Eastern Europe and the Challenges of

Modernity, 1800–2000

This book presents a concise and comprehensive overview of the mainstream

flows of ideas, politics and itineraries towards modernity in Central and
Eastern Europe and the Balkans over two centuries from the beginning of the
nineteenth century to the end of the Gorbachev administration. Unlike other
books on the subject which view modernity based on the idea of Western
European supremacy, this book outlines the various different pathways of
development, and of growing industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisa-
tion that took place across the region. It provides rich insights into the com-
plex networks whereby very varied ideas, aspirations and policies interacted
to bring about a varied pattern of progress, and of integration and isolation,
with different areas moving in different ways and at different paces. Overall
the book presents something very different from the traditional picture of the
“two Europes”. Particular examples covered include agrarian reform move-
ments, in various phases, different models of socialism, and different models
of socialist reform.

Stefano Bianchini is Professor of East European Politics and History at the

University of Bologna, Italy.
BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies
Series editor: Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Kent

Editorial Committee:
Roy Allison, St Antony’s College, Oxford
Birgit Beumers, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies,
University of Aberystwyth
Richard Connolly, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University
of Birmingham
Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of
Glasgow
Peter Duncan, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College
London
Zoe Knox, School of History, University of Leicester
Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages,
University of Bath
David Moon, Department of History, University of York
Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester
Graham Timmins, Department of Politics, University of Birmingham
Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow

Founding Editorial Committee Member:

George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of
Paisley

This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for

Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-
quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all
aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities
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1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security 4. Repression and Resistance in

Policy, 1991–2000 Communist Europe
Roman Wolczuk J.C. Sharman

2. Political Parties in the Russian 5. Political Elites and the New Russia
Regions Anton Steen
Derek S. Hutcheson
6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of
3. Local Communities and Post- Russianness
Communist Transformation Sarah Hudspith
Edited by Simon Smith
7. Performing Russia – Folk Revival
and Russian Identity
Laura J. Olson
8. Russian Transformations
Edited by Leo McCann
9. Soviet Music and Society under
Lenin and Stalin
The baton and sickle
Edited by Neil Edmunds
10. State Building in Ukraine
The Ukrainian parliament,
1990–2003
Sarah Whitmore
11. Defending Human Rights in Russia
Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and
Human Rights Commissioner,
1969–2003
Emma Gilligan
12. Small-Town Russia
Postcommunist livelihoods and
identities: a portrait of the
Intelligentsia in Achit,
Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov,
1999–2000
Anne White
13. Russian Society and the Orthodox
Church
Religion in Russia after
Communism
Zoe Knox
14. Russian Literary Culture in the
Camera Age
The word as image
Stephen Hutchings
15. Between Stalin and Hitler
Class war and race war on the
Dvina, 1940–46
Geoffrey Swain
16. Literature in Post-Communist
Russia and Eastern Europe
The Russian, Czech and Slovak
fiction of the changes, 1988–98
Rajendra A. Chitnis
17. The Legacy of Soviet Dissent
Dissidents, democratisation and
radical nationalism in Russia
Robert Horvath
18. Russian and Soviet Film
Adaptations of Literature,
1900–2001
Screening the word
Edited by Stephen Hutchings and
Anat Vernitski
19. Russia as a Great Power
Dimensions of security under
Putin
Edited by Jakob Hedenskog,
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20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of
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George Sanford
21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform in
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Philip Boobbyer
22. The Limits of Russian
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Emergency powers and states of
emergency
Alexander N. Domrin
23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation
A social and cultural history of
reform in the Khrushchev era
Edited by Polly Jones
24. News Media and Power in Russia
Olessia Koltsova
25. Post-Soviet Civil Society
Democratization in Russia and the
Baltic States
Anders Uhlin
26. The Collapse of Communist Power
in Poland
Jacqueline Hayden
27. Television, Democracy and
Elections in Russia
Sarah Oates
28. Russian Constitutionalism
Historical and contemporary
development
Andrey N. Medushevsky
29. Late Stalinist Russia
Society between reconstruction
and reinvention
Edited by Juliane Fürst
30. The Transformation of Urban
Space in Post-Soviet Russia
Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade
and Evgenij Bondarchuk
31. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet
Union, 1920–40
From Red Square to the Left Bank
Ludmila Stern
32. The Germans of the Soviet Union
Irina Mukhina
33. Re-constructing the Post-Soviet
Industrial Region
The Donbas in transition
Edited by Adam Swain
34. Chechnya
Russia’s “war on terror”
John Russell
35. The New Right in the New Europe
Czech transformation and right-
wing politics, 1989–2006
Seán Hanley
36. Democracy and Myth in Russia
and Eastern Europe
Edited by Alexander Wöll and
Harald Wydra
37. Energy Dependency, Politics and
Corruption in the Former Soviet
Union
Russia’s power, Oligarchs’ profits
and Ukraine’s missing energy
policy, 1995–2006
Margarita M. Balmaceda
38. Peopling the Russian Periphery
Borderland colonization in
Eurasian history
Edited by Nicholas B. Breyfogle,
Abby Schrader and
Willard Sunderland
39. Russian Legal Culture Before and
After Communism
Criminal justice, politics and the
public sphere
Frances Nethercott
40. Political and Social Thought in
Post-Communist Russia
Axel Kaehne
41. The Demise of the Soviet
Communist Party
Atsushi Ogushi
42. Russian Policy towards China and
Japan
The El’tsin and Putin periods
Natasha Kuhrt
43. Soviet Karelia
Politics, planning and terror in
Stalin’s Russia, 1920–39
Nick Baron
44. Reinventing Poland
Economic and political
transformation and evolving
national identity
Edited by Martin Myant and
Terry Cox
45. The Russian Revolution in Retreat,
1920–24
Soviet workers and the new
communist elite
Simon Pirani
46. Democratisation and Gender in
Contemporary Russia
Suvi Salmenniemi
47. Narrating Post/Communism
Colonial discourse and Europe’s
borderline civilization
Nataža Kovačević
48. Globalization and the State in
Central and Eastern Europe
The politics of foreign direct
investment
Jan Drahokoupil
49. Local Politics and Democratisation
in Russia
Cameron Ross
50. The Emancipation of the Serfs in
Russia
Peace arbitrators and the
development of civil society
Roxanne Easley
51. Federalism and Local Politics in
Russia
Edited by Cameron Ross and
Adrian Campbell
52. Transitional Justice in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union
Reckoning with the communist past
Edited by Lavinia Stan
53. The Post-Soviet Russian Media
Conflicting signals
Edited by Birgit Beumers,
Stephen Hutchings and
Natalia Rulyova
54. Minority Rights in Central and
Eastern Europe
Edited by Bernd Rechel
55. Television and Culture in Putin’s
Russia
Remote control
Stephen Hutchings and
Natalia Rulyova
56. The Making of Modern Lithuania
Tomas Balkelis
57. Soviet State and Society Under
Nikita Khrushchev
Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith
58. Communism, Nationalism and
Ethnicity in Poland, 1944–50
Michael Fleming
59. Democratic Elections in Poland,
1991–2007
Frances Millard
60. Critical Theory in Russia and the
West
Alastair Renfrew and
Galin Tihanov
61. Promoting Democracy and Human
Rights in Russia
European organization and
Russia’s socialization
Sinikukka Saari
62. The Myth of the Russian
Intelligentsia
Old intellectuals in the new Russia
Inna Kochetkova
63. Russia’s Federal Relations
Putin’s reforms and management
of the regions
Elena A. Chebankova
64. Constitutional Bargaining in
Russia, 1990–93
Institutions and uncertainty
Edward Morgan-Jones
65. Building Big Business in Russia
The impact of informal corporate
governance practices
Yuko Adachi
66. Russia and Islam
State, society and radicalism
Roland Dannreuther and
Luke March
67. Celebrity and Glamour in
Contemporary Russia
Shocking chic
Edited by Helena Goscilo and
Vlad Strukov
68. The Socialist Alternative to
Bolshevik Russia
The Socialist Revolutionary Party,
1917–39
Elizabeth White
69. Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet
Russia
Vocational youth in transition
Charles Walker
70. Television and Presidential Power
in Putin’s Russia
Tina Burrett
71. Political Theory and Community
Building in Post-Soviet Russia
Edited by Oleg Kharkhordin and
Risto Alapuro
72. Disease, Health Care and
Government in Late Imperial Russia
Life and death on the Volga,
1823–1914
Charlotte E. Henze
73. Khrushchev in the Kremlin
Policy and government in the
Soviet Union, 1953–64
Edited by Melanie Ilic and
Jeremy Smith
74. Citizens in the Making in Post-
Soviet States
Olena Nikolayenko
75. The Decline of Regionalism in
Putin’s Russia
Boundary issues
J. Paul Goode
76. The Communist Youth League and
the Transformation of the Soviet
Union, 1917–32
Matthias Neumann
77. Putin’s United Russia Party
S.P. Roberts
78. The European Union and its
Eastern Neighbours
Towards a more ambitious
partnership?
Elena Korosteleva
79. Russia’s Identity in International
Relations
Images, perceptions,
misperceptions
Edited by Ray Taras
80. Putin as Celebrity and Cultural
Icon
Edited by Helena Goscilo
81. Russia – Democracy Versus
Modernization
A dilemma for Russia and for the
world
Edited by Vladislav Inozemtsev and
Piotr Dutkiewicz
82. Putin’s Preventative Counter-
Revolution
Post-Soviet authoritarianism and
the spectre of Velvet Revolution
Robert Horvath
83. The Baltic States from the Soviet
Union to the European Union
Identity, discourse and power in
the post-communist transition of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
Richard Mole
84. The EU–Russia Borderland
New contexts for regional
cooperation
Edited by Heikki Eskelinen,
Ilkka Liikanen and James W. Scott
85. The Economic Sources of Social
Order Development in Post-
Socialist Eastern Europe
Richard Connolly
86. East European Diasporas,
Migration and Cosmopolitanism
Edited by Ulrike Ziemer and
Sean P. Roberts
87. Civil Society in Putin’s Russia
Elena Chebankova
88. Post-Communist Poland
Contested pasts and future
identities
Ewa Ochman
89. Soviet Economic Management
under Khrushchev
The Sovnarkhoz reform
Nataliya Kibita
90. Soviet Consumer Culture in the
Brezhnev Era
Natalya Chernyshova
91. The Transition to Democracy in
Hungary
Árpád Göncz and the post-
communist Hungarian presidency
Dae Soon Kim
92. The Politics of HIV/AIDS in
Russia
Ulla Pape
93. The Capitalist Transformation of
State Socialism
The making and breaking of State
Socialist society, and what
followed
David Lane
94. Disability in Eastern Europe and
the Former Soviet Union
History, policy and everyday life
Edited by Michael Rasell and
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova
95. The Making and Breaking of
Soviet Lithuania
Memory and modernity in the
wake of war
Violeta Davoliu-té
96. Ideologies of Eastness in Central
and Eastern Europe
Tomasz Zarycki
97. Cinema, State Socialism and
Society in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe, 1917–89
Re-visions
Edited by Sanja Bahun and
John Haynes
98. Ethnic Relations in Post-Soviet
Russia
Russians and non-Russians in the
North Caucasus
Andrew Foxall
99. Eastern Europe and the Challenges
of Modernity, 1800–2000
Stefano Bianchini
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 Eastern Europe and the
Challenges of Modernity,
1800–2000

Stefano Bianchini

English translation by Carolyn Kadas

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First edition published in Italian in 2009 by Rubbettino Press.
Stefano Bianchini
Le sfide della modernità
Idee, politiche e percorsi dell’Europa orientale nel XIX e XX secolo
© 2009 Rubbettino
www.rubbettinoeditore.it
This English translation published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Stefano Bianchini
The right of Stefano Bianchini to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bianchini, S. (Stefano)
[Sfide della modernit?. English]
Eastern Europe and the challenges of modernity, 1800-2000 / Stefano
Bianchini ; English translation by Carolyn Kadas.
pages cm. – (BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European
studies ; 99)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Europe, Eastern–Politics and government–19th century. 2. Europe,
Eastern–Politics and government–20th century. 3. Economic development–
Europe, Eastern–History. I. Title.
DJK48.B5313 2014
947.0009'04–dc23
2014029460

ISBN: 978-1-138-83223-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-73612-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor and Francis Books
Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: industrialisation, modernity and development in

Eastern Europe 1

1 Development and backwardness: the social origins of East

European politics 25

2 Capitalism or rural socialism? The dilemmas of renewal in Russia

and the Balkans 42
2.1 Rural communities and modernisation in Russian political
thought 42
2.2 Narodnichestvo, Marxism and the problem of capitalism in
Russia 45
2.3 The penetration of Narodnichestvo and Russian Marxism in
South-East Europe 51
2.4 The Slavophile alternative 54
2.5 Reorganising politics in the face of problems of development 58

3 The “peasant state”: ideology and politics of agrarian movements in

Central-Eastern Europe between the two world wars 64
3.1 Formation and characteristics of agrarian parties 64
3.2 “Peasantism”, the idea of a “third way” and modernisation 71

4 Communism and the “third peasant way”: competing internationals

and development models in the USSR and Central-Eastern Europe 85
4.1 Green or red? Competing internationals over development
policies 85
4.2 Modernity, agriculture and industry: the Bolsheviks and
“primitive socialist accumulation” in the USSR 93
xii Contents
5 Market socialism, national roads to socialism and competition with
the West 108
5.1 The end of the Second World War and political ruralism 108
5.2 From “command economy” to “market socialism” 112
5.3 The plurality of development models in socialism 116
5.4 Social complexity, cultural change and political reform 124
5.5 Development models and competition with the West 132

6 Between otherness and globalisation: “real socialism”, modernity

and Gorbachev 150
6.1 “Otherness” and modernity in European socialist countries’
self-perception 150
6.2 “Growth without reforms” and the external world’s penetration
of European socialist societies 152
6.3 Modernisation and the “reformability” of the Soviet
system 160
6.4 Gorbachev’s modernity: from globalisation to the “socialist
rule-of-law state” 166
6.5 The end of European communist “otherness” 172

7 Conclusion: the challenges of modernity and post-modernity 188

7.1 Eastern Europe’s paths towards modernity 188
7.2 The construction of modernity between autarky and
interdependence 194
7.3 Modern and post-modern: politics in a globalised Eastern
Europe 202

Bibliography 213
Index 232
Acknowledgements

The term “Eastern Europe” is as vague as it is contested: the lack of a shared

definition stems from several factors. Geographically, this region could
include Greece, Turkey and Finland along with Slavic peoples, Hungary
and Romania, or could be restricted to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus; at times
it has been identified with the European regions on the eastern bank of the
Elbe River, at other times merely with eastern Poland, Finland, the Baltic
countries and Russia. Occasionally, “Eastern Europe” has been considered a
broad macro-regional umbrella, which alternatively encompasses sub-regions
like Central Europe (or Central-Eastern Europe), the Balkans, the Danubian
Basin, the vast Sarmatian plains, the entire territory of the Soviet Union or
the Western CIS countries …
Actually, “Eastern Europe” is not a mere geographical term, but a notion
that has acquired a political/cultural connotation with the passing of time.
This is why intellectuals, policy makers and people at large have often claimed
different geographies by contesting the space of “Eastern Europe”, as it has
been depicted by other authors.
Essentially, scholars from East and West have perceived “Eastern Europe”
as a category distinct from Western Europe. Some historians – such as Jaroslav
Bidlo, Tomáž Špidlík, Johannes Irmscher, Hans H. Schaeder and Dmitri
Obolensky – have traced this dichotomy back to the partition of the
Roman Empire and the subsequent Rome-Byzantium polarisation, mainly
referring to it in terms of dual Christian civilisations. Others, like Franti-
žek Dvorník or Josef Macu°rek, Roger Portal and Francis Conte, have identi-
fied Eastern Europe with the Slavic world, considering its culture and
civilisation as a whole, while scholars focused on development and industrialisa-
tion in Europe since the Enlightenment (see, for instance, Alexander Ger-
schenkron or Piotr S. Wandycz) were inclined to emphasise the legacies of
backwardness, peasantry and serfdom as distinctive characteristics of
“Eastern Europeanness”.
Most recently, Larry Wolff pointed out that only in the 18th century did
travellers begin to include Russia in the category of “Eastern Europe” in their
chronicles when they mentally detached it from Sweden and the notion of
“Northern Europe” and brought the Russian Empire closer to Poland.
xiv Acknowledgements
More recently, after the Second World War “Eastern Europe” was identi-
fied in the West with the European countries under communist rule (thus
excluding Greece, Turkey and Finland), although intellectuals in Poland,
Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s such as Milan Kundera,
Jenö Szücs, György Konrad and Czesław Miłosz contested this geography by
claiming a clear distinction between their own countries (representing “Cen-
tral Europe” or Mitteleuropa) and the Soviet Union. The latter, in their view,
belonged to “Eastern Europe” because of its despotism, autocracy and anti-
democratic traditions. Their vision was bitterly contested at the time by
writers such as Joseph Brodsky or Tatjana Tolstaya, who perceived it as
undermining the role of Russian dissent, and by prominent scholars like
Maria Todorova, who regarded this mental picture as an attempt by these
dissidents to distance themselves from the Balkans, perpetuating an image of
savagery ascribed to the latter in most Western literature during the 20th
century. In turn, after 1948 Tito’s Yugoslavia rejected the idea of being
included in the notion of “Eastern Europe” – which was identified in
Belgrade with the “Soviet Camp” – and insisted on its non-aligned and
Mediterranean profile.
In other words, the term “Eastern Europe” has often been perceived as a
category of macro-regional identity in which the geographic reference to the
“East” was mentally connected – openly or ambiguously – to the notion of
“Asia”, in contrast to “Europe”. In so doing, the polarisation between Asia
and Europe emphasised by the Ancient Greeks during their wars against
Persia was ideologically revitalised in terms of different dichotomies of civili-
sations, religions, social and economic development, urbanisation, democratic
traditions, etc.
Personally, I was not interested in rehashing these aspects when I decided
to write this book. I definitely did not want to ignore them, and actually I did
not, but I decided to consider different European sub-regions overall, because
otherwise the intense network of relationships that has been established –
under various historical conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries – would
have been undermined.
As a result, I included in the narratives the areas of Central Europe, the
Balkans, the Danubian Basin and Russia/Soviet Union, namely the con-
siderably diversified space that extends eastwards from the Baltic to the
Aegean Sea to include all the territory of Russia/the USSR. The reason for
my decision lies in the fact that the aforementioned concerns over macro-
regional identity have led scholars to focus mainly on specific sub-regions or
to restrict their analysis to a specific time period (for instance the communist
experience). Instead, as I wanted to reconstruct the five main debates on
modernisation1 that have taken place since the beginning of industrialisation,
I came to the conclusion that it would be detrimental to exclude areas that
mutually interact and influence the other European spaces that shared similar
concerns. Excluding Russia was impossible, as this powerful country plays an
undeniably influential role in Europe, while at the same time Central Europe,
 Acknowledgements xv
the Balkans and the Danubian basin have attracted and elaborated multi-
faceted inputs from the entire European continent, and continue to do so. The
absence of this plural dimension would have implied undermining the com-
plexity of relations and the wealth of networks established in this part of
Europe throughout the historical period under consideration, thus hindering
an in-depth understanding not only of the East-West dichotomy, but also of
the East-East and North-South contacts that existed.
Therefore I wanted to make a specific effort, unusual in the scholarly lit-
erature, to try to reconstruct the variety of nexuses and trajectories that have
influenced the debates on modernity and development, as well as the range of
hypotheses, plans, strategies and reforms aimed at rejecting, imitating and
redefining their patterns in connection with local peculiarities (albeit per-
ceived differently according to the areas and eras concerned) in a wider Eur-
opean context. Such a context has been territorially identified with a set of
sub-regions that I have included within the still contested umbrella notion of
“Eastern Europe”: it was not an easy decision, but in the end it was justified
not only by the need to simplify the narrative. At least in my view, recon-
structing the multitude of networks and the variety of influences produces a
vivid picture of the métissages2 that have characterised (and still characterise)
the construction of modernity in Europe as a whole. At the same time, it
helps to explain why the diversity of local peculiarities and the convergence of
interests matters to all Europeans, and creates the background for the ratio-
nale for prospective European integration, a Europe with its eastern borders
still – and not by chance – undefined.
***
This book owes much to the stimulus generously given to me by many
colleagues and friends over the years. I felt that to do the job properly, it was
necessary to develop an interdisciplinary approach, out of the conviction that
only through interdisciplinarity was it possible to grasp the dynamics of East
European societies. As a consequence I have explored various disciplines,
from history to anthropology, from political science to cultural studies, and
from economics to sociology, in order to draw from them important ideas,
particularly on an interpretative and methodological level. I especially bene-
fited from numerous meetings in Italy and abroad, and in particular at the
annual conventions of the American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies (AAASS, now ASEEES, Association for Slavic, East European
and Eurasian Studies) and the Association for the Studies of Nationalities
(ASN), which I have assiduously attended over the years, in discussion with
George Andreopoulos, Ivo Banac, Henry Huttenbach, Julie Mostov, Craig
Nation, Livia Plaks, Sabrina Ramet, Michael Rywkin, Paul Shoup, Maria
Todorova, Susan Woodward, and in Europe with Vladimir Bryushinkin,
Paolo Calzini, Leonidas Donskis, Gvozden Flego, Zdravko Grebo, Damir
Grubiša, Rada Iveković, Dušan Janjić, Alla Jaz’kova, Ilja Levin, Joseph
Marko, Valerij Mikhailenko, Anatolij Mikhailov, Lászlo Nyusztay, Rudolf
xvi Acknowledgements
.
Rizman, Ineta Dabašinskiene, George Schöpflin, Milica Uvalić and Mitja
Žagar.
I owe personal thanks to several scholars from various disciplines, includ-
ing Jean Blondel, Matilde Callari Galli, Luigi Vittorio Ferraris, Adriano
Guerra and Francesco Privitera, who all read the manuscript and encouraged
me to broaden its scope of reflection, each from a different visual angle,
always new and intriguing for me. Their suggestions were extremely useful
and I have tried to keep track of them in my reconstruction of the map of
ideas, policies and pathways of East European modernity. Special thanks to
Leslie Holmes and Patricia Kolb, who provided crucial advice for making the
manuscript more accessible to Anglo-American readers. In addition I am
grateful to my students, and in particular those from the international MA in
Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES), with
whom I have had many discussions during and outside lectures. Their obser-
vations and questions, originating from a fresh and curious way of seeing the
past and coming from a variety of points of view largely due to their many
different countries of origin, helped me to focus the multifaceted nature of the most
important themes involved in the relations between modernity, development
and backwardness.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Victor Bojkov, Monika
Kaminska and Anna Krasteva for their great help and patience not only in
discussing some aspects of the book, but also in making available sources
which would otherwise have been very difficult to obtain. Along with them, a
special thanks to the translator and colleague Carolyn Kadas, who took on
the arduous task of transforming the complex Italian style into incisive and
effective English.
Of course it goes without saying that the responsibility for what is written
in this book is mine alone.
Stefano Bianchini

Notes
1 In this book I have treated “modernisation” and “paths to modernity” as syno-
nyms, so that the latter is not to be interpreted in the way American “modernisa-
tion theorists” from Seymour Martin Lipset on treat it. Actually, I am aware that
there is a distinct strand in political science development theory known as “mod-
ernisation theory” which overlaps with, but is not quite the same as, “paths to
modernity”. Nevertheless, as the title of the book says, my main focus is on the five
debates on modernisation which include not only the economic and social dimen-
sions, but also political and cultural factors: understanding this comprehensive
complexity, in my view, reveals the fundamental commonalities of modernity, and
shows how each society interprets it somewhat differently and finds its own path to it.
2 Métissage: this term, of French origin, is increasingly used in sociology and
anthropology. It does not refer merely to the mixing of cultures, but specifically to
the complexity of mutual cultural influences that promote changes and lead to new
original cultural forms, without necessarily replacing the original ones. It has
sometimes been translated into English as “hybridity”, although some scholars,
 Acknowledgements xvii
like Burke, contend that “hybridity” has a different meaning, as it refers to a
combination of cultures without history and memory, and can operate as a trans-
mitting vehicle of dominance (as in the case of the British colonisation of India, or
evangelisation). In contrast, métissage is about the mixing of cultures, with their
own traditions and roots in the past, that materialises regardless of the adoption of
legal and political measures. Compare John Francis Burke, “Reconciling Cultural
Diversity with a Democratic Community: “Mestizaje” as Opposer to the Usual
Suspects”, in Citizenship Studies, vol. III, n. 1, 1999, pp. 119–40; Homi K. Bhabha,
The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994; and, on nomadic métissages,
Matilde Callari Galli (ed.), Nomadismi contemporanei, Guaraldi, Rimini, 2003,
pp. 17–50.
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Industrialisation, modernity and development in
Eastern Europe

