productivity, were derived from the post-Enlightenment heritage of the humanist ideals which today cannot be acknowledged without criticism. To grasp the dynamics of the post-Soviet countries that are developing their own democratic models requires looking into their political struggles, social fissures and complexities within their past and present, rather than observing them from the epistemological standpoint. Such a standpoint is criticised in this volume for seeing those countries as locked in one homogenous totalitarian paradigm. The abstractness of the universalist and utopian concept of transition imposed on concrete social relations is criticised, while the theoriticisation of democratic ideals is related to the political legitimisation.