Slovo 16 2

SLOVO VOLUME 16

NUMBER 2

AUTUMN 2004

Contents page editorial Helen Warren

89–90

articles An Overview of Albania’s Foreign Policy-Making in the 1980s Katsikas

Stefanos 91–106

Demonization and Defence of the Serbs: Balkanist Discourses during the Break-Up of Yugoslavia Tom Jackson

107–124

Mis-Plagiarizing the East: The Romanian Principalities between Fact and Fiction Irina Marin

125–130

Is Popular Culture Subversive in Romania? An Assessment of Teenage Girls’ and Women’s Magazines David Berry

131–142

Poland as a Captive State? Joanna Szalacha

143–151

Evangelizing Accession: Solidarity Electoral Action and Poland’s EU Membership Anna Pluta

153–169

book reviews Sarah Birch, Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe (Seán Hanley)

171–172

Walter G. Moss, A History of Russia. Volume 1: to 1917

172–173

(Mark Smith)

Martin Åberg and Mikael Sandberg, Social Capital and Democratization: Roots of Trust in Post-Communist Poland and Ukraine (Tatiana Yarkova)

173–175

Alan M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (Burçak Keskin)

175–176

Alex J. Bellamy, The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-Old Dream? (Catherine Baker)

176–178

Peter Siani-Davies, ed., International Interventions in the Balkans since 1995 (Svetlana Durdevica Lukica)

178–180

Josephine Woll, Real Images, Soviet Cinema and the Thaw

180–181

(Cesar Ballester)

Tomasz Zarycki and George Kolankiewicz, ed., Regional Issues in Polish Politics (Ayse Artun)

181–183

Giuseppe Boffa, The Stalin Phenomenon (David K. Oldman)

183–185

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Editorial Since being taken on by Maney, Slovo has gone from strength to strength, as clearly demonstrated by the present issue. Of the many submissions received, those selected for publication have been through, as always, our rigorous refereeing and editing process to ensure that Slovo maintains its reputation as a quality postgraduate publication. Contributions from both established and aspiring academics ensure that Slovo continues its academic excellence whilst allowing younger intellectuals to gain their first experience of publication.

This issue is comprised of a variety of articles on topics as diverse as Poland’s accession to the European Union and Albanian Foreign Policy during the 1980s, as well as a number of interesting book reviews covering a broad spectrum of issues. All of this emphasizes the interdisciplinary, cross-regional nature of Slovo that has made it such a success. Volume 16(2) is introduced by an unusual paper

by Stefanos Katsikas on Albania, discussing foreign policy-making there during the 1980s. Continuing the Balkan focus is Tom Jackson’s strongly argued piece concerning Balkanist discourses during the break-up of Yugoslavia. There follow two papers on Romania; the first, by Irina Marin, embraces a novel approach to the mis-representation (or mis-plagiarization as the author terms it) of the works of two Romanian scholars by later authors. Subsequently, David Berry leads us through the maze of popular culture pertaining to girls’ and women’s magazines in present-day Romania. Turning to Eastern Europe, Joanna Szalacha’s exploration of Poland’s possible condition as a Captive State provides an interesting discussion on the perceived benefits of Western influence on post-Communist economic organization, while Anna Pluta’s ‘Evangelizing Accession’ concludes the papers presented here by providing a critical insight into an important contemporary issue.

Slovo welcomes submissions from academics at all stages of their career that reflect the aforementioned multidisciplinary nature of the journal.

As always, Slovo relies on the good will and generosity of a great number of people both within SSEES and in the wider academic community, without whom this valuable forum for young academics would not be viable. It will never be possible to thank these people sufficiently for the invaluable work they perform, but it is hoped that a brief mention here is an acceptable substitute. The editorial board would like to extend thanks to: Professors David Gillespie, Geoffrey Hosking, George Kolankiewicz, Arnold McMillin and Robert Pynsent; Drs Stephen Blackwell, Wendy Bracewell, Alex Drace-Francis, Ger Duijzings, Dorota Horowiak Wojciech Janik, Piotr Jaworski, Tomasz Miciewicz, Zoran Milutinovica, and Peter Siani-Davies; Tim Beasley-Murray, Christine Fernandes, Andrew Gardner, Michaela Mudure, and Maria Widdowson; and; from Maney, Liz Rosindale and © School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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Anna Thrush. On a personal note I would like to thank this year’s editorial team for their tireless work and support in the preparation of Volume 16, and wish the next team well in their quest to build on the success of the last few years.

A. H. Warren Slovo Executive Editor 2003–04

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Is Popular Culture Subversive in Romania? An Assessment of Teenage Girls’ and Women’s Magazines David Berry Southampton Institute This paper considers whether elements of popular culture can be seen as subversive in the contemporary Romanian context and, with this in mind, aims to initiate a debate and perhaps generate future ethnographic research into this particular field of enquiry. In this vein, this paper perhaps poses more questions rather than offering definitive answers on whether we can indeed view popular culture in subversive terms. The main points under consideration concern whether the forms of female representation which have emerged since the 1989 revolution are currently producing new forms of subjective cultural identity and new definitions of femininity. The paper thus addresses the production of new female audiences who have developed new tastes and lifestyles, and asks whether we can begin to perceive female subjective cultural development as a disruptive force to pre-existing traditional norms and values that have dominated the Romanian cultural landscape and whether new levels of social consciousness and female identity are currently transforming or reinventing society through cultural production. To foreground the debate, the article begins with a brief analysis of popular culture, then discusses representation and outlines some of the content in magazines. In the final part of the article, I discuss whether we can view the freedom to reflexively interpret both text and image as a revolutionary and subversive moment in Romanian history.

Popular Culture Before we assess the development of the teenage girls’ and women’s magazine market, it is perhaps useful to evaluate some of the more salient points associated with the term popular culture. This is necessary here because the notion of popular culture has a particular resonance for Eastern European societies such as Romania.

There are two perceptions of the popular worth mentioning at this stage of the discussion. The first and the most familiar is broadly speaking intellectual. The educated class, or let us say a fair proportion of them, continue to perceive the popular as of less value than so-called higher cultural forms such as opera, ballet, the arts, or literature. The debate regarding popular culture vis-à-vis high culture is well established in Western circles, with a number of recent academic

© School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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works disputing the elitist idea, emanating in the UK from the 1930s onwards, that high cultural forms had greater value than mass cultural forms.2 This debate is beginning to emerge in Romanian intellectual circles as popular culture begins to assert its grip over society, although it is fair to say that even in Western societies the popular today is hardly perceived as subversive, but rather as something more mundane or even conservative and as a cultural form that perpetuates a social system rather than challenging convention.

The second is rural based, where non-commercialized folk culture has dominated the Romanian countryside and where clear gender roles are demarcated in terms of duties in the household and in the agricultural working environment. In both cases, the emergence of popular culture in Romania can be perceived as a threat to a way of life and tradition, albeit concerning very different forms of tradition and practice.

The former is a clear-cut division between high culture and low (popular) culture and the perception is that high culture is superior in form and function, whereas the latter does not necessarily make this assumption; although, with regards to the latter, the popular can be perceived as having the potential to disrupt traditional roles in familial and working environs as women seek more independence in their working and leisurely lives.

The debate between high culture and popular culture is based on a negative perception of the latter, akin to the position advocated by the so-called Mass Society Theorists. One forceful exponent of these ideas was Dwight MacDonald who, although speaking of mass rather than popular culture, claimed that it debased culture’s actual meaning and context, and that in some way popular culture was obscene and contrary to what was good in human nature.3 MacDonald claimed that mass culture was ‘standardized’ and superficial because it deliberately celebrated the meaningless aspects of life at the expense of serious intellectual debate, which is necessary for the authentic development of subjective culture; that mass culture was a ‘debased’ form and that the mass media were primarily responsible for negating or undermining intellectuality; and that mass cultural products were incapable of cognitive stimulation, a point that is central to this present discussion.

Although Raymond Williams argued against elitist notions of culture, he nevertheless claimed that there was a perception of the popular, which was, in his view wrongly, associated with ‘inferior kinds of work’.4 Richard Hoggart took a somewhat more scathing view and warned against the ‘shiny barbarism’ of mass cultural products, being particularly scornful of glossy magazines with their ‘spicy’ content.5 Theodor Adorno also maintained that popular culture ‘standardized’ society through its sheer repetitive nature because it exists to satisfy the whim of capital; in 1

See John Fiske, Television Culture (London: Methuen, 1987); Raymond Williams ‘Culture is Ordinary’, in Resources of Hope (London: Verso, 1989); and Jim McGuigan, Cultural Populism (London: Routledge, 1992).

2 Q. D. Leavis is one such theorist; see Fiction and the Reading Public (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932).

3 Dwight MacDonald, ‘A Theory of Mass Culture’, Mass Culture, ed. by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White (Glencoe, IL: Collier–MacMillan, 1957).

4 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1976).

5 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958).

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this view, popular culture is perceived as having less value and as a lower cultural form because it lacked ‘authenticity’ at the point of production.6 Popular culture is not to be confused with folk culture; the former to a very large degree is the product of commercial imperatives of the media industry, whilst the latter is associated as the product of the people. The former is imposed from above, from the imperatives of capital, and the latter is a product from below and is thus seen not just to be more ‘authentic’ but having greater democratic and moral value.

This connection with commercially driven interests lay at the heart of the critique of popular culture because it is seen as devoid of cultural meaning. The view is that popular cultural forms have exchange value, in that they command a profit, but that they have very little use-value other than fulfilling the needs and key objectives of capital.

All this may very well be true, but it is not a complete picture of how popular culture through the process of representation may radically alter society during a specific historical process and context. The issue at stake in Romania is not whether popular culture is of less, more or equal value to high culture, but rather whether popular culture is transforming cultural identity and, in the process of transformation, whether it is disrupting tradition.

Of course, one cannot dispute that the production of representational forms within the magazine industry is ‘primarily’ driven by the commercial drive to profit. This is what I refer to as its primary intention, which also includes the desire to produce new audiences, to attempt to reflect their aspirations and desires, and those forms of representation are largely made up of marketing techniques and are the product of public relations exercises. However, there are secondary, unintended consequences concerning the impact of representation on public consciousness, on the changing patterns of female cultural identity, and on the way in which women interpret content and then place that form of interpretation into context. In sum, the unintended consequences of representational forms are what the individual freely chooses to do with content, and this is its subversive value based on its ability to confront and disrupt tradition, particularly the challenge to conformity and compliance, which has been a central feature of Romanian society.

As we have established the elitist perception of the popular was and is very much based on its inferiority to high culture, and the focus of the critique is premised primarily on the supposed benefits that cultural forms bring to individuals, with knowledge meaning culture and civility. Of course, for some this transforms into the view that the higher the quality and the greater the capacity equals higher levels of what Pierre Bourdieu called ‘cultural capital’.7 Although I empathize with this view, it does neglect other positive moments in the production of the popular, as is the case in Romania.

Popular culture is associated with lower cultural forms, and is often dismissed as futile and banal. It is not often viewed as subversive, something that challenges dominant forms of existence. In Romania, popular culture is subversive as a liberating force for women, which has opened up the potential for change through the interpretation and consumption of representational forms.

6 7

Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (London: Routledge, 1991).

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

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Of course, the overall intention behind the production of female representation is to compete in the marketplace. In this context, it will be argued here that the 1989 revolution unleashed many diverse moments in Romanian history.8 On the one hand, representational forms were created mostly to satisfy commodity production and the profit motive, and this attachment to the commercial imperative constitutes a part of the critique against popular culture. On the other hand, it has led to a demand for the consumption of an ideal image, and it is at this point that a degree of uncertainty in terms of public reception occurs. That is to say, any control over the production of representational forms is lost to the individual at the point of consumption. Hence, what has emerged in Romania is a large degree of risk, a new project in itself. The risk is based on the uncertain character of how the image and text will finally materialize when it transforms into subjective identity, another novel development.

Romanian female magazines, representation and new audiences In my view, the type of representation portrayed in both teenage and women’s magazines is primarily responsible for one of the most fundamental changes in Romanian society. Put simply, female representation challenges tradition in the most subversive fashion because it has offered the opportunity to reflexively interpret and consume the image in a way that challenges convention. With the emergence of reflexive interpretation comes a new rationality of which rules are made and found. Rules are no longer imposed from above and simply absorbed, but now constitute the very essence of consciousness and identity formation.

Reflexive interpretation, new rationales, and social engagement form a new space on which identities are built. This is despite the fact that the Romanian revolution itself was limited because it introduced that most post-modern ideal of uncertainty, from which representations and new modes of social engagement with forms arose.

Representation may be that domain which is distinct from reality, but, in the process of development, representation mimics reality and becomes reality; a post-modernist drama of sorts.

With the emergence of new forms of representation and popular culture, the revolution inadvertently introduced a number of significant schisms and contradictions in Romanian society by transforming perceptions of reality. In relation to the position and identity of women, 1989 unleashed two counterposed movements. On the one hand 1989 permitted the Romanian Orthodox Church to freely operate away from the Romanian Communist Party, and there was a genuine public outpouring of belief in faith post-Ceausc escu. Even though this was a new moment in development, the Church continues to represent the past, tradition, and the view that women are subject to a greater authority. Yet 1989 also unleashed its dialectical 8 I have argued in The Romanian Mass Media and Cultural Development (Aldershot: Ashgate Publications, 2004) that the events of 1989 can be characterized as a political revolution or coup d’etat. This is important to bear in mind, because the Romanian revolution was extremely limited and lacked the power to radically or fundamentally transform society. Nevertheless, change has occurred, particularly as a result of representations in the media, and, more specifically for our purposes, the idealized representational form of teenage girls and women in the magazine market.

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opposite, represented not in tradition but in a modern form; the ‘idealized representation’ of femininity in magazine culture had arrived, and it took its effect upon the very same woman who sat in church perhaps unaware of the extreme polarities of the two points. The development of a privately owned magazine industry has opened up a social space that has affected the shape of cultural development in a distinct manner. New forms of public activity and cultural identity have developed as a result of magazine discourse and the images represented therein. Therefore, new patterns of public consumption are evolving and the processes of socialization and interaction are changing. The growth and diversity of the magazine market suggests that distinct audiences with a plurality of interests are currently emerging, with the subsequent development of different lifestyles, tastes, and power.

Teenage girls’ magazines An interesting development in the Romanian magazine market is teenage girls’ magazines, reflecting a new teenage market or audience with a newly emerging lifestyle partly generated from the types of representation mediated in such magazines. Like their Western counterparts, the magazine industry has targeted the teenage audience, which it perceives as a lucrative commercial market with the potential of a disposable income. Teenagers are governed by what their respective peers wear and what they look like. In this context, magazines can condition behaviour, which turns teenagers into a perpetual source of revenue. In general terms, teenagers in Romania are the ideal market, with no real memory of the past and susceptible to the seductive lure of Western consumerism and lifestyles.

Six magazine titles in the female teenage market are Fan Hits & Posters, Play, Girl, 20 de Ani, Popcorn, and Bravo.9 Fan Hits & Posters is the most distinctive, with an exclusive focus on Romanian music, specifically attempting to promote indigenous Romanian production amongst its target audience. The content is mainly based on interviews with various singers and bands, personality tests, strip cartoons, news about new albums, and contests. Play contains information about Romanian music and foreign performers. It contains advertisements for television and radio programmes and information about theatres, pubs and discos, indicating the older end of the teenage market, and costs around £1.

Girl is targeted at a younger teenage audience, specifically, of high-school age, with articles on celebrities, fashion, and what high-school pupils get up to in their spare time. There are also advertisements for beauty products and a column dedicated to readers’ letters and answers to teenage problems. Bravo and Popcorn are similar in content, and would appear to be rivals competing for an audience with similar values and tastes. There are interviews with both Romanian and foreign celebrities, while they also have a section dedicated to social problems which has focused on the rights of children. They also supply telephone numbers for children to call if they need help. The magazines contain advice on love and information on sexual problems. Bravo provides information on computers and games, and it provides pop chart information from both the United Kingdom and the United 9 Information was taken from 20 de Ani (May 2002); Bravo (May 2002); Popcorn (May 2002); Play (May 2002); Fan Hits & Posters (summer issues 2001 and 2002) and Girl (March 2002).

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States. The magazine also proposes its own pop chart. The advertisements in both of these magazines are mainly for mobile phones, beauty products, and television programmes.

Finally, there is 20 de Ani, which is considered to be the best in this category in terms of presentation and house style. Apart from the usual information on celebrities, news about films and videos are included, it also contains short articles written by its readers and some gossip columns also written by its readers. There is advice on both medical matters and career choices, and, similarly to its competitors, it provides the usual information on celebrities, but it is slightly more ‘adult’ in that it provides information on VIPs other than celebrities and musicians. It also provides personality tests, fitness exercises, and horoscopes. The advertisements are, once again, for beauty products, television and radio programmes. This magazine has a staggering ninety-eight pages and trades at 75p.

This clearly demonstrates that a number of significant developments are occurring in the process of socialization, to which we can add other influential factors such as television and formal education (a point that I shall elaborate on below) and, of course, the role of the Church in teenagers’ lives. In sum, this period of teenage development is extremely complex, and resolving the various ideological variations is no easy matter, but one thing is certain: that the content in teenage magazines is, for the first time in Romanian history, providing teenagers with the tools to confront tradition.

The content of teenage magazines, with its emphasis on beauty products and mobile phones, is producing new forms of lifestyle. Similarly, foreign pop music has also offered new readings, such as Adam Ricketts’ Everything My Heart Desires or E-Type’s Princess Of Egypt, and DJ Bobo’s song Together, containing lyrics such as: ‘It’s a new generation, without hate or frustration | together we are free | we are what we are, together | we all long for the land to be free’, or Smile by the all-female band Vitamin C: ‘Life it ain’t easy | Life is so tough, it ain’t easy | Put a smile on your face’.

These lyrics offer hope and contribute to the aspirations of young people growing up in uncertain times with a weak economy, low wage levels, high unemployment, and high inflation. The images of foreign lands and liberated lifestyles are seductive to the young imagination, and conflicts ensue, both internally (measured as autobiographical narratives within the self) and externally with the ‘old’ Romania. This reveals a newly-imported form of content, language, and imagery that displays the production of new signs and values within a given social context; the importation of style and format has resulted in a new form of production and consumption.

The content is then framed in contra-distinction to traditional values, norms and practices, and this practice, as we will see, continues into the adult market. This is a transformative moment, because the youth were previously socialized into Ceausc escu’s image of a Stalinist future where young people were expected to uncritically fall into line, where youth were followers of the Orthodox faith and where parental guidance itself was conditioned by a repressive regime. Suddenly, all that has changed because the magazine speaks directly to them, bypassing all existing authority.

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Women’s magazines The growth of new female audiences and market orientation has a particular meaning in Romania. The rise of women’s lifestyle magazines is creating new forms of consumption and identity, with images portraying the ‘new woman’ and depicting new social freedoms associated with rising patterns of consumption. This development is to be contrasted with conditions that women were subjected to under the Ceausc escu regime, and this is primarily how the critical context and subversive character of popular culture is to be perceived. For example, in 1986 the authorities claimed that childbirth was a female duty to the longevity of the state and thus claimed ownership of the child as a collective means to production.

Ceausc escu claimed that in essence children were ‘socialist property’ and that women were obliged to provide children to the state as a ‘patriotic duty’, with those women who failed to provide considered ‘deserters’.10 Women were forced to have gynaecological examinations as the state attempted to control both abortion and contraception. This form of female oppression was added to what Daniela RoventaFrumusc ani refers to as the ‘asexual socialist identity’ that governed the lives of women,11 and as Doina Pasca-Harsanyi states, leading female party officials provided the ideal role model for other women to emulate: official political women [. . .] were supposed to be role models. Women officials had to comply with the party ideal of the exemplary woman, and had to look the part too. They could not dress fashionably, wear makeup, or look attractive in any way.

Anyone who looks at pictures of the most prominent female nomenklatura, forced to imitate the generic and asexual communist ‘comrade’, will understand the lack of appeal for young women.12

The development of female magazines has formally transformed the process of female self-identity, which in turn has had an impact on the collective conscience of Romanian national identity. The transformation of female identity can be, and probably is, perceived by consumers of the text and image as a form of liberation, and indeed magazines do portray new images of women who are both confident of their position and economically independent, which empowers, or at least has provided the potential for, women to make autonomous choices over lifestyle.

Any transformation of female identity is extremely complex because aspects of liberation through positive media representation are dialectically accompanied by new forms of subjugation to a dominant ideology that is primarily governed by the commercial imperative, driven by advertisers’ interests, which primarily construct an ideal image of femininity through the process of representation. This may result in the uncritical consumption and acceptance of the image, which ironically entails

10

See Doina Pasca-Harsanyi, ‘Women in Romania’, Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, ed. by Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 46.

11 Daniela Roventa-Frumusc ani, ‘New Role Models for Journalists in Eastern European Countries’, The Global Network, 4–5 (1996), 44.

12 Pasca-Harsanyi, ‘Women in Romania’, p. 48. See also Mariana Hausleitner, ‘Women in Romania: Before and After the Collapse’, in Funk and Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism.

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a high degree of conformity. However, we must assert a hypothesis that at least acknowledges the self-empowering process during female transformation, which has an uncertain outcome. For the moment, we may argue that micro-revolutions or a restructuring of the female self are underway, and, from that perspective, it can be viewed as a form of liberation, particularly in consideration of the historical Romanian woman.

Women’s magazines are to a very high degree ‘cultural extensions’ of the teenage market in which an idealized representation is culturally framed and prolonged as a part of the socialization process. Some of the more popular magazines in this category are Unica, Olivia, Madame Figaro, Avantaje,13 Frizuri, Cosmopolitan, and Elle.14 The content can be a continuation of the teenage market, such as the ubiquitous ‘personality test’ and endless images of fashion and beauty, and in this sense the teenage market can be conceptualized as ‘pre-adjustment’ or as a ‘preparatory stage’ for the women’s market that essentially relies on women’s autonomous magazine-buying power. Advertisers therefore benefit, since the commercial product seduces the consumer to purchase. This is why the ideal female image closely corresponds to the product, because women have to relate to the product in order to purchase the goods.

Olivia offers advice on perfect female movement, whilst Madame Figaro provides a fashion horoscope which advises on what to wear according to the reader’s star sign. Of course, female magazines are the perfect conduit for the expression of consumerism, with a medley of products on offer ranging from perfume to cars, beauty products to furniture, while in Avantaje and Cosmopolitan there is even advice on what cigarettes to smoke. Olivia also provides advice on what to eat for a sensible diet and how to lose and control weight. Unica provides advice for the woman on how to dress for the office, whilst both Cosmopolitan and Unica provide their respective readers with advice on how to seduce a man. Of course, there is not a great deal of difference in style and direction between Romanian magazines and those found in other parts of the world. In this sense, the idealized representation has become universalized through the process of capitalist globalization.

Naomi Wolf has argued that the cumulative effect of representations encourages women ‘to absorb the dominant [male-centred] culture’s fantasies as their own,’ the consequences of which are the construction of her identity.15 For Wolf, the ultimate goal of the woman is to be desired by men, and she learns this from representation.

Here, magazines are an organic part of social production, and ‘it doesn’t matter how assertive she may be in the world, her private submission to control is what makes her desirable’.16 But there is a double-edged sword in the Romanian context, for 13 Evidence of a new social status attained by Romanian women can be found in a competition organized by Avantaje (2003) entitled ‘Woman of the Year’ which covers a broad range of work including politics, social work, mass media, culture, and the arts.

14 Information was taken from Frizuri (June 2002); Femeia (June 2002); Elle (March 1999 and February 2002); Unica (March, May 2001 and June 2002); Madame Figaro (June 2002); Olivia (November 2001 and June 2002); Avantaje (February and June 2002), and Cosmopolitan (April, May, and June 2002).

15 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, (London: Vintage, 1991), p. 151.

16 Ibid., p. 130.

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whilst the new female sexuality can be perceived ultimately as a medium for male consumption, at the same time it releases the potential for female empowerment through freedom of interpretation.

The production of popular culture and media effects During the process of mediation, many complex and often contradictory moments occur. Although I have claimed we can perceive some of these moments as a form of liberation, there are still other moments to seriously consider. The main concerns with teenage magazines are based on moral issues concerning content and on whether teenagers are socially equipped to cope with the complexities of content that may be considered as ‘adult’. There is also another and perhaps more important concern relating to the way in which advertisers attempt to create ‘brand loyalty’ through attachment to certain products at an early stage of development.

What we may define as ‘filtering systems’ are designed specifically to attract teenagers either to commercial products or to particular television and radio programmes which have the specific aim to boost audience ratings, ultimately aiming to influence the choices teenagers make. Here, we consider the power to influence development concerning teenage subjective culture and identity. Teenage magazines are preponderant here because of the innocence of childhood. ‘Personality tests’ are particularly worrying because they pressurize teenagers and women into a particular mode of socialization. They force both groups to conform to developing an ‘ideal personality’, and those who cannot emulate the socially constructed ideal are prone to becoming excluded from what is essentially an idealized representation of the perfect and socially acceptable female and teenage model. For teenagers, peer pressure is central to the process of conformity, rather than their development of a deeper and more profound sense of individuality.

The concept of idealized representation, first used by Erving Goffman,17 has been applied in Western academic circles, particularly focussing on the portrayal of women in magazines. What Naomi Wolf called the ‘beauty myth’ was an ideal representation of the perfect woman, always white, young, slim and, of course, beautiful.18 Any woman falling outside the realms of acceptability were, by definition, imperfect and faulty. The ideal representation was, and currently remains, a gender construct, based on perceptions of the dominant male gaze. Thus, we can utilize the idealized representation to critically analyse the motives or intentions behind the presentation of content in the ‘personality test’, which for some will be simply seen as a bit of fun. ‘Fitness exercises’ are also about creating the ideal female body, mainly for male consumption.

The power of the magazine industry to influence its audience, particularly the younger section, towards a dominant ideology is predominantly considered as a negative factor in the socialization process.19 However, on another theoretical level, 17

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin, 1976).

Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 130.

19 The UK a programme entitled Skinny Kids was shown on Channel 4 (January 2003) and detailed the effect that images of the ideal woman have on children as young as eight. These young girls were all seriously concerned with their weight, particularly on their thighs!

18

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the emergence of a popular culture in Romania can be viewed as subversive,20 particularly if it empowers women to cope with restrictive traditions and develop a sense of independence. The content of female magazines certainly offers a challenge to the traditional values and conventions of Romanian life, and it can be viewed not purely in negative terms, but also dialectically, including positive readings of the social effects of representation. Magazines bring to their audiences social and cultural benefits such as self-confidence and ‘pleasure’, which, as Fiske has argued, permits ‘the reader [. . .] some control over the production of meaning’.21 Certainly, the emphasis on ‘beauty products’ is a corporate way of providing solutions through products, and here the demands of women are addressed in what Anna Gough-Yates calls ‘corporate parameters’.22 However, Gough-Yates also states that magazine producers ‘point to the role of women’s magazines as a provider of good quality information about sexual matters which help women to make informed, responsible decisions about their behaviour’.23 As far as John Fiske is concerned, magazines for women are also perceived as producing and ‘constituting a feminine public space’ in which a variety of important views are discussed.24 What we have here is the continual restructuring of a female habitus, which is the result of a relationship between subjective and objective culture. As Carol Davis and Nick Raynor state, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus is a powerful way of understanding the complexities of modern social life: The habitus underlies and structures out human practice, which in turn structures out social space in terms of sets of categorical assumptions via the process of making judgements based upon distinctions between those who have different sets of habitus . . . In some ways, people cut the cloth of their vision in relation to the social clothing that they already wear.25

Female identity, and here we can use George Simmel’s concern for the development of a subjective culture, is continually being reformulated, reconstituted with the aim of ‘self-improvement’ or what Simmel referred to as the acquisition of culture, which is the primary aim of the individual.26 There are many parallels 20 Angela McRobbie recognized that the production of positive images subvert the dominant masculine culture and that feminist readings may reveal an alternative discourse to the homogenous culture. See Angela McRobbie, ‘Settling Accounts with Subcultures’, in Culture, Ideology and Social Process, ed. Tony Bennett, Graham Martin, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott (London: Batsford, 1981).

21 Fiske, Television Culture, p. 230 22 Anna Gough-Yates, ‘“Sweet sell of sexcess”: the production of young women’s magazines and readerships in the 1990s’, in Ethics and Media Culture: Practices and Representations, ed. by David Berry (Oxford: Focal Press, 2000), p. 225.

23 Gough-Yates, ‘“Sweet sell of sexcess”’, p. 26.

24 Fiske, Television Culture, p. 113.

25 Carol Davis and Nick Raynor, ‘Reproducing consciousness: what is Indonesia?’, in Ethics and Media Culture: Practices and Representations, ed. by David Berry (Oxford: Focal Press, 2000), p. 92.

26 As Margaret Gallagher noted, female aspirations are grounded in the reality of female oppression and a real desire to break free from previous social relations: ‘In the Eastern countries the conventional female feminine image represents a genuine aspiration for a woman tired of the tractor driver image of woman as worker.’ Margaret Gallagher, ‘Velvet Revolutions, Social Upheavel and Women in European Media’, Women Empowering Communication: A resource book on women and the globalisation of the media, ed. by Margaret Gallagher and Lilia Quindoza-Santiago (London: World Association for Christian Communication, 1993), p. 117.

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here with the collapse of fascism in both Spain and Portugal in the mid-1970s, particularly the way in which young women responded to new-found freedoms and their immediate familial relationships, and to their perception of the Roman Catholic Church. Democracy opened up a schism between modern and traditional forms of social organization and morality. Images in female magazines were based on North Western European women. Unlike their grandmothers or mothers, young women now chose not to wear traditional dress with its oppressive black headscarf, black dress, black tights, and black shoes to church. Young women would now be seen wearing short colourful skirts with no tights at all. In Romania, this tension is already there, and the fear of western immorality and female sexual freedom will be a cause of concern to the ruling Church authorities, as the mother of all threats to male dominance.

