1989: A Global History of Eastern Europe

382 Pages·2019·3.209 MB·English

by  James Mark, Bogdan Christian Iacob, Tobias Rupprecht, Ljubica Spaskovska

1989
The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an
isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues
thatCommuniststateshadinfactlongbeenshapersofaninterconnecting
world,with1989insteadmarkingachoicebylocalelitesabouttheform
that globalisation should take. Published to coincide with the thirtieth
anniversaryofthe1989revolutions,thisworkdrawsonmaterialfromlocal
archivestointernationalinstitutionstoexploretheplaceofEasternEurope
in the emergence, since the 1970s, of a new world order that combined
neoliberal economics and liberal democracy with increasingly bordered
civilizational,racial,andreligiousidentities.Anoriginalandwide-ranging
history,itexplorestheimportanceoftheregion’slinkstotheWest,East
Asia,Africa,andLatinAmericainthisglobaltransformation,reclaiming
theera’sothervisionssuchassocialistdemocracyandauthoritarianmod-
ernizationthathadbeenlostintriumphalisthistoriesofmarketliberalism.
james mark isProfessorofHistoryattheUniversityofExeter.Heis
theauthorofTheUnfinishedRevolution:MakingSenseoftheCommunist
Past in Central-Eastern Europe (2010), which was nominated for the
Longman History Today Book Prize 2011 and selected as one of the
‘bestbooksof2011’byForeignAffairs.Heisco-authorofEurope’s1968:
Voices of Revolt (2013) and co-editor of Secret Agents and the Memory
ofEverydayCollaborationinCommunistEasternEurope(2017)andAlter-
nativeGlobalizations:EasternEuropeandthePostcolonialWorld(2020).
bogdan c. iacob is Associate Researcher in the Department of
HistoryattheUniversityofExeter.Heiseditorofthespecialissue‘State
Socialist Experts in Transnational Perspective: East European Circula-
tion of Knowledge during the Cold War’, published in East Central
Europe(2018),andco-editorofIdeologicalStorms:Intellectuals,Dictators,
andtheTotalitarianTemptation(2019)withVladimirTismaneanu.
tobias rupprecht is Lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean
History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Soviet Inter-
nationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and
LatinAmericaduringtheColdWar(2015).
ljubica spaskovska isLecturerinEuropeanHistoryattheUniver-
sity of Exeter. She is the author of The Last Yugoslav Generation: The
RethinkingofYouthPoliticsandCulturesinLateSocialism(2017).
NEW APPROACHES TO EUROPEAN HISTORY
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1989
A Global History of Eastern Europe
James Mark
UniversityofExeter
Bogdan C. Iacob
UniversityofExeter
Tobias Rupprecht
UniversityofExeter
Ljubica Spaskovska
UniversityofExeter
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www.cambridge.org
Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781108427005
DOI:10.1017/9781108576703
©JamesMark,BogdanC.Iacob,TobiasRupprechtandLjubica
Spaskovska2019
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements page vii
Introduction 1
GoingGlobal 5
TheLongTransitionandtheMakingofTransitionalElitesinGlobal
Perspective 10
AGlobalHistoryoftheOther‘1989s’ 20
TheEndofthe‘1989’Era? 22
1. Globalisation 25
FromSocialistInternationalismtoCapitalistGlobalisation 29
DebtandIdeologicalReorientation 38
AbandoningAlternativeTrade 43
TheWestIsNottheEnemy:ReinterpretingPeripheralisationand
Backwardness 45
TheChoiceof‘Neoliberal’Globalisation 51
AuthoritarianTransformations? 56
TransformationfromWithin 59
Conclusion 70
2. Democratisation 73
ReformingElites 76
OppositionfromtheLocaltotheGlobalandBack 83
TheJourneytoLiberalDemocracy 87
Alternativesto‘1989’:AuthoritarianismandViolence 96
DiscipliningTransitionandDemocraticPeace 109
3. Europeanisation 125
TheEarlyColdWar:ADividedEurope 130
Helsinki–Re-borderingEurope? 132
AnAnti-colonialEurope:CritiquingHelsinki 137
APrehistoryofFortressEurope:CivilisationalBorderinginLate
Socialism 140
EasternEurope,aBufferagainstIslam? 154
After1989:‘FortressEurope’? 164
Conclusion 170
v
vi TableofContents
4. Self-Determination 173
TheRiseofAnti-colonialSelf-Determination 176
TheSovietWithdrawal 186
PeaceorViolence 194
ReverberationsofEasternEuropeanSelf-Determination 215
Conclusion 216
5. Reverberations 219
1989asaNewGlobalScript 221
Instrumentalising1989:TheWestandNewFormsofPolitical
Conditionality 226
‘Taming’theLeft 231
Interventionismandthe‘1989’Myth 237
EasternEuropeansandtheExportoftheRevolutionaryIdea 240
FromCubatoChina:Rejecting‘1989’ 246
MarketSocialismRe-imaginedBeyond1989 257
Conclusion 263
6. AWorld without ‘1989’ 266
TowardstheWest?AmbiguousConvergence 267
WhoIstheTrueEurope?TheTurntoDivergence 275
BeyondtheEU:Post-socialistGlobalTrajectories 298
Conclusion 309
Bibliography 312
Index 364
Acknowledgements
WewishtothanktheLeverhulmeTrust,whichgenerouslysupportedthe
research for this book as part of the project ‘1989 after 1989: Rethinking
the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective’. It funded the time
required for research and writing for three of the authors, James Mark,
LjubicaSpaskovska,andBogdanC.IacobaswellastheworkofWuBiyu
andAlesiaKananchukwhoassistedwithsomeresearch.Thebookisthe
product of collaborative writing and research, and of equal effort from
the four authors. We would also like to thank Ned Richardson-Little,
who climbed the foothills with us, before leaving to ascend other peaks.
Forcarefulreadingandcommentsonearlierdraftsaswellasforprovid-
ing intellectual companionship, we wish to express our gratitude to a
good number of our academic colleagues, amongst them Catherine
Baker, Cornel Ban, Florian Bieber, Susan Bayly, Nelly Bekus, Eric
Burton, Aron Buzogány, Kim Christiaens, Guillem Colom-Montero,
GregorFeindt,Zoltán Ginelli, Raluca Grosescu,FrankHadler,Konrad
Jarausch, Robert Kindler, Michal Kopeček, Albert Manke, Angela
Romano, Chris Saunders, Christina Schwenkel, Quinn Slobodian, Lars
Fredrik Stöcker, Balázs Trencsényi, Joanna Wawryniak and Felix
Wemheuer. We are thankful to the three anonymous Cambridge
UniversityPressreviewersfortheirinsightfulcommentsandsuggestions.
We are especially grateful to the ‘1989 after 1989’ project co-ordinators
Natalie Taylor and Alison Tytherleigh, whose support has been invalu-
able. We also wish to thank our proofreader, Martin Thom, whose
sterlingeffortshavehiddentheoccasionalawkwardnessofourphrasings
and done much to refine ourtext.
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