Table Of ContentFragile Dreams
FFrr aa ii ll ee
DD rree aa mm ss
Tales of Liberalism and
Power in Central Europe
John A. Gould
Ta les
o f
L ibe ralism
Powe r
and
University of Michigan Press
C entral
Ann Arbor in
Europe
John A. Gould
Copyright © 2021 by John A. Gould
All rights reserved
For questions or permissions, please contact [email protected]
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
First published October 2021
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Gould, John A., author.
Title: Fragile dreams : tales of liberalism and power in Central Europe / John A. Gould.
Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: lccn 2021028018 (print) | lccn 2021028019 (ebook) |
isbn 9780472075041 (hardcover) | isbn 9780472055043 (paperback) |
isbn 9780472129461 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Liberalism— Europe, Central— 20th century. | Liberalism—
Europe, Central— 21st century. | Europe, Central— Politics and
government— 1989– | Europe, Central— Social conditions— 1989– | Europe,
Central— History— 1989–
Classification: LCC jc574.2.e8515 g68 2021 (print) | LCC jc574.2.e8515
(ebook) | DDC 320.510943— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028018
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028019
Cover illustration: After the demonstration— Hlavné námestie, Nové Zámky,
Czechoslovakia, Nov. 1989. Photograph © Ondrej Berta, used with
permission of the artist.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Chapter 1 Revolutions: The Fall of Communism as
Witnessed from a Beer Barrel and Beyond 1
Chapter 2 Communism: The Political Importance of
Telling a Good Story 19
Chapter 3 Neoliberalism: Why BMWs Don’t Just
Randomly Explode! 43
Chapter 4 Nationalism: Liberalism’s Evil Twin Screws
Up the Enlightenment 64
Chapter 5 Ethnic Conflict: The Breakup of Yugoslavia 80
Chapter 6 “Transitology”: How I Joined the Global
Conspiracy against Slovakia 96
Chapter 7 Intervention: Liberalism Weaponized in the
Western Balkans 115
Chapter 8 International Relations: The West Gets Cocky 127
Chapter 9 Homophobia: The Political Uses of Fear 144
Chapter 10 Populism: Austerity, Fear, and Loathing on
Central Europe’s Periphery 157
Chapter 11 Illiberal Democracy: The Political Economy of
Hungary’s Liberal Unraveling 184
(with Zsolt Gál, Comenius University)
Liberalism’s Fragile Dream 199
Notes 201
Index 231
Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform
via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11955636
Preface and Acknowledgments
Method, Meet Madness! If you are a middle- aged teacher like me,
you have probably noticed a recent trend in your new students. Most are
unfamiliar with the touchstone events of our generation. A recent school
trip a colleague and I took to Sarajevo made this perfectly clear. Our stu-
dents had heard of World War II and the Holocaust, and they knew that
there was once a Soviet Union, but they were shocked to learn that there
had been a genocidal Bosnian war in 1992–9 5, and they were devastated by
an exhibit on the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. When pressed, only a
couple could identify other major events of the post– Cold War period, like
the demise of the Berlin Wall; the fragmentations of the Soviet Union,
Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia; the expansion of the European Union
(UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); or even the rel-
atively recent Russian occupation of Crimea. Wherever I focused, momen-
tous events since 1989 remained a mystery.
This book will bring students up to speed as well as jog the memories
of those of us who lived through the events. Yet, it is by no means a detailed
or complete history. Rather, it is also in part an intellectual guidebook to
what “we” were thinking at the time and how these thoughts and related
choices shaped the lived experiences of my generation. It is immersed in
a merger of (mostly) comparative politics theory, policy choices, and the
personal experiences of friends, family, and me.
This personal angle is admittedly invasive. As a white, male, US pass-
port holder with a hefty dissertation research grant and a couple of New
York– based consulting gigs, I experienced the 1990s with a privileged
degree of security that set me apart from Central Europeans more than
the languages I was struggling to learn. So, no, I could not begin personally
to experience how Central Europeans felt about the revolutions of 1989,
the communist era that preceded it, or the nationalism, neoliberalism, war,
EU expansion, corruption, and populism that followed. My positionality
wasn’t quite located in the downtown hotels to which a famed journalist
once summoned locals for interviews, but it wasn’t too far down the street.
