Russia and the Postcommunist World

Blog Post: Russia and the Postcommunist world

From my reading of the articles, it seems that the authors are trying to avoid the problem we discussed the past few weeks: to what extent should we group transitions and regimes together? Where is the balance between over-generalization and specificity to the extent that each state is its own case? In my opinion, these articles do a good job of reaching such a balance. They are confronting a major historical transitional stage, the breakup of the Soviet Union. From what I divine from these articles, there are three major groupings in considering Postcommunist transition. The groupings somewhat correspond to chronological and regional organization. In a simplified manner of describing, they are: early in Eastern Europe, prolonged evolution in Russia, and recent developments in Black Sea and Serbian nations.

In his article, Przeworski describes a domino effect in Eastern Europe occurring early in the dismantling of the Soviet Union. The ‘ideological cement’ holding the totalitarian model together began to fall apart. In particular, he highlights sentiments that Socialism had no longer become the end, but transitioned to a means of securing more traditional values such as ‘securing the border’ and materialism. Poland, Romania, Western Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary each developed an internal impetus for change. Przeworski argues that the endogenous impetus had been developing (at least in Poland) since 1981; the threat of Soviet intervention acted as a dam impeding transition. The Gorbachev revolution cracked this dam. As we will see in later cases, there was a disconnect between people’s thoughts and their roles. The military would not rise against opposition; rather, they entered compromise talks. The party bureaucrats could no longer even believe in their own speeches. This shows the extent of the perception of the system as failure. Przeworski argues that what failed in Eastern Europe was “the idea of rationally administering things to satisfy human needs – the feasibility of implementing public ownership of productive resources through centralized command; the very project of basing a society on disinterested cooperation – the possibility of dissociating social contributions from individual rewards.” (370)

I found this quote to be very important – the extent to which people acknowledged failure had a lot to do with their next move, in my opinion. Hassner argues that Russia’s economic, cultural, and political determinism threatens its future as a democracy. Przeworski (though he wrote in 1991) believes that, for example, Poland’s transition to democracy went smoothly and quickly because they were willing, on all sides, to transition. They offered “a magic wand, that once waved, [would] cure all ills. Replace ‘nationalization of the means of production’ with ‘private property’ and ‘plan’ with ‘market.’” (370) In considering Russia’s transition, Hassner focuses on Putin as a catalyst. He sees Putin as authoritarian, but unlike the recent Postcommunist transition states, Putin retains popular support. Recent transitions were the result of 7 factors outlined by McFaul; he highlights that the authoritarians in Georgia, Ukraine, and Serbia never obtained the widespread popular support like Putin. Putin, unlike the early transitions, “shocking[ly]…claims continuity with both the Czarist and Soviet pasts.” (7) Hassner is troubled by Putin’s attitude; he seems to be making no preparations for democracy, encouraging nationalism targeting former satellite states and the West, and emptying democratic institutions of their content while maintaining the appearance of democracy. (8-9)

Hassner describes that Russia stands at the crossroads of the postimperial power, and Putin’s goals to re-establish the Russian empire as a superpower have come in to conflict with establishing a liberal democracy. Currently, they are in a ‘virtual’ empire, acting as a punisher to nearby satellite states and a ‘negative’ to any major Western strategy or diplomatic initiative. (12-13) Also feeding in to these concerns is the fact that Putin and his party retain popularity and control. United Russia currently holds 315/450 of the seats in the legislative. Howard’s article “The Weakness of Postcommunist Civil Society” also contributes an argument against the establishment of a genuine liberal democracy in Russia (at least for this generation). It seems as though this Russian system of governing, born out of its past, is here to stay. Which begs the question: is this necessarily bad? Is this system of governing good for Russia uniquely, and thus prevents us from normative judgment? I think we can say that their foreign policy attitudes have been troubling. But what are we to say to the fact that a vast majority of Russians support Putin and his regime?