Conclusion One question posed by Néstor García Canclini sums up the issues at stake here: ‘What has made popular cultures into a central theme for the study of power?’27 Part of the answer was the realization that, with the introduction of popular culture and the ability of individuals to consume at will, power itself has become dispersed, and that hegemony, control, and surveillance are undermined. Of course, when researchers refer to popular culture, there is always a social and cultural context to consider. In Latin America, one of the leading thinkers on popular culture, Jesús Martin-Barbero, has claimed, in a similar vein to Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature, that popular culture is counter-hegemonic, with the capacity to enthuse resistance to dominant forms and institutions and the ability to effectively transform culture.28 Concerning Latin America, Martin-Barbero argues that the ‘transnationalization of culture’ (the importation of cultural forms) does not necessarily result in passive consumption or the homogenization of culture, but rather that the people can consume and blend with existing forms to produce new and distinct forms, a sort of cultural recycling process.

This article has attempted to alert the reader to the need for further ethnographic and theoretical enquiry into elements of popular culture, and to scientifically assess its impact upon both young and older women, and its subsequent effect on cultural production and the transformation of society. Whatever the character of society that might develop in Romania, the magazine aspect of media production would be central both to co-ordinating and to shaping new cultural distinctions. In many respects, the changes that have occurred condition the process of Romanian cultural reinvention, which is essentially based on the fusion and struggle between traditional and modern forms. What John B. Thompson refers to as the ‘mediazation of culture’ is a contemporary process that introduces new empirical forms and ways of interaction in systems that exist alongside tradition.29 For our purposes, discourse 27 Néstor García Canclini, ‘Culture and Power: The state of research’, Media, Culture and Society, 10.4 (1988), 467–97.

28 Jésus Martin-Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations (London: Sage, 1993).

29 John B. Thompson, Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (London: Polity Press, 1994).

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and representation in Romania does not annihilate tradition, but disrupts and competes with traditional forms in the process of post-Communist development, producing ‘new traditions’ in the process whilst maintaining that struggle between traditional and modern forms.

During the magazine-reading process, teenagers automatically engage with a number of ideological struggles that compete for their ear. For identity to emerge and have some cultural meaning, these struggles will be negotiated and resolved, particularly the counter-positions of formal educational studies (with their emphasis on history and tradition) and the position of the Church against the disrupting character of popular culture. Pupils are constantly exposed to multiple representational images and discourses from teenage magazines and television, which force them to reconcile the apparent contradiction of their formal studies because the media disrupts and transcends tradition, creating new traditions. Both magazines in the process of mediation and formal studies, particularly the moral aspect within the educational establishment, are subject to and represent what Thompson calls ‘symbolic power’. Negotiating with both institutions’ often diverse messages depends on subjective positions, but the acceptance or rejection of messages nevertheless results in action and social activity, as Thompson states: symbolic power [. . .] stems from the activity of producing, transmitting and receiving meaningful symbolic forms. Symbolic activity is a fundamental feature of social life, on par with productive activity, the coordination of individuals, and coercion.

Individuals are constantly engaged in the activity of expressing themselves in symbolic forms and in interpreting the expressions of others; they are constantly engaged in communicating with one another and exchanging information and symbolic content.30

The content and representational forms are affecting consumerism by producing, or at least offering, new forms of symbolic power which are a direct challenge to traditional authority. In a society where women have been both subservient not only to men but also to the will of the state, perhaps the ultimate benefit of the development of popular cultural forms in Romania (despite some of the obvious negative aspects lying behind the objectives of production) is their ability to finally confront one of the oldest traditions in Romanian history, the tradition of conformity to a greater authority. Even though a new conformity to advertisers’ whims may have arisen during the production and consumption process, at least a contradictory moment has developed to provide women with the freedom or potential to reflexively interpret data at will. The social and cultural implications of these changes in development are extremely wide-ranging, as women now have the potential to shape their identity and condition their lifestyle through freedom of choice.

30

Thompson, Media and Modernity, p. 16.

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Demonization and Defence of the Serbs: Balkanist Discourses During the Break-Up of Yugoslavia Tom Jackson School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London The violent destruction of Yugoslavia, at a time when most post-Communist societies were embarking on a process of democratization, contributed to the idea that the Balkans do not share the same culture, beliefs, history, or religion as people in the west. Many foreign commentators employed images and historical analogies that underlined a notion of Balkan separateness, backwardness, and barbarity — if not in opposition, then clearly not equal to, the level of civilization in the West. This essay, using the burgeoning body of ‘Balkanist’ theory, shall examine, the demonization of the Serbs and the demonization of commentators, both in Serbia and the West, who defended the Serbs. Discussions of ‘Balkanism’, feed into the construction of an image of Balkan lands and their inhabitants, and become important to the study of both the negative and positive portrayal of the most disparaged group; the Serbs.

Articles about the Balkans often lead the reader to believe that the inhabitants of this region do not share the same culture, beliefs, history, or religion as those in the rest of Europe. Otherwise, how could murder, ‘ethnic cleansing’, and genocide be taking place at the end of the twentieth century in a continent that had, decades previously, decided to integrate its states in political and economic union in order to avoid a repeat of the two World Wars? It is certainly not a new idea that Western Europe regards itself as civilized and the Balkans as semi-civilized. During the conflicts of the 1990s, some commentators made judgements using the culture, history, and religion of each Yugoslav ethnic group in order to determine which was closer to European civilization, and therefore which side should be supported.

The Serbian nation’s vilification in the eyes of the world was facilitated by a well-documented culture of defiance. Some of Serbia’s most popular and respected works of literature, such as Njegoš’s The Mountain Wreath, contain images of violence, murder, and genocide. Serbia’s most famous mythic heroes combine such attributes as cruelty, cunning, massive strength, and bravery. Its politics have been chaotic and raucous, notably with the defenestration of the royal couple at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Serbs have been described as paranoid and as having a collective ‘martyr complex’ over events that occurred in the distant past.

In the 1990s, the operations of the Yugoslav army (functionally controlled by the Serbs) were particularly violent in the Croatian cities of Vukovar and Osijek. In © School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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Bosnia, the Serbian population was aided by the government in Belgrade during its siege of Sarajevo and its attempts to carve out a separate Serbian republic. Finally, in Kosovo, the appearance of mass expulsions of ethnic Albanians sent a message to the world that the Serbs were the aggressors.

This article aims to address the method and reasoning behind both the negative and the positive portrayals of the most demonized nation in recent times: the Serbs.

I shall examine the discourse on the Serbs, and to a lesser extent on other former Yugoslav ethnic groups, during the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s proceeding from the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. The focus will not be primarily on the output of academics, but instead on that of prominent members of the cultural communities in France and Britain whose writing reached a wider audience and influenced general public opinion. Nevertheless, this essay will include references from academic studies on the Balkans as well as from popular literature and media. In the section on France, the majority of discourses come from well-respected and high-profile intellectuals who have achieved the same status as celebrities and who, probably more so than in any other society in Europe, are given a public platform, as intellectuals, to air their opinions. However, the label ‘intellectual’ does not necessarily confer the same respect in Britain as in France. In this case, a number of the most vociferous and enthusiastic contributors to the debate will be observed. In addition, failure to include the contribution of Austrian playwright Peter Handke would be a serious oversight in any discussion of the demonization of the Serbs, and equally, the demonization of those who defended the Serbs. In many ways, this paper is a study of what Edward Said has described as ‘short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury’, which he was trying to replace with a ‘longer sequence of thought and analysis’ in his book Orientalism.1 Indeed, some of the examples used here represent these types of narrative: angry, controversial, and unevaluated. But these discourses cannot be brushed aside because of these characteristics, due to their importance in shaping opinion and influencing political debate.

We should not neglect the role of the Serbian people in influencing foreign perceptions. At the same time as the break-up of Yugoslavia, the civilian urban population within Serbia, especially the youth, were appealing to Europe to acknowledge their struggle against the Miloševica regime, notably during the 1996 and 1997 demonstrations. Their carnival-like protests and self-conscious references to Western culture partially restored the battered image of the Serbs, only to be reversed when NATO began its bombardment of the country in 1999. Then, instead of resisting as citizens demanding Western-style democracy, the protesters selfconsciously took to the streets as Serbs, united by the powerful sense of victimhood that NATO’s attacks had inspired. The subsequent demonstrations, as high-spirited as the ones before, confused foreign observers who viewed them either with admiration or with disdain. Indeed, as we shall see, the Serbs often defended themselves using the same ‘Balkanist’ images as their detractors in the West.

In this essay, because the Balkans have not been described in direct opposition to the West, the theoretical framework does not focus on Edward Said’s analysis.

1

Edward Said, ‘A Window on the World’, Guardian (London), 2 August 2003.

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Instead, I shall concentrate on the burgeoning body of work relating to ‘Balkanism’, the West’s internal division into hierarchical grades of civilization. The meaning and usage of the term ‘Balkans’ itself appears to ebb and flow from one generation to another, as shown by the virtual disappearance of the term during the Communist era when it was subsumed within the division of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ Europe. Furthermore, the borders of the Balkans are confused by the reluctance of certain states to be grouped within a negatively perceived region believed by some to be on the edge, both geopolitically and spiritually, of Europe. To use the term ‘Balkanism’ and ‘Balkanization’ today implies a process of fractionalization, violent destruction, and barbarism.

Within the context of this paper, discussions of the ‘other’, ‘Orientalism’, and ‘Balkanism’ feed into the construction of an image of Balkan lands and their inhabitants, and become important to the study of the representation of Serbs from the 1990s onwards. I shall argue that the demonization process was closely related to ‘Balkanist’ theory. In response to calls that ‘something must be done’, the process was contributed to by the narratives included below. Many of the major assessments of the conflict eschewed post-modernist neutrality in favour of attributing responsibility to particular groups. Hence, we need to isolate the narratives of certain commentators and judge them in relation to the events they consider important and what they neglect to include.

‘Balkanism’ Academic output on the Balkans is not equal to the amount produced on the ‘Orient’. Quite simply, the majority of references to the Balkans exist in popular novels and travelogues written by journalists and Balkan ‘experts’, rather than in academic texts. The Balkans’ ambiguous geographical, cultural, and conceptual position meant that the West’s intellectual engagement with the Balkans was closer to Edward Said’s ‘colonialism of the mind’ rather than to direct colonial contact as with Asian lands. Todorova has argued that ‘Orientalism’ does not equal ‘Balkanism’, since the former concerns ‘imputed opposition’ and the latter ‘imputed ambiguity’.2 Similarly, Bakica-Hayden argues that due to its concrete geographical existence — however flexible its borders — Balkanism is not the same as ‘Orientalism’ because the ‘perception of the orient is relative depending on time and space.’3 To understand the conception of the ‘other’, we can look at the conventional divisions of Europe in the last two hundred years. As Samuel Huntingdon believes, Europe can be divided in two, and he uses the fifteenth-century dividing line between western Christianity and eastern Orthodoxy. In the Balkans this line corresponds with the boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. In the former Yugoslavia therefore, Croatia and Slovenia are culturally allied to the West.

In Serbia, the province of Vojvodina is also north of the civilization dividing line.

The peoples to the west and north of the line share a common history that includes

2

Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 17 Milica Bakica-Hayden, ‘Nesting Orientalisms: the Case of the Former Yugoslavia’, Slavic Review 54.4 (1995), 917–35, p. 921.

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landmarks in Western cultural development: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. The ‘velvet curtain of culture’ dividing Europe differentiates between the generally more prosperous and integrated, and those to the south and east who have had difficulties developing stable political systems.4 In the eighteenth century, when Larry Wolff argues that the idea of ‘Eastern’ Europe was invented, backwardness was not measured necessarily in economic terms but rather by the ambiguous location of the ‘East’ and its relation to Europe ‘proper’. As an indisputable part of the European continent, it was impossible to label Eastern Europe as the antithesis of civilization, which led to the development of a scale whose poles contrasted barbarism and civilization. As Wolff has said; ‘One might describe the invention of Eastern Europe as an intellectual project of demi orientalization.’5 In an age of expanding travel, the men and women of the Enlightenment increasingly visited and studied the lands of Eastern Europe, and combined observation with mythology to give the ‘half-wild’, ‘half-civilized’ image that colours descriptions of non-Western Europe to this day.6 The Balkan motifs adopted by British authors from the nineteenth century onward suggested a violent, unstable region made up of various indistinguishable peoples — contradicted by their insistence upon their own uniqueness. Ironically, this trend unwittingly underlined the similarities between them for Western commentators.7 Agatha Christie’s ‘Herzoslovakia’ is a composite Balkan state where the national pastime is ‘assassinating kings and having revolutions’.8 Christie and other authors were reflecting and perpetuating the view that the Balkan states could be lumped together because of their impenetrably confusing history and politics.9 For the West, the location of the Balkans has helped to establish them as the European ‘other’.

Analyses of the Balkans have fought with defining the essences of European peoples having lived for centuries, more or less, in the ‘Orient’. According to Larry Wolff, ‘it was Eastern Europe’s ambiguous location, within Europe but not fully European, that called for such notions as backwardness and development to mediate between poles of civilization and barbarism.’10 The theme of not quite belonging is often recited in the analogy of the bridge, especially in Bosnia, itself the setting of a number of famous bridges playing the role of muse for discussions of religious heterogeneity, notably in the work of Ivo Andrica. Todorova also accuses the bridge analogy of invoking labels such as ‘semi-developed’, ‘semi-colonial’, ‘semicivilized’, and ‘semi-oriental’.11 Where the West believes itself to be the promoter of civilization, the perception was that ‘eastern’ administrations stunted the normal 4

Samuel Huntingdon, ‘Clash of Civilisations’, Foreign Affairs, 72.3 (1993), 26 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: the Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 13.

6 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, p. 357.

7 K. Fleming, ‘Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography’, American Historical Review, 105.4 (2000), 1219.

8 Agatha Christie, The Secret of Chimneys (London: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 105.

9 Fleming, ‘Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography’, p. 1219.

10 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, p. 9.

11 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 16.

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growth of Christian societies. In the same way, Serbs point to their monasteries and argue that they illustrate the stage of art and culture they had reached — on a par with the rest of Europe. Serbian myths say that Serbs chose to build churches, resplendent with frescoes depicting Serbs eating with knives and forks, rather than build an army capable of defeating the invading Turkish army. A common assertion is that the Serbs ‘would have produced an even greater artistic heritage than the Italians, were it not for the Turks.’12 The label ‘Balkan’ has become part of political rhetoric: ‘Balkan mentality’, ‘Balkan primitivism’, ‘Balkanization’.13 These terms carry such negative connotations that Balkan countries have tried to draw themselves into the realm of the West’s moral universe. Tony Blair attempted to do the same in March 1999 when he spoke of Kosovo being in Europe, simultaneously reminding the world that the First World War started in nearby Sarajevo.14 But these examples help to perpetuate the ‘Balkanist’ tradition of representing the region as violent. Conversely, some journalists were cynical about the attempts being made by Croatia and Slovenia to promote themselves as Western: ‘The Croats have tried to reinvent themselves.

They’ve traded Tudjman for the Teletubbies [. . .]; they’ve swapped their Ustase past for a European future.[. . .] Gone are fists and the neo-fascist nostalgia with its flags and badges. Gone are the war cries. Gone too are the 165,000 Krajina Serbs.’15 Croatia, having been criticized for the superficiality of its nascent democracy, realized the need to transform itself. Christopher Hope, on returning to Zagreb in 2001 after a gap of ten years, remarked that there were ‘[n]o more marching bands, no more the nationalist tat they used to flog. Everyone is feeling a lot better, they have mobile phones, and all the right brands are in all the shopping centres. Narrow your eyes and you might be — in Europe.’16 Internal and external Balkan image formation Balkan discourse was most frequently found in the writings of Western travellers from the nineteenth century onwards. The nature of the literature meant that the discipline remained, somewhat aptly, as semi-intellectualized as the Balkans appeared to be ‘semi-civilized’. The trend of Balkan travel writing in journalistic or literary form resurfaced during the 1990s, as journalists and ‘Balkan experts’ retraced their predecessors’ steps. Those who study the process of image formation devote a great deal of their work to analysing the literature of these earlier writers because, although most of their works might have been forgotten in the interim, the re-emergence of the ‘Balkans’ has led journalists and commentators to search them out for readable and quotable descriptions of Balkan life. As a result, stereotypes derived from popular literature permeate contemporary discussions of the Balkans.17 12

Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: a Journey through History (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993), p. 32.

Milica Bakica-Hayden and Robert M. Hayden, ‘Oriental Variations on the Theme “Balkan”: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics’, Slavic Review 51.1 (1992), 1–15 (p. 3).

14 ‘“It will be tough” warns Blair’, Guardian (London), 26 March 1999.

15 Christopher Hope, ‘This is the Balkans. No-one is Nice’, Guardian (London), 26 June 2001.

16 Hope, ‘This is the Balkans. No-one is Nice’.

17 Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: the Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 203.

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From the nineteenth century onwards, Europe was host to an increasing number of British travellers and writers whose sense of adventure gradually took them further and further east. The profile of women venturing to the Balkans became something of a joke, since they were adopting the causes of small countries. For these women, bourgeois Western Europe was devoid of romance, whereas the Balkans offered an escape from the ‘intrusion of civilised monotony’.18 Pre-industrialism, economic backwardness, and a lack of sophistication appear as recurrent motifs in the literature of writers interested in the Balkans, perhaps in reaction to their distaste for the apolaustic societies of the West. They tended to avoid Balkan cities as much as possible, focussing on village life as the true reflection of society: ‘while the cities were visited, their inhabitants were looked down upon or patronised in their attempts to be European.’19 Furthermore, as a region of peasants, the spirit of the nation was assumed to reside within rural peasant communities. Western commentators had a tendency to patronize urban Balkan populations because they had lost their connection to folk culture and the virtues embodied in a life shaped by proximity to nature.20 These women’s published works, such as Rebecca West’s Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Edith Durham’s High Albania, are still recommended as valuable resources in understanding Balkan history and society, and their influence still colours contemporary perceptions. Durham’s The Burden of the Balkans elicits ‘Balkan’ aphorisms such as ‘one must either like or hate’, and, in reply to a question to an Albanian as to why he hates the Serbs, ‘because [. . .] we are born like that. It is in our blood.’21 Equally, as we shall see later, the criticisms West and Durham directed against each other’s work are startlingly reminiscent of present-day squabbles between journalists and intellectuals over (mis)understanding the Balkan conflicts.

In the discourse on ‘Orientalism’, eastern populations are shown to be without the capacity for logical thought. Serbs accept that their feelings and emotions toward certain subjects, notably Kosovo, are illogical. While a Serb would admit having no interest in visiting the province, he would swear to die to keep it Serbian.

To the question ‘why is Kosovo important to you?’ a Serb answered: ‘It is not rational. It is not logical. It just is. Every man in Serbia will die for Kosovo.’22 A Serbian joke describes two Serbs on the moon: one shoots the other and declares territorial rights, because wherever there is a Serbian grave, the land automatically becomes Serbian. Therefore, irrationality becomes part of the Serbian spirit of resistance, not only in the Western perception, but also among Serbs themselves.

The cultural anthropologist Mattijs van de Port, describing the difficulties anthropologists face in attempting to ‘understand’ a people, concluded that the Serbs’ own awareness that their society contained ‘conceptual and emotional frames of reference’ that were alien to outsiders and fostered the belief that it ‘takes a Serb to 18

H. H. Munro (Saki), quoted in Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania, p. 43.

Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania, p. 168.

20 John Allcock, ‘Constructing the Balkans’, in Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Women Travelling in the Balkans, ed. by John Allcock and Antonia Young (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 218–36 (p. 227).

21 M. E. Durham, The Burden of the Balkans (London: Nelson, 1905), pp. 3–9.

22 Linda Grant, ‘Exiles in the Enemy Camp’, Guardian (London), 8 May 1999.

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know a Serb.’23 Highlighting incomprehensibility may also be a method of dealing with a traumatic history. It would help to assuage feelings of guilt or to pre-empt criticism if one were to express a lack of understanding of one’s own society, as many Serbs did. The Serbian psychotherapist Zoran Milivojevica described the importance of resistance and irrationality to Serbian self-image in the newspaper Danas: When you look at our national history we see that it is full of ‘no’— from ‘no’ to the Turkish empire, to ‘no’ to Austria-Hungary, to ‘no’ to Hitler and Stalin, to Europe, to the NATO pact [. . .]. Probably this is not the last such ‘no’. But foreigners don’t understand this. They seek rationality.24

Serbia’s historical relationship to Europe is a complex, often contradictory, amalgamation of constantly evolving myth and political reality. Myth is often structured around the perceived amorality of the West. Nationalist religious and political leaders routinely suggest the superiority of an almost chivalric spirituality that is in the process of dilution through contact with the West. Serbs are European, but not in the decadent and corrupt manner of Western societies. Instead, Serbs, ‘sometimes together with other Slavs, Orthodox peoples, who have not been caught up in the degeneration of Europe, should be the guardian of authentic Europeanness.’25 As part of a process of what Bakica-Hayden calls ‘nesting orientalisms’, endeavours to uncover ‘true identities’ were undertaken by the peoples of the former Yugoslavia by looking into their pre-Yugoslav selves. Geographically western Slovenia and Croatia sought to stress their historical and cultural connection with Europe, noting their Catholicism and their participation in Central European cultural life. However, they often failed to consider the manner of their participation whether as equal actors or not.26 Contemporary Croatian and Slovenian identity is not based on their past subjugation to the Habsburg Empire, but on their shared culture with Central Europe and their spiritual dissonance from their erstwhile Serbian, Muslim and Macedonian brothers in the rest of Yugoslavia.

Judging the Serbs Initially, as Yugoslavia broke apart, the West adopted a position of neutrality, refusing to identify an aggressor in the conflict. However, as evidence of Serbian atrocities accumulated, the West’s neutral position became increasingly untenable.

The shelling of the marketplace in Sarajevo, and the infamous ITN ‘concentration camp’ pictures at Trnopolje, became the ‘proof’ that the Serbs were the new Nazis.

In Britain, Serbs were suspected of murdering a British newsreader and planting a nail bomb in a London pub.27 Serbian atrocities were labelled ‘genocidal’, a new

23

Mattijs van de Port, ‘It Takes a Serb to Know a Serb’, Critique of Anthropology, 19.1 (1999), 26.

Danas, 5 January 2000, cited in Lenard J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bosom: the Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosh evica (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), p. 285.

25 Ivan Ch olovica, The Politics of Symbol in Serbia: Essays in Political Anthropology (London: Hurst, 2000), p. 40.

26 Bakica-Hayden, ‘Nesting Orientalisms’, p. 924.

27 ‘Exiles in the enemy camp’, Guardian (London), 8 May 1999.

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Holocaust arousing fears that the world was witnessing a repeat of Nazi crimes, and, to their horror, in Europe.

Television, like other media, explained the Yugoslav wars either as an incomprehensible ‘quagmire’ of ancient hatreds or as the bellicose behaviour of an uncompromising Serbian regime fighting to re-establish a medieval empire. In Britain, only five per cent of the public claimed to understand ‘very well’ the events in Bosnia by 1996.28 Programme-makers attempted to trace the origins of the conflicts by analysing the historical relationships between the warring factions. This led many observers to conclude that the world was witnessing the culmination of one thousand years of ethnic hatred. The British television station Channel 4 broadcast a series of programmes under the title of Bloody Bosnia in August 1993. Although a laudable attempt to present Bosnia in a number of different angles, it was criticized for exhibiting anti-Serb bias and contributing to the media’s ‘wanton demonization of the Serbs’ by failing to mention the Croatian detention camps.29 Elsewhere, the media used images to suggest Serbian fascination with ancient beliefs, superstition, and simplicity. One such example was a picture of Serbian peasants kissing the coffin containing the remains of Prince Lazar, a medieval Serbian ruler.

Mick Hume argued that the ‘nazification’ of the Serbs was partly a result of journalists’ desires to conduct a ‘foreign crusade’ in an era of Western ‘moral vacuum’.30 However, Hume’s view contradicted Cushman and Meštrovica’s assessment of ‘post-modern’ intellectuals who insisted on moral equivocation. Once NATO had begun its bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, the tide of Albanian refugees from the province of Kosovo overshadowed atrocities being committed against Serbs. The murder of Serb farmers in Kosovo in July 1999 by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was seen ‘as a mere bloody drop in the ocean when set against the Albanian mass graves.’31 Many authors and journalists attempted to balance their admiration for the Serbs with disgust at atrocities committed in their name. On research visits looking for the ‘real’ Serbia, they represented contemporary versions of what Rebecca West called ‘humanitarian’ travellers who ‘constantly went out to the Balkan peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom’.32 In A Barrel of Stones: In Search of Serbia, Peter Morgan notes that his time spent in large Serbian urban centres is always with the educated members of the Serbian ‘opposition’ — musicians, journalists, and artists.

Together they ridiculed the nationalism of Miloševica’s rhetoric and other aspects of modern life such as ‘turbofolk’ music, but at the same time he felt that their discourses were haughty and prevented them from engaging with aspects of 28 Robert J. Wybrow, ‘British Attitudes toward the Bosnia Situation’, in International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis, ed. by Richard Sobel and Eric Shiraev (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 55.

29 Ian Brough-Williams, ‘War without End?’ in Bosnia by Television, ed. by James Gow, Richard Paterson, and Alison Preston (London: British Film Institute, 1996), p. 23.

30 Mick Hume, ‘Nazifying the Serbs, from Bosnia to Kosovo’, in Degraded Capability, ed. by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 78.

31 ‘The Serbs are Victims Too’, Guardian (London), 28 July 1999.

32 Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: the Record of a Journey through Yugoslavia in 1937 (London: Macmillan, 1942), p. 22.

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‘everyday’ Serbian existence.33 This recurrent theme that urban educated people are the exceptions to the true nature of Serbia feeds into the ‘Balkanist’ discourse of Bakica-Hayden’s ‘nesting orientalisms’. While no one in the region would describe themselves as ‘Oriental’, the Habsburg-dominated people (namely in Slovenia, Croatia, and Vojvodina) would regard the Ottoman-dominated Christians as ‘other’, while the latter would repeat the process with the Muslims and Turks.34 Thus, our perception of real Serbs is complicated by people we like, because to be ‘Serb’ is to be backward, barbaric, and nationalistic.

The paradox of Serbian resistance and identity It is difficult to gauge the extent to which people, consciously or otherwise, live up to stereotypical behaviour when confronted with other nationalities. When Morgan described his Serb colleagues’ amusement at his English politeness, we cannot tell how much of this is exaggerated behaviour and over-compensation for his company. Similarly, how much do the Serbs exaggerate ‘Balkan’ behavioural traits for a Western audience when they come into contact with journalists? A Serb living in London, Dejan Lukica, was described in an interview as being ‘not good news for the West,’ because he was born in ‘the melting pot of Sarajevo, he grew up with Muslim friends, married a Croat, studied oriental languages at university and became a TV newsreader and foreign correspondent.’35 Presumably, the West was to fear this man since his internationalism, his ‘Europeanness’, gave credence to his words. However, Lukica spoke of the Serbian culture of resistance, the wartime record of the Croats, and the West’s misinterpretation of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzhica. Ultimately, through Lukica’s denial of violence against Kosovan Albanians, his pronouncements were simply portrayed as the ramblings of another irrational nationalist Serb. In another interview, Branka Katica, a young Serbian actress who had distributed copies of Harold Pinter’s anti-NATO Guardian article outside a London film studio, asked: ‘When will they indict Tony Blair and Bill Clinton?’ Katica spoke of her opposition to Miloševica and NATO and of the suffering inflicted on her parents in Belgrade. The ‘luminous’ actress is characteristic of the type of Serb the West has trouble understanding. Katica mixed anti-Miloševica rhetoric with opposition to the destruction of Serbia because ‘at the end of the millennium NATO is bombing Belgrade. Yugoslavia was poor before, now it will become a medieval country.’36 The Serbs came on to the streets in two contrasting protest movements. In 1996– 97, they directed their anger at the regime, whereas, in 1999, NATO was at the receiving end of Serbian fury. The demonstrators directed their protests not only at the regime but also at the outside world. Many of the banners were in English, and referred humorously to Western culture: ‘Slo be or Slo not to be, that is the question!’, ‘Students against the machine.’37 Jansen has shown that the difference 33 34 35 36 37

Peter Morgan, A Barrel of Stones: in Search of Serbia (Aberystwyth: Planet, 1997), p. 103.

Bakica-Hayden, ‘Nesting Orientalisms’, p. 921.

Dejan Lukica, ‘You are Going to Lose This War’, Guardian (London), 3 April 1999.

Mark Tran, ‘Force of Nature’, Guardian (London), 5 July 1999.

Ch olovica, The Politics of Symbol in Serbia, p. 300.

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between the 1996–97 demonstrations and those in 1999 was the contrast between solidarity as citizens and as Serbs. Both the protests against the regime and those against NATO were organized and wittily articulated in order to highlight the disparity between educated Serbs and those who were leading and attacking them.

Urban populations counterposed their tastes, education, and beliefs with the ‘primitivism’ of the peasants (also figuratively used to depict members of the regime) in their rural, conformist, and backward lives.38 Serbs reflect these imposed stereotypes on to themselves. The result is a ‘self-conscious Balkan “Orientalist” counter-dialogue constructed around imposed and derogatory intended labels of unruliness.’39 Thus, when a NATO stealth bomber came down in Serbia, graffiti appeared asking: ‘How would a Serb know what stealth technology is?’ Serbian humour is aimed at the Serbs themselves, subverting national representations as a way of coping in 1990s sanction-hit pariah Serbia.

The bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 cemented a belief in Serbian ‘otherness’ that only a Serb could understand. Commentators could not comprehend the disparities between the anti-regime protests and the anti-NATO demonstrations that took place in 1996–97 and 1999 respectively. The former suggested a desire for inclusion in Western ‘civilization’, whereas the latter was perceived as a nationwide rejection of the West. In order to cope with their split identities, some Serbs drew attention to their Europeanness by subverting advertising campaigns for Western goods. For instance, a car advert featured one of the bombed bridges in Novi Sad with the tag-line ‘The ride of your life’. Similarly, taped-up windows replaced the usual computer software content of a Microsoft campaign. The images were distributed via the Internet during the bombardment because ‘big brands are a uniting force. We all use them . . . It was about using the so-called unreality of advertising to communicate the reality of our situation.’40 By using the West’s most powerful images, the Serbs wanted to illustrate their connection and relationship to the societies that were bombing them.

