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Summary The Other Europe: Readings + Important Terms
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summaries of all readings required for the course "The Other Europe" + some terms described through bullet points (as it is required in the exam)
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What do we mean by a Communist System? - Archie BrownCommunism referred both to an international movement aimed to overthrow the capitalist system and to implement the
new society which would exist only in the future when Marx’s higher stage of socialism had been reached.
Communist systems are often de ned socialist: however, this term is used to describe many more political parties,
movements and governments than those who accepted Marxist-Leninist ideology
Hence, many socialist theorists saw the essence of socialism in social or public ownership. For instance, the British
political theorist Michael Lessno de ned socialism as a “democratic control of economy”: in this sense he believed
that capitalism and socialism were conceptually compatible (and not opposites)
However, even if Socialists and Communists could be temporary allies, they were separated by fundamental di erences
concerning the relationship between means and ends.
Moreover, Communist systems vary greatly over time as well as signi cantly from one country to another: this is why
the American political scientist Kautsky claimed that the term “Communism” had become useless as it meant di erent
things in di erent minds, therefore it was no longer meaningful
In spite of this, Archie Brown de nes the main characteristics of a Communist system:
In regard of the political system, its rst feature is the monopoly of power , which in Stalin’s time it was known as the
dictatorship of the proletariat: In fact, in communist systems politics of power always prevailed over law
The second feature is the Democratic centralism, a term adopted by Lenin which meant that there could be
discussion of issues until a decision had been taken by higher party organs and then it had to be implemented in a
strictly manner throughout the party or the society.
In the economic eld, Communist systems are non-capitalist ownership of the means of production. In particular, the
key feature of any Communist society is the so-called Command Economy.
The fundamental di erence from a market economy was that decisions about what should be produced and in what
quantities, and at what prices that output should be sold, were the results of a hierarchical, top-down process
culminating in instructions ‘from above’ = from state, to all producers. They were not the result of decentralised
decisions resulting from interactions between customers and supplier and producers were concerned above all to meet
targets set by planners.
They had no particular reason to concern themselves with the wishes of the users of their products, nor with the
activities of competitors. Indeed the concept of competition was absent. Other producers in the same line of activity
were simply not competitors but fellow-executors of the state plan.
In ideological terms, the Communist society was an all encompassing belief system and key for understanding world.
The commitment to building socialism or communism, namely classless societies, was the ultimate goal and source of
legitimacy.
Moreover, in Communist systems there was a sense of belonging to an international movement to the extent that it was
this supposed internationalism that attracted many people to adhere to communism. However, many members of the
worldwide Communist movement and who were devoted to the ideal of internationalism recognised the unique role of
the USSR as the country that put their ideology in power and, therefore, they became vulnerable to being used as
instruments of Soviet state policy.
Eastern Europe 1939-2000 - Mark Pittaway
Crisis War and Occupation
Outcome of WWI:
- Ended dominance of multinational empires
- Replacing some of these regions with ‘new’ nation states
o Reconstructing others and strengthening those that existed before the war.
- Political map of Eastern Europe conformed uneasily to the patterns of national, ethnic and linguistic identi cation
across the region.
o E.g., Poland’s independence - Polish nation-building involved ensuring the political, cultural, and economic
hegemony of the dominant Polish majority.
o E.g., Romania’s political elite attempted to forge a new state incorporating Bukovina, Transylvania and Bessarabia -
each its own multi-ethnic populations, large sections of the populations identi ed with their own governors.
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,- Czechoslovakia - political elites attempts to build a unitary state that rested on a rmly Czechoslovak identity were
not only resisted by Slovakia, but the country’s Germans and Magyars.
o Yugoslavia - attempts to create a society based on pan-Yugoslav identity foundered the persistence of national
particularisms among the Croats, Serbs and Slovenes.
Postwar settlement laid the foundations for internal political con ict around nationality in new states and led to the
creation of losers who resented the settlement and challenged its legitimacy. War’s impact in society subverted
hierarchies of class and ethnicity within its states and, therefore, social disruption and transformation of political
authority produced a revolutionary wave. In particular, revolutionary governments in Hungary and Bulgaria were
emblematic of the desire on the part of subordinate groups for greater participation in politics and increased share of
national wealth.
o Hungary (15)
o Bulgaria - war led to revolutionary peasant dictatorship which o ered a ‘third road’ in politics - revolution failed in
1923.
! Revolutionary governments in Hungary and Bulgaria were emblematic of the desire on the part of subordinate groups
for greater participation in politics and increased share of national wealth.
- Eastern European economy - limited impact of industrialization on the economies and societies (great dependence
on agriculture). Weakness of the economy demonstrated during the depression which led to an intensi cation of the
problems of poverty.
Tension generated by the consequences of war led to the advance of authoritarianism and the retreat of democracy.
- Power of the National Socialists in Germany upset the delicate geopolitical balance of the post-war settlement.