“Since the age of discovery”, writes the famous French sociologist Michel
Wieviorka, “métissage has been inseparable from modernity”, and citing
Serge Gruzinski, he points out how the appearance of the “first world econ-
omy” between the 16th and 17th centuries in Asia and America caused the
phenomenon of “mixing and rejection”.1
The geopolitical macro-region we usually define as “Eastern Europe” is
from this point of view no exception. Indeed, métissage, a product of different
processes of cultural syncretism occurring over centuries, is the main feature
that has accompanied its process of modernisation from the moment the
Industrial Revolution triggered its rapid economic development.
In truth, métissage was present in Eastern Europe well before modernity
appeared on the horizon. Nevertheless, with its arrival the phenomenon of
métissage consolidated, propagated and changed inasmuch as modernity was
largely the result of a dense network of tightly woven relationships, a) between
its component parts (i.e. Central-Eastern Europe, the Danube and the Bal-
kans, and the immense, rolling spaces of the Plain of Sarmatia, beyond the
Volga and up to the Urals), b) within each one of these regions, and c) in
interaction with the rest of the Continent.
In other words, modernity did not simply develop because some East European
elites “suddenly” perceived their countries’ state of backwardness and thus set to
work, in myriad difficulties and resistance, to introduce models considered success-
ful and tested in a vaguely defined industrial West (which for decades essentially
consisted of England and Belgium and some regions of France and Germany).
According to this interpretation, the question of East European modernity
should be viewed merely in terms of the hard-won but inevitable absorption
of an indistinct “Western model of industrial development”. Access to mod-
ernity would thus have occurred thanks to the pre-eminence of Western cul-
ture to which the East had “finally” submitted after “numerous and vain”
attempts to reject this modernity, or Western pre-eminence, or both.
In our opinion this explanation, reinforced over time by plenty of stereotypes,
sounds simplistic and unconvincing.
It seems to us that, on the contrary, a discussion of modernity and devel-
opment in Eastern Europe must take into consideration the area’s dynamic
2 Introduction
métissage. As a matter of fact, the traditional multiplicity of trans-European
ties and the predisposition for mixing contributed decisively to anchoring the
development process to original trends of thought, continuously reacting to
the international context. In this process political ideals and movements were
forged, with their own views of modernity. The dense networks of relations
that formed the substratum of East European societies likewise established
their actual degree of mutual dependency, as well as their autonomous sub-
jectivity. This was done through lengthy processes which turned out to be
original but also marked by other European and international contexts.
These networks of relations, the result of regional specificity and multilateral
inputs, engendered the awareness both of local possibilities and aspirations and
of various obstacles (social, economic and cultural) which, compared to other
situations, delayed economic development, and industrialisation in particular.
Naturally, over the course of time East European métissage relations
changed, multiplied and established unprecedented forms of communication.
New networks arose and still others, as we will see, disappeared or lost
importance. In their tumultuous succession and intersection they defined the
multiplicity of East European societies, contending with economic changes,
the development-backwardness issue and Political transformation. The capital
“P” indicates the broader ideals and strategic policies that set the scene for
shaping political stances, reactions of public opinion, concrete acts of gov-
ernance, the functioning of institutions, and also the choice of reference
models.
At the outset of modernity several important networks of relations were
already established due to certain crucial factors such as: a) the economic and
social functions carried out mainly by Jewish, German, Armenian and Greek
diasporas; b) competition, first religious (both within Christianity as well as
between Christian religions and Islam), and then national, with the spread of
the press, universities and academies; c) the intensification of communication
and transport, first via canals and then railways; and d) participation in the
main cultural currents that crossed the Continent.2
These “basic networks” promoted new forms of métissage and aspirations/
constructions of modernity, against the background of a prior process of
change in the exercise of political power. In effect, this process of change took
a similar course across the entire European continent (the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth being the most significant exception), and was characterised
by institutional centralisation, the progressive bureaucratisation of state
administration, and by the creation of a tax system and a regular army.
While these transformations were underway, the networks mentioned above
played a decisive role in transmitting ideas and political practices. Just think
of the influential role of the diasporas.
It is well known that Jews, Germans, Armenians and Greeks had spread
around the various East European regions from the beginning of the Middle
Ages (the Greeks had been there since the Classical Age, like the Jews, at least
in the Balkans). They had been invited by local princes and sovereigns for the
 Introduction 3
specific purpose of compensating for the absence of certain activities in the
fields of commerce, public administration, handicrafts and at times even the
military. This process took place in political contexts dominated by the Great
Empires, where borders were few and distant: it fostered an extended and
more general perception of “community”, which was particularly successful
among the diasporas.
Thus after centuries of being settled, the maps of the early 1900s showed
that Ashkenazi Jews were an influential element in Poland, Lithuania and
Belarus as far as Vitebsk and in Volhynia; then in Galicia, Moldova, Hungary
between Debrecen and the Carpathians, as well as in Bessarabia, with a
strong presence in the cities of Cluj, Bucharest, Szeged, Budapest, Bratislava,
Novi Sad, Odessa and Poltava. In turn, Sephardi Jews were . particularly active
in the Balkans, especially in Sarajevo, Thessaloniki and Istanbul and, in part,
in Bulgaria.3
Germans, on the other hand, besides living in Poland, Lithuania and
Volhynia, had settled in Bessarabia, along the Bug, or on the Black Sea
between Odessa and the Crimean peninsula, along the Volga, and in the
Banat, Transylvania and Dobruja.
Greeks. had spread out along the entire Black Sea Coast as well in Wala-
chia and Istanbul, where the majority of European Armenians also lived. The
latter were also present in Bulgaria, especially in the triangle between Plovdiv,
Shumen and Varna, and in Romania, Moldova and Podolia, Galicia and,
though less widespread, in Transylvania, Odessa, Macedonia and Thrace
(especially in Edirne).
For centuries Jews played an important intermediary role between the city
and the countryside in their roles as merchants, innkeepers, grocers, tenant
farmers and property managers; Greeks were often employed as imperial
administrative functionaries (not only at the time of Byzantium, but also of
the Sublime Porte), while – like Armenians – they conducted trade between
the banks of the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Adriatic (in competition
with Venice, Genoa and Dubrovnik/Ragusa), leaving to Germans mainly
craftsmanship or, in the capital cities, the formation of administrative and
military cadres.
On the whole, for centuries the main diasporas linked nobility, rural popu-
lations, artisans, merchants and entrepreneurs, promoting the growth of mar-
kets, craftsmanship, credit and the number of consumers of non-agricultural
products. They likewise influenced local cultures to the point that still today it
is unthinkable to understand the literature of the various East European
countries without considering the contribution provided by the main dia-
sporas. Certainly, a part of them (as in the case of the Jews), became poorer
as a result of industrialisation, suffering from the financial and market crises
of the early 1800s, as well as from reductions in sales rights and urban
migration permits (especially to the detriment of small and medium-sized
towns and to the benefit of the modern megalopolises). Yet another part
became wealthy, turning into the undesired competitor of the nobility,
4 Introduction
especially of those who aspired to entrepreneurial or bourgeois functions or
simply wanted to control all the economic activities of the village.4
Thus keen competition arose between the new aspirations of the landed
aristocracy, including the nascent national bourgeoisie (especially those of
rural origin) and the roles traditionally carried out by diasporas (particularly
the Jewish diaspora). This negatively affected not only their penetration into the
countryside, where they were used to exchanging handmade goods and tools
with surpluses of wheat, linen, wool and livestock, but also – more generally –
the progressive secularisation of society. This secularisation by stimulating
emancipation and respect for civil rights was encouraging a more favourable
climate for greater acceptance of Jews in the Christian world and facilitating
their integration.5
Therefore industrialisation and modernity had an ambivalent function: on
the one hand, they intensified relations between Jews and non-Jews (and more
broadly between the diasporas and the various ethno-national groups in the
territory) in a context of progressive and rapid social differentiation which
could be felt everywhere, including among the diasporas; on the other hand,
they deepened the fracture lines, mainly by asserting individual ethnic groups’
national, religious and linguistic-cultural homogeneity, thus discouraging the
secularisation of society.
For that matter, we cannot comprehend the extent and diffusion of East
European anti-Semitism if we do not keep in mind the ambivalence of this
process.
It is common knowledge that capital knows no borders because it tends to
be invested where it finds a profit. Bankers, entrepreneurs and merchants
moved according to an international and cosmopolitan logic, dictated by
business needs. This aspect often (but not exclusively) interwove with the
network of relations established within each diaspora. As far as Jews were
concerned, at the end of the 1800s, 40% were engaged in commercial activities
or in the credit business, and 30% in industry and handicrafts. Therefore, with
the internationalisation of business, capitalism became a cosmopolitan trend
in cultural terms. However, the closeness of the rising neo-bourgeoisie to the
Jewish presence in the crucial and significant sectors of capitalism was chal-
lenged at the end of the 19th century by a negative reaction to cosmopoli-
tanism (mainly perceived as a threat to national or group identities), which
translated into anti-Semitism and influenced some major anti-capitalist social
currents.
At the same time, as Jews were socially differentiated among themselves,
the cultural cosmopolitanism that characterised them facilitated the con-
currence of interests with worker and socialist internationalism, to the point
that this element – which contained conspicuous personalities from Marx to
Trotsky – decisively contributed to spreading potent political ideas all over
Europe.
In reality the conflict between diasporas’ trans-national ties and the new
fracture lines triggered by 19th-century insurgent nationalism formed part of
 Introduction 5
the ambivalence intrinsic to the process of constructing modernity. This con-
tained the impulses for the development of capitalism and the creation of
nation-states, aspirations to free trade and economic protectionism, the affir-
mation of scientific rationalism and the enhancement of religious and identity
precepts …
It was thus in a contradictory picture of constantly evolving trans-national
frames of reference, that modernisation in Eastern Europe began to deal with
the relation between agriculture and industry, mechanisation and handicrafts,
and city and countryside, taking into account a complex system of reforms
and changes in values, on which development-backwardness dynamics exerted a
decisive influence.
These changes affected both the link between freedom and property (dear
to the diasporas and the rising bourgeoisie), and equal rights, establishing
unexpected commonalities between traditional peasant egalitarianism and the
spread of Marxism. Similarly, these changes laid the foundations of civil
society (starting with the emancipation of serfs and the formation of a liberal
element in the nobility) and began to reduce the aristocracy’s privileges
(especially in the fiscal area). They took shape in the fight against the Great
Empires’ administrative centralism in favour of decentralisation, in the form
of emerging claims, as we will see in Russia, Austria-Hungary or Turkey, and
in the liberalism that supported the zemstvo, as well as in Bakunin’s anar-
chism. They likewise contended with the need to define the forms and the
main actors in the national and identity issue, just as they addressed the pro-
blem of reconstructing legitimising myths and reminders of the past, both to
affirm the existence of “historic nations” (according to a 19th-century theory
shared by Karl Marx and Otto Bauer), and to claim the existence of original
constitutional and parliamentary structures in some countries (as in the case
of the Hungarian Golden Bull of 1222, compared to the English Magna
Charta, or of the aristocratic republics in Poland and Transylvania).6
Ultimately, this was a complex and indigenous process which could not
help but take into consideration other changes underway – albeit along the
same lines – in other Northern and West European countries, and later in the
newly formed Kingdom of Italy, which, however – as already pointed out –
had its roots in the plurality of networks of trans-European relations, due to
their particularly receptive nature, prone to mixing.
Religious competition, on the other hand, also contributed to defining the
cultural substratum that triggered the modernisation process.
To the pre-existing conflict between Western and Eastern Christianity, exa-
cerbated by the presence in Eastern Europe of both Roman and Greek (or
Uniate) Catholicism in contrast to Orthodoxy (and in particular the Greek
and Russian Patriarchates), was added, in the 16th century, the spread of
Protestantism, and therefore the Tridentinum Counter-Reformation.
This competition exerted a fundamental, long-lasting influence over the
entire region, beyond theological diatribes, because it involved the issue of the
language used in liturgy, promoting the use of the vernacular, then
6 Introduction
transformed into national languages, while the use of printing and subse-
quently higher education spread through the founding of universities and
academies, thus confirming the processes extensively studied by Anderson and
Gellner.7
As early as 1470, printing appeared in the German and Protestant areas of
Saxony, Silesia and Bohemia. In a few years’ time it spread to Krakow,
Budapest and Bratislava, in Catholic as well as Protestant circles. At the end
of the 15th century it was present in Moravia, Croatia (in Senj) and in
Orthodox Montenegro, as well as in the Republic of Venice, where printing
was done in the Latin, Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets.
. Meanwhile, in 1493
the first Hebrew printing house was opened in Istanbul: this was followed in
the 1500s by a Hebrew printing works in Edirne and in the 1600s in Thessa-
loníki and Smyrna. In the meantime, between the 16th and 17th centuries,
Hebrew printing was also established in Prague, Krakow, Lublin, Augsburg,
Leipzig and Venice as well as in other cities.
In the wake of the Catholic–Protestant conflict, the different denomina-
tions’ need to spread their own truths induced even the Orthodox Church to
promote printed publications. The first books in Cyrillic appeared in Krakow
in 1483, followed by those from Cetinje in Montenegro, Tîrgovişte in Wala-
chia, and also in Prague, Vilnius and Sibiu. The first Orthodox printing works
was opened in Moscow in 1564 and shortly afterwards in L’viv in Ukraine,
then spreading to Kyïv. Previously printing had also appeared in Belgrade,
Iaşi, Bucharest and Košice, as well as in the monasteries of Shkodër and
Goražde, albeit only briefly.
From a climate of religious adaptation to new inventions such as the
printing press, the Turkish-Islamic culture remained excluded for reasons that
can be traced back mainly to the resistance of the scribes’ associations, and
subsequently reasons of doctrine, originating as we will see later from pres-
sures on the part. of the Hanafi school. Thus the first Turkish printing house
was opened in Istanbul only in 1727, whereas in Central Europe printing in
Danubian-Balkan languages in the Christian regions bordering the Empire of
the Sublime Porte developed in reaction to the Ottoman advance. Thus Milan
became a centre for Greek publications, Venice specialised in Croatian and
Glagolitic, Rome in Bulgarian and Hebrew, Krakow in Hungarian, Braşov in
Romanian and Bologna in Hebrew. Similar processes arose in other areas in
which the political context represented an obstacle to the spread of printing in the
local vernacular. This contributed to making Plzeń a specialised centre of
publishing in Czech, Tubingen in Slovenian and Königsberg in Lithuanian.
In the meantime Catholic–Protestant competition had extended to higher
scientific education. During the 16th century Protestant churches spread
quickly throughout Poland, the Baltic coasts and to the south-east as far as
Transylvania and Slavonia. Lutherans established their own universities in
Bratislava and Prešov in Slovakia, in Legnica in Silesia, in Sopron and Sár-
ospatak in Hungary and in Königsberg on the Baltic. Calvinists promoted
.
their own universities in Vilnius, Kedainiai, Slutsk and Šilura in Lithuania, as
 Introduction 7
well as academies in Cluj, Alba Iulia and Aiud in Transylvania, in Debrecen
in Hungary and in Panivci in Podolia. On the other hand Antitrinitarian
schools were established in Ukraine in the cities of Chernihiv, Hoshcha and
Khmil’nyk, as well as in Raków and Levartów in Poland, Kysylyn in Volhy-
nia and Cluj in Transylvania. Finally, the Unity of the Brethren (or Jednota),
after breaking with the Hussite movement, created its own gymnasiums in
Moravia, Bohemia and in Leszno in Poland.
The Counter-Reformation reacted to Protestant penetration, especially in
Habsburg Austria and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, by creating
religious colleges, seminaries and Jesuit schools which had great importance
in educating the faithful: among these we recall particularly the work of the
Jesuits in Danzig and Płock in Poland, in Zamość in Volhynia, in Ivano-
Frankivs’k in Galicia, in Košice, Trenčín and Banská Bystrica in Slovakia, in
Cluj and Alba Iulia in Transylvania, in Brno in Moravia and in Telč in
Bohemia, as well as in Zagreb and Rijeka in Croatia. Catholic universities
were established in Prague, Vilnius, Vienna, Krakow, Olomouc and Trnava,
inducing the Orthodox Church in turn to create its own cultural and religious
education centres, so that in Ukraine and Lithuania one could soon find side
by side Catholic and Orthodox academies, colleges and schools: this was the
case in Kyïv, Vilnius, Minsk, Slutsk, L’viv, Przemyśl, Zamość and Chełm,
among other cities.
From this rapid mapping it is obvious that the way religious relations in
Central-Eastern Europe had been shaping up entailed spheres of pre-eminence,
conflict and overlapping which were to have linguistic-cultural repercussions.
Meanwhile Judaism and Christianity had confronted each other in the
Balkans as well, where the Ottoman system of Millet ensured Orthodoxy’s
firm predominance (even though over time it became increasingly divided
within) as well as Jewish autonomy. The Sephardi Jews fleeing from the
Spanish Inquisition were offered protection, not only due to cultural tolerance
but mainly out of economic self-interest. It is well known that the Sephardi
Jews – in contrast to the Ashkenazi Jews – had developed highly advanced
and prized handicrafts, especially in the production of luxury goods. Fur-
thermore, during their forced migration eastwards, they were able to transfer
most of their capital from the Iberian Peninsula. This allowed them to con-
tribute to the development of cities in Anatolia and the Balkans, in particular
turning Smyrna and Thessaloníki into influential centres for the spread of
modern political culture (from the Jewish Enlightenment to the Young
Turks).8
The Sublime Porte thus undoubtedly drew advantages from this welcoming
policy, but this conduct was not always constant: in 1526, for example, fol-
lowing its advancement in Danubian Europe it imposed the closure of the
universities in Pécs and Buda, so that the Hungarian nobility was forced to
look elsewhere to educate their children, thus founding the Collegium Hun-
garicum (and subsequently Hungaricum Illiricum) at the University of
Bologna, in anticipation of better times.
8 Introduction
The fact remains that the spread of the press and the complexity of reli-
gious and educational networks set up between the 16th and 18th centuries
formed a powerful foundation for the enormous cultural developments that
occurred in the 19th century. The processes of secularisation and national
construction engendered at the time the elaboration of a lively system of
museums, publishing houses, academies, cultural societies (in which the var-
ious national diasporas found a mode of expression), reading rooms, theatres,
universities, but especially gymnasiums and lyceums in the languages of the
various existing linguistic groups. Thus a new competitive process opened up
which added even more controversy to the religious conflict in the form of the
spread of laicism and atheism, as well as divergent political perspectives.
These new perspectives were just as linked to a new form of ethno-national
autonomy and independence, as they were oriented to constructing neo-
regional cultural or federal spaces such as Mitteleuropa, Danubian integration,
Yugoslavism and Panslavism (in all the accepted meanings).
To the network of lay and religious, ethnic and socio-cultural relations
mentioned above we must add the role of the complex system of commu-
nication and transport that was gradually developing in Eastern Europe, first
with the construction of canals connecting rivers and subsequently, after
1840, with the spread of the railways.
Just to mention an example, the canal between the Elbe and Havel rivers
(later extended to the Oder), or the canal that joined the city of Bydgoszcz to
the Oder or the one between Timişoara and the Danube in the Banat were
already operating in the 18th century. In the 1800s canals were then built
between the Dnepr and the Bug, between the Neman and the Vistula. Simi-
larly, the network of canals in the Hungarian plains (especially in Bačka and
the Banat) were connected to the Danube and projects to reinforce the
navigability of the Danube were implemented, as well as the intensive use of
the Maritsa and the construction of the Corinth Canal between Peloponnese
and Attica.
It was, however, mainly the fear of the decline of cities that were large
commercial centres but distant from access to the most important waterways
(especially seaports) which encouraged the expansion of trans-national rail-
ways after 1840. Soon Berlin, Vienna and Budapest became hubs of primary
importance for regions like Saxony, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, Lower Aus-
tria, and for connections to the Baltic and the Adriatic. Soon afterwards Saint
Petersburg joined these ranks, closely connected to central European capitals
via Vilnius and Warsaw, and the Warsaw–Minsk–Moscow and Warsaw–Kyïv
railway lines were built. Warsaw, via Krakow (at the time part of Austria) was
connected to the Russian port of Odessa and it in turn was connected to Iaşi
in Romania. In particular the so-called “corner of the three empires” where
Austria, Russia and Germany shared a common border became strategically
crucial for communication.
In the Ottoman Empire on the other hand, interest in developing the rail-
ways, albeit late and brought about more by military than commercial
 Introduction 9
motivations, had begun to increase: thus after the construction of the
Thessaloníki–Kosovska
. Mitrovica railway line (conceived mainly to control
Macedonia), the Istanbul–Alexandroupolis and the Edirne–Plovdiv lines
(aimed at controlling Greeks and Bulgarians, respectively), the basic network
was extended to connect Thessaloníki to the capital and the latter, via
Yambol, to Burgas and, via Sofia (already independent), to Varna.
To the north, in the Habsburg Empire, Zagreb – already connected to Cluj
in Transylvania – was connected to Belgrade by 1891, when the Serbian
capital had .a few years before already completed its connections to Sofia,
Edirne and Istanbul. In fact, Vienna, via Celje in Slovenia and Zagreb, could
already communicate by rail with the Sea of Marmara, so that the German
dream of constructing a Berlin–Baghdad–Persian Gulf railway began to be a
concrete possibility (or a real nightmare for the powers of the Entente).
This increasingly dense intertwining of networks created by the diasporas,
religious and national competition, and the new and potent communication
routes (which were also rapidly shrinking perceptions of space), were joined
by the major currents of thought which flowed with increasing speed of
exchange and reciprocal knowledge across the entire continent.
On the other hand, in Poland German cameralism and physiocratic culture
were already widespread at the end of the 18th century. Concepts such as
“free trade”, “natural law” and “contracts” were well known. In Bohemia, as
we will see, industrialisation was progressing in the villages in the form of
small and medium-sized enterprises, thus avoiding rapid and dramatic
urbanisation.9
In turn, the Enlightened absolutism of Vienna and Saint Petersburg was
essential for the spread of the ideas of freedom, constitution and the fight
against privilege in the two empires. For these impulses the contribution of
Jewish Enlightenment (or Haskalah) in Vilnius, Odessa and Warsaw, with its
attempt to bring Jewish culture closer to Polish, Lithuanian and Russian
national cultures, was not extraneous. In the meantime, in spite of having
shown themselves incapable of managing landed estates in a substantially
different way from the rest of the landed aristocracy, some sectors of the
nobility had sought to gain credit as the indigenous entrepreneurial bour-
geoisie. They assigned themselves a national role, referring to their own
independence from international finance due to historical reasons as well as
the special role of their economic activity.
This does not mean that there were no forces or individuals who would
have proposed or desired to imitate existing foreign models, in particular the
English one, such as in the case of István Széchenyi in Hungary or in Russia,
especially after the assassination of Czar Paul I and until 1810. A century
later, even Lenin posed the problem for post-revolutionary Soviet Russia, of
whether or not to follow the “Prussian model” of development or the
“American” one. Still later, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Sakharov (between
the 1970s and 1980s) joined these ranks, as well as Yeltsin’s Foreign Minister
Kozyrev.10
10 Introduction
In sum, the problem of Westernisation in terms of transferring models (and
sometimes, in its most radical expression, even as a form of “self-effacement”
in the West) repeatedly surfaced on the political scene. However, this was just
one school of thought among many in a vast and dynamic framework,
marked by the syncretism triggered by the pressing force of numerous net-
works of trans-European relationships, which proved to be both protagonists
of conflict and inspiration for original re-formulations.
In conclusion, modernity and métissage interwove; both interacted with the
West, fuelled by a wide range of ideas which, in addition to the aforemen-
tioned Enlightenment, liberalism and capitalist cosmopolitanism, developed
in various ways. Just think of Romanticism, which up until the end of the
18th century spread rapidly in all its political interpretations from France to
Russia, from Germany to the Balkans, and also of the imperial visions con-
jured up from racist presuppositions to be found in the theses of Mackinder’s
Heartland and in Danilevsky’s Panslavism.
Analogously, the debate between Darwinism and creationism, science and
religion, selection of the species and power politics permeated the spirit of the
entire European continent, from the moment it intensified during the course
of the 19th century, certainly not leaving Eastern Europe on the margins of a
more general reflection about man, machines, the evolution of civilisation and
the art representing it.
With the turn of the 20th century, the idea of self-determination and the
principles on which it is founded formed part of Lenin’s thought, and over-
seas, in the House Inquiry, Woodrow Wilson’s commission to prepare the
American plan to reorganise Europe geopolitically at the end of the Great
War. In both cases the solutions put forward had many commonalities, in
their dominant ethno-national approach, whereas in Great Britain the pub-
lication of the weekly New Europe constituted a political-cultural operation of
great incisiveness which emerged from the sharing of British intellectuals’ and
journalists’ ideas, as well as of other exponents of Czechoslovakism and
Yugoslavism (such as Masaryk or Supilo).
The idea of Europe and the prospect of its integration was part of Richard
Coudenhove-Kalergi’s philosophy, a convinced multi-culturalist and cosmopo-
litan of Bohemian origin but raised in Austria, who formed the pan-European
movement and was close to Aristide Briand, who above all understood the
importance of the new systems of railway, road and air communication in
drawing closer, not just symbolically but in daily life, to what he defined as
“pan-regional systems” (including Europe).
Finally, even Marxism was a powerful carrier of inter-European commu-
nication not only because the idea of Europe and overcoming backwardness
were strategic references for both Lenin and Trotsky, but also because that
political philosophy came from Europe, where the Bolsheviks and other cur-
rents of Russian thought felt they legitimately belonged. On the other hand,
as we will see, there were many moments in which Soviet literature and phi-
losophy interacted with the international and West European, Central-Eastern
 Introduction 11
European and Balkan orientations, during the 1920s as well as in the 1950s
and 1960s, and as surprising as this may seem, even during Brezhnev’s era of
stagnation.11
On the other hand, when we think of art, Russian modernism appeared
before the advent of Bolshevism: Suprematists, Constructivists and Cubists
were already at work when the Revolution of 1917 exploded and the Futurists
could still freely express themselves for another decade before “Socialist
Realism” was imposed, precisely because their favourite subjects were
machines, cities and electricity, all symbols of the idea of modernity of the
time.12
In sum, a multiplicity of trans-European relations (and in the 20th century
transatlantic ones, as has already been touched on and will be dealt with in
more detail later on) contributed to creating the conditions for East European
métissage and modernity to develop in a “leopard-skin” pattern, with areas of
intense growth next to profoundly backward areas.
In these conditions, it was inevitable that over time and in space various
debates on development and on the forms it would have to assume got
underway, generating just as many currents of thought. Their penetration into
these societies’ political cultures makes it unthinkable – even after the fall of
communism – that the consolidation of an enlarged European Union (EU)
and the subsequent steps toward European integration could occur by indul-
ging in a mere transfer of Western models, without the formation of a shared
process or, as recent bureaucratese usage would have it, co-ownership. Simi-
larly, relations with Russia may not overlook the complex ties that formed
over time between this immense country and the various geopolitical areas of
Europe, in which the West – once again – ends up being but a component and
not the main point of reference.
Together all these reflections, summed up to refresh the reader’s memory,
explain why – in the attempt to reconstruct the line of debate on modernity
and development in Eastern Europe – a comparative methodology has been
chosen for this book, innovative in many respects in relation to the stimulating
and vast bibliography available on the topics to be addressed herein.
Indeed, international literature on the transition written by comparativist
politology in the 1990s attempted to accredit the existence of “Centre”-
”Periphery” dynamics to the celebrated “Western victory over communism”,
according to what was mentioned above. “Progress” and “failure” in the
individual countries as they emerged from the previous Socialist system were
thus evaluated according to a methodology intended to establish a taxonomy
with which to measure the degree of assimilation with the West achieved by
the individual post-socialist societies, to place them within a predisposed
hierarchical grid.
Here we need only think of the theses according to which several post-
communist models would have emerged, according to the “Europeanist”
legacy of the Habsburgs or the “Asian” one of the Ottoman Empire: these are
theses that do not explain why Bulgaria managed to enter the EU “only”
12 Introduction
three years later than, for example, “Habsburgian” Bohemia and Moravia
(currently the Czech Republic). Other interpretations placed an accent on the
democratic or national claims that emerged during the crises of communism
between the 1950s and 1980s in Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Poland in order
to explain the greater solidity of the post-communist transition in these
countries, forgetting, however, that a similar process (and rather more con-
stant over time) characterised Tito’s Yugoslavia, although this could not save
it from a destructive crisis with much bloodshed.13
Besides, it is not by chance that many authors carefully avoided broaching
the subject of the profound crisis of the state that exploded in the Balkans, as
if this were an event extraneous to transition. At times, in focusing their
attention on the ongoing transformation in Central Europe and trying to
grasp the differences in approaches (for example, between Poland and Hungary),
some scholars attempted to establish a hierarchical order between Poland’s
conflictual-pluralist-type model of democratic consolidation (believed to be
more persuasive), and Hungary’s corporate one, founded on compromise
(judged as less convincing). Similarly, Slovakia’s reliance on hierarchies led to
assigning that country scarce probability of democratic success, and went as
far as putting it on the list of “problematic” countries, while predicting the
Czech Republic’s rapid inclusion in democratically consolidated societies with
a successful market economy.14
In this way transitology often used a unidirectional interpretative logic,
from West to East, without critically asking what the historical-cultural,
sociological and political-institutional as well as economic relationship still in
existence was between the process of assimilation (considered already under-
way) and the perceptions of what came to be considered the “Periphery”, at
the moment the latter re-established its encounter with the supposed
“Centre”, after the contrapositions of the Cold War.15
To escape these limits, however, it would make no sense to renounce the
comparative method, as it offers stimulating perspectives for understanding
trans-national dynamics, especially when the changes take on an epochal
character, with broad geopolitical implications.
Thus we have chosen a methodologically different path, which in comparing
takes more into account the qualitative repercussions triggered by the net-
works of relations mentioned above, which, by following their own ways, gave
rise to specific situations leading to forms of modernity as original as they
were trans-national and interdependent.
On the other hand, to dwell for just a moment on the methodological
aspects, nor can we be satisfied with the traditional approach taken up to now
in the literature of area experts, i.e. those scholars of East European political
history empirically oriented towards assessing the changes in their specific
area of research (in which they know at least one language) in reference to
historical contexts and experiences, mentalities, cultures matured locally, to
all of which they end up attributing a determining importance, leaving com-
parison in the background. Even though many of them have produced
 Introduction 13
famous and very detailed studies, they have often been affected by “geo-
graphical” limits enforced on their research, in that it is focused on Russia or
other countries (sometimes just one) of the Central-Eastern Europe and the
Balkans. Thus they underestimated or lost sight of the dense network of
contacts and reciprocal influences that made modernity in Europe a trans-
national aspect of the configuration of “politics” in the area that from
Szczecin and Trieste extends to the Urals and beyond, stretching as far as the
Pacific to interact – simultaneously – with the even larger framework of
European and world dynamics.16
In contrast, this book intends to use a comparative approach to define
modernity taking into account: a) the principal transversal political and cultural
trends or, more precisely, the trans-national trends that were involved in the
development/backwardness relationship; b) the impact these had on historical-
cultural heritages and value systems; and c) experiences acquired in East
European societies, in order to shed new light on the métissage forms of
constructing “Politics”, governance and social organisation forged during the
last two centuries.
On the other hand, the perception of modernity rooted in East European
elites and public opinions has not really moved away from the principal traits
attributed to the process of modernisation from the time of Karl Marx and
then Max Weber, up until the most recent syntheses of Jürgen Habermas and
Anthony Giddens.17 In other words, whether accepted or rejected, all over
Europe modernity was identified with the dynamics of different, intimately
interdependent processes, such as the development of manufacturing and the
exaltation of the machine, the accumulation of capital and the mobilisation of
resources; the increase in productivity and literacy; urbanisation and ration-
alist architecture; the centralisation of state power and the construction of
national identity; the affirmation of reason, the primacy of science, the right
to participate in politics, as well as lay definitions of values and reference
standards.
An original aspect of the East European space as a whole, on the other
hand, consists of the ways and forms in which the elites and public opinions
gradually constructed their own attitudes toward “Politics” and modernity,
taking into account (or being pressured by) the many-shaped intensity of
communication flows that formed between East and West and never dis-
appeared – as already mentioned – even during the communist era, until there
was a sudden acceleration during the process of EU enlargement and the
advent of globalisation.
Furthermore, it is precisely out of a reflection aimed at simultaneously
keeping in mind how East European modernity was conceived, discussed and
realised, as well as the dense and multilateral networks of trans-European
relations (which were the cause of this syncretism, fusion and métissage), that
some unexpected interpretations emerge, offering a dynamic framework for
the relationship between “Politics” and modernisation on the European continent,
far beyond the West-East or “Centre-Periphery” approaches.
14 Introduction
Indeed, within the framework of the networks of relations we have already
mentioned, a powerful vector for the diffusion of modernity was the increas-
ingly influential role of money. The state, which needed vaster and vaster
resources to exercise its power politics and maintain the courts and public
administration, relied with increasing frequency on the fiscal lever. This was
first done by changing feudal obligations into cash payment, and then by
introducing new forms of taxation. Soon even new instruments, innovations
and more advanced cultivation methods (like, for example, using chemicals in
agriculture), and the acquisition of new knowledge contributed to the
increasing use of money. The relationship that emerged on the one hand
between money and some of the activities carried out mainly by exponents of
the diasporas, and on the other hand between the influence of traditional
nobility and the emerging liberal nobility, and the formation of bourgeoisie
and imperial centralism set off repercussions which soon came to have
unforeseen consequences.
In Eastern Europe modernity also provoked a rapid and profound change
in social stratification. Industrial development had been carried out at the
cost of agriculture and handicrafts, while trade and credit, transport and
communications, public services, rents and the private professions spread
(with usury often carrying out the function of promoter of accumulation).
Some categories were protected, such as pensioners, especially after the rise of
communism; others enjoyed special privileges, such as the military. Com-
munism in turn introduced new forms of inequality, in contrast to its pro-
grammes and its own ideology. The bureaucracy had advantages. Unequal
distribution of income was allowed by territory (thus encouraging the growth
of nationalist claims) and by category (for example, to the benefit of Party
and state functionaries). In some cases salaries were markedly differentiated
for different categories of workers, or, in the case of Yugoslavia, the emer-
gence of a class of small private entrepreneurs was supported within certain
limits … Moreover, disparities were introduced in terms of access to rights
when, under the system of ethnic quotas, the majority national group was
preferred in a given territory, the borders of which were often subjectively
and/or arbitrarily determined.
Finally, the explosion of modernity shaped politics, determining its forms
and instruments. For the whole of Eastern Europe this implied a radical
revision of representation (which often occurred much more rapidly than in
the West). Immediately after the First World War many countries adopted
universal suffrage, which was often accompanied by voting by proxy and
collective representation, mostly of the ethno-national type. Likewise the
sources of legitimisation of power changed, and the primacy of nations and/or
ideologies emerged. Gender relations and the idea of the family underwent
profound changes, in an atmosphere in which the growth of secularisation
was the result of a drastic reduction in the number of those holding the faith,
the spread of criticism of religion, as well as laws governing divorce and
abortion.
 Introduction 15
In the meantime civil society – upon which initially, as we have seen, great
hopes had been set – was hardly able to emerge as an autonomous subject.
Originally, urban centres had recognised the limits to their development both
because this was opposed by the landed aristocracy, and because they were
geographically very distant from each other. Subsequently – in the nation-
building phase – a significant part of public opinion considered city inhabi-
tants, mainly Jews and ethnic minorities, an obstacle or an encumbrance
which was best gotten rid of. Furthermore, the independence of the courts
had been restricted well before the communist ascent, as shown by the Zagreb
and Friedjung trials in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1900s.18 For
its part, rural illiteracy caused peasants’ support for cooperation to be late
and often contradictory, while the Orthodox Church’s dependency on poli-
tical power, censorship of the press (already widely practised in the interwar
period) and finally the tendency in a significant part of the intellectual and
political elites to encourage emotional support for nationalism, often identified
with ethnicity, all contributed to constricting space for the autonomy of civil
societies.
In any case, as modernity reached the populations’ daily lives, the educated
elites’ plans and debates about problems of development soon became the
expression of a political practice as differentiated in its tactical options as it
was in its strategic solutions. Thus, from the initial naive and fideistic impetus
of certain youth movements (like the Russian “Going to the people”), it went
from extremist exasperation to terrorism, to then fall back at the end of the
century on more articulate prospects, becoming the fulcrum of the pro-
grammes of populist, peasant, socialist and liberal movements and parties
which gradually formed not only in imperial Russia, but all over the Habsburg,
Balkan and Ottoman territories.
Overall, the East European construction of modernity, in terms of the
search for a new equilibrium between agriculture and industry, city and
countryside, peasants and workers, tradition and innovation, oligarchic power
and the assertion of rights, urban reconstruction and public administration,
rationality and beliefs, secularism and religions, inevitably ended up inter-
twining with the great theme of East European contemporaneity or that of
identifying the most efficient institutional models for representing and repro-
ducing modernity, which then resulted in the construction of the state and
nation.
State and nation building, like aspirations to economic, social and cultural
modernity, were therefore the two great currents that, intertwining and influ-
encing each other, marked the evolution of East European events from the
Napoleonic era onwards.
In this regard, we will examine in detail just one (albeit important) dimen-
sion of its political history, and that is the dynamic relationship established
between the main debates on modernisation and the configuration of politics.
In other words, the focus of our attention will be on the most significant
controversies that grew up around the historic issue of development, intended
16 Introduction
as one of the two fundamental themes that led to, limited and determined the
construction, original in many ways, of modernity in the East European
regions. However, we do not aim to reconstruct all the phases or networks of
relations that manifested themselves during the course of the two centuries on
the themes we will be addressing.
On the other hand, it will be impossible to ignore, as the reader will have
already ascertained, the question of the state and the nation: in effect, like a
karstic river, it has run through the political literature and debates which over
time have accompanied the political desire to participate in the construction
of modernity both for those who hoped to become an integral part of a
European project (by means of constitutions or revolutions), and those who
hoped to assert their own vision of modernity, completely or in part different
from the Western model.
On the whole, this was a polyphonic and trans-national debate, which
ended up constituting a challenge to the behaviours and practices with which
the “Centre” tended, and still does tend to relate to East European spaces,
often reproducing unilateral and pre-established formulas, relying on mental
laziness and recurrent attitudes, capable of triggering mutual resentment and
incomprehension, and making it difficult to construct a shared political
practice.
Thus to reconstruct the salient phases of the complex historical evolution
that grew up around East European politics, development and modernity, we
have concentrated our attention on five moments, which likewise constitute
milestones in the process of both intellectual and political construction of a
society conceived as modern, efficient, equal, and rooted in the consciousness
of its inhabitants.
These moments have been briefly analysed in each chapter, the first of
which lingers, in the guise of an introduction, on the main causes of back-
wardness in Eastern Europe, making ample reference to the international
debate on the topic.
Chapter 2, in contrast, analyses the main aspects of the so-called Russian
movement Narodnichestvo (improperly translated with the term “Popu-
lism”).19 This chapter reconstructs the most important topics of the con-
troversy, by now “classical” and thoroughly examined by the literature on
capitalism in Russia, which at a certain point even involved Karl Marx, also
dedicating space to the less researched influence of Narodnichestvo on the
spread of revolutionary ideas in South-East Europe.
In Chapter 3 the reader is introduced to the hopes (and illusions) cultivated
by the agrarian movements, and in particular their project of founding “pea-
sant states” in Central-Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. In this case,
the political projects and efforts aimed at constructing an agrarian social
theory revealed an unprecedented trans-national appeal and a variety of ideas
which were actually translated into rather brief and uneven experiences of
governing. These projects shared commonalities with models of Western
origin, as well as the emerging Bolshevik model.
 Introduction 17
In Chapter 4 the attention focuses on the contents of the contemporary
Soviet controversy about primitive socialist accumulation. This is a con-
troversy that came about during the sort of competition that arose between
the “Green International” and the Krestintern, and concluded with the liqui-
dation of the peasant question, as well as the Bolshevik revolutionary elite,
and with the triumph of Stalin’s political vision.
The turning point brought on by the rise of Stalinism in the USSR and the
way the Second World War ended in Europe led to a drastic change in how
people thought about “politics”, development and modernity in all of Central,
Eastern and Balkan Europe, marginalising agriculture and rural life every-
where. It also defined a future that was previously unthinkable for the entire
region as far as the spread of industrialisation, urban rationalism, education
and social and cultural homogenisation was concerned.
Chapter 5 thus deals with the lively and tumultuous phase following the
expansion of socialism in Central-Eastern Europe, the assertion of an indus-
trialist political culture and the consequent necessity to adjust production
qualitatively during the years of de-Stalinisation. In particular, the chapter
analyses the proposals advanced by politicians and experts from the various
East European countries concerning the construction of a market socialism
and national roads to socialism.
It was at this time that a reformist wave swept over the entire Soviet Camp,
including Yugoslavia (a sort of “ghost presence” in the Camp) which lasted
nearly 15 years. During that period, as we shall see, a vision of modernity
and development was discussed that originally began in a closed and well-
defined space, that is the Soviet Camp, though it had already been challenged
by Yugoslavia with its opening to the West and its policy of non-alignment.
Subsequently this closure underwent another attenuation when in the entire
European socialist space the conviction prevailed that it was possible to
compete on a global level by proposing efficient and functional models for
transforming rural societies into industrial ones (the limits of which, however, had
been underestimated at the time) to the countries emerging from the dissolution
of the colonial empires.
Finally, Chapter 6 lingers on the consequences of the external world’s
penetration of the Socialist Camp (continuing, in spite of powerful ideological
resistance, throughout the 1970s) and subsequently on Gorbachev’s project,
aimed at reorganising socialist modernity without renouncing its great inter-
national ambitions. Its realisation, as is well known, unleashed repercussions
on the very solidity of the Camp and the socialist experience, and has nur-
tured an intense – and curiously, not yet concluded – discussion about the
possibility of reforming “real socialism”.
Certainly in all these phases, as we shall see, the perceived relationship with
the West was alive and well, even when it was experienced in terms of con-
traposition: a sort of alter ego with whom to compare oneself, see the reflection
of oneself, or conflict with, but who could still not ignore the relational
dynamics that gradually arose between Central-Eastern Europe and Russia.
18 Introduction
On the other hand, it would have been impossible for these societies – in
spite of attempts to the contrary, basically ideological in nature – not to take
into account themselves and each other, not only because of the powerful role
Russia had, but also due to the complex and multilateral web of contacts and
interdependencies that historically developed between them, and which produced
the métissage forms of politics we have repeatedly touched upon.
Just think of the complex role played by Marxists and Narodniks in the
peasant issue and the rural socialism project put forward at the time, not only
in Russia, by appealing to the municipalities: how much was this an expression
of resistance to development, or was it just a manifestation of the rejection of
cultural homologation which was feared could come with industrialisation? In
other words, were Narodniks sort of no-globals long before the term was
invented in the strictly cultural sense, or more radically, a movement that
sought to define an alternative form of governance (thus anticipating the
Bolsheviks) in order to shun the Western model of capitalist development and
to found instead non-capitalist modernity? How much of this approach sur-
vived in the following decades in the context of a constant search for paths
towards and the contents of modernity, in various European currents of
thought and spaces characterised by features different from the most significant
ones in the West?
This question, which we would like to leave open, actually raises another
issue regarding the role of intellectuals: the Narodniks in fact were all intel-
lectuals, not peasants. For rural leaders to emerge, gathering consensus from
their main electoral base, the ascent of the agrarian parties had to be awaited
and in any case this was an event linked more to Central-Eastern Europe than
to Russia (with the exception of the Socialist Revolutionaries in the villages
and their leftist component).20 Nevertheless, in both cases intellectuals then
and throughout the 20th century continued to play an essential role in for-
mulating programmes and identifying political goals, to say nothing of their
ability to mobilise.
However, if it is true, and it is, that the function carried out by the intel-
lectuals was absolutely crucial, can this same intellectualism be considered an
indistinct whole, not so much for the ideas it promoted (inasmuch as this would
be impossible from the beginning), as for its basic formation and its scientific
system of reference? In other words, can it be considered – from this point of
view – a class that maintained its role unchanged over time, or, on the con-
trary, is it worthwhile to examine – with the comparative analysis of the five
controversies mentioned above – its evolution as a pressure group, identifying
the successive components that determined its leadership capacity or driving
force?
The first wave of intellectuals active in politics (with the Narodnichestvo
being the main reference point) had a classical education mainly obtained in
religious colleges and schools. When and how was this wave then joined and
perhaps overtaken by the rise of a new strata of technical/scientific and/or
bureaucratic intelligentsia, forged in the public schools, as industrialisation
 Introduction 19
and the diversification of services offered to society became dominant in the
state’s economic and administrative governance? The relationship between
intellectualism and communism – especially in mature socialist societies,
when the topic of the market had taken over the political-cultural debate in
the entire Soviet Camp and Yugoslavia – acquired particular significance in
this respect, as the polyphony of the intellectual class with its articulations
and divisions, allows us to understand better the evolution of the dynamics
between reform and conservativism, between internationalism and nationalism,
until the eve of the collapse of communism itself.
Another aspect we touched upon earlier, and which we should think about,
is that of the relationships between Russia and Central-Eastern Europe, from
the moment when both – in their complex interactions – addressed the problem
of how to relate to the West, i.e. from the end of the 18th century on. This
topic has often been neglected or eliminated, especially in recent years, with
simplistic references to Russia’s imperialist and oppressive leanings (Czarist
and communist) towards Central Europe. Nevertheless, the dense web of
interdependencies established over time is much more complex and cannot be
reduced to a mere binary oppressor-oppressed relationship or an institutional
relationship of intergovernmental contacts, inasmuch as it influenced the flow
of ideas, the circulation of projects, and the transfer of cultures. A flow, this one,
that was clearly perceived, lively and intense, at the time of the Narodnichestvo
and Marxism, and then confirmed during Bolshevism and the peasant move-
ment, to resurface with unexpected incisiveness during de-Stalinisation and
Gorbachevism.
While the issue of relations between Russia and Central-Eastern Europe
and the Balkans has understandably remained largely untouched for obvious
political reasons, it cannot be exorcised by references – so dear to one part of
humanistic culture – to a difference “in terms of civilisation” between the two,
whereby Russia ends up being systematically identified with what is non-
European, and even Asian.21 What if, instead, Russia were an integral part of
the West, not only culturally (no one denies, in fact, the European cultural
roots of Chekhov or Gorky, Glinka or Tchaikovsky, Pasternak or Vysotsky),
but also in its basic political orientations, just like its conscious choice of
belonging to the project of modernity?
One need only think, just to instil some doubt in the reader’s mind, about
the origins of communism itself, Central-West European culture, embraced by
Bolshevism (but also by other Russian political movements in the Menshevik
social-democratic or revolutionary socialist forms), oriented towards devel-
oping industry and the working class in the Messianic expectation of a revo-
lution that it imagined should return to its “natural centre” or, once again,
the West – from Germany to Great Britain. Or think, along with Nikolai
Petro, about the importance of the convergence of Soviet underground society,
dissent and international emigration in affirming democracy in Russia.22
And then if communism in Central-Eastern Europe were a little less hastily
reduced to “Soviet satellites” or “lesser children” of the West and the East
20 Introduction
(Russian), but rather considered a part of European politics with its own
features, a very different significance would be assigned to the options (or
illusions, depending on the point of view) advanced in European socialist
countries outside the USSR and aimed at defining specific models, identified
in turn with the Yugoslav alternative of self-management, the programmes of
Imre Nagy or Alexander Dubček, and with the original ideas of people’s
democracy according to simultaneous mechanisms of interaction and diver-
gence. Those can be similarly observed in the relations between continental
Western Europe and the Anglo-American world, without forgetting the
broader framework of relational flows which, with just as much intensity, affec-
ted and continue to affect the Atlantic space and the European geographical
space as a whole.23
Certainly, to return to the initial concern regarding the relationship
between Marxists, Narodniks and peasants, and the paths to modernity that
arose in the West, the comparison with otherness has always raised a problem
of group, national or state identity.24 The complex interdependency between
Russia and Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans undoubtedly was affec-
ted over time by the controversial issue of the identity of peoples who are
demographically smaller and militarily less powerful than the Russians.
However, Russia, just like Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans, has had
to deal with the issue of its identity compared to a West erroneously perceived
as a unique whole, and to ask itself each time where or how local character-
istics or past traditions could find their place amid the upheaval that the
complex process of modernity entailed.
This has been the torment of the political systems that have alternated in
East European spaces since the decadence of the supranational dynastic set-
tings began. Apprehension about identity (an aspect peculiar to modernity!)
was a powerful factor both in terms of hindering the assumption of Western
models, but also a stimulus to seek their own paths to modernity, all the more
so in that the same communism ideologically aspired to design an alternative
framework to Euro-Atlantic capitalism, although referring to a dynamic
context of development closely connected to the Industrial Revolution and
the formation of the working class.
Therefore many apparently distant elements ended up dialoguing and
interweaving with each other in unexpected ways, at least according to Wes-
tern criteria: just think of the convergence of orthodox communist currents
and nationalist idealism; the interweaving of interests between Party appara-
tuses and populist xenophobic nationalism, with which – by abandoning
claims to their own universalist or ecumenical principles – the traditionalist
Catholic Church as well as the Orthodox Church established close ties, even
more so because they were challenged by the new Eastward expansion of the
Protestant Church.25
On the contrary, many exponents of more advanced, industrialist and
democratic Occidentalism (even among communist ranks) ended up finding
themselves in a type of liberalism that had been more or less weakened by
 Introduction 21
orientations aimed at safeguarding part of the pre-existing social state. Even
the definition of “right” and “left” appeared to be a mirror or reversed image
compared to Western tradition: it was common in Eastern Europe, especially
in the early phases of post-communist transition, to define a liberal exponent
as “leftist” and an orthodox communist as “from the right”.
For that matter, identity and modernity were the crux or, more accurately, a
dichotomy that saturated the East European political and cultural debate up
until the fall of communism. It remains to be seen whether – in spite of the
West’s acclaimed victory in the Cold War – it ceased to exist after 1989/91 or
may occur again, under a new guise, not only in view of advancing globali-
sation, but even as part of shared institution building in the process of Eur-
opean integration, also due to the different way each people or country
perceives it belongs to Europe. From this point of view, the reconstruction of
the great debates on development and the trans-national reflection that flows
from it can provide useful indications on medium- and long-term trends
which could accompany Eastern and Central European developments in the
coming decades.