Stef Jansen has argued that Kosovo was actually of little relevance during the NATO protests, but that, rather, Western bombardment evoked a set of emotions which combined to create Serbian identity. The West helped to venerate Miloševica into a contemporary Tito figurehead who reminded the Serbs of Yugoslavia’s stand against Stalin in 1948.41 In both sets of street protests, the demonstrators were united by ‘acts of defiance which fed into a common cause and created a partial sense of shared meaning’, all part of the triad that constitutes Serbian identity: ‘victim, underdog and rebel.’42 Humour, reinforcing the image of a likeable yet raffish people, often used historical motifs emphasizing the themes of victimhood and repression. Jansen cites a banner carried at the time of an anti-Miloševica rally in 1997 that read: ‘Those were good times under the Turks’.43 It was important for the 38 Stef Jansen, ‘Victims, Underdogs and Rebels: Discursive Practices of Resistance in Serbian Protest’, Critique of Anthropology, 20.4 (2000), 412.

39 Jansen, ‘Victims, Underdogs and Rebels’, p. 410.

40 Meg Carter, ‘A Window on the War’s Reality’, Independent (London), 1 August 2000.

41 Fiachra Gibbons, ‘He duels, he brawls, he helps cows to give birth . . . and he makes films’, Guardian (London), 23 April 1999.

42 Jansen, ‘Victims, Underdogs and Rebels’, p. 397.

43 Jansen, ‘Victims, Underdogs and Rebels’, p. 402.

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Serbian protesters to send the message to the world through pictures of their non-violent mass revolt, but they were disappointed by the initially delayed interest from the foreign media. At that stage, placards appeared expressing anger at Europe’s indifference: ‘Europe sleeps, the media are silent, Serbia awakes . . . God help us!’ Finally, once the protests were noticed by the world’s media, the demonstrators changed tactics and communicated their delight thus: ‘The student protest; the joy of Europe’.44 The French debate French intellectuals have a long and celebrated history of making important contributions to political debate; from Emile Zola, to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s call for intervention in Bosnia. Predictably, therefore, the French government’s position on Yugoslavia was the subject of furious debate among France’s quasi-celebrity intelligentsia. Gauging public opinion often involves studying the media and public surveys, but, in France, the contributions of intellectuals, occupying such an important position in French cultural life and self-image, are analysed here because their message reached such a wide audience. It is important to realize that behind much of the debate on French involvement in Western intervention, especially in Kosovo, was the perennial angst over American domination in international affairs.

In November 1991, French president Mitterrand reminded the public that ‘Croatia was allied with Nazi Germany, but Serbia wasn’t [. . .]. I do not believe that Serbia is making war to conquer Croatia but rather to alter its borders with Croatia and to gain direct control or indirect control of Serbian minorities residing in Croatia.’45 The President’s remarks defended France’s position of not designating an aggressor at that time, but they angered a number of intellectuals who were disturbed at the anti-Croat tone.

A number of academics and intellectuals debated the actions of the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims during the Second World War, thereby perpetuating the portrayal of the Yugoslav conflicts as a continuation of a war fought fifty to sixty years earlier.

Alain Finkielkraut came to the Croats’ defence, arguing that there were more Croat resistance fighters at the end of the Second World War than there were in France. At the heart of Mitterrand’s remarks, Finkielkraut argued, was the suggestion that Serbian aggression was legitimate since the Croats were hereditary racists.46 Arguably exhibiting the same tendencies himself, Finkielkraut was repeatedly critical of those who used selective readings of Yugoslavia’s history in order to justify their interpretation of the situation.47 Likewise, another high-profile intellectual took up the cause of the besieged city of Sarajevo. Taking a lead from André Malraux, who during the Spanish Civil War made a pro-Republican film, L’Espoir, Bernard-Henri Lévy went to Bosnia in 1993 to film Bosna!, a documentary of the suffering of Sarajevo during the siege.

Ch olovica, The Politics of Symbol in Serbia, p. 300.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 November 1991.

46 ‘The President Gives a History Lesson’, Nouvel Observateur, 12 December 1991.

47 Richard Golsan, ‘Introduction’, in Alain Finkielkraut, Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writing (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. xxvi.

44 45

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Lévy and Finkielkraut both criticised the work of Serbian film director Emir Kusturica and his Palme d’Or award-winning film Underground. In reply to Finkielkraut’s attacks in the French press, Kusturica wrote a humorous parody of Serbian stereotypes in which he proposed a plan for the Serbian annexation of Normandy (where the director lives) through such means as researching whether any Serbs are buried in village churchyards (a well-known Serb joke), and making his daughter place photos of Miloševica in her classmates’ bags.48 Kusturica not only played with Serbian and outsiders’ perceptions, but also with ‘Balkanist’ themes of the relativism of civilization, in pointing out that not all Serbs are nationalist, ‘fascist’, or supporters of Miloševica. He viewed the French attacks on Underground as self-consciously ‘humanistic’ attempts to put the director on trial in the fear that their country was being ‘Balkanized’ by this nationalist Slav.

Leading the French attack on NATO and the West was Régis Debray, who disputed that the war would destroy Miloševica’s repressive apparatus and reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Debray, in his ‘A traveller’s letter to the President of the Republic’, made specific reference to the negative portrayal of Serbs in the media and the plight of the expelled Serbs from Croatia. While not defending Miloševica’s regime, Debray rejected the inaccurate and misleading terminology and analogy used: ‘[. . .] and suppose that an isolated and poor country with ten million inhabitants [. . .] can be compared with conquering, over-equipped Hitler’s Germany.’49 Debray sought to illustrate the hypocrisy of a Western position that used false analogies with the past. In casting the Albanians of Kosovo as the new persecuted Jews of Europe, a clumsy, but powerful, invocation was used. Instead, in order to highlight the inefficacy of such moves, Debray proposed a more apt comparison with French colonial rule in Algeria. ‘A traveller’s letter . . .’ ends with an antiAmerican flourish echoing de Gaulle’s resentment at America’s global dominance.

Debray is a self-confessed anti-American in the Gaullist mould, whose rebuttals of NATO’s media reports prompted Lévy to respond that ‘[s]uch rabid AntiAmericanism can lead anywhere, including to concealed support for Slobodan Miloševica. Tough luck for the facts, and tough luck for 900,000 refugees.’50 Peter Handke The Austrian-German playwright Peter Handke caused a storm of protest with his book A Journey to the Rivers, describing a trip to Serbia while the war in Bosnia was raging. Upon publication, Handke immediately became, like Serbia, a pariah in the media and among his contemporaries. In America, the writer Susan Sontag vowed that Handke’s work would never again be performed in New York. In France, Alain Finkelkraut called Handke an ‘ideological monster’, and even the actress Marie Colbin wrote an open letter accusing the playwright of violent behaviour, of vanity, and of being a supporter of Balkan fascism. In response to Handke’s support for Serbia during the NATO bombing, British author Salman Rushdie nominated Handke for the ‘International Dunderhead 1999’ award.

48 49 50

L’imposture Kusturica’, Le Monde, 2 June 1995.

Régis Debray, ‘A Traveller’s Letter to the President of the Republic’, Le Monde, 13 May 1999.

Jon Henley, ‘Deray’s betrayal provokes Régiside’, Guardian (London), 15 May 1999.

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Handke directed his anger and distrust at media war reporting and at the general vilification of the Serbs. While most observers of the Yugoslav wars would agree that, to an extent, the media’s division between aggressor and aggressed, the victims and the guilty, was simplistic, most found it hard to stomach Handke’s romanticization of ‘primeval’ Serbia under sanctions. Of petrol siphoning, Handke writes; ‘I could not argue against my wishful thought that this kind of refuelling might long continue.’51 Handke’s description of Serbian markets suggests a bucolic nation living in a land of plenty, never happier than when in the process of buying and selling ‘soup chickens as big as turkeys’, ‘massive forest-dark honey pots’, and ‘story-book-fat river fish’.52 Equally controversial was Handke’s questioning of Serb culpability in the shelling of a Sarajevo marketplace and the bombing of Dubrovnik.

Handke was also guilty of using the hysterical language of historical analogy, such as when he accused NATO of creating a new Auschwitz: ‘In those days it was gas chambers and shooting squads, today it is computerized killers from 15,000 feet.’53 Handke examined his own, as well as others’, perceptions of media reportage. In describing a photo of victorious Slovene ‘freedom fighters’ published at the time of the Slovenian victory over the Yugoslav army, Handke expresses his own sorrow at the deaths of seventy army soldiers at these men’s hands, whilst acknowledging that his emotions are dependent on media manipulation.54 Handke also shares other commentators’ distaste for historical analogy. On seeing graffiti comparing the destruction of the Croatian city of Vukovar to the destruction of Stalingrad in the Second World War, Handke is initially impressed by the ‘combination of artistic and political action’, but he later comes to realize that equating the two cities’ experiences is inappropriate.55 Handke’s opposition to this move is motivated by his anger at the Croatian government’s downgrading of the Serbs’ status within the newly independent state to that of a minority. And while Handke purportedly ridicules the arguments about who started the war, it is clear that he sympathized with the Krajina Serbs when they took up arms.

In addition, Handke talks about the use of cliché in descriptions of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzh ica that made him want to read his ‘mediocre’ poetry.

Similarly, after hearing about the ‘chauvinist’ Serbian turbofolk singer and widow of Zh eljko Razhnatovica-Arkan — Ceca — he wanted to hear her songs. Media defamation elicits a craving to hear and see for himself the cultural products of a demonized nation. Handke’s greatest anger is directed at the media in France and Germany, ostensibly since Le Monde, Libération, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among others, were most vociferous in their attacks on the Serbs and those who defended them. ‘My work is of a different sort. To record the evil facts, that’s good.

But something else is needed for a peace, something not less important than the facts.’56 51

Peter Handke, A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia (New York, 1997), p. 52.

Handke, A Journey to the Rivers, p. 40.

53 Bernd Reinhardt, ‘The Austrian Writer Peter Handke, European Public Opinion and the War in Yugoslavia’, <http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/hand-all_prn.shtml> [accessed 16 June 2003] 54 Handke, A Journey to the Rivers, p. 14.

55 Handke, A Journey to the Rivers, p. 15.

56 Handke, A Journey to the Rivers, p. 82.

52

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Handke shared the Serbian self-image of the suffering nation: ‘There is not a people in Europe in this century [that] has had to endure what the Serbs have had to put up with for five or more years, eight years.’57 It is not difficult to understand why such comments would antagonize people used to seeing daily reports of Serb atrocities against Croats, Muslims, and Albanians. Whenever media articles or academic books are published on the Serbs and Serbian history, the same characteristics are guaranteed to be mentioned. Pro-Serb and anti-Serb factions use the same aspects of Serbian self-imagery, but they diverge in the way the history and Serbian characteristics are used. Handke differs from other writers in his repetition of Serbs as perpetual victims. On the other hand, the media started to dispute the myth of Serbian resistance, notably under the Turks and during the Second World War. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia brought descriptions of Serbs having a bunker mentality toward Kosovo, such that they would never surrender and would die for the cause.

Britain Noam Chomsky declared that the Serbs were being submitted to a level of virulent hatred and jingoism that had no equivalent since the Allied treatment of the Japanese during the Second World War. The Japanese were reduced to ‘vermin who must be crushed — unlike the Germans, fellow humans who had strayed.’58 Furthermore, comparisons between the Nazis and Miloševica’s Serbia increased, provoking the well-known polemicist Julie Burchill to produce a list of reasons why the Serbs were not the new Nazis and the Albanians not the new Jews.59 On the other hand, the British actress Vanessa Redgrave organized a public protest meeting in April 1992 following Serb attacks in Bosnia, calling for the British Foreign Office to organize an airlift for Sarajevo similar to the one which helped West Berlin during the Soviet blockade of 1948.60 The West has depicted the Balkans as a problematic region characterized by barbarity and instability, but ‘whether the Balkans are non-European or not is mostly a matter of academic and political debate, but they certainly have no monopoly over barbarity.’61 Julie Burchill took up the argument that the West was not innocent of depravity and violence in the recent past. After NATO ceased its bombardment of Serbia in June 1999, Burchill drew comparisons with American action in Vietnam in the 1970s. In response to stories of Albanian suffering, Burchill cited the My Lai massacre which resulted in the deaths of four hundred Vietnamese civilians at the hands of American soldiers. Burchill drew attention to American double standards where, as a world superpower, it has the resources to cover up its own war crimes while continuing to apply pressure for the indictment of Serbian suspects.

57 David Hudson, ‘Scandalous Pro-Serbian Novelist Inflames Europe’s Literati’, <http://www.salon. com/books/log/1999/06/15/handke/print/html> [accessed 10 June 2003] 58 Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 92.

59 Julie Burchill, ‘A war of words’, Guardian (London), 10 April 1999.

60 Rachelle Marshall ‘Vanessa Redgrave: A passion for justice’, available on <http://www.wrmea.com/ backissues/0395/9503047.htm> [accessed 12 June 2003]

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Julie Burchill and Harold Pinter were two of the most high-profile proponents of the view that NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia was seriously flawed. With Miloševica described as a fascist, and with constant references to genocide, it was a logical step for some commentators to make a connection between Kosovo Albanians and the Jews’ experience during the Second World War. Burchill wrote a tongue-in-cheek column listing twenty reasons why this parallel was ludicrous.

Burchill’s message was a mixture of support for the Serbs, criticism of US policy, and a rejection of Western stereotypes of Serbian barbarism: ‘We didn’t want the Serbs to win because we support rape, murder and genocide, but because we believe that a world in which no one dares disagree with the United States’ version of the past and the future is not so much a world as a toilet down which history is flushed like so much human waste.’62 In a broader attack on Western feminist values, Burchill also criticized the innuendo and scurrilous gossip surrounding Miloševica’s marriage, which she juxtaposed against Hillary Clinton’s climb-down from feminist to devoted cookie-baking wife.

Burchill’s rejection of the media’s negative portrayal of Serbs did not extend to other groups in the former Yugoslavia, suggesting that Bakica-Hayden’s ‘nesting orientalisms’ may be evolving faster than many academics imagine. Contrasting the civilized behaviour of the Serbs, presumably a conclusion reached from her contacts with them, Burchill attacks the Kosovo Albanian refugees who ‘hiss and spit’ at passers-by in the street. Burchill equally questioned the morality of defending the rights of the Albanian community in Kosovo who, it is claimed, do not recognize the existence of rape: ‘It does seem strange that we fought a war in order that such a savage suppression of rights might carry on.’63 With regard to the Croats, repeated mention is made to the influence of German connections: ‘Croatia never existed until the Germans invented it for their own ends during the Second World War — and then, of course, they were the first to “recognise” it when it wanted to break away from Yugoslavia. Of course they recognised it — they invented it!’64 Conversely, Burchill’s stance against American imperialism did not stretch to the war in Iraq. In another article, she wrote that anti-war protesters, by resisting the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces, must believe that ‘Saddam and his gangster regime should be allowed to continue using Iraq as their own torture chamber.’65 In this case, the absence of references to American and British imperialism in Burchill’s rhetoric was a noticeable anomaly.

Balkan hospitality became an infamous cliché of Western commentators’ visits to the region. Martin Bell, a former BBC reporter and British MP, described the Serbs as ‘extremely hospitable’, adding that ‘one of the most hospitable Serbs I ever met was a man called Arkan. I had many delightful conversations with him in the old days when he was busy in Bosnia.’66 Arkan led a notorious paramilitary group

61 62 63 64 65 66

Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 7.

Julie Burchill, ‘Victory’s Victims’, Guardian (London), 12 June 1999.

Julie Burchill, ‘Victory’s Victims’.

Julie Burchill, ‘A War Too Far’, Guardian (London), 3 April 1999.

Julie Burchill, ‘Silly Show-offs Against Saddam’, Guardian (London), 1 March 2003.

Stuart Wavell, ‘Natural Born Martyrs’, Sunday Times, 4 April 1999.

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around Bosnia, and was indicted as a war criminal before being assassinated in one of Belgrade’s gangland disputes. Furthermore, according to Burchill, ‘anyone who knows anything about European history before 1945 supports the Serbs.’67 This clearly continues the tradition of commentators from the Victorian period onward who romanticized Serbian desires for freedom and their bravery.

Harold Pinter’s main arguments concerned the Western treatment of Yugoslavia, notably the illegal bombing campaign and the transferral of Miloševica to The Hague. He also accused the KLA of being a ‘bandit organisation’ funded by the American secret services and of being guilty of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the province.68 Pinter has also called for Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to be prosecuted (though not at The Hague, which Pinter does not recognize as legitimate) for breaching the Geneva Convention during NATO’s bombing of Belgrade. The attacks on Pinter have been led by the writer Henry Porter, who used the playwright’s silence on the extradition of General Pinochet to Chile as an example of his flawed argument with relation to Miloševica. Porter’s article implies a reversal of Pinter’s accusation of selective morality in American ‘humanitarian’ intervention back on to the playwright.69 But Pinter has defended his objection to American unilateral force as follows: I believe that the United States, so often described by itself -— as the bastion of democracy, freedom and Christian values, for so long accepted as leader of the ‘free world’, is in fact and has in fact been for a very long time a profoundly dangerous and aggressive force, contemptuous of international law, indifferent to the fate of millions of people who suffer from its actions, dismissive of dissent or criticism, concerned only to maintain its economic power, ready at the drop of a hat to protect that power by military means.70

It was Pinter’s voice that stood out against the official NATO line during the Kosovo War. The bombing of a train carrying civilians, and the destruction of Serbian broadcasting facilities in the knowledge that civilians would be killed, were two examples where the media gave minimal attention to Serbian casualties.

Conclusion This article has aimed to examine the demonization of the Serbs and to contrast the popular perception of Serbian national characteristics and history in France and Britain with the self-image that Serbs disseminated during the 1990s. We have seen from the analysis of the protest movements that Serbs wanted to demonstrate that they belonged to a Western world, that they were part of Europe and not supporters of Slobodan Miloševica’s regime. To these ends, they used references to aspects of Western culture. However, once the West started to bomb Serbia, the protests drew on disillusionment resulting from sanctions and directed their anger at NATO and 67

Julie Burchill, ‘A War of Words’, Guardian (London), 10 April 1999.

‘Pinter: I Won’t be Silenced’, Guardian (London), 3 August 2001.

69 ‘You Can’t Have it Both Ways, Harold’, Guardian (London), 1 August 2001.

70 Harold Pinter, ‘Foreword’, in Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, ed. by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. ix.

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the West, subverting the very cultural icons they had lauded in previous protests.

The Serbs were well aware of their perceived image in the West, and were the first to lampoon and satirize it. Meanwhile, support for the Serbs in the West could be found within a small group of, primarily anti-American, polemicists. They too disputed some of the more far-fetched disparaging labels thrown at the Serbs, though they also utilized stock Balkanist imagery. Peter Handke’s suggestion (insulting to any urban-dweller) that Serbs’ appreciation of nature was heightened by the economic sanctions was one such glaring instance. Julie Burchill’s clear support for the handsome Serbs with their fierce pride was another.

In France, the discussion among intellectuals incorporated references to European values and the rights of nations to their own destiny. As in Britain, French intellectuals looked to the past to evaluate who deserved support in the 1990s.

Which group was guiltier during the Second World War — the Croats or the Serbs?

In the end, it depended on which narrative you read. Pro-Croatian supporters, notably Alain Finkielkraut, while attacking the West’s obsession with the Second World War, disputed Croatian culpability. Others went further, accusing the Serbs not only of collusion but also of having a smaller resistance movement than the Croats. Many efforts were made to highlight the disparities in Western media reporting, and the misleading use of historical analogy. All sides in the Yugoslav conflicts were guilty of moral relativism and equivocation.

Numerous articles and books have been published debating the culpability of the Serbs in some of the worst carnage of the 1990s. It has also become clear to many academics that Serbian suffering was rarely reported, and, to this day, the Serbian expulsions from the Krajina region in Croatia, as well as Albanian attacks on Serbs in Kosovo, have become mere footnotes in popular perceptions of the wars. Yet those who sought to defend the Serbs and highlight the hypocrisy of so many who called for the bombing of Yugoslavia believed that the logic behind Western intervention was morally, practically, and legally flawed. The use of analogy with Nazi crimes against the Jews was particularly galling for some observers because it distorted the realities of the Yugoslav wars and simplified the case for a Western-sponsored ‘just’ war against the Serbs.

However, not all the negative images were unwelcome. The Serbs were happy to live up to their externally-imposed and self-defined image as a bulwark against American imperialism. The bombardment figured as just another defeat in a long history of capitulation at the hands of a superior enemy. But they have historical right on their side. They know they cannot succeed, and diffuse the hopelessness of their situation with humour. Such behaviour made them as popular with anti-globalization fighters as it infuriated those who saw them as the aggressors.

As much as the ‘West’ is a misleading label for a huge amount of disparate peoples, lumping populations together under the rubric ‘Balkan’ is also unfair. The violent destruction of Yugoslavia created a false collective identity for the Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, and Muslims. Bakica-Hayden called the process that drove ethnic groups within a region to contrast and add value to their culture as ‘nesting orientalisms’, in acknowledgement of Said’s work on the West’s treatment of the ‘Orient’. Ultimately, it is misleading and inaccurate to claim that one’s own society

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is superior to another. Equally, all effort must be made to highlight human individuality rather than repeat received ideas and perceptions from past generations.

For instance, the difference between rural and urban Serbs is similar to the disparities within British, American, and French populations, and should be accepted as such.

Finally, arguing where to ascribe guilt is dependent on the narratives of war which we decide to use and those we choose to ignore. Whether the Slovenes, the Croats, the Serbs, or the West are guilty of war crimes, hypocrisy or otherwise, cannot be surmised from only one source. Many of the commentators examined here are vulnerable to accusations of bias against one group in the Yugoslav conflicts (including the West). The power of the media cannot be overestimated, as well as the simplification of history, of images, and of arguments in times of war.

One cannot ignore that, in most assessments of the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Serbs, as a people, were blamed for its collapse and for the violence that accompanied it. It is likely that the barrage of negative coverage of the Serbs that accompanied Western intervention in Yugoslavia is just indicative of wartime propaganda and an excuse to intervene in order to stop scenes of bloodshed. It must be hoped that the demonization of the Serbs will not influence foreign dealings with Serbia in the future. It is equally important for Serbs, their neighbours and Europe as a whole, that this is the case.

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

An Overview of Albania’s Foreign Policy-Making in the 1980s1 Stefanos Katsikas School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London This paper first examines the ideological principles governing the foreign policy of Albania during the 1980s, how these principles were applied, and what the foreign policy decisionmaking process in that state was. It then proceeds to describe the factors which defined Albania’s foreign relations with the USSR and the West. Finally, it analyses the elements which determined Albania’s bilateral relations with neighbouring Balkan states as well as the political stance adopted with regard to efforts for multilateral regional cooperation.

Ideological principles of Albania’s foreign policy By the 1980s, Albania had come to reject the principle of socialist internationalism as defined by the Soviet Union. This principle, developed by Soviet theoreticians after the 1950s, was based on the pre-war concept of proletarian internationalism which referred to the unity that should govern inter-party relations between Communist parties in their common struggle against capitalism.2 Socialist internationalism demanded unity among socialist states in their conduct of foreign policy, which was thought to be best guaranteed through alignment of the foreign policies of socialist states with that of the Soviet Union. Such an alignment would be achieved through the development of common foreign policy mechanisms among the states of the Socialist bloc, namely annual meetings between first secretaries of East European Communist parties and the first secretary of the Soviet Communist party, or the adoption of foreign policy concepts such as the doctrine of ‘limited sovereignty’, also known as the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ by the Communist regimes of all socialist states. The Brezhnev Doctrine came into force after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and stated that the national sovereignty of any socialist state would be respected so long as its political actions domestically or internationally were in line with those of the Soviet Union.3 1

I wish to thank the Lilian Voudouris Foundation, Athens, for the scholarship thanks to which I conducted my PhD research at SSEES/UCL and was able to publish the present article. I would also like to thank Dr Peter Siani-Davies for his useful remarks on earlier drafts of the present paper.

2 Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988), pp. 169–75; Tereza Rakowska-Harmstone, ‘Socialist Internationalism and Eastern Europe — A new stage’, in Survey, 22.1 (1976), 42ff.

3 Light, pp. 194–200; Karen Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 73–80.

© School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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At the core of Albanian foreign policy was Hoxha’s personal desire to stay in power and to perpetuate his political legacy in Albania. In order to consolidate power, the Albanian regime attempted three times to align itself with different socialist protector states after the Second World War, but broke off relations with these states whenever Tirana viewed that such an alignment undermined Enver Hoxha’s political power.4 The first time was with Yugoslavia after the Second World War, however this Albanian–Yugoslavian friendship ended in the aftermath of the Soviet–Yugoslavian rift in 1948. Hoxha feared that the wave of leadership changes across Europe following Tito’s subsequent rehabilitation would warrant his departure too.5 The second attempt at alignment was with the Soviet Union after the split in Soviet–Yugoslav relations in 1948.6 But, as with Yugoslavia in the past, Albania broke relations with the Soviet Union in the mid 1960s, this time as a result of the Soviet Union’s rapprochement with Yugoslavia and the ensuing Soviet pressures on the Albanian Communist regime to follow the Soviet example and foster political and economic relations with Yugoslavia. Fostering such relations with Yugoslavia would have been in sharp contrast to the hostile political relations which the Albanian Communist regime had kept with Belgrade until then and would therefore undermine the political authority of Hoxha’s political regime by presenting it as a mere follower of Soviet political wishes.7 In addition, any Albanian–Yugoslavian rapprochement would have been seen as leaving the door open for political revenge on the part of the Yugoslavian authorities for the Albanian–Yugoslavian rift in 1948 by undermining Enver Hoxha’s political power in Albania.

The final attempted alliance was with China after the break in Soviet–Albanian relations in the mid 1960s: Albania sought to establish a political alliance with China which was then on bad terms with Moscow.8 But, as with Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the past, Albania’s alliance with China ended in 1978 as a result of China’s rapprochement with the West beginning in the 1970s.9 After the rift in Albanian relations with China in 1978, the Albanian regime declared its own theoretical foreign policy doctrine, which was based on the premise of isolationism.10 Under this premise, Albania was the only pure socialist state in the world, surrounded by

4 Klaus Lange, ‘Albania: Albanian Security Policies: Concepts, Meaning and Realisation’, in Jonathan Eyal, The Warsaw Pact: Moscow’s Southern Flank (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 209–19.

5 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians. A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), pp. 141–73; Paulin Kola, The Search for Greater Albania (London: Hurst & Company, 2003), pp. 76–95 6 Vickers, pp. 173–80; Paulin Kola, Albania, its Isolation and the Albanian National Question with Particular Emphasis on Kosova 1941–1992 (unpublished PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1999), pp. 108–40.

7 Kola (2003), p. 114.

8 Vickers (1995), pp. 180–220; William E. Griffith, Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963).

9 Biberaj, Elez, Albania and China: A Study of an Unequal Alliance (London, 1986); for an overview on Albania’s relations with the People’s Republic of China see: Kola (2003), pp. 144–51.

10 Vickers (1995), pp. 201ff; Elez Biberaj, Albania: A Socialist Maverick (Boulder: Westview, 1990), p. 87; Kola (1999), pp. 159–64.

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imperialist and revisionist countries, and in order to maintain its uniqueness, it was to proceed on the socialist path alone.

The premise of isolationism prevented Albania from seeking an alliance with either the Socialist or Western blocs. Such a potential alliance was seen as having corrosive effects on Hoxha’s political rule and, therefore, as undermining any prospects of his political heritage surviving into the future. This premise continued to guide Tirana’s foreign policy-making even after the mid 1980s, despite the fact that after Gorbachev’s accession to power, the foreign policy principle of socialist internationalism was replaced by that of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’. This, by accepting that the Soviet Socialist model was not the only truth, challenged the leading role of the Soviet Union within the Socialist bloc and laid the foundations for reduced Soviet political control on and, thus, greater foreign policy autonomy of, the socialist states of Eastern Europe.11 The Albanian Communist regime at the time considered that Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’ was merely a political tactic on the part of Moscow, aiming at preserving political control of East European states by creating the illusion that they were free to follow their own foreign policy, while in reality they were not. The Albanian Communist authorities believed that any attempt on the part of socialist states of the Soviet bloc to follow a different foreign policy path would provoke a harsh political reaction on the part of Moscow. This would seek to align the foreign policy of these states with that of the Soviet Union, by either controlling foreign policy decisions through mechanisms such as the Warsaw Pact or pure military intervention in the territories of the Soviet bloc’s socialist states. In addition, Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’ set the grounds for closer cooperation between the West and the socialist states of the Soviet bloc.12 The Albanian authorities believed that such cooperation left the door open for Western capital to flow into the weak economies of East European states, undermining the political and social basis of communism in these states, something which the Albanian Communist regime did not favour.

Foreign policy mechanisms After the amendment of the Albanian Constitution in 1976 the state organs constitutionally entitled to foreign policy-making were: the People’s Assembly, the Presidium of People’s Assembly, and the government. The first was considered to be the supreme organ of state power, and among its responsibilities were the ratification or abrogation of international treaties and the definition of foreign policy in compliance with the main directions given by the Albanian Party of Labour.13 The second body was responsible for the introduction of international treaties to the

11 Light (1988), p. 219, 296–300, and 308–12; Gerhard Wettig, ‘“New Thinking” on security and East-West relations’, Problems of Communism, 37.2 (1988), 1–14; Dawisha, (1989), pp. 517ff; Vernon Aspaturian, ‘Soviet Foreign Policy’, in Foreign Policy in World Politics, ed. by Roy Macridis (London: Prentice-Hall, 1989), pp. 147–65; Peter Shearman, ‘New Political Thinking Reassessed’, Review of International Studies, 19 (1993), 139–58; Karen Dawisha and Johnathan Valdez, ‘Socialist Internationalism in Eastern Europe’, Problems of Communism, 36.2 (1987), 1–14.

