Post-Stalin “Normalization:” A
“Precarious Stalemate”
Lecture on April 20
Lecture Overview
• General characteristics of „mature‟
communism in Eastern Europe
• Specific trajectories
• Significant legacy effects? Have the
decades of communist rule left a
measurable imprint on post-communist
political development?
I. General Characteristics: What changes
after Stalin across the region?
• The interlocking system of control, discipline and
punishment breaks down as punishment is minimized:
-- purges, mass deportations and imprisonment called off
-- secret police is curtailed
-- terror replaced by regime harassment of dissidents
-- rule of law somewhat restored; greater predictability, less
arbitrary abuse of the justice system
* Pervasive cynicism, corruption and opportunism follow
even as the communist regimes attempt to undertake
persistent reform/modernization efforts. Why do post-
Stalin reform efforts fail to produce more positive
results?
Shift to „modernization‟
Jowitt suggests that after Stalin‟s death, the
communist regimes attempted to move to a
more conciliatory stance of „modernization‟ i.e.,
“the regime‟s attempt to develop more empirical
and less dogmatic definitions of problems and
policy, a formal, procedural approach rather than
a substantive, arbitrary approach to the solution
of problems, and an understanding of the
executive function that stresses leadership
rather than command competences.” (p.57)
This, in turn, required
…”a rather significant redefinition of the relationship
between regime and society from mutual hostility and
avoidance to the regime‟s selective recognition and
managed acceptance of society.”
In this process, however, the Party lost its sense of
purpose and transformatory mission; its “combat ethos,”
as Jowitt puts it. The sense of “charismatic correctness”
maintained under Lenin and Stalin (albeit through terror)
has been lost and political corruption increases as
austere Stalinists like Rajk and sincere reform
communists like Nagy and Dubcek are replaced by
“traditional-type patrons and „big men.‟” (p.127)
A hybrid system evolves with modern
features consistently constrained by
traditional characteristics
This system…”recognizes methodical economic
action but favors „heroic‟ storming; values
professionals but subordinates them to tribute-
demanding apparatchik „notables‟; attempts to
upgrade contract as a mode of economic
predictability but debilitates its institutional
integrity with blat; strives for a scientific industrial
economy but approaches it „arithmatically‟;
emphasizes the mass scope of its democracy
but operates it secretively; asserts it has
substantively freed the individual but captures
him in the kollectiv.” (p. 139)
The result: Neo-traditionalism
Like traditional peasant/noble societies, tribute, bribery and
blat now constitute the principal modes of interaction
between regime and society:
“Money is rubbish. Power gives the right to everything. Now
women come to me.” A party commissar to a worker. (p.
129)
Blat typically refers to ties of reciprocity, not to impersonal,
strictly accountable, exchanges of standardized value.
In this respect, Soviet social organization broadly
resembles primitive economies where „reciprocity
demands adequacy of response not mathematical
equality,‟ and traditional peasant communities where
“reciprocal favors are so dissimilar in quality that
accountancy is difficult.” (p. 131)
The Party cadres are thereby
transformed
Into a “closed political status group” reinforced by the
adoption of corrupt practices …“that on balance sustain
the politically superior and economically privileged
position of the elite cadre”…(p. 149)
Potentially destabilizing this privileged group‟s hold on
political power are a number of key risks (p. 151):
1. Social anger of those excluded from the privileged
access structure of Party patronage;
2. The political anger of „citizens‟ who resent its very
existence;
3. Mobility demands of lower-level cadres
4. Alienating cadres that wish to restore the Party‟s
organizational integrity
Political Culture Legacies of
Stalinism
Why does corruption become so pervasive, so
quickly once punishment is removed from the
system and modernizing reforms initiated?
Jowitt argues that the political culture of the
Stalinist years reinforced traditional cultural
orientations to produce “the reinforcement of a
status ordering of regime and society” (p. 63)
and a “dichotomous structure of privileged
versus unprivileged” (p. 64) maintained through
the “regime‟s explicit and persistent use of
coercion in relations with society and within the
regime itself.” (p. 69)
Accordingly,
“It is significant that the tendency to
dichotomize elite and non-elite
membership during the dictatorship of the
proletariat has reinforced the political
culture that existed prior to the rule of the
Communist Party, a political culture in
which the elite sector was distinct in
character and prerogative, not simply in
role.”(p. 65)
Social Responses to
dichotomization and coercion
• Some degree of stability accorded to the
communist regime not through legitimacy
but through familiarity – social acceptance
of patterns of authority and privilege
consistent with the past
• Fostering of „pull‟ or „connections‟ as “a
means of decreasing the uncertainty and
anxiety” of encounters with those in
authority (p. 66)
Social Responses, cont.
• Adopting a “split posture” of public compliance v.
private skepticism or rejection – a “ghetto
political culture” (p. 70)
• Estrangement and alienation from authority
• Instrumental use of public offices and state
resources
• Withholding of critical information from superiors
• Dissimulation – deceptive manipulation, the
conscious adoption of false appearances
• Responsibility defined “as the avoidance of
public initiative.” (p. 76)
Rothschild also stresses
continuities with the past
It is therefore important to take note of “…the
survival and resurgence of political continuities
from the interwar period in such dimensions as
the styles and degrees of political participation,
the operational codes and cultures of political
elites, the processes of recruiting these political
elites, their definitions of economic priorities, and
so forth.” (p. 178)
…”political patterns in the 1980‟s looked more
continuous with those of the 1930‟s than
seemed conceivable in the midst of the
revolutionary decades of the 1940‟s and 1950‟s.”
Key continuities with the 1930‟s
• Ritualistic political behavior – ritualistic, symbolic overt even
pretended gestures of ratification sufficient; pervasive
“depoliticization of public life”
• New ruling class consolidated (“socially closed nature of this self-
protecting and self-replicating elite” maintained by “patterns of
access to higher education”) but took on the “styles, traits and
values of the interwar elites”
• Economic policy similar = development via heavy industry at the
expense of agriculture and consumption and with the help of foreign
credits
• Pervasive nationalism
• Political contestation = “the communist apparatchiks inherited…a
deplorable tradition of conducting domestic politics not as an
exercise in compromise and consensus building among fellow
citizens but as a mode of warfare against enemies.” (p. 180)
II. Differentiation: Specific
trajectories
• Most obviously, East European countries diverged in their
experiences of „mature‟ communism with the GDR, the CSSR and
Bulgaria remaining hard-line; Hungary and Poland moving to „soft‟
authoritarianism; Romania developing a „clan‟ based dictatorship
under Ceausescu.
• Less obvious, but important to note are differences within society.
As Jowitt notes, internally societies could be differentiated into
three zones (p. 81):
1. Poor rural communities –characterized by the persistence of
traditional peasant culture
2. Urban industrial settings – characterized by a greater degree of
modernization
3. Mixed sectors (services and commercial sectors) – characterized
by extensive corruption but also some entrepreneurship as
individuals took risks by engaging in the second economy
III. Legacy Effects
Clearly, analysts are now seeing more
continuities than revolutionary „breaks‟ in
the political development of Eastern
Europe. Based on this summary of Jowitt
+ Rothschild, what kind of continuities or
legacy effects from the pre-communist and
communist past would you expect to find
in contemporary East European politics?