The Autumn of Nations – 25 years later: Vladislav L. Inozemtsev

What was 'Autumn of Nations' 1989 about and how should the events of that time be understood?

The events that unfolded from August to December 1989 affected almost every country of the Soviet bloc in Europe – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria and Romania – and became the most powerful revolutionary upheaval in Europe since the collapse of monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary back in 1918. They brought the bloc confrontation on the European continent to an end, facilitated demise of the communist ideology and contributed greatly to the final collapse of the Soviet Union.

The success of these movements was determined by a widespread rejection of totalitarian communist ideology by a vast majority of the citizens of Central European countries, as well as by the feeling this ideology was imposed from outside by Soviet nomenklatura.

This rejection, as it was expressed by the time, resulted in two kind of popular demands. On the one hand, the masses demanded freedom – freedom from the continuous dictate of the Communist ideologues and economic bureaucracy; they asked for the opening of borders, for the access to information and for freedom of expression, for their rights to be engaged into private bussinesses. This demand for freedom was by far the strongest, but at the same time it was relatively “abstract” – one may say that the majority of Central European nations were not liberal political regimes in the 1920s or 1930s (perhaps Czechoslovakia was the only exception), therefore I would not mention a desire to return to the days of political freedom. Rather one may speak about the will of the people to build their lives according to principles that were established in all developed countries during the second half of the 20th century, but were neglected and rejected in Communist ones. For these nations liberal democracy was a historical novelty – and it’s difficult to say how successful the way to it might have been without another crucial circumstance.

On the other hand, the intellectual elite supported “return to Europe” which looked much more reasonable and tangible since all the countries of the Communist bloc before the end of the 1940s were part of the European civilization, whose unity was broken up with the beginning of the Cold War. The drive towards the return to Europe was less audible than the demand for freedom and liberty (except for the East Germany, where it took the form of reunification of the divided German nation), but it provided the necessary practical and achievable goal for the reform movement while calls for democracy remained rather ideological. Moreover, given the presence in Western Europe of such a powerful integration association as the EEC and of the strong military alliance like NATO it could be assumed that the “European drive” was able to provide the revolutionary movement with guidelines and/or organizational frameworks, so necessary for its further successes.

Thus, assessing the events of 1989 in Central Europe, I would call them democratic revolutions exceptionally well superposed with a civilizational consolidation; adoption of new values at the time of revitalization of old identities. It is the combination of these elements that determined, in my opinion, the final success of “post-Communist transition”.

Why had it place at the twilight of "short century" (1914-89)?

I believe the concept of the “short 20th century” is an ideological construct that does not carry a significant meaning. One who talks about whether all these events happened “in the twilight” of the 20th century or “at the dawn of the 21st century” engages in the intellectual speculation and nothing more. The shock of 1989 was prepared by both the entire logic of the development of the Soviet system that became less and less competitive on the world scale, and the rise of globalization, which the Soviet bloc had tried to resist. These events could happen ten years earlier or twenty years later – but I do not see any need to tie them to the “beginning” or the “end” of some “century”. The “short 20th century” is merely a name for a period marked by world’s division into two opposing military-ideological blocs, and it passed when such a confrontation completely outlived itself.

Are there any analogies between past and present situation?

Of course, the similarities look very significant – but the differences are not less drastic.

The biggest similarities arise from the very fact that in recent years the ex-Soviet peoples which after the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not fall into the sphere of immediate European influence, became disappointed by the way of their current development. Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova haven’t achieved significant economic progress in recent decades – the living standards in these countries today are several times lower than in Poland or Czech Republic, while there was almost no difference between them in the late 1980s. Politically all these countries are either authoritarian dictatorships (like Belarus) or kleptocratic regimes (such as Ukraine), or even mired in internal conflicts (Moldova). Political oppression and alienation of the state apparatus, economic distress and rampant corruption – all this pushes the citizens of Eastern European countries to call for change as quarter-century before it moved the inhabitants of the Central Europe. The protesters in post-Soviet states use these days the same methods of nonviolent resistance that were used by Poles or Czechs in the late 1980s even while they realize that even non-violent protest may cause a sharp – and tough – reaction from authoritarian governments.