12 Light (1988), pp. 296–300, 308–12; Wettig (1988).

13 Articles 66–67 of the Albanian Constitution.

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People’s Assembly and the ratification or abrogation of treaties which were not examined by the People’s Assembly itself. Finally, the government directed the foreign policy of the state according to principles previously defined by the People’s Assembly and the Albanian Party of Labour.14 Constitutional stipulations, however, should not be considered as a reflection of the real allocation of power in Albanian politics. A close examination of Albania’s political system in practice would reveal that foreign policy decision-making assumed a highly personal character, and that the real power lay in the hands of the First Secretary of the Albanian Labour Party.15 Every important foreign policy decision was first approved by Hoxha and then imposed by his small group on the rest of the party.

By the early 1980s this group had only two members, Mehmet Shehu and Hysni Kapo.16 Kapo died in 1979, while Shehu was assassinated on 17 December 1981 during the proceedings of the Politburo of the Albanian Party of Labour.17 The reason for his assassination, although not entirely clear, seems to have been his strong disagreement with, and criticism during the proceedings of, the maintenance of isolationism as the guiding rule on foreign policy for Albania’s future. Such criticism seems to be consistent with Shehu’s political position after the rift in Sino– Albanian relations which favoured the abandonment of the policy of isolationism and Albania’s rapprochement with the West.18 Kapo’s death and Shehu’s assassination fostered Enver Hoxha’s personal rule within the Albanian Party of Labour and ensured that Albania would remain loyal to the policy of isolationism which Albania had adopted after the Sino–Albanian rift in 1978.

Foreign policy decision-making in Albania continued to be highly personalized when Ramiz Alia took power after Hoxha’s death in April 1985, although it did begin to reflect better the country’s economic realities, examples of which include high unemployment and chronic food shortages caused by rapid population growth of 2.2% annually.19 To this must be added the lack of capital caused by the land fortification project, which the Albanian regime carried out as a reaction to the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet invasion raised fears within the Albanian Communist regime: severe economic problems faced by the USSR at the time might lead to an expansion of Soviet military ambitions towards disloyal socialist states such as Yugoslavia and Albania.

The unfulfilled economic targets and chronic shortages of goods and technology led to a new interpretation of Albania’s policy of isolationism, the foreign policy objectives of which were: a) to maintain Albania’s distance from the two Superpowers; b) to limit contacts with Soviet allies by and large to the commercial 14

Article 39 of the Albanian Constitution.

Ramadan Marmullaku, Albania and the Albanians (London: Hurst, 1975), pp. 64–66.

16 Kola (1999), pp. 38–40.

17 According to the official version, Shehu committed suicide. See Elez Biberaj, ‘Albania after Hoxha: Dilemmas of change’, Problems of Communism, 34.6 (1985), pp. 36–38; Kola (2003), pp. 165–71.

18 Kola (2003), p. 208.

19 Raymond Hutchings, ‘Albania’, in Study Papers: Joint Economic Committee of the USA Congress, vol. 2 (Washington: USA Government, 1989), pp. 328–46; Biberaj (1985), pp. 38–40.

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sphere; and c) to expand economic, cultural and political relations with the West and the immediate neighbourhood.20 Relations with states outside the region In the previous section the foreign policy principles and decision mechanisms of Albania were examined. The remaining part of this paper will analyse how these principles and mechanisms worked in practice by examining three aspects of Albania’s foreign relations: a) relations with the USSR and the West;21 b) bilateral relations with neighbouring Balkan states; and c) the political stance Albania had adopted towards various efforts for regional multilateral cooperation during the 1980s.

Examining foreign relations with the USSR and the West is essential not only because of the entrenchment of the two blocs in the area after the Second World War, but also because modern Balkan states have tended to give higher political priority to relations with economically and militarily powerful states outside the region. From this viewpoint it is interesting to see how Albanian relations with the USSR and Western states developed during the 1980s and what factors influenced them. These issues will be the subjects of analysis in the next section. relations with the ussr During the Soviet–Yugoslav rift in 1948, Albania opted for the Soviet side. Albania’s alignment with the Soviet Union nullified Yugoslav plans for Albania’s participation in a Yugoslav-led Balkan Federation, and rendered unsuccessful any Greek claims to ‘Northern Epirus’.22 The alliance with the Soviet Union, however, did not last long. After the death of Stalin and the Soviet–Yugoslav rapprochement that followed, Soviet pressures on Albania to improve its relations with Yugoslavia increased. The Albanians resented these pressures, seeing them as undermining their sovereignty and gradually began to distance themselves from the USSR until they formally withdrew from the Soviet bloc after the Warsaw Treaty Organization-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.23 Despite repeated Soviet appeals to normalize bilateral relations, these remained cool until the 1990s.24 Albania consistently refused to develop any type of relations with the Soviet Union, be these diplomatic or economic. The reasoning behind this was a fear that any contact with the Soviet Union would be at the expense of Albanian sovereignty.25 When Gorbachev came to Soviet power, the Albanian political system under Alia remained in essence Stalinist and Gorbachev’s political reforms under Perestroika ideologically threatened the very basis of Albania’s Stalinist political system.

20

The Times, 4 April 1983, p. 4b; Biberaj (1985), p. 41.

For the purpose of this paper, the term ‘West’ refers to the economically developed regimes of the so-called ‘First World’, be they members of NATO and the European Community or neutral in the post war divide.

22 Vladimir Dedijer, ‘Albania, Soviet Pawn’, Foreign Affairs, 30.1 (1951), 103–11; Vickers (1995), pp. 163–80; for a general overview on Soviet–Albanian relations after 1948 see Kola (2003), pp. 96–132.

23 Vickers (1995), pp. 180–84.

24 The Times, 20 April 1990, p. 8a.

25 The Times, 4 April 1983, p. 4b; The New York Times, 29 November 1985, p. A11.

21

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relations with the west Despite Western interest in improving relations with Albania, no real breakthrough occurred so long as Hoxha remained in power. This was because the Albanian Communist leader believed that increased contacts with the Western World could have a detrimental effect on Albania’s political stability. However, not all Western states were perceived to pose the same degree of threat to the country’s political stability, which in turn left enough scope for Tirana to diversify its political stance towards the West.

According to Hoxha, Western states could be classified into three categories, each of which reflected a special type of foreign relations. The first category included most of the Western states such as France or Italy that managed to develop limited diplomatic relations with the Albanian state.26 In the second category belong West Germany and the United Kingdom whose relations with Albania remained cool due to their refusal to review policies over long-disputed issues. In particular, the United Kingdom was unwilling to return to Tirana the gold looted by the Nazis during the Second World War,27 and West Germany refused to meet Albanian demands regarding Second World War reparations.28 Finally, in the third category was the USA with which Tirana refused to have any diplomatic contacts in line with Hoxha’s axiom that considered both superpowers as states posing the highest degree of threat to Albanian sovereignty.29 After Hoxha’s demise, the new Albanian leadership reviewed relations with the West. The country needed to turn westwards to obtain the necessary economic and technical aid to break the economic deadlock after the rift with China. Indeed, under Alia, Albania improved its diplomatic relations with most Western states.

It increased diplomatic contacts with France and Italy,30 and in 1987 restored full diplomatic relations with West Germany due to the latter’s interest in offering technological assistance to Albania to exploit its oil and mineral resources. The

26

Biberaj (1985), p. 43.

At the end of 1945 two British destroyers were sunk in the Corfu channel after hitting mines.

The International Court of Justice ruled that the British ships had violated the Albanian territorial sovereignty in sailing in the area where the British destroyers were sunk, but the Albanian government held responsible for the mines and therefore was ordered to pay £843,947 compensation to the British government. The Albanians ignored the demand and the British retaliated by refusing to return to Albania a large sum of gold stolen from Albania by Axis forces and later seized by the allies. L. C. Green, International Law Through the Cases (Toronto: Dobbs Ferry, 1978), pp. 228–37; Kola (2003), pp. 73–75; Leslie Gardiner, The Eagle Spreads its Claws: A History of the Corfu Channel Dispute and of Albania’s Relations with the West, 1945–1965 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1966); Ivo Banac, With Stalin against Tito (New York: Cornell University Press–Ithaca, 1988), p. 29; Vickers (1995), pp. 169–70; The Times, 13 October 1986, p. 7e.

28 Any rapprochement in Albanian-German relations was blocked by Bonn’s refusal to meet Albanian demands for Second World War reparations. Bonn’s position was that any official agreement on reparations should follow a formal peace settlement, which, in turn, would be linked to solving the German question. West Germany had settled the issue of War reparations in the case of Poland and Yugoslavia by extending cheap credits to those countries, but the Albanian constitution of 1978 prohibited the country from accepting foreign credits. Biberaj (1986), p. 148.

29 Kola (2003), pp. 149–51.

30 Biberaj (1985), p. 44.

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Communist regime counted on this to strengthen the country’s foreign trade.31 In addition, during that period, Albanian technicians were sent for training in Western Europe, Albanian students enrolled in Western Universities and a growing, but still controlled number of tourists and journalists were allowed to visit Albania.32 Diplomatic openness to the West led to closer economic relations. Trade relations with many Western countries were improved with Albania exporting oil, minerals, and agricultural products, and importing machinery and technological products.

West Germany and Italy became Albania’s greatest trading partners in the West.

In 1988, three years after Alia came to power, overall trade with Italy amounted to $65m and with the West Germany $52m.33 Moreover, a number of economic agreements were signed, such as with West Germany in 1988, for cooperation in industrial and agricultural production,34 and Albania looked for assistance to a number of Western companies, such as the Italian Agip or the French Elf-Aquitaine and Total, for extraction of its oil and mineral resources.35 However, despite any economic and diplomatic relations, even under Alia there were limits on Albania’s rapprochement with the West. First of all, Albanian constitutional restrictions prohibited the acceptance of any non-repayable foreign economic aid, direct foreign investment or joint ventures and therefore Western states or companies were restricted to barter dealings with the Albanian state. This appeared to produce limited results in cooperation as regards industrial production and the extraction of oil and mineral resources, on which the Albanian state counted to improve exports and raise economic standards. Unfortunately, the results of cooperation in these economic areas were so appalling that in 1989 the Albanian state was forced to violate constitutional provisions and accept an $11m in non-repayable economic aid from the West German government to invest in oil production and the mining sector.36 Human rights and liberalization of the Albanian political system posed another obstacle to Albania’s relations with the West. The latter demanded that Albania liberalize its political system and improve its human rights as a necessary precondition for further improvement in Albania’s relations with the West. Although Alia took measures to improve Albania’s record on human rights, he did not show flexibility in relaxing previous coercive policies. For example, only in May 1990 did the Albanian parliament redefine ‘religious’ propaganda as a non-criminal activity and throughout this period most of the churches and mosques remained closed.37 Bilateral and multilateral relations The next two sections examine the factors which influenced Albania’s bilateral relations with Balkan states and the political stance that Tirana adopted in the

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

The Times, 24 October 1987, p. 5b; Biberaj (1985), pp. 45–46.

Biberaj (1985), pp. 45–46 Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), No. 2, 1989, p. 35.

EIU, No. 3, 1988, p. 30.

EIU, No. 3, 1988, p. 30. Biberaj (1985), p. 46.

EIU, No. 2, 1989, pp. 29–30.

The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, ed. by Hugh Poulton (London, 1991), pp. 197–98.

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various efforts for multilateral cooperation in the Balkan region during the 1980s.

In both sections, the analysis is not restricted only to states such as Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, but includes Greece and Turkey. The main reasons for the inclusion of Greece and Turkey in discussing bilateralism and multilateralism are the following: a) any treatment of multilateralism in the region is bound to include Greece and Turkey, both of which are leading political and economic powers in the region; and b) any inclusion of Greece and Turkey in the analysis of multilaterlism also draws both states into the discussion of bilateralism. efforts for multilateral cooperation During the mid-1980s Albania refused either to initiate or to participate in any political projects aiming at fostering political and economic cooperation in the Balkan region. The fear was that any form of regional cooperation would engage Tirana in a series of multilateral agreements with the states of the Balkan region, which in turn would tie the Albanian Communist regime’s hands in various aspects of the country’s domestic and foreign policy. In addition, any form of regional cooperation was seen as a means by which certain states such as Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, or Yugoslavia could intervene in Albanian politics in order to promote either their own national interests or the national interests of the Soviet Union or the USA, according to whether these states were part of the Western or the Soviet bloc.

Albania’s refusal to either initiate or promote regional cooperation in the Balkans was a political stance to which Tirana had remained faithful since the Second World War. It has been argued previously that Hoxha did not favour Tito’s plans to establish a Balkan federal state with the participation of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia.38 Apart from Hoxha’s objection to the Yugoslav plans for establishing a Balkan federation during the 1940s, Tirana’s abstention from any political projects aiming at fostering political and economic cooperation among the states of the Balkan region could also be well illustrated by Albania’s refusal to participate in two other projects launched by Balkan states after the beginning of the 1970s and aimed at fostering regional cooperation in the Balkans. The first was launched by the Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis after the Helsinki Summit in 1974, which, according to Karamanlis created favourable conditions for such a project to succeed. The Helsinki Summit inaugurated a period of détente between the Eastern and the Western blocs which in turn was viewed as a necessary precondition for any successful initiative aimed at establishing regional multilateral cooperation in a region such as the Balkan Peninsula. Karamanlis’s project was influenced by the neo-functionalist ideas of the time and suggested that successful regional cooperation in the Balkans could be achieved through a step-by-step rapprochement of the Balkan states, starting from low politics issues such as communications, transport, trade, and tourism and moving on to include high politics.39 38

Vickers (1995), pp. 141–73.

Thanos Veremis, Greece’s Balkan Entanglement (Athens: Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, 1995), p. 35; C. Svolopoulos, Elliniki politiki sta Valkania 1974–81 [Greek Policy in the Balkans 1974–81] (Athens: Euroekdotiki, 1987), pp. 74–79; Archeio, vol. 8, pp. 499–501. Aurel Braun, Small-state Security in the Balkans (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), pp. 51–53. Regarding neo-functionalism and its influence on the Karamanlis project see Braun (1983), pp. 48–51.

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Albania refused to participate in Karamanlis’s project as it did with the Helsinki Summit of 1974.40 During the Balkan conference which the Greek government convened in Athens in 1976 in order to implement Karamanlis’s project, all the Balkan states, Albania being the only exception, participated and signed 154 multilateral agreements on low politics issues.41 This is because the Albanian Communist regime of Enver Hoxha viewed Karamanlis’s scheme as a political plot conceived by powerful Western states and the Soviet Union to undermine the political power of Hoxha’s regime and, in this way, to drag Albania into their sphere of influence.42 The second project was launched by the Bulgarian Communist regime in November 1981 and was similar to an old Romanian scheme put forward by the then Romanian Prime Minister Chivu Stoica in 1957. Like the old Romanian scheme, the Bulgarian project of 1981 aimed at rendering the Balkans a nuclear-free zone by removing all the nuclear weapons from the territories of the Balkan states.43 As with Karamanlis’s project in the past, Albania refused to join the Bulgarian project because Tirana saw it as a Soviet-inspired plan to subject the Balkans to their political control.44 Such a view was also supported by the fact that the Bulgarian project was put forward just a few days after a meeting between the Bulgarian leader, Todor Zhivkov, and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, in the Crimea.45 After the mid-1980s Albania’s political stance towards regional cooperation in the Balkans began to change and came to reflect Ramiz Alia’s pragmatic foreign policy to bring Albania out of international isolation.46 This change can be seen in Albania’s participation in the conference of the Balkan Foreign Ministers convened by the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade in February 1988. The aim of the conference was quite similar to that of the Balkan conference convened in Athens by Constantine Karamanlis in 1976; namely to inaugurate a multilateral breakthrough in the Balkan region by focusing on low politics issues, such as economics, transport, cultural, scientific, and environmental issues, hoping that cooperation in low politics issues would pave the way for high politics to be dealt with in the future. But, despite any similarity in terms of the aims and the philosophy of both the Athens and Belgrade conferences, Albania participated only in the Belgrade conference, during the proceedings of which it adopted a constructive political position; this was reflected by the fact that Tirana agreed to host the next Balkan conference of Balkan Foreign Ministers in 1990.

40 Albania was the only European state that refused to participate in the Helsinki Summit of 1974 as well as the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a security organization which was established as a result of the Helsinki Summit of 1974, with the participation of Western as well as East European states, plus the USA and Canada in order to promote a long-standing peace and security in Europe. For more details on Albania’s abstention from the proceeding of both the Helsinki Summit as well as the CSEC see Kola (2003), pp. 151–55.

41 Braun (1983), pp. 51–53.

42 Braun (1983), pp. 51–53 43 RFE Bulgarian SR/14, 23 November 1981, item 1.

44 Biberaj (1990), p. 92; Enver Hoxha, Two Friendly Peoples: Excerpts from the Political Diary and Other Documents on Albanian-Greek Relations 1941–1984 (Toronto: Marx, Engel, Lenin, Stalin Institute, 1985), pp. 406–07.

45 RFE Bulgarian SR/1, 16-1-1984, item 5.

46 RFE Background Report (Albania)/192, 21 October 1987.

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bilateral relations In most cases, bilateral relations between Albania and its neighbouring Balkan states during the 1980s present remarkable changes in comparison with the past. In order to explain any changes, it is necessary to look at the factors affecting their bilateral relations, which can be systematized in four areas. These are: (a) environmental issues, (b) nationalism, (c) territorial issues, and (d) economic issues with particular reference to bilateral trade and investment. a. Environmental issues The term ‘environmental issues’ refers to those regional issues which affected intra-block relations. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which proved to be an important catalyst in improving Yugoslavian–Albanian relations at the beginning of the decade, could serve as an example.47 Indeed, the Soviet invasion put both countries on alert. For Yugoslavia, the attack on non-aligned Afghanistan was seen as a move challenging non-alignment and raised concerns about a future Soviet threat to Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity, while Albania was afraid of any potential attack against Belgrade, which could in turn threaten Tirana’s policy of isolationism.48 The Soviet factor was always an important issue in determining the bilateral relations of Yugoslavia and Albania with Bulgaria. This was because Bulgarian foreign policy was perceived as being the alter ego of Soviet foreign policy. In the case of Bulgarian–Albanian relations, it could be argued that diplomatic relations between the two states imitated Albanian–Soviet relations. Albanian–Bulgarian relations were frozen after the rift in Soviet–Albanian relations in the 1960s and were officially terminated when Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.49 From then on bilateral relations remained cool, both sides often engaged in bitter polemics, and only after Gorbachev’s accession to power did bilateral relations enter a new phase with Albania relaxing its rigid political stance towards the Warsaw Pact countries, including Bulgaria.50 b. Nationalism According to William Bloom, governments, when feeling insecure about their ability to keep political control, turn to nationalist propaganda as a political means of rallying support.51 This argument seems to be especially true for Albania during the 1980s. The country faced a harsh economic situation, which caused social unrest and eroded the legitimacy of the Communist regime. Pure coercion could possibly solve declining legitimacy, but as Schopflin successfully remarks ‘(. . .) any regime no matter how repressive, needs some sort of wider goal which may be futureoriented but it needs also to refer to the past’.52 47

Biberaj (1990), p. 88.

Kola (2003), pp. 131–32.

49 Marmullaku (1975), p. 127.

50 RFE Background Report/207, 14 October 1988, pp. 1–3.

51 William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 79–81.

52 George Schopflin, Politics in Eastern Europe 1945–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 186–93.

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In the 1980s, the Albanian regime searched for this wider goal in nationalism which was well expressed in the case of the Albanian riots in the Yugoslavian regions of Kosovo and the Socialist Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia during the 1980s.53 The riots started after a student protest in March 1981 at the University of Priština over student living conditions, which then sparked demonstrations among the Albanian population in the whole region of Kosovo as well as in the cities of Tetovo, Gostivar, Struga, and even Skopje in the Socialist Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Demonstrators demanded republican status for Kosovo, but there were also voices among the demonstrators calling for unification with Albania. The Yugoslav authorities refused to meet demonstrators’ demands seeing them as a first step towards Kosovo’s unification with Albania in the future, and used military and security forces to restore order.54 However, order was only temporarily restored and in fact the region of Kosovo remained in turmoil for the entire decade.

The Albanian regime of Enver Hoxha declared its support for the demonstrators’ demands, thus arousing suspicions among Yugoslavian authorities that Albania was behind the riots, triggered by Tirana as part of a plan to create a ‘Greater Albania’. The two sides were engaged in bitter polemics, with Tirana protesting about the mistreatment of Albanians in the Yugoslav Federation, and Belgrade accusing Tirana of interfering in Yugoslavia’s internal politics. Cultural contacts were cut and bilateral trade declined. Despite signs of rapprochement during the second half of the decade when the two states restored cultural links, bilateral relations have never achieved the same level as prior to the Kosovo riots in 1981. On the contrary, with the rise of Serbian nationalism during the second half of the decade, under the leadership of Slobodan Miloševica, the status of Kosovar Albanians further deteriorated, thus fuelling turmoil in Kosovo and sweeping away any hope for a real improvement in Albanian-Yugoslavian relations.55 Belgrade’s suspicions that the Albanian Communist regime of Enver Hoxha was behind the Kosovo riots in 1981 did not seem to be altogether false. Recent revelations suggest that the Albanian authorities instigated the riots of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1981 as a means of diverting public attention away from the acute economic crisis following the Chinese–Albanian rift of 1978.56 According to these revelations the 1981 riots in Kosovo were instigated by organs of the Albanian secret police along with members of the Albanian émigré community of Switzerland. It is also believed that the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) armed group which began hostilities in Serbia in 1998 in the quest for independence was founded by followers of the same group of people who were behind the 1981 riots in Kosovo.57 Although it is not clear what the role, if any, of these groups was during the Alia period, what is clear is that for the entire decade the Albanian regime used the issue of Kosovo more as a means of legitimacy than to change the post-war territorial status quo of the region in Albania’s favour, as the Yugoslav authorities accused Albania of doing 53

Kola (2003), pp. 156–93.

Spyridon Sfetas, Kyriakos Kentrotis, Oi Alvanoi ton Skopion. Themata ethnotikis Syniparxis [Albanians of Skopje. Issues of Ethnic Coexistence] (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan studies, 1995), pp. 103–07.

55 Poulton (1991), pp. 61–68.

56 Kola (1999), p. 173 (footnote 13); Kola (2003), p. 159 (footnote 14).

57 Kola (1999), p. 173 (footnote 13); Kola (2003), p. 159 (footnote 14).

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at that time. This thesis is exemplified by the fact that the Albanian regime did not take any measures showing that it wished to go beyond an acute political rhetoric for domestic consumption, such as recalling its ambassador or raising the issue with the United Nations. c. Territorial issues In signing the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, the Balkan states committed themselves to accept the post-war territorial status quo of the region and bury their oldnurtured territorial aspiration against their neighbours.58 Although this commitment seemed to have worked in some cases, such as in the case of Greek Thrace against which Bulgaria nurtured territorial aspirations in the past, in others, the political practices of Balkan states did not keep pace with this commitment. This is well exemplified in a number of territorial disputes such as the Greco–Turkish dispute over the Aegean Sea and Cyprus or the Yugoslavian dispute with Greece and Bulgaria over the Macedonian issue.

The territorial issue of North Epirus was perhaps the most influential in foreign relations of these states with their immediate neighbours. ‘North Epirus’ is used by Greeks to refer to southern Albanian regions of Gjirokaster and Korce, where a small Greek minority lives.59 Until the 1980s, this area was considered to be a natural extension of the northwestern part of Greek territory, known as South Epirus, and was the object of territorial aspirations from the Greeks that went back to the beginning of the twentieth century.60 These aspirations remained alive after the Second World War and constituted the main reason for Greece’s firm policy to maintain the ‘state of war’ in its relations with Albania until the end of 1980s.61 By maintaining the state of war Greek authorities aimed to achieve two things.

First of all, they refused to recognize the post-war territorial status of Albania, thus nurturing hopes that if in the future this status would change, Greece would have the right to claim North Epirus. Secondly, Greek authorities refused to abandon the state of war, lest such a political movement be exploited by the Albanians, so as to claim the repatriation of Chams to Greece or to ask compensation for the minority’s property left behind.62 58

P. M. Bell, The World since 1945. An International History (London: Arnold, 2001), pp. 310–14.

There is no agreement around the exact number of the Greek minority. According to Greek émigré sources, Greeks living in Albania numbered 400,000, while the Albanian census of 1961, the last census recording ethnic minorities, puts the number at 40,000 (2.4% of the total population). Both these figures seem to exaggerate the number of ethnic Greeks living in Albania, which should be around 150,000 to 200,000. Poulton, (1991), pp. 195–99; The Times, 9 July 1986, p. 7e.

60 Stefanaq Pollo and Arben Puto, The History of Albania from its Origins to the Present Day (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 158–59; Michalopoulos (1986).

61 The “state of war” in Greco–Albanian relations resulted from the fact that when Italy invaded Greece in 1940, Albania officially comprised part of the Italian territory.

62 The Chams were a quite sizeable Albanian minority living in northwestern Greece. Before the Second World War Chams numbered about 20,000. They left Greece during the Second World War and the Greek Civil War for two reasons. Some minority members, having collaborated with the German and Italian occupying forces, followed the retreating German troops after the end of the Second World War. Some others were enforced to leave by the Greek National Army during its military activities against the Communist partisans during the Greek Civil War. Vickers (1995), p. 159; Michalopoulos Dimitris, Tsamides [Chams] (Athens: Arsenidi, 1993).

59

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The existence of the state of war was an obstacle to any further improvement in Albanian–Greek relations and, on many occasions, the Albanian regime raised the issue with the Greek side. In Greece, the issue cultivated nationalistic aspirations among a number of Greek societies known as ‘Vorioepirotikoi Syllogoi’ (Societies of North Epirus), whose members propagated a future annexation of North Epirus to Greece and actively lobbied the Greek government and the Greek-American communities of the USA.63 This, in turn, cultivated a climate of mistrust within the Albanian regime towards Greece and the Greek minority living in Albania, which was perceived as a potential threat to Albania’s territorial integrity. This is well exemplified in minority policies, such as the name-changing campaign of 1975 aimed at forcibly changing non-Albanian names. People with Muslim names were exempted and the campaign was primary applied to minorities such as the Greek in the south or the Catholics in the north.64 In the 1980s, the Greek government under Papandreou sought a breakthrough in Albanian–Greek relations in line with the general policy of openness to the Communist north and this served Papandreou’s need to maintain leftist profile for his domestic audience. The timing for such rapprochement was considered opportune due to Albania’s gradual openness towards the West after the Sino–Soviet rift.

The rapprochement started in 1984 when the Greek Prime Minister, A. Papandreou, publicly renounced any territorial aspirations Greece had nurtured towards Albania until that time, and culminated in the official governmental denunciation of the state of war in 1987.65 Despite criticism of the Greek government by the Conservative party and the sundry societies, ‘Vorioepirotikoi syllogoi’ (Societies for Northern Epirus), it seems that the governmental decision was prompted by two other reasons. The first is that by renouncing the state of war the Greek government wished to improve bilateral relations with Albania, which in turn were believed to affect the status of the Greek minority. Secondly, since the Albanian regime had never used the issue of Chams against Greece, Greek authorities were persuaded that the Albanian regime would not raise this issue consequent to the removal of the state of war. d. Economic issues In the immediate post-war period Balkan states’ foreign relations were influenced more by political than economic criteria. The fact that all Balkan states emerged from the Second World War with their economies severely weakened favoured excessive political control over their economies, which in turn prevented the development of an autonomous economic sector that could influence foreign policy decision-making. This was especially true in the case of Albania, where the political system submerged every economic activity under the tutelage of Hoxha’s Communist regime.

Economics came progressively to play an increased role in the foreign policymaking of Albania after the mid-1970s. This was not because Hoxha’s Communist 63 Thalis Mylonas, To Vorioepirotiko sto katofli tis ethnikis meiodosias [The issue of North Epirus on the Threshold of National Treason] (Athens: Sideris, 1987); The Times, 23 February 1984, p. 6h; Hoxha, 1985, p. 361.

64 Poulton (1991), pp. 199–200.

65 Vickers (1995), p. 211; The Times, 4 December 1984, p. 7h.

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regime lessened political control over the country’s economy or because an autonomous economic sector emerged after that period. Instead, there were accumulating economic problems such as the lack of hard currency, which eroded the legitimacy of the Communist regimes and necessitated a reorientation of Albania’s foreign policy based more on economic pragmatism. This reorientation meant that Tirana had to turn either westwards or to the immediate Balkan region as the only way to find hard currency in order to renew industrial technology, thus revitalizing productivity and economic growth. Despite the fact that this economic pragmatism was not immune to the political climate, the economy in Albania came more and more to determine foreign relations with Tirana’s Balkan neighbours.

The rift in Sino–Albanian relations reduced Albanian imports by fifty per cent, and, with external borrowing constitutionally prohibited, Albania faced a harsh economic reality which came to determine the country’s foreign relations in subsequent years.66 To cope with this economic situation, the Albanian regime sought hard currency by expanding economic relations with the West and the immediate region. The fact that Western states were hit by the economic depression of the beginning of the 1980s, due to the second oil crisis following the Iran–Iraq war in 1980, rendered the Balkan neighbourhood a preferential region for forging close economic relations and for trading the qualitatively inferior Albanian products.67 Although it is difficult to have a clear picture of Albania’s economic relations since there is little official data, it seems that economic interactions with the Balkan region increased during the 1980s. This is true for its neighbouring Communist states such as Yugoslavia and Bulgaria as well as for Greece and Turkey. In the case of Bulgaria, after a sixteen-year freeze in bilateral relations, Albania started to restore economic relations with Sofia in 1983 by signing an economic agreement which provided for closer trade relations between the two states.68 As a result of that agreement, and others which followed during the decade, bilateral trade increased substantially. It is estimated for instance that in 1987 bilateral trade was 8.5% higher than in the previous thirty years and the trade growth rate for the previous five years was stable at over sixty per cent annually.69 Albania exported to Bulgaria minerals such as nickel and bauxite, as well as electricity, and imported semi-finished goods such as steel tubes and chemical products.70 From the 1970s Albania steadily improved its economic relations with Yugoslavia. Although China was Albania’s most privileged economic partner during that time, its distance forced Albania to open economically to its immediate neighbours, especially non-aligned Yugoslavia, where a large Albanian minority lived. The fact that Belgrade had relaxed its previously tough policies towards Albanians living in Kosovo also created a favourable environment. The improving climate in bilateral 66 Michael Kaser, ‘Albania Under and After Enver Hoxha’, in Joint Economic Committee of USA Congress, East European Economies: Slow Growth in the 1980’s, vol. 2 (Washington: USA Government, 1989), pp. 4–9.

