Theorizing transition in postcommunist societies

1
Theorizing transition in post-communist societies

• 29.09.04

2
Discussion topics

• 1) Communism
• Marx
• Socialism
• economies of shortage
• totalitarianism
• The example of the Soviet Union
• Basic chronology
• Reasons of collapse
• 2) Post-communist transition
• Characteristics
• Criticism
• 3) Post-communist condition
• Outcomes
• Possible explanations

3
Readings

• Nazpary, Joma 2002. Bardak Elements of Chaos (Ch
  3). In Post-Soviet Chaos Violence and
  Dispossession in Kazakhstan. London Pluto.
• Verdery, Katherine 1996. What Was Socialism and
  Why Did It Fall? In What was Socialism, and What
  Comes Next? Princeton, N.J. Princeton University
  Press.

4
Communism

• Communist society
• public (communist) ownership
• of resources
• of the means of production
• As an ideal society
• Plato's Republic
• the earliest Christian communes.
• utopian settlements of the 19th c
• As an ideology
• Marx and Engels

5
Marxism

• Communist Manifesto (1848)
• Capital (1867-94, with Engels)
• Main characteristics of Marxism
• 1) Scientific
• discover general laws of human society
• 2) materialist
• focuses on
• material conditions
• poduction relations
• means of production
• Base vs superstructure
• Economic relations vs ideas

6
Marxism

• 3) Deterministic
• certain conditions always lead to certain
  outcomes
• Human history
• the history of class conflict
• Class consciousness vs other (eg. ethnic)
  collective identity
• Slavery master vs slave
• Feudalism landlord vs serf
• Capitalism bourgeoisie vs proletariat
• Commumism no classes

7
Communism

• Characteritics
• public (communist) ownership
• equal pay
• State withers away
• No money, no market
• Everybody works
• from each according to his ability, to each
  according to his needs.
• How to achieve this
• proletarian revolution gt collapse of the
  capitalist economy
• OK to use coercion
• Inevitable when conditions are ripe
• in the most highly industrialized nations of
  Western Europe

8
Socialism

• Socialism
• Diverse group of ideologies
• Capitalism gt (socialism) gt communism
• Millenarian discourse
• socialism has been attained and communism is
  near
• CPSU in 1961communism within a generation

9
Socialism

• 3 modes of exchange
• Reciprocal
• Family
• Kula in the Trobriands
• Redistributive
• Chiefdoms
• socialism
• Centrally planned
• Gosplan (State Planning Committee)
• Centrally controlled
• Party bureaucracy
• Market
• capitalism

10
Socialism

• Central drives of socialism
• 1) accumulation of allocative power
• gt monopoly of allocation
• destruction of resources outside the apparatus
• Soviet state "a spoiler state" (Gross 1988)
• 2) accumulation of means of production
• Central drive of capitalism
• to accumulate profits from sales

11
Socialism

• "economies of shortage"
• producing units operate within soft budget
  constraints
• bailed out if do poorly
• financial penalties are minimal
• gt no efficiency
• gt firms learn to hoard materials and labor
• gt freezes resources
• gt supplies are always scarce
• systemic preference"
• heavy industry vs consumer products

12
Socialism

• capitalism
• demand-constrained
• socialism
• resource-constrained

13
Socialism

• Shortages
• gt strategies to acquire needed goods or income
• from outside the official system
• gt dual economies
• formal" vs "informal (second) economy
• Eg. "dachas"
• "black market"
• special shops for nomenklatura (and tourists)
• Symbolic meaning of Western commodities
• eg. plastic bags
• empty beer can and boxes
• jewing gum cartoons
• stickers

14
Totalitarianism

• Simplistic cold war division
• liberal democracies vs totalitarian regimes
• Reagan "evil empire"
• main features of totalitarianism
• A totalist ideology
• A single mass party committed to this ideology
• A system of police control over the population
• State monopoly over mass communications and
  military force
• Centralised control of the economy

15
Totalitarianism

• Revisionist interpretations
• totalitarianism Stalinism
• post-Stalinist era
• totalitarian model less applicable
• political power more fragmented
• political oligarchy

