Week 14: People's Democracies

Collapse of the Soviet-sponsored regimes in Eastern Europe, effectuated within the span of two years, left the bewildered observer with an impression that "People's republics" were doomed to failure from the start. The liberal discourse unfolding around the notion of individual freedom appeared to have offered an easy - and reassuring - explanation which presented these regimes as illegitimate, the force of terror and soviet arms being their only viable buttress.

Still, to people living in the 60's and 70's things may have looked different. Externally, the opponents in the Cold War seemed to have accepted the status quo, bereaving the conflict of its dreadful poignancy. Internally, Eastern European governments were not particularly unstable, no more so than their western counterparts. Then the real question is whether these regimes, execrated after their demise by revisionist historians, did manage to find a formula whereby they became acceptable to the governed populace. In other words, did the states of the Eastern Bloc succeed in acquiring legitimacy which went beyond mere fear of internal reprisals or the prospects of Soviet interference? If so, what were the sources of social support which the Eastern European regimes could turn to their account? Could they have lasted longer without abandoning their aims and sacrificing their essential features?

Week 13: Prosperity and Protest

In defiance of all pessimistic forecasts, Western Europe quickly recovered from the damages of the war and entered onto the path of uninterrupted economic growth. The prosperity ushered by a combination of vigorous public spending and confident private enterprise made one quickly forget the beatific days of the Belle Epoque displaced, as it were, by new realities and new expectations. At the center of the post-war Europe stood then the benevolent welfare state charged to attend to the needs of the most vulnerable members lest they succumb to the penury devoid of honor and dignity (at least in theory). A counterpart of the welfare state, new consumer societies appeared to have at last exiled ideology from the political discourse to make the day-to-day living into the crucible of public attention.

This, however, did not salvage Europe from the brewing discontent, which saw itself fledged out in the students' and workers' protests in 1967-1968. The protesters widely differed in their demands, exhibiting nonetheless the unabashed contempt for the society of which they had been a part. Although reaching no profound changes - at least in the short run - the events 1967-68 aroused heated debates regarding the nature of turmoil. Are we dealing with genuine revolution in making, which, given a chance, might have altered the landscape of social life? Was it perhaps but a quasi-theatrical outburst on the otherwise calm surface of ubiquitous smugness - the outburst venting off residual violence accumulated in the years of growth? Do we witness instead a semi-conscious foreboding of hard times ahead, a growing realization of the unsustainability of the current lifestyle and the last-minute effort at finding a suitable alternative?

What do you think? 

Week 12: Meaning of Decolonization

Decolonization, or the dismantlement of the colonial empires, allegedly represented an effort at ending European/Western global hegemony with the subsequent transfer of power to the former colonial peoples. In the fact of autonomy or independence many a leader of anti-colonial movements recognized the restoration of historical justice, a kind of mental return to the path traversed before the colonial times with an aim of resuming this interrupted movement.

Yet, in more than one respect, the newly founded states remained profoundly bound to their former masters; economically dependent, they relied on foreign industries and exports. Politically weak, they were often indefensible in the face of intrusions or interventions carried out by the Europeans and Americans putatively to bring stability into the region. Most importantly, however, was a type of mental dependence which doomed the recent members of the international community to to the stock ideas concocted by the West; suffice it to say that the very idea of national self-determination (to say nothing of the nation-state) appeared and was first applied in the West, seeping then out through the narrow European confines when the Old World was no longer capable of keeping this "privileged right" to itself.

So then, what was decolonization - the restoration of historical 'truth', of history itself to the dispoiled colonial peoples, or the extension of the European principles to the rest of the world - principles, which ultimately underlie the system of dominance of which Imperialism was but one expression?