Notes
1 Michel Wieviorka, La differenza culturale. Una prospettiva sociologica, Laterza,
Bari, 2002, p. 68 (original title: La différence, Éditions Balland, Paris, 2001). For
an anthropological perspective on the métissage, transversality and plurality of
cultures, on the other hand, please see Matilde Callari Galli’s stimulating reflec-
tions in Antropologia senza confini, Percorsi nella contemporaneità, Sellerio,
Palermo, 2005, especially pp. 104–14 and 193–96 and the extensive accompanying
bibliography. With “transversality” I mean the fluctuation of real existing and vir-
tual contacts (across borders, bodies and mindsets) between people, goods and
values. The process contributes to liquefying the homogeneity, cultural autarky and
uniformity of a village or a nation-state, stimulating new forms of communication
in a context of de-territorialisation and nomadism.
2 For a visual map of these networks see Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of
East Central Europe, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1995, especially
pp. 48–56, 90–92 and 104–10.
3 For example at the beginning of the 20th century Jews in Vilnius made up 41% of
the population; in Odessa 34%, in Minsk 52%, in Iaşi 57%, in Chişinau 46% and in
Białystok 63%. Other Jewish centres were Brest (65%), Lublin (47%), Ivano-Frankivs’k
(46%), and Thessaloníki (57%).
4 See e.g. Miklós Szabó, “The Liberalism of the Hungarian Nobility 1825–1910”, in
Iván Zoltán Dénes (ed.), Liberty and the Search for Identity. Liberal Nationalisms
and the Legacy of the Empires, CEU Press, Budapest, 2006, pp. 139–53.
5 Cf. Nachum Gross (ed.), Economic History of the Jews, Schoken Books, New
York, 1975; and Markus Arkin, Aspects of Jewish Economic History, The Jewish
Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1975.
6 More broadly on these topics see the various essays contained in Iván Zoltán
Dénes (ed.), Liberty and the Search for Identity … , op. cit.; and Heiko Haumann,
A History of East European Jews, CEU Press, Budapest, 2002.
7 Significant, in particular, the by now classic studies by Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities, Verso, London, 1991; and Ernst Gellner, Nations and
Nationalisms, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984.
22 Introduction
8 On the Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire see Nachum Gross (ed.), Economic
History, op. cit., pp. 56–59.
9 Maciej Janowski, Marginal or Central? The Place of the Liberal Tradition in
Nineteenth-Century Polish History, in Iván Zoltán Dénes (ed.), Liberty and the
Search for Identity, op. cit., pp. 254.
10 See Iván Zoltán Dénes, “Political Vocabularies of the Hungarian Liberals and
Conservatives before 1848”, and Miklós Kun, “The Inherent Burden of Russian
Liberalism”, in Iván Zoltán Dénes (ed.), Liberty and the Search for Identity, op.
cit., pp. 179, 321; and Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Rus-
sia’s Reforms. Market Bolshevism against Democracy, US Institute of Peace Press,
Washington, DC, 2001, pp. 23ff.
11 On these topics see Michael Heffernan, The Meaning of Europe: Geography and
Geopolitics, Arnold, London, 1998, pp. 125–27, 152–53; also Robert D. English,
Russia and the Idea of the West. Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold
War, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000, pp. 83–89, 131–32.
12 Alan M. Ball, Imagining America. Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century
Russia, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2003, pp. 33ff.
13 A tenacious advocate of this thesis was Jacques Rupnik in his various writings,
including “On Two Models of Exit from Communism: Central Europe and the
Balkans”, in Sorin Antohi and Vladimir Tismaneanu, Between Past and Future.
The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath, CEU Press, Budapest, 2000, pp. 14–24,
even though subsequently Rupnik attenuated his assessment, as is apparent in his
article “The Post-Communist Divide”, in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner,
Democracy after Communism, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
2002, pp. 103–8. A different interpretation from Rupnik’s, especially concerning the
Habsburg legacy of autonomy of the magistracy, is in John B. Allcock, Explaining
Yugoslavia, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000, p. 280.
14 Cf. Anna Seleny, “Old Political Rationalities and New Democracies: Compromise
and Confrontation in Hungary and Poland”, World Politics vol. 51, n. 4, 1999,
484–518; with the volume, stimulating for other reasons, by Milada Anna Vachu-
dova, Europe Undivided, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, which by sug-
gesting a distinction of models between liberal democracies and illiberal
democracies in post-communist transition, underestimates the weight of the crisis
of the state and the weakness of institutions in the countries bordering the Yugoslav
federation.
15 Not least from this point of view, the contribution of Andrew C. Janos, Central
Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre-to Post-
communism, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000, in which the author refers
explicitly to the relationship between “Centre” and “Periphery” in explaining –
throughout the entire book – the origins of East European backwardness and
attributing the responsibilities for it largely to international factors.
16 Please see the bibliography at the end of the next chapters, from which it is also
evident, as in the great works by, for example, Franco Venturi, Joseph Rothschild,
Moshe Lewin and François Fejtö (to cite just a few) that the geopolitical space
analysed almost never includes the whole of Eastern, Central and Balkan Europe,
but just a part of it.
17 See Robert J. Antonio (ed.), Marx and Modernity: Key Readings and Commentary,
Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2003; Karl Marx, Capital, Dover Publications, Mineola
NY, 2011; and Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1982; with Max Weber, Economy and Society, Routledge, London,
2008 [1922]; and also by Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2011 [1905]; Jürgen Habermas, The Philoso-
phical Discourse of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1987; Anthony Giddens,
The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990. Also useful is
 Introduction 23
Gianfranco Pasquino’s synthesis in Norberto Bobbio, Nicola Matteucci and
Gianfranco Pasquino, Dizionario di Politica, UTET, Torino, 1983, pp. 637–45.
18 Regarding these court cases, read Wickham Steed’s incisive account/testimony,
Through Thirty Years 1892–1922, Heinemann, London, 1924. See also Beniamino
Salvi, Il movimento nazionale e politico degli Sloveni e dei Croati, ISDEE, Trieste,
1971, p. 171.
19 Actually the term populism reflects such a variety of meanings that it is quite
ambiguous. The Russian movement called narodnichestvo, on the other hand, has
nothing in common, for example, with Latin American populism or the xeno-
phobic and racist manifestations of the European populist right, nor can Herzen be
compared to Perón. So, in order to avoid confusion, we prefer to maintain here the
original Russian terminology and avoid translating it. On this topic, on the other
hand, see the critical analysis of the terminology associated with the word “popu-
lism” by Andrzej Walicki in his famous volume The Controversy over Capitalism:
Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1969, pp. 1–28. A confirmation of the confusion that can occur with the use of the
term populism when indifferently referred to narodnichestvo and the demagogic,
racist, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist tendencies of the populist parties of the
1900s can be found in the very structure and introduction of the volume edited by
Joseph Held, Populism in Eastern Europe, East European Monographs, Boulder,
NY, 1996.
20 Indeed, the electoral base of the Socialist Revolutionaries of the left was among the
peasants and a significant following revealed itself at the Pan-Russian Congress of
Peasant Deputies of June, 1917. See Edward H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia.
The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, Penguin Books, 3 vols, Harmondsworth, 1976,
vol. 1, pp. 120ff; and William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution 1917–1921,
Macmillan, London, 1952 [1935].
21 Compare, for example, on European cultural dualism: Domenico Caccamo, Intro-
duzione alla Storia dell’Europa Orientale, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma, 1991,
pp. 23–81; with Jenö Szücs, The Three Historical Regions of Europe, Kiado,
Budapest, 1983; Mikhail Agurski, The Third Rome, National-Bolshevism in the
USSR, Westview Press, Boulder, 1987; Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central
Europe”, The New York Review of Books, 26 April 1984, 33–38; or György
Konrad, Antipolitics. An Essay, Harcourt Brace & Co., London, 1984.
22 Nikolai Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy. An Interpretation of Political
Culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995.
23 One must keep in mind that the leaders considered in the West mere “executors” of
the Kremlin’s will, such as Rákosi in Hungary or Zhivkov in Bulgaria or Honecker
in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (to mention a few), were intimately
convinced of their ideas and the justice of communist orthodoxy which they
claimed to interpret, to the point at which they did not hesitate to oppose those
orientations expressed by the Soviet leadership they considered wrong. The extreme
cases of Hoxha and Ceauşescu were a further confirmation of how misleading it is
to demote Central-Eastern Europe to a secondary role compared to Western
Europe and Russia. This thesis even sounds “justificationist” for the responsibility
in many respects resting with the leaders of those countries. On the other hand, the
topic of relations between Russia and Central-Eastern Europe has been the subject
of intense debate between East European intellectuals, as already pointed out in
endnote 21. A more complex vision of European and Euro-Atlantic relations is
that of Oskar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History, Sheed and
Ward, London and New York, 1960. Another acute analysis of intra-European cul-
tural flows can be found in Angelo Tamborra, L’Europa centro-orientale nei secoli
XIX e XX (1800–1920), Vallardi editoriale, Milano, 1971, even though – also in this
case – the reconstruction of Russian events is contained within rigorous limits.
24 Introduction
24 On the intertwining of development paths and perceptions of tradition and iden-
tity, see for example, Diana Mishkova, “The Uses of Tradition and National
Identity in the Balkans”, in Maria Todorova (ed.), Balkan Identities. Nation and
Memory, Hurst, London, 2004, especially pp. 273–93; or Arthur Mendel, Dilem-
mas of Progress in Tsarist Russia: Legal Marxism and Legal Populism, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1961. However, at least as far as we know, there
are no available all-encompassing studies on the region from an historical perspective
from the 19th century to the present.
25 Sabrina Ramet, L’Europa centro-orientale tra religione e politica. Cattolici, Ortodossi
e nuovi missionari dopo il 1989, Longo, Ravenna, 2008.
1 Development and backwardness
The social origins of East European politics

At the beginning of the 19th century when the effects of the Industrial Revolution
in England began to be felt in continental Europe, the most dynamic centres
in the fields of culture, finance, manufacturing and technical innovation had
already moved from the Renaissance cities of northern and central Italy to
North-Western Europe, between Paris, London and Amsterdam.
According to a wide range of literature on the topic,1 within this triangle
Belgium was the first, even before France and Holland, quickly to follow
England’s example. The Industrial Revolution was already producing a rapid
increase in the rate of development of the production of goods and services,
and was thus exerting a strong influence above all on the continent, to acquire
the new manufacturing techniques and main inventions.
The networks of relationships matured over the previous centuries in Eastern
Europe were not excluded, as already mentioned, from this influence. This
region was already sensitive to the topics of modernity promoted mainly by
the Enlightenment and the new economic theories of the 17th and 18th centuries
(from cameralism to physiocracy) due to the diffusion of the press, uni-
versities, academies and high schools, as well as economic and trade ties
which over time had linked East European agricultural production to markets
in North-Western Europe. The diasporas, intellectuals and a part of the
nobility showed the most vivid interest in becoming part of the dynamic fra-
mework of changes, to receive the stimuli and re-elaborate them in relation to
their own interests and the surrounding political climate.
However, institutional and legislative conditions, social relationships, and
religious, cultural and mental predispositions varied according to region, for-
cing local political and economic players to measure for the first time so
overtly the existing distance between the potential for development and the
obstacles which, depending on the situation, impeded growth at the feverish
rhythms perceived elsewhere. The topic of backwardness and how to over-
come it became part of the political agenda, generating controversial aspira-
tions to bring about a huge structural adjustment which essentially imposed
on each society the alternative of either accepting, mixing with or rejecting
the development model generated by Great Britain.
26 Development and backwardness
In reality, this dilemma was perceived as difficult to resolve – in addition to
being obviously political in nature – as it imposed a choice between pro-
gressive economic, social and cultural autarky and an inevitable adjustment,
between opening to new international métissage or rejecting it in the name of
safeguarding local identity.
This situation contributed to the spread of a new (for those times) repre-
sentation of intra-European relations, characterised by the consolidation of
the Eurocentric-Western mythology according to which the sources of devel-
opment (more broadly referring to the idea of “civilisation”) and back-
wardness (corresponding, on the other hand, to “barbarism”) were made to
coincide respectively with the notions of “West” and “East”, in which the
“degree of distance from the idea of civilisation” became more pronounced as
one gradually proceeded eastward.2
From the cultural point of view this was indeed a radical approach, over-
turning the previous identification of the “civilisation-barbarism” binomial
given to the “South-North” dichotomy based on a rather more traditional
and, let us say, “classical” approach in view of its Latin origin, which up to
that point had been dominant in European culture.
In reality, as Larry Wolff relates, the map of civilisations was already in the pro-
cess of being reconstructed, in the wake of perceptions pondered by 18th-century
European intellectuals and travellers.3 These perceptions had become inter-
woven with the rooted conviction of Voltaire and many followers of the
Enlightenment, when they posed themselves the problem of Europe’s future
and how to reform its political systems. Though theirs was a mainly philoso-
phical and geographic point of view, again according to Wolff’s definition,
they too referred, as did the physiocrats in their salons, to categories of
backwardness and development. In so doing they arrived at a dichotomous
East-West interpretation of Europe which, in their case, was mainly used to
offer their services to the East, as that region was (mistakenly) perceived as a
tabula rasa, or clean slate, a space without history’s negative limitations and,
therefore, receptive and ripe for building a society free of the vices of the
Western Ancien Régime (where most intellectuals of the Enlightenment
expressed a positive assessment of “orientalism”).4
It was, therefore, within the context of a re-orientation of the mental maps
of Europe that the Industrial Revolution ended up supplanting Afro-Asiatic
primacy, held since the 18th century in science, technology, manufacturing
and trade and even military, by Indians, Arabs, Turks and Chinese.5
In other words, the Industrial Revolution which started in Great Britain
began, with all its transformative force, to impose decisive changes on eco-
nomic and social organisation, rapidly demonstrating the technical power,
innovative efficiency and the capacity to trigger social repercussions that had
not been seen in Europe – with such breadth and rapidity – since the fall of
the Roman Empire.
Soon the impact and the attractive force it was able to exert – in connection
with the political ideas of the French Revolution – proved to be of universal
 Development and backwardness 27
importance, incomparably greater than any other model of reference. It shook
deeply rooted habits and ways of thinking, and undermined the roots of a
centuries-old stability of relations between production, commerce, city and
village. It also radically altered concepts of space and time, which for cen-
turies had been determined by the speed of communication permitted by the
horse and the sailing ship.6
From that moment, not only did everything radically change, but the pace
of change also rapidly increased. Hence, it was inevitable from the start of the
19th century that the priority of politicians and intellectuals would be to
overcome any obstacles or constraints on development. It was especially
Eastern Europe, geopolitically on the edge of the area generating new forms
of production, that felt its impact, dynamics and implications.
This, of course, does not mean that differences in development did not exist
before the Industrial Revolution. When Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974 used
the concepts of “Centre” and “Periphery”,7 the former had been identified
with Western Europe since the 16th century and the latter assigned to Eastern
Europe (as well as Latin America). Wallerstein was in fact drawing on a
debate that had been around for some time in European and East European
studies, at least since 1887 when Georg Friedrich Knapp8 had associated the
origin of differentiated development in Europe with the development, on
the right bank of the Elbe, of a manor system of land use, whereas on the left
side large landed estates prevailed.9
It was this difference, with its juridical and social implications and geo-
graphical location, which accounted for the unevenness of East European
economic development, especially according to Polish (and later also Hun-
garian) historiographic views that emerged during the Sixth World Congress
of Historical Sciences in 1928.
As a result, however, not only was an interpretation of modernisation as a
process of “catch-up and imitation” along the West–East axis endorsed, but
an explanation was preferred that arbitrarily extended the situation on one
side of the Elbe to the entire half of a continent. This subsequently triggered
heated debates which dragged on for decades and led other scholars10 to
propose different classifications, by segments or areas. However, the extent of
backwardness in one region inevitably ended up being compared to the
“radiating centre”, i.e. Western Europe.
Of course it is difficult to deny that the “Centre-Periphery” dichotomy
proposed by Wallerstein did not have a significant effect on Europe, and that
it did not provide a motivation – far beyond the interpretations offered by
historians, politicians, and an increasingly well-informed and lively public
opinion – for cultural and political frustration, crushed expectations, hopes
and “alternative” plans vis-à-vis the West which surfaced on various occa-
sions from the beginning of the 19th century in the less developed areas of
Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
In interpretative terms, however, Wallerstein’s arguments encouraged some
prominent experts in East European economics to ask themselves once again
28 Development and backwardness
about the origins of East European backwardness. A 1985 meeting of the
Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio provided the opportunity to do this.
The result was a successful publication edited by Daniel Chirot, in which the
authors basically highlight how different levels of development had existed in
Europe long before the Industrial Revolution.11 In other words the authors
agreed that a combination of factors dating far back in time contributed in
different forms and ways, depending on the region, to determining East
European backwardness and its dependency on the West.
In particular, they argued that the reasons behind the unfavourable condi-
tions for modern development in South-Eastern Europe lay in the persistence
of a predominantly pastoral economy and low demographic density. What
also emerges from their study, however, is how the Balkans experienced
phases of prosperity and population growth, and how these very factors led to
intense exploitation of agricultural land, followed, as in other parts of Europe,
and particularly in the Mediterranean, by “political crises, environmental
degradation, migration, and demographic decline”.12
As we can see, this scenario does not attribute the origins of backwardness
in South-Eastern Europe to long Ottoman rule, as does Balkan nationalist
historiography. On the contrary, it tends to highlight a variety of economic,
environmental and cultural phenomena which appear to have been common
to other European Mediterranean regions such as Spain in the 17th century,
contravening the theory founded on mere East-West contrast.
On the other hand, the mechanisms that affected South-East Europe differ
profoundly from those that characterised the evolution of the Baltic area.13
Here it was the factor of barter trade with the West – based on grain in
exchange for manufactured goods – that led to a growing dependence on
technology, thus contributing to a decline in the importance of towns and
cities, while the great landed estates became more firmly established. In the
process, the aristocracy basically abandoned the sword for the plough and
soon demonstrated they were able to control agricultural production directly
through the large landed estates. This led in turn to the establishment and
spread of serfdom.
The line of argument developed during the meeting in Bellagio, on the
other hand, was that Bohemia constituted a special case. Because of its geo-
graphical position between the Baltic area and the Danube-Balkan region, it
was able to keep step socially and economically with the surrounding regions
of Austria and Bavaria, despite the re-introduction of the feudal system,
urban reorganisation, the levying of taxes and excises on trade following the
surrender of Prague in 1547, and despite its loss of independence as a result of
the disastrous defeat of White Mountain in 1620 to the Catholic House of
Habsburg.
Hungary in turn followed a different path. After its return to Catholic rule
as a result of the Habsburg victories, the retreat of the Turks between 1683
and 1699 (ratified by the Treaty of Karlowitz) and the defeat of the insurrec-
tion mounted by Ferenc Rákóczi II, the Habsburg monarchy and the landed
 Development and backwardness 29
aristocracy formed a solid anti-bourgeois alliance which extended across
the geopolitical area of the Danube. As in the case of the Baltics, this enabled
the large landed estates to prevail over the urban classes, and permitted the
consolidation of serfdom to the detriment of the peasantry.14
In Poland, on the other hand, the success of the “Republic of Nobles”15
was not only an indication of the strength acquired by the magnates, but also
of the deep-rooted conviction that a “weak state” would make the country
less “dangerous” and therefore less attractive to potential enemies.
The outcome, as we know, was very different: Poland’s partitioning at the
end of the 18th century. This ended up being an advantage, however, also for
Russia, the backwardness of which compared to Poland’s at the time had
been progressively mitigated by the construction of an industrial base, albeit
oriented mainly towards military imperatives. Paradoxically in some areas of
Poland the subsequent growth phase came about as a result of the occupation
and the need to develop pilot areas to take the lead and produce benefits
which could then potentially have more general effects.16
Overall, the conclusions of the Bellagio debate drew a complex picture of
the economic and social dynamics in Eastern Europe with regard to devel-
opment, pointing out the various levels of backwardness, traditions, cultures,
and social and political histories of the regions involved.
Nonetheless, despite the diversity of the East European area’s initial con-
ditions – from the Baltic to the Danube, from Sarmatia to the Balkans, there
is no doubt that the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and its impact on
Eastern Europe marked a watershed, indelibly marking the politics of those
regions.
Once contact had been established between industrial forms of Western
development and the agrarian societies of Central and Eastern Europe and
the Balkans (as different as they were originally), this contact produced a
political and social situation that was profoundly influenced by the dilemmas
which arose in the search for the most effective reference model. The adoption
of any particular model was, in fact, conditioned by the range of options
available. At one end of the spectrum was the “autarkic” model, and at the
other “integration/assimilation” of Western political and economic institu-
tions and cultural stimulus. Between these two poles there were various
intermediate solutions.
In short, the geopolitical reconstruction of the relationship between devel-
opment and backwardness preferred at the Bellagio conference confirms the
existence of a differentiated process of development in Eastern Europe. This
development can be characterised as a “leopard skin” with some leading
regions surrounded by much vaster areas marked by the prevalence of rural,
technically less evolved economies and/or insufficient political-economic
conditions for dealing with the challenges of industrial modernisation.
Apart from this, the discouragement of transversal or trans-national the-
matic currents that characterised the relationship between politics and pro-
blems of development brings to light the limits placed on the previously
30 Development and backwardness
mentioned networks of relationships and social sectors. These networks were
actually ready to accept change, to demand structural adjustments that could
facilitate access to modernity and to represent newly forming interests.
These limits included, for example, the geopolitical changes imposed by
power politics, in particular when this provoked such social upheaval as to
impoverish certain territories, thus bringing about a widespread state of
backwardness.
The end of independence did, in fact, act as a brake on development at
least insofar as it involved territorial divisions which eradicated previous local
economic and commercial ties, or established new relationships between city
and countryside and between peasants and large landowners, mostly to the
detriment of the former and the advantage of the latter.
Similarly, a permanent state of war, as was the case along the border
between the Habsburg Empire and the Sublime Porte, was a factor con-
tributing to depopulation and military devastation in some regions. Thus
military and/or political occupation and radical changes in the balance
between the major powers affected conditions of territorial development,
limiting its capacity to respond to the challenges of manufacturing and free
trade at a time when this was of crucial importance.
Yet, as we have already noted, political dependency did not always have
these results.
This was the case in Bohemia, where despite the devastation wreaked by
the Thirty Years War and movement “ahead of its time” from the city to the
countryside, modern farming techniques, fish farming, beer brewing, and the
textile and mining industries had already developed in the 18th century. In
some Polish regions, especially those of the Kingdom of Poland that were
subjects of the Russian czars, a state steel industry flourished as did privately
run woollen mills, later replaced by cotton mills. A similar benevolent destiny
awaited the Polish regions under Prussian control such as Upper Silesia (with
the intensive development of mining) and the Poznań region, where agricultural
production increased.17
Important as they were, these were exceptions. Despite the differences from
one region to another, which were often substantial, islands of development
remained territorially and socially circumscribed and were de facto “scat-
tered” throughout the immense “rural and technically backward sea” of
Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
There were, however, numerous religious, political, social and cultural fac-
tors that played a part in limiting these exceptions. Some religious precepts,
for example, created an atmosphere contrary to modernisation. An eloquent
example of this was the role played in the Ottoman Empire by the Hanafi
School, which spread a negative attitude of ideological and legal resistance to
the development of innovation and modern techniques which in the past had
ensured the Sublime Porte’s power and invincibility as it advanced in the
Mediterranean and towards the centre of Europe. Prior to the 18th century,
pluralism had been guaranteed by the four schools of Sunnite Islamic law;18
 Development and backwardness 31
in the 1700s this was gradually supplanted by the Hanafi rite, which was
officially adopted by the state in the 18th century. The Hanafi School imposed
formalistic legalism throughout the empire which restricted freedom of
research starting with theology and later permeating other fields, in particular
the press.
The rise of the Hanafi School is historically situated within the context of
the Sublime Porte’s rapid decline. Once the vast and rich territories north of the
Danube and the Sava rivers were lost between the 17th and 18th centuries, the
Ottoman Empire was unable to offer its subjects the opportunities for social
growth and well-being it had been able to ensure in previous centuries. Faced
with such difficulties, the Hanafi School opposed events by reacting out of
self-preservation, psychologically understandable but politically disastrous,
promoting cultural isolation at the very moment when new manufacturing
techniques were being experimented on and spreading throughout North-Western
Europe.
As a result, this attitude reversed the previous one, which was much more
open to innovation and had been systematically pursued up until the 16th
century. At the time, in fact, the Turks’ skill at fusing metal and their ability
to administer and organise were a century ahead of the Western world. These
were aspects of a more general trend, as mentioned before, which attributed a
leadership role to the Afro-Asiatic space in the process of human civilisation.
This positive propensity for modernisation had allowed the Ottoman Empire
to take on a dominant position, providing the fundamental basis for its
expansion and success. Later, however, the combination of military defeats
and religious prescriptions opposing the introduction of new techniques and
innovation coming from the West contributed just as decisively to accelerating
its decline, to the point of making it inevitable.19
More or less at the same time, other religious convictions – in this case
Christian – had a similar effect, for example in Imperial Russia.
Gerschenkron’s excellent study of Russian industrialisation20 duly explains
how much Russia was affected by the prohibition, theological in origin, bar-
ring Old Believers from changing their social status. Since this was considered
an expression of divine will, it could not be changed. Thus huge amounts of
wealth remained inaccessible: in fact, confronted with persecution imposed
first by Peter the Great and then several times at the behest of the Orthodox
Church, this money was used for the secret religious education of believers (in
Russia or abroad) and to pay the enormous taxes imposed by the czars.
Consequently sums accumulated by Old Believer peasants who had become
entrepreneurs – particularly in the textile sector and in the grain trade – were
not invested to expand commercial and industrial activities. On the contrary,
these sums were diverted mainly to ethical-religious ends, and therefore did
not help to create an entrepreneurial bourgeois class willing to risk accumulated
capital to increase resources and productive growth.
So in the wake of what Max Weber observed about the link between the Pro-
testant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, or the Catholic Church’s anti-modernist
32 Development and backwardness
positions at the time of the Syllabus and the encyclical Quanta cura, religious
convictions in Russia and the Ottoman Empire also had an unquestionable
effect, contributing (as in the Catholic Mediterranean area) to braking or
dispersing the effect of changes which could have created favourable condi-
tions for development and limiting the effect of social groups’ efforts to
achieve modernity.
On the other hand, along with religious prescriptions that constrained
modernity, anti-Semitism should also be mentioned, at least in regard to the
prejudices of Christian origin which fuelled and spread it. Clearly this was
also encouraged by cultural and social biases promoted to varying degrees by
governments (especially in Russia, Poland and Romania, but also in Austria-
Hungary). The fact is that in any case, as will become more evident in the
next chapter, anti-Semitism decisively contributed to circumscribing the
spread of liberalism. Rich Jews (especially merchants and bankers) concretely
subscribed to these liberal principles, becoming promoters of accumulation
and investment in compliance with legislative limits imposed on them from
time to time by restrictive and discriminatory government policies. These
policies were often violently intimidating, and when spirits became aroused,
they turned into pogroms.21
In similar ways and forms, other behaviour ascribable to the political-social
sphere in turn led to similar results. For example, the impact of factors men-
tioned earlier, that is the prevalence of the landed aristocracy in defining the
property structure in the countryside and discouraging growth in the cities as
centres of trade, finance and cultural exchange. This process, whether trig-
gered by crushing military defeat (like that of White Mountain) or alliances
between the local aristocracy and a foreign imperial court (as in the case of
Hungary), also resulted in limiting the formation of the bourgeoisie, dimin-
ishing mercantilist tendencies, the delayed imposition of serfdom and limiting
the liberal nobility’s room for manoeuvre.
These events had long-term repercussions. The defeat of the bourgeoisie in
its emergent phase and de-urbanisation in the modern age profoundly affected
both the establishment of an entrepreneurial class (by weakening it politically)
and its primary accumulation process (by impoverishing it materially). Forms
of serfdom de facto bound workers inextricably to the land, tying up the labour
supply just when industrialisation was in the process of getting established.
Alexander Gerschenkron, in his seminal study on backwardness,22 identi-
fied the essential prerequisites for setting off the “big spurt” (as he defined it)
to include the availability of labour, the primary accumulation of capital,
entrepreneurs’ propensity to risk and the collective’s attitude towards entre-
preneurial activity. It was the absence of these prerequisites, due to events
during the 16th and 17th centuries, as mentioned above, which contributed to
creating an unbridgeable gap between East European economic-social status
and the needs dictated by 19th-century industrialisation.
It is curious to see how this change in the balance between cities and the
countryside, to the sole benefit of the landed aristocracy, was widespread
 Development and backwardness 33
throughout Eastern Europe. Moreover, and despite differences from region to
region, its origins can be seen in how the relationship changed between the
aristocracy and war during the transition from the Middle Ages to the
modern era in these regions of Europe.
In the Middle Ages, the aristocracy’s main social function was to wage war.
The subsequent relinquishing of this function by a large number of its mem-
bers and its replacement by agricultural production as the safest means for
creating wealth led to a profound transformation in Central-Eastern Europe’s
economic and social processes, which affected both the city-countryside
relationship and the relationship between peasants and the land.
That this transformation was caused by the increasing use of mercenaries
or soldiers of fortune, or by the support offered by foreign armies (the Aus-
trians) who proved in some cases to be strategic allies of local nobles when
fighting those of different religious convictions (Protestants or Muslims, for
example) or new social groups (like the nascent bourgeoisie) is nothing more
than a local differentiating factor. It does not change the overall situation, in
which the landed aristocracy prevailed.
In short, the events in Bohemia that took place between the surrender of
Prague and the battle of White Mountain, as well as the attitudes that pre-
vailed among Hungarian magnates after the defeat at Mohács and Hungary’s
re-conversion to Catholicism in the early 1700s, led to a situation not that
different from Poland’s, in which the nobles even refused to pay taxes to
maintain the army. They did this so as not to jeopardise their personal and
political freedom and the secure income guaranteed by their lands and their
control over the peasants.
Demographic decline and growing possibilities to purchase luxury goods
with the income from grain sales on domestic and Western markets also
contributed to reinforcing the above-mentioned trend.
However, even in places where these factors were not so influential because
there were fewer opportunities to trade with the West, as in the case of
Russia, the landed aristocracy still became stronger, leaving access to the
military to cadets and others. It was Peter the Great who encouraged Dutch,
English, German and foreign immigration in general to provide the army and
administration with specialised personnel with the technical, administrative
and organisational expertise necessary to reform and modernise (and also to
develop crafts). At the same time the czar also regulated farm inheritances by
introducing the concept of primogeniture. This prevented estates from being
divided up by heirs and bound a section of the dvorjane (landowners) to the
land and its profits.23
In the Ottoman Empire, in contrast, the feudal system underwent rapid change
starting at the end of the 16th century when the price revolution put an end to the
spahija or sipahi’s (the sultan’s cavalry) interest in carrying out military cam-
paigns.24 The cavalry was rewarded by the sultan with a non-inheritable plot of
land called timar, with a fixed value in terms of income. As the empire expanded,
opportunities grew for distributing land in exchange for military loyalty.
34 Development and backwardness
However, the price revolution caused a massive depreciation in the cur-
rency’s value, and the timar also lost value. Consequently the sipahi’s interest
in waging war rapidly vanished as the land they received in compensation for
military service was no longer a form of wealth accumulation, nor did it lead
to an increase in income. On the contrary,
. it reinforced the sipahi’s tendency,
encouraged by imperial officials in Istanbul, to exploit the lands already
under their control, transforming them into inheritable property.
Thus while the sipahi tended to focus increasingly on the personal and
family advantages to be had by exploiting their lands, the sultan in his
obsessive search for fresh troops to send to conquer faraway lands25 was
forced to resort to mercenary infantry troops, by forcefully conscripting sol-
diers in the countryside. Given the need for funds to pay the peasant infantry
that was gradually replacing the cavalry, the Sublime Porte levied increasingly
heavy taxes on rural areas, not necessarily only Christian ones. It was not
until 1843 that the reform of military service – as part of the renewal of the
Tanzimat – founded the basis for creating a modern army.
In the meantime, with the defeat of Vienna at the hands of Jan Sobieski’s
troops and the ensuing disastrous and rapid retreat, the Ottomans abandoned
Hungary, Transylvania and most of Croatia-Slavonia. Withdrawal from these
fertile lands forced many sipahi, janissaries and officers to retreat south of
the Danube and the Sava. Many settled in Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia,
where they attempted to reconstruct their sources of income. Taking advan-
tage of weak central power, increasingly incapable of maintaining control
over the empire’s lands, they usurped part of the existing lands, imposing their
own taxes on the peasantry (who were thus doubly oppressed).
As a result the timar were broken up to form a new, still illegal type of
inheritable property known as çiftlik (or čitluk).26 Increasing numbers of these
were also the result over the long term of the fact that they were split between
heirs, creating small allotments that yielded limited income. In addition, the
systematic exploitation of Christian peasants sparked revolts, given that most
of the Ottoman military tended to safeguard their own incomes by exploiting
the countryside.
The degenerative increase in the number of farms undoubtedly played a
role in the inevitable process of decline. Here too, however, social change
originating with the reorganisation of the military and marked by the caval-
ry’s preference for farming which consequently bound them to the land, pro-
duced a generalised phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire. Here, like in
Central Europe, albeit in different forms and with other mechanisms, the
aristocracy preferred farming in order to make more profit, and established
control over the peasants either through the institution of serfdom or the
tyranny of taxation.
The impoverishment and/or rigidity of social relations in Eastern Europe
then combined with the conservative aristocracy’s (large landowners as well as
those who had authority over smaller portions of land) growing attachment to
specific values such as isolation and self-sufficiency in food and production.
 Development and backwardness 35
These values were considered to be guarantees of independence, and indivi-
dual and political liberty by the landed classes who no longer intended to
serve or be subordinate to a central imperial power.
In the process of constructing political culture, the identification of virtues
always acquires crucial importance, and in our case the spread of values orien-
ted towards the convergence of isolation, self-sufficiency and independence
represented a fundamental passage in the formation of ideas that accompanied
the birth and evolution of the modern nation-state in Eastern Europe.
In this situation the positive values attributed to the above concepts were
further bolstered by the manifest support of the peasants,27 especially those
bound to a village economy, as in the southern Slav zadruga and bratstvo,
the Romanian sat, the Russian mir and obshchina, the Slovak rod and the
Albanian fis. In the countryside an autarkic culture originated from the need
to protect the extended family from outside dangers, be it war or looting, or
natural calamities such as floods or famine, as well as in daily life. We should
not forget that production (from ploughing to harvesting and raising live-
stock, from “proto-industrial” activities geared to manufacturing textiles and
cookware to the hunting and gathering, to maintaining dwellings) required a
quantitative use of labour, at that time ensured solely by extended families
and mechanisms of interfamily and village solidarity.28
Finally, and we will see this later on, behaviours stemming from experiences
accumulated in the past, like the acute (and natural) sensitivity regarding self-
protection of the group, and the prospect of independence promoted by the
landowning classes combined with economic protectionism of the 19th-century
modern state, further reinforced this basic culture.
We must keep in mind that on the whole this was a process in many ways
comprehensible and similar to other Western countries (just think of Eng-
land’s severe tariff protectionism which lasted from the 1600s to the middle of
the 19th century).29 In Eastern Europe, however, this process lasted much
longer, to the point that it prevented access of the growing and pressing mass
of the population to industrialised Europe’s productive innovation.
In fact, instead of ensuring protection and decision-making autonomy,
isolation excluded East European agriculture from the technical innovations
spreading throughout the West. Thus the level of knowledge about farming
methods and machinery became progressively inadequate and obsolete, nulli-
fying East European agriculture’s competitive potential and leaving these
countries culturally unprepared to deal with the challenges of industrialisation.
It is still true, though, that East European isolation, albeit growing, was
neither all-encompassing nor systematic. In this sense the Russia of Peter the
Great and Catherine II differed markedly: an example of pragmatic technical
and cultural openness which among other things placed Russia among the
great powers of Europe. Due to the complexity of this widespread reforming
spirit, not only did economic development accelerate (here the state often
took on a monopolistic role, albeit promoting private enterprise), but the
primacy of science was also asserted, encouraging secondary and technical
36 Development and backwardness
education as well as the Academy of Science’s activities. In sum, the seeds of
modernity, transformed by the Enlightenment, had been sown in Czarist
Russia: from Voltaire to Herder, numerous intellectuals and experts worked to
“Europeanise” Russia. These efforts at including it seemed to overcome the
insuperable distance between “the West” and “Russia”.30
The fact remains, however, that Russia’s efforts to industrialise in the 18th
century continued to be highly dependent on the country’s military needs: it
was in fact dominated by the political goal of conquest and the needs of war.
Thus essential sectors like mining and textiles were directed by the state first
to provide weapons and uniforms for the army, whereas intensive paper
production served the state’s bureaucratic requirements.
In truth, even Great Britain financed its army and wars (including the
Napoleonic wars and subsequently for several decades) by drawing resources
mainly from industrial development, but mainly through the tariff system. In
Imperial Russia, on the other hand (with a less protectionist regime than
England), industrial and fiscal policies served almost exclusively the needs of
power politics.31
As mentioned previously, given the shortage of available private capital,
taxation was used unscrupulously by the czars to collect the funds necessary
to sustain production mainly for military or administrative purposes. The
result was uneven, discontinuous development, unable to produce stable and
long-lasting results that could produce new wealth in sectors not necessarily
connected to the needs of the military or of power. Quite the contrary, it
burned up accumulated resources, making great victories possible but also
causing sudden halts each time the tax authorities exhausted their capacity to
raise capital due to systematic exploitation of the population, particularly in
the countryside. At that point industry slowed down, and with it, Russia’s
offensive capacity, forcing the czar to sign armistices or peace treaties (as
occurred several times between Peter the Great and Sweden and Turkey).32
In conclusion, a complex combination of factors (religious, political, social,
ethical, cultural and behavioural) contributed over time to creating the con-
ditions for backwardness in Eastern Europe just when Great Britain was
beginning to develop.
The significance of each of these factors differed depending on historical
legacies, political experiences and cultural sedimentations constituting each
micro-region’s specific nature in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, regardless
of the main factor, whether it was international, religious, economic, social,
cultural or a combination of these, the fact remains that the entire area found
itself facing the challenges of modernisation in the first decades of the 19th
century, with a political and social system that was technologically and
structurally inadequate. Indeed, the system seemed static in Central Europe
and Russia, while in the Ottoman Empire, by then considered the “sick man
of Europe”, disintegrative forces intensified.
Indeed, in both cases (not just in the case of the Sublime Porte), contact
with industrial modernisation accentuated political instability and intensified
 Development and backwardness 37
the debate of ideas. The fear of a socially based Russian revolution was, for
example, quite widespread among intellectuals and conservative classes, as
well as among the imperial courts following the upheavals caused by the
French Revolution and Napoleon’s adventures.
At the beginning of the 19th century Joseph de Maistre, during his stay in
St. Petersburg as ambassador of the Kingdom of Sardinia, had the opportunity
to observe the tensions running through Russian society. A conservative and
anti-modernist aristocrat, he recommended that serfdom be maintained and
that public education be abandoned along with the establishment of the
Academy and the introduction of the sciences, which he considered dangerous
as they were outside the control of the Catholic Church.
Marquis de Custine’s premonitions were similar in nature. He was also
concerned about a possible social revolution in Russia, brought on by the
conditions of the peasantry and also encouraged by the possible influence of
religious sects.
In contrast, fear of social turmoil led Baron Von Haxthausen (himself a
junker, a Prussian landed aristocrat) to suggest the development of village
communities, enhancing their hierarchic and patriarchal structure and
through skilful management introducing technical innovations on large
landed estates so as to stabilise conservative-aristocratic control over rural
society in Prussian and Russian Europe.33
These are a few important examples of the conservative nobility’s growing
unrest. This stemmed from the perception of imminent radical changes with the
expansion of modernisation and its accompanying phenomena, e.g. indus-
trialisation, urbanisation, secularisation and mass education. In addition,
there was the push to build nation-states that would disrupt continental geo-
politics but most of all would sweep away the legitimacy of monarchic and
noble power with the progressive assertion of liberalism and democratic
ideals.
It was obvious that the conservative landed aristocracy, i.e. the same local
magnate aristocracy that had prevented the emergence of the bourgeoisie in
Bohemia and Hungary between the 16th and 17th centuries and had agreed
to “Germanise” itself (to show its allegiance to the imperial house of Central
Europe), feared any change that might weaken its role. Above all it sensed, to
its dismay, the risk of a revolution that could permanently overturn the social
status quo. In a way, in areas with particularly weak institutions like the
Ottoman Empire, the Serbian peasant uprisings in 1804 made it clear how
social problems, by assuming the features of a national revolt, were able to
accelerate the destabilisation of the multinational empires.34
The “fear of revolution”, on the other hand, was a sign of the aristocracy’s
awareness of how wide the gap was between the expectations of social trans-
formation in the various strata of society (bourgeoisie, workers, peasants) and
the increasingly tenacious resistance of the landed aristocracy (be it large
landowners or owners of small yet inheritable plots of land) who were firmly
against upsetting the “traditional” order. This gap fully demonstrated the
38 Development and backwardness
tension between the desire for change and obstacles preventing that change,
thus identifying itself as the very essence of backwardness which can be seen
at once as a relative and dynamic concept.
It was against this complex background that heated debates on moder-
nisation and the best conditions for ensuring a country’s development took
shape, in successive stages and in keeping with the times. The contents of this
debate ended up translating into a vision of “politics” with a strong social
imprint.
In other words, it was at this time that the foundations and the social ori-
gins of East European politics were defined. This basis was a widespread
phenomenon, shared by “late comers” (to use an old definition of Hobs-
bawm’s35) across the region, in spite of local differences and peculiarities. In
fact, also due to the relative speed (in general faster than many West Eur-
opean contexts) with which, after the Great War, universal suffrage and the
mobilisation of mass consensus was achieved, social problems ranging from
equity to development strongly influenced the programmes and stances of all
political forces from the Elbe to the Ural Mountains, from the Baltic to the
Aegean. These social problems defined domestic and international alignments
and political alliances, and mobilised the populations’ passions in a frame of
reference that oscillated for a long time between autarky and interdependence,
between openness to new things and the refusal to change.