However, between events of 1989 and 2014 there are more differences than similarities. First, today Eastern European countries are still trying to “step into the same river for the second time”. Poland in 1989 stood on the verge of a “shock therapy” which was supposed to move (and actually moved) the nation from a Communist planned economy to a market one. In 1990-1992, all post-Soviet states went along the same way – but they encountered a long period of economic demise instead of a quick recovery. Today Ukraine possesses a per capita GDP that is three times smaller than Poland’s, and Moldova remains the poorest nation in Europe. To repeat the events of the 1990s and once again undergo the “shock therapy” (and just this is today proposed for Ukraine by Western financial institutions), may become too painful even for the freedom-loving nations. Therefore the desire for change in this new environment may well be balanced by skepticism, completely absent in 1989 in all of the Central Europe, but accumulated during the 1990s.

Secondly, the feeling of Europeanness, which largely instigated the recent developments in Ukraine, nevertheless remains today much more abstract in Eastern European countries than it seemed previously for the peoples of Central Europe. Residents of these countries never experienced a life in Europe as in a common civilization; on the contrary, the European lifestyle in Russia for centuries was a privilege of the elites that most of the population didn’t seek to emulate. Imperial and then Soviet legacy spawned nostalgia for special and unique path rejecting the idea of any inclusion into Europe. Moreover, a long history of incorporation into one Union (the Soviet one) provokes a wide distrust of any other unions (of the European as well).

Therefore, one should not succumb to the illusion that the Ukrainians, Belarussians and even Moldovans one and all seek to join Europe; I believe that all new transforming countries lack that pro-European consensus that well existed in Poland, Romania and the Baltic countries at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.

Thirdly, a certain “Euroscepsis” that exists inside the transforming countries is reinforced by a much greater skepticism with which all these countries are treated by the EU. Fifteen years have passed between the revolutions of 1989 and Central European countries’ accession to the European Union, and till now there is no great enthusiasm in Western Europe about their membership – therefore it’s not surprising that today Poland is more pro-European power than many of the “old” EU countries. Europe is not ready for a new wave of enlargement, and looks on potential new members more as on freeriders rather than on equal partners. This unfortunate and, most likely, deeply flawed, vision is firmly rooted in the minds of many European leaders and these days seriously prevents them from rising to the understanding and fulfillment of their contemporary historic mission.

Fourth, – and finally – a completely different power may be seen these days to the East of the European Union that was in place there 25 years ago. Instead of a changing and democratizing Soviet Union stays now inert and conservative Russia; in place of Mikhail Gorbachev, a devoted “Westerner” and supporter of “universal values”, we have now Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian ruler and admirer of the “civilizational” theory; rather than a complex but declining power, losing the Cold War to the West one may see a new nation-state fueled by nationalistic ideology that feels itself at the apex of an unexpectedly aquired might. Reformist and relatively poor Soviet Union is replaced by a revanchist and quite rich Russia, which may do quite a lot to restore its former greatness that is seen by the majority of the population as the successful fight against the West for Russia’s territorial zone of influence and as restoration of “traditional” Russian or/and Ortodox values.

All these circumstances make the outcome of the current drama far from being evident. Much more “conditional” Europeanness of angry people in the streets of Eastern European; the complicated position of the European Union itself, not to mention the conservative and openly aggressive position of Russia may prevent new revolutions in the region.

Do events of 25 years ago can be an inspiration for contemporary Europeans?

Yes, of course they can – and in fact, would have to be, but this still has not occurred. The year 1989 was in many ways a turning point for Europe – accepting new countries, the European Community (and later the EU) made a claim for global leadership. Not accidentally the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s became a time of the European “renaissance”, with several rounds of EU enlargement, the introduction of the Euro and with a strong economic growth in peripheral European countries. Europe begun to turn from the “ever closer union” of nation-states into a genuine civilizational community – and this, in my opinion, was a much greater result of the revolutions of 1989, than the democratization of former Soviet satellites. Taking this into account I would argue that the main idea, which Europeans must now accept, is the idea that the European civilization has no conventional political borders. Europe should encounter Putin’s doctrine of “the Russian World” stretching from Astana to the Dnieper by the project of “European space” from Porto to Vladivostok; it must use the seducing power of Western cosmopolitanism against the old doctrine of nationalism now reviving in Russia. The weakness of Putinism lies in the very fact that a European may not be a Russian, but any Russian always remains a European – and therefore the “European project” is by itself much more universal than any “Russian project” may become – and, consequently, is much more promising as well. This attractiveness and competitiveness of the European project has been proven by the events of 1989 and since then has not been refuted. The main lesson of those times for Europe, in my opinion, should become its self-confidence and its commitment to Europe’s global mission – which is even more important since Russia of 2014 is more weak and vulnerable – both politically and economically – than the USSR of 1989 once was.