16
Totalitarianism

• Katherine Verdery
• socialist states were weak
• Constant internal resistance
• samizdat
• Hidden forms of sabotage at all system levels
• Symbolic forms of resistance
• James Scott
• weapons of the weak
• offstage strategies
• hidden transcripts
• oral histories, anecdotes, jokes
• consumption of second economy goods

17
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• 1917-28
• Establishing and safeguarding the socialist order
  (1917-1918)
• The Leninist System (1917-1924)
• Civil War (1918-1921)
• New Economic Policy (1921-1928)
• Limited possibilities for individuals and private
  firms to carry out trade

18
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• The Stalin period (1928-1953)
• Central planning
• first Five-Year Plan
• Gosplan
• Industrialization
• Collectivization
• Kolkhozes
• agricultural production under central control
• public ownership of the means of production
• Getting rid of kulaks
• To finance industrialization
• Resistance from peasants
• 1930-33 10 milion peasants died
• Ukraine mass starvation in 1933 (6-7 million
  dead)

19
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• The Stalin period (1928-1953)
• Terror and Purges
• End of 1930s
• Stalin vs Trotsky
• Mass deportations
• 1941 and 1949 (eg. Estonia)
• Forced labour camps
• The GULAG
• By 1938, about 7 million in the camps
• Division of Europe / fall of the iron curtain
• institution of CEE satellites (1945-49)

20
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• The Khrushchev period (1953-64)
• "Thaw"
• De-Stalinization
• Liberalization
• consumer goods, housing, arts
• Cold war
• Berlin Wall (1961)
• Cuban Missile crisis (1962)

21
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• The Brezhnev period (1964-1982)
• "Mature socialism"
• Social stability favoured over economic reforms
• Stagnation
• Same cadres
• Complete lack of discipline at workplace
• I pretend to work and you pretend to pay me.
• Russification and undercover assimilation

22
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• Interregnum (1982-1985)
• Andropov
• Former KGB chief
• Authoritarianism
• Reforms to defeat of corruption
• Chernenko
• attempt to return to Brezhnevism

23
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• Gorbachev reformism (1985-1991)
• Perestroika
• party-led reforms
• three main elements
• uskorenie (economic acceleration)
• decentralization of decision-making
• introduction of a limited market sector
• co-operatives

24
Basic Chronology of Soviet Era

• Gorbachev reformism (1985-1991)
• Glasnost
• limited freedom of speech
• New topics
• environment, gender, sex, national autonomy,
  psychology, religion
• Crackdown on alcoholism
• Collapse of Berlin Wall (1989)
• Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991)

25
Fall of the Soviet Union reasons

• Still a puzzle
• Biggest superpower in 1991
• an army of 5,3 million
• 350,000 troops in the KGB
• 40,000 nuclear weapons
• 40,000 tons of chemical weapons.
• Western Sovietology
• Failed to foresee
• Now - "transitology
• Three levels of explanation
• Individual
• State
• International

26
Fall of the Soviet Union reasons

• Individual level arguments
• Gorbachev factor
• Reforming, not undoing communism
• Generational change in the leadership
• socialized during Khrushchevs thaw

27
Fall of the Soviet Union reasons

• State level arguments
• Economic failure
• Underdevelopment of the consumer industry
• Economic crisis in the late 1980s
• Growth of foreign debt (Verdery)
• Imperial overstretch
• Similarities with colonial empires
• The nationalities question
• the power of nationalism
• underestimated by Marx, Lenin

28
Fall of the Soviet Union reasons

• International level arguments
• Competition with the West
• Cold war
• an increase in defense expenditure
• competition in space research
• Arms race
• Reagan's strategic defense initiative, star wars
• gt by mid-1980s
• SU spent 15-17 of GNP on military spending

29
Fall of communism

• two grand apocalyptic narratives
• final victory of modernity
• market economy and liberal democracy
• end of ideology the end of history
• Fukuyama
• twilight of modernity
• collapse of the administered society
• the end of the enlightenment project to direct
  the world
• gt uncontrollable postmodernity

30
Post-communist transition

• two main components
• economic liberalization, privatization
• Command economy -gt market economy
• State/collective ownership -gt private ownership
• Central planning -gt supply and demand
• political democratization
• Authoritarian regime -gt democracy
• One party rule -gt multi-party system
• Official ideology (communism) -gt pluralism
• Sham elections - gt free, competitive elections
• Third component?
• colonialism gt post-colonialism (decolonisation)
• Construction of state and nationhood