Notes
1 See among others the “classics” by R.M. Hartwell, The Causes of the Industrial
Revolution, Methuen and Co., London, 1967; and, by the same author, “Economic
Change in England and Europe 1780–1830” in The New Cambridge Modern His-
tory, vol. IX, 1965, pp. 31–48; Milward and Saul, The Development of the Econo-
mies of Continental Europe, op. cit.; Paul Bairoch, Rivoluzione industriale e
sottosviluppo, Einaudi, Torino, 1967; Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Back-
wardness in Historical Perspective, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA,
1962.
2 On the construction of the Eurocentric mythology and the typical European-Western
perception of human civilisation, see the provocative and well-documented volumes
by Martin Bernal, Black Athena, Vintage, London, 1991; and John Hobson, The
Eastern Origins of the Western Civilisation, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, 2004. These topics will be revisited in more detail at the conclusion of this
comparative study.
3 Cf. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of
the Enlightenment, Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 10, p. 356.
4 The concept of tabula rasa was articulated particularly by Leibnitz and became
very popular among the followers of the Enlightenment, especially those who, like
Voltaire, established close ties with Catherine II’s Russia. See also Dieter Groh, La
Russia e l’autocoscienza d’Europa, Einaudi, Torino, 1980, pp. 31–44.
5 Cf., on this, Henry Reynolds, Black Pioneers, Penguin, London, 2000; with the less
recent but equally corrosive volume by George James, Stolen Legacy, Philosophical
Library, New York, 1954.
6 See David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1990.
 Development and backwardness 39
7 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Academic Press,
New York, 1974.
8 See, more broadly, Domenico Caccamo, Introduzione alla Storia dell’Europa
Orientale, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma, 1991, pp. 131–34.
9 Basically, landed seigneuries bound peasants to a noble landlord through yearly
rents in kind, while manorial seigneuries bound peasants to the land and imposed
a series of services (corvées) on them, on the basis of which they would pay the
landlord duties for the use of the farm.
10 Cf., e.g., John Lampe and Marvin Jackson, Balkan Economic History, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1982; Jerzy Topolski, La nascita del capitalismo in
Europa, Einaudi, Torino, 1979; Iván T. Berend and Gyorgy Ránki, Economic
Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1974.
11 Daniel Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1989.
12 See essays by John Lampe, “Imperial Borderlands or Capitalist Periphery? Rede-
fining Balkan Backwardness”, and Fikret Adanir, “Tradition and Rural Change in
Southeastern Europe during Ottoman Rule”, in Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Back-
wardness, op. cit., pp. 131–209; with Carlo M. Cipolla (ed.), Economic Decline of
Empires, Methuen, London, 1970.
13 By Baltic area here we mean, as indicated by Hugh Seton-Watson, that part of
Central-Eastern Europe where the rivers flow north and empty into the Baltic Sea.
See Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918–1941, Westview
Press, Boulder and London, 1986.
14 Cf. on these events also Riccardo Picchio, “L’Europa Orientale nel XVIII secolo”, in
Ernesto Pontieri (ed.), Storia Universale, Vallardi Commissionaria, Ed., Milano,
1970, pp. 369–71; Péter Hanák (ed.), Storia dell’Ungheria, Angeli, Milano,
1996, pp. 75–83; István Lázár, Hungary, a Brief History, Corvina, Budapest, 1990,
pp. 130–31.
15 The “Republic of Nobles” (szlachta) was de facto decreed by the Union of Lublin
between Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569, and by the way in which
Henry of Valois, chosen in 1573 as the first monarch following the extinction of the
Jagiellonian dynasty, was elected. See Riccardo Picchio, L’Europa Orientale dal
Rinascimento all’età illuministica, op. cit., pp. 235–53.
16 Regarding issues of economic development and political dependence, cf. the papers
presented at the conference in Bellagio by Robert Brenner, “Economic Back-
wardness in Eastern Europe in Light of Developments in the West”, Péter Gunst,
“Agrarian Systems of Central and Eastern Europe”, and Jacek Kochanowicz,
“The Polish Economy and the Evolution of Dependency”, in Chirot (ed.), The Origins
of Backwardness, op. cit., pp. 5–130; with the studies by Witold Kula, The Pro-
blems and Methods of Economic History, Burlington, Ashgate, 2001; The Cam-
bridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965;
and for the Balkans, the extensive and detailed work by Jozo Tomasevich, Peasant,
Politics and Economic Change in Yugoslavia, Stanford University Press, Stanford,
1955. On Russia see in particular the more recent Peter Gatrell, The Tsarist Econ-
omy, Batsford, London, 1986; and cf. Valentin Giterman, Storia della Russia, 2
vols, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1973; Teodor Shanin, Russia as a Developing
Society, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1965, in particular chapter 5 on the morphology
of Russia’s backwardness; and Lionel Kochan, The Making of Modern Russia, St.
Martin’s Press, New York, 1983, especially the parts about Peter the Great and his
economic policies.
17 See Jacek Kochanowicz, “The Polish Economy and the Evolution of Dependency”,
in Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness, op. cit., pp. 120–21.
40 Development and backwardness
18 Which are, to be precise, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali.
19 Compare André Miquel, L’Islam. Storia di una civiltà, SEI, Torino, 1973, pp. 283–84;
Henry Charles Puech, Histoire des Religions. L’Islam, Gallimard, Paris, 1970–76,
vol. 2, pp. 646–94, and vol. 3, pp. 3–179; Nerkez Smajlagić, Leksikon Islama,
Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1990.
20 See Alexander Gerschenkron, Europe in the Russian Mirror, Cambridge University
Press, London, 1970. See also Milward and Saul, The Development of the Economies
of Continental Europe, op. cit.
21 On discriminatory legislation in the Habsburg Empire see C.A. Macartney, The
Habsburg Empire 1790–1918, Macmillan, New York, 1969. On the Jewish situation
in the Czarist Empire see Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism,
Nationalism and the Russian Jews 1862–1917, Cambridge University Press, New
York, 1981. As Witold Kula had already observed, the Jewish contribution to East
European economic development has not been a preferred area of study, in spite of
its crucial importance, compared to the political-cultural and religious dimension
of the Jewish question which historiography has so far shown it prefers. This tendency
was even confirmed by recent works including Leonard J. Greenspoon, Ronald
Simkins and Brion Horowitz (eds), The Jews in Eastern Europe, Creighton Uni-
versity Press and University of Nebraska Press, Omaha and Lincoln, 2005; or Glen
Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish, Oxford University
Press, New York, 2006.
22 See Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, op. cit.
23 On Peter the Great and Russia see in particular William Marshall, Peter the Great,
Longman, London, 1996; Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, Penguin
Books, London, 2005; Vasily Klyuchevsky, Peter the Great, Macmillan, London,
1958; Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History
and Thought, Oxford University Press, New York, 1985; Voltaire, The History of
the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great, 2 vols, Thomson Gale, Farmington
Hills, 2005.
24 On the price revolution in the 16th century and its impact in Eastern Europe and
the Balkans, see M. Postan and H.J. Habakkuk (eds), Cambridge Economic History,
op. cit.; Pierre Vilar, Sviluppo economico e analisi storica, Laterza, Bari, 1978, espe-
cially pp. 122–24; with Ömer L. Barman’s study, “Les mouvements des prix en Tur-
quie entre 1490 et 1655”, in Histoire économique du monde méditerranéen 1450–1650.
Mélanges en honneur de Fernand Braudel, col. 1, Privat, Toulouse, 1973, pp. 65–79.
25 Note that the Ottoman Empire was, in its structure, similar to ancient empires in
the sense that conquest and constant territorial expansion were an essential part of
their success and their system of consensus. On the other hand, crushing military
defeats followed by the loss of land inevitably ended up favouring a growing process of
political, economic and social decline.
26 These çiftlik should not be confused with those, by the same name, legally granted to
Muslim peasants in Thrace, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during Ottoman
expansion (up until Suleiman the Magnificent), and sufficient to maintain a family.
27 See Dunja Rihtman-Augužtin, Struktura tradicijskog mišljenja, Školska knjiga,
Zagreb, 1984.
28 From the extensive literature on the topic, cf. in particular Paul Henri Stahl,
Household, Village and Village Confederation in Southeastern Europe, East Eur-
opean Monographs, Boulder, 1986; Francis Conte, The Slavs, Boulder, New York,
1995; Massimo Guidetti and Paul H. Stahl, Il sangue e la terra, Jaca Book,
Milano, 1977; Henri H. Stahl, Traditional Romanian Village Communities, Cam-
bridge University Press, New York, 1980. A recent study by Maria Todorova raises
alternative explanations for the existence of the zadruga: see Maria Todorova,
Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern, CEU Press, Budapest, 2006
[1993], especially pp. 127–66.
 Development and backwardness 41
29 Between 1800 and 1845 English tariffs to protect domestic industry were almost six
times higher than those implemented in Germany between 1850 and 1913 and one
and a half times greater than Russia’s during the period 1870–1913. See John M.
Hobson, The Eastern Origins, op. cit., p. 249.
30 In confirmation of how widespread this opinion was at the beginning of the 18th
century, Dieter Groh cites two poems, one German and one English, respectively
celebrating the glories of Peter the Great and English-Russian affinity. See Dieter
Groh, La Russia e l’autocoscienza, op. cit., p. 50.
31 The relationship between English militarism and industrialisation had already been
denounced by John A. Hobson in his volume Imperialism, published again in 1968
by Allen and Unwin, London. Cf., in addition D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and
Politics in British Foreign Policy 1915–1914, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968; and
Paul Gregory, Russian National Income 1885–1913, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1982.
32 Cf., on this subject, Alexander Gerschenkron, Europe in the Russian Mirror, op.
cit.; and Milward and Saul, The Development of the Economies of Continental
Europe, op. cit. Riasanovsky reaches similar conclusions in his A History of Russia,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2005. Less critical of Peter the Great’s industrial
policies is William Marshall, Peter the Great, op. cit., pp. 63–73.
33 When de Maistre reported his impressions of Russia in Cinq lettres sur l’éducation
publique de la Russie it was 1810, whereas de Custine expressed his vision of Rus-
sia’s social and religious problems in his monumental work of four volumes in
1844. In turn August Von Haxthausen outlined his plan for conservative agrarian
reform following his journeys to Russia in 1847. See Marquis A. de Custine, La
Russie en 1839, Bruxelles, 1844, 4 vols; Joseph de Maistre, Œvres complètes, Lyon,
1884; August Von Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, University of
Chicago Press, London, 1972; for a broader vision of the 18th-century debate on
Russia, see Dieter Groh, La Russia e l’autocoscienza, op. cit., pp. 249–58.
34 Cf. Michael Boro Petrovich, A History of Modern Serbia, Harcourt Brace Jova-
novich, New York, 2 vols, 1976, especially pp. 27–81; Danica Milić, “Uloga eko-
nomskog faktora u formiranju srpske nacije”, in Dušan Janjić and Mirko Mirković
(eds), Postanak i razvoj srpske nacije, Narodna Knjiga, Beograd, 1979; Srpska
Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti, Istorijski značaj srpske revolucije 1804. Godine,
Beograd, 1983.
35 Eric Hobsbawm, “‘First Comers’ and ‘Second Comers’”, in Autori vari, Problemi
storici dell’industrializzazione e dello sviluppo, Argalia, Urbino, 1965, pp. 71–101.
2 Capitalism or rural socialism?
The dilemmas of renewal in Russia and
the Balkans

2.1 Rural communities and modernisation in Russian political

thought
The controversy over capitalism that developed in Russia in the second
half of the 19th century – which has been reconstructed with great analytical
effectiveness by such “classic” authors as Andrzej Walicki, Franco Venturi,
Vittorio Strada, Valentina Tvardovskaya and Adam Ulam1 – clearly reveals
the dilemmas that were being discussed even then and would be faced in the
future by Russian society, and more generally, by the great rural areas of
Eastern Europe.
In essence, the dilemma concerned the methods and pace of modernisation
in Russia. The dilemma can be summed up as follows. Would it be best to
bring Russia tout court into line with the capitalist model of development and
to absorb and reproduce the phenomena that characterised Western indus-
trialisation? This was the view embraced by apologists of capitalism, who
were convinced of the “objectivity” of development, in which progress was
seen as being inevitable and unalterable. Or should one reject the idea of
simply waiting and seeing, and instead encourage “subjective” intervention
with the aim of modifying the effects of development, especially to alleviate
the suffering of the weaker strata of the population, by attempting to con-
struct socialism, starting from the conditions of solidarity and collective
property found in village communities (i.e. the obshchina and the mir), which
were still widespread throughout the countryside?
In other words, the Russian movement called Narodnichestvo (which was
quite heterogeneous and internally complex), in following a “subjectivist”
approach to development, also embraced by Bakunin’s anarchism, asked itself
if and under what conditions it would be possible to avoid or “skip” the phase of
capitalism to arrive at a socialist phase by transforming the traditional
collective agricultural structures already in place in Russia.
Various elements contributed to this hypothesis including the profound
weakness of Russian liberalism, which throughout the 1800s never amounted
to a convincing political prospect for Russia.
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 43
In reality, a few years after Napoleon’s defeat between 1815 and 1819, a
current of thought spread among young military officials, who attempted to
convince Czar Alexander I to give them a constitution (which he later gran-
ted, but only to Poland). They submitted a draft, which was approved by the
sovereign in 1821. However, the emperor soon gave up the idea due to oppo-
sition on the part of most of the Russian aristocracy and pressure from
Metternich, invoking the principles underlying the Holy Alliance.
Paradoxically, autarkic resistance to change only encouraged the opposi-
tion’s radicalism and the diffusion of secret societies, echoing practices already
underway in Central and Western Europe. It was in this climate that the idea
of an insurrection arose among liberal members of the aristocracy, planned
for December 1825 (hence the name “Decembrists”). The tragic failure of the
insurrection allowed the new czar, Nicholas I, to impose powerful theocratic
and chauvinistic rule over the empire. This delivered a decisive blow to liberal
hopes, which in any case were not considered credible in the country’s dominant
circles.2
This absence of credibility was largely attributable to a diffident (and racist)
attitude among the aristocracy as well as the Orthodox clergy towards Jews.
In contrast, many Jews in Russia and Central Europe believed in liberalism
(and later socialism).3
In a society like Russia’s, with widespread illiteracy and superstition, anti-
Semitic prejudice of Christian origin was further encouraged by the pogroms
promoted by czarism towards the end of the 1800s. These pogroms had the
sole purpose of redirecting popular dissatisfaction with local conditions
towards other causes (and away from imperial power). This occurred in a
general European climate in which anti-Semitism had gradually intensified,
cultivating hypotheses of the mass expulsion of Jews to Madagascar, until it
reached its apex at the end of the century in France with the Dreyfus case.
Nevertheless, in the specific case of Russia and Eastern Europe, the spread of
similar behaviours contributed among other things to the strict and at times
socially hostile containment of liberal ideas. In addition, Russian conservative
thought had gradually led to a negative attitude towards money. This pre-
judice was effectively described (and encouraged) by Dostoyevsky in his
novels.4
Nevertheless, attempts to assert liberal policies surfaced in Russia once
again when, in 1864, an administrative reform was promoted by Alexander II
(“the Liberator”) who, after formally ending serfdom, established autono-
mous local districts and provincial councils called zemstvos (a term originally
linked to the concept of “land” or zemlya). This decision seemed to offer a
unique opportunity to revive and spread liberal ideas gradually, based on the
concepts of representation and autonomy. In spite of myriad limitations, it
was the zemstvos that could have promoted these ideas by carrying out the
functions assigned to them.5
However, the zemstvos developed slowly, and only in the strictly Russian
areas of the empire. They lacked their own resources, were already restricted
44 Capitalism or rural socialism?
by 1866 and experienced brief vitality on the eve of the 1905 revolution, only
to be rapidly marginalised by other institutions such as the Duma and the
Soviet, which for different reasons proved able to achieve greater consensus.
Thus the void left by the defeat of the Decembrists and the long wait for a
constitution desired in liberal circles, but continuously delayed by the imperial
powers, in the absence of strong institutions based on a liberal conception of
the state, had for nearly half a century prepared the ground for other political-
institutional and social ideas, more revolutionary than reformist in character.
These ideas were all based on urgently addressing the central problem of
development and the challenges posed by the West to the pre-modern empires
of Central Europe, which seemed increasingly out-dated and obsolete, especially
the autocratic and reactionary Czarist Empire.6
It was thus in an increasingly closed atmosphere of political-social dis-
satisfaction that Aleksandr Gercen (better known in the West as Alexander
Herzen) wrote a body of original reflections on Russian society and the
changes underway in Western Europe, which gave rise to a lively and fiery
debate about capitalism and socialism as well as a variegated political movement,
called Narodnichestvo. The repercussions of this debate were to be of crucial
importance not only for Russia, but also for the Balkans and Central-Eastern
Europe.
In reality Herzen’s ideas were not lacking in anti-bourgeois tones, in part
an expression of his contempt for the aristocracy, but also a result of a severe
criticism of the West formed during his stay in Paris on the eve of the 1848
revolution. At the same time, however, his criticism revealed strong ethical
tensions. In particular his criticism was aimed at corruption, which he
encountered in the shopkeeper attitude of the middle classes, and in their
daily behaviour, which he perceived as falsely moralistic and lascivious. This
was all reflected in the fashion of the promenade, the vaudeville culture and
Scribe’s boulevardier theatre (which to Herzen seemed dull, unoriginal and,
though witty, tedious because of his inevitable happy endings culminating in
marriage). In his view all of this clashed with the honesty and dignity of the
proletariat, which he actually knew very little about, but which he felt had
inherited the qualities of the old aristocracy.7
It was therefore within a similar ethical-social frame of reference that he
saw the obshchina as the alternative institution to despotism, contrary to
currents of liberal thought. The liberalists had actually set themselves the goal
of destroying the rural community by launching reforms that through the
inheritance of land, would promote the formation of a well-to-do peasant
class as well as a labouring class.
The failure of the revolutionary wave of 1848–49, which was principally
democratic, working class and urban, encouraged him to look more closely at
the rural world. This is where he saw the fire of resistance to oppression
moving in France and in his own Russia. It was then that he articulated his
reflections in the brief volume The Development of Revolutionary Ideas in
Russia, printed in 1851 in French and dedicated to Bakunin. Debating with
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 45
Slavophiles as he had done in Russia (we will return to this later), he accused
them of having renounced “enlightened reason and spirit” to return “to
admiring the Muscovite state” and with it, the Orthodox Church, falling “not
into progress, but into backwardness”.8 Herzen thus gave new voice to the
conflict between “Russian Europeanism” (identified with St. Petersburg) and
what he defined as “Muscovite pan-Slavism” – a conflict which would become
well known in the international literature as the one between Westernisers and
Slavophiles. He traced this conflict back to antithetical views of Russian his-
tory and culture, in contrast to the ideals of liberty, legality, emancipation and
Europeanness. In this framework Herzen placed the topic he held dearest to
his heart: freeing the serfs and developing the rural community as a revolu-
tionary and socialist institution, able to join the currents of French and
German thought of Proudhon, Fourier, Hegel and Feuerbach.
Therefore in line with his agrarian view of socialism, Herzen was convinced
that it would be the social self-organisation of the village – freed from the
bonds of serfdom – that would ensure individual freedom. This would happen
through a programme of transformation summed up in his slogan “Land
and Freedom” (Zemlya i Volya), which later became the name of the
conspiratorial association he founded.
If it is true that Herzen was unaware of capitalism’s economic and social
mechanisms, it is also true that other representatives, including non-Russians,
of the Narodnik movement soon become aware of them and were prepared to
condemn capitalism’s “degenerative aspects”. This included the social impact
of indiscriminate urbanisation, the exploitation of female and child labour,
and the impoverishment of the weaker social classes. They were thus focusing
on factors that also provided plenty of material to a group of forthright
Western writers at the time, inspired by strong materialistic determinism and
“condemning” the living conditions of the proletariat and their social
marginalisation, such as in Émile Zola’s naturalist fiction and, later on, Realism.9

2.2 Narodnichestvo, Marxism and the problem of capitalism in

Russia
The transversal critique of capitalism, including Herzen’s work, formed a new
European school of thought which sparked new political and philosophical
tendencies in Russia.
In particular, the “Western” current of the Narodnichestvo, which combined
positivist, materialist and atheist orientations, found its precursor in young
Vissarion Belinsky.
Although his philosophical ideas were often confused, as shown by his
enthusiastic readiness to accept all ideas from other countries only to be dis-
appointed later on, Belinsky – in his brief life – had a decisive impact on the
way literary works were interpreted, and became a leading figure, able to
direct the Western progressivist and cultured Russian elite towards atheistic
radicalism.
46 Capitalism or rural socialism?
Indeed, it is to Belinsky that we owe the birth of Russian literary critique,
passionately, simply and efficiently expressed, but most of all aimed at evalu-
ating a work of art not on the basis of its adherence to formalism and stylistic
mannerism, but in relation to its ability to reflect social reality critically. He
felt that one had to reconcile oneself with this, in the name of reason and
one’s rational awareness of history. From this perspective, the Enlightenment
and his admiration for the works of Peter the Great held a special place in his
thinking.
Years later his violent controversy with Nikolai Gogol, whose Dead Souls
Belinsky had originally praised as a progressive work, had a decisive impact
on Russian cultural circles at the time. In his Selected Passages from Corre-
spondence with Friends Gogol had revealed his patriarchal, mystical-religious
vision of Russian reality and the view that serfdom was justified. His theories
provoked Belinsky’s reaction, and in 1847 he did not hesitate to accuse Gogol
of being an obscurantist, unable to comprehend that Russian Christianity was
merely superstitious. The strength of his arguments and the stylistic effective-
ness with which Belinsky attacked Gogol won him the enthusiastic approval
of Russian progressivist intellectuals, who consecrated him the archetype of
modern Russian Western thought, just before his death.10
An important influence on Belinsky’s thought was Feuerbach’s materialism
and atheism, so that the consensus achieved during his bitter battle against
mysticism reinforced the anti-theocratic convictions of a wide spectrum of
Russian thinkers and politicians, leading to their reappraisal of the State as the
guiding force of history and society as opposed to the Church, and in favour of
both rationalist and secular thought, as well as the diffusion of atheism.
Thus the spirits of the time surged, and alongside Belinsky’s Westernism,
works by intellectuals such as Nikolai Chernyshevsky, his friend Nikolai
Dobrolyubov, Dmitry Pisarev and Pyotr Lavrov, as well as the sociological
and historical-philosophical romanticism of Nikolai Mikhailovsky emerged.
All of them placed unshakable trust in human thought and intellectual
work. This fully reflected the legacy of the Enlightenment but it also impres-
sed on them a new ethical-political impetus (with organisational and practical
political implications), which assumed the utmost importance for modern
Russia’s cultural development in the decades to come, expanding well beyond
its borders to the Balkans and Central Europe.
In particular, Dobrolyubov stimulated the education of a young generation
capable of claiming a central political role and looking beyond liberalism.
Pisarev, on the other hand, encouraged the intelligentsia corrosively to criti-
cise power, but in the end Lavrov became the real ideologue of the intelligen-
tsia in Russia’s social transformation: the most detailed version of his position
was elaborated in his Historical Letters, published between 1868 and 1869,
and was an appeal, which soon proved to be both passionate and convincing
for many young revolutionaries, to conscience and to a sense of duty and debt
that the intellectuals, in his opinion, had owed for some time to the peasantry
and the working classes.11
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 47
According to this view, widely shared among “Westernisers”, and which
greatly influenced young people from the Balkans, the onus would be on the
educated elite to protect popular forms of development by “awakening” in
the rural world the political awareness of its institutions (the obshchina’s self-
government) through propaganda, stimulus, education and awareness of its
own best interests. In other words, only with the help of intellectuals – in
societies lacking a mature bourgeoisie and basically illiterate – would it be
possible for the people (meaning the peasants) to lay the foundations for
achieving a higher and fairer level of development, in which common own-
ership of the land, self-government, and solidarity with the organisation and
the division of labour – characteristic values of the obshchina – constituted
the fundamental political and institutional principles of reference.
After 1861, when freedom from serfdom had become a reality at least for-
mally, the Narodniks’ focus shifted from an anti-feudal critique to an anti-
capitalist view with agrarian socialism its dominant characteristic. The
struggle against autocracy was to a certain extent less important, as it was
seen as an institutional form that might contain the expansion of the bour-
geoisie and capitalism, making it possible to prepare the underground for a
socialist alternative that would have enabled society to forego the capitalist
stage.
The fact that abolishing serfdom did not mean the end of exploitation in
the countryside, because new forms of “enslavement” were emerging, seemed
to confirm that their position was the right one, and was now leading to
action. The activity of the Narodnik communes (including the Smorgon
Academy in St. Petersburg12) was from this perspective a veritable breeding
ground for young revolutionaries, and helped to create the basis for that
“explosion of romantic faith”, as described by Walicki, which came into
being in the “Going to the people” movement of 1873–74.13
With the introduction of educational structures that were “parallel” or, in
more modern terms, “antagonistic” to imperial ones, two crucial political
aspects of Russian Narodnichestvo were defined. On the one hand it meant a
pragmatic approach, training young people ready to apply the intellectual
“Enlightenment” they received through education in everyday practice, in the
conviction that this would promote mobilisation in the countryside. This
sparked a mixture of rousing but poorly calculated certainties and hopes that
took shape in the “Going to the people” movement, with its accompanying
disappointment.
On the other hand, motivated support and intense participation had helped
to spread the Narodnik educational programmes. This made it possible to
articulate innovative ideas to guide the process of modernisation in village
communities, ensuring the transformation of its pre-capitalist social structure
into socialist institutional units.
Modernising the obshchina was a crucial part of “Westernisers’” thought:
specifically, this translated into openly supporting the introduction of Western
technical innovation in agricultural production, both in terms of agrarian
48 Capitalism or rural socialism?
expertise and intensively exploiting the land, as well as modernising farming
equipment, at the time completely obsolete.
However, transforming the means of production was only one part – albeit
an important one – of the Narodnik project. The other part was based on a
revolutionary view of human relations which went far beyond simply identi-
fying the positive values of the obshchina (like the organisation of work, col-
lective ownership, and solidarity between the nuclear family and the village),
considered the immanent expression of socialism. This view broadly addres-
sed the topics of exploitation and violence in society, including the family
institution and emotional and sexual relations between men and women. In
particular, the ideas contained in the novel What is to Be Done? written in
prison by Nikolai Chernyshevsky and finally published in 1863, had a sensa-
tional effect, mobilising the young and revolutionary spirits of the time.
Though stylistically dull and of little literary value, mainly because what it
lacked in action it made up for in long speeches, Chernyshevsky’s novel in
reality reflected the young spirit and torments of the time, also anticipating
radical choices and profound changes. Thanks to his inspiration, What is to
Be Done? became a sort of forerunner of the “little red book”, wielding
enormous influence on radical youth from Russia to the Balkans, and putting
forward life solutions which were then tried out in the communes.14
Its greatest impact was on gender relationships, both because the doors
were opened to female education and because women were assigned an equal
social and sexual role, which challenged the patriarchism typical of the
traditional rural communes.
In reality, the role of women had been a topic of discussion in literature
and philosophy for some time. Women had played their part in revolutionary
acts and in 1858 the government had established the first girls’ school in
Russia. However, the novelty was that the sanctity of marriage as an institu-
tion had been called into question, in that a similar moral role was assigned
to the right to divorce and to subsequent marriages, de facto encouraging a
sexual revolution. Moreover, the fact that men and women attended “paral-
lel” courses together at the Narodnik academies and communes meant that in
the eyes of traditional Russian society, these associations looked like places of
perversion, immorality and a lead-in to prostitution, when in reality – in
many ways anticipating times and changes in customs – they laid the basis for
overcoming gender discrimination and hierarchical relationships of patriarchal
origin.
Thus the critique of patriarchism and its hierarchisation of roles was one of
the most incisive aspects of the Western, modernising approach to the
obshchina and mir. Along with self-government and the mechanisation of
agriculture, it focused on defining the original traits of rural communal socialism,
in anticipation of overcoming the state of capitalism.15
As we have seen, the movement was strongly influenced by rationalism and
was critical of Christian religion if not explicitly atheist. These views ensued
from a democratic and united vision of social and economic relationships, to
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 49
the point of opposing the Church as the absolute power structure, integrated
as a supporter of the aristocracy and autocratic imperial power.
The conflict with theology and theocracy had been encouraged by the
absorption of ideas from the Enlightenment oriented towards developing and
enhancing the sciences through the popular diffusion of knowledge (obliga-
tory and accessible education for both sexes). So in contrast to the doctrinaire
and dogmatic revelations typical of religious prescriptions, Narodnichestvo
promoted a broad conceptual approach to scientific knowledge, including not
only the natural and technical disciplines but also social ones, in order to abolish
dependence on and subjection to narrow learned circles. It was this approach
that led a large part of the Narodnichestvo to oppose Darwinism (an attitude
very evident in Mikhailovsky), but only as a political current intent on
applying the principles stemming from the differentiation of the species to
individual and free market competition. Darwinism as a naturalist theory of
evolutionism was not rejected: nevertheless, Mikhailovsky (immediately sup-
ported by Tkachev) denied that this could explain the social division of work.
He thus rejected Darwin’s interpretation as an expression of liberalism, which
the Narodnichestvo as a whole opposed, choosing socialism instead.16
Predictably, the reception of the “enlightened message” of these transfor-
mations in the countryside was not encouraging, and at times even openly
hostile, and it ended in failure around the second half of the 1870s.
In response to this disappointment, Pyotr Tkachev shifted the strategy to
another front by entrusting a revolutionary minority with the task of inciting
rebellion. This was the beginning of “Narodnik Jacobinism”, a specific com-
ponent of Narodnichestvo that considered the “preparatory and propaganda”
phase among the people to be pointless, and instead set to work to be able
quickly and energetically to seize the right moment to take over political power
and begin the radical transformation of society, using a highly centralised
organisation of professional revolutionaries.
In fact, Tkachev was the inspiration behind the wave of terrorism that
caused bloodshed in Russia starting in January 1878 (when Vera Zasulich
seriously wounded the governor of St. Petersburg), and culminated in the
assassination of the “Liberator” Czar Alexander II in 1881.17
In reality, Tkachev was never totally convinced of the tactics chosen by his
disciples and followers, whose ideas were the cause of an irrevocable rift
within the newly constituted conspiratorial association Zemlya i Volya, and
finally caused its dissolution in 1878. While those in favour of resorting to
violence, in the illusion that this was the way to overthrow the autocracy,
gathered around the group Narodnaya Volya, the orthodox Narodnik wing
established its own movement, Chernyi Peredel.18
This is all well known. However, what we would like to emphasise here is
how all the heterogeneous advocates of the Narodnik were convinced that
Russia, at the moment it came into contact with the powerful modernising
force originating in the West, would have been able to react with its own
model of socialist development. Thus they all agreed on the fact that its
50 Capitalism or rural socialism?
originality would be based on the obshchina’s special characteristics and the
possibility of converging with the urban artisan communities known as artel,
subsequently establishing some form of federative organisation.19
This position was also shared by Bakunin, who had always been particu-
larly impressed by the self-administering aspect of the obshchina, which he
saw as an essential lever of political and social transformation insofar as it
exercised an alternative power to autocracy and not as a structure incorpo-
rated into it. Thus in his writings he proposed the formation of a confedera-
tion of free communities and associations, with no central power and thus in
direct contraposition to the state. He thus laid the foundations of an anarchic
political project, whose followers tended to identify with an emotional and
sentimental view of peasant life, with a rather romantic view of the revolution.20
On the contrary, the Western and Jacobin Narodnichestvo remained
anchored to an Enlightenment approach. This was dominated by the idea of
using propaganda, with the goal of shaping the conscience of the rural
population, and a vision of the state as a “useful” instrument which needed to
be controlled so it could set in motion the necessary social transformation “to
the people’s advantage”.
In contrast with these convictions, a controversy with Narodnik Jacobinism
began in 1879 in the form of Georgi Plekhanov’s orthodox Marxism.
At that point an issue that was mainly ideological in nature was introduced
into the debate on the conditions of development in Russia. This issue, which
wielded great influence at the time and in following decades, was that the
proletariat should be the driving revolutionary force. Within these coordinates
the obshchina was seen as an archaic institutional structure, the continuation
of which could constitute an obstacle to industrialisation and creation of the
market. In other words Plekhanov felt it was not possible to leave out a stage
of social development which in his opinion was determined by the “laws of
nature”, because this would mean eliminating the “natural” phases of change.
At most, he acknowledged, in contrast to liberal orientations, it would have
been possible to accelerate the implementation of a particular phase in order
to prepare for its passing.21
It was under these circumstances that Vera Zasulich (in 1881) asked Karl
Marx for his opinion on the relationship between development, socialist
revolution, the community function of the obshchina and the role of the pro-
letariat in Russia. Gitermann amply covers this exchange of letters and their
contents. As we know, Marx and Engels’ joint opinion expressed the follow-
ing year was unfinished: however, they felt that the Russian village commu-
nity could play a positive role in developing socialism only if the Russian
revolution were the occasion for unleashing the revolution in the West and
joining it. In other words, the driving force of social transformation remained
the working classes of the industrialised countries, even if this did not exclude
the possibility that the special features of the Russian situation could be
favourably introduced in Europe, as long as this occurred within a brief
time.22
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 51
This opinion greatly influenced the Russian revolutionary movement, to the
extent that decades later its echoes were heard in the convinced (and impa-
tient) Bolshevik expectation of a revolution in Germany and Great Britain, to
which they could entrust the destiny of socialist construction temporarily set
in motion in Russia in October 1917.
Many years earlier, between 1883 and 1884, Plekhanov had emphasised the
process of market formation in Russia, ruling out the idea that capitalism
could develop slowly in that country. In his Marxist view capitalism was
inevitable and it would have been up to the rapidly forming working class to
exert pressure so that Russia’s Westernisation would end quickly, thus con-
cluding the work initiated by Peter the Great. Although this gave rise to fur-
ious, albeit comprehensible attacks by the Narodniks (to whom he had
previously belonged), it was to Plekhanov’s merit that he pointed out the
distance separating the two factions: those who felt it was still necessary to
think of Russian transformation in terms of preserving certain aspects of
society (unavoidably, the rural one), and those who felt it was essential to
accept models offered by the West, starting with the means of production
(and therefore industrialisation), perhaps later modifying managerial forms and
social balances of power within the framework of world revolution.
Plekhanov’s ideas had great resonance in Russia, where Marxist associa-
tions and groups began to multiply, penetrating the consciousness of Russian
workers: prominent scholars such as Alexander Gerschenkron later acknowl-
edged Plekhanov’s as well as Milyukov’s unquestionable merit in having cre-
ated a positive cultural atmosphere for the spread of entrepreneurship and
industrialisation in the 1890s, just when Sergei Witte’s politics were becoming
known.
Paradoxically, Plekhanov’s expectations moved in an entirely different
direction. He was steadfast in his conviction that the development of Russian
capitalism would lead to the end of autocracy but also pave the way for
moving beyond capitalism.23

2.3 The penetration of Narodnichestvo and Russian Marxism in

South-East Europe
The ideas of the Narodniks and the Marxists, as well as the controversy over
capitalism, were not limited to Russia. They rapidly reached beyond the
empire’s borders, mainly thanks to the czar’s policy of internationalising
Russian universities. The decision to grant numerous scholarships at uni-
versities in the capital or in Moscow attracted many young people, especially
from the Balkans. From Bulgaria alone nearly 500 students went to study in
the two largest Russian cities between 1856 and 1878, not to mention those
coming from the Bulgarian diaspora in Odessa. It is not known how many
students came from Serbia, Romania and other Slavic areas of Central-Eastern
Europe.24
52 Capitalism or rural socialism?
The imperial’s main aim was to spread pan-Slavist solidarity and admira-
tion for its government through university teaching, but this policy often had
a very different effect than hoped. Once in Russia, many students (especially
those from the Balkans) came into contact with the Narodniks’ and Marxist
revolutionary ideas. Students quickly absorbed these ideas and compared
them to the situation – not dissimilar – in their own countries, and they pre-
pared themselves ideologically to face similar challenges. They were almost
always discovered by the czarist police and were forced to interrupt their stu-
dies when they were expelled from Russia. Yet those youthful experiences –
albeit chaotic and brief – turned out to be decisive for setting up new contacts
with revolutionaries in exile in various European countries and those still in
Russia, thus spreading their ideas, including some original ones, alongside
Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Lavrov and others.
This was the case of the Serb Svetozar Marković, who attended the Smor-
gon Academy and in the wake of the Narodnik advance in rural communities,
studied the Balkan zadruga and cooperation. During his brief life he pub-
lished many studies on Serbia, South-Eastern Europe, and the relationship
between development, socialism and orientalism (a concept much debated at
the time by the European intelligentsia25). What clearly emerged from his
writings was the Narodnik belief in finding a new model that could avoid the
social decline and impoverishment that accompanied the Industrial Revolution
in the West.
His reflection on socialism and the countryside, prompted by Narodnik
ideas, combined with Feuerbach’s ideas on materialism (of which Cherny-
shevsky was a disciple) and an appreciation for Darwin’s ideas, allowed
Marković’s thinking to join the main tendencies of the time, particularly
where materialism and scientific knowledge met in the wake of the development
of modernity.
Later Marković came into contact with Bakunin and the First Interna-
tional in Switzerland and ended up representing his country in the organisa-
tion’s Russian section.26 A generation later the socialist Serbs Vasa Pelagić,
Mihailo Ilić and Dragutin Popović followed his example and went to Russia
for their education.
Lyuben Karavelov, a Bulgarian radical-democrat, had a similar experience.
He established a strong political relationship with Marković, with a view to
setting up projects that could lead to the creation of a Balkan federation fol-
lowing the Swiss one he admired so much. Karavelov was also close to
Herzen, Nechayev and Bakunin, and received most of his cultural and poli-
tical education in St. Petersburg and later in Moscow. However, he was never
able to enrol at university because of lack of money. Instead he began writing
for various newspapers such as Ruskiy Vestnik, Moskovskiye Vedomosti and
Svoboda, concentrating on problems of development in the Ottoman Empire
and embracing the ideas of the narodnik circles with which he was actively in
contact until he was expelled from Russia. His thinking matured particularly
around two themes: the natural sciences and philosophical anthropology. He
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 53
articulated his view based on the convergence of the social and natural sci-
ences, assigning a privileged role to mathematics, an ethical value to work,
and the foundations of human happiness to self-government and education,
with a spirit dominated by rationalist materialism as well as Narodnichestvo.27
Others educated with Karavelov in Russia were Hristo Botev, and later Petko
Karavelov and Stefan Stambolov.
The Bulgarian Dimitar Blagoev, who enrolled at the University of St.
Petersburg, left a description of his education in the Russian communes in a
brief autobiography. He was very active in dissident and revolutionary asso-
ciations as well as in the “parallel” Narodnik academies, which included the
group of students from the island of Vasilyevsky where he lived at that time.
He was also in contact with Zemlya i Volya, Narodnaya Volya and with
Lavrov’s periodical Vpered, which was published in Switzerland. He was
particularly aware of the economic and social pressures coming from the
West, which, as he saw it, forced backward European countries like his either
to adapt or perish. Later, again in the Russian capital, he espoused social-
democratic ideas in line with Plekhanov’s views, became a fervent militant
and an illegal Marxist press editor, until he too was expelled from Russia and
returned to Bulgaria to spread Marxism.28
In short, with the unwitting help of the Czarist Empire’s pan-Slavist policies,
Russian Narodnichestvo profoundly influenced the foundations of socialism
and Balkan peasantism, at least until the success in Bulgaria of Stambo-
liyski’s agrarian ideas, who, on the contrary, drew inspiration from the West,
and Germany in particular.
Another factor that increased contacts between Russia and the Balkans
was the czarist persecution of Narodnichestvo. Many of its most well-known
personalities were forced to go into exile abroad, often choosing the Bal-
kans as their destination: Vladimir Debogori-Mokrievič and Boris Mincev
escaped to Bulgaria while Nechayev, Akselrod and Plekhanov took refuge in
Romania.
Romania, like Serbia and Bulgaria, was deeply affected by Narodnik influ-
ences. It had become a favourite transit point for illegal revolutionary litera-
ture and consequently the crossroads of contacts between East and West.
Romania welcomed Narodniks from Bessarabia among other places, following
the defeat of the “Going to the people” movement.
Thus Romania became a breeding ground for socialist and Narodnik ideas
which shaped many representatives in that country such as Constantin
Dobrogeanu-Gherea (Solomon Katz), a Jew originally from Kharkov who had
established himself in Romania, and author in 1910 of a quoted study on capit-
alism and the Romanian countryside. In this Marxist work, Dobrogeanu-
Gherea denounced the commingling of capitalism and feudalism in the
Romanian countryside and the spread of “return serfdom” or neo-serfdom
(neoiobǎgia), which he countered with an agrarian reform programme with
populist and socialist influences, from Chernyshevsky to Plekhanov. Zamfir
Ralli-Arbore and the Bessarabian boyar Constantin Stere also joined and the
54 Capitalism or rural socialism?
latter spent some time in exile in Siberia and had great influence on the
Romanian peasant movement during the first decades of the 20th century.
Stere, in particular, coined the term Poporanism in 1894, the Romanian trans-
lation of the Russian Narodnichestvo. As we will see later on, from socialist ideas
he moved to the concept of a “peasant state” and articulated a programme
of rural development based on small estates, as well as Danish-inspired
agricultural and agro-industrial cooperation.29
All this intense activity and network of connections and contacts in and
outside Russia reflected great sensitivity towards the themes of development
and backwardness, forcing the protagonists of this time of controversy to
compare themselves to the West and Western development model, to see
whether they were applicable or not in a predominantly agricultural and
autarkic context, even though this was threatened by the expansion of money,
the market and, increasingly, capitalism itself.30
Thus, in spite of the marked distance that had evolved over time between
Narodniks and Marxists, they were still united by the problem of defining the
relationship between capitalism and socialism (be it agrarian or industrial).
They were all aware that, in any case, it was necessary to come to terms fully
with the new means of production being tested in the West.