- Hitler’s consolidation of power was met with the politicization of German minorities (most marked in
Czechoslovakia).
o The politicization of German minorities and active political and nancial support from Berlin threatened the balance
of power and the territorial integrity of states.
o German armaments-based recovery came increasing German economic penetration of the Eastern European
Region.
- Rise of national socialism fuelled domestic fascism in Eastern Europe.
o Romania (16)
! Domestic fascism was represented by the Iron Guard - its popularity challenged the political system.
o Hungary - militant opposition to the post-WWI borders (Treaty of Trianon), marginalization of public o cials and
frustration with a lack of social reform generated pressures.
! Domestic fascism was represented by the Arrow Cross Party.
- Hitler decided to annex Austria in 1938 and further expand into Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland).
o Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - Germans given the status of citizens of the Reich, Czechs became second
class citizens.
o The Slovak People’s Party proclaimed an independent Slovak state under the protection of the Reich.
! In Slovakia - anti-Czech and anti-Semitic sentiment.
o Impact of this annexation felt throughout Danubian Eastern Europe.
! Hungary regained territory in Ruthenia and Southern Slovakia due to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
It created a climate in which the Arrow Criss Party was able to challenge the Nationalist regime - support in
elections on the basis of hunger for territorial revision and frustration with the lack of social reform.
! Romania alarmed at its loss of Bessarabia to the USSR in 1940, sought closer links with Germany.
- The consolidation of German political hegemony over Danubian Eastern Europe combined with economic
hegemony - exploitation of Czech industrial plant for rearmament and spread of antisemitic legislation.
- Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 was a Nazi experiment at ‘a new ethnographic order’.
o Western Poland underwent Germanization, central Poland, under its Nazi governor Hans Frank, bore the brunt of the
National Socialists' anti-Polish and anti-Jewish policies.
! The Nazis sought to destroy the cultural infrastructure of the Polish nation by targeting its intellectuals. This policy
was heralded
! by the closure of Kraków's higher education institutions and the deportation of their sta to concentration camps.
! Poland, minus its intelligentsia, was to be transformed into a source of cheap labour for the factories of the Reich.
o Agriculture in Poland was to be bled dry (feeding the Reich), there were low standards of living, poverty and
repression.
o The Home Army developed - military organization that resisted Nazi rule.
- Germany began to dismember the Yugoslav state in 1841 and territory of Slovenia was incorporated into the
German Reich.
o Germany expelled Slovenes and replaced them with ethnic Germans.
o Dismemberment of Yugoslavia brought Bulgaria into the war on the German side and it gained Macedonia in return -
a big disagreement between Serbs and Bulgaria prior to WWII.
- Albania invaded by Italy in 1939 - Italian King becomes new head of state.
- Croatia was divided between Italy and Germany.
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,Building Socialism
The war acted as the midwife of political transformation across Eastern Europe as single-party socialist dictatorships
developed between 1947 and 1949. They found it di cult to generate stability given to limited legitimacy (economic
failures due to forced collectivisation and industrialisation). The Soviets policy was to install anti-fascist coalitions in
power. Communist parties adopted a popular front approach of unity with all anti-fascist parties following Hitler’s
invasion of the USSR in 1941.
On the other hand, Eastern Europe’s policy consisted of people’s democracy which relied on social equality.
‘Fascist’ and ‘collaborator’ became synonymous for those who opposed the policies of the new regime.
Retribution:
- Directed often against entire ethnic groups, particularly Eastern Europe’s German Population.
o Strong desire of revenge on the part of those who had su ered from the plans of Nazis and their clients to shape an
ethnographic order.
! Czechoslovakia - a process of wild expulsion and liberation.
Zdenék Nejedly - proclaimed that the country's new rulers will purify Prague and the border districts with the help of
the red army.
! Poland - the new Polish state began the transfer of millions of Germans westwards - 2.2 million.
! Yugoslavia - the expulsion of Germans smoothed land reform policies.
Policies pursued in Poland and Czechoslovakia aimed at rebuilding the countries around the hegemony of dominant
ethnic groups.
In other states:
- Albania pursued policies that combined the standardization of language and campaigns of repression, to advance
a version of Albanian identity that rested on the culture of Tosk’s (in the South) and aimed at the marginalization of
Gheg’s (in the North).
- Multi-ethnic Yugoslavia - Communists promoted a revival of Yugoslavia based on a supranational ‘universal’
culture. This pushed the country’s rulers down a road of federalism.
- Macedonia - language and education were used to promote a Macedonian identity distinct from the Serb and
Bulgarian identities that had been ascribed to populations.
Reconstruction everywhere was accompanied by nationalist rhetoric - reconstruction was about ‘national’
reconstruction and recovery.
Breaking of the war time alliance - tension generated by the undemocratic behaviour of the soviets and their
Communist allies.
- American concern of a ‘Communist threat’ prompted the US to o er West Europe Marshall Aid.
- Anti-communist nature of politics in Western Europe and the expulsion of Communist parties in France and Italy.