67 Biberaj (1990), p. 103.

68 Kaser (1986), p. 7.

69 EIU, No. 1 (1987), pp. 35–36; EIU, No. 4 (1987), pp. 26–27; EIU, No. 1 (1988), pp. 29–30.

70 EIU, No. 1 (1987), pp. 35–36; EIU, No. 4 (1987), pp. 26–27.

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relations is well exemplified in bilateral trade, whose total value from $11.9m in 1972 reached $28m in 1978, the year of the Sino–Albanian rift.71 After the break with China, trading relations developed even further. Yugoslavia became Albania’s main trading partner with the total value of trade between the two states reaching $60m in 1979 expected to reach more than double in the next five years.72 However, these plans were disrupted by Albanian disturbances in Kosovo and Macedonia during the 1980s.73 Despite Albania’s efforts not to allow the Kosovo crisis to affect bilateral economic relations, the continuing disturbances by Albanians in Yugoslavia impeded the speedy development of economic relations. Characteristically, despite bilateral trade being expected to reach the value of $210m in 1985, it reached only $83m, while in 1989 the total value of trade between the two states was about $50m.74 The expansion of relations with Greece and Turkey also had an economic dimension. The cultivation of good relations fitted with Albania’s general opening up to the West in search of economic and technological help, since both states were integrated in Western markets and had an active presence in most of the international forums. Tirana’s economic relations with Athens improved to such an extent that by the end of the decade Greece had become the third largest exporting state after West Germany and the sixth biggest importing state. In 1988, for instance, Albanian exports to Greece amounted to $21m and imports $6m.75 The fact that Ankara was not so important a trading partner as Athens does not diminish Turkey’s economic importance for Albania. Economic cooperation between the two states was strengthened through the signing of economic agreements such as a tourist protocol in 1987 and a trade protocol a year later.76 As a result of these economic agreements, bilateral trade seemed to improve by the end of the decade, reaching the value of $3.4m, three times more than the total trade value of 1987.77 Conclusion In the 1980s, Albania’s foreign policy was different from that in the past. First of all, there were discernible differences in Tirana’s foreign policy decision-making.

Although foreign policy-mechanisms remained the same in comparison with the past, the harsh economic realities and a changed international environment resulting from the sunset of the Soviet Empire favoured a new foreign policy, which was in sharp contrast with the principles that should have directed Tirana’s foreign policy. This meant in practice that since the beginning of the 1980s Albania was gradually abandoning the foreign policy of isolationism and opening to the West and the immediate region.

71

Elez Biberaj, ‘Albanian-Yugoslav Relations and the Question of Kosove’, in East European Quarterly, 16.4 (1983), 496.

72 Biberaj (1983), pp. 492–97.

73 Biberaj (1990), p. 88; Biberaj (1986), p. 154; Braun (1983), p. 58; REF Background Report (Eastern Europe)/ 31, 26 February 1988.

74 EIU, No. 2 (1988), pp. 27–28.

75 EIU, No. 4 (1988), p. 4.

76 EIU, No. 2 (1987), p. 27; EIU, No. 2 (1988), pp. 29–30.

77 EIU, No. 4 (1988), p. 29.

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During this period, economic pragmatism resulting from harsh economic realities came to influence the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foreign policy. It was due to this pragmatism that both the West and the immediate region gained in importance in the foreign agendas of Albania. With reference to the Balkan region, in particular, this pragmatism set the grounds for increasing both bilateral contacts and efforts for regional multilateral cooperation.

However, economic pragmatism did not determine a linear course in the foreign policy of these states. There were a number of factors leading to deviation from this opening up towards the immediate region and the West. So far as bilateral relations are concerned, this linear process was disturbed by nationalism, which was occasionally used by the Albanian Communist regime to disorientate the public from the harsh economic realities the country was facing, which had seriously deteriorated after the Sinoâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Albanian rift at the end of the 1970s.

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Mis-Plagiarizing* the East: The Romanian Principalities between Fact and Fiction† Irina Marin University of Bucharest This paper focuses on two eighteenth-century instances of plagiarism from works authored by the Moldavian prince and scholar Dimitrie Cantemir and aims at establishing the role of textual exchanges in the forging of a distorted perception of the Romanian Principalities.

It follows the painstaking arguments provided by two foreign travellers, Louis Carra and Franz Joseph Sulzer, in their pseudo-scientific accounts of Wallachia and Moldavia, respectively, laying particular emphasis on the tenuous nature of their claim to referentiality and the inescapably intertextual quality of their approach. The problem of plagiarism is dealt with both in terms of our own twenty-first-century nostalgia for originality as well as taking into consideration the specific eighteenth-century context with its medieval and Renaissance legacy concerning the issue of authorship.

As already adumbrated in the title of this paper, I will be looking at a problem of imagology, which is very much in keeping with the work that has been done in this field over the past few years. I have in mind primarily Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe. Following in his footsteps, I am equally concerned with the way in which the East and in particular the Romanian Principalities — which form the main interest of the present paper — were viewed through a Western lens in the eighteenth century, that is, via accounts given by ‘Westerners’ who happened to sojourn there for a time. I intend to demonstrate that the distorted image conveyed by their works is owed not so much to their lack of physical contact with the local realities (as was the case of Voltaire, for instance), or to their prejudices about the place, as to an irresistible penchant for intertextuality, which is more often than not * Before actually introducing the topic of my paper, let me first solve the terminological problem that the title poses. I have ironically patterned my coinage, mis-plagiarizing, on such derivational binomials as reading–misreading, spelling–misspelling, understanding–misunderstanding. In each of these cases, the implicit, subjacent idea is that of doing something the wrong way, of abusing a common practice, the difference between the two terms of such binomials being not a substantive one (for instance, when one misspells something, the resulting word does have a spelling of sorts, if a deficient one), but a formal one, having to do with the infringement of rules. † This paper was originally given at the BSECS Annual conference, Oxford 2001. I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Mihaela Limia, and Daviel Brett for their comments and constant support as well as the anonymous aeferees, who gave their consent for publication.

© School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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an unacknowledged form of intertextuality. So, the purpose of this paper is to show how, even with actual travellers, referentiality (in the linguistic sense of the word, i.e. that of denotation, of a relation between language and the world out there) is hijacked into intertextuality. As a result, their accounts evince a palimpsest-like quality in that their narrations and their descriptions do not necessarily point to some objective reality, but to yet other similar texts, so that the referent is obscured or, at best, deferred, by the layer upon layer of interpretations. This does not refer to the subjective, biased discourse of the nondescript traveller immersed in the strange cultural reality of a far-away place, but to those purportedly objective discourses, laying a claim to a scientific chronotopic rendering, that is, to a faithful, first-hand description of the place in both historical and geographical terms.

Two case studies will help me to illustrate my thesis: the first centres on Jean Louis Carra’s 1777 treatise Histoire de la Moldavie et de la Vallachie avec une dissertation sur l’état actuel de ces deux Provinces.1 The author, an agent working for the Prussian king Frederick II, served for a time as a secretary to the Moldavian prince Alexandru Ghika, and wrote the above-mentioned tract in conjunction with another one laying out a plan for the envisaged division of the Ottoman Empire. His writings were meant to be an accurate, true-to-life source of information for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. Thorough comparative analyses of Carra’s text, however (I refer here to analyses conducted by a Romanian scholar, Maria Holban), have shown it to be a rehashing of passages plagiarized from the works of Dimitrie Cantemir, in particular from his Descriptio Moldaviae (The Description of Moldavia).2 I am not going to defend Cantemir’s works against the predatory use foreign authors made of them, but merely use this case of plagiarism as a starting point for a meditation upon the nature of authorship in the eighteenth century and the relation between textuality and referentiality.

In some cases, the pieces of information Carra extracts from Cantemir are quite accurate, although still unacknowledged, as, for instance, when he gives an account of the natural resources of Moldavia and of how the Gypsies sifted the sand scooped from riverbeds in search of gold, which was said to be found in such profusion that it enabled them to pay their taxes to the prince.

What seems particularly strange, however, is that he glosses over the ethnographical realities, although, when it comes to a traveller’s perception of a distant strikingly unfamiliar place, these are the first that meet the eye, featuring most prominently in any such account. They are, psychologically speaking, the most salient and most conspicuous elements, and his dismissing them so easily reinforces the claim that his is an intertextual, palimpsestic perception of the two principalities 1 Jean Louis Carra (1743–1793), French adventurer, a dabbler in philosophy and pedagogy, a scheming Girondin in the French Revolution, his plotting brings him eventually to the guillotine; between 1775–76 he works for Alexandru Ghika, the Moldavian prince; and in 1777 he publishes Histoire de la Moldavie et de la Valachie avec une dissertation sur l’etat actuel de ces deux Provinces in conjunction with Essai particulier de politique dans lequel on propose un partage de la Turquie européene.

2 Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723), Moldavian prince (1710–13) and erudite scholar, a member of the Academy of Berlin, author of groundbreaking treatises on history, philosophy, music, geography, a specialist in Muslim culture.

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and that his is a second-hand take on, in this case, Moldavian realities. Such an attitude is indicative of the fact that he did not have actual contact with them, but rather read about them in Cantemir’s Description of Moldavia. I tend to see here an unmistakable sign of textual boredom. If Carra had interacted with these realities, he most likely would have retained at least some of the more picturesque and colourful aspects. But his is the typical textual (or textually-induced) boredom of the foreigner who does not have the patience to read through the fastidiously-gathered ethnographical data of Cantemir’s work. And, predictably enough, the accumulation of strange, tongue-twisting names, local customs, minor deities, and conjuring practices will surely have been most trying, even rebarbative, for a foreigner.

If such tell-tale snippets of information as, for instance, the reference to a special type of green beeswax (‘cire verte’), point to an unfair appropriation of Cantemir’s contribution, there is, nevertheless, a worse fate than plagiarism that awaits Cantemir’s work at the hands of the French author, that of mis-plagiarism. If Carra had merely used such information as found in the Moldavian scholar’s works and passed it off as his own, I suppose we Romanians might have been able to look upon it as a blessing in disguise. For although the source is unacknowledged, the advantage of this kind of erudite information about the Romanian Principalities gaining unhoped-for currency is quite obvious, since Carra’s History was much circulated and influenced other travellers’ accounts for a long time to come. It appears, however, that even plagiarism presupposes a certain amount of effort and discretion, which Carra, unfortunately, was not able to put in. For instance, he misreads Cantemir’s geographical distinction between the two parts of Moldavia, the High Country and the Low Country (T c ara de Sus — T c ara de Jos) transforming it instead into a distinction between Moldavia and Wallachia. And, as if this were not enough, he proceeds to a moral characterization of the inhabitants of the two countries grounded on such fallacious geographical details or demarcations. Geography, in other words, becomes a source of legitimation for moral generalizations arrived at by means of unwarrantable feats of induction.

Now, if in the case of Carra’s History the name of Cantemir is not mentioned at all, with Sulzer,3 the author of the controversial History of Transalpinian Dacians, we can speak of an appearance of fair play. Unlike Carra, he overtly engages into a fierce polemic with the Moldavian scholar. He constantly, and disparagingly for that matter, refers to his text, Cantemir’s Description of Moldavia, with a view to pointing out its flaws and its fallacies. He is particularly critical of some of the more imaginative accounts to be found in Cantemir, as for example the part where he describes a strange breed of sheep that was said to trot backwards, crabwise as it were. Nothing wrong so far. The problem starts when we examine the bibliographical list attached at the end of Sulzer’s work and realize that Cantemir does not appear there.

3 Franz Joseph Sulzer (1727–1791), a Swiss from Laufenburg; he starts out as a military magistrate in the Austrian army, and settles in Brasc ov, Transylvania; in 1776 he is called to Wallachia by the Phanariot prince Alexandru Ipsilanti, for whom he works as a secretary, as a councillor, and even as a topographer; he is the author of a bulky three-tome work called Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens . . . , published in 1781, in Vienna. The work, which was meant to be informative and scientific, often veers towards the satirical and the polemical, in this respect coming closer to a Stachelschrift (Germ. pamphlet) rather than to a scientific treatise.

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Ironically enough, he lists Carra with his History of Moldavia and Wallachia, a blatant instance of plagiarism from Cantemir. A man of Sulzer’s erudition and textual prowess cannot have failed to notice the uncanny similarity between the two. What is positively ludicrous is that, at a certain point, Sulzer resorts to Carra’s text to substantiate his own critique of Cantemir. He only acknowledges the Moldavian scholar when he wants to criticize something about his work, but when it comes to using ethnographical data, he too, just like Carra, passes it off as his own contribution. This point has been made by, among others, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga (whom Larry Wolff also mentions in his Imagining Eastern Europe). One of the betraying elements in Sulzer’s account is to be found in the depiction of the raininvoking ritual known as papaluda. This is the Moldavian dialectal form of the word, the Wallachian counterpart, paparuda, differing by just one sound and the ‘l’ being replaced by an ‘r’.4 This apparently insignificant dissimilarity gives Sulzer away, since he uses the Moldavian (that is, Cantemir’s) word when one would have expected him to use the Wallachian dialectal form, because he lived in Wallachia for quite a long time. So he misappropriates an alien phonetic reality in the heat of the same intertextual drive.

But the positively incendiary part of Sulzer’s History of the Transalpinian Dacians is the one concerning the origin of the Romanian people. Sulzer is the infamous initiator/engenderer of the so-called ‘immigrational’ theory, according to which the Romanians came into being as a people somewhere in the Balkans and it was not until the thirteenth century that they migrated north of the Danube. Petru Maior, one of the representatives of the Transylvanian School, showed how Sulzer misconstrued an old Hungarian document, in which there was, understandably enough, no mention whatsoever to Wallachians, since they were considered outsiders and debarred from any political or representational rights until their famous petition for national recognition of 1791 (Supplex Libellus Valachorum). In support of his erroneous conclusions, Sulzer invokes linguistic arguments engaging into debates over language problems without actually speaking Romanian, hazarding such opinions as the necessity of retaining the Cyrillic alphabet for representing the sounds of the Romanian language.

The kind of historiography Sulzer practices in his work reminds one of two of the five types of historiographical reading postulated by Dominick LaCapra in his 2000 book History and Reading, namely the synoptic and the redemptive reading. If Sulzer’s erudition and propensity for comprehensive research may warrant a characterization of his method as synoptic, then his pro-domo-sua, self-fulfilling kind of arguments, his plagiaristic use of sources and tendentious selection of facts point to a redemptive reading of history, or to use LaCapra’s words, to a model of reading ‘striving to seek out the meaning of past experience, frequently in terms that put into play or even help to validate contemporary desires and values’,5 in Sulzer’s case, his own desires and values. All this is by no means surprising, since history, 4 Franz Joseph, Sulzer în Dacia cisalpinab sc i transalpinab , Editura muzicalab a Uniunii Compozitorilor sc i Muzicienilor din România, ed. and trans. by Gemma Zinveliu (Bucuresc ti, 1995), p. 29.

5 Dominick LaCapra, History and Reading (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2000), p. 55.

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just like cartography, is never innocent, and has always been an apologetic, politically loaded practice. Thus, Sulzer makes the most of his undeniable erudition with a view to obtaining a consular position, and his minute economic descriptions are consequently aimed at bringing home to the Austrian imperial authorities the necessity and tremendous profitability of colonizing the Romanian provinces. The man was not a raving lunatic or some megalomaniac in making these suggestions, but was merely capitalizing on an already existing political configuration and on the very topical plan (the famous Greek Project initiated by Catherine the Great) for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its constitutive territories among two of the great European powers of the day, Russia and the Habsburg Empire.

What I was rather uneasy about when I first started considering and appraising these people’s works was the possibility that I might unwittingly judge them by the wrong standard, using a contemporary benchmark, imposing upon them an alien and alienating set of values regarding authorship and plagiarism, in other words, that I might be making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, people in the eighteenth century did have a venerable precedent in the medieval tradition of textual reproduction and compilation, a tradition governed by the powerful notion of auctoritas (in which the author was a mere scriptor, a transparent and self-effaced vehicle for the authority of God’s word). Added to this, there was the Renaissance doctrine of imitatio, relying on the power of ancient exemplars, as well as the compiling flurry induced by the then-fashionable commonplace books. Can one be so harsh in judging the two, knowing that in the eighteenth century authorship as a recognized profession had not yet completely sunk into public consciousness and that it was still a fledgling notion (people like Fielding were still being humorous about it referring to the new profession as ‘living by one’s pate’)? The challenge launched here, very much in the manner of a devil’s advocate, is whether we could find some mitigating circumstances for Sulzer and Carra. After all, Ephraim Chambers, the author of the two-volume Cyclopedia (1728), defended dictionarymakers against the charge of plagiarism by resorting to the concept of ‘Publick Service.’ If lexicographers rob, he said, they do not do it in any way other than the Bee does, for the ‘Publick Service’. Were not the two mis-plagiarists doing the same thing, that is, drawing on various sources and compiling items of information for the ‘Publick Service’, that is for the use of the authorities in their respective countries? The techniques of compiling, excerpting, and paraphrasing were all ‘reading strategies for coping with information overload’,6 because, ever since the advent of printing by moveable type and the consequential information dissemination, scholars had been expressing their concern about the increasing number of books, so that, in the seventeenth century, we have such an apocalyptic vision of books forever growing in number as put forth by Leibniz who spoke of ‘that horrible mass of books that keeps on growing’.7 The eighteenth-century journalistic boom added 6 See Anne Blair’s enlightening article ‘Reading Strategies for Coping with Early Modern Information Overload’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 19.

7 Richard Yeo, ‘A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia (1728) as “the Best Book in the Universe”’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 62.

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a new dimension to this textual effervescence and rendered the practice of crossreferencing indispensable. Think, for instance, of Addison’s and Steele’s journals, which were ‘abundantly cross-referenced’; of course, this was primarily done with a view to fostering in-group feelings but also to coping with writing loads.8 Nevertheless, leaving aside this devil’s-advocate stance, one cannot but conclude that, if all these historical arguments can be invoked in mitigation of the two authors’ fault, there is, however, one undeniable aspect of their working method which places them outside the purview of this tradition, namely, their failure to acknowledge their sources. While the above-mentioned reading strategies had, more often than not, a mnemonic function, working as retrieval mechanisms, in the case of these authors the selfsame strategies work as an obscuring, deceiving, self-promoting mechanism, blurring rather than foregrounding actual authorship.

In view of this one cannot possibly absolve them of the charge of plagiarism or rather mis-plagiarism, for, more often than not, the pirated information surfaces in their work hopelessly distorted, hijacked from its original import.

8 Brain McCrea, Addison and Steele are Dead: The English Department, Its Canon, and the Professionalization of Literary Criticism (University of Delaware Press, Delaware, 1990), p. 52.

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Evangelizing Accession: Solidarity Electoral Action and Poland’s EU Membership Anna M. Pluta London School of Economics This paper considers the impact of the ideological diversity of Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosa ca (AWS, Solidarity Electoral Action) on Poland’s integration with the European Union. It is argued that the ideological heterogeneity of the AWS prevented it from formulating a stance on Europe prior to the 1997 elections. The situation was further complicated when a coalition with the liberal, Euro-enthusiastic Unia Wolnosa ci (UW, Freedom Union) proved to be the only means of forming a majority government. Policy differences were deemed of secondary importance in light of the need to prevent the Communists’ successors from maintaining political power. Consequently, the AWS turned to the ambiguous, if politically profitable, ‘re-evangelization’ doctrine. While an effective means of gaining electoral legitimization, such neo-messianism could not be translated into concrete policy proposals. The use of proportional assignation of personnel to resolve ideological differences soon led to conflicts between the liberal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Committee for European Integration and the Chief Negotiator. For the Solidarity-successor elites, eliminating their political opponent was more important than the realization of the policies they promised to implement. In spite of a radically changed systemic context, the ex-dissidents’ claims for political power were still legitimated by the goals of 1980.

Introduction When Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosc collected a third of the votes in Poland’s September 1997 elections, it was hailed as the start of a successful Christian-democratic party and a contribution to the consolidation of Polish democracy.1 Yet it soon became clear that personal politics and ideological diversity impeded policymaking. Ideological differences became increasingly pronounced when the trade unionist, conservative AWS formed a coalition with the liberal, Euro-enthusiastic Unia Wolnosci. Following four years of intra-coalition power struggles, botched reforms, and economic slowdown, neither of the governing groupings managed to enter the 2001 parliament.

This paper will consider the impact of the AWS’s ideological diversity on Poland’s integration with the EU. The first section will concentrate on the formation of Electoral Action and its pre-electoral attempts at formulating a coherent stance on Europe. Secondly, the presentation of European integration in the 1997 1

W¢odzimierz Weso¢owski, Partie: Same Klopoty (Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2000), pp. 72–73.

© School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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parliamentary elections will be discussed. The third section will account for the evolution of integration policy under the AWS–Unia Wolnosa ci coalition. Lastly, the 2000 presidential election, the collapse of the UW–AWS coalition and the fragmentation of the AWS will be discussed.

The formation of AWS Established in June 1996 under the initiative of Marian Krzaklewski, the leader of the Solidarity Trade Union, the AWS incorporated a plethora of ideologically diverse organizations, ranging from Euro-sceptic Catholic nationalists to pro-integrationist liberals. Apart from the NSZZ Solidarnosa ca (Narodowy Niezalezd ny Zwiapzek Zawodowy ‘Solidarnosa ca ’, National Independent Trade Union ‘Solidarity’), the AWS’ largest members were the Porozumienie Centrum (PC, Centre Accord), the Zjednoczenie Chrzesa cijansko-Narodowe (ZChN, Christian-Nationalist Faction), the Konfederacja Polski Niepod¢eglej–Obóz Patriotyczny (KPN–OP, Confederation for Independent Poland — the Patriotic Camp), and the Polski Zwiapzek Rodzin Katolickich (Polish Association of Catholic Families). Regaining parliamentary representation and preventing the Communist successors from maintaining political power was Electoral Action’s raison d’être. As specified in the ‘Declaration of the AWS’, the ‘aim of the Action is the formation of a wide electoral bloc which will have a chance of winning the upcoming parliamentary elections’.2 The ethos of Solidarity 1980, which stood united in its diversity against the common authoritarian enemy, was hence resurrected for the political purposes of the Solidarity-successor elites.

The power-sharing arrangements of the AWS reflected the size of its member organizations. The legislative body was the National Commission, consisting of five to seven representatives of the Trade Union and one representative of each of the other member organizations. Krzaklewski was appointed as the chair of the Commission, and the posts of deputy chairmen went to representatives of ‘Solidarity’, the Christian Nationalist Faction, the Confederation for Independent Poland– Patriotic Camp, and the Polish Association of Catholic Families. The executive of the AWS was the Co-ordinating Committee, elected by the National Commission and consisting of a total of ten members, half of whom were Trade Unionists and the remainder represented the five largest member organizations of the movement.

Marian Krzaklewski was also appointed as Secretary of the Co-ordinating Committee.

The diversity of Electoral Action was soon manifested during an attempt to construct a common stance on European integration at a meeting in March 1997.

The liberal Centre Accord, the Conservative–Agrarian Faction (Stronnictwo Konserwatywno–Ludowe, SKL) and Ruch Stu (the One Hundred Movement) advocated speedy accession. The Confederates, the National Christian Faction, and the Catholic Families, on the other hand, were highly sceptical. While not explicitly opposing European integration, they qualified their support by raising numerous and unrealistic conditions. Section 6.8 of the KPN–OP’s program, for example, 2 Andrzej Anusz et al., ABC Akcji Wyborczej Solidarnosa ca (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Fulmen, 1997), p. 9.

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called for a re-negotiation of the association agreements and stated that, in order for Poland to be able to compete with the EU on an equal footing, Polish annual growth rates should average between ten and fifteen per cent. The programme ended with a section entitled ‘Problems with European Integration’. These included agricultural over-production, growing unemployment, a biased interpretation of the Treaties in favour of the Union, as well as describing the Single Market as ‘a ruthless battle, breaking all established rules, for subsidies, production levels, markets, and work.’3 The Christian–Nationalist Faction also did not explicitly oppose EU membership.

Section 36 of its socio-economic programme called for abandoning dogma in approaches to the nature and speed of integration.4 The manner in which the Faction responded to various developments in the integration process, however, would suggest that its attitude to EU accession was not one of enthusiasm. In February 1996, for example, the ZChN issued a statement condemning recent legislation that increased foreigners’ rights to purchase land,5 and in June of that year it called for a re-negotiation of the association agreements.6 In contrast to the above, the Centre Accord was unambiguously supportive of accession. Having emphasized the need for fast NATO membership,7 its program stated: ‘Membership in the European Union lies at the strategic interests of our country, as it ties it civilisationally, politically and economically with the West and allows for faster economic growth [. . .] the period of awaiting for membership should be made as short as possible’.8 Similarly, the Conservative–Agrarian Faction was clear in its disagreement with concerns about loss of national values and identity: The European Union is not a melting pot which turns nations participating in the integration process into a homogenous European society. Respect for national tradition and diversity is the obvious right of each member state, and has been made use of by the members with no limitations. Membership in the European Union will be the consequence of our 1000 year old presence in Europe, and not a break with national tradition.9

Taking a clear-cut stance on European integration presented the greatest challenge to the Solidarity Trade Union and its leader Marian Krzaklewski, however. On the one hand, Krzaklewski needed to compromise with the pro-integrationist elements 3

Ibid., p. 9.

‘Program Gospodarczo-Spo¢eczny ZChN’, in Informator Zjednoczenia Chrzesa cijansko Narodowego, nr.42/7, 29 February 1996, Warsaw, section 36, p. 8, ZChN folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 5 ‘V Nadzwyczajny Zjazd Krajowy Zjednoczenia Chrzesa cijansko-Narodowego’, Uchwa¢a nr.1, Informator Zjednoczenia Chrzesa cijansko-Narodowego, nr.41/6, 28 February 1996, Warsaw, ZChN folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 6 Ibid., Uchwa¢a nr.20/30/96, 15 June 1996.

7 Uchwala nr.5 IV Kongresu Porozumienia Centrum — Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosa ca , section 2, Porozumienie Centrum folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 8 Ibid., section 3.

9 Programme Wyborczy Stronnictwa Konserwatywno-Ludowego, 1997, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies, PAN. 4

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of the AWS and did not want to deter the large section of its electorate which supported EU accession. On the other hand, EU membership entailed the restructuring of the heavy industries, and hence the threat of unemployment for the trade union’s traditional support base in the loss-making mines and shipyards. As the political scientist Frances Millard observes, while explicit support for accession was politically convenient to the AWS, the implementation of reforms required for membership went against the interests of a significant section of the union’s support base.10 The 1997 Parliamentary Elections Taking place eight months before the start of accession negotiations, the 1997 elections were the obvious platform for the presentation of party-political views on Europe. Apart from the AWS and the UW, the main contenders were the Communist-successor Stronnictwo Ludowo Demokratyczne (SLD, Social Democratic Alliance), the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL, Polish Agrarian Faction), the nationalist Ruch Odbudowy Polski (ROP, Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland) and the social-democrat Unia Pracy (UP, Labour Union).

The Freedom Union was unambiguously supportive of accession, calling for both NATO and EU membership to take place as soon as possible. It was argued that accession would entail few socio-economic costs, since the necessary reforms had to be carried out anyway. The programme stated: Reform efforts, necessary for the success of our foreign policy must take place anyway, if we want to tear Poland away from decades of relative backwardness. These efforts will bring us greater international security and faster development, when we bring a reformed Poland into NATO and the European Union.11

Similar Euro-enthusiasm was exhibited by the Communist-successor SLD, which claimed: We consider Poland’s membership in the European Union and NATO to be the most important foreign policy aims [. . .] acceding to the European ‘Fatherland of Fatherlands’ will bring better and safer lives to the Poles.12

The Labour Union raised concerns about the potential dangers of accession to the labour market.13 It argued, however, that membership of the EU and NATO was the only guarantee of Poland’s international security.14 Conversely, Jan Olszewski’s Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland took a very cautious stance on EU membership. Its proposed accession strategy required 10 Frances Millard, ‘Polish Domestic Politics and Accession to the European Union’, in Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union, ed. by Karen Henderson (London: UCL Press, 1999).

11 Freedom Union 1997 Electoral Program, section 99, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 12 SLD 1997 Electoral Program, ‘Dobre Dzisa — Lepsze Jutro’, section 15, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 13 Labour Union 1997 electoral programme: ‘Zas¢ugujesz na Wiëcej. Deklaracja Wyborcza Unii Pracy’ section 1, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 14 Ibid., section 4.

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Poland’s GDP to be on par with that of its European partners, prior to membership.

Judging by 1997 growth rates, accession could take place in twenty years!15 The Polish Agrarian Faction’s views on Europe combined the need to protect Polish national identity from such threats as ‘liberal pressures’, ‘postmodernism’, and ‘aggressive counter-culture’16 with the desire to make use of the CAP and structural funds. For the PSL, EU membership was a zero-sum game, to be won either by ‘us’ or by ‘Brussels’. The success of the integration process lay in the hands of the negotiators, who had to be ‘tough’ in defending Polish national identity, industry and above all the agricultural sector.