2.4 The Slavophile alternative

In Russia there were also other intellectual and political currents which,
though also desiring to enhance the community structure of the countryside,
drew up radically alternative political projects. These movements clearly
refused to assimilate Western industrial models even though, paradoxically, it
was from the West that they took their leading concept, around which they
had articulated their own view of the world and the rejection of imported
models: that is, nationalism.31
These currents can be recognised as part of what Walicki defined as
“conservative utopia”, or the so-called Slavophile movement, with which
Alexander Herzen had sharply debated at the time, as mentioned previously.
The Slavophiles included people like Aleksey Khomyakov, Ivan Kireevsky
and the brothers Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov, all living between 1800 and
1860 (with the exception of the younger of the Aksakovs, Ivan, who died in
1886). They emphasised the Russian character and its national and religious
spirit, in open conflict with the provocative and conservative (but Western)
theories expressed by Pyotr Chaadaev in his Philosophical Letters.
Their thought was particularly influenced by the Romantic Movement, and
specifically by its anti-Napoleonic and anti-French component, inspired by
the historicist and nationalist influences of the modern school of Fichte and
Hegel. In particular, they took up the idea of universality realised in detail
through a series of writings provided by prominent persons and civilisations,
and applied this to Slavic culture.32
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 55
As a consequence, the construction of Slavic distinctiveness and its identi-
fication with the concept of a whole and complete civilisation (with active
participation in constructing it) was largely founded on the Slavophile con-
viction that Russia had historically forged its society on the distinction
between state power (held by the autocracy to protect the population from
outside enemies and preserve order), and the “right of opinion” (held by the
population through its ownership of land and rural institutions), preventing
the possibility of “interference” between these two spheres.
Thus there was also a place in their thinking for the obshchina, which the
Narodniks and liberals both interpreted in fundamentally different ways.
While the former identified it as a form of proto-socialism in need of moder-
nisation, the latter saw it as an archaic structure obstructing industrial devel-
opment. The Slavophiles extracted from this a typically local dimension,
which they transformed into a traditional institution, consistent with their
design for building Russian nationalism.
Thus among Slavophiles the conviction took root that the farming com-
munity, due to its intrinsic distinctiveness, was intimately tied to the earth in
an organic bond with the biological rhythms of the universe. It was the purest
expression of closeness to God and oneness with the natural environment and
history. Consequently, in their eyes any social change aimed at breaking up
this “harmony of bonds” and establishing a new equilibrium between man
and nature based on technology and politics – as would have inevitably hap-
pened if capitalism and socialism prevailed, as both entailed industrialisa-
tion – would have led only to a radical alteration of reality, eventually
suffocating its human dimension and uprooting it from traits inherited over
centuries and transmitted “unchangeably” over time by ancient Russian
society.
With such a highly mythicised (and distorted) vision of the past and of the
relationship between political society and the natural environment, the Sla-
vophiles accused Peter the Great with his policy of “Europeanisation” of
having destroyed this harmony, considered by them “a dominant character-
istic” of Russian-Slavic civilisation. Consequently they relied on the force of
Russian spiritualism – still considered well established thanks to religious
culture and Orthodoxy – to keep alive the prospect of Russia’s civilising
development in the world.33
Among Slavophiles, as with Narodniks, there was a variety of orientations
but in general Slavophiles firmly rejected the idea of a primitive, uneducated
Russia needing to be civilised through Westernisation; on the contrary, they
saw adherence to Orthodoxy as an expression of the “original genuineness” of
Russian tradition and culture, an element of “purity” that would lead – in
their view – to the peaceful development of state institutions which, unlike in
the West, were not imposed by force but came about “spontaneously” by and
for the people. According to them it was thanks to these institutions and their
collective organisation that antagonism between lords and peasants had been
avoided and the original spirit of Christianity had been preserved (in the
56 Capitalism or rural socialism?
Orthodox tradition), thus avoiding constant conflict between rights and
morals, reason and experience, the noble classes and the humble ones, and
between individuals and the authority that they critically attributed to the
Western experience.34
Russian Slavophiles were undoubtedly influenced by Von Haxthausen’s
travel diaries and it is of little importance that this romantic view of the
obshchina and the mir, with their communitarian and patriarchal elements
being linked to the distinctiveness of Russian culture, in contrast to the Eur-
opean West, was more a political representation than a reconstruction of
reality. Peasant revolts were not a rare event in Russian (and East European)
history and village communities were also widespread in Western and Asian
cultures (think of the Indian rajput or the domestic communities of Aragona,
or the France of the Ancien Régime).35
Here it is more important to observe how, at the instigation of Von Hax-
thausen (and then other authors such as Vasily Leshkov or Ivan Belyaev),
attention to the social organisation of the countryside had rapidly evolved
after 1850 into a conservative political, anti-industrial and anti-Western doc-
trine, combining the exaltation of religious Orthodoxy with a view of agrarian
collectivism stemming first from the Russian spirit, and later extended to the
Slavic spirit. The idea of a Slavic civilising mission, though originally put
forward by German historical philosophers like Von Schlötzer and Hegel,
found fertile ground here, coinciding with imperialist orientations and later
with Nikolai Danilevsky, providing a solid ideological base for expansionist
Russian nationalism.36
Thus by backing Orthodox religious and spiritual resistance to modern
rationality (with a cultural mind-set not far from Pope Pious IX’s Catholic
view at the time), the trinomial of nationalist ideas, a civilising mission and
imperialism ended up proposing an idea of the state that formed the core of
the neo-Slavophile school of Russian conservative political thought of the
turn of the century. It sparked an anti-modern cultural reaction which
contained, paradoxically, some typical aspects of modernity, such as the
tendency to make Slavic identity coincide with state identity.
At the same time, just when the natural sciences were coming to the fore in
Europe, Danilevsky placed himself openly with the anti-Darwinists, declaring
he was a staunch supporter of the creationist theories so dear to Christian
fundamentalism. Between the 1860s and 1870s, when he reconstructed the
Slavophile theory in his most important book Russia and Europe, Danilevsky
rejected the theory of evolution of the species and its applicability to national
cultures. His was a vision of the nation with traits that were unchangeable as
they were created by God and were therefore also non-transferable, according
to the historicist and modern approach already advocated by Herder, Fichte
and Hegel.37
Thanks to this concept, which actually suppressed the cultural complexity
of the various Slav peoples by equating them to Russianism, Danilevsky
rigidly and all-inclusively defined the national characteristics of Slavism,
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 57
identified with the Russian world, then to lead to a political design aimed at
liberating the Slavs under the Ottoman Empire by expanding the Czarist
Empire, with the goal of returning the centre of Christianity to Con-
stantinople (and to the great church of St. Sophia), transforming the ancient
capital of the Roman Empire into the centre of a Slav federation.38
In the end his political thought remained manifestly imbued with antagon-
ism between Slavic and European societies, thus effectively representing that
component not just of Russian thought, but also of other East European
countries that opposed the West, deemed corrupt, rotten and culturally mor-
ibund because it was rational, secular and averse to tradition. Rather it chose
to take refuge in the peculiarities of the East not so much because it identified
with Asia, but because it represented the Christian East, with its holy places
whence the “right way” of religious thought had sprung forth, linked to the
figure of Jesus.
Nevertheless, these tendencies were only partially endorsed by czarism, in
spite of the manifest support expressed by the powerful public prosecutor of
the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev since 1881. In effect, for Russian
foreign policy the goals of “autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality” (summed
up by another Russian conservative, Count Uvarov) were not always con-
sistent with the interests of expanding into Asia. Furthermore, including the
small European Slavic peoples in the empire as part of this programme could
have meant importing new radical and revolutionary elements at the risk of
reinforcing the existing ones, so feared by the czar.
On the other hand, the conservative and basically anti-modernist wing of
the Slavophiles mentioned above, which took root mainly in Russia, was not the
only interpretation. A second component, with democratic and egalitarian
traits, had grown up among Slavs in Austria and especially the Czechs, since
the time of the Slavic Congress of Prague in 1848. Called Democratic pan-
Slavism or later neo-Slavism, this current made a comeback around the end of
the century and found new inputs following political changes in Serbia with
the rise of the Karađorđevićs, and the Russian revolution of 1905 when St.
Petersburg’s “political return” to Europe (following its defeat by Japan)
appeared to offer a new opportunity for the Slavic peoples of Europe to
unite.39
In reality this movement, which also sponsored some congresses attended
by conservative exponents or leaders from the new agrarian parties including
the Pole Roman Dmowski and the Croat Stjepan Radić (to whom we will
refer later), did not openly contribute to the debate on problems of develop-
ment. They limited themselves to hoping for economic and cultural cooperation
and invoking equality among Slavic peoples. Nevertheless, it had great moral
influence and created a climate of convergence which re-emerged every so often
in the following decades, triggering illusions (and fears, according to some
observers) of trans-national solidarity founded on ethno-cultural ties, on
which they could have built shared programmatic principles, able to get beyond
the conservative and anti-modernist orientations of Russian pan-Slavism.
58 Capitalism or rural socialism?
2.5 Reorganising politics in the face of problems of development
Slavophilism, Narodnichestvo, Marxism and to a lesser extent liberalism: all
these currents of thought provided the backdrop for the political panorama in
Russia and Eastern Europe during the 1800s and contended with modernity.
The encounter gave rise to a multitude of questions, projects and visions of
society’s future, the meaning of development and its power over society.
In effect, the means of production generated by industrialisation induced a
reflection on the future of agriculture and the rural organisation of society,
and then went on to broaden the attention to dealing with power, the role of
autarky, religion and science,
Starting in Russia, which had already begun profound reforms in the 18th
century based on a solid network of relationships of ideas with all of Europe
and the Enlightenment, new movements and schools of thought had begun to
develop: they were to exert a penetrating influence on other East European
areas, and in particular the Balkans, inducing intellectuals to take sides and
draw opposing conclusions, modernising or conservative, on the future of
their countries.
As we have seen, the entire spectrum of Russian politics had positioned
itself along policy lines to form the outlines of parties’ and movements’ poli-
cies concerning the relationship between society and the conditions for
development: from liberal capitalists, who supported the adaptation of insti-
tutions to Western models; to Marxists, intent on leading the process of
change toward socialism; to anarchists and Narodniks (Westernisers or Jaco-
bins), convinced they could combine modernisation, socialism and local
characteristics; and finally to the conservative and reactionary Slavophiles,
determined – to varying degrees – to refuse any adaptation to foreign models
in the name of nationalism, orthodoxy and imperialism. There is no doubt
that the spectrum of Russian political alignment tried, clashed with, was
divided by and reassembled itself mainly in the search for measures to over-
come its state of economic and social backwardness compared to the West.
This was all done under the aegis of modernity, with which it was already
imbued.
As we have said, this process was not limited to Russia, but through various
clandestine channels and exile, it put conservatives and revolutionaries from
Europe into contact, united either by the fear of or the desire for radical
change. In an atmosphere of growing ferment, a variety of policy options were
proposed, addressing relations between agriculture and industry, religion and
secularisation, religion and science, and between trans-national and “tradi-
tional” cultures. All of these issues proved to be of long-term importance for
those European societies dominated by rural life as opposed to cities.
This explains why in the face of spreading modernisation and the social
upheaval it caused, the ideas and ideologies that formed the basis of the East
European political structure did not follow similar paths to those that led to
the formation of the “political families” in liberal West European societies.
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 59
In other words, in countries induced in order of priority to ask themselves
if, and to what extent, Western models of production and development should
be accepted, changed or rejected, the attraction of liberalism and/or social-
ism – though acknowledged by means of constant trans-national intellectual
communication – had inevitably taken on a different value and meaning. The
forms and means of production and the search for the most appropriate
institutions for this task was the fundamental issue around which politics
came to be oriented, until it transversally divided existing alignments, even
when these were nominally inspired by the Western political families.
In the pages (and events) that follow we will be able to examine this phe-
nomenon more closely: here we should emphasise how this principal char-
acteristic of Russian politics came up again and again in the following
decades, continuing up to the eve of the 21st century in spite of the different –
at times radically different – historical and international contexts in which the
country found itself.
Moreover, surprising as it seems, although the Central-Eastern European
and Balkan countries have become independent and have distanced them-
selves from the imperial dynastic environment inherited from the Modern
Age, in essence these countries have not broken away from the features that
characterised Russian society. Here again, in organising ideas and construct-
ing political doctrines, local peculiarities aside, it has been necessary to deal
with the unavoidable issue of Western development, its institutional (political,
economic and cultural) models, and the preservation of local peculiarities,
reinterpreted – depending on times and places – in a variety of ways.
Thus the predominantly social (and cultural) nature of East European
politics derived mainly from controversies between intellectuals and within
the dominant elite around the themes of institutional organisation and the
timing and ways of acquiring the necessary resources to ensure industrialisation
and modernisation, as well as repercussions of this on the country’s cultural
fabric (in the broadest sense of the term).
Hence, mutatis mutandis, the terms of the dilemma changed very little in
the four subsequent great debates on development that characterised the
conflict between schools of thought and political doctrines in the European
area of our interest.

Notes
1 Cf. on this subject: Adam B. Ulam, In the Name of the People: Prophets and
Conspirators in Prerevolutionary Russia, Viking Press, New York, 1977; Valentina
A. Tvardovskaja, Il populismo russo, Editori riuniti, Roma, 1975; Andrzej Walicki,
The Controversy over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian
Populists, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1969; Franco Venturi, Il populismo russo,
Einaudi, Torino, 3 vols, 1979 [from 1952]; Vittorio Strada, “Introduzione”, in
Lenin, Che fare? Einaudi, Torino, 1971.
2 On Alexander I’s constitutional proposals in Russia and the Decembrists see both
Thomas G. Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia. Studies in History, Literature and
60 Capitalism or rural socialism?
Philosophy, Macmillan, New York, 1968, 2 vols, especially the first one; and
Franco Venturi, Il moto decabrista e i fratelli Poggio, Einaudi, Torino, 1956.
3 See Heiko Haumann, A History of East European Jews, op. cit., pp. 86–91; as well
as Marco Brunazzi and Anna Maria Fubini (eds), Gli Ebrei dell’Europa Orientale
dall’utopia alla rivolta, Ed. di Comunità, Milano, 1985.
4 See Paolo Brera, Il Denaro. Saggi di economia e letteratura, Shakespeare & Co.,
Milano, 1984, especially pp. 42–44.
5 On the reform of the zemstvos, cf. Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, op.
cit.; with the enthusiastic hopes placed in them by Pavel Milyukov, Russia and its
Crisis, Collier-Macmillan, London, 1962 [1905], pp. 203–43.
6 On the crisis of Russian Liberalism, see Leonard Shapiro, Rationalism and
Nationalism in Russian Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, Yale Russian and
East European Studies, New Haven, 1967, especially pp. 143ff.
7 See Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen,
Knopf, New York, 1968 [1867], and From the Other Shore, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1979 [1849], with Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of
Russian Socialism 1812–1855, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1961; and
Venturi, Il populismo russo, op. cit., pp. 3–59.
8 Alexander Herzen, The Russian People and Socialism, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1979.
9 See, for example, the essay by the Serbian writer Svetozar Marković, “La lotta
sociale e politica in Europa”, and analysis of his thought in Marco Dogo’s
“Introduction” to Svetozar Marković, Il socialismo nei Balcani, Guaraldi, Firenze,
1975, especially pp. 10–24. See also Émile Zola, Germinale, Mondadori, Milano,
1976.
10 On Belinsky (who died in 1848 at the age of 37), see Shapiro, Rationalism and
Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 65ff.; Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire 1801–
1917, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967.
11 Cf. on these exponents of the Narodnichestvo, Walicki, The Controversy over
Capitalism, op. cit., pp. 56–75; Venturi, Il populismo russo, op. cit., vol. II, pp.
420ff.; Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, op. cit., vol. I. On Mikhailovsky a more
recent specific study by Giulia Lami has been published in Italy, Un ribelle legale,
Unicopli, Milano, 1990.
12 The Smorgon Academy, as we will later see, was one of the “communes” established
by the Narodniks to spread their way of thinking. Founded in 1867 in St. Peters-
burg, it only operated for two years until 1869 and its existence was discovered by
the police just a year after it had been closed.
13 See Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism, op. cit., p. 81.
14 Cf. Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to Be Done? Cornell University Press, Ithaca,
1989; with Leonard Shapiro, Rationalism and Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 106–10.
15 On this, compare Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, op. cit.; and Woodford D.
McClellan, Svetozar Marković and the Origins of Balkan Socialism, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1964, pp. 55–60.
16 Mikhailovsky had already begun a polemic with Spencer before dedicating himself
to Darwin, when in 1870 he published his work Darwin’s Theory and Social Sci-
ence. That same year Tkachev had expressed his ideas on social Darwinism in the
essay Science in Poetry and Poetry in Science. See Giulia Lami, Un Ribelle Legale,
op. cit., pp. 68ff.; and Franco Venturi, Il populismo, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 332ff. To
get an idea of the debate on science, modernity and religion between Great Britain
and Russia it is interesting to reconstruct the timing of certain important events.
Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species and The Origin of Man
respectively in 1859 and 1871. Pope Pius IX condemned, among other things, the
absolute popular sovereignty and neutrality of the State over religion in the ency-
clical Quanta cura, published in 1864. The pope added to this document the
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 61
Syllabus, a summary of behaviours considered execrable by the Papacy including
freedom of conscience, Liberalism, and the ideas of progress and modernity. In
Russia Danilevsky’s nationalism and creationist anti-Darwinism (addressed below)
surfaced between 1869 and 1871; and while the “Going to the people” movement
arose between 1873 and 1874, Narodnik reactions to social Darwinism dated back
to the 1860s and resurfaced with Mikhailovsky, at least up until 1875–76.
17 Alexander II was called the “liberator” because he signed the decrees abolishing
serfdom in 1861.
18 As is well known, Zemlya i Volya had actually been set up in 1876 (drawing
inspiration for its name from the organisation previously founded by Herzen and
disbanded in the 1870s), but it soon split into two groups that followed very dif-
ferent strategies: Chernyi Peredel (or “Black Division”) emphasised the need to
promote the goal of gradually assigning black lands (so called because volcanic ash
from the Pacific coast, brought by the rains, makes these lands in Ukraine highly
fertile) to poor peasants; the Narodnaya Volya group (whose name played upon
the double meaning of the word Volya, i.e. Will, but also Liberty, of the People/
Narod) aimed at favouring a more rapid change in politics, insisting on a radical
strategy that resorted to terrorism.
19 On Artel, see in particular Francis Conte, The Slavs, Boulder, NY, 1995, pp. 252–55.
20 For Bakunin’s opinion on the rural communities, see Mikhail Bakunin, State and
Anarchy, Revisionist Press, New York, 1976. See also the biography of Edward H.
Carr, Michael Bakunin, Macmillan, London, 1975.
21 Israel Getzler, “Georgij V. Plehanov: la dannazione dell’ortodossia”, in AA.VV.,
Storia del Marxismo, Einaudi, Torino, 1978–82, vol. 2, pp. 413–40.
22 See Marx-Engels, India, Cina, Russia, Milano, 1965, p. 246; also see Valentin
Gitermann, Storia della Russia. Dalle origini alla vigilia dell’invasione napoleonica,
La Nuova Italia, Coll. Strumenti, Firenze, 1992, vol. II, pp. 415–16.
23 Cf. Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, op. cit., p. 61; with Teodor
Shanin, Russia as a “Developing Society”, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1985, vol. 1;
Theodore H. Von Laue, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia, Athe-
neum, New York, 1974; and more recently, Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and
Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill,
1982.
24 On this topic see Augusta Dimou’s doctoral dissertation Paths towards Modernity:
Intellectuals and the Contextualization of Socialism in the Balkans, European
University Institute, Fiesole, 2003.
25 We will return to this concept in the Conclusion and in the basic bibliography on
the topic, to which the reader may refer.
26 Cf. on Marković in Switzerland, see Svetozar Marković, Il socialismo nei Balcani,
op. cit., p. 34; but also the 1910 volume by Jovan Skerlić, Svetozar Marković.
Njegov život, rad i ideje, Prosveta, Beograd, 1966; Đorđe Mitrović i Savo Andrić,
Svetozar Marković i njegovo doba, Rad, Beograd, 1978, pp. 59–88.
27 On relations between Marković and Karavelov see the records of the Yugo-
Bulgarian conference published by the Serbian Academy, SANU, Svetozar Mar-
ković i Ljuben Karavelov u kontekstu slovenske književnosti i kulture, Beograd,
1992. On Karavelov see S. Bobchev, “Любен Каравелов” [Lyuben Karavelov], in S.
Velikov (ed.), Петко Р. Славейков, Любен Каравелов, Христо Ботев, Захари
Стоянов: В Спомените на Съвременниците Си [Petko R. Slaveikov, Lyuben Kar-
avelov, Hristo Botev, Zakhari Stoyanov: v spomenite na Sŭvremennicite Si (In the
Memories of their Contemporaries)], Sofia, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1967,
especially pp. 224 and 229; or, J. Nathan, История на Икономическата Мисъл в
България [Istoriya na Ikonomicheskata Misŭl v Bŭlgarija (The History of Economic
Thought in Bulgaria)], Sofia, State Publishing Company “Science and Art”, 1964,
pp. 43–49.
62 Capitalism or rural socialism?
28 See Dimitar Blagoev, Кратки Бележки из Моя Живот [Kratki belezhki iz Moya
Zhivot (Short Notes of My Life)], Sofia, Bulgarian Communist Party Publications,
1949, especially pp. 21–28; and by the same author, Избрани Произведения [Izbrani
Proizvedeniya (Selected Works)], Sofia, Bulgarian Communist Party Publications,
1950, and Сборник Документи [Sbornik dokumenti (Documentary Collection)],
Sofia, Bulgarian Communist Party Publications, 1956; insisting on Blagoev’s
Marxist education, J. Nathan, История на, op. cit., p. 6; on Blagoev and his
relationship with Russian Marxism and industrialisation in Bulgaria, see also
Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, op. cit.
29 On the influence exerted on Narodnichestvo and Russian socialism in the Balkans,
cf. Cyril Black, Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans, in Charles and Bar-
bara Jelavich, The Balkans in Transition, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1963, pp. 145–83 (with an extensive bibliography on the subject); and Latinka
Perović, Srpski socijalisti XIX veka, Rad, Beograd, 1985, 2 vols, especially vol. II
dedicated to Svetozar Marković; and Bianca Valota, Constantin Dobrogeanu-
Gherea tra marxismo e populismo, CIRSS, Milano, 1984.
30 On the impact of capitalism and money on agrarian economies in the Balkans, see
the still insuperable Iván T. Berend-György and G. Ránki, Economic Development
in East-Central Europe, op. cit.
31 On the reception of nationalism in Russia by the Slavophiles and the penetration of
this West European idea in Russia, see more extensively Milyukov, Russia and its
Crisis, op. cit., pp. 43–52.
32 V. Alain Touraine, Critica della modernità, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1997 (Critique of
Modernity, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1995).
33 On the importance of spirituality in Russian culture, see Dmitrij Tschizewskij,
Russian Intellectual History, Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1978.
34 Cf. Andrzey Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia
in 19th Century Russian Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975; on Chaadaev the
most complete work is still that of Charles Quênet, Lettres philosophiques de Pierre
Tschaadaieff, Paris, 1937; see also Dmitrij Tschizewskij, Russian Intellectual
History, op. cit.; and Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, op. cit., vol. 1.
35 Regarding peasant insurrections in Russia, suffice it to think of those promoted by
Stenka Razin (1670–71) and Pugachev (1773–75), two leaders who became very
close to Bakunin. For their stories see Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of
Russia, op. cit. Regarding the village community in the experience beyond the
Russian and Slavic world, cf. the two useful anthologies edited by Massimo
Guidetti and Paul H. Stahl, Il sangue e la terra, and Le radici dell’Europa, but
published for Jaca Book, respectively in 1977 and 1979. Finally, keep in mind that
the system of collective taxation, through the joint responsibility of commune
members, was widespread not only in Russia but also in France up to the begin-
ning of the 19th century. See Margaret Levi, Of Role and Revenue, University of
California Press, Berkeley and London, 1988.
36 Von Haxthausen and his writings are broadly discussed in endnote 33 of Chapter 1,
to which we refer the reader. As for Vladimir Leskov, see in particular his volume
Il popolo russo e lo stato from 1850, while on the historian of law Ivan Belyaev
there are numerous writings referred to by Valentin Gitermann in his Storia della
Russia, op. cit., vol. II, p. 202. On Von Schlötzer see Angelo Tamborra, L’Europa
centro-orientale nei secoli XIX e XX (1800–1920), Vallardi editoriale, Milano,
1971, pp. 80–81. On Danilevsky, see both Tamborra, op. cit., pp. 256–57; and
Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, op. cit., vol. I; as well as Dmitrij Tschizewskij,
Russian Intellectual History, op. cit.; and A.G. Zdravomyslov, Межнациональные
конфликты в постсоветском постранстве [Mezhdunacionalnye konflikty v
postsovetskom postranstve], Aspekt Press, Moskva, 1997, p. 204.
 Capitalism or rural socialism? 63
37 Nikolai Danilevsky first published his book Rossiya i Evropa (Russian and Europe)
in 1869 in the journal Zarya; reworked in successive stages in later editions, a
reprinted version of the original Russian Rossiya i Evropa is what appears
published by Johnson Reprint Corp., New York, 1966.
38 In indicating the goal of returning Christianity to St. Sophia, use of the adjective
“oriental” was deliberately avoided, to point out how the project referred to the idea
of Christianity tout court. In fact, the reader should keep in mind that in the pop-
ular culture of Orthodoxy (a term meaning “righteous belief”), it is Roman Cath-
olicism that appears schismatic and the Pope an unacceptable monarchical figure,
whereas bishops and patriarchs are supposed to represent the descendents of
Christ’s Apostles operating in a space that is certainly universal but geopolitically
generated by an Empire in which Rome had lost its function as the capital in 330
as desired by Constantine, so that not the Vatican (located in a provincial city) but
the church of St. Sofia (in the heart of the capital) was still supposed to represent
the centre of Christianity. This centre appears to be culturally “violated” (as is well
known, in fact, the church of St. Sofia was transformed into a mosque by the
Sublime Porte after Bisanzio’s conquest in 1453) and – in Slavophile thought as
well as that of religious Orthodoxy – should have been brought back to its original
function; this interpretation, however, was referred to politically by Danilevsky. See
Nicolas Zernov, Eastern Christiandom. A Study of the Origin and Development of
the Eastern Orthodox Church, Putnam, New York, 1961.
39 There is very little literature on this topic. See Angelo Tamborra, L’Europa Centro-
Orientale, op. cit., pp. 251–53, 310–12.
3 The “peasant state”
Ideology and politics of agrarian
movements in Central-Eastern Europe
between the two world wars