31
Transition

• Transition
• a process
• connecting the past to the future
• Characteristics ( problems)
• teleological
• unilinear
• exclusive
• past unquestioned, unreconstructed
• communism
• future pregiven
• free market capitalism
• western liberal democracy

32
Transition

• Recipy
• Price liberalization, stabilization,
  privatization etc.
• Pace of transition
• Shock therapy
• Estonia, Czech Reulbic, Hungary
• Gradual
• Russia, Ukraine
• Assumption
• successful market reforms gt democracy

33
Transition

• triumphalist school
• Fukuyama, the end of history'.'
• Comparable to
• Modenization theory in the 1950s and 60s
• pessimistic school
• cultural divisions and ethnic conflicts
  inevitable
• Huntington clash of civilizations
• Western Christendom, Slavic-Orthodoxy and Islam
• Baltic States as an outpost of Western
  civilization
• future is predetermined and filled by
• nationalism
• inter-communal violence
• regional instability

34
Transition

• in reality
• multiple communisms
• different cultural and historical contexts
• multiple trajectories
• selective appropriation (eg. China)
• Resistance
• privatization as theft (Nazpary)
• erastamine gt ärastamine (Estonia)
• new millenarian and moral discourse
• capitalism and independece (Nazpary)
• Before, they promised us the paradise of
  communism but they failed to take us there. Now
  they promise us the paradise of capitalism.

35
Transition

• Negative outcomes
• dissolution of moral community
• "the future is cancelled (Nazpary)
• dissolution of welfare state
• increase of poverty and inequality
• Economic depression
• steep decline in GDP and foreign trade
• Hyperinflation
• Shortage of goods
• Power vacuum
• Emergence of mafia/organized crime

36
Transition

• Negative outcomes
• Yeltsin on Dec 31, 1999 (resignation speech)
• I want to ask for your forgiveness, because many
  of our hopes have not come true, ... I ask you
  to forgive me for not fulfilling the
  expectations of those who believed that we would
  be able to jump from the grey, stagnating,
  totalitarian past into a bright, rich, and
  civilized future in one go.

37
Differences between countries

• CEE and Baltics
• rather quick consolidation of democracy
• Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan
• Dictatorships
• Ukraine, Tajikistan, Bulgaria, Moldova
• mixed cases, protracted, conflictual and violent.
• Russia
• Unclear case

38
Success of Post-Communist Reforms

• General types of explanations
• Actor-centered
• Structural
• 1. Cultural arguments
• Eg. religion
• Huntington, Fukuyama, Eckstein
• Western Christianity(Protestant/Catholic)
• vs Eastern Christianity (Orthodox)
• vs Muslim

39
Success of Post-Communist Reforms

• 2. Politico-historical arguments
• a) previous experience with democracy
• CEE and Baltic vs CIS
• b) history of statehood/ degree of
  nationbuilding
• CEE and Baltic vs CIS
• Imperial rule - Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire,
  etc
• c) Length of Soviet domination
• CIS vs Baltic states vs CEE
• d) Communism from within or externally imposed?
• Externally imposed easier to distance?
• From within more legitimate?

40
Success of Post-Communist Reforms

• 3. Geographical arguments
• Influence of "Western partners and neighbors"
• Cultural influence
• Economic influence
• 4. Institutional and Policy Choices
• a) Presidential vs Parliamentary systems
• Parliamentary more democratic than presidential?
• Presidential Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and all
  CIS
• Parliamentary Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia,
  Latvia

41
Success of Post-Communist Reforms

• b) Shock Therapy vs Gradual Reform
• Shock therapy works better than gradual reform?
• CEE vs CIS
• Estonia vs Lithuania
• c) Collective identity based on Ethnos vs Demos
• ethnos
• blood ties and ethnic affiliation
• demos
• universal territorial citizenship.
• for successful democratization demos must
  prevail?
• Balkans vs Hungary

42
Success of Post-Communist Reforms?

• 5. Degree of elite turnover
• Russia 75 of elite former nomenklatura