The Return of Post-Communism

Jacques Rupnik

The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe 15 years ago brought vast and positive democratic changes. But in 2006, after more than a decade of striving for acceptance by the West, the moral and political vacuum left by communism was fully exposed. Can a new balance between the democratic ethos and the undertows of the region’s political history and culture be found?

In Poland, for example, the prevailing mix of Catholicism and nationalism made society particularly resistant to communism (certainly in comparison with the egalitarian, social-democratic ethos of pre-war Czechoslovakia). But these anti-communist antibodies also worked against the universal acceptance among Poles of liberal democracy.

Indeed, right-wing populists in Poland and left-wing populists in Slovakia are now allied in government with extreme nationalist parties. In Hungary, the main opposition party Fidesz organizes demonstrations in front of Parliament for the resignation of a government, even after it won a confidence vote. In the Czech Republic, a minority right-wing government has not gained a confidence vote in Parliament after six months of bickering. Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union was heralded by a presidential race between an ex-communist (the victor, who claimed to like the EU) and a proto-fascist (who says he hates Turks, Gypsies, and Jews).

Political instability and unpredictable behavior by elected leaders typifies affairs throughout the region. Even more worrying is the erosion of trust in democratic institutions. According to a recent Gallup International poll, Central and East Europeans are the most skeptical about democracy, which only about one-third of people trust. In contrast to a majority of West Europeans, East Europeans do not consider their elections free and fair. Only 22% responded affirmatively when asked, “Do you think your voice matters?” Democracy today has no rivals, but it is losing support.

Populist movements harvest that ambivalence and discontent. They are not anti-democratic; indeed, they claim to be the “true voice of the people,” and constantly demand new elections or referenda. But they are anti-liberal; they accept democracy’s demand for the popular legitimacy, but reject its demand for constitutionalism (the separation of powers). They do not believe that constitutional norms and representative democracy have primacy over values and “legitimate” popular grievances.

In Poland, the “politics of values” is based on the assumption that a “moral order” based on religion should prevail over the freedoms guaranteed by permissive liberalism on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the death penalty. In Slovakia, the anti-liberal reaction applies also to the treatment of national minorities. Although there has so far been no significant shift in practice, the legitimation of xenophobia is a major feature of this onslaught on political liberalism: Jan Slota, the leader of the Slovak National Party, has said that he envies the Czechs for having expelled the Germans after WWII, and regularly accuses the Hungarian minority of “oppressing the majority nation.”

Acute polarization is occurring everywhere, and it is here where the legacy of communist political culture is mostly keenly felt: an opponent is not someone with whom you argue or negotiate, but an enemy that you must destroy.

After 15 years of free-market policies, populists in Warsaw, Bratislava, and Budapest want to bring back the state. And, since even socialist parties pushed liberal economic policies, it is not surprising that the far right, with its nationalist and protectionist overtones, has hijacked the social question.

The populist challenge to the pro-market, pro-Western elite consensus that has prevailed in the region since 1990 takes two forms: an anti-corruption drive and “de-communization.”

In Poland, the two are combined in a denunciation of the “original sin” of the 1989 compromise between moderate dissident elites and moderate communist elites, which enabled a non-violent exit from communism, but allegedly allowed the ex-communists to convert their political power into economic power. Hence the need for a two-pronged attack: anti-corruption and de-communization, which is also a leitmotiv of Fidesz in Hungary, and to some extent of the right-wing Civic Democratic Party now in power in Prague.

Moreover, these populists attack the EU as an elite-imposed project, while pro-European coalitions have become exhausted, disintegrating in the aftermath of EU accession in 2004. Significantly, the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian prime ministers resigned within days or weeks after fulfilling the “historic” task of “returning to Europe.”

Populist nationalists present themselves as the only defenders of national identity and sovereignty against “external threats,” as Polish Premier Jaroslaw Kaczynski put it. Their vision is a “Christian Europe” of “sovereign nation-states” that opposes the existing materialist, decadent, permissive, and supra-national model.

The EU can probably learn to live with these populists, because it has to. Indeed, populism moves in cycles. Populists come to power promising “to clean house,” but once they move in and become identified with the house and all its flaws, they fall back on clientelism and state capture by the ruling parties (as we are now seeing in Poland) rather than becoming more radical.

Many argue that the pro-EU consensus of the last decade emptied politics of its substance, contributing to the current populist backlash. But the EU can also constrain populism. After all, populist nationalists have joined (and since left) government coalitions in Austria, Italy, Holland, and Denmark. And, while nationalist populism is a trans-European phenomenon, populism today, unlike in the 1930’s, it does not hold itself out as an alternative to democracy.