3.1 Formation and characteristics of agrarian parties

The Great War caused epochal geopolitical upheaval in Central-Eastern
Europe, but did not pave the way (nor could it have) for resolving any of the
economic and social problems that had started to come to a head before the
conflict began.
Compared with before the war, the unresolved issue of development and
how to achieve it appeared in many ways even more acute in the last months
of 1918. Once weapons were laid down and the map of the European con-
tinent had been drastically redrawn, the new East European states – arisen
from the imperial ashes – had to contend with the problems of unemploy-
ment, the relationship between agriculture and industry, and social pressures
triggered not only by the development of ideas and transformation, but also
by the advent of Bolshevism in Russia.
In addition, at the time of Narodnichestvo, the controversy over capitalism
had involved intellectuals and groups of elites who were not directly in control
of power. After the Great War, however, there was a clear qualitative leap in
the debate over development as it directly involved men and political forces
who were – at least in part – in government and administration. Thus the
debate took on a theoretical but also a concrete dimension as it entailed daily
decision making, well beyond guiding and mobilising consensus. This was
obviously a major turning point.
In Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the protagonists of this phase
were the peasant parties.
Though these parties were already part of the political scene in some
countries towards the end of the 19th century, they underwent a phase of
expansion and consensus especially between the two world wars. During the
1920s they gained direct experience governing, creating a new network of
cultural, political and value-based relationships founded on the concept of
rurality, in competition with and occasionally in cooperation with Bolshevism.1
Their political roots were extremely varied because nearly all Central-
Eastern European countries (with the exception of Bulgaria, Hungary and the
Baltics) had to contend with processes of national integration and
 The “peasant state” 65
amalgamation between territories that had gone through different experiences
and cultures under different empires. In other words, while peasant move-
ments defined their own strategies and the development/modernity issue
became the focus of the political agenda, the new regional geopolitical situation
caused a reshuffling of networks of relationships and new métissage. At the
time, however, the societies were not adequately equipped to adapt to these
new situations.
In Czechoslovakia, the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, headed
first by the Czech Antonin Švehla, and then – significantly – by the Slovak
Protestant Milan Hodža, obtained a relative majority and remained in power
from 1922 to 1938. This party was established in 1896 in Bohemia by a group
of well-to-do farmers. In 1922, after the rise of the Czechoslovak Republic, it
merged with Slovak farmers, dominated by Protestants who were richer and
better educated than the Catholic peasants, and had little to do with nation-
alism, which later became the pro-fascist branch of the Catholic Church.
Thanks to this convergence and the post-war allocation of land that had
belonged to German and Hungarian large estate owners, this party was able
to attract consensus among Slovak as well as Czech farmers. The party’s
initial success enabled it to penetrate local public administration and subse-
quently the banking system. This gained it the support – increasingly restric-
tive – of the urban middle class and the financial classes, at the cost, however,
of a gradual loss of its marked sensitivity to the issues of rural life.
The Croatian Peasant Party followed a similar path. It was one of the most
active and most firmly established agrarian parties and became popular in the
new Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Founded in 1904, it was originally dominated
by the cultural and ideological ideas of Ante Radić, as well as by the fiery and
radical-republican spirit of his younger brother Stjepan. Following the latter’s
death, due to complications following an assassination attempt in parliament
in 1928, the party became heavily influenced by the arrival, in the inter-
mediate ranks, of businessmen, Zagreb intellectuals and reactionary members
of the bourgeoisie, who saw in it a more solid bulwark against the political
circles of Belgrade. This led to the emergence of a new leader, the socially
moderate Vlatko Maček. It was thanks to him that, in 1939, a compromise
was achieved involving the sharing of institutions on a nationalist basis, with
Serbs from the capital.2
Numerous other Yugoslav parties also featured a strong peasant connota-
tion, for no other reason than the fact that they drew the majority of their
support from the countryside. In spite of this, basing themselves upon the
largest electoral base available did not necessarily mean that peasant culture
and views were reflected in their political programmes. This was the case of
the Serb Radicals. The bulk of this party’s electorate was in the countryside
but from the 1880s, at the beginning of its political ascent, onwards, its
orientation remained heavily influenced by provincial city merchants and
urban intellectuals. Thus peasantism as a political-cultural current did not
66 The “peasant state”
have a leading role among this party’s rank and file; this role remained a
prerogative of the essentially urban classes.
However, even where peasantism had managed to permeate party orienta-
tions, this varied according to the area of the country and pre-unification
experiences, and was mainly an expression of diversified cultural movements.
In Slovenia, for example, Christian-social (if not openly clerical) orientations
prevailed, while in Serbia genuine peasant parties suffered divisions due to
personal conflicts which often left them on the sidelines politically, or they
assumed radical ideas which enabled them to attract only limited support, as
in the case of the highly respected Agrarian Left of Dragoljub Jovanović. In
the 1920s and 1930s he belonged to the Farmers Union (Savez zemljor-
adnika), headed by the seasoned politician Jovan Jovanović, before splitting
off and forming an autonomous group.
Like Yugoslavia, Poland had a variety of peasant movements stemming
from different historical experiences from the period after it was partitioned
in the late 18th century. One of the most important parties was the con-
servative Piast, headed by Wincenty Witos, with its major electoral support in
former Austrian Galicia. In Kongresówka (i.e. the Poland created by the
Congress of Vienna, which was originally guaranteed administrative auton-
omy, albeit within the Russian Empire), on the other hand, there was con-
siderable support for a more radical and left-leaning party known as
Wyzwolenie (Liberation) led by Jan Da̧bski.
There were profound differences between the two groups, making any
attempt at alliance problematic. Piast activists, in fact, were prepared to listen
to the clergy, and were ardent supporters of state welfare for small landowners.
They also favoured gradual land reform, fearing that in the eastern regions of
the country, anything else might benefit Ukraine and Belarus to the detriment
of Poles. In other words, Piasts reflected both the Catholic reformism of the
Habsburgs and ethno-national concerns.
Wyzwolenie, on the other hand, was influenced by Russian Narodnichestvo,
anti-clerical and in favour not only of more radical land reform, but also of
administrative decentralisation to the advantage of the minorities, and did not
hesitate on many occasions to align itself with Piłsudski’s socialists.
Tensions between the two movements began to lessen only towards the end
of the 1920s, when repression imposed by General Piłsudski led to Witos’s
arrest along with other agrarian leaders and thus forced the peasant leader to
flee to Czechoslovakia after his release. Following these events and elections
marked by intimidation and iniquity, on the eve of the Great Depression
which hit the Polish countryside extremely hard, the two groups decided to
join forces in a common formation, the Popular Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe).
In the meantime, in the countryside – and particularly in Galicia – peasant
discontent and radicalisation were growing, as demonstrated by repeated
strikes in 1931, 1932 and 1935. In such difficult conditions it was up to
Maciej Rataj from Piast, who had promoted the unification of the two par-
ties, to hold together the ranks of the newly formed party, until he was shot
 The “peasant state” 67
by the Nazis in 1940 and replaced by Mikołajczyk, who headed up the party
from exile in London.
The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, under the direction of Aleksandŭr
Stamboliyski, was a more uniform and, in many ways, a socially more
courageous and innovative example (it introduced mandatory community ser-
vice and sought a compromise with Yugoslavia regarding the issue of Macedo-
nia), although it had revolutionary touches, tinged with an authoritarian bent.3
This party, founded in December 1899, suffered a dramatic electoral defeat
in 1902 and found itself on the brink of dissolution. Nonetheless, following
the entry of Stamboliyski as editor-in-chief of the Party newspaper Zemle-
delska Zashtita, popular support began to grow, thanks to his stance in the
fight against monarchic absolutism, in the name of protecting the social and
political rights of the emerging classes. Later, the dire economic situation,
brought about as a result of the long period of military engagements from the
Balkan Wars to the Great War, allowed Stamboliyski to rise in the Bulgarian
government. He thus became the leading figure in the country’s political
life in the immediate post-war period, and in 1920 he almost obtained an abso-
lute majority in parliament, but three years later he was overthrown and killed
in the course of a bloody coup which marked the end of the transforming force
of the peasant movement.
In Romania, the National Peasant Party, which numbered among its lea-
ders Ion Michalache, Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Stere, was formed between
1918 and 1926 through a process of alliances and mergers of Transylvanian
and Bessarabian movements with political organisations of the Regat (the old
kingdom, which came into being in 1859 through the unification of the
principalities of Moldavia and Walachia).
Originally, before the World War, the Romanian peasant movement had
been influenced by agrarian socialist ideas from Russia and displayed extreme
radicalism, which continued to worry the country’s large landowners and
ruling classes even after the bloody repression of the 1907 revolt. However,
following the war and the merger with the Transylvanian movement of
Maniu, programmes and policies began to include a curious mixture of
agrarian and regional needs, dominated by autarkic-nationalist views of the
economy. Even Narodnik and socialist-democratic exponents such as Stere
believed that industrialisation was not an essential part of development,
whereas broad agrarian reform and “authentic rural democracy” were con-
sidered essential aspects of the peasant political programme. Stere actually
emphasised on several occasions how “original and organic Romanian rural
civilisation was”, in stark contrast to urban culture, which he considered
“imported” and therefore extraneous to his country’s traditions.4
This situation was later reversed when the Party came to power in 1928.
Opening the country up to foreign capital meant that it was now possible to
improve the country’s accounts and stabilise the currency, but it also encour-
aged the bourgeoisie to enter Party ranks, to the detriment of the peasant
element and the reformists. Soon internal divisions set in, along with growing
68 The “peasant state”
disillusionment in rural areas. King Carol, who had recently returned to the
throne, exploited this situation by putting an end to the Party’s involvement in
government (and to the Romanian peasant movement’s ambitions) in 1931.
Hungary was the only country where the peasant movement remained
confined to the margins of national political life, as a consequence both of the
repression of the Revolution of the Councils5 and the fact that large land-
owners managed to remain in control for the 20-year period that followed.
Indeed, there was a Small Landowner’s Party, inspired by Narodnichestvo
and led by the sociologist István Szabó until his death in 1923. This party was
also in the government in the 1920s. However, as it lacked any type of radicalism,
it adapted to the social and political status quo until it completely lost any
reformist zeal. A new agrarian party attempted to re-emerge a few years later,
but was not able to represent any interests other than those of well-to-do
farmers. Other attempts followed in the 1930s but did not have any significant
effect on the country’s situation where other currents of thought remained
dominant throughout the 20-year interwar period, from anti-Semitism to
urbanist culture (not lacking in anti-capitalist elements), to the “Trianon
syndrome”.6
Finally, peasant parties also emerged in the Baltic countries, although in
the 1920s they were scattered in myriad formations, and were only able to
reflect their own particular interests, ending up by emphasising the nationalistic
dimension of their programmes rather than the social dimension.
Overall this picture of different situations that developed in individual
Central-Eastern European countries reflected one common trend, which was
dealing with the problem of the relationship between agriculture and industry,
at a point in time, at the end of the Great War, when a crucial new political
and institutional factor came into play: universal suffrage.
Unlike the situation in most of the West, in different countries of Central
and Eastern Europe, from Czechoslovakia to Poland and the three Baltic
countries, including Soviet Russia, suffrage was immediately extended to
women between 1917 and 1921. Only in the Balkans did women have to wait
until 1945 to have their rights recognised (with the exception of Turkey which
granted women the right to vote in 1934 and the partial exception of Bulgaria
in 19387). The situation in Hungary was special in that restricted male and
female suffrage (granted in 1918) was soon extensively reduced as a result of
the repression following the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.8
It is also true that in Bolshevik Russia the right to vote, although extended
to women, was negated by the USSR Constitution of 1918 for certain social
categories such as private merchants, employers, ministers of religious cults
and former agents of the czarist police, and only in 1936 were these limitations
abolished.
In conclusion, despite some restrictions, an epoch-making change was
underway that only some northern European countries like Norway and
Denmark anticipated, and only briefly. Overall, in fact, discrimination against
women had remained in force in the most important Western countries, with
 The “peasant state” 69
only Great Britain and Spain granting women the right to vote between 1928
and 1931, while Italy, France, Germany and Belgium waited until the end of
the Second World War; in the United States, due to slavery before and the
persistence of racial discrimination afterwards, universal suffrage only came
into effect in 1965; Switzerland, on the other hand waited until 1971 to grant
women the right to vote.
This meant that in the interwar period, popular participation in choosing
the elite and political organisation maintained a partial, hierarchical and
patriarchal dimension in most of the continent, and especially in Western
Europe and, in part, in the Balkans. The coming to power in the years after
the Great War of numerous dictatorial systems in the East and the West
accented this fact, confirming the absence of Western democratic primacy, as
a die-hard mythology would have it, especially as fraud and open voting in
the countryside were widespread in Europe in the 1800s and, in fact, the
Hungarian magnates were inspired by these practices when they drastically
reduced democratic reforms (including voting), which had been approved
soon after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire.9
So the overall European picture at the end of the First World War was not
so differentiated in political-democratic terms that there was a hierarchical
East-West dichotomy distinctly in favour of the Western part. If anything, in
Central-Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Russia, holding the first elections
with broad (in many cases universal, as we have seen) suffrage coincided with
a phase of widespread uncertainty due to the complex construction of the new
geopolitical map. This went well beyond what the victorious powers had tried
to assert with the Paris peace treaties, due to the conflict’s protraction at least
until the Riga and Lausanne agreements were signed.10
Thus in Eastern Europe – in contrast to the more stable West, at least in
territorial terms – by the end of the 1920s a series of fragile, young states had
been formed with borders that were often contested by neighbours. Here the
process of forming new, shared institutions occurred with the Bolshevik
revolution on the doorstep, the presence of numerous ethnic minorities within
their borders, and such strong social pressure from below as to impose
immediate access to male suffrage or, depending on the country, universal
tout court. In agrarian societies still dominated by pre-modern aristocracy,
this meant (with the sole exception of post-revolutionary Russia) suddenly
including a mass of people – incomparably larger than in the past – in the
leadership selection process and political participation, even though most of
them lacked the proper cognitive instruments.
Under such conditions institutional, economic and cultural adjustment to
the new situations could be neither rapid nor simple, as it directly and heavily
influenced relationships between social forces and the balance of existing
powers.
These either had to be reconstructed from the bottom up, as in the case of
Soviet Russia, swept away by the upheaval of the revolution, civil war and
War Communism, or they had to contend with the persistent and still decisive
70 The “peasant state”
influence of the old aristocratic and magnate classes in confrontation with the
new classes, and more broadly the popular strata (which had been given the
right to vote). This segment of society was pleading for structural adjustments
to meet their needs. These adjustments were necessarily as radical in spirit as
they were in content, compared to the existing political-social situation. It
was the radical nature of the tensions rising in each country, along with the
panic of the old ruling classes that felt as though this challenge was aimed at
the core of power held by them, and which they did not intend to give up,
which opened the way for dictators and the spread of pro-fascist and corporatist
sympathies.11
New parties and movements, old social structures and new classes found
themselves contending with the problems of consolidating states and adjusting
structures, with the nagging worry of having to lay more solid and promising
foundations for development, in the presence of a decision-making mechan-
ism caught between revolutionary impulses and the popular involvement of
the masses.
Under these conditions, the still weak urban bourgeoisie found it particu-
larly hard to identify a central role. They were viewed with suspicion by the
conservative nobility (intent on perpetuating its dominant position), and met
with widespread prejudice against cities and the networks of trans-European
relationships with which they had come into contact. This included the Jews
who had become particularly visible not only because of their social functions
and cultural cosmopolitanism, but also because they were a target of popular
superstition and religious-based diffidence on the part of Christians.
In the meantime the organisation of consensus, political communication
and party militancy had to take fully into account, among other things, the
repercussions of development policies on local cultural sensitivities.
Indeed, a double and profound change, the consequence of the beginning
of mass society, was beginning to be felt, with implications that were still
completely unpredictable. On the one hand, the attraction of the industrial
means of production and its controversial effects of homologising, mixing
and/or difference compared with Western reference models increasingly lim-
ited political choices. On the other, the dilemma of how to deal with the new
métissage appearing on the horizon quickly came out of closed groups’
drawing rooms to become a focal point of concern for increasingly broad
swaths of society, until it involved and mobilised all male voters and, in some
countries, even women voters.
Decisively, voter behaviour and orientations were influenced by the revolu-
tionary wave that hit Europe after 1917. Peasants (many of whom were dis-
banded soldiers or those on leave, or about to desert) reacted in particular,
especially where the claims of radical agrarian reforms and pressure in favour
of small landholders initially appeared to be getting out of hand. This reac-
tion was also consistent with widespread aspirations to egalitarianism as a
modern form of asserting equal opportunities for access to food and a decent
existence.
 The “peasant state” 71
Indeed, Lenin’s “Decree on the Land” of November 1917 had outlined an
agrarian programme based on the division of large landed estates and the
creation of a large class of individual peasant farmers.12 In the specific case of
Russia, this was carried out through the usufruct of estates and not by creat-
ing private property, as had been actually openly indicated in the decree.
However, due to their general mentality and political culture, Russian pea-
sants did not consider legal ownership a priority, whereas free enjoyment of
the fruits of their labour was guaranteed by the decree. However, aside from the
regulations that governed access to a right, it was the proclaimed principle that
won out on an international level. There is no doubt that Lenin’s decree fired
the hopes and imaginations of poor or landless peasants in the rest of Central-
Eastern Europe, triggering the fear among the noble aristocracy of Bolshevik
“contagion” and the loss of popular consensus. This was also strongly felt by
the agrarian parties and governments of the countries located between the
Baltic and the Aegean, between the Russian and the Germanic spheres.
The existence of a situation potentially exposed to the risk of revolution
was confirmed by the spontaneous occupation of the large landed estates,
with the help of the demobilised soldiers from the central empires that were
breaking up, and by the albeit short-lived experience of the Soviet Republic in
Hungary.13
Consequently, as soon as the war was over, the governments of Central-
Eastern Europe and the Balkans were forced to adopt radical land reforms
which were supposed to do away with the large landed estates and extend
private land ownership (which the peasants of those areas felt very strongly
about, unlike peasants in Russia). However, these reforms were only partially
carried out following the ebb of the revolutionary movement, mainly to the
detriment of previously dominant national groups (such as the Austro-Germans
and Hungarians).

3.2 “Peasantism”, the idea of a “third way” and modernisation

It was in this context that an original political orientation known as pea-
santism began to take shape and define itself on a theoretical and policy level.
Supporters of this movement began by adopting autonomous guidelines that
cherished the hope of a “third way” between Western capitalism and Soviet
socialism.14
Peasantism’s ideas actually interwove at least in part (as we will see in the
next chapter) with orientations that had emerged in some currents of Bol-
shevik thought, whereas agrarian conservative parties were also politically
active in Northern and Central Europe, for example in Austria, Switzerland
and Denmark (much less effectively in France and Holland), where criticism
of industry and finance as well as the rejection of nationalisation had been
inspired by large landholders’ prevailing clericalism and anti-Bolshevik pres-
sures. In Central-Eastern Europe, however, social radicalism of poor or land-
less peasants had gained the upper hand, at least in the aftermath of the
72 The “peasant state”
Great War. This radicalism had been stimulated as much by the Russian
Revolution as it had by the disintegration of the great supranational dynasties
of pre-modern origin.
So the influence of small private landowners in these regions grew – gen-
erating great expectations, which were then in part disappointed – while the
challenges of industrialisation placed the peasant parties of Central-Eastern
Europe in a very different position from similar movements in Scandinavia or
the Alps. This was because in Eastern Europe they had to deal with the pro-
blem of development and its compatibility in situations that were economic-
ally almost exclusively agricultural, and rural in terms of social organisation.
The result was a wide-ranging reflection which brought together Narodnik
ideas, a certain romantic-rural outlook, an odd mixture of private property
interests and institutions with mainly collective representation, a certain anti-
urban animosity, as well as a particular conception of industrialisation and
international cooperation. This was a peculiar mixture of modernising moti-
vations and pre-modern resistance that sought its place between capitalism
and Soviet socialism.
All these facets were taken on board by the agrarian parties of these Eur-
opean regions squeezed between the German and Russian spheres. They tried
to present themselves to voters as political groupings representing all pea-
sants, considered members of an essentially homogeneous social class in
composition and interests. They were bent on taking over the leadership in
their individual countries either by adopting a revolutionary stance (as was
the case especially in Bulgaria), or a constitutional strategy (as in Czechoslovakia
and Poland).
In reality, the countryside of Central-Eastern Europe reflected a complex
social stratification, where farm labourers coexisted alongside farmers big and
small, together with the owners of large estates (with the exception of Bul-
garia, which lacked the latter). Despite this, at least in their initial phase, and
specifically because they were driven by post-war revolutionary tensions, the
aim of the peasant parties was to embody the most radical core of the rural
world, in which social egalitarian claims linked to the spread of small farms
prevailed, to the detriment of the large landed estates. Furthermore, they
promoted policies that entailed the state’s active role in the economy, at least
regarding some crucial sectors, including the support of cooperative activities
(in particular they sought state intervention to alleviate their dependence on
financial and marketing intermediaries), access to literacy and secondary
education, the development of agricultural schools, as well as the creation of
model farms and special state-run centres for leasing tractors and other
agricultural machinery, called “agricultural stations” (after a model also
adopted by the kolkhozy in the USSR at the end of the 1920s called MTS –
Mashino-Traktornye Stancii, or “Machine and Tractor Stations”).15
Subsequently, especially in the late 1920s and increasingly during the 1930s,
when their experience at governing (with the exception of Czechoslovakia)
was being eroded by the advent of dictatorships, and everywhere the influx of
 The “peasant state” 73
foreign capital had grown or the urban middle classes were becoming more
powerful, they turned to more socially cautious policies, often more sensitive
to nationalistic appeals.
Despite such variations, for the entire 20-year period the underlying “phi-
losophy” of these groups remained closely linked to the notion that the
aspects of peasant life were superior to those of city life. The city in turn was
associated with the cultural and political view of the bourgeoisie and the
working class.
As a result, the city-countryside dualism ended up taking a form that was
rooted in a sort of “conflict of civilisations”. The city was blamed for exploi-
tation at work, the alienation of human beings and the creation of an artifi-
cial and polluted environment. The countryside, on the other hand, was
described in rather idyllic terms by peasantist theoreticians, including the
Croatian Rudolf Herceg, as a natural, pure, happy and economically self-
sufficient community, because here essential goods could be produced for
communal life, while the cities were forced to rely for their survival on
agricultural products.16
At the same time this polarisation encouraged and was an expression of
general resentment towards cities, which actually revealed the troubled and
uneasy position that rural Central-Eastern European society cultivated in
terms of the “development/backwardness” issue.
In the case of Bulgaria, this position was promoted by Stamboliyski him-
self, who intended to support the supremacy of villages over urban centres. In
his political writings he dwelt on the profound cultural difference that in his
opinion separated the city from the countryside. To the former he explicitly
attributed a conservative conception of life as it was founded on parasitism,
fraud, laziness, perversion, corruption and usury, in contrast to the country-
side, where life as he perceived it was – in principle – democratic, to the point
that the juxtaposition of the two spheres of society became cultural, spiritual
and material. Therefore, Stamboliyski concluded, the city-countryside conflict
was profoundly political.17
In his vision, marked by a strong dichotomous polarisation, villages
yearned to be treated equally and no longer like the “sons of a lesser god”.
Thus, he asserted, villages had the right to have their own administrative
autonomy, authority over the educational system at least until high school,
control of the post offices, telegraph, banks, pharmacies and medicines …
Later Stamboliyski came to believe that society should be organised in six
social orders, at the top of which stood the farmers and artisans, followed
by wage-earners and workers, down to the lower levels of the ladder, where
the world of trade and that of public and private bureaucracy/administration
were to be found.
In line with these ideas, once Stamboliyski joined the Bulgarian govern-
ment, he restricted the rights of lawyers, of whom the Bulgarian rural world
had fostered a negative stereotype. He struck out against corn traders by
establishing a central state consortium, he intimidated journalists and he
74 The “peasant state”
sidelined intellectuals from the party, favouring peasants from both the fiscal
point of view and in matters of education and schooling. In particular, he
instituted obligatory three-year middle schools after the first four years of
elementary school. He also replaced military service with a sort of civil ser-
vice lasting 12 months, in which youth worked free for the state-building
infrastructure. This was a project that attracted the attention of the League of
Nations and actually anticipated the formation of the “peace corps” or civil
protection corps.
Stamboliyski’s peasantist view also had an international component, as we
will see in the next chapter. This view contained not only the Bulgarian
leader’s personal sensitivity to the topic of world peace, but also the prospect
of a Balkan Federation (which began with an agreement with Yugoslavia on
the Macedonian question), and worldwide development of the “peasant
movement” or the “green wave”.
Overall, however, and beyond the peasant radicalism that developed in
Bulgaria, urban centres were critically identified by all agrarian movements of
the time with the typical aspects of Western society, as cities had become
centres of industry, finance, insurance companies and commercial and trade
fair activities. All this was seen as a threat to the existence of a rural way of
envisaging life, production and social relations. Cities were seen as places of
oppression and the denial of rights, as the price disadvantages felt by those in
the country were considered a direct consequence of workers’ protests against
the high cost of living in cities, while the low level of capital investment in
rural areas was attributed to a punitive attitude that prevailed in credit insti-
tutions. In addition, the cities were increasingly considered to be centres of
inhuman mechanisation and promotion of corruption, on account of how
wealth was used and the way in which customs and culture had been altered
from the genuineness of the rural environment.18
Peasants were, in fact, considered the depository of human virtues.
According to Herceg’s thought, peasants belonged to a sort of cast destined
by history for final triumph: in borrowing Marxist ideas, Herceg asserted that
peasants constituted the “fifth state”, and would have the task, following the
emergence of the working class (considered the “fourth state”), to spark the
final conflict and finally establish an equal and just society, guaranteed by
peasants’ “natural disinterest” in exploiting others’ work.19
This approach stemmed from the conviction, as irrational as it was fruit of
mystical constructions, which were quite widespread not only in Central-
Eastern Europe and not only at that time, according to which peasants’ moral
superiority derived from the fact that they were “natural men”, or expressions
of an ancient way of life, connected to nature, to its cycles, to the healthiness
of its environment, and in the fundamentalist Christian version, exactly for
these reasons, closer to God.
Overall, the peasantist ideology asserted a view of reality based on the
exaltation of a “primitive way of life” (acknowledging romantic and anti-
modern influences), even recalling ancient pagan fertility cults. In conclusion,
 The “peasant state” 75
the peasant monopoly of virtue derived directly from his closeness to the
earth, considered the mother of life. Consequently, the pressing and urgent
call for supremacy of the “natural law” drew legitimacy and strength from the
relation between man and the earth, between the peasant and his field, where
his main values were proven, including individualism, respect for life and
therefore the rejection of violence and the inclination to pursue development
through peace.20
For some time the cultural and universalising link between nature, agri-
culture and peace had been synthesised in the Russian language, which sig-
nificantly attributed to the word “Мир” (mir) three concepts: the world, peace,
and government as expressed by the rural communes.
This system, now also political-ideological, designed by the agrarian
movement, did not only re-propose this “philosophy”, but by exalting the
intimate nexus between man and the earth, established a direct link between
farm ownership and the right exercised over the land, identifying the latter
with the geopolitical limits of the state, according to an approach that showed
itself to be firmly rooted in local political culture, triggering hugely important
and long-term repercussions throughout the entire region.
In some peasant parties or at least in factions that reacted more strongly to
these appeals, this latter aspect acted as a stimulus to define political strate-
gies and theoretical points of reference in which the protection of ancestral
distinctiveness, popular traditions and local culture, associated mainly with
the habits and customs found all over the rural world, constituted the foun-
dation of national specificity. This approach can be traced back to a pri-
mordial, bucolic and anti-Enlightenment-type romantic view of the concept
of nation.21
In other words, this explains the tendency of peasant parties in the 1920s
and 1930s to become increasingly decisive interpreters of nationalism,
influencing government orientations even when they were excluded from
governments.
In his studies Hugh Seton-Watson, with tones not devoid of irony, men-
tioned many cases in which governments, when entertaining Western visitors,
strived to give a rustic representation of national identity. With the advent of
tourism and the images government agencies used to try to attract foreigners’
attention, they offered an ideologically folkloristic view of the country, to
which the nation’s recognisable traits were systematically traced back. Again
with this goal in mind, a broad photographic iconography confirms how at
that time during parades, public events and funerals, popular traditional
costumes of rural origin and national flags were widely used.
The interweaving of nationalism and peasantism thus often took on anti-
capitalist connotations, insofar as capitalism (as well as industry, finance and
urbanisation) represented a factor of social and cultural importation that was
responsible for altering national character. Along these lines, for example, was
László Németh, Hungarian writer, essayist and historian of ideas, who
denounced the dilution of the Hungarian spirit due to the alien nature of
76 The “peasant state”
capitalism that had penetrated the country and the social assimilation which
had come about, according to him, especially between 1860 and 1880, with
the penetration of “intruder” Slavs, Germans and Jews.22
The historian Gyula Szekfü took a much more radical approach, attribut-
ing Hungarians’ loss of control of the modernisation process to the 1867
Ausgleich with the importation of capitalism into Hungary and the “uncon-
trolled spread of Jews”. He thus assigned cultural and ideological legitimacy
to a simultaneously anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic view which was very suc-
cessful in Central-Eastern Europe (and which in certain ways, as we have
seen, was anticipated by czarist Russia), contributing to discrediting liberal-
ism, seen as an anti-national political current. The situation was similar in
Romania, where urban centres were more or less inhabited by ethnic mino-
rities including Jews, so that the polemics of country against city also
assumed the traits of a conflict between “national” and “foreign”. Defending
tradition openly conflicted with foreign development models of which the
Jews, as “intruders”, were pointed out as being the main propagators and
beneficiaries, while in Poland it was mainly the local emerging bourgeoisie
that fed anti-Semitism. They believed – as has already been mentioned – that
the Jews were “competitors”, capable of taking away from them what were
considered some of the most coveted business sectors.23
One of the few critics of this manifestation of narrow-minded, petty, racist
and xenophobic national sentiment, which was openly encouraged at uni-
versities especially in Poland and Romania (to the point that Hugh Seton-
Watson considered them the worst in Europe), was the Hungarian scholar of
international law and social sciences István Bibó. Bibó attributed the “defor-
mation of Central-Eastern Europe’s political culture” mainly to the profound
social and economic backwardness inherited from history, which had led to
an obsession with a distorted national character.24
However, it would be wrong to attribute a uniquely anti-modernist or anti-
industrial value to the peasantist movement as a whole, and its orientations
and emotions. This aspect was undoubtedly present, just as was the sensitivity
shown in finding a homogenous identity (albeit through rural culture and
emotional appeal) which placed peasantism in a frame of reference of modernity,
although this was based on attitudes and plans that were not always con-
sistent with its rational and scientific approach. Some prominent figures
within the peasant movements were tenaciously dedicated to defining ideas
and policies that reconciled industrial development with the needs of
agricultural production.
The Croatian Peasant Party ideologist Ante Radić, when explaining the
relationship between agriculture and industry, adapted a famous saying to
emphasise how “actually, industry was, is and will continue to be important.
But let me just say this: the factory and the railroads are only the stomach,
and the stomach receives its food from agriculture”.25
In this vein, and thus distancing himself from Stere’s anti-industrialist
radicalism, Virgil Madgearu, economist and ideologist of the Romanian
 The “peasant state” 77
Peasant Party, in 1923 formulated a reformist view of his country that focused
on development of the countryside but viewed industrial expansion in relation
to the needs of agriculture so as to mitigate the polarisation between city and
countryside. In his view, some sectors should be particularly privileged, for
example communication and transport systems, electrification, the develop-
ment of tools and machinery, as well as innovative manufacturing processes,
as these would contribute to qualitatively and quantitatively improving agri-
cultural production and people’s welfare. In this framework, the greatest cause
for worry was the growth of cartels, monopolies and trusts, which he considered
means for imposing unfavourable prices on agriculture, as well as protec-
tionist policies damaging to exports of food products, and thus in the final
analysis supportive of cities’ interests to the detriment of the countryside.
The problem of self-government in the countryside and protection of pea-
sant interests were also concerns shared by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, leader of
the Polish People’s Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe) in the 1930s and 1940s.
Though opposing a view of peasantism as the rural domination of society, he
became a supporter (albeit with much caution as he feared the disintegration
of the estates) of an agrarian policy founded on “healthy” individual farms
and the active participation of farmers in defining the country’s development
strategies. Moreover, he hoped to create a farming industry by promoting the
Wielkopolska region (where he came from), which he hoped might become
the main export centre of Polish products.
He also worked very hard to reduce peasant debt and create long-term
credit arrangements for agriculture. Part of this approach was his insistence
on the need to create new customs tariffs advantageous for the countryside,
when he collaborated on drafting of the “People’s Programme” approved on 9
July 1942, following the creation in London of the International People’s
Union, which included the representatives of peasant and people’s parties of
Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in exile in Great
Britain. It was again this aspect that persuaded him to fight for a Central-
European federation based in Warsaw and Prague, which was at the centre of
political negotiations under the auspices of the Foreign Office between 1940
and 1942.26 Hence Mikołajczyk’s position, like that of Madgearu, was not
based on a city–countryside conflict.
Other peasantist currents went even further, welcoming the prospect of
allying themselves with, or at least drawing nearer to, the working class. This
was the case of many small parties from the left wing of peasant movements
in Bulgaria (like the Pladne group, led by Nikola Petkov and George M.
Dimitrov), in Poland (Zwiazek Mlodziezy Wai Polskiej), in Serbia (Narodna
Seljačka Stranka) with Dragoljub Jovanović, or Petru Groza’s Ploughman’s
Front (Frontul Plugarilor) in Transylvania. These movements tended to join
up with the people’s fronts of the 1930s and work alongside the communists
during the fight against Nazism and fascism during the Second World War.27
The most important of these in policy terms were Pladne and Narodna
Seljačka Stranka. Pladne emerged following the coup of 1923, when
78 The “peasant state”
Stamboliyski’s Agrarian Union broke up into many factions. It took the name
of its daily newspaper (Pladne, i.e. “Noon”) and strove to keep Stamboliyski’s
ideals alive, declaring that it would pursue his policies tenaciously. Along
these lines Pladne bitterly criticised the Bulgarian leadership, which had
overturned the peasant government, accusing it of being fascist. They pro-
moted a democratic-agrarian economic view and supported a rapprochement
with Yugoslavia, as this was considered a key factor for the stability and
integration of the Balkans. Pladne was critical of the public administration
(both urban and rural), deeming it incapable of consolidating local transport,
health and schooling. Pladne saw in cooperation and non-denominational
education (as opposed to religious education) the two essential aspects for
promoting peasant democracy and social modernisation. From this perspec-
tive, it was close to some policies put forward by the Communist Party, with
which it ended up joining forces.28
Narodna Seljačka Stranka, on the other hand, took a mainly sociological
approach to the situation, which emerged from the thought and strong peasant/
popular personality of Dragoljub Jovanović. During his younger years he had
been a social democrat and had harboured antimonarchic sentiments, which
had resulted in his being thrown out of the University of Belgrade, where he
taught agrarian policies, in 1932. His view was that peasants were productive
individuals and, as such, they were also working people, and in the context of
the country’s very backward status he pushed for an alliance with the working
classes. Private property made sense, as he saw it, only if it did not become a
means of exploiting others, while decentralisation, local self-administration
and cooperation should become key aspects of a democratic state that saw the
peasants as the fundamental instrument for opposing fascism.
It was therefore a mutual aversion to fascism and strong idealistic support
for cooperation in the countryside that drove him to break away from the
Farmers Union (Savez zemljoradnika) in 1940 and join the People’s Front,
thereby drawing closer to the communists. He refused to accept the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, but acknowledged the validity of communist worker
representation and a federal and Yugoslav perspective, about which he felt
particularly strongly (Jovanović was, among other things, a keen supporter of
a Danubian-Balkan confederation, which was also one of Tito’s political
goals).
Nonetheless, Pladne and Narodna Seljačka Stranka, as well as the other
left-wing peasant parties, met with an identical, bitter fate after the Second
World War when they became victims of Cold War communism and ended
up being suppressed in 1947. Their leaders suffered an even worse fate: in
Bulgaria, Nikola Petkov was sentenced to death and hanged, while George
M. Dimitrov escaped abroad. In Yugoslavia, Jovanović was arrested and
remained in prison until 1955.
In reality, for the entire interwar period the distinction between peasantism
and Bolshevik Communism was rather subtle from the policy point of view,
as they were competing at the same time as they were working together,
 The “peasant state” 79
especially during the days of the NEP (Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika, or
New Economic Policy, as we shall see in the next chapter), and also given the
particular sensitivity shown by the agrarian parties toward aspects of solidarity
inherent in cooperation.
Cooperatives were, in fact, a crucially important element in the construc-
tion of what would be, according to Madgearu, the “Peasant State”. The
cooperatives were actually entrusted with the task of opposing intermediaries,
tradesmen, and the capitalist and financial institutions of the cities. Since
peasantism was basically founded on small family-run farms, this pooling of
resources was seen as the way to meet the needs of product marketing and to
produce greater economic, social and cultural benefits. All of this was based
on the idea of cooperation as a convergence of the interests of private indivi-
duals, in contrast, from this perspective, to the Soviet system, in which the
state’s authority had finally imposed itself on the kolkhozy, associating them
de facto with the sovkhozy.29 At the same time, there was the idea that coop-
eration could make up for liberal individualism and urban supremacy, by
facilitating the construction of a view of the common good as a limit to private
property.
Experiments along these lines were carried out in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria
and Romania, and the Serbian sociologists Mihailo Avramović and the
aforementioned Dragoljub Jovanović gave a special theoretical contribution
providing a broader and more systematic perspective. Jovanović was particu-
larly committed to drawing up plans for a Yugoslav peasant cooperative state,
which would include Bulgaria as well.30
There is no doubt, however, that the Croatian experiment based on the
Gospodarska Sloga (Economic Union) and the Seljačka Sloga (Peasant
Union) provided the most stimulating case in this area. The former was
involved in developing collective labour and the rural economy through its
vast network of branches, while the latter operated mainly in the field of
education and culture, promoting the development of studies of the history
and culture of the countryside and also literature and poetry featuring agri-
cultural themes.31 While on the one hand the latter sought to enhance the
value of peasant culture as national culture, on the other it carried out an
essential function of spreading knowledge and education.
So overall, and despite its heterogeneous nature, peasantism as a political
movement was an original attempt to formulate strategies which in dealing
with the changes imposed by modern life, aimed to create harmony between
agriculture and industry, and between countryside and cities. The leading role
would remain in the hands of the rural world, at least as far as their aspirations
were concerned. This would protect the cultural distinctiveness and solidarity
that united the peasants, and ensure “natural” development, consistent with the
environmental context, thus forging a national identity.
The experiment, however, did not work. The hope of creating “peasant
states” that could act on the world stage and represent a different way of
understanding development and the social organisation of daily life, as an
80 The “peasant state”
alternative to industrialisation pursued with different methods and aims from
Western liberalism and Soviet communism, was crushed by a number of
factors.
The first factor was the rapid imposition of dictatorships in Central-Eastern
Europe, starting with the violent repression that followed the fall of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic and the tragic coup in Bulgaria, which put an end
to the most radical current of peasantism in 1923. This was followed by less
bloody authoritarian, corporative and pro-fascist advances in other countries
in the area (the only exception being Czechoslovakia), and made it clear how
even at the beginning of the 1930s this late-Narodnik experiment was not
strong enough to maintain the dual concept of “development-participatory
democracy”, appealing as it did to such a differentiated social stratum as that
of the peasants.32
Second, the impact of the Wall Street financial crash in 1929 was devas-
tating for the East European agrarian systems. It deprived them not only of
Western financial investment, but above all of market outlets in capitalist
Europe. It is no coincidence that from 1929 to 1934 the Balkan countries
attempted to re-launch a sort of domestic market, bowing to pressure from
members of parliament of the Balkan Conferences who forced their govern-
ments to sign bilateral commercial agreements and harmonise the laws on
exchange rates and checks.33
This attempt did not last long, as the rise of Hitler and the strategy he
adopted to subordinate the agrarian economies of the East to German
industrial development de facto discouraged the efforts made by Central-
Eastern Europe and the Balkans to achieve recovery. The Neuer Plan, drafted
in September 1934 by Hjalmar Schacht, offered German industrial products
in exchange for foodstuffs from the East, thus establishing a preferential
relationship with Berlin. This relationship in fact turned out to be a gigantic
fraud, as in this way Hitler ensured food supplies while investing resources in
the arms industry, thus postponing the observance of agreements until he was
sufficiently powerful to threaten the stability of the region and thwart any
protests by the countries that had been deceived.34
In the end, from the cultural perspective, peasantism’s political proposals
remained ambiguously modern as they acknowledged some typical aspects of
modernity (like culture and education, political participation, the nation-state,
and science, especially if it was useful for rural development), whereas they
refused others (urbanisation, rationality and the capitalist organisation of
labour if it assigned agriculture a marginal position compared to industry).
Thus peasantism remained “half way” not just between capitalism and
Bolshevism, but also between modernity and the pre-modern past, even
though its proponents vaguely sensed how important some aspects would
become in the long term, such as environmental and landscape protection
or eco-sustainable development, themes that ran through their ideas in very
sketchy form and were more in the spirit of their projects.
 The “peasant state” 81
Under these conditions, the impetus for social change coming from the
countryside in 1918, which was taken up by peasantism and can be summed
up specifically as the demand for radical land reforms and the proliferation of
smallholdings, rapidly weakened. With it, the constructive force waned of the
original cultural and political project to construct a society that represented
not just an alternative to what was seen as the predominance of the city and
industry, but could have been a “third way” next to capitalism and Bol-
shevism, with the dignity of its own theoretical-ideological apparatus and
some of its own special policy aspects.
However, infiltrated by the urban financial bourgeoisie and representatives
of large and medium-size landed estates, peasantism soon became a solely
conservative force in which any reference to the popular identity of peasants
as a manifestation of national identity often deteriorated into nationalism.
The loss of its original idealistic inspiration and its retreat into nationalistic
narrow-mindedness contributed to the weakening of peasantism’s political
role, causing it to break with left-wing social elements. These returned to the
side of the working classes and communism in the years of the Popular Fronts
on the eve of the Second World War, which ensured – with consequent
upheaval – that any prospect of a “peasant state” was buried. This left com-
munism enough political space to present itself to the populations, exhausted
by renewed conflict, as the most convincing modernising force, even though it
was oriented towards an industrial and urban approach that confined
agriculture and the countryside to a marginal function.