Lastly, Solidarity Electoral Action’s stance on European integration reflected the ideological diversity of its member organizations. The heading of the relevant section read: ‘Full membership in NATO and integration with Europe.’17 An implicit distinction between NATO membership and integration (but not necessarily membership) in the EU was hence established. The disparity between enthusiastic support for NATO and a lukewarm acceptance of EU membership could be observed further in the programme: We decisively support Poland’s full membership in NATO taking place as soon as possible. Integration with the European Union will create a real possibility of gaining direct influence on the shaping of the new European order, [. . .] we aim towards the establishment of a Europe where free nations are united in a Europe of Nations.18

Unlike the NATO situation, the desired timing of integration with the European Union was not specified. Moreover, the program did not explicitly state the Electoral Action’s support for EU membership, and the more ambiguous phrase of ‘European integration’ was used instead. The AWS motivated its support for integration by suggesting that it would allow Poland to influence the new European order. The programme implied that this new Europe would be an intergovernmental ‘Europe of Nations’, rather than the closer form of federalist co-operation advocated by the Freedom Union and the Social Democratic Alliance.

The vague and ambiguous nature of the program was a result of the heterogeneity of the AWS. As Krzysztof Oksiuta of the Conservative–Agrarian Faction commented: In all our (i.e.: AWS’) electoral materials it was emphasized that we are going to the European Union [. . .]. There is the matter of the speed of integration with the European Union, and here there were very different voices in the electoral campaign. There were those who wanted to [accede] as quickly as possible, and my grouping, the Conservative-Agrarian Faction, was one of those, and there were opponents who thought well, the European Union, being in Europe does not mean 15 1997 Programme Wyborczy Ruchu Odbudowy Polski, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 16 ‘V Kongres Polskiego Stronnictwa Ludowego. Dokumenty Programowe’, 1997, p. 142.

17 Solidarity Electoral Action 1997 electoral programme: ‘Pe¢ne Cz¢onkowstwo w NATO i Integracja z Europap’, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN. 18 Solidarity Electoral Action 1997 electoral programme, 1997 election folder, Political Parties’ Archive, Institute of Political Studies PAN.

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that we have to [accede] straight away, that we should reform this European Union into a Europe of Nations, retain national character, our institutions and so forth, and so because of this the speed of integration should be slower. Threats were made about selling out national property, that was ZChN and these radically Catholic trends, so there was this stance in the electoral campaign. The Solidarity Trade Union also aligned itself to this formula in different regions of the country, depending on who was the regional head..the leader himself, Marian Krzaklewski, did not take a clear stance in the electoral campaign [. . .] it was only after the election that the AWS decided to opt for a faster integration.19

As the above discussion illustrates, the European integration doctrines of the AWS and the Freedom Union had little in common. For the liberals, the processes of systemic transformation and European integration were mutually reinforcing. The reforms required for accession would have to be carried out anyway, they argued, if Poland was to consolidate a liberal free-market democracy. For the AWS, on the other hand, European integration was a ‘zero-sum’ game where a cost benefit analysis would be applied to accession requirements. The implementation of some of the required reforms, such as restructuring heavy industry, went against the interests of many of the Action’s trade unionist voters. Moreover, the ‘Europe of Nations’ to which the AWS wished to accede had little in common with the increasingly inter-dependent and federationalist post-Maastricht EU and the liberal, closely integrated Community envisioned by the Freedom Union. Yet, in spite of such stark ideological differences, the AWS was forced to turn to this Euroenthusiastic grouping to form a majority government.

Integration policy under the AWS–UW coalition Having won almost thirty-four percent of the vote, the SLD could be described as the winner of the 1997 elections. Limited in their coalition-building ability by their authoritarian past, however, the social-democrats were unable to form a government. With twenty-seven percent of the vote, AWS formed a coalition with the vehemently liberal and pro-integrationist Freedom Union. Prior to the election, it was believed that the ideological differences between the two groupings would prevent them from governing together. Few pre-electoral talks took place. Indeed, the two appeared rather adversarial. In a statement made during the election campaign, Leszek Balcerowicz, the leader of the Freedom Union, volunteered the following commentary about the AWS’s economic strategy: ‘I have the impression that the page on expenses was written by socialists, and the page on taxes by a handful of liberals’.20 The socio-economic programs of either ROP or the PSL would have been a better match for Electoral Action, but neither could offer enough votes to form a majority. Having collected over thirteen percent of the vote, the Freedom Union hence became an attractive coalition partner. Partnership with the interventionist, conservative, and Euro-sceptic AWS was hardly an attractive option to the principled liberals however. To form a government, the AWS was hence forced to 19 Interview with Krzysztof Oksiuta, representative of the Conservative–Agrararian Faction, 9 July 1998.

20 Leszek Balcerowicz, ‘Wydatki i Podatki AWS’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 28–29 May 1997, p. 3.

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make significant concessions in key policy areas. After nearly two months of negotiations, the UW struck a hard bargain and gained control over the ministries of finance, foreign affairs, defence, and justice, with Balcerowicz appointed as finance minister and deputy premier.

As it manoeuvred between the Euro-sceptic ZChN and the Freedom Union’s enthusiasm for fast accession, the AWS’s stance on Europe grew even more ambiguous. The approaching accession negotiations, scheduled to start in February 1998, confronted it with the need to present some sort of a coherent integration doctrine that would be broad enough to incorporate the divergent views of its numerous member organizations as well as those of its coalition partner. In order to establish such a doctrine, Marian Krzaklewski resorted to the well-tested political marketing tool of Polish Catholicism and the strategy of ‘re-evangelizing’ Europe.

1997 marked a turnaround in the Episcopate’s attitude towards the EU. As it became increasingly aware that accession was a fait accompli, and that little could be done to prevent it, the Catholic hierarchy sought to formulate a strategy that would allow it to reap optimal benefits from Poland’s membership in the European Union.

The Bishops’ fears of imminent secularization were apparently quelled during a visit to the European Commission in November 1997. On their return, they urged the Polish church to change the way it thought about Europe. In place of fearing it, European integration should be now seen as a ‘wonderful opportunity and a great Evangelical challenge for the Church’.21 The re-evangelization doctrine was expounded on by Bishop Muszyna ski: This will need to be put into evangelization programs. The nation will need to be told what benefits are related to entering the European Union, but also what are the inconveniences and burdens connected with it. But if the Poles are shown the purpose of it, they will be able to take on sacrifices. The Union is starting a public ethical debate on the subject of what it is doing, and the Churches have the full right to come up with an ethical assessment of the politicians’ doings.22

The Church hence declared its intention to become actively involved in the integration process. The Episcopate’s support was not unqualified, however. European integration was acceptable as long as it did not adversely affect Polish sovereignty and national identity, or put domestic agriculture and industry at a disadvantage.

The Catholic hierarchy still perceived the EU as anti-religious and immoral. Józef Glemp, the Archbishop of Poland, was particularly specific about the European Union’s morally corrupt nature: ‘Atheism, secularization, which in Europe take the form of ideology together with euthanasia and homosexual marriages, these are the great challenges of the Church’.23 The re-evangelization doctrine turned out to be an effective, if temporary, remedy for Krzaklewski’s dilemma. During the opening parliamentary debate in October 1997, he stated: European integration will give Poland the chance to speed up economic growth. We will also gain a real possibility of directly influencing the evolution of the new 21 22 23

Andrzej Domos¢awski, ‘Koscio¢a Drogi do Europy’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 June 1997, p. 23.

Edward Krzemien, ‘Uczymy sie Unii’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 11 August 1997, p. 11.

Interview with Ewa Czaczkowska, ‘Zawsze Mielismy Nadziejep’, Rzeczpospolita, 19 December 2001.

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European order. We will co-create the unity of the continent, while preserving our identity. We will consolidate our Polishness. The only concrete foundation of the European Community is Christianity, and inseparable from it is the love for freedom, a responsible freedom. It was Christianity towards which turned the creators of the idea of a common Europe.24

The AWS hence supported European integration, granted, however, that the European Union Poland acceded to was above all Christian. Although it was never quite specified precisely how the challenging task of evangelizing the EU would be carried out, the ‘re-evangelization’ doctrine was broad enough to incorporate both the euro-sceptic ZChN and the pro-integrationist Centre Accord or the One Hundred Movement. While the need to preserve the traditional, Catholic identity of the Poles made accession to the secular, morally corrupt Europe unacceptable for the Catholic-nationalist politicians, the prospect of preserving Polish national identity and sovereignty by means of evangelising the EU’s member states allowed a way out of the dilemma. Instead of adjusting to European culture, the Poles would adjust the EU’s values to their own. Polish morality was constructed as somehow superior to that of Western Europe, and the beneficial influence of Poland’s value system was presented as a bargaining tool with the EU.25 However, the evangelization doctrine was not embraced by all members of the Catholic Church. The most Euro-sceptic representative of the Church was Father Tadeusz Rydzyk’s movement of Radio Maryja. Unimpressed by the Episcopate’s evangelism, Radio Maryja saw European integration as a grave threat to Polish Catholicism. As archbishop Józef Michalik put it: The cross of Christ, his teaching, and sacramental life of compassion, have created the whole of European culture. Atheism, forced on us for many years, today takes the name of liberalism and capitalism. Before the East, and now the West call for Poland to adapt a full social, political as well as ideological and religious liberalism.

We hence stand before a new form of totalitarianism that is a lack of tolerance for the good, for Godly matters, aiming to spread evil with no heed for consequences and in effect once again to hurt the weakest.26

Its close association with the Christian Nationalist Faction and the Polish Federation of Catholic Families turned Radio Maryja into a powerful medium for the propagation of Euro-scepticism. As integration progressed, the ideological divisions of the Church were also reflected in the AWS’s internal debates about European integration.

More a marriage of convenience than a working partnership, the governing coalition was fraught with conflicts from its inception. The political scientist Grzegorz Rydlewski notes that over thirty conflicts between the coalition partners were made public up until 30 September 1998, ranging from administrative reform, ‘family’ 24 Marian Krzaklewski, quoted in Jacek Kucharczyk, ‘Porwanie Europy. Integracja Europejska w Polskim Dyskursie Politycznym 1997–1998’, Polska Eurodebata, ed. by Lena Kolarska-Bobinska (Warsaw: Instytut Spraw Politycznych, 1999), p. 304.

25 Ryszard Czarnecki, Parliamentary debate on European integration, 19 March 2001 <http://ks.sejm. gov.pl:8009/forms/kad.htm> 26 Czarnecki, 19 March 2001

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allowances to media regulation. The sociologists Jerzy Hausner and Miros¢awa Marody point out that the lack of an ideological common ground made personnel policy the instrument through which the governing coalition maintained coherence and stability.27 The European integration process proved to be a salient example of how attempts to resolve ideological differences by means of personnel arrangements impeded policy formation.

The coalition agreement specified that governmental appointments would be distributed proportionally based on the number of received votes.28 Ministerial and deputy ministerial positions were balanced between the UW and Electoral Action: where the AWS appointed the minister, the Freedom Union could select the candidate for the deputy position, and vice versa. Such power-sharing arrangements led to some unusual ministerial tandems, the most striking of which was perhaps the appointment of the Freedom Union’s Piotr Nowina-Konopka as deputy to the Catholic-Nationalist head of the Committee for European Integration, Ryszard Czarnecki. Correspondingly, another Catholic-nationalist, Adam S¢omka of the KPN–OP, was made the second in command to the liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Bronis¢aw Geremek.

Responsibility for European integration strategies was divided between three institutions. While the office of the Chief Negotiator was based at the Prime Minister’s Chancellery, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was charged with policy formulation, and KIE was to manage policy development and co-ordinate implementation among the different ministries. The implementation of the Committee’s directives was assigned to the Office of the Committee of European Integration (UKIE), with the head of the KIE also responsible for the post of the secretary of the UKIE. The KIE, set up in 1996, was initially chaired by the Prime Minister, so as to ensure sufficient authority to effectively co-ordinate integration efforts. Prime Minister Buzek, however, appointed the leader of the Euro-sceptic Christian Nationalist Faction, Ryszard Czarnecki, to head the KIE. It did not take long for conflicts to develop between Czarnecki and the Euro-enthusiastic liberals. Czarnecki’s liberal deputy, Piotr-Nowina Konopka, was sent on leave after he insulted his boss on a popular radio programme. He was subsequently appointed as deputy to the head negotiator, Jan Ku¢akowski.

Czarnecki also came into conflict with the Minister of Finance and leader of the UW, Leszek Balcerowicz, concerning the administration of EU aid when the Freedom Union proposed draft legislation on public finances, which placed aid administration under the auspices of the Finance Ministry. As Balcerowicz commented, allowing the KIE to continue managing the funds would only lead to ‘multiplying pathology’.29 27 Jerzy Hausner and Miros¢awa Marody, Three Polands, 1997 Report on the Progress of European Integration (Warsaw: Freidrich Ebert Foundation, 1998), p. 56.

28 ‘Umowa Koalicyjna Pomiepdzy Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosaca i Unia Wolnosaci’ section 8, in Ryszard Rydlewski, Rzadzenie Koalicyjne w Polsce (Warsaw: Elipsa, 2000), p. 148.

29 Katarzyna Jepdrzejewska, ‘Racja po Stronie Balcerowicza’, Rzeczpospolita, 15 May 1998.

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By the time the new legislation was put in place, however, the damage had already been done. Controversy regarding the deadline for the submission of funding applications developed at the start of May 1998. According to Czarnecki such a deadline had never been set.30 Contrary to his assertions, Louisewies van der Laan, the spokesperson of the Commissioner for Enlargement, emphasized that, if the documents were not submitted by 15 May, Poland might lose the allocated funds.31 The Commission further criticized the KIE for delays in the submission of documents related to the implementation of the acquis communautaire in Polish legislation.32 The scandal erupted at the end of July when the European Commission rejected thirty-four million ECU worth of PHARE aid applications submitted by the KIE. Although the applications were submitted by the deadline of 15 May, the poor quality of the proposed projects was cited as a reason for the rejection. According to the Commissioner for Enlargement, had the projects been submitted earlier, there would have been sufficient time for necessary revisions.

Apart from the loss of PHARE funds, other problems at the KIE also pointed to Czarnecki’s inability to fulfil his position’s requirements. Inconsistent organizational arrangements, the Electoral Action’s generally ambiguous stance towards the European Union, and Czarnecki’s doubtfully pro-integrationist attitude led to increased confusion both on the side of the Polish negotiators as well as at the European Commission.33 EU officials complained about not knowing with whom they should negotiate.34 Concerns were raised about the lack of coordination among the ministries responsible for implementing the harmonization procedures, loss of confidential documentation, and the inefficient manner in which the UKIE was run in general. By the summer of 1998, almost thirty confidential documents were said to have gone missing from the offices of the Committee.35 The loss of the PHARE funds was the proverbial ‘last straw’ that finally led to personnel changes at the KIE. After lengthy discussions with representatives of the ZChN, Buzek decided to dismiss Czarnecki from the function of Chairman and take over the running of the Committee himself.36 The position of secretary of the UKIE was filled by Maria Karasina ska-Fendler, previously a European economist at ·ódza University. While once a ZChN advisor and a known sympathizer with this grouping, she had no formal party-political affiliation. Ryszard Czarnecki was given a ministerial position at the Prime Minister’s Chancellery, and was eventually charged with the task of preparing a public information programme about EU membership.

30

Piotr Apanowicz and Jan Bielecki, ‘Czarnecki Poprawia van der Broeka’, Rzeczpospolita, 9 May 1998.

Apanowicz and Bielecki, ‘Czarnecki Poprawia van der Broeka’.

32 Apanowicz and Bielecki, ‘Czarnecki Poprawia van der Broeka’.

33 Interview with W¢odzimierz Cimoszewicz, prime minister and head of KIE under SLD–PSL government, 21 July 1998; interview with Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, head of KIE from April 1999 to May 2001, 14 January 2002; interview with John O’Rourke, European Commission Representative in Warsaw, 17 January 2002.

34 ‘Koszt Braku Koordynacji’, Rzeczpospolita, 5 April 1999.

35 ‘Zapowiedza Zmian Personalnych’, Rzeczpospolita, 30 July 1998.

36 ‘Czarnecki Bez Teki’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 25–26 July 1998.

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As it was confronted with making concrete policy decisions, the Electoral Action’s consensus on EU accession grew increasingly threadbare. The ambiguity of the evangelization doctrine was quickly capitalized upon by its anti-integrationist members. As numerous factions claimed to have the only ‘correct’ interpretation of the AWS programme, the vague nature of this document became increasingly salient. A striking example of the contradictory ways in which the program was interpreted took place in October 1998, when Jan Maria Jackowski, a member of the group of AWS parliamentarians associated with Radio Maryja, announced that the Electoral Action was in fact opposed to EU accession. The phrase ‘European integration’ should not, according to Jackowski, be interpreted to mean ‘EU membership’, but it was rather a general statement of support for some unspecified form of association with Western Europe.37 As the crisis at the KIE developed, the Catholic nationalist sections of the AWS were becoming increasingly vocal in asserting their Euro-scepticism. In March 1998, the Team for the Implementation of the AWS Program was established. It consisted of twenty-seven parliamentarians including the Nationalist-Catholics of Radio Maryja, Adam S¢omka’s Confederation for Independent Poland–Patriotic Camp, as well as two notoriously anti-integrationist members of the ZChN, Jan ·opuszanaski and Andrzej Chrzanowski. S¢omka and ·opuszanaski had been expelled from the AWS in July 1998 for lack of voting discipline. Another five members of KPN–OP then left the Action as a sign of protest against S¢omka’s expulsion. On 24 July, seven Catholic-nationalist parliamentarians left Electoral Action in protest against the sale of the Gdansk shipyard. The AWS now had 187 parliamentary seats, which, combined with the Freedom Union’s 60, left the government with the rather narrow majority of fifteen seats. It may appear that as their ranks diminished the bargaining power of the radical Catholic section of the AWS decreased. In fact, the reverse took place. The AWS needed all the votes it could muster, thereby enabling the radicals to use the threat of leaving to their advantage. The ZChN was in a powerful position to bargain for Ryszard Czarnecki’s ministerial seat at Jerzy Buzek’s chancellery.38 In the meantime, relations between Poland and the European Commission took on a temporary turn for the better. The changes at the Committee for European Integration met with a positive response from the Commission.39 The new secretary’s priority was ‘not people but good procedures, not ideology and speaking about how we will protect national interests, but keeping an eye on the simple, technical matters’.40 A detailed plan of all required legislative change was adapted in September 1998, and improvements were made in the use of EU aid.

The brief period of relative de-politicization of the accession process ended when Karasinska-Fendler tendered her resignation in December 1998, citing inadequate institutional arrangements as a reason for her inability to continue in her post. Subsequently, the KIE remained without an acting head for almost sixteen months.

According to Janina Paradowska of the magazine Polityka, Prime Minister Buzek 37 38 39 40

See Kucharczyk, ‘Porwanie Europy’, pp. 306–07.

Miros¢aw Lizut, ‘AWS Topnieje’, Gazeta Wborcza, 24 July 1998.

Marcin Zdort, ‘Informacje’, Rzeczpospolita, 29 July 1998.

Maria Karasina ska-Fendler, quoted in Zapowiedza Zmian Personalnych, Rzezpospolita, 30 July 1998.

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had promised the position of the Committee chairperson to the Freedom Union. The suggested candidate, Jerzy Osiatynaski, was never appointed, however, and the KIE remained undirected.41 It was also speculated that Jacek Saryusz Wolski, the Governmental Plenipotentiary for European Integration from 1991 to 1995, might take the leadership of the KIE, with Karasinaska-Fendler as first deputy. The conditions set by both Saryusz-Wolski and Karasinaska-Fendler, however, entailed a significant strengthening of the KIE. The Committee was to have authority over its member ministries, its internal structure should be rehauled so as to avoid overlapping competencies, there should be a much stronger relationship with the negotiation team and with the head negotiator, and, lastly, there should be a much less ‘vassal’ relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs including, among other issues, the co-supervision of Poland’s EU representation in Brussels.42 The lack of a clear administrative structure continued to plague the integration process, the loudest complaints being heard from the KIE. The staff felt ignored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Negotiator’s office, both of which regularly sidelined the Committee to consult directly with the Prime Minister. Poland’s representative in Brussels, Jan Truszczynaski, was also accused of consistently ignoring the KIE and reporting integration related matters to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs retorted that the KIE staff were over-reacting and claimed that the relationship between the two institutions was very good. Notably, however, the Ministry’s spokesman did point to the rather higher salaries of the KIE staff.43 A further conflict concerning the transition period on the sale of land ensued.

Following an initial request for a total ban on the sale of land to foreigners, the KIE strongly criticized Jan Ku¢akowski for requesting an eighteen-year transition period in July 1999. This was interpreted as a slight on the Catholic-nationalists’ attempts at protecting Poland from being ‘bought out’ by the German colonizers. Eventually the two institutions ceased to communicate altogether. In spite of the KIE and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ buildings being only some one hundred metres away from each other, Jan Ku¢akowski stopped visiting the Committee. Asked why, he commented: There is currently no one there corresponding to me in rank, it is them who should come to see me. I have my staff and know what is going on. It is true that NowinaKonopka personally linked the UKIE with the negotiation team, and now there is no one fulfilling this role; I am incessantly asking the Prime Minister reinstate the previous state of affairs.44

In the meantime, Ryszard Czarnecki remained at Jerzy Buzek’s chancellery, working on the Public Information Programme (Program Informowania Spo¢eczenstwa, PIS). One of his first moves was to appoint Artur Gurski, previously an editor of the 41

Janina Paradowska, ‘Akcja Przeciw Unii, Unia Przeciw Akcji’, Polityka, 23 (2000), <http://polityka. onet.pl/archiwum.asp> [last accessed 25 May 2004].

42 Mariusz Janicki ‘KIE w Dwa Kije’, Polityka, 4 (1999), <http://polityka.onet.pl/archiwum.asp> [last accessed 25 May 2004].

43 Janicki ‘KIE w Dwa Kije’.

44 Jan Kulakowski, quoted in Janicki ‘KIE w Dwa Kije’.

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anti-EU radical-Catholic Nasz Dziennik daily, to a senior position in his department.

The PIS strategy document, completed in May 1999, reflected Czarnecki’s cautious approach to EU membership. The strategy aimed to present both the costs and the benefits of accession, warning of potential ‘shocks’ to Polish society when confronted with competitive European markets. It emphasized Poland’s thousandyear-old presence in Europe and the Christian values it shares with the continent, and presented Poland’s struggle against Communism as a contribution to a secure and democratic Europe.45 At the KIE, co-ordination problems persisted, as Prime Minister Buzek failed to appoint a head of the Committee. The deputy head, Jacek Samecki, did not have sufficient authority to push the integration process forward, and delays in harmonizing Polish legislation to the acquis ensued. Eventually, the parliamentary commission for European integration, headed by the Freedom Union’s Tadeusz Mazowiecki, proposed draft legislation calling for the government to submit all required harmonization measures for parliamentary ratification by July 2000. It also requested the government ‘establish a subject who, appointed by the prime minister and the government, will bear the responsibility for the efficiency and coordination of harmonization measures and for the carrying out the scheduled works in a disciplined manner’.46 Subsequently, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski was made head of the Committee for European Integration. Wolski’s appointment in April 2000 and the new legislation brought about progress in harmonization measures,47 and a large part of the required drafts was submitted and legislated by the summer of 2000.

The appointment of Saryusz-Wolski took place in the midst of a growing coalition crisis. Various disputes, ranging from tax law and the labour code to local administration, continued to plague the coalition. Conflict was caused by the continued practice of appointing the minister and his deputy from opposing groups. Apart from European integration, finance and defence were key points of dissent. The liberal economic policies of Leszek Balcerowicz were heavily criticized by the radical-Catholic wing of the AWS. Promises of greater co-operation and support made in an annex added to the coalition agreement in October 1999 proved unfounded and the relations between the coalition partners continued to deteriorate. Finally, the Freedom Union ministers submitted their resignations at the end of May 2000, and the liberals withdrew from government, citing numerous intra-coalition conflicts and an inability to rely on their coalition partner as the reasons for this decision. The position of Minister of Foreign Affairs was given to W¢adys¢aw Bartoszewski, who had previously held this function under President Wa¢epsa in 1995.

45

Strategia Informowania Spo¢eczenastwa, 4 May 1999 <http://www.cie.gov.pl/> [last accessed 2 October 2003].

46 Druk sejmowy 1685, III kadencja <http://orka.sejm.gov.pl/Druki4ka.nsf> [last accessed 2 November 2003].

47 Interview with John O’Rourke, First Counsellor at the European Commission Representation in Warsaw, 10 January 2002.

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The 2000 Presidential Elections and the collapse of the AWS The ideological fragmentation of the Solidarity-successor groupings was reflected in their inability to back one presidential candidate. Eventually the acting president, Communist-successor Aleksander Kwasa niewski, won by default, competing with over a dozen right wing presidential pretenders. Following lengthy deliberations, the Freedom Union decided not to put forward a candidate, the Labour Union backed Kwasniewski, and the remaining groupings backed their party leaders.

After prolonged discussions the AWS decided to support Marian Krzaklewski.

Only the radical-Catholic Jan ·opuszanaski, the libertarian Janusz Korwin-Mikke, and the ex-Chief of General Staff Tadeusz Wilecki explicitly opposed EU accession.

Aleksander Kwasa niewski maintained an emphatically pro-integrationist stance, as did the liberal Andrzej Olechowski. As in the 1997 parliamentary elections, there was a fair share of ambiguity in some candidates’ views on Europe. While not explicitly anti-integrationist, Dariusz Grabowski, supported by the Confederation for Independent Poland, presented a very cautious stance to accession. Accession should take place, he argued, if supported by a positive referendum result, but only after a fair and unbiased information campaign, hence implying that the Poles have been misled into being overly enthusiastic about EU membership. Lech Walesa, whose programme offered a mixture of liberalism and calls for greater state intervention, presented a fittingly ambiguous stance to accession, expressing support on the one hand but hedging this with assertions that he will not ‘accede on his knees’.

Jan Olszewski, of the Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland, also did not explicitly oppose accession. He did however, call for lengthy transition periods and a ‘toughening’ of the negotiation stance. He emphasized the need to ensure that banks, as well as the energy and communications sectors, remained in Polish hands.48 The most complicated stance on the European Union, however, was that of Marian Krzaklewski. Caught once again between the centre-right, pro-integrationist side of the solidarity successor electorate and the radical-Catholic supporters of Radio Maryja, Krzaklewski exhibited a thinly-veiled dislike of the EU. He emphasized the need for a Europe of Nations, in contrast to ‘left wing federationalist utopias’. He also warned of the threats to national interest, of idealizing accession without being aware of the full scale of its costs, and of a cultural revolution purportedly planned by the left-wing Euro-enthusiasts. Making full use of the ever-present historical rhetoric, Krzaklewski warned of Brussels becoming the new Moscow, implicitly equating the EU with the ‘evil’ of Communism and its successors.49 The plummeting popular support for the AWS was reflected in Marian Krzaklewski’s disappointing third place. Contrary to his hopes of a second round with Aleksander Kwasa niewski, he attained only sixteen per cent of the vote. The runner up was the liberal Andrzej Olechowski, who gained seventeen per cent.

48

Mariusz Janicki, ‘Tana ce Rytualne’, Polityka, 32 (2000), <http://polityka.onet.pl/archiwum.asp> [last accessed 25 February 2004] 49 Janicki, ‘Tana ce Rytualne’.

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Kwasniewski’s overwhelming 53% victory served to dispel any illusions as to the future electoral chances of the AWS,50 and Electoral Action split into several smaller groupings throughout the spring of 2001. In January of that year, Andrzej Olechowski initiated the centre-right, liberal Citizens’ Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), together with Tusk and Plazynski of the AWS. In March, the SKL left Electoral Action to join the Platform, and the justice minister Lech Kaczynaski set up the Law and Order committees, later to be registered as the Law and Order party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS), which gladly embraced defecting AWS parliamentarians. Also in March, Przymierze Prawicy (the Coalition of the Right, PP) was established by the more nationalistically-inclined members of the SKL and some ZChN MPs such as Pi¢ka and Niesio¢owski. Finally, in May 2001, the Solidarity trade union withdrew from the AWS, leaving Jerzy Buzek’s minority government and the Ruch Spoleczny Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosa ca party (Social Movement Solidarity Electoral Action, RS AWS) to deal with a highly fragmented parliament, a skyrocketing budgetary deficit and a rapidly deteriorating economic situation.

In the meantime, the accession negotiations dragged on, with the EU delaying much-needed institutional reforms and Poland maintaining its ‘tough’ negotiation stance. Concerns about Poland’s ability to accede and calls for a postponement of its membership could be heard from the Union.51 As negotiations continued and as the EU refused repeated requests to set a definite date for membership, in Poland concerns grew about the viability of acceding in the ‘first wave’ of enlargement.

Confusion over the accession date did not improve matters. What initially appeared to be a confusion of the dates of Poland’s readiness for membership and the actual date of EU entry proved a convenient excuse for discrediting the exacting head of the KIE. On 20 May 2001, Saryusz-Wolski claimed that 1 January 2003 was not a realistic entry date and that Poland could be expected to accede to the EU on 1 January 2004. He also stated that Prime Minister Buzek would confirm this. Only two days later, however, at a Brussels press conference held jointly with the head of the European Commission Romano Prodi, Jerzy Buzek stated that there had been no change in the expected accession date of 1 January 2003. He further informed the confused journalists that his discussions with Prodi did not broach the subject of the expected date of accession, but only concerned the speeding-up of the negotiation process. Saryusz-Wolski, also present at the press briefing, reportedly appeared flustered, and declined to comment when questioned about the discrepancy between his and the Prime Minister’s statements.52 Initially, Prime Minister Buzek put the confusion over the entry date down to a misunderstanding at the previous meeting of the KIE, and stated that he would not request Saryusz-Wolski to step down. The negotiations continued to stall throughout the remaining months of the AWS government, and it soon became clear that January 2003 was indeed a highly unrealistic prognosis. The integration process sped up only in November 2001 when, after a resounding loss of both the Solidarity 50

<http://www.abc.wp.pl/prezydent/wybory2000.html> [last accessed 20 May 2004].