Yet somewhere in the middle of this story, I met a woman in Bratislava,
Slovakia, named Simona. We dated, negotiated three years of long distance,
viii / Preface and Acknowledgments
married, finished grad school, and had two incredible kids. Along the way,
my wanderings along Central Europe’s unique postcommunist lane grew
from an academic project to a very personal commitment. So, I’m no longer
the outsider that I was. Still, I am not an insider either, and never will be.
I’ve nevertheless taken the liberty to gently dip into the lived expe-
riences available to me—p articularly those of my Slovak family and my
network of friends. I hope that this dip will be generic—t ypical rather
than revealing. I really don’t want to share too much of what is not mine.
And, yes, I’ve received permission to share from my “informants.” I’ve
also anonymized names and identifying details of many of the partici-
pants in this story.
Which stories? This is a book of tales blended with history and
theory. I include the stories like sugar— a sweet taste to help make the
theory and history more memorable and palatable. Yet the stories are not
just for flavor; they serve a theoretical purpose. Many of the tales offer
what I call “trendline illustrations.” They portray what we would expect
to happen given our beliefs and expectations about prior similar events or
given simple logic. A trendline illustration is sort of like following the path
of a single snowflake in a storm. It has unique characteristics, but its path
charts the general pattern of flakes around it.
Yet, there are also deviant cases that fail to fit the pattern. Why would
a small group of flakes appear to be swirling upward? Well, that’s a mys-
tery that needs to be solved. It might even tell us something more broadly
about the storm. As a political scientist, I often find these stories to be the
most exciting. They beg us to think with greater nuance about how the
world works.
This is also a work in the field of comparative politics. I cover a num-
ber of topics that are important to the construction of power within and
across states in Central Europe after communism. I structure each chapter
around a part of the literature that has been relevant to the experience.
I have unfortunately had to leave out many important topics. Nor have I
attempted to be comprehensive in the literature that I do cite. My goal is
to give the careful reader the vocabulary to become conversant on some
of the foundational literature in a range of subfields. Ideally, by the end of
this book, readers will have a pretty good insight into how one might craft
answers to the classic questions of political science, “Who received what,
when, and how?” and as importantly, “Who lost in this process, and how
did their exclusion and marginalization play a role in others’ gains?”
To assist readers in this task, I bold key concepts, events, and persons
and provide a brief definition of each. Many of these bolded terms make
Preface and Acknowledgments / ix
up the basic academic jargon of my field. Others are events or people of
importance to the region. It would help student readers to keep a record of
these bolded terms and be able to identify them. This, plus a little review
later, should help make some of the classic works in my field more acces-
sible and less boring.
My definitions are not the final word on any topic. They are not even
uncontroversial. I simplify at a cost, and there are few discussions here
that will not be met by a “Yeah, but . . .” reaction from the regionally expe-
rienced or academically trained reader. I welcome that discussion because
that is where the classic works that I just called boring become anything
but. So think of this as both an introduction and an invitation. If I have
really done my job, readers who start here will be in a better place to master
and critique the literature that I reference and move on to others.
In sequential order, the chapters of this book focus on revolutions and
social movements; the political economy of communism; early postcom-
munist political and economic change; ethno-n ational history, conflict,
and identity; something we’ll call “transitology”; institutional transfer;
the enlargement of the EU and NATO; international relations theory;
homophobia; populism; and contemporary illiberalism. As we scroll down
this long, perhaps intimidating list of topics, we will also move around
geographically and through time.
I am trying to “write what I know,” following my personal, professional,
and academic career choices, with references to many of the frameworks
that others and I used to make sense of the world. As an academic, I usu-
ally tended to travel to where something interesting was happening or
had just happened, so this narrative focuses on events that were telling
in some way about the postcommunist European experience. Countries
visited here include Czechoslovakia and its Czech and Slovak offspring;
Yugoslavia and the successor spawn that today make up the Western Bal-
kans; and, finally, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary. At the risk of receiving a
few stern lectures, I include the Western Balkans in Central Europe.
I make an effort throughout the book to include the experience of
women, the elderly, sexual and gender minorities, and the Roma— a mar-
ginalized Central European ethnic group. Their positions are often what I
would call liminal, meaning that they often occupy vulnerable positions in
society and are thus more likely to suffer when policy choices expose their
vulnerability. It is also important to consider how their marginalization
made the successes of others possible. To ignore these experiences is to
miss much of the story. I therefore center them here when I can.
Due to my position as a white, heterosexual male raised in the liberal,