Notes
1 An overall picture of the importance and fate of the peasant movements between
the two wars can be inferred from a comparative analysis of the national histories
of these countries. Cf., for example., the comparative studies by Hugh Seton-
Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918–1941, op. cit.; Joseph Rothschild,
East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, Washington University Press,
Seattle, 1983; the national histories by Maria Dowling, Czechoslovakia, Arnold,
London, 2002; Keith Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1994; Ivan Mužić, Stjepan Radić u kraljevini SHS, Matica Hrvatska, Zagreb, 1988;
Aleksander Gieysztor, History of Poland, PWN, Warsaw, 1979; Ljubo Boban,
Maček i politika HSS 1928–1941, 2 vols, Liber, Zagreb, 1974. On this topic see
also Bianca Valota, L’ondata verde, CIRSS, Milano, 1984.
2 On the Cvetković-Maček compromise the most extensive studies available are by
Ljubo Boban, Maček i politika Hrvatske seljačke stranke, op. cit.; and Alfredo
Breccia, Jugoslavia 1939–1941. Diplomazia della neutralità, Giuffrè, Milano, 1978.
3 On the Bulgarian agrarian experience, the most systematic study is still by John
Bell, Peasants in Power: Alexandŭr Stamboliski and the Bulgarian Agrarian
National Union 1899–1923, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1977.
4 See Kurt W. Treptow, “Populism and 20th Century Romanian Politics”, in Joseph
Held (ed.), Populism in Eastern Europe, op. cit., pp. 199–201.
5 In the revolutionary climate of the early post-war years, a Soviet republic (as it was
then called) was proclaimed in Hungary on 21 March 1919 under the leadership of
Béla Kun, and lasted until 1 August of the same year. See more extensively
82 The “peasant state”
Pasquale Fornaro, Crisi postbellica e rivoluzione, Angeli, Milano, 1987, pp. 57–122,
141ff.
6 “Trianon syndrome” indicates the feeling of national frustration that took root in
the country following the painful amputation of territories imposed by the peace
treaties after the Great War, reinforcing Hungarian revisionism. On political cultures
of that time see Miklós Lackó, “Populism in Hungary: Yesterday and Today”, and
György Csepeli, “In the Captivity of Narratives: The Political Socialization of
Populist Writers in Hungary, and the Origin of National Narratives in Eastern
Europe”, in Held (ed.), Populism in Eastern Europe, op. cit., pp. 107–43.
7 In Bulgaria male universal suffrage was granted in 1879. A law in 1937 granted the
right to vote to married, divorced and widowed women, who could exercise this
right in the elections a year later.
8 In Hungary Count Károlyi granted universal suffrage to men over 21 years of age
and to women over 24 years of age (but the latter had to have a certain level of
education) in January 1919. In 1920, once the Republic of the Councils had fallen,
only literate women had the right to vote. In 1922 the right to vote was further
restricted for men and women to the point that in order to control farmers, they
resorted in the countryside to an open vote. In fact, universal suffrage was
introduced in Hungary only in 1945.
9 Cf. Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder, Anthem Press, London, 2002, pp.
73–76; and John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of the Western Civilization, op.
cit., p. 292; and for Hungary see Rothschild, East Central Europe, op. cit., pp. 152–55;
or Péter Hanák (ed.), Storia dell’Ungheria, op. cit.
10 Cf., on the peace treaties, Francesco Caccamo, L’Italia e la “Nuova Europa”, Luni,
Milano, 2000; with Renée Hirschon, “Espulsioni di massa in Grecia e Turchia: la
convenzione di Losanna del 1923’, in Marco Buttino (ed.), In fuga. Guerre, carestie
e migrazioni nel mondo contemporaneo, L’Ancora, Napoli, 2001, pp. 23–33; and
Gieysztor, History of Poland, op. cit., pp. 502–6.
11 Enlightening on this topic is still the study by Jerzy W. Borejsza, Il fascismo e
l’Europa Orientale. Dalla propaganda all’aggressione, Laterza, Bari, 1981.
12 The “Decree on the Land” has recently been re-issued by Ronald Grigor Suny, The
Structure of Soviet History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. 64–65;
among the most important features characterising them was the creation of a
national land fund, created through the acquisition – without compensation – of
land property; the assignment to the local administrations and villages of the task
of proceeding with the distribution of the farms to the peasants without distinction
of gender; the ban on paid labour; and the protection of technologically advanced
farms like model farms where division was not applied.
13 On this subject see Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars, op. cit. The
impact of the Bolshevik revolution was particularly felt in Bessarabia, where the
Romanian military intervention of January 1918, though justified by reasons con-
nected to the idea of national unity, was actually encouraged by the desire to
restore the large landed estates that the peasants had occupied and split up. See
Charles King, The Moldovans, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 2000, pp. 32–35.
14 The study most determined to synthesise peasantism as theory, scattered in the
thousands of streams of political and cultural orientations expressed within all the
agrarian parties and by their leaders, was that by David Mitrany, Il marxismo e i
contadini, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1954, whose Italian title, meaning “Marxism
and the peasants”, is in some ways a dilution of the original English title, much
more expressive of the author’s ideological intentions, which read Marx against the
Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism (1st ed. University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, 1951).
15 On the topic see Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. A Study of
Collectivization, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1968.
 The “peasant state” 83
16 Cf. for example, Ghiţa Ionescu, “Eastern Europe”, in Ghiţa Ionescu and Ernest
Gellner (eds), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics, Weindelfel and
Nicolson, London, 1969, p. 108; and Rudolf Herceg, Nemojmo zaboraviti:
Hrvatska politika mora biti seljačka, Zagreb, 1928.
17 See in particular, Aleksandŭr Stamboliyski, Селото и градътъ (писано въ зат-
вора) [Seloto i gradt (pisano v zatvora)], and the collection of his writings in
Nikola D. Petkov (ed.), Александъръ Стамболийски. Личность и идеи [Aleksandŭr
Stamboliyski. Lichnost i idei], Pechatnica “Zemled’lsko Zname”, Sofiya, 1930, pp.
226–32.
18 Cf. International Peasant Union, Peasant International in Action, by J. Rutaj,
Melville Press, London, 1948, p. 15; and Ante Radić, Sabrana Djela, Seljačka
sloga, Zagreb, 1939, vol. XII, pp. 156–59, 249–50.
19 Rudolf Herceg, Die Ideologie der kroatischen Bauernbewegung, Rud. Herceg und
Genossen, Zagreb, 1923.
20 Regarding this point please re-read the manifesto with which Green International’s
activities were launched (to be addressed in the next chapter), entitled “Idée de
l’agrarisme universel”, Mezinárodní Agrární Bureau Bulletin (hereafter MAB) n. 1,
1923, 3–4.
21 On this topic the reader is referred to my book Sarajevo le radici dell’odio, Edizioni
Associate, Roma, III ed., 2003, pp. 5–22; as well as Johann Gottfried von Herder,
Philosophical Writings, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; and John
Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, Allen and Unwin, London,
1987.
22 On Németh’s thought see in particular, Miklós Lackó, “Populisme et ‘troisième
voie’ en Hongrie”, in Chantal Delsol and Michel Maslowski (eds), Histoire des
idées politiques de l’Europe Centrale, Puf, Paris, 1998, pp. 489–95.
23 On the situation of the Jews in Central-Eastern Europe in those years, see Ezra
Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1983; cf. also Péter Hanák, “The Anti-Capitalist
Ideology of the Populists”, in Joseph Held (ed.), Populism in Eastern Europe, op.
cit., pp. 148–50; with Heiko Haumann, A History of East European Jews, op. cit.,
p. 117–19.
24 See Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars, op. cit.; and István Bibó,
Miseria dei piccoli stati dell’Europa Orientale, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994 [1946], pp.
49ff.
25 A. Radić, Sabrana Djela, Seljačka Sloga, Zagreb, 1936–39, vol. VIII, p. 13.
26 Cf. on this subject, David Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant. A Study in Social
Dogmatism, op. cit., pp. 121–22, regarding Madgearu; regarding Mikołajczyk, see
Stanisław Stȩpka, Stanisław Mikołajczyk. Rozprawy i studia, Muzeum Historii
Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, Warszawa, 2001; and Józef Hampel, “Wizja Polski
ludowej w myśli politycznej i praktyce działania Stanisława Mikołajczyka”, in J.
Gmitruk (ed.), Stanisław Mikołajczyk 1901–1966, materiały z konferencji nauko-
wej, Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, Warszawa, 1998. On the
Czechoslovak-Polish federation, see Piotr S. Wandycz, “Recent Traditions for the
Quest of Unity: Attempted Polish-Czechoslovak and Yugoslav-Bulgarian Con-
federations 1940–1948”, in Jerzy Lukaszewski (ed.), The People’s Democracies
after Prague, De Tempel, Bruges, 1970, especially pp. 35–66.
27 See for example, Milovan Mitrović, Jugoslovenska predratna sociologija, Centar
SSO Srbije, 1982, pp. 86–91; and Dragoljub Jovanović, Sloboda od straha, Filip
Višnjić, Beograd, 1991, especially pp. 356–57; but also Barbara Jelavich, History of
the Balkans, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984, vol. 2; and Hugh
Seton-Watson, “Danubian Peasant Parties”, The Economist, London, 11 January
1947, p. 54.
84 The “peasant state”
28 Cf. Nissan Oren, Bulgarian Communism: The Road to Power 1934–1944, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1971, pp. 23–24.
29 Originally the Kolkhozy (an abbreviation of kolektivnoe khoziaistvo, or collective
farm) were cooperative farms in which individual members combined ownership of
non-land assets, while the Sovkhozy (an abbreviation of Sovetskoe khoziaistvo, or
soviet farm) were basically state-owned farms, whose incomes and welfare were,
however, far more secure than those of the collective farms. This difference faded
away to the full advantage of state ownership after the 1965 agricultural reforms.
30 See, for example, the sociology of cooperation developed by Avramović on several
occasions in various studies, including his Socijalne funkcije zadrugarstva, Beograd,
1938; and the evolution of relations between cooperation and socialism in Dra-
goljub Jovanović, Socijalizam i seljaštvo, Politika i društvo, Beograd, 1941. More
broadly on the topic, see Mihailo Vučković, Historija zadružnog pokreta u
Jugoslaviji 1918–1941, Inst. Društvenih nauka, Beograd, 1966.
31 On the role of cooperatives in close connection with the Croatian peasant party,
see works by Juraj Krnjević, “Peasant Movement in Eastern and Danubian
Europe”, Contemporary Review, August 1948; and by Rudolf Bićanić, Kako živi
narod, Zagreb, 1936. On the relationship between culture and peasantism, which
induced groups of young people in various countries to move to the villages and
follow a movement in many ways similar to the Russian “Going to the people”, see
David Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant, op. cit., pp. 143–46; but also Joža
Horvat and Petar Šegedin (eds), Socijalistički preobražaj našega sela, Zagreb, 1950.
32 Cf. on this, Rothschild, East Central Europe, op. cit.; and R.J. Crampton, Eastern
Europe in the 20th Century – and After, Routledge, London, 1997.
33 On the Balkan conferences, see more broadly my Sarajevo, le radici dell’odio, op.
cit., pp. 208–9.
34 On the effects of the world economic crisis as well as Schacht’s plan and its impact
on the heavily damaged economies of Eastern Europe, see Iván T. Berend and
Gyorgy Ránki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe, op. cit.
4 Communism and the “third peasant
way”
Competing internationals and development
models in the USSR and Central-Eastern
Europe

4.1 Green or red? Competing internationals over development

policies
Though the failure of their strategy could already be seen in the 1920s and
the 1930s, there is no doubt that the peasant movement had nurtured the
ambition of exercising a specific role somewhere between industrial capitalism
and communism, with the goal of overcoming the narrow limits of local
experience.
This ambition was also at the root of a wider project of collaboration,
which alongside the national-popular dimension fostered within national
borders, aimed to achieve a common view of development deriving from the
peasantry, trans-national in nature. This approach was based on the shared
conception of rural supremacy over cities and industrialisation “with a human
face”, because it stemmed from agriculture’s needs as well as (still) the coex-
istence of private ownership of land, and cooperative production and culture,
in a policy framework aimed at overcoming the conflicts.
This is why Stamboliyski (who, among other things, had been imprisoned
from 1915 to 1918 for his pacifist position against the war) was able to launch
the idea of creating a veritable “Green International”, with the remit to create
the conditions for overcoming national rivalries and strengthening peace between
the “peasant states”.1 This idea soon began to take shape in the immediate
period after the Great War.
The first step in this direction was taken with the setting up of an Infor-
mation and Coordination Office of the peasant parties, with headquarters in
Prague, which in 1922 issued a sort of manifesto entitled The Idea of the
Universal Agrarian Movement. The main concept expressed in the document
was the leading role of food production and the countryside’s vital role in
ensuring people’s “material and spiritual” welfare.
The international organisation in fact expressed a two-fold concern: on the
one hand, the peasant parties sensed the risk of ideological competition with
the Bolsheviks, which was implicit in Lenin’s “Decree on the Land”, men-
tioned in the last chapter; on the other, they feared that this stimulus, coming
in particular from Russia, would encourage a sense of support and feelings of
86 Communism and the “third peasant way”
cultural solidarity spurred on by widespread sentiments of Slavic identity in
some countries.
So, with the aim of stemming these dangers and because of a specific
interest on the part of the Czechoslovak government which was at the time
led by a peasant party, the “Green International” established its headquarters
in Prague, which had been the traditional centre of the democratic pan-Slavic
or neo-Slavic movement since 1848. As we have seen, Radić was sensitive to
these movements, as were representatives of other parties not necessarily close
to peasantism. Indeed, in its initial phase it tended to present itself as a pan-
Slavic organisation founded on Czechoslovak, Polish, Bulgarian and Yugoslav
convergence, even though in so doing it ran the risk of becoming less attrac-
tive and distancing itself from agrarian parties in non-Slavic countries.
Moreover, both Antonin Švehla and Milan Hodža made names for them-
selves as prominent activists in Czechoslovakia but also in the wider area of
Central-Eastern Europe by promoting this movement.2
This explains why similar parties in Romania, the Baltics and Finland did
not immediately support the cause but waited until later, when new conditions
came about that changed the original inspiration and scope of “Green Inter-
national”. The organisation’s rather weak structure limited the potential
scope of the Coordination Office. This was not helped by the fact that, in the
meantime, its prime instigator, Stamboliyski, had been overthrown by the
coup in Bulgaria.
Only after 1925 did the organisation begin to hold annual congresses and
publish a bulletin in three languages. It was not until 1927 and 1928, however,
that the association abandoned its original Slavist approach to take on a more
continental character. By then the danger of the Bolshevik “contagion”
seemed mostly to be on the wane; revolutionary movements in Central
Europe had been in part successfully repressed and the most radical move-
ments had faded away due to the implementation of agrarian reforms that
were damaging mainly to foreign-born landowners. The newly constituted USSR
found itself isolated on the international scene and very much involved in its
own internal problems. These factors made it obvious that Slavism had lost
whatever attraction it had held at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. This
allowed the Green International movement to overcome its original narrow
approach and take on a more widely European continental character. This
was also made possible thanks to the support of Swiss, Austrian, Dutch,
French and Sudeten German movements, as well as that of other East Eur-
opean countries including Finland and Estonia. So, the Coordination Office
began to gain greater momentum and an assembly of member parties was
finally convened in 1929.
Peasantism then began to put forward a sort of international rural strategy,
based on pacifism, active support of the League of Nations and resorting to
arbitration in the case of international controversies. At the same time, it
attempted to promote mutual professional interests, but in this it had little
success because of a lack of organisational ability and the fierce competition
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 87
between the national economies. When peasantism finally managed to lay the
foundations of a coordinating structure at the end of the decade, it was nearly
on the eve of those epoch-making political and economic upheavals we spoke
of earlier, which would mark the end of the movement itself and, inevitably,
the end of the attempt to construct an international rural policy.3
However, apart from the events that characterised the years 1929–33, there
is no doubt that peasantism was defeated because its attempt to sketch out its
own path of development was based on a political and cultural illusion. Its
modernisation plans were inconsistent with the trends underway on an inter-
national level. In particular, the effort to safeguard national popular rural
distinctiveness, by assigning a leading role to farm production and promoting
the restricted expansion of cities and industrial centres, meant there was no
possibility of effectively competing with Western growth, in spite of the Wall
Street collapse and subsequent Depression.
Curiously, however, during the course of the 1920s at least, similar types of
policies, marked by similar dilemmas, were also to be found in Bolshevik Russia,
where revolutionary zeal still permeated the political and, more generally, cul-
tural scene. Certainly the prospect of radical changes in the rest of Europe did
not leave Soviet Russia without the lure of national-popular distinctiveness
already inherent in Lenin’s convictions regarding people’s self-determination.
This aspect forcefully emerged, however, during the war with Poland and was
codified shortly thereafter in the process of Korenizatsya or indigenisation.4
These references, however, were similar only in part to the trends emerging
at the same time in the peasantist movement. In the case of Bolshevik Russia,
they had become intertwined with a general political but more explicitly cul-
tural orientation, matured in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian intellectuals’
journals and salons. What emerged was the search to define the traits of a
different, alternative culture to that of the past because it was revolutionary,
committed in civil terms and able to reflect a proletarian vision of life.5
In sum, while a heated debate in literature and art (just to mention a few
names, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Vsevolod Meyerhold, Kazimir Malevich and Marc Chagall) arose and lasted
all through the 1920s, with the aim of identifying the new political traits of
classes and workers, this largely stemmed from a desire to “protect” the
radical changes that had been brought about in 1917 and to keep them
alive, articulating a tangible expression of cultural as well as social distinction
in contrast to the capitalist world, in the messianic expectation of a new
revolutionary movement in the West.
These were the years in which the aspiration to identify the peculiarities of
a new modern society, better and socially more effective not only compared
with the czarist past but also to capitalism, was a predominant concern – a
concern that was, however, firmly anchored in a narrow industrial logic.
Thus while intellectuals and artists examined their roles and ethnic groups
were encouraged to enhance their own ethno-national cultures, families,
gender relations and the relationship to religion also underwent profound
88 Communism and the “third peasant way”
upheaval. In spite of strong reservations and hesitation on the part of males,
feminist organisations were created in the factories and a congress of Bol-
shevik women was convened. Divorce was legalised by the end of 1917; the
next year a family law was passed, and in 1920 Bolshevik Russia was the first
country in the world to legalise abortion, which was guaranteed as a free
public service. Radical theories, sustained in particular by Aleksandra Kol-
lontai, called for women’s equality and sexual freedom (going as far as the
full satisfaction of all impulses) and proclaimed the “end of the family”.
While it is true that these ideas did not last long as they were opposed by
Lenin and the Party, so that by the early 1920s there was a return to more
traditional principles, it is also true that from these theories and their critique
of the family, the idea of public education of children and youth took root,
providing the basis for the state’s commitment to education, in competition
with the Orthodox Church.6
Materialism and rationalism, already propagated in Russia by
Narodnichestvo and taken up again by Marxist and social democratic
thought, became popular in the new Soviet society in an interpretation that
opposed religion and led to the founding of the weekly publication Bezbozhnik
(Atheist), as well as anti-religious festivals and subsequently to the persecu-
tion of the clergy. In the short term these tendencies had little effect, particu-
larly in the countryside, but over time they led to the progressive
secularisation of society and institutions, without eradicating beliefs and
superstition, however. Propaganda against religion had not only anti-Christian
implications (mainly opposing Orthodoxy, but also resolutely against Roman
and Greek Catholicism).7 The anti-religious aspect had a very particular
impact on the Jews, given the complex interweaving of religion and identity
that characterised them. Although a current of anti-Semitism reared its head
from time to time during Bolshevism, the presence of a Jewish element in
dominant Party functions and the police especially during the 1920s facili-
tated the identification of anti-communism with anti-Semitism. This left space
for the networks of Jewish diaspora to function in the USSR, at least until they
were devastated by the Holocaust during the Nazi advance.8
Here again, the growth of civil rights that began with the February revo-
lution, as well as the phenomena of Russian-Soviet urbanisation and indus-
trialisation in the interwar period encouraged Jewish employment in industry
and the services as well as significant growth in their level of education thanks
to the expansion of public education. At the same time the USSR’s interna-
tional isolation dealt a blow to the Jewish diaspora, adversely affecting Rus-
sian Jews’ sense of belonging to a trans-national “community” and
accelerating an identity crisis, already triggered by migration from the coun-
tryside to small and medium-sized urban centres. This was furthered by the
propagation of state-sponsored atheism and Marxist reductionism of the
“Jewish question” enunciated in Die Judenfrage.9
At the same time, disappointments in political and economic terms that
were felt by the Bolshevik leaders at the end of the civil war, following the
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 89
defeat with Poland, the Kronstadt rebellion and, not long after, the failure of
the last insurrectional attempt in the West, in Hamburg in October 1923, all
had the effect of forcing the Bolsheviks to reflect upon the situation in their
country and to rethink the relationship between workers and peasants. This
reassessment resulted in the NEP (Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika, New
Economic Policy), announced at the Tenth Party Congress (1921), when
Lenin decided to replace the requisitioning of War Communism with the
introduction of a tax in kind, thus bringing, de facto, the relationship with the
countryside back to a barter policy.
From that moment on, there began a lively and at times heated controversy
over the future of Soviet Russia, which became the USSR in 1922 following the
Treaty on the Union with three other republics controlled by the Bolsheviks
(namely Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasia). The outcome was that the cru-
cial issue of development took an entirely different turn from that of Central-
Eastern Europe, because Stalin’s policy of forced industrialisation prevailed.
Right up until that moment, and in fact for the entire decade, discussions
over policies to adopt to promote modernisation (always in terms of indus-
trialisation) interwove with those regarding the growth of agricultural pro-
duction, thus combining economic and social arguments as well as
ideological, political and cultural dimensions. Here, too, as in Central-Eastern
Europe, the debate was not the sole prerogative of elites in the opposition (as
during the time of Russian Narodnichestvo), but directly involved the direction
of government policy, engendering power struggles as well.
For obvious reasons of political realism, the peasant question continued to
be the main focus of development theories and alliance policies in the USSR
as well, at least in the 1920s, not only because it was a crucial issue inside the
country, but also because it affected its international strategies, specifically
vis-à-vis the colonial world and the Balkan peninsula.
In terms of domestic politics the issue was put in terms not only of the
disappointments of the first post-revolutionary years, marked by the failure of
War Communism, the famine of 1921, and the serious decline in industry at
the end of that year, as well as Soviet isolation, broken partially by the Treaty
of Rapallo but borne out by the failure of Lenin’s plan, albeit timid, to attract
foreign capital, to be analysed below.
In regard to the problems in the countryside and worker-peasant relations
on an international level, dramatic confirmation of the difficulty of forming
alliances came in 1923 from Bulgaria, where the successful coup of the 9 June
against Stamboliyski brought about a serious crisis in the local Communist
Party. Its leadership, summarily identifying the Bulgarian leader’s politics
with those of the socialist revolutionary leader Alexander Kerensky (who had
headed the provisional Russian government from the 21 July 1917 up to the
October Revolution), forced its activists not to lend their support to the
Farmers Union during the military uprising.
Nonetheless, the Komintern (acronym for Kommunistichesky Internatsional,
the Communist International or Third International, founded in 1919 by
90 Communism and the “third peasant way”
Lenin), through Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek and by means of official
statements, did not spare their criticism of the position taken by the Bulgarian
communists, thus causing divisions in the Party and forcing it, in September,
to attempt an uprising which ended in tragedy.10
Just a few weeks later, between 10 and 23 October 1923, taking advantage
of the Pan-Russian Agricultural Fair, Moscow hosted the founding congress
of the Krestintern (acronym for Krestyansky Internatsional), the new “red”
Peasant International. This was a crucial moment in that it marked a transi-
tion in Bolshevik political strategy towards the countryside and, above all,
towards the colonial world which was dominated by the peasant issue.
For some time, in fact, a debate had been unfolding in the Bolshevik Party,
as well as in the Komintern, regarding the relationship between workers and
peasants and on the meaning that an alliance (smychka) with the rural world
should take. Though the “Decree on the Land” had outlined the foundations of
a Bolshevik agrarian policy, the mistrust felt among Bolsheviks towards the
peasants was widespread. The Bolsheviks considered that the peasants aspired
to being landowners, or were bourgeois, mainly because of their attitude
toward private property (even though the Russian peasants only asked for the
guarantee of usufruct) and commerce.
This prejudice gained in strength during War Communism. In 1920 the
economist of Hungarian origin Eugene Varga insisted on the need to resort to
requisitioning, expropriation and taxes on rich farmers in order to balance
the relationship between city and countryside. In other words, and despite the
fact that in the later stages of the Leninist period caution prevailed regarding
the methods of putting collectivisation into practice in the countryside, the
communists were firmly convinced that any alliance with the peasantry should
only be considered temporary and should be restricted to the “democratic-
bourgeois phase”.11
However, the need to conceive a strategy towards the peoples of the colo-
nial empires gave cause for reflection upon the peasant issue and to rethink
the Komintern programme, which meant supporting improvements in the
living conditions in the countryside, both from the economic and social
viewpoint as well as from the standpoint of political rights.
This effort was also part of a proposal put forward by Radek, member of
the executive committee, at the Fourth Komintern Congress in 1922, when he
suggested extending the “worker government” formula, proposing that a new
form of “worker and peasant” government should be created at least in those
countries such as Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria where the rural
world had a dominant role both on a societal and an economic level.
It was no coincidence, after all, that this proposal was put forward in 1922
and limited to those countries. They, in fact, were at the heart of Central
European political peasantism; three of them (mainly Slavic) had already
founded the Coordination Office in Prague and the radicalism of their posi-
tions encouraged some communist leaders to think that by leveraging the
countryside of South-Eastern Europe it would be possible to break a weak
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 91
link of the capitalist chain and re-launch the revolutionary spirit in Europe, as
had occurred in Russia in 1917.12
Despite this, the communist parties’ attitude towards the countryside after
the Fourth Komintern Congress never substantially changed, and the persis-
tence of this prejudice is the “real reason” for communist passiveness, forced
by the Bulgarian leadership on its own Party’s militants at the time of the
coup against Stamboliyski.
It was following that tragic event, however, that Zinoviev thought it neces-
sary to make a more determined effort with regard to the countryside, taking
up Stamboliyski’s project for the “Agrarian International” (drawn up in
Prague, it should be said, just a few months earlier and already in crisis due
to the events in Bulgaria). So it was that a “Red” Peasant International was
set up to reflect more substantially, among other things, the marked changes
in internal Soviet politics that came about with the adoption of the NEP.
The announcement of this position was made just a few days after the coup
in Bulgaria at the extended Third Plenary Assembly of the Komintern
Executive Committee, when Zinoviev made clear the relationship between the
NEP and the new directions of the Komintern in agricultural policy.
The initiative was taken up by the young Polish communist Tomasz Da̧bal
(who had been freed from prison just some time earlier following an exchange
agreed between Moscow and Warsaw), with an article that appeared in
Pravda on 19 June, in which he formulated the idea of setting up a peasant
international as part of the Komintern. This was followed by the convening of
the founding conference in October. The organisation was, however, quite
short-lived, because it was linked to the wavering fortunes of the NEP and
constrained by the conclusions reached by the USSR regarding the debate,
which we will soon discuss, on “primitive socialist accumulation”. Indeed, the
Krestintern held only one extended Plenary Assembly of the Association
Council in 1925 and a second conference in 1927.13
Nonetheless, its brief existence is important in understanding the essence of
the debate on development/underdevelopment as it evolved in those years,
given the need to find the necessary resources to ensure the country’s indus-
trial growth and to define the politics of alliance on a domestic and interna-
tional level. At the time, the hope (or illusion) that the Bolshevik Revolution,
by coinciding with the long-awaited revolution in the West, could have a
worldwide dimension was still very much alive. Because of this, the above
debate must be seen from two points of view, namely in terms of the future of
the Soviet state and of the fate of the revolution.
Using this approach makes it easier to understand the reasons for Bukharin’s
personal commitment. In 1925, at the extended Executive Committee of the
Komintern, he delivered a particularly difficult introductory speech in which
he decisively grappled with the issue of an alliance between working class and
certain rural social strata.
According to Bukharin, it was essential to consider two crucial aspects of
the problem. On the one hand, he argued, the peasant or farming associations
92 Communism and the “third peasant way”
in the West (in Germany and the United States) were economically dependent
on banks, trusts and high finance, while, on the other, the peasants were the
most numerous social category in the world. This meant that it was necessary
for the revolutionary movement to undermine bourgeois predominance over
the rural world, by leveraging the diversity of interests and economic and
social conditions found within the rural world and, at the same time, forming
an alliance with the peasants of the colonial empires.
Based on these considerations Bukharin went so far as to interpret the
international situation in terms of polarisation between “worldwide city” and
“worldwide countryside”, associating the former with industrialised, metro-
politan Western Europe and the United States and the latter with backward
colonial countries. Mutatis mutandis, here echoes from the peasantist debate
on the city and the countryside could be heard: in other words, this was a
Bolshevik approach that sought common ground with similar orientations
from Central-East European peasantist thought.
In turn Trotsky, who during those years found himself supporting very
different causes, as we will see, wrote in a memorandum in 1925 how
Bukharin’s position had some aspects that were close to the Narodniks and, in
fact, contained “elements of Soviet populism [or Narodnichestvo]”.14
On the other hand, following Bukharin’s line of thought, “living in peace
with the peasants” had to consist of much more than a slogan. It had to
become a strategic imperative for the Bolsheviks in the newly formed USSR
and from there move on to a policy of international alliances. This would
have to be founded partly on the ability to attract the revolutionary element
present in some peasant parties, and partly by stirring left-wing factionalism
by playing on the radicalism of some sections of rural associationism.15
In some ways this approach was encouraged when, during a two-month
visit to Moscow by Stjepan Radić, the Croatian Peasant Party joined forces
with the Krestintern, which happened on 1 July 1924. Indeed, this con-
vergence would soon play an important role in the internal political struggle
in Yugoslavia and in Radić’s hope of obtaining Soviet support for his position
regarding the Croatian national question, based as it was on the attitude of
the Komintern which was favourable, at that time, to the break-up of the
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.16 It is also true, however, that
this convergence was accompanied by meetings between Radić, Radek, For-
eign Minister Georgy Chicherin and the top leaders of the Krestintern, and
was followed by public declarations and articles by the Croatian leader himself,
praising the Soviet “spirit” and Soviet agrarian law.
In short, it seemed then that at least for part of the Bolshevik leadership,
there was a convergence in programmes with some peasantist movements (the
more radical ones) that might strengthen the policies based on alliance, which
in Moscow at the time had been drafted very roughly. This is why Radić was
even offered the leadership of the Krestintern. The attempt failed, however,
because the Croatian leader’s main objective was, as we have mentioned,
national and not social, whereas the majority of Bolshevik activists were still
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 93
ideologically prejudiced against the countryside: this prejudice stemmed from
the deep conviction that the dominant role should be held by the working
class in the prospect of revolution.17
Nevertheless, these dynamics were not immediately obvious. In the mean-
time, close contacts had been set up with the Bulgarian agrarians, who had
also considered the idea of joining the Krestintern, whereas the Czechoslovak
communists had achieved a brilliant electoral victory in Ruthenia thanks to
peasant support. So it seemed that there was still space for an alliance with
the rural element of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe although
already at the beginning of 1925, when the gap with Radić was becoming
unbridgeable, the Bolsheviks were increasingly unsure of the Krestintern’s
future, as it was having trouble arriving at such a vast consensus as had been
expected in such a short time.
Hence, in a situation dominated by uncertain outcomes, it was up to
Bukharin, as we have seen, to declare his conviction by re-launching the idea
of convergence with the rural world. This he did with his famous slogan
“Enrich yourselves!”, which he addressed to the peasantry and for which he
paid very dearly later.
This was the beginning of the clash between Bukharin and Zinoviev.
Zinoviev’s pro-peasant enthusiasm had already exhausted itself and he had
reached the conclusion that Bukharin’s neo-Narodnichestvo was ill-suited to
the country’s development needs. Zinoviev had thus begun to embrace Trots-
ky’s industrialist positions and in 1926 he and Trotsky formed a joint oppo-
sition (against the majority represented by Bukharin and Stalin) within the
Bolshevik Party.18
So the controversy regarding the development model to follow in the USSR
intensified. The first symptoms had already been felt in the so-called “scissors
crisis” of 1923.19 Within that framework, the influence of the Krestintern on
Bolshevik policies was rapidly waning, while in Central-Eastern Europe, as
we have seen, the “Green International” put in a short-lived appearance.