Bronis¢aw Geremek, parliamentary debate on foreign policy, 9 May 2000, <http://ks.sejm.gov. pl:8009/forms/kad.htm> [last accessed 12 October 2003].

52 Jacek Pawlicki, ‘Dzia¢ Kraj’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 119 (2001), 4.

51

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Electoral Action and the Freedom Union, the Communist-successor government took up a less ‘tough’ but more effective negotiation strategy, which eventually led to Poland becoming a member of the European Union on 1 May 2004.

Conclusions As the above discussion illustrates, the ideological diversity present within the AWS impeded the formulation of a coherent integration doctrine. The situation was further complicated when a coalition with the liberal, Euro-enthusiastic Freedom Union proved to be the only means of forming a majority government. A coalition with a Communist-successor organization, no matter how ideologically compatible, was precluded by the historical symbolism used by the AWS to legitimize its heterogeneity. Policy differences were deemed of secondary importance in light of the need to complete the August 1980 ‘revolution’ and prevent the Communists from maintaining political power. Ideological diversity hence caused severe difficulties in the formation of European integration policy. As a result, Marian Krzaklewski turned to the ambiguous, albeit politically profitable, ‘reevangelization’ doctrine. While it provided an effective means to gain electoral legitimization, such neo-messianism could not be translated into concrete socioeconomic policy proposals. Neither could the proportional assignation of personnel under the AWS–UW coalition agreement replace the compromise and co-operation required for the formulation of one integration policy.

In place of policy similarities, the 1997 coalition was formed on the basis of common historical heritage in the dissident movement. Although both the AWS and Freedom Union have expressed support for European integration, their views of when and on what conditions this should take place were so different as to render policy consensus practically meaningless. Lack of policy consensus meant that ideological differences were resolved by means of personnel arrangements, which led to the appointment as head of the Committee for European Integration of the Euro-sceptic Ryszard Czarnecki. Czarnecki’s doubtfully pro-integrationist management style soon prompted conflicts with the Euro-enthusiastic Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs as well as complaints from the European Commission. Even after Czarnecki’s dismissal in August 1998, the administrative organization of the integration process left much to be desired, and the lack of co-ordination among the relevant institutions resulted in the resignation of the UKIE secretary and a further stall in policy implementation. It was only sixteen months later that the KIE was appointed a new head. While the harmonization process sped up under his supervision, Poland’s uncompromising stance on the sale of land continued to slow down the negotiation process. Following the Freedom Union’s withdrawal from the government in May 2000 and Marian Krzaklewski’s resounding loss in the presidential elections of that year, the AWS finally fragmented during spring 2001. The September 2001 election saw victory for the Communist-successor SLD and a new, more effective negotiation strategy. Neither the Freedom Union nor what remained of the AWS gained sufficient votes for parliamentary representation.

The above analysis would lead to the conclusion that, almost a decade after the collapse of the Communist regime, the threat of Communism and the ethos of the struggle against the ancien regime were still used to legitimize political power.

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Parallels may be drawn in the way the ideologically multifarious Solidarity of 1980 maintained unity by reference to the need to fight the common Communist enemy, and the manner in which the diverse members of the AWS united once again to struggle against the Communist-successor Social Democratic Alliance. The calls to prevent the SLD from maintaining power would suggest that the Solidaritysuccessor elites did not perceive the political transformation as finished. For the ex-dissidents and their entourage, eliminating the political opponent was more important than the realization of the policies they promised to implement. In spite of a radically changed systemic context, the anti-Communist elitesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; claims for political power were still legitimated by the goals of 1980.

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Poland as a Captive State?

Joanna Szalacha Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun The aim of this paper is to present a short analysis of the change in the power of the state. By using the category of the captive state and a few examples from the Polish economy, I will try to show the process of the deep and strong redefinition of the state’s functions. The paper will also relate to the concept of the network structure and the efficiency of the state within such a structure. Inevitably, in the context of such a perspective, the problem of the influence of globalization and the role of the state within it will occur. Although it is Poland that appears in the title, it must be considered here only as an example of a more universal process, not as a unique case.

Scenario One Poland, October 2003 — Bill Gates meets the Polish Prime Minister. The aim of the visit is to give the Polish government codes to Windows software. As a consequence the Polish government and Polish state institutions will only use Microsoft software on their computers. During his visit to Poland, Gates announces the beginning of the special programme concentrating on providing cheap software to Polish schools.

Scenario Two Poland, November 2003 — in several Polish cities, police launched a huge search of private houses and internet cafés in order to find illegal copies of Microsoft software. When such copies were found, they were taken away together with the computers’ hard discs. During the time that the search was carried out, legal sales of Windows in Poland doubled.

Scenario Three Poland, January 2003 — the Polish state insurance institution — ZUS1 — had been recently computerized by the company named Prokom. This company provided ZUS with computer systems which worked only under Microsoft Windows.

As a result ZUS forced each private company and each private insurance-payer to use a program called Platnik. This is a program which helps to pay out monthly insurance. It is used by ZUS and it only works with the Windows program.2 Now the main question: Is there any connection between these three scenarios? Do they relate to each other?

1 2

Zaklad Ubezpieczen Spolecznych — an institution which pays pensions.

For sources in Polish see <http://www.ibiblio.org/ser/SP-versus-RP/zus/>

© School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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My answer is — yes. They are connected with each other not only because these events happened in Poland, but also because they are part of a complicated shift from an ‘effective state’ to a ‘captive state’. This essay is a short sketch presenting this change within the power of the state. By using the category of the captive state I would like to consider how world economic trends influence internal politics and the economy in Poland and how they change the scale and quality of the power of the state authority.

Captive State (theory) captive state, weak state: do they mean the same thing?

‘Captive State’ — this phrase has been recently connected with the title of George Monbiot’s book published in 2001. Monbiot uses this phrase as a significant category which helps to describe an economic and social stage of the British state. In his book he describes how the UK (thanks to the process of mass privatization) has become a kind of a prisoner of private big capital and corporations. The process had its beginnings in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, when transnational corporations (TNCs) lobbied in parliament for privatization.3 As a result many state-owned companies were taken over by TNCs and all profits previously obtained by the state were transferred into private hands. However, the privatization of the companies was just the beginning of deeper and more intensive activities which may have led (or indeed have led) to a simple takeover of the whole state and the deprivation of citizens’ subjectivity.

The category used by Monbiot does not mean the same as ‘weak state’. The problem of the state’s power is a well-known issue in the social sciences. The differentiation between a strong, a weak, and a collapsed state is determined by how effective the state is. Shaoguang Wang enumerates a few functions that the state must fulfil if it wants to govern effectively. By performing the following functions, state authorities can be considered an effective source of power within the country. The basic feature of the strong state is an ability to monopolize the legitimate use of force. Max Weber described this as the most fundamental core of the idea of the state. Together with this is the capability to regulate society and the economy, which should go with the maintenance of the internal coherence of state institutions. The strong, effective state must be seen as one entity which has a power to shape its own national identity and to mobilize consent. It must possess the power to extract resources and then to redistribute them.4 Therefore, if we want to define a weak state, we must search for countries which do not possess the above functions. Some authors point out that non-effective states also display other features.5 One feature is a high level of corruption in public life. That means that we deal with the criminalization of the state, where former informal patterns have become institutionalized as norms of behaviour, mainly in 3

Monbiot George, Captive State. The Corporate Takeover of Britain, (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 9.

Wang Shaoguang, ‘The Problem of State Weakness’, Journal of Democracy, 14.1 (2003).

5 See M. Beissinger and C. Young, ‘Comparing State Crisis Across Two Continents’, in Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective, ed. by M. Beissinger and C. Young (Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2002).

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a form of client-patron networks.6 As an outcome of these client networks, many public institutions are dysfunctional. They exist, but they do not have enough power or political will to achieve their own aims. In such situation, the state can be also described as a ‘soft state’, which is unable to fulfil the expectations that normally appear when we think of the state. the captive state according to george monbiot George Monbiot’s book does not enumerate in any one place the attributes of the captive state, but I think we can say that its main features are the mass privatization which is conducted with enormous social costs; government agendas acting more in the name of the TNC than in the name of the citizens; the assignment by local governments of many privileges to the TNC (such as tax reductions); the take-over of ‘social spaces’ by private firms; the widespread process of ‘branding’ public institutions;7 the accomplishment of public tasks by private companies (building highways, bridges, etc.). In this case almost all costs are on the public side and all profits on the private side.

According to these attributes, the captive state is not a weak state, although, as we will see, in some ways it possesses some of those functions (dysfunctions), but their quality is much different. In Monbiot’s opinion, the main feature of the captive state is that big companies are acting in places and fields where the state should act. More importantly, these activities have a fatal influence on local communities, their finance and their level of social life. Despite this, government bodies and local authorities have very often allowed private companies to operate in their district.

They even sometimes support them in their conflicts with local communities.8 George Monbiot shows that this is sometimes an effect of corruption among local clerks and civil servants and the promotion of private interests instead of public ones. But, on a wider scale, this is also evidence of a deep redefinition of the state’s functions. This redefinition leads us to change each state and its public assets into merely a safe source of money for TNCs. network structure and the captive state — state and globalization The social process as described by Monbiot is possible thanks to the networking structure of the captive state. The category of network is usually used in an economic context, where network is related to business form and economic strategy, where many firms are cooperating with each other in order to avoid risk in an uncertain environment.9 Here I propose to use a term ‘network’ as a metaphor describing the whole structure of the captive state.

6 Clarke Kimon, ‘Formal and Informal Relations In Soviet Industrial Production’, in Management and Industry In Russia, ed. by Simon Clark (Cambridge, 1995).

7 Branding is a phenomenon described among others by Naomi Klein in No Logo (London: Flamingo Books, 2000). Branding consists in placing TNCs’ logos in visible places within public institutions. For example: Pepsi automats schools, the HSBC’s logo placed on the city of London Police uniforms (the bank has sponsored the whole police department there), or logos placed on road signs in Birmingham.

8 Monbiot’s book describes many such cases when local government was acting in favour of private firms, even when there was proof that these firms were actually causing lots of losses to local budgets.

9 David Stark, ‘Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism’, The American Journal of Sociology, 101.4 (1996).

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The concept of the network tells us that we deal with a structure without one centre and that there are many centres of equal power which are dependent on each other. In the context of the state, networks are visible only if we put the state institutions into the global environment. Jadwiga Staniszkis (2001) points out that network structure is a kind of response to the global economic and political processes. So networks in general can be considered to be the social consequences of globalization.10 States facing up to globalization can only adapt to it through changing their power structure into the network structure. This means that the state becomes open to external influences and that many important decisions will come up from external centres. Staniszkis points out that the network-state is quite vulnerable to changes in a global environment. This is of course an outcome of the openness of the network’s structure. In the area of politics, this means that the state’s authorities cannot completely and independently decide about many important issues (especially in foreign policy). Regarding the economy, network structure causes deep dependency on global economic trends.

However, in my opinion, the concept of the captive state should not be connected with the idea of the state as a total victim of globalization. As William Sites wrote, states are still important actors on the global stage. Many of them just have a different ability to ‘. . . take advantage of the opportunities posed by international challenges’.11 Therefore, in the terms of globalization, to be a strong state means to respond to the pressures of internalization in the way that has a positive influence on society and the state institutions. This process of adaptation to the international environment involves the process of creating the linkages between the state and global centres of power. That is why the structure of the network, so characteristic of globalization, appears here. Those linkages with the external environment are obviously a part of the network.

I think, therefore, that we can consider the captive state not as a victim of globalization, but rather as a state which has lost its capability to self-govern. We cannot think about the state as an entity outside globalization any more, which just responds to external pressure, because it is in fact linked quite firmly to external sources of power (like international organizations and global financial markets).

The states are involved in the global events and they usually cause them. So they are not the victims of globalization, but they can become captive states if their linkages with the global centres and their network structure are too open. In that situation they lose their ability to self-govern and to control their own linkages.

10 Although the term globalization is still confusing and still vague, I do not want to write here about controversies connected with different definitions of that term. For the purpose of this paper let us accept that under the term globalization we will understand the relatively new, multidimensional set of related social processes, which are all based on a specific attitude toward the role of the economy in the society. The globalization in the terms of capitalism can be here understood as three related logics: the logic of international exchange, the logic of global production, and the logic of mass innovation (see Martin, p. 10). In the terms of politics this means fulfilling the UN standards of the democratic country. The combination of these two aspects — capitalism and democracy — is often called ‘the OECD standard’.

11 William Sites, ‘Primitive Globalisation? State and Locale in Neoliberal Global Engagement’, Sociological Theory, 18.1 (2000), 126.

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Therefore if the whole economic situation is defined to favour private corporations, then the country’s authorities can be become the prisoner of external capital.

This is because the captive state treats private capital as a special remedy for every problem. Instead of facing up to problems caused by globalization and modern times it behaves as if it couldn’t solve any of these problems. From the beginning it puts itself into the passive role of the recipient of the ideas and activities of others.

So the captive state is a state, which in the global economic environment, seeks private capital with the result that it becomes dependent on it. It renounces independent strategies of solving social and economic problems, defining them from the beginning as inefficient. The captive state considers that private capital strategies are always better and more efficient. So it takes these strategies and transfers them into every level of the life of the state. By doing that it weakens its self-governance, its controllability and it becomes entangled in the structural power of globalization.12 Captive State (symptoms) the polish ‘microsoft story’ The ‘Microsoft Story’ — as pictured at the beginning — suggests to me that there are levels of social and public life in Poland which might be considered symptomatic of the captive state. That is, in my opinion, a symbol of the deep redefinition of the economic and political functions of the Polish state. On a very basic level it shows us a story about the protection and enforcement of the so-called intellectual property rights. It also tells us a story about the media and software market in Poland. But nowadays the media market is of course in some way a global market, and most of the companies which are operating in it are TNCs. So thinking in the categories of the networks, it is possible to say that when the state opened its media sector for TNCs, at the same time it created linkage with the global market.

The most important factors of the story are, of course, actors who appear and act here. Actors, meaning people, institutions, and firms, are involved in the processes described. Their actions have their own open or hidden functions (in the terms of functionalistic theories). First of all, we deal here with a specific fight for rights.

The open function of this fight is the tendency to enforce the law, to comply with international conventions and modern state standards. In this context, the police’s action of taking away illegal copies was functional for law-abidance in the country.

It was functional for the state as well as for the producers. Also ZUS’s attitude and its pressure to use the Platnik programme could be considered as functional for the state because it helps a public institution to collect money faster and in a more modern way. However, there is also a hidden function of the actions taken by the actors involved in the story.

Naomi Klein argues that the enforcement of intellectual property rights is promoted mainly by TNCs.13 That is because these laws are good for them and make their profits grow. The author of No Logo even states that this is just a ‘smoke-screen’ to validate huge profits. Let us ask the question of whether the hidden function 12 13

Jadwiga Staniszkis, W¢adza globalizacji (Warsaw: Wyd. Scholar, 2003).

Klein, No Logo, pp. 176–78.

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of the Polish police and insurance authorities’ activities is the growth of one company’s profits? If we ask who gains in the story described above, the answer would be the company. Among many actors involved in the story this one firm is an actor which makes profits thanks to legal global sales.14 The theft of someone’s property is always serious. But should the strength of the private companies be paid from public money? The problem lies not in police arresting thieves, which is their duty, or in the insurance and pension institution collecting money, but in achieving private profits from the work of the public institutions.

The problems of the captive state are not limited to this one example (the intellectual property rights and use of software). The example illustrates symptoms of the process described by Monbiot. Monbiot’s analysis shows that the key to the concept of captive state is the problem of spending public money on so-called private investments. Very often this can be found in the case of foreign direct investments (FDI), when TNCs are given many privileges like low taxes (or no taxes at all), even when the social costs of such investment are perceived as too high.15 Such an attitude of local authorities and state bodies can be also considered as an outcome of adaopting to a network structure. In that structure, institutions very often lose their abilities to self-govern. They depend on so many external centres or sources, that, finally, they cannot defend themselves against those influences. The enforcement of intellectual property rights is an example of transferring global tendencies through a network structure. Poland belongs to international organizations (like the WTO) which force the adaptation of these laws, and it seems that the Polish authorities cannot reject them.

Staniszkis writes that in Poland we can observe interesting contrary tendencies.16 The state authorities are trying to adapt simultaneously to both logics — global and European — without realizing that very often they cannot be enforced at the same time. In other terms, this means that on economic and political levels the state is trying to open and limit its structures at the same time. So this contradiction pointed out by Staniszkis is correlated to the dilemma — local/global — which each state must face up to.

The problem of software is also related to that process. The Polish government wants to use Microsoft software in governmental computers, while the European 14

There are of course also different companies (Sony, Philips, Time Warner, etc). Microsoft is used here as the most significant example. In general, TNCs (media branch) have calculated that their loss can be estimated in billions of dollars every year because of the millions of illegal copies which are available via the internet. Software trade companies have stated that in 2002 they have lost 13 billion dollars.

These estimations are of course in some way misleading. Their base is an assumption that each illegal copy could have been bought legally, which is not true. People search the internet to find free goods, or they buy illegal copies not because they are illegal but because they are cheaper.

15 One of the examples could be the case of supermarkets (huge retail shops owned by foreign companies) in Poland. Very often when such companies wanted to build their shopping centre in a town, they received not only tax reductions but also local government sponsorship for the building of all the infrastructure around the future shop. In this case not only was public money spent for something which should have been built by the company itself; what is more important is that the authorities did it even when local communities protested against the development of an another big shop in their area.

16 Jadwiga Staniszkis, Postkomunizm. Próba opisu (Gdanask: s¢owo/obraz terytoria, 2001).

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Commission has forbidden the monopolization of the software in the state institutions. The Commission very clearly said that state bodies should use open source software in order not to become dependent on one firm. As can be seen, the Polish government does not want to fulfil these procedures. It desperately wants to be part of the globalization processes, even when at the same time it wants to become a part of the EU.17 Polish authorities are trying to keep its institutions and market open for global companies (like Microsoft), while the EU is trying to limit such global influences. This is not only an economic dilemma, but it is a deeper problem of choosing the long-term strategy for the whole state.

Post-Communist heritage Consideration of the problem of the captive state in the context of Poland also lead to a consideration of the heritage of Communist times. We cannot forget that events described by Monbiot were related to the western countries that already have a capitalist economy. The search for symptoms of the captive state in a Central European country must be connected with the analysis of the problems of the postSoviet economies. In these terms, Poland can be considered as a captive state because of the process of mass privatization, which is a part of the post-Communist heritage. Our ‘Microsoft Story’ is maybe not completely a part of the privatization processes, but nevertheless involves the entrance of the TNCs to the local (Polish) market, so it is not very far from the traditional procedures of privatization. The history of the last fifteen years in Poland shows that privatization is deeply related to the problem of networks. As I have pointed out, it is hard to analyse the category of the captive state without the category of the network, which is very closely correlated.

If we take a close look at the biggest and the most important privatizations in Poland, then we will see that they share a pattern. That pattern is composed of the state-owned firms which were deeply in debt, weak state institutions, and the informal networks stretched between Polish businessmen, politicians, and foreign firms. In fact, we can say that networks in Central and East European countries (including Poland) are based on the ties ‘. . . that cut across enterprises and government’s institutions’.18 Precisely due to such networks and special ties, foreign companies had easy access to the Polish market and managed to buy state-owned firms quite cheaply. In Poland, as well as in other post-Communist countries, TNCs have mainly invested in ex-state-owned firms. So-called recombinant property is an 17 However the recent example of the Bulgarian parliament’s decision to reject Microsoft’s proposal and to use only open source, shows us that to be a ex-Communist state does not have to mean becoming totally open to external influences.

18 Stark, ‘Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism’, 994. To describe that process the Polish sociologist — Jadwiga Staniszkis (2000) — uses a term ‘political capitalism’ which means that there are actors who used their old (pre-1989) political ties to achieve economic profits in the reality of the market economy. The phenomenon of political capitalism is related to the problem of rent-seeking, which can be considered as a process within which businessmen or politicians are trying to achieve as much private profits as possible. They do it even if their main aim should be seeking the success of the company (as a whole), or, in the case of politicians, when their aim should be the well-being of the state and the state’s institutions (see Jadwiga Staniszkis, Postcommunism, The Emerging Enigma (Warsaw: ISP Pan, 2000).

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outcome of this. That kind of property combines private and state ownership. The former state-owned company is transformed into a company where some shares are owned by private capital and some are still in the hands of state authorities.19 Thus, we can say that state and TNCs are blurring the boundaries between private and public, between the state and the market.

From my point of view, the quick sale of the biggest companies in the country with very often a monopolistic position on a market was proof that Poland had become a captive state. The case of privatization of the telecommunication sector in Poland is a significant example. Telekomunikacja Polska SA — the only groundphone network in Poland — was sold almost completely to French Telecom. The foreign company not only managed to buy it quite cheaply, but has also managed to keep its monopolistic position in a market. So despite the privatization, the state did not achieve the most important aim — the development of the telecommunication sector.20 The state’s institutions showed in this case (and in the Microsoft case) that they are unable to protect the internal market and that they do not possess the capability to invent their own way of extracting and developing the resources already inside those companies. Therefore, the whole history of privatization is just a story about the state, which has believed that the opening of the market without any protection be good for the economy and society. In other words, it is a story about the state which has adapted too quickly to the network structure of globalization.

In my opinion, the main problem of the captive state is that, while the state tries to adapt to the present arena of globalization, it starts to see itself mainly as a part of an economic process. Poland tries to adapt to the modern stage of the global economy. It tries to use its resources and put its institutions into the world system. It believes that being a part of a globalized world is to be a part of a well-developed world. But, maybe because of its past, it already has a network structure and is vulnerable and open to external influences. Adopting the global logic only makes these processes stronger. That is because this specific economic logic leads a country to transferring this economic attitude into every level of social life. The privatization that has not led to competition growth or the dependency upon only one type of computer software offers just some examples of that process. *

*

*

The main problem of the captive state is that it really needs investments. Polish schools need cheap software and computers and the Polish ZUS needs a program that will modernize its work. The problem is that these needs are achieved in an expensive, monopolistic way. The case of Poland proves that this is very harmful for the whole state and society.

19

Stark, ‘Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism’, 996.

We deal with very similar situation also in the case of other privatizations — like Polish airlines LOT (bought by SwissAir, now in a strategic alliance with Lufthansa). Privatization of the energy sector in Poland seems to have the same pattern, but because it has not been finished yet, it is hard to estimate for sure. But we can say that privatization (in general) has not led to a growth of competition on the market.

21 According to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital.

20

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The captive state is something different from a weak state. It is a stage between a strong, effective state and a corrupted, inefficient one. The core of that process is based upon the assumption that society can be easily managed and governed not through democratic procedures, but through economic ones. The transfer of economic logic into public life can, of course, be refreshing in some ways, but its effect is mainly a society that cannot govern its own country and public institutions that forget their own aims.

Being a captive state is also not the best way to survive in an era of globalization.

The captive state is not a good choice. To accept this stage means that one takes a passive role within a dynamic, fast process. The aim in the globalization game is, however, not to be a recipient of someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategies, but to become an inventor of such strategies. Yet it takes time and capital â&#x20AC;&#x201D; financial, cultural, symbolic, and human capital â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to become an inventor and this cannot be achieved in the captive state, and right now it cannot be achieved in Poland. 21

Slovo, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn 2004

Reviews

Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe. By Sarah Birch. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. xii + 212 pp. £55.00. ISBN 0 333 98765 9 (hardback).

Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe is the second of two volumes dealing with electoral systems in post-Communist states produced within the framework of the One Europe or Several? series. However, whilst the first, Embodying Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), which Birch co-authored with Millard, Popescu, and Williams, dealt with the choice of new electoral systems in the region after the fall of Communism, her current single-authored work analyses their possible effects. Such effects, it is suggested, may concern levels of turnout, the quality of democratic accountability, and inclusiveness, as well as patterns of party competition and party system format.

Electoral systems, Birch argues, must be conceived as more than simply a seats– votes formula generating varying degrees of proportionality. The size of electoral districts must also be taken into account, as must the legal framework governing party finances and election spending. Factors such as market success, general levels of socio-economic development and the broader institutional framework (the presence or absence of a strong presidential executive) must also be taken into account.

However, rather than focusing on the traditional ‘effectiveness versus inclusiveness’ dichotomy, in which many debates on electoral systems in new democracies have been framed, Birch focuses instead on their implications for party politics.

Electoral systems, she argues, must be analysed in terms of ‘politician enabling’ features, which allow office-holders to build up individual political machines and personal votes, and ‘party enabling’ features, which constrain them into working through tightly-knit party organizations.

As well as offering an excellent synthesis of the literature on electoral systems, the book presents a wealth of data on elections and electoral systems in twenty postCommunist states. Tables within the body of the text are further supplemented by extensive and clearly-set out appendices. To test the hypothesized relationships, the author uses quantitative analysis based on multiple regression analysis. However, statistical exposition is kept to a minimum in favour of discursive analysis. In all these respects, Electoral Systems and Political Transformation is a model of highquality comparative political analysis, which, as the author rightly suggests, goes beyond the weakly grounded case study approaches found in more traditional area studies literature.

However, its findings are, in some respects, disappointingly thin. Many of the variables examined (finance regimes, presidentialism, levels of economic © School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London, 2004

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development, availability of a personal vote, levels of democratization) have little impact across the range of possible effects examined. Other findings simply confirm long-established relationships. Proportional representation, for example, is found to promote higher turnout and greater inclusiveness. However, Electoral Systems and Political Transformation does make several interesting and counter-intuitive findings. Firstly, it emerges, ‘mixed’ electoral systems combining majoritarian (firstpast-the-post) elements and PR promote greater inclusion than purer PR models.

Secondly, it seems clear that, in certain, post-Communist contexts, majoritarian voting in single-member districts creates not stable two-party politics, as Maurice Duverger famously asserted, but a plethora of ‘parties’, which are essentially personal vehicles for oligarchs and clientelistic local leaders. This applies primarily in Russia and Ukraine, whose party systems are highly fragmented and regionalized, and where the more patrimonial nature of Soviet Communism may have created a predisposition towards client–patron relations. In East Central Europe, where Hungary has a comparable ‘mixed’ system, alongside strong parties and integrated national politics, Duverger’s predicted effects apply.

Regrettably, these findings are not examined in more detail. Overall, however, Electoral Systems and Political Transformation is an admirably concise and wideranging work, written in a crisp and clear academic style, which breaks genuinely new ground in both its empirical findings and its efforts to integrate party and electoral studies.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

Seán Hanley

A History of Russia. Volume 1: to 1917. By Walter G. Moss. Second Edition. London: Anthem Press, 2002. xxii + 632 pp. No price available. ISBN 1 84331 023 6 (paperback).

Walter Moss’s History of Russia is a reliable introductory textbook in two volumes.

Volume I has recently been revised and expanded, and according to the title, covers the period up to 1917. The book contains five sections, each devoted to a sweep of Russian history, beginning with Kievan Rus’ and ending with the late imperial period. Each section has chapters which describe politics, economy, and society, and religion and culture. In this way, Moss provides introductory information about the relationship between ruler and ruled, the impact of imperialism and the nature of everyday life. The presentation is systematic rather than sparkling, and while the separation of themes makes information easier to locate and absorb, it can hinder an attempt to integrate historical factors and establish convincing causes.

This is a weakness of the textbook format. On the other hand, this format provides a sturdy infrastructure: maps, chronology, list of rulers, glossary, and an effective index. The bibliographies are particularly well-organized: located at the end of each chapter as well as at the end of the complete text, they clinch the book’s usefulness for general reference purposes.

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Perhaps the most refreshing feature of the book is the inclusion of an extended extract from a primary source in each chapter. The chapter on Ivan the Terrible contains part of a letter he wrote to Elizabeth I in 1570, elucidating his different conception of rulership. In the chapter on ‘Religion and Culture, 1533–1689’, Moss provides an extract from Avvakum’s autobiography, which vividly describes the repression of the Old Belief. These are valuable teaching tools; they also give life to the narrative. The same function is provided by the book’s black-and-white illustrations. Moss is perhaps most convincing, however, when he discusses the later nineteenth century, about which he has written elsewhere (Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky [London, 2002]). Here, the cultural information is particularly comprehensive and directly relevant to the political narrative; the different thematic sections combine to produce a crisp and clear overview.

The book works well on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but in some ways it lacks overall cohesion. Providing a proper conclusion would have helped to achieve this.

The book promises to take the story ‘to 1917’, and in a sense it does, because it stops at the end of 1916. But to end with a chapter on ‘Religion and Culture, 1855–1917’, and a sentence on peasant popular culture, is an anti-climax. There is no explanation of 1917 and very little mention of the Bolsheviks. It is surely not schematic or unhistorical to give some view of previous Russian history through the events of 1917, either dismissing them as illegitimate and aberrant or the reverse; it is certainly more satisfying than to exclude the Revolution from the imperial story.

There are no perfect end-points for a textbook, and including 1917 is to end the Revolution as it is beginning, but the Bolshevik Revolution rather than the midst of the First World War is surely a more justifiable point of conclusion.

The book also lacks a defining centre, a compelling core feature. For instance, there are no eternal Russian concepts infused into the deep structure of the narrative and argument, as in Geoffrey Hosking’s Russia and the Russians: From Earliest Times to 2001 (London, 2002). In addition, the book lacks the range of reference and expertise that is possible in a multi-author work, such as Russia: A History, ed. by Gregory Freeze (Oxford, 2002). Hosking’s book is recognized by many to be the best single-volume Russian history which has been written in recent years. It can also be read as an introduction to the subject. Why reissue Moss’s book? It is important because its purpose is different: as facilitator, reference tool, and teaching aid. It is an honest guide, and a very useful book of its type.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

Mark Smith

Social Capital and Democratization: Roots of Trust in Post-Communist Poland and Ukraine. By Martin Åberg and Mikael Sandberg. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

332 pp. No price available. ISBN 0 754 61936 2 (hardback).

