Communist nostalgia and the consolidation of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 354-374

  Ekman, Joakim ^a   Linde, Jonas ^a  

^a ÖREBRO UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNISM; DEMOCRACY; POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT;

CENTRAL EUROPE; EASTERN EUROPE; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 25444433658     PISSN: 13523279     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523270500183512     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Ronald Inglehart, 'Political Culture and Democratic Institutions: Russia in Global Perspective', paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (2000), p.17.
2. See, for example, Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996);
3. Richard Rose, William Mishler and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998);
4. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999);
5. Jonas Linde, Doubting Democrats? A Comparative Analysis of Support for Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Örebro: Örebro Studies in Political Science 10, 2004).
6. See Linde, Doubting Democrats?, pp.256-8.
7. Andreas Schedler, 'What is Democratic Consolidation?', Democratization, Vol.9, No.2 (1998), pp.91-107.
8. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Cologne: Könemann, 1993).
9. See, for example, Thomas Bulmahn, 'Taking Stock: German Unification as Reflected in the Social Sciences', Discussion Papers FS III 98-407 (Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, 1998);
10. Joakim Ekman, National Identity in Divided and Unified Germany: Continuity and Change (Örebro: Örebro Studies in Political Science 3, 2001). One aspect of nostalgia that we have failed to discuss in this article, related to the personal biography dimension (see Figure 1), concerns nostalgia as consumption. There are plenty of examples from all over Europe of this phenomenon. Young people are drawn to communist memorabilia by the kitsch factor of the communist aesthetic: Lenin T-shirts, Pioneer shirts, badges, brands (like the Ostalgie products in the former GDR), CDs with official communist sing-along songs, and so forth. Such an interest in communist products may be seen as ironic mockery as well as a post-modern search for identity. At the more extreme end of the spectrum we find communist theme parks, such as businessman Blasko Gabric's 'Yugoland', located in Subotica, a small northern Serbian village, or the memorial site in Grutas Park, southern Lithuania (unofficially named 'Stalinworld'), where some 75 statues of Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels have been preserved. The construction of a similar theme park in Berlin has been seriously discussed as well. Such cultural-commercial expressions are of course interesting, but not really important when analysing the prospects for democratic consolidation.
11. We are most grateful to Professor Sten Berglund (Örebro University, Sweden) and Professor Richard Rose (University of Strathclyde, UK) for allowing access to this valuable data set: New Europe Barometer, Machinereadable datafile, Conditions of European Democracy, Örebro University and Centre for the Study of Public Policy (CSPP), University of Strathclyde (2001).
12. See, for example, Sten Berglund, Frank H. Aarebrot, Henri Vogt and Georgi Karasimeonov, Challenges to Democracy: Eastern Europe Ten Years After the Collapse of Communism (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001), pp.120-21;
13. Terry D. Clark, Beyond Post-Communist Studies: Political Science and the New Democracies of Europe (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002);
14. Joakim Ekman, Sten Berglund and Frank H. Aarebrot, 'Concluding Remarks', in Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman and Frank H. Aarebrot (eds.), The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, 2nd edn. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004).
15. See Linde, Doubting Democrats?, pp.211-36.
16. See Ekman, Berglund and Aarebrot, 'Concluding Remarks', pp.599-605.
17. New Europe Barometer.
18. Kristian Gerner and Stefan Hedlund, The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp.57-8.
19. New Europe Barometer.
20. Diamond, Developing Democracy, p.68;
21. compare Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, p.6.
22. Pippa Norris, 'Introduction: The Growth of Critical Citizens?', in Pippa. Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1-27.
23. The five-part model suggested by Norris should be compared to Easton's well-known typology: see David Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965);
24. David Easton, 'A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support', British Journal of Political Science, Vol.5 (1975), pp.435-57.
25. See Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman, 'Satisfaction with Democracy: A Note on a Frequently Used Indicator in Comparative Politics', European Journal of Political Research, Vol.42, No.3 (2003), pp.391-408.
26. Norris, Critical Citizens, pp.9-12;
27. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 'Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis', in Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens, pp.33-8.
28. On childhood socialization, see, for example, Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
29. See Linde and Ekman, 'Satisfaction with Democracy', pp.391-408.
30. The classic work on authoritarian values is Theodor W. Adomo, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Free Press, 1950).
31. Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London: Macmillan, 1996), p.35.
32. Candidate Countries Eurobarometer 2001.1 (Brussels: European Commission, 2002), fieldwork: October 2001;
33. Candidate Countries Eurobarometer 2004.1 (Brussels: European Commission, 2004), fieldwork: February-March 2004;
34. Eurobarometer 61 (Brussels: European Commission, 2004), fieldwork: March 2004.
35. Diamond, Developing Democracy, p.68.
36. We have analysed the development from 1993 to 2001 in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia; in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the NEB time series runs from 1995 to 2001.
37. Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), pp.143-6;
38. Peter H. Merkl, 'German Identity Through the Dark Mirror of the War', in Peter H. Merkl (ed.), The Federal Republic of Germany at Fifty: The End of a Century of Turmoil (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), p.341.
39. Geoffrey Pridbam, 'Confining Conditions and Breaking with the Past: Historical Legacies and Political Learning in Transitions to Democracy', Democratization, Vol.7, No.2 (2000), pp.36-64;
40. Alexandra Barahona De Brito, Carmen Gonzaléz-Enriques and Paloma Aguilar (eds.), The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
41. Rose, Mishler and Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives;
42. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation;
43. see also Diamond, Developing Democracy, pp.178-85;
44. Linde, Doubting Democrats?
45. Wolf Wagner, Kulturschock Deutschland (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1996);
46. see also Wolf Wagner, Kulturschock Deutschland: Das zweite Blick (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1999).
47. Similar accounts of the difficulties involved in the transformation process, and retrospective revaluations of life under communism, can be found in the rich flora of personal recollections of life in the GDR. In the wake of the German unification, the field of Alltagsgeschichte has emerged as an interesting branch of GDR history. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a large number of books have been written, describing various aspects of everyday life in the GDR. Such 'oral history' studies or 'life stories' make up a vast body of documents, and should be regarded as rather important for our understanding 'communist nostalgia' and post-communist public opinion. A recent study that touches upon such issues from a sociological point of view is Carol Harrington, Ayman Salem and Tamara Zurabishvili (eds.), After Communism: Critical Perspectives on Society and Sociology (New York: Peter Lang, 2004).
48. See Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis.
49. Ekman, Berglund and Aarebrot, 'Concluding Remarks', pp.599-605.