Was 1989 the end of geopolitics in this part of the world?

No, it was not. This idea was born immediately after the democratic revolutions – primarily because for the first time in modern history the spheres of influence were redefined peacefully and not as a result of serious military confrontation. That, I believe, has given rise to the “End of history” thesis, and consequently, to the idea of the “end of geopolitics”. Meanwhile, it was a misleading impression from its outset. Disappearance of two relatively equal – both by their power and by their logic of acion – geopolitical blocks led to a fundamental divergence in political doctrines dominant in Western Europe, and in Russia and its satellites, which became easily noticeable from the beginning of the 1990s.

If the politics of all countries in Europe in the second half of the 20th century was a kind of a modern politics, after the revolutions of 1989 the paths of individual countries diverged. The European Union was established in 1992 which became, as Robert Cooper rightly observes, a post-modern polity. It doesn’t seek military expansion; its members are pooling their sovereignty in order to strengthen supranational institutions; the populist policies give way to a technocratic rule. But in the same 1992 violent conflicts erupted in as the former Soviet Union and in other parts of the post-communist world – from Tajikistan and Nagorno-Karabakh through Chechnya and Abkhazia to Transdniestria and Bosnia. Very soon a post-modern world was opposed by a pre-modern one, where the main identity was determined not by a sense of belonging to a certain civil (or politicial) nation, but by a person’s religious or ethnic affiliation. In the Balkans, for almost ten years some “ethnically clean” states were extensively built, and now Putin annexes the territory of Ukraine arguing about defending the rights of not only the citizens of Russian Federation, but of “Russians” and even of the “Russian-speakers”. In my opinion, it's not just return of geopolitics – it’s an appeal to pre-Westphalian order when religious and tribal origins have remained an important “argument” for justification of certain political claims.

The revolutions of 1989 led to a profound change in European political selfconsciousness. A light coating of “modernity”, which seemed to be evenly distributed from the Atlantic to the Urals, condensed, like mercury uses to do, in the Western part of the continent just in a couple of years – and it condensed there to an extent that gave rise to successive postmodern experiments. But at the same time the politics in the Eastern part of Europe became radically archaic, creating the desire of national leaders to appeal to the ideologies and doctrines, to meanings and concepts of the 19th and preceding centuries.

The “Iron curtain” elevated after the World War II “from Stettin to Trieste”, in fact separated two parts of the modern world – and therefore it provoked the Cold War, which does not necessarily need to develop into a real military conflict because of the rationality of both parties. A “Paper curtain” now dividing Western and Eastern Europe, separates a post-modern world from a pre-modern one, and signals not so much a “return of history” but rather an emergence of a completely new geopolitical situation. Most likely, in the future we will not see a repetition of the Cold War, but rather some reminisences of the 19th century world, divided into the “territory of law and order” in Euro-Atlantic and into the “territory of chaos” around the global periphery. The claims Russia makes now in the North Caucasus and in Crimea, in Transdniestria and in the Eastern Ukraine are not the claims for territorial expansion, but rather the claim to ensure that international law should never apply to the “Russian world” and to guarantee that no one would prevent Russia from if not conquering then from archaizing them. It is by no mean a coinsidence that the Kremlin elite proclaims the ideology of Eurasianism – a concept directly pointing on the “Asianization” of Russia’s politics and of attributing to it a completely new character defined by its civilizational, ethnic and even tribal roots alien to the modern world. The struggle between the post-modern and the pre-modern worlds is a brand new feature of global politics. This confrontation has never occurred in previous history. Modern world easily and severely defeated pre-modern one many times and in different spaces – but the post-modern never encountered such a challenge. Today no one may say what would be the outcome of this new confrontation – but should we hope that Europe will consolidate its forces to resist the upheaval of an archaic order fundamentally and firmly. Because otherwise this new wave of reactionism may bury the whole European project.

Vladislav L. Inozemtsev, the Director at the Centre for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow, Presidium Member at Russian International Affairs Council and Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC.

Article written as a part of the Freedom Express project - an international social and educational campaign launched on the 25th anniversary of the “year of changes” – the year 1989. The project is organised by European Network Remembrance and Solidarity with the support of ministries of culture from Central European countries and in cooperation with many institutions dealing with the history of the 20th century.