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of both historical and contemporary processes regarding the formation of social and political capital in two postCommunist countries, Poland and Ukraine; it attempts to link these processes with the democratization paths these countries are treading. The authors employ a

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variety of perspectives, drawing from fields such as political science, sociology, and even biology to explain the highly complex relationships between trust and political capital, between social capital and political institutions, and between all these factors and the possibility of a successful democratization.

Two regions, Lower Silesia in Poland and Eastern Galicia in Ukraine, have been chosen as case studies. Both are borderland regions that were transferred between states and are distinguished, especially in the former case, by an almost complete eradication of the historical and cultural roots due to the replacement of native populations. This fact allows the authors to draw a parallel with the American states as studied by de Tocqueville — hence the hypothesis that the ‘“uprooting” of the constitutional regime rather than the socio-cultural “roots” is conducive to cooperation and to social and political capital’ (p. 118). The authors thus contrast two of the most familiar social capital-democratization paradigms — those of de Tocqueville and Putnam — and they argue that regime change, as opposed to continuity, may present a better opportunity for democratic development.

The book is noteworthy for its attempt to embrace a wide variety of approaches to the creation of social and political capital ranging from individual to regional and institutional levels of analysis (party-systems and constitutions). Even though the data are often questionable, as the authors rely on research conducted in different years, the authors’ approach is ambitious for using advanced statistical analysis alongside qualitative techniques to describe and analyse the undoubtedly complex phenomena studied. At the same time, the approach the authors are attempting to use has for some time been known as ‘mimetic evolutionism’. In essence, it is an application of biological laws of ‘the survival of the fittest’, ‘selection’, ‘adaptation’, ‘co-evolution’, and so on in order to explain social phenomena. Whereas this approach is appealing for its elegant metaphorical portrayal of how cultural practices and political institutions can feed into each other to reinforce democratic experiences, its explanatory power, likewise any metaphorical model, is not unlimited and is more useful in describing the picture than in uncovering any cause-and-effect relationships between its constituent elements. These goals are better achieved through a number of different approaches the authors rely on, mostly based on empirical testing of Putnam’s, de Tocqueville’s and Huntington’s models regarding the relations between social capital and democratization.

The authors should be given credit for the multi-faceted explanation of the origins and evolution of social and political capital. As they move from one level of analysis to another, they discover that, whereas at the individual level some correlation can be found between education and party membership with trust in political actors and institutions, at the level of countries this could be of limited use in explaining differences. Path-dependencies in terms of social capital are then studied at a regional level, though they are also found to have little effect, and the only legacy that matters is the Communist one. At the national level, party systems and constitutions are examined as potential ‘conducive environments for breeding and reproduction of political capital’ (p. 34). Finally, the authors move to the supranational level, at which they find confirmations for Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ hypothesis, which, according to the authors, is the most decisive factor in providing an explanation for the types of political capital. For example, a preference

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for strong leaders, manifested in the choice of presidential and semi-presidential systems and hence in very personalized politics in the East, is opposed to a very weak correlation between social and political capital, from which derives an inclination towards parliamentarianism with more governmental accountability in the West.

The authors conclude that while both ‘constitutional changes’ (institutions) and ‘national habits and peculiar circumstances’ (social capital) are important for the construction of democracy-prone political capital, the East–West divide is still the decisive one and the fate of post-Communist regimes located to the East of the divide seems largely predetermined.

Central Asian Resource Center

Tatiana Yarkova

Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia. By Alan M. Ball. Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003. ix + 309 pp. Notes, index. No price available. ISBN 0 7425 2792 1 (cloth), 0 7425 2793 X (paper).* The twentieth century was characterized by an antagonistic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, or so the popular press and Hollywood have asserted. Alan M. Ball’s Imagining America excavates the multi-faceted story that such sources usually leave out. Focusing on the circulation of American movies, music, architectural designs, tractors, and immigrant narratives in Russia, he explores how and why Russians from all walks of life both admired and shunned American technology, industrial progress, and life-style.

The first five chapters elaborate how American artifacts and styles shaped the ideals as well as the hopes of Russians at the turn of the century. The Bolshevik elites readily embraced the American work ethic to bolster the egalitarian Communist alternative, but they were fully aware that the American model was imbued with racism and capitalist exploitation of labour. To escape from the imminent moral dilemma, they claimed the imports as the inevitable means ‘to catch and to surpass the West’ (pp. 145–73). The technological superiority of America also stirred the interest of the masses. Whereas tractors and emigrant letters brought the American dream to villages, jazz music and Hollywood movies captured the imagination of city-dwellers. Growing uncomfortable with the increasing popular appeal of the American ethos, Bolsheviks either banned or co-opted the American imports, leading to the emergence of peculiarly Russian styles in the arts and industry (Chapters 1, 3, and 4).

The second part of the book dwells upon the transformation of such conceptions during the post-1989 period. Ball acknowledges that the images of America still offer miraculous promises to the Russians, but he also notes that their intensity and constituency have dramatically changed. The contemporary elites have, he argues, * This review is a revised version of my essay that is circulated in the H-USA discussion list of Humanities & Social Sciences Online Database <http://www.h-net.org/~usa>.

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adopted the American techniques with less criticism than before (Chapter 7), whereas the nostalgia-stricken masses developed fervent anti-American feelings amid the liberalization efforts (Chapter 8). Though the former gave up surpassing the West on behalf of joining it (pp. 214–18), the latter turned to neo-nationalist or Eurasian utopias to alleviate the vicissitudes of the US-designed reforms (p. 248).

The most important strength of this book is, for me, the simultaneous evaluation of responses from both the masses and the elites. Ball also deserves recognition for his examination of everyday media as well as his meticulous cross-reading of Russian and American sources. His thorough writing style renders the book easily accessible to readers at all levels who take it up either for a class or for leisure.

I am troubled, however, with two particular arguments that the book is grounded upon. First, Ball frequently asserts that the United States was the most influential actor in twentieth-century Russian history, but he does not substantiate his claim with a comprehensive discussion of the role of other states in this process. When he employs comparisons, such as about the relative importance of the US and Germany in Russian industrialization (pp. 147–52), he presents a rather rudimentary analysis. The book therefore remains very much within the conventional Cold War paradigm, underestimating the secondary, and yet crucial, role of other countries in twentieth-century super-power politics.

I am equally dissatisfied with the hastily supposed relationship between the centralized state and the failure to achieve sustainable growth. Ball explains Russia’s technological stagnation primarily through ‘the autocratic government [. . .] [which] tended in the longer run to retard innovation [. . .] [and] provided scant competitive pressure to spur innovation and productivity’ (p. 267). I, however, think that the Russian situation should be explained by taking into account the broader global trends and local factors. For instance, how did the mid-twentieth century Third World professional emigration to the West influence Russian technology? How did the global shift to the service sector affect Russian economic development? Did Soviet elites close their ranks to newcomers, and hence to revolutionizing ideas, in order to maintain their power and social status? Raising such questions may, I believe, help to better untangle the intricate reasons why Soviet Russia failed to create a robust alternative to Western capitalism as it intended.

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Burçak Keskin-Kozat

The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-Old Dream? By Alex J. Bellamy. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003. x + 211 pp. £45.00. ISBN 0 7190 6502 X (hardback).

The relationship between Serbia and Croatia during the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the wars which followed will surely continue to offer up an often contentious debate, and at its heart must be an exploration of the dynamic between their leaders Slobodan Miloševica and Franjo Tudjman and of their competing national ideas. Accordingly, students of the disintegration and its aftermath have been well-served with a number of serious and insightful book-length analyses of 1990s

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Serbian politics (one might mention the names of Robert Thomas, Eric Gordy, or Lenart Cohen), but works of similar depth on Croatia have remained inexplicably scarce. The standard account, indeed, remains Marcus Tanner’s somewhat journalistic Croatia: a Nation Forged in War, which lacks a theoretical contextualization of Tudjman’s leadership and ideology, or even the will to break out of the historical schema of Croatian martial virtue which has largely been defined by Croatian nationalists themselves.

Alex Bellamy’s The Formation of Croatian National Identity, therefore, is an attempt to redress the balance, and not before time. The author, a former contributor to Slovo, has several academic articles on 1990s Croatian ideology and politics to his name, including a sensitive explanation of the significance of the Croatian flag which would deserve circulation among any journalists preparing lightweight background pieces ahead of Croatian appearances in international sport. Bellamy’s work is not a chronological account of post-Yugoslav Croatia, but a rigorous examination of the different narratives of Croatian identity as they have been manifested and contested since 1990. From the outset, Bellamy underpins his discussion with reference to theories of nationalism: rather than taking a position in the so-called ‘great divide’ between primordialists and modernists, Bellamy follows the innovative trend of Michael Billig in also addressing how national identity is realized in the field of everyday social practice. Indeed, his first two chapters are dedicated to setting out a multi-layered model of national identity, which he sees as operating on the three inter-related levels of the national narrative itself, the actions of political and cultural elites, and the expressions and performances of identity in the social sphere.

After this extended introduction, the other four chapters attempt to apply the framework to Croatia. In this case, the narrative level is that of continued Croatian statehood, the ‘perceived shared history’ (p. 57) which is thought to give Croats their abstract identity. The timeline is expounded from its medieval origins to 1991– 92, with due reference being made where appropriate to controversies such as the first Yugoslavia’s unification, Croatian Communism or the place in the narrative of the NDH. A second chapter analyses the interpretations of that narrative made by a variety of Croatian political actors, including a useful distillation of Tudjman’s nationalist rhetoric — an ideology which Bellamy terms ‘Franjoism’ — and an overview of the challenges made to it by opposition politicians and two selected ‘dissidents’, Ivo Banac and Slavenka Drakulica. Two more chapters give accounts of the (attempted) influence of ‘Franjoism’ and the other narratives with which it clashed in six case studies: economic policy, linguistic purification, history and language teaching, the Catholic Church, football (in particular the passions aroused when Tudjman interfered with the affiliative identity of Dinamo Zagreb supporters by changing the name of their team), and the case of the Istrian peninsula where a local, ambiguous, multi-ethnic identity is cherished, strongly at odds with the homogenizing nationalism of Tudjman.

Bellamy’s choice of examples incorporates not only the traditional subjects of interest in nationalism, such as Ernest Gellner’s particular favourite of education, but also issues such as sport which have been recognized as equally relevant during the 1990s. Although there are other fields which demonstrate the contested nature

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of Croatian identity just as deeply (European diplomacy, for instance, or popular music), this book does not aim to be an exhaustive analysis of Croatian society.

However, it is to be hoped that the author’s future works will contribute to one, and each of the six capsules might themselves serve as stimuli for further research. In particular, the complexities of the Istrian case (which is also celebrated by Drakulica in her Café Europa as an alternative to Tudjmanism) could supply a book of their own, although, for those already seeking further reading, it is somewhat frustrating that the footnotes of Bellamy’s most intriguing points on Istrian exceptionalism only refer to an oral conversation rather than offering any written sources.

There are certain points during Bellamy’s theoretical chapters, too, where his argument could be further contextualized. It is surprising, for instance, that George Schöpflin’s views on the importance of myth to personal identity do not figure in Bellamy’s discussion of the relevance of narrative, especially as Schöpflin’s approach has also implicitly succeeded in bridging the ‘great divide’ in nationalism studies. However, possibly the most glaring missed opportunity — which Bellamy may also have the chance to amplify in further work — is the lack of explanation of his coinage ‘Franjoism’. Although nowhere does Bellamy make it explicit, one presumes that it is intended to reflect a perceived ideological similarity between Tudjman and Spain’s Francisco Franco. The comparison is not facetious: like Tudjman, Franco (as addressed in Paul Preston’s authoritative biography) believed in an idealized national reconciliation between the former opposing sides in a civil war, but set behind this veil a political construction of the nation, which excluded with coercive force those who did not fit into the Francoist conception and was rooted in Catholic faith as a sign of identity. Indeed, Tudjman himself was not unaware of the parallel, and is said to have explicitly modelled his planned ‘Altar of the Homeland’ (at the site of the memorial at the Jasenovac concentration camp), on Franco’s monumental Valley of the Fallen.

Yet these are not criticisms so much as invitations to further work from Bellamy or others. Its analyses of Croatian politics make the book essential reading for students of and specialists in the region, and begin to put the study of contemporary Croatia on a par with that of post-Yugoslav Serbia. At the same time, the theoretical standpoint Bellamy has evolved would also recommend it to anyone concerned with the interplay between abstract nationalism and individual identity, whether their interest is in south-east Europe or elsewhere.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

Catherine Baker

International Interventions in the Balkans since 1995. Ed. by Peter Siani-Davies.

London: Routledge, 2003. xvi + 224 pp. £60.00. ISBN 0 415 29834 2 (hardback).

The issue of international intervention and particularly the role of the ‘international community’ in the Balkans have been intensively and hotly debated. Yet, this collection of eleven essays edited by Peter Siani-Davies goes broader and deeper than other books. Its strength is in a comprehensive notion of intervention. Within this

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single volume, preventive engagement and peacekeeping, economic sanctions and bombardment, international administration in the protectorates, the EU regional and individual approach, international financial organizations’ conditionality, civil society building and psychosocial intervention have been examined. Searching beyond the usual military and state-centric focus, the contributors assess the deeper consequences for domestic political outcomes, group and personal security, and gaps between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ perceptions.

The book is organized to cover as much as possible from the global level down to personal wellbeing, to include history and to pose questions for the future. The focus on the post-Dayton period is chosen because of ‘an unprecedented transfer of resources, norms and values to the region.’ After the editors’ introduction positioning non-intervention in the Balkans in a historical context, Mary Kaldor examines a mixture of the intervention with a cosmopolitan approach, edging out the earlier, purely global, top-down geo-political approach. Vesselin Popovski discusses the legal dimension and the concept of a ‘responsibility to protect’. Miroslav Hadhzica stresses the absence of a coherent Euro-Atlantic strategy toward the Yugoslav crisis and ‘series of paradoxes and inconsistencies.’ Sumantra Bose, Emmanuela C. del Ré, Alice Ackerman, and Jasna Dragovica -Soso write case studies on the striking divided town of Mostar, the mammoth task of the international administrations in Kosovo, different phases and modalities of international engagement in Macedonia, and the effects of Western coercive policies on political outcomes under Miloševica .

The scope of intervention is particularly revealing in appraising the impact of foreign assistance on lower levels of groups and individuals. Steven Samson argues that the imposition of the Western model of civil society as a bureaucratic funding category creates tensions within Balkan societies and between various local and international actors, i.e. gaps and insecurity. Vanessa Pupavac broaches controversies surrounding post-conflict trauma relief, concluding that ‘psychosocial management problematizes local coping strategies, destabilizes communal ties and increases the sense of vulnerability of individuals.’

The book closes with David Phinnemore and Peter Siani-Davies’ overview of the EU and Stability Pacts’ twin discourse of intervention and integration, and Stephanie Schwander-Sievers’ summary of the main points stressing that respect for the concerns of local actors is a prerequisite for any integrative form of development.

As the majority of authors have research experience from the Balkans, they have been able to put under scrutiny the implementation of all mechanisms of prevention, coercion and reconstruction. The ‘bureaucratic pachyderms with their own particular interests’ and ‘improvization syndrome’, but also some generally beneficent actions on the side of inter-governmental organizations, as well as the limited space for integration under sharp local divisions and the unintended consequences of this are stressed. Painting both the West’s periodical disengagement and eagerness to intervene without a clear idea of the next step, and its rush to impose ready made models such as the ‘project culture’ of civil society capacity building or Anglo-American psychosocial therapy, the authors call for a re-evaluation of the international community’s performance. It is not to say that they are against the intervention per se, however, they believe the practices of intervention need to be

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reviewed and ‘the gap between the concerns of locals and outside actors needs to be bridged if the aims of intervention are to be met and integration achieved’ (Introduction, p. 26).

On the weak side, the decision to define the scope of international interventions after 1995 to include Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova might be challenged.

Although the focus is mostly on human security, the role of the NATO Partnership for Peace is missing. The book is strong in deconstructing the networks of intervention; it would be probably too much to expect more consideration of a new construction of intervention as well.

A person from the region might find him- or herself nodding while reading this deftly-written book. International Interventions in the Balkans since 1995 should find its way not only to scholars, but also to policy-makers, as a valuable source for policy improvement.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

Svetlana Djurdjevica-Lukica

Real Images, Soviet Cinema and the Thaw. By Josephine Woll. London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000. 267 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. No price available. ISBN 1-860-64369-8 (hardback), ISBN 1-860-64550-X (paperback).

As far as the aims of the author, this work is quite successful, and, above all, interesting and well worth reading. Josephine Woll has written a well-researched work about Soviet cinema during 1954–67, the so-called ‘thaw‘ years. It is a time when two generations of filmakers emerged in the Soviet Union. The first, consisting of directors such as Grigorii Chukrai and Marlen Khutsiev and the second of directors such as Andreii Tarkovskii and Kira Muratova, who joined the older generation (that of Mikhail Romm and Ivan Pyrev) which had emerged during the 1930s. The present work analyses how these three generations of filmakers contributed to the de-Stanilization of Soviet society and culture by bringing new themes, or recovering those themes that had been suppressed during the twenty-five years of Stalinistdefined society and nation. These filmakers recovered the theme of the individual as opposed to the collective, and they placed the individual against a background of contemporary social issues. Thus, they attempt to claim cinema as an art which reflects upon society as it really was, and not as a didactic or propagandistic tool.

However, it was not an easy task.

Woll places her perceptive and thought-provoking analyses of the film of that period firmly within the political context, thus demonstrating how each shift in the power struggle within the Party between conservative and liberal forces affected the film industry and in particular the efforts of the filmmakers to maintian their artistic independence. Although the ‘battle’ was lost in the end, with the advent of Brezhnev‘s repression, the film industry as a whole experienced a revival during the thaw years. Not only the three main Russian film studios (Mosfilm, Lenfilm, and Gorky) left behind the stagnation of the last Stalinist years, but the Republican

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studios and flourished. The political and social contextualization of the thaw cinema is the strongest point in this work.

Woll follows a chronological analysis of the main thaw films, and she introduces each chapter in a humorous way by giving the title of famous Western films, mainly American. For example, the chapter dedicated to the Stalinist years is entitled The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks; the chapter dedicated to the years where Khrushchev was settling down is entitled The Rules of the Game, directed by Jean Renoir, and so on.

Perhaps what the work lacks is a more systematic analysis of the style of the films and of how the aesthetics and the techniques of the thaw films differed and developed from ‘Stalinist’ films. There are occasional comments about camera and lighting on specific films, and the author indeed attempts to give at least one technical and aesthetic comment for each of the films analysed. However, this is neither done systematically nor comparatively. The questions of how and why were the camera, lenses, the lighting and editing different are not answered, nor, indeed, are they even posed. Woll has not placed the thaw films within a wider context of international cinema at a time when film aesthetics were being dramatically changed in the late 1950s and 1960s. One might for instance mention the Free Cinema, the French New Wave, and above all, the Polish School, the Czechoslovak New Wave, the Hungarian New Cinema of the late 1960s, film movements in Eastern Europe which preceded or paralleled with what was taking place in the Soviet Union cinematographically. It would have been interesting to see how these film movements influenced and were influenced by the Soviet thaw cinema aesthetically and thematically. However, these are not the aims of the present work.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

Cesar Ballester

Regional Issues in Polish Politics. Ed. by Tomasz Zarycki and George Kolankiewicz. SSEES Occasional Paper No 60. ISBN 0-903425-71-8.

The regional reform of 1998 was an important stage in Poland’s post-communist transition. Forty-nine regions were merged into sixteen new ones with wideranging powers and elected regional parliaments. This reform aimed to give regions adequate resources and authority to implement strategies for local development and to facilitate direct access to European Union funds. The reform was seen as a nail in the coffin for the communist legacy of centralism.

Thanks to the reform and its first test case in local elections of 2001, academic interest in Britain in Polish regional issues has recently increased and important contributions such as ‘Restructuring Regional and Local Economies: Towards a Comparative Study of Scotland and Upper Silesia’, edited by George Blazyca, have been published. However, a similarly comprehensive study on the impact of the reform on national and regional politics was missing. I believe that the volume under review contributes to filling this gap. It is a collection of papers presented at

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the 2002 Anglo-Polish Colloquium on the ‘Regionalisation of Polish Politics’ at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London.

The volume starts with two introductory papers. The editor, George Kolankiewicz, introduces the main arguments of the papers and tries to weave this eclectic collection into a coherent framework. Jan Rokita discusses the newly emerging class of regional politicians and the limitations on their means to influence national policies. He maintains that after the reform the centre has become the element of stability whilst the regions have become the element of change, and, despite shortcomings, the administrative reform strengthened democracy.

The first thematic section, ‘Regional Politics’, starts with Jerzy Regulski’s paper which emphasizes the complexity of the regionalization process. In contrast to Rokita’s optimism, Regulski points to the dangers posed by the pressure from the central bureaucracy for recentralization and the increase in the influence of national parties on local government. David Dornisch proposes looking at regional development through the development of social and institutional structures and uses the analysis of ‘ecologies of projects’, i.e. a multi-level network of regional institutions and social capital addressing local problems. His case study of the ·ódz region demonstrates that such an analysis can explain how historically backward regions could manage to shift their negative developmental strategies into positive.

The second section of the book has two case studies on Silesia. Marek S. Szczepaæki’s detailed appraisal of social capital and problems of restructuring in Silesia is followed by a paper on the politics of regionalization in Silesia and perceptions of regional elites on EU enlargement by James Hughes and others. Hughes’s paper is based on local elite interviews conducted in Katowice (Silesia), Pecs, Tartu, Maribor, and Cluj. The Katowice elite displayed the strongest sense of regional identity and higher awareness of the benefits of European integration process for the region.

Even though the third section is called ‘Regional Party Politics’, the scope of the three papers in it is much wider. Anna Sosnowska portrays the post-1989 development in Polish politics by referring to diverging party attitudes towards the peripheral position of Poland in the world. She defines opposing attitudes as ‘acquiescent periphery’ versus ‘humiliated periphery’ and, in terms of economic policy, ‘globally playing capitalism’ versus ‘folk capitalism’. Aleks Szczerbiak’s contribution is also concerned with national-level politics rather than local. He gives a thorough analysis of party electoral strategies and electoral profiles, analysing statistical data regarding voting patterns according to variables like age, occupation, place of residence, and church attendance. Szczerbiak observes a recent shift in voting patterns from moral–cultural to socio-economic class-based but adds that ideological issues like attitudes towards the past still continue to be one of the political fault lines. Miros¢awa Grabowska explains how the post-communist versus post-Solidarity cleavage (in the Lipset-Rokkan sense) in Polish politics emerged as a result of the communist period and epitomized post-1989 politics. She argues that even though this cleavage weakened in the recent years due to the failures and fragmentation of the post-Solidarity side, its demise is not imminent. However, as the paper is based on empirical studies from 1995–96, one looks forward to the

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results of the replication research which, as Grabowska notes, is currently being conducted.

The last thematic section is on local politics. Pawe¢ Swianiewicz discusses the growing influence of political parties on local elections since 1990 and issues of clientelism. Surprisingly, his research findings demonstrate a weak linkage between party politics and local decision-making, i.e. absence of clientelism. However, Swianiewicz admits that these findings are based on limited surveys with small samples. Antoni Kukliæski and Karol Olejniczak present a research proposal to test the hypothesis that a high-quality regional elite emerges where strong regional identity exists. There are references in the text to appendices which do not follow, so one gets the impression that the paper is a hastily shortened version of a larger project outline. The last paper by McManus-Czubiæska and others is one of the most insightful contributions. It explains the relation between public attitudes towards local governance reforms and identity, democratic principles/practice and partisanship by regression analysis of original empirical data from 2001. The authors conclude that the impact of identity and commitment to democratic principles is not significant in terms of attitudes towards the reform, whereas the level of satisfaction with the practice of democracy locally and nationally and, to an extent, party allegiance, are.

The last paper by the co-editor, Tomasz Zarycki, touches on the majority of the issues covered by the contributors and successfully wraps up this structurally incoherent volume. To be fair, the book makes no claims to theoretical or thematic coherence and the unassuming title reflects the diverse content well. The scope of papers range from recent research findings on regional reform to general theoretical discussion on regionalization. The quality of individual papers is variable but on the whole this collection fulfils its professed aim of ‘providing a statement of the current status of scholarship in Polish regional politics’ and ‘signalling further directions of research’.

University of Glasgow

Ayse Artun

The Stalin Phenomenon. By Giuseppe Boffa. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1992. 205pp. $39.95 (hardback). ISBN 0-8014-2576-X. Giuseppe Boffa was a progressive Communist politician who, until expulsion, had been L’Unitá’s Moscow correspondent. A Soviet historian since 1959, Boffa thought Stalinism represented a period of ‘deplorable excesses’ and was not an ‘inevitable outgrowth of Marxism and Leninism.’ The Stalin Phenomenon (1982) charts the historiography of Stalinism.

For Boffa, the existence of Stalinism is one of the most controversial terms in the social sciences: does it represent personal power, a period in power, or the autocratic means to secure power? Is it a general or unique phenomenon? Stalin presented himself as the heir to Marxism–Leninism rather than a departure from it.

Attempts to define Stalinism as a discrete episode were stillborn with Khrushchev but revived under Gorbachev. Stalinism has been used politically as a warning and as a model; history has become enmeshed in these polar opposites.

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Boffa asserts that two interpretations of Stalin dominated the twentieth century: an Anglo-American one and a 1956 Soviet postanovleniie. The latter praised the ends, if not the means, of Stalinism. It also placed Stalin within structural constraints, de-emphasizing the role of any individual except for Lenin. Western Marxists have also played down the degree to which a ‘cult of personality’ could really have wielded such power without the structure of the system enabling this.

The book outlines a number of schools of historiography. The ‘Continuity Theory’ sees Stalin as the culmination of Marxism–Leninism. The NEP is thus treated as a tactical hiatus prior to the ‘inevitability’ of collectivization. Such a view was popular in America, and with émigrés like Solzhenitsyn. Boffa believes that the identification of the pivot between change and continuity is a historian’s hardest task. He argues that, if Stalinism really was the heir to Leninism, then why were the purges of 1936–38 necessary?

Boffa contends that the theory above is often extended, placing Stalinism in the context of the themes of statist autocracy running through Russian history.

E. H. Carr is one advocate. Solzhenitsyn, however, finds Robert Tucker’s ‘revolution from above’ a national insult: it tars Russian history with the Stalinist brush. Boffa argues that Stalinism needs to be understood as a new and modern phenomenon.

The influential ‘totalitarian’ school places the phenomena of Stalinism and Nazism under a shared umbrella. Zbigniew Brzezinski represents this American tendency. The Cold War encouraged the identification of the USSR with this term, leading to a backlash against such a consensus-lacking, value-laden term.

Boffa also identifies the ‘development school’ popularized by decolonization and Soviet space success. Alec Nove views Stalin as a ‘necessary’ response to longstanding economic backwardness. Stalin is heir to Peter the Great and his ilk. As such, Stalinism is thought of as an authoritarian form of ‘industrialization politics’.

Some argue that the opportunities created by industrialization offset the harshness of collectivization and helped legitimize his rule. Boffa finds this school helpful but simplistic.

The ‘Thermidor school’, pioneered by the original if polemical Trotsky, twinned Stalin with the events of the French Revolution. Stalinism sprang from Bolshevism, although separate from and in opposition to it. Trotsky saw Stalin as the revolution’s Bonaparte. He criticized the emergence of the bureaucratic stratum as a revolutionary betrayal. These ideas have been critically extended by Trotsky’s biographer, Isaac Deutscher. The ‘new class’ identified by Milovan Ðilas can also be connected with this school. Boffa cautions us against the use of Marxist terms to analyse the particularities of Soviet Russia. He also asks how a bureaucracy could be simultaneously so radical and yet such a victim of its ‘own’ radicalism.

Another politicized school emerged out of the Soviet–Yugoslav split. Stalinism was accused of being a statist ideology, substituting the bourgeoisie for a hegemonic bureaucracy under dictatorial control. This distortion meant that the true believers had to be annihilated. Yugoslav scholars contrasted this with the looser organization of their country with its economic system of self-management.

The ‘Industrial Despotism’ school looks at Marx’s ‘Asiatic mode of production’ in the light of the non-western European social structures that a hybrid Soviet Union contained. This school became more prominent with the spread of communism in

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Asia. One of its central ideas was the need for industrialization to change the feudal social order. Boffa also celebrates the Soviet historian, Roy Medvedev, who thought that the path to socialism could be achieved using a scientific methodology: Marx and Lenin had made important, if unscientific, strides towards it. He viewed Stalin as a not inevitable deviation from a process that could have achieved more through voluntary enthusiasm.

The excellent translation newly charts the emergence of Gorbachev’s glasnost where the debate moved far outside traditional arenas. One important impediment to the continuation of this debate is the slow pace of archival declassification. Boffa shows the debate moving along the channels he identified, if a little more complicatedly and contradictorily. Boffa highlights two important contemporary historians: Dimittrii Volkogonov for his access to unreleased sources and Mikhail Gefter for his originality.

Boffa concludes by stating that he attempted to analyse the schools objectively, without ‘[. . .] an arid exposition of their hypotheses. I have tried to point out their origins, development, merits and shortcomings [. . .] to indicate not only the criticisms levelled against them by scholars of various persuasions but also the principal objections . . . I personally believe they invite’ (p. 189). He succeeds admirably well in this. He reasons that none of the schools are sufficient alone, but that all, taken together, are necessary. He denies ‘taking refuge in eclecticism’ — the schools should be applied according to which part of Stalinism one is explaining and in what context (p. 190). Boffa situates himself in these rancorous debates by declaring that ‘Stalinism was born in the wake of Marxism and its Leninist evolution, though with considerable alterations [. . .] in the original contours of both’ (p. 12).

In summary, Boffa’s command of the historiography is exceptional, lucidly interpreted, eloquent yet approachable. Although Boffa’s death in 1998 has robbed the book of potential for new life, for anyone wishing to view the debates that Stalinism has provoked, this book is indispensable.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London

David K. Oldman