-
The Soviets responded with a Cominform (international organization of Communist parties).
The Other Europe - Vinen
- Eastern Europe took a wrong turning between 1945-1948: political and economic failure even in democratic and
prosperous countries (Czechoslovakia)
- enthusiasm for communism: it was at its most brutal when it was supported by most of people
- debate over communist legacy (apathy and cynicism)
- intolerance towards attempts to socialism
- as the ones in 1930s, purges during the 1940s hit the bourgeois and educated backgrounds
- antisemitism in communist world: the Soviet Union renounced to support Israel and projects to establish a Jewish-
Soviet state in Crimea
- purges were unpredictable: many victims were local both to their own party and also to Stalin
- Stalinism also had an ideological basis: who believed in it and why? Those who were members of the Communist
Party before the defeat of Nazi Germany
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, (…)
1. Explain why the communist bloc "contains more than one economy" (Vinen p. 425)?
Richard Vinen argues that there were signi cant di erences between the economies of Eastern European states and
that of the Soviet Union, notably because they developed at di erent speeds: in Eastern Europe numerous people’s
democracies, such as East Germany and Czechoslovakia, were more advanced from an industrial point of view and
some of the weaker ones developed even more quickly in the post-war period; however, they were utterly favoured by
the capitalist traditions which contributed to a more tolerant attitude towards private enterprise than the Soviet Union.
On the contrary, factories in the Soviet Union were characterised by confusion and disarray and worked frantically at an
irregular place trying to reach central planning goals: it often happened that they manufactured 70% of the products
during the last days of the month in which workers went as far as working the whole day and then restored their
energies by abstaining from work for a short period.
2. Try to summarise “in a nutshell” what de-Stalinisation meant. In how far were essentials of what Archie Brown
described as a "communist system" subjected to change?
The term “De-Stalinisation” refers to the attitudes and measures which characterised Soviet Union’s policy after Stalin’s
death in 1953 and, in particular, after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956. It consists mainly in the process of
destruction of Stalin’s legacy which is often described as one of “thaw”, even if it was not a natural process at all but it
was controlled and manipulated by local rulers of communist countries who acted only according to their personal
interest. The impact of Stalinism on Eastern Europeans had been so intense that dismantling its legacy implied changes
of numerous aspects of their lives. Firstly, Stalin’s death represented a challenge to the leading role of the Soviet party,
but most of all it a ected incisively each national Communist party: the end of Stalinism corresponded to the end of the
institutionalised paranoia caused by his repressive policy and, therefore, to the toleration of more open discussion in the
party and the prospect that it might introduce certain reforms, but it could also mean popular revolt against unpopular
policies or even against the party’s authority. In this sense, the main features of the “communist system” described by
Archie Brown were destined to change radically: not only the monopoly of power during Stalin’s time, which was
de ned as “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, would have ceased to exist, but there were also signi cative changes in
the way of thinking towards economics which brought to conceive economic growth as a by-product of Communism
rather than a method of supporting and preserving it.
3. Which aspects of Stalin's political career does Khrushchev see positively in retrospective, which ones does he
condemn?
During the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev
made the famous “Secret Speech”: he pointed out that, beyond Stalin’s merits in the socialist revolution and in the civil
war, initially the Soviet political leader was supported by numerous people as he was one of the strongest Marxists and
Leninists and he actively fought against the enemies of those ideologies. On the other hand, Khrushchev severely
criticised Stalin’s excesses and disastrous actions, focusing mainly on the crimes that he committed against his own
party as well as on the terror that he sowed through the Purges and unjusti ed arrests, tortures and executions.
Furthermore, his speech is well-known for his criticism of Stalin’s cult of personality which made him an infallible hero at
people’s eyes: hence, the cult of Stalin had been gradually growing and became the source of serious perversions of
party principles and revolutionary legality, but no one had never dared to question it before his death.
The tragedy of central Europe - Milan Kundera
1956 - the director of the Hungarian News Agency, before his death, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate
message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun - "We are going to die for Hungary and for
Europe."
- The Russians, in attacking Hungary, were attacking Europe itself
What does Europe mean to a Hungarian, a Czech, a Pole?
- Nations have belonged to the part of Europe rooted in Roman Christianity. They have participated in every period
of its history. For them, the word "Europe" does not represent a phenomenon of geography but a spiritual notion
synonymous with the word ‘West.’
- ‘Geographic Europe’ was divided into two halves which evolved separately: one tied to ancient Rome and the
Catholic Church, the other tied to the Byzantium and the Orthodox Church. After 1945, the border between the two
Europe’s shifted to the west, and several nations that had always considered themselves to be Western woke up to
discover that they were now in the East.
o After the war - West and East, the part of Europe situated geographically in the centre was culturally in the West and
politically in the East.
o Revolts in Central Europe - the great Hungarian revolt in 1956, the Prague Spring and the occupation of
Czechoslovakia in 1968; the Polish revolts of 1956, 1968, 1970 (supported by the population and backed by Russia)
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