From Sarajevo to Sarajevo

Charles Gati

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

Article preview: first 500 of 5,281 words total.

Summary:  Socio-political conditions in the former communist bloc do not favour the development of that tolerant political culture which is essential to democracy and economic progress.

Charles Gati, Professor of Political Science at Union College, is author of Hungary and the Soviet Bloc, The Bloc That Failed, and the forthcoming Verdict in Moscow: The Hungarian Revolution and the Murder of Imre Nagy.

From Gdansk on the Baltic to Dubrovnik on the Adriatic, from Prague in the heart of the old continent to Sofia near Europe?s eastern periphery, freedom has come to east?central Europe: freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Throughout the region elected governments are in place.

Unfortunately, if understandably, what attracts more attention is the ugly underside of the transition to democracy: war, political fragmentation and economic despair. Instead of dialogue and debate, there is demagoguery. Instead of consensus, there is contention and confrontation. Instead of new governments adopting a forgive?but?do?not?forget policy toward the communist past in order to deal with the tasks ahead, mysterious sources leak politically inspired, doctored lists of former agents, informers and collaborators. Especially in countries where the communist regimes were relatively mild, as in Poland and in Hungary, there are even signs of nostalgia now for the authoritarian order of recent years.

The main questions remain as they have been since 1989: Will the fragile democracies of east?central Europe take hold and last? Will they become stable enough to join the west European political and economic order? The war tearing Yugoslavia apart now overshadows these questions and exacerbates the problems of transition to democracy. The related but more pressing questions today are the war?s international repercussions and implications: Does it portend the beginning of the Balkanization of Europe, east and possibly west? If so, do American and west European interests call for more timely and active Western engagement aimed not only at preventing the proliferation of small wars but moderating the region?s growing instability as well?

The horrors of Sarajevo 1992 bear scant resemblance to the events that followed Sarajevo 1914, but the collapse of communism has rekindled ancient political feuds as antagonistic and passionate as ever. They spring from the suddenly freed stresses and strains of the communist era itself, from the memory of destruction and dislocations during and after World War II and from real and perceived injustices imposed by the post?World War I territorial settlements. Countering if not canceling the region?s democratic impulse, these passions?the enduring historical legacy of the twentieth century?delimit the pace and define the substance of postcommunist transformation.

II

Mainly because of the powerful lasting impact of communist political culture, the road to democracy in east?central Europe is paved not only with bumps but with long detours that could lead to dead ends. Making it so are unrealistically high popular expectations of prosperity and, in general, the widespread identification of democracy with economic well?being. Few people in the area understand, and even fewer accept, the proposition that democracy is but a means to electoral choice; that democracies, unlike communist systems, base their claim to legitimacy more on respect for proper constitutional procedures than on economic performance.

For those raised in a communist political culture the distinction between delivering the goods and upholding the sanctity of the process is often lost if not altogether meaningless. Thus if they blame democracy and not only their current ...

End of preview: first 500 of 5,281 words total.