4.2 Modernity, agriculture and industry: the Bolsheviks and

“primitive socialist accumulation” in the USSR
In the second half of the 1920s the USSR entered a new phase in which it
rapidly distanced itself from the agro-industrial development models still pre-
valent in Central-Eastern Europe. It was becoming increasingly evident how
the implementation of the NEP had not led to rapid industrialisation. For
this reason, social development in the USSR came into increasing conflict
with Bolshevik working class ideology.
The terms of the discussion that exploded within the ranks of the Bol-
sheviks (which have been analysed in depth by Alexander Erlich, and on
which there is a vast amount of international literature20) concerned the steps
to take to achieve Soviet industrialisation, inevitably taking into account the
conditions of international isolation in which it found itself in the mid-1920s.
94 Communism and the “third peasant way”
The long period of conflict, from the Great War to the civil war to the
Peace of Riga with Poland (i.e. from 1914 to 1921), along with the social and
political repercussions of War Communism, had brought Russia to its knees,
causing both the destruction of the transport system and its industrial facil-
ities, developed with such difficulty during the 1890s thanks to the policies of
Sergei Witte. In addition, most specialised workers had disappeared.
Edward Carr, William Chamberlin, Alec Nove and Robert Daniels, in their
famous reconstructions of the USSR’s economic and social history, have
already extensively illustrated how due to deaths in battle fighting in the Red
Army, and because many of its numbers were now part of the post-war Soviet
administration, the working class had been reduced by 55% between 1917 and
1930, and in some cities like Petrograd (later Leningrad) it fell to 22%.
Similarly, among Party cadres, 61% of those who had declared worker ori-
gins in 1919 were serving in a city or village administration. Industrial gross
output, based on an index of 100 in 1913, had dropped to 31 in 1921 and
large industry output had actually fallen to 21; the production of electricity
had gone from 2,039 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) down to 520 billion.
In fact, the “classic” historiography of the USSR has thoroughly verified
how at the end of the long phase of conflict, the number of workers and
industrial production had dropped drastically. Technical know-how to run
the factories had shrunk, innovation was mostly absent, transport systems
were seriously damaged, and the rural world and agricultural production had
gone back to playing the main role in the Soviet economy, bringing the
country closer to Russia’s conditions following the liberation from serfdom in
1861 than to that of the dawn of the 20th century.21
In Bolshevik logic, however, it was clear that in this situation it was necessary
to rebuild the country’s industrial base and, with it, the working class, which
from the ideological viewpoint was considered the keystone for building
socialism. Soviet Russia, due to its revolutionary expansion policies after 1917,
and because it was considered by the winning powers at Versailles and its new
neighbours (especially Poland and Romania) to be a centre for subversion and
“dangerous” for world stability and peace, was politically and economically
isolated, to the point that a cordon sanitaire had been rapidly placed around
its borders through a system of alliances led by Great Britain and France, in
which Poland and Romania played an important role, at least in Europe.22
Despite this unfavourable picture, after 1921 Lenin attempted to attract
foreign capital to exploit Siberian oilfields and timber, but very few contracts
were signed as a result of the atmosphere of international mistrust toward
Bolshevik Russia, and despite the fact that the agreement had in fact lifted
the ban on Russian foreign trade on 16 January 1920. The failure of the
Conference of Genoa of 1922 confirmed this situation.23
Yet, these attempts at opening up, which were viewed coldly in the West at
the time, became crucially important in the USSR, as attracting capital,
technology and management was as much an ideological problem as it was a
real one.
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 95
Since 1917 Taylorism had been considered by the Bolsheviks an essential
tool for modernising, stimulating a curious convergence of politics and art
(figurative as well as literary). The case of Aleksei Gastev, worker and poet,
who founded the Central Labour Institute to educate trainers who then
spread around the country the most advanced know-how in terms of pro-
duction and management, was not at all an exception. By 1938 he had
formed a network of 1,700 training centres all over the USSR. In addition,
his made efforts to combine Taylorism, the cultural exaltation of machines
and a new work ethic based on the dignity of work and a sense of community
encountered the Futurists’ view, mentioned previously, which through paint-
ing, poetry and theatre turned out to be particularly attracted by bio-
mechanics (as in the case of Vsevolod Meyerhold) and the idea that the new
horizons of art and culture depended on their ability to dialogue with and
represent work, technology, engineering (from automobiles to mechanics),
also bringing architecture, design and town planning into this approach. This
conception of modernity in industrial policies and art, particularly vibrant in
the 1920s but a recurring theme throughout the following decade, in spite of the
country’s isolation and then Stalinist terror, was explicitly supported by the
most important Bolshevik figures.
Here it is sufficient to remember how in the early 1920s Radek exalted the
importance of the efficient management of enterprises, referring to the United
States, from where work methodologies, know-how and the spirit of innova-
tion were to be taken. In 1923 Bukharin formulated a bold image of Soviet
Russia as the “new America”. He proposed that combining American
management/industrial production methods with the hegemony of the prole-
tariat in the USSR (instead of the bourgeoisie in America’s case) would lead
to a fusion of Marxism and Americanism, with great future prospects for the
development of socialism. Shortly thereafter, in 1925, Felix Dzerzhinsky, at
the time head not only of the secret police but also the Supreme Soviet for the
National Economy, encouraged the study and adoption of Fordism. The
USSR had already signed contracts with Henry Ford and American Jewish
organisations (for example, the Joint Distribution Committee) for the purchase
of tens of thousands of tractors.24
In sum, openness to methods like Taylorism and Fordism, as well as the
acceptance of an idea of modernity based on machines, the secularisation of
society and public education were followed by contracts signed with several
US companies, as well as a gradual popularisation of jazz (until Gorky
heavily criticised it in 1928) and American, French, English and German
cinematography. This was done in the conviction that the importation of
characteristic elements of Euro-Atlantic industrial companies would have
found a new ethical and cultural transformation in the USSR’s proletarian
setting, benefiting the construction of socialism, and preparing the way for
overtaking – even qualitatively – capitalist society (which Khrushchev explicitly
referred to decades later with his slogan of overtaking America).
96 Communism and the “third peasant way”
Aside from these significant efforts, which tell us much about the cultural
perception of international modern reality that prevailed then in the USSR,
we should keep in mind that especially the importation of capital goods, even
if it appeared to be substantial in absolute terms, was always modest in rela-
tive terms given the country’s vastness and the demographic, economic and
social power of the peasantry.
Resistance and suspicion on the part of European governments and
American capitalists, as mentioned, contributed to circumscribing the effect
of Bolshevik openness to international trade. Overall this situation had the
short-term effect of limiting development policy orientations adopted in the
years to follow. Over the longer term, the reform projects of the 1970s and
1980s continued to draw inspiration and political-ideological legitimisation
from them, as we shall see.
In any case, given that for the moment the USSR found itself in a position
where it was politically impossible to attract foreign capital, it was forced to
ask itself which internal resources it could mobilise to recreate the conditions
for the country’s industrial development, consistent with the Bolshevik Party’s
ideological expectations.
Thus identifying sources of accumulation became the central theme in the
dispute that set the idea of development balanced between agriculture and
industry (dear to Nikolai Bukharin) against the policy of accelerated indus-
trialisation (supported, on the other hand, by Yevgeny Preobrazhensky and
Lev Trotsky).
On the one hand, as we have seen, Bukharin put forward views that origi-
nated at the turning point that led to the NEP, which emphasised the role of
the market, both as a form of individual incentive and as a way of absorbing
all production. In his view the fall in prices of industrial products had had an
immediate positive effect on industrial expansion and agricultural develop-
ment. Following this line of thought, however, the boost given to the increase
in trade on the domestic market should have gone hand in hand with the
expansion of foreign trade, which would mean a radical revision of foreign
policy.25
On the other hand, Preobrazhensky and Trotsky felt that it was impossible
to abandon the idea of a renewed revolution in the West. To prepare for this,
it was necessary rapidly to build the conditions for the development of the
Soviet proletariat by implementing a strategy of accelerated industrialisation
based on a policy of internal procurement of resources, which he summed up
in the formula “primitive socialist accumulation”.26
Bukharin, on the contrary, started from the assumption that the revolution
in the West had already been defeated and resumption of a movement in that
direction would have to be put off to a date in the distant future. Conse-
quently, in his opinion, it would be better to concentrate on the situation in
the USSR, without endangering the alliance between workers and peasants,
because it was on this alliance that consensus and the stability of Soviet
power were founded.
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 97
Indeed, this approach formed the foundation of what was later ideologi-
cally revised by Stalin with the formula “building socialism in one country”,
which he voiced publicly for the first time on 20 December 1924 in an article
that appeared simultaneously in Pravda and Izvestiya. This approach
appealed to Bukharin, who strongly supported it on more than one occasion
and in particular at the 16th Party Congress in December 1925.27
In short, what was labelled the “right wing” of the Bolshevik Party (asso-
ciated above all with Bukharin, Shanin and Sokolnikov) agreed to support
aspects of a “mixed economy” typical of the NEP, in which state control over
industry, foreign trade and wholesale trade had to be brought back to a
market context. In fact, market revitalisation had been supported by limited
de-nationalisation after 1921.
It was within this framework that the 16th Party Congress came out in
favour of a gradual process of industrialisation of the country, to be imple-
mented by identifying development priorities based on investment in agri-
culture, support for light industry and strengthening of the transport system
in order to promote the circulation of goods and services. Essentially, the
right felt that concessions to agriculture and exporting its products would
enable urban development and the accumulation of sufficient capital for the
subsequent expansion of heavy industry, and the strengthening of military
requirements. The expansion of trade, even partly private, and encouraging
the peasants to grow richer was supposed to help lay the foundations for an
increase in resources which in time would enable industrial production to
develop.
In contrast, the logic of the “left wing” of the Party, represented by Trotsky
and Preobrazhensky, went in a completely different direction. The emphasis
here was on the backwardness of the USSR and on the need not just for
reconstruction, but for accelerated industrialisation. Trotsky had already
argued in his writings prior to 1917 that the issue of backwardness was of
extreme importance and placed the problem of modernising the country at
the centre of revolutionary political action. He maintained that because of
Russia’s specific characteristics, only the working class could play the leading
role in transforming the country. Yet, in his view this transformation still
remained anchored to the prospect of a world revolution, as this was an
essential prerequisite for overcoming Russian backwardness and, therefore, in
total conflict with the doctrine of “socialism in one country”.28
In view of the disappointing results during 1921–24, when an attempt was
made to boost foreign trade and attract foreign capital, this line of reasoning
resulted in an economic approach that proposed taking advantage of the
state’s situation as the largest producer of industrial goods and a monopoly
on foreign trade, to draw the resources deemed essential for the further
development of heavy industry from agriculture.
Earlier on, however, Preobrazhensky had not hesitated to make a brutal
comparison between capitalist exploitation of the colonies and the similar
exploitation that the Soviet state was proposing to carry out in the
98 Communism and the “third peasant way”
countryside (the “internal colonies”, as he defined them) in order to obtain
the resources necessary for primitive socialist accumulation. Later, faced with
potential controversy, he toned down his argument when he made it clear that
resorting to violence or confiscation was not included among the tools for
implementing this economic policy. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that con-
testations of his thesis contributed to reducing his influence in the country
and within the Party.
In reality, Preobrazhensky suggested adopting a mixed system of fiscal and
economic measures including high taxes on agricultural and artisan profits, as
well as resorting to “unequal exchanges” on a massive scale through targeted
pricing policies. He suggested keeping the prices of industrial products high,
and on the other hand imposing low purchase prices on wholesale agri-
cultural products. He remained convinced that purchasers of industrial goods
would be mainly, if not exclusively, wealthy peasants (the famous kulaks),
whereas poor peasants would still be supported by the government through
the granting of credits. In reality he intended to exploit the scissor effect of
prices, which had worried the Bolshevik leadership so much in 1923. This was
part of a more general conviction that it was possible to take advantage of the
unequal relationship of market relations between state and private sectors to
the overwhelming benefit of the state, thus accumulating the considerable
capital initially required to renew the country’s industrial equipment, promote
innovation, and increase production and investment.29
Yet, he did not want to put pressure on prices beyond the limits of eco-
nomic, technical and rational viability. At most he intended to use this to
promote forced taxation, which in the early stages could stabilise the relation
between supply and demand and later pave the way for a policy based on
incentives.
It is clear that both the “right” and the “left” had the issue of the country’s
industrialisation at heart and reasoned from a perspective that took into
consideration some of the fundamentals of market relations, although they
disagreed on timing and how to define the essential basis for acquiring resources
in terms of the balance to pursue between agriculture and industry.30
Neither hypothesis was approved by a majority of new members of the
Communist Party, who had begun actively to militate after the civil war, fol-
lowing the membership drive promoted by Stalin in 1924, called by him a
“Leninist lever’. Generally not well educated, they were not interested in what
was happening outside the USSR (shown by their basic indifference to inter-
nationalist ideals), and on the other hand looked down on the peasants,
fearing that their independent entrepreneurship could over the long term lead
to them forming their own party, along the lines of what was happening in
Central-Eastern Europe.
This cultural attitude of communist militancy was decisive in those difficult
years and for the future. The peasants were considered by the Party to be a
problem, a “cursed problem”.31 During the NEP, their tendency to enlarge
their property and (albeit by little) livestock holdings and possible use of
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 99
hired workers was critically observed. Since the time of the civil war Party
members had harboured suspicions about the peasants, who seemed to hesi-
tate when it came to drastic choices, in spite of the fact that the poorest had
shown their loyalty to the Bolsheviks. This hesitation was actually an expres-
sion of a behaviour that stemmed from the countryside’s traditional diffidence
toward any form of political power.
Later on, especially towards the end of the 1920s as the Party acquired
increasingly propagandistic tones and transmission of orders from the centre
to the periphery dominated, the peasants reacted with growing passivity and
widespread disinterest in politics. The local secretaries, with their rather limited
political education, did not understand why and often reacted despotically.
They also often proved to be prone to corruption, unscrupulous ambition and
abuse of office, all of which ended up sharpening local hostilities.
In fact, working-class ideology, along with cultural prejudice, mis-
appropriation of funds and the structural inadequacy of the Party’s peripheral
structures progressively widened the gap between the countryside and the
industrial and urban vision that was the goal of social transformation, at least
as perceived by the Bolshevik leaders.
In spite of this, at least early on, Bukharin’s opinion that the alliance
between workers and peasants should be pursued as a priority factor, even at
the cost of accepting the development of socialism “at a snail’s pace”, had
still prevailed.
This convergence between rightist currents and the Stalinist centre was
made possible by the broad consensus that the prospect, in many ways
autarkic, of “socialism in one country” managed to win among Bolshevik
militants. In contrast, Trotsky’s bitter argument against an attitude he con-
sidered to be basically a betrayal of the revolution’s internationalist ideals fell
on deaf ears, increased his isolation, and finally caused his harsh defeat in
1926.
The dispute ended with the expulsion of the entire leftist group, which was
itself also deeply divided, during the 15th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in
December of the following year, followed by Trotsky’s deportation to Alma
Ata and his subsequent exile in Turkey.32
It would have been wrong to think that the autarkic dimension inherent in
the formula “socialism in one country” would have immediately and decisively
permeated the USSR’s ideology and political economy. In the short term
Trotsky’s defeat meant the defeat of his political proposals, but certainly not
of the Soviet aspiration to modernity founded upon industrialisation. As
proof of this, while the NEP survived for a few more years, in 1928 the USSR
signed two contracts with US companies to provide technical assistance in
developing the electricity industry. The previous year the US company Henry
Freyn and Co. had been involved in laying the foundations for an ambitious
project of rebuilding the steel industry in the Urals, establishing the urban
planning and production facilities of Magnitogorsk. The ambition was to
build a futuristic socialist city, founded upon education, science and technical
100 Communism and the “third peasant way”
development, although its construction suffered from all the limits, ineffi-
ciencies and defects of Soviet society in the 1930s and forced industrialisation.
Meanwhile in 1929 General Electric participated in the construction of the
Dnepr dam, whereas the failure of new negotiations with Ford was attenuated
by an agreement with Austin for the construction of an automobile plant
between 1929 and 1932 in Nizhniy Novgorod with an experimental town-
planning project with innovative workers’ and industrial buildings.33 Thus the
first experiment in constructing a modern city began, with methodologies and
a design that was then applied to many similar situations in the following dec-
ades, as the need to plan new urban centres grew with the development of mass
production. This allowed Soviet architecture and town planning to interact with
international orientations of the time, demonstrating that socialist political,
cultural and economic isolation was always relative and never absolute.
On the other hand this approach had been ideologically legitimised by
“Sergo” Ordzhonikidze in 1928 when, in a public speech to students, he
compared (American) “arch-bourgeois machines” to socialist ones, admitting
that the former were certainly better, but that socialism could only surpass the
United States by avoiding isolation, acquiring techniques from more
advanced societies by inviting experts and sending students abroad to study in
America. In 1933 even Stalin still admitted publicly how important the
American contribution would be to Soviet development.34
While a cautious relationship with America began to develop, a differ-
entiated perception of ties to Europe also began to mature in the USSR. This
occurred not only because Moscow sensed a growing security threat, but
because traditional, culturally controversial relations with the European con-
tinent ended up facilitating the establishment of ties with the New World, i.e.
the United States. After all, this was a large industrial society, and besides, the
USSR felt attracted by other aspects such as the dimensions of the two
countries, the similarity between the conquest of the West and that of Siberia
(or the Virgin Lands). In the years between the 7th Congress of the Komin-
tern and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR was also attracted by some
elements of social and economic policy contained in Roosevelt’s New Deal.35
Significant currents in American culture, in particular the Methodists, had
also begun to appreciate elements of the Soviet experience that were closest to
their world view, especially in terms of the workplace, education and the fight
against dissolute living. Hence they found important (and for the Methodists,
positive) convergences between US Prohibition and the Soviet campaign
against alcoholism.
Meanwhile, pressing events spread the fear in the USSR that an attack on
the “country of the revolution” was imminent from Europe and Asia. This
conviction intensified due to a series of events in 1927 beginning with the
British decision to break off diplomatic relations with Moscow, the assassi-
nation of the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw, attacks on Soviet diplomatic
personnel in Berlin and Peking, and finally the annihilation of the Chinese
communists in Shanghai.
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 101
The accentuation of Euro-Asiatic tensions was reflected inside the USSR,
aggravating the nightmare of encirclement. Some Bolsheviks were once again
tormented by the need to industrialise, not only because this was seen as an
essential factor for the country’s modernisation for ideological as well as
political and economic reasons, but especially because this would ensure
military security, repelling external threats to the revolution.
In these turbulent times a conviction spread that the process of gradual
industrialisation begun under the NEP was too slow for the needs dictated by
ideology and the international context. Industrialisation seemed to be too
exposed to the fluctuations of agricultural production: the harvest crises of
1927–28, which intensified the following year, were interpreted as an alarming
factor as they jeopardised food supplies to the cities but also exports of agri-
cultural products (at that time 30% of all Soviet foreign trade was done with
Germany). The foreign currency earnings from these exports were essential
for investment in industry.36
At this point, by leveraging the economic and social crisis of the NEP,
Stalin radically overturned internal alliances and equilibrium in the Party,
politically ruining the most prestigious interpreter of openness, however par-
tial, to the market and the countryside, and along with him, the “rightist”
group. Stalin’s clash with Bukharin was resolved in a few months with the
defeat of the “Party favourite”. Politically compromised by the harvest crises
of the winter of 1927–28, the NEP – deprived of its principal sponsor – was
overwhelmed and abandoned, making way for the “turning point of 1929”,
when collectivisation was imposed on the countryside, coinciding with the
start of the first five-year plan and significant militarisation of the economy.
Thus ended the process of building a consensual relationship between agri-
culture and industry, and between city and countryside, that was structurally
different from the one attempted during War Communism.
The break with that effort, which also led, as we have seen, to a loss of
interest on the part of the Soviets towards the Krestintern to the point of
turning it into an unimportant appendage of the Komintern, could not have
been cleaner. A sort of civil war began against the peasantry (in open oppo-
sition to Bukharin’s concern about protecting the alliance with the working
class).37 Any act of opposition was interpreted as a boycott and bloodily
repressed in the name of fighting the counter-revolution.
Meanwhile a policy of speeding up investment in support of heavy industry
was launched, without any reference to the market or the relationship
between supply and demand, while the public administration’s powers of
interference in the economy increased until all choices from production to
distribution were made “on command”.
The costs of this drastic change were huge. While propaganda presented
modernisation by exalting hyper-industrial gigantism, often setting unrealistic
goals and using excessive and unrestrained design concepts, the construction
of new industrial urban centres was not accompanied by efficient connections
to the main communication channels, electrification was insufficient, suburbs
102 Communism and the “third peasant way”
became anonymous and were rapidly built up with inferior-quality materials.
At the same time broad swaths of the population, particularly the peasants,
rapidly began to resist these developments.
The consequences of the Stalinist coercion of those years have been exten-
sively written about in terms of sacrificed human lives and dramatic famines
provoked by heedless political-economic decisions, mainly focusing on the
decline in living standards and revolts in the villages and widespread rural
areas. Less well known are the repercussions of this resistance on gender
relations, with the reversal of hierarchical relations in the villages and the
ascent of older women to dominant positions, especially where men became
more politically vulnerable. While it is true that younger, active women often
ended up becoming the object – also symbolic – of violence and rape during
the repression, it is also true that during the 1930s family policies in the
USSR changed drastically. Abortion and homosexuality were banned, while
patriarchalism and the heterosexual family were exalted in the name of
demographic growth and quantitative investment in the future labour force.38
The spirit in which these changes came about was part of a more general
picture where the call of “socialism in one country” became not just a factor
of autarkic isolationism, but also an essentially nationalistic factor of attrac-
tion deriving from the concept of “power politics”. Under Stalin, Russian
centrality in the USSR and the interest of the Soviet state in the Komintern were
reasserted. This was in direct contrast with the idealistic and utopian
inspiration of the previous revolutionary internationalism.39
Meanwhile constant allusions to external threats from a world united in an
anti-Soviet position (actually this was mainly European, with the addition of
the colonies, China and Japan, especially after the attack on Manchuria in
1931, subsequently aggravated by the signing of the Anti-Komintern Pact)
served to justify the elimination, also physical, of any opposition. The revo-
lutionary guard and all Bolshevik leaders who had taken part in the events of
1917 were brutally assassinated on Stalin’s orders.40
In this situation it is obvious that the debate over problems of Soviet
development had no more space to evolve, and even less to exist. In fact, it
was cut short, whereas Stalinism’s social and ideological bases were firmly
entrenched in rigid and hierarchical forms, strongly conditioned by the central
figure of Stalin, and proved able to reproduce themselves for decades to come.
In a climate of rational and exasperated violence, Stalin shaped the Soviet
path to socialism and modernity by concentrating resources on accelerated
heavy industrialisation along with forced collectivisation in the countryside.
Production was defined by five-year plans, and society underwent a period of
intense urbanisation, with the progressive growth of social services (particu-
larly employment, health and pension systems) and mass education, including
higher education and Party rationalism which at times verged on the per-
verse.41 This was all managed by coercion, used by Stalin as a tool both to
eliminate those he considered “enemies of the people”, as well as (and this
dimension should not be underestimated) to intensify the pace of
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 103
development. Coercion was also used as a substitute for monetary incentives,
beyond the normal ones, but also of a very different nature, with Stakhanovism
and access to career privileges, assigned only in relation to Party affiliation and
loyalty.
Having survived the Second World War and consolidated itself due to the
prestige gained from Moscow’s military successes, the fortunate transfer of
numerous factories beyond the Urals during the Nazi advance, and the
potential shown by heavy industry’s quantitative production (which had
obviously focused on weapons and the extraction of raw materials for military
use, following a very similar trend to that in the United States at the time),
this model then represented communist parties’ and various leftist formations’
main frame of reference. Under the new international conditions that had
come about in 1945, new opportunities were provided to undertake – in other
European countries and soon afterwards in certain post-colonial contexts –
the topics of development, industrialisation and modernisation according to a
view that was not necessarily capitalist, and therefore not imitative of the
Western model. The Stalinist-Soviet model seemed to fit those aspirations
quite well.

Notes
1 On agrarian internationalism cf. “La Politique étrangère et l’Organisation Inter-
nationale des Agriculteurs”, MAB Bullettin du Bureau International Agraire vol.
VIII–IX, 1925; Rudolf Herceg, Izlaz iz svietske krize (Pangea), Zagreb, 1932; J.
Rutaj, Peasant International in Action, Melville Press, London, 1948.
2 On the literature regarding the pan-Slav orientation in this phase, see in particular
George D. Jackson, Komintern and Peasant in East Europe, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1966, pp. 143–44.
3 Actually, the “Green International” survived the fury of the world war with the
name International Peasant Union thanks to the action of a number of exponents
forced into exile, while communism was victoriously established in the East.
4 The term Korenizatsya or indigenisation means the process of enhancing the value
of national cultures promoted by Lenin in the newly formed USSR, and developed
up until 1928. Cf. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to
Self-Determination” (published in Verbote n. 2, April 1916), in Lenin, Collective
Works, Progress, Moscow, 1964, vol. XXII, pp. 143–56; and Iurii M. Garushiants,
“The National Programme of Leninism”, in Henry Huttenbach and Francesco
Privitera (eds), Self-Determination from Versailles to Dayton. Its Historical Legacy,
Longo, Ravenna, 1999, pp. 31–47; with Mihail Gellner and Aleksandr Nekrič,
Utopia in Power: The History of Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present, Hutch-
inson, London, 1986 (on the war against Poland); and Adriano Guerra, who
mentions the proclamation of Gen. Brusilov to the former czarist generals to rush
to fight against Poland in the ranks of the Red Army, in Adriano Guerra, Il crollo
dell’Impero sovietico, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1996, p. 83. For the policy of nation-
alities in the 1920s see the first part of the volume by Terry Martin, The Affirmative
Action Empire, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001; and Ronald G. Suny and
Terry Martin (eds), A State of Nations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.
5 There is a vast literature on this subject. For a first approach, see Giovanna Spendel,
Gli intellettuali sovietici negli anni ‘20, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1979; and Vittorio
104 Communism and the “third peasant way”
Strada, Tradizione e rivoluzione nella letteratura russa, Einaudi, Torino, 1969 and
1980.
6 On the problems of women in the USSR, see Barbara Clements, Bolshevik Women,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. A useful synthesis is that by Wendy
Goldman, “Le donne nella società sovietica”, in AA.VV., Il secolo dei comunismi,
NET, Milano, 2004, pp. 195–205.
7 On atheism and secularisation in USSR, see William B. Husband, “Godless Com-
munists”. Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia 1917–1932, Northern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, DeKalb, 2000; and the anthropological study by Sonja Luehrmann,
Secularism Soviet Style. Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 2011.
8 See Lionel Kochan (ed.), The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1978.
9 On Marx, the Jewish question and its impact of Soviet society see Markus Arkin,
Aspects of Jewish Economic History, The Jewish Publication Society of America,
Philadelphia, 1975, pp. 151–53.
10 On the Komintern’s critical position on the situation in Bulgaria see the appeals of
23 June and September 1923, in Aldo Agosti (ed.), La terza Internazionale. Storia
documentaria, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1974, vol. I, tome II, pp. 738–41, 743–44. Cf.
also Joseph Rotschild, The Communist Party of Bulgaria: Origins and Development
1883–1936, Columbia University Press, New York, 1959.
11 On relations between Lenin, the Komintern and the peasant question, see in parti-
cular Lenin’s famous article, “Better Fewer but Better” (originally in Pravda n. 49,
4 March 1923), in Lenin’s Collective Works, 2nd English edn, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1965, Vol. 33, p. 487–502; also in Lenin, L’alliance de la classe ouvrière et
de la paysannerie, Éditions des langues entrangères, Moscou, 1954; Moshe Lewin,
Lenin’s Last Struggle, Pantheon Books, New York, 1968; and Moshe Lewin’s
comments in his volume Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. A Study of Collecti-
vization, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1968; also see on this point
Franco Rizzi, “L’internazionale comunista e la questione contadina”, in AA.VV.,
Storia del Marxismo, Einaudi, Torino, 1978–82, vol. 3, tome 1, pp. 495–502; and
Edward H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia. Socialism in One Country 1924–1926,
Vol. 2, Macmillan, London, 1959, pp. 288–90. See also Franco Rizzi, Contadini e
comunismo. La questione agraria nella Terza Internazionale 1919–1928, Angeli,
Milano, 1981.
12 See Radek’s report to the XI meeting of the IV Congress of the Komintern, Ofan-
ziva kapitala in Institut za međunarodni radnički pokret, Komunistička Inter-
nacionala. Stenogrami i documenti kongresa, Privredna knjiga, Gornji Milanovac,
1981, vol. IV, pp. 258–59. See also the Resolution of the III Plenum of the
Komintern on government, worker and peasant in Aldo Agosti (ed.), La terza
Internazionale. Storia documentaria, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1974, vol. I, tome II,
pp. 714–16.
13 More broadly on these events see George D. Jackson, Komintern and Peasant, op.
cit., pp. 59–70. In fact after 1927 the Krestintern continued in the shadow of the
Komintern. Apparently it was formally dissolved only after 1939.
14 On this aspect see Edward H. Carr, in A History of Soviet Russia. Socialism in One
Country, op. cit., (quotation from p. 661 of Italian edn).
15 On the position assumed by Bukharin, see more extensively Stephen Cohen,
Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A Political Biography 1988–1938, Alfred A.
Knopf, New York, 1973, but also his speeches in Nikolaj Bucharin, Le vie della
rivoluzione 1925–1936, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1980.
16 On the Komintern’s attitude towards the Balkan question, see “Risoluzione del V
congresso sulle questioni nazionali dell’Europa centrale e nei Balcani” (July 1924),
and “Risoluzione del Presidium sulla questione jugoslava” (April 1925), in Aldo
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 105
Agosti (ed.), La terza Internazionale, op. cit., vol. I, tome II, respectively pp. 160
and 319. Also see Gordana Vlajčić, Jugoslavenska revolucija i nacionalno pitanje
1919–1927, Globus, Zagreb, 1984, all of chapter 4, but especially pp. 162–216.
17 Ivan Muzić, Stjepan Radić u kraljevini SHS, op. cit., pp. 157–63.
18 See Trotsky, Zinov’ev and others, La piattaforma dell’opposizione nell’URSS,
Samonà e Savelli, Roma, 1969. There is a vast bibliography on Trotsky’s opposi-
tion. We refer here, among others, to the second volume of the famous trilogy by
Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky 1921–1929, Oxford University
Press, New York, 1959; Victor Serge, Vita e morte di Trotskij, Laterza, Bari, 1973;
Charles Bettelheim, Class Struggles in USSR, Monthly Review Press, New York,
1976.
19 The scissors crisis consisted of the rapid growth in prices of industrial products and
a fall in agricultural prices, overturning their relationship compared to the previous
year. See for example, Maurice Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917,
International Publishers, New York, 1967; and Alec Nove, An Economic History of
USSR, Allen Lane, London, 1969.
20 Cf. Alexander Erlich, The Soviet Industrialisation Debate 1924–1928, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1960; with the documents gathered by Lisa Foa (ed.),
La strategia sovietica per lo sviluppo economico 1924–1930, Einaudi, Torino, 1970;
Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, op. cit.; Alec Nove, “Economia
sovietica e marxismo: quale modello socialista?”, in AA.VV., Storia del Marxismo,
op. cit., vol. 3, tome I, pp. 605–34.
21 On the upheaval in Russia caused by the long period of war, see Edward H. Carr,
A History of Soviet Russia, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 270–71; Alec Nove, An Economic
History, op. cit.; William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution 1917–1921, op.
cit.; Robert Daniels, The Roots of Confrontation, Harvard University Press, Cam-
bridge, MA, 1985, pp. 134–35; Nicholas Werth, Storia della Russia nel Novecento,
Il Mulino, Bologna, 2000, p. 186.
22 On this subject, see in particular Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Storia diplomatica dal
1919 al 1979, Ed. dell’Ateneo, Roma, 1972, pp. 32–44.
23 See Edward H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 351–62, 371–
80; Alec Nove, An Economic History, op. cit.; and more recently Robert Donaldson
and Joseph Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia, Sharpe, Armonk, 2002, p. 55.
24 On this subject cf. Alan M. Ball, Imagining America, op. cit., especially pp. 24–30,
75ff; with Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers. Ritual in Industrial Society – the
Soviet Case, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1981;
and Nicoletta Marcialis (ed.), E i Russi scoprirono l’America, Editori Riuniti,
Roma, 1989.
25 Nikolai Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, 1979; and, by the same author,
“The New Economic Policy of Soviet Russia”, in Al Richardson (ed.), In Defence
of the Russian Revolution. A Selection of Bolshevik Writings 1917–1923, Porcupine
Press, London, 1995, pp. 188–94.
26 See Eugène Preobrajensky, Dalla NEP al socialismo, Jaca Book, Milano, 1970 (this
volume was published in Moscow in 1922 by Moskovsky Rabochy and followed by
La nuova politica economica, published in Moscow in 1925 by the Academy of
Sciences).
27 Stalin’s speech had actually been anticipated by a series of lectures at the Uni-
versity of Sverdlovsk, in which some passages had been included that were con-
sidered ideologically “un-orthodox” and were therefore subsequently eliminated.
However, it soon became clear how his statement on “socialism in one country”
had been asserted in opposition to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and
not so much in terms of sharing the political and economic orientations expressed
by the Party’s “right”. Cf. on this topic, Roj Medvedev, “Il socialismo in un solo
106 Communism and the “third peasant way”
Paese”, in Storia del Marxismo, op. cit., vol. 3, tome I, pp. 561 and ff.; as well as
Bucharin, Stalin, Trotsky, Zinov’ev, La rivoluzione permanente e il socialismo in un
Paese solo, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1973, especially pp. 171–80; and Edward H.
Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, op. cit.
28 See on this topic the excellent essay by Baruch Knei-Paz, “Trotsky: rivoluzione
permanente e rivoluzione dell’arretratezza”, in Storia del Marxismo, op. cit., vol. 3,
tome I, pp. 133–65; also Leon Trotsky, “Theses on Industry”, in Richardson (ed.),
In Defence of the Russian Revolution, op. cit., pp. 195–214.
29 For Preobrazhensky equality of exchange was non-existent in capitalism, as it had
been after all during czarism. Therefore in primitive accumulation, similar rules
would have had to be applied also by the Bolshevik state. For more detail, see E.
Preobrazhensky, The New Economics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965; and by the
same author, The Crisis of Soviet Industrialisation. Selected Essays, Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 1980.
30 Cf. on these aspects the collection of documents by N. Bucharin and E.
Preobraženskij, L’accumulazione socialista, ed. by Lisa Foa, Editori Riuniti, Roma,
1969; and Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, op. cit.; and the
classic biography of Bukharin by Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik
Revolution, op. cit.
31 This terminology was very much in vogue in the party at the time and Bukharin
loved to refer to it, even though he did not feel there was anything “cursed” about
dealing with relations with the peasants.
32 On the extensive literature on Trotsky, especially in the period discussed here, see
Richard B. Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1973; and Heinz Abosch, Trotsky e il bolscevismo,
Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1977.
33 Cf. on this period of industrialisation and Soviet-American relations, Stephen
Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1995, especially pp. 108–45; and Richard Cartwright Austin,
Building Utopia. Erecting Russia’s First Modern City, Kent State University Press,
Kent, 2004 [1930].
34 Ball, Imagining America, op. cit., pp. 119–20, 145.
35 This was the time of the American communist party’s greatest influence on US
politics: at the end of the 1930s approximately 25% of CIO (Congress of Industrial
Organizations) members, which at that time aimed to promote mass production of
cars, steel and electrical machinery, belonged to communist-led trade unions.
During the Spanish war the party managed to organise and send volunteers to
fight Franco, and attracted many intellectuals to its ranks. The communists even
formed a popular front in Minnesota and at times, thanks to the convergence they felt
existed with New Deal policies, they joined some sectors of the Democratic Party.
Thus they also had an influential role, albeit not dominant, in California, Wiscon-
sin and Michigan. Cf. the collection of documents by Harvey Klehr, John Earl
Haynes and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1998; and Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and
Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1995.
36 On the issue of wheat and prices at the end of the 1920s as a pretext for a new
policy towards the countryside, see Sigrid Grosskopf, L’alliance ouvrière et pay-
sanne en URSS (1921–1928). Le problème du blé, Maspero, Paris, 1976; and more
recently Andrea Graziosi, Dai Balcani agli Urali, Donzelli, Roma, 1999, pp. 88–99.
37 On this issue, see Andrea Graziosi, The Great Soviet Peasant War. Bolsheviks and
Peasants 1917–1933, Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies, Cambridge, MA, 1996,
especially pp. 47ff.; and by the same author, Lettere da Kharkov, Einaudi, Roma,
1991.
 Communism and the “third peasant way” 107
38 On these topics, see Lynne Viola (ed.), Contending with Stalinism. Soviet Power
and Popular Resistance in the 1940s, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2002; and
Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago and London, 2001, pp. 181ff. On the human costs of Stalinist poli-
cies Andrea Graziosi has recently returned with his volume, L’URSS di Lenin e
Stalin, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007, especially pp. 295ff.
39 Explicit in this sense are the theories approved at the VI Congress of the Komintern
in 1928 as well as the article entitled “For the Fatherland!”, published in Pravda, 9
June 1934. See Robert Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism,
University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1984, respectively vol. II,
pp. 83–87, vol. I, pp. 243–44. A recent detailed study on nationality policy and the
Russification of the USSR see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action, op. cit.; and
the volume edited by Suny and Martin (eds), A State of Nations, op. cit., especially
pp. 253–99.
40 There is a huge literature on this topic. For a first approach, see Robert Conquest,
The Great Terror, A Reassessment, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990.
41 Just one example of this was the distorted use of reason according to which
Bukharin and others were tortured, vigorously and effectively described by Arthur
Köstler in his novel Darkness at Noon, Macmillan, New York, 1941.
5 Market socialism, national roads to
socialism and competition with the West

5.1 The end of the Second World War and political ruralism
De-Stalinisation began in Moscow just seconds after Stalin’s death, when with
the formation of the troika, a collective solution was found to his succession.
Nonetheless, it was only when Nikita Khrushchev read his two reports, the
public one and the secret one, to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956, that the premises were established for
launching a new debate on industrialisation and development models on a
vast scale, inevitably extending itself, given the time frame, to socialism’s roles
and function in Europe and the world.
Compared to the 1920s, however, the circumstances had profoundly chan-
ged. First of all, some networks of trans-European relations had been dis-
rupted. The Holocaust had eliminated almost the entire Jewish presence, even
though some individuals had survived the Shoah and some of them (belong-
ing to leftist currents) had reached dominant positions in communist parties
and governments, especially in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and
Romania. The German minorities (and with them the Protestant Churches)
had been drastically reduced due to migration to the West caused both by
fear of revenge for supporting Nazism, and forced exodus, encouraged – with
reprisals – by governments of those countries that had suffered most under
Nazi violence. Greek and Armenian diasporas had been annihilated by dis-
asters caused by their respective nationalisms, by the transfer of people and
by massacres (especially of Armenians). Even Catholicism (both Greek and
Roman) had been significantly reduced due to the prevalence of communist
state atheism, and had been discredited by some of their hierarchy’s colla-
boration with Nazi-friendly regimes. This occurred in spite of the fact that
this attitude was later mitigated by anti-communism, as the Catholic Church
was perceived as a bastion of the fight for freedom even by non-religious ele-
ments. However, many networks of relations that characterised Central-Eastern
Europe between the 19th and 20th centuries had been abolished, intimidated
or weakened – for various reasons – by Nazism, anti-Semitism, nationalism
and, finally, by the westward Soviet advance.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 109
Second, the Soviet system had been imposed on Central-Eastern Europe
(including a part of Germany) and to a large extent on the Balkans (with the
exception of Greece, Turkey and, in certain aspects, Yugoslavia). This introduced a
new network of relations, in this case political-ideological relations based on the
interdependence of communist parties, while the flow of East-West communication
was blocked for many years by the Cold War. In reality, in addition to inter-
European divisions, still others arose between “people’s democracies” following the
break between Yugoslavia and the USSR, while socialism continued to spread and
consolidate in the Far East. However, whereas in the latter case relations between
agriculture and industry, and city and countryside continued to maintain the same
features as in the first half of the century, with the prevalence of quantitative (or
extensive) production, the European situation was very different. Here in the 1950s
and not just in the USSR but across the entire Soviet Camp and in the autono-
mous, but still socialist Yugoslavia, intense industrialisation had taken place and
questions were arising about the relations to establish between industrial
modernity, the quality of development and the new political prospects of socialism.
Third, the situation described above, the result of the repercussions of the
Second World War and the immediate post-war years in Eastern Europe, had
determined among other things a deep social and cultural break from the
interwar period. In fact, at the end of the 1940s the conditions no longer
existed for reviving – in any form whatsoever – the previous exchange of ideas
between peasantism and Bolshevism, between industrialisation and agricultural
development, or between city and countryside.
The communists of Eastern Europe, consistent with their political-cultural
vision, were convinced that they had fully satisfied rural demands when
during 1945–46 the Popular Fronts (heterogeneous anti-fascist coalitions that
came about during the war with the communists’ active contribution) imple-
mented a new wave of agricultural reforms, regenerating the radical spirit of
the aftermath of the First World War.
Large landed estates had been nationalised, cut up and rapidly distributed as
private property to poor peasants, creating a degree of social egalitarianism that
was undoubtedly meant to satisfy old claims. Nevertheless, this was interpreted
by the communists as an act aimed at decisively weakening the previously
dominant social classes’ hold on the economy. Certainly the reform inflicted an
extremely tough blow to the landed aristocracy, to the point that many previous
owners (not only foreign-born ones) decided to abandon their own countries.
Meanwhile, the communists deemed they had rapidly concluded the
“democratic-bourgeois phase” in the countryside, and had thus cleared the
path for the subsequent construction of socialism, as suggested by their
ideology.1 From that moment they focused their attention on industrialisation
and urbanisation, considered essential prerequisites for constructing their
political project, as well as overcoming illiteracy with the introduction of
compulsory education (soon raised to eight years), eliminating church-
sponsored education and social services, and establishing state-sponsored
atheism.
110 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
There was, therefore, a “profound” cultural and political reason, which
developed within the new post-war “people’s democracies”, that prompted the
break both with the interwar period and with existing peasantist formations:
this break rapidly deepened with the worsening of US-USSR relations and the
advance of the Cold War.
Among the first to enter into direct conflict with the communists – sup-
ported by peasantist and leftist social-democratic currents – were the agrarian
parties, which had maintained a strong hold on the electorate, especially in
Hungary (where the Smallholders’ Party obtained 57% of the vote in elections
in November 1945), Poland (where Mikołajczyk was forced by the Yalta
accords to accept a joint government with the Lublin Committee), and partly
in Romania (where Maniu and Mihalache still had some influence). Accused,
and rightly so, of having nationalist leanings before the war as well as having
supported the richest peasants and the urban bourgeoisie to the detriment of the
poorer classes, they were crushed by the rapid convergence of various factors,
ranging mainly from communist control of the interior ministries and the police,
to leftists’ predominantly industrialist orientation and international conditions
stemming from the division of spheres of influence of the Danube-Balkan area
by Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in October 1944.
Between 1946 and 1947 the communists’ critique transformed into ideologi-
cal denigration, and then into accusations of conspiracy (partly invented, partly
true), followed by imprisonment and trials. Decimated by the arrests of their
leaders and disorganised, the agrarian parties (like those of liberal or right-wing
socialist orientations, who had also been part of the anti-fascist coalitions) soon
found it impossible to conduct their activities freely, until Maniu and Mihalache
were condemned to life in prison, Mikołajczyk fled abroad, and the Hungarian
Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy – forced to resign – decided not to return to his
homeland. Shortly thereafter, as mentioned above, the peasantist wings of the
left (which had most strongly backed the alliance with the working class during
the Second World War) were silenced, while left-wing social democrats were
absorbed by the communist and workers’ parties.2
Once the Iron Curtain had fallen and the monopoly of the Communist
Party had been imposed, the break with the past, radical in form and content,
was completed with the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe. In those turbulent times,
the problem of development and modernisation was dealt with regardless of
rural societies’ aspirations. From 1949 onwards, the countryside was force-
fully collectivised and the Stalinist model of industrialisation tested in the
USSR after 1929 was applied everywhere.
As a consequence, the agrarian problem was reduced to a technical ques-
tion of production efficiency and the preservation and distribution of goods,
whereas the aspiration to modernity remained limited by the approach
imposed on it by the communists. As mentioned previously, they identified
modernity with industrial and urban growth, policies of mass literacy and
later higher education, architectural rationality, art that could realistically
reflect the world of work, and an atheistic view of society.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 111
Once Bolshevik-peasantist competition was over, the international antag-
onism between development models seemed to become simpler, and at least
initially was reduced to mere rivalry between East and West, between socialism
and capitalism, reinforcing the conflict stemming from the Cold War.
Yet this “simplified” image, based on the antagonism between the United
States and the USSR and certainly facilitated by the return of Soviet iso-
lationism (extended to the entire camp) as well as an essentially autarkic
vision of development typical of Stalin, did not fully represent reality. Indeed,
this revealed much more articulated and complex forms at the beginning of
de-Stalinisation and concomitant with decolonisation. We will see how, in
reality, a tendency in this direction had already emerged in Europe after the
Second World War with the original ideas of “people’s democracies”, and
how this would be crushed by the two camps’ rapid solidification. Never-
theless, the changes that occurred in the mid-1950s provided the occasion for
these ideas to resurface in new forms and on an international level.
Thus a rich and fervent season began, multiple and trans-national, which
affected many countries and lasted until the repression of the “Prague
Spring”, with Tito’s Yugoslavia playing the role of an alternative protagonist.
After 1948, in effect, Yugoslav identity had been forged upon the basis of self-
management in internal politics and the country’s joining the Non-Aligned
Movement in foreign policy.
In this situation the concept of “competition” emerged from the rigid Eur-
opean juxtaposition of camps (which came about during the most acute phase
of the Cold War), then to expand geopolitically and take on worldwide sig-
nificance, more in economic-social terms than militarily. This competition
was soon identified not only in Moscow and Washington, but also in Bel-
grade and Beijing, and at play was hegemony over the post-colonial world of
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Competition remained, of course, contained within the framework of the
conflict between alternative models of development. Not much time had
passed since the phases marked by the East-West opposition between city and
countryside, industry and agriculture, between rural socialism and industrial
socialism; similarly the East-East differences between Bolshevism and pea-
santism, industrialist Stalinism and pro-fascist and/or clerical corporativism
were not yet a distant memory.
Nonetheless, solidly anchored in the more general picture of modernity, in
the mid-1950s the new East-West polarisation of capitalism-communism, as it
had been defined after 1947 in the context of Europe, began to evolve into a
series of peaceful technological and social challenges. The “race to conquer
space” became one of its most distinctive symbols, and the functionality of
the system, the effectiveness of the solutions proposed and the quality of life
soon became the criteria used for measuring an antagonism which, in fact,
tended to lower barriers and increase communication.
Other factors contributing to this were the deliberations in the Socialist
Camp regarding controlled forms of market, the process of democratisation
112 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
both in individual countries and in international economic and political rela-
tions, and the distribution/attraction of resources to/from newly independent
countries in the so-called “Third World”. More broadly, the problem of
technical innovation, the growing use of new instruments of mass-media
communication to present one’s own “product system”, the expansion of
trade and the growing use of international finance were leading to the crea-
tion of a network of connections and progressive world interdependence
which would later develop into globalisation. The USSR and the Socialist
Camp were no longer able to avoid this process, although they attempted to
do so under Brezhnev because it frightened them.
Meanwhile, the issue of the reform of socialism, of its transition from
quantitative to qualitative production, and from a centralised, monolithic
system to one that was complex and differentiated reopened the debate on
relations within the Camp. This debate was in a context of competition with
the West for hegemony over the “Third World”, and Yugoslavia symbolised
the feasibility of a socialist approach characterised by a plurality of models,
with the Soviet system being only one of the possible variations.

5.2 From “command economy” to “market socialism”

In essence, in the 1950s socialist Europe began openly to ask itself which path
modernity should have taken once industrialisation – often traumatically –
got off the ground. On the table was Stalinism’s legacy: the development
model pursued since the 1930s had undoubtedly provoked profound and
tumultuous social changes, but had also brought many limits to light in the
USSR and throughout the Soviet Camp. It became inevitable to ask oneself
whether and to what extent the transformations already undergone had
required a structural adjustment of the economic system, and therefore, also
the political system. Since Stalinism had been mainly a forced experience
shared by a much larger geopolitical space than the USSR, aspirations for
change soon took on a strongly trans-national profile.
Meanwhile new challenges had arisen on the horizon, especially from the
United States which had proceeded, in the context of the Cold War, to
implement the Marshall Plan and reconstruct Western Europe. This made
competition between growth models visible (and measurable).
Finally, European colonial empires had begun to dissolve: this offered new
fields of action for competition between models, even though this posed a new
challenge to the isolationism of socialist economies and politics.
In sum, the path to modernity forged by Stalin was to be assessed in terms
of results achieved and future goals, adequate or radically modified depending
on the needs of the time and aspirations, never abandoned by communist
leaders, to make socialism assume a leading role in global development.
So, once the dominant figure of Stalin had disappeared, socialist countries
could begin to examine both the effectiveness of the Soviet social and eco-
nomic system (and, in particular, the consequences of the structural rigidity of
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 113
planning; the marginality of light industry; and the falling behind in agri-
cultural production) and the viability of alternatives. The existence of alter-
natives had been made clear by the system of self-management, which was in
place in Yugoslavia following the severing of relations between Tito and
Stalin in June 1948.
The harbingers of these thoughts had actually surfaced a few weeks after
Stalin’s death when a complex combination of local situations and pressures
from Moscow had provoked a clash of politics and programmes in the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Hungary, between Ulbricht and
Zaisser in Berlin, at the same time as workers’ protests exploded in the
German democratic capital, while in Budapest Imre Nagy presented his gov-
ernment’s proposals in antithesis to the orientations pursued up to then by
Party Secretary Mátyás Rákosi. A few years later Khrushchev spectacularly
proclaimed his mea culpa in Belgrade, which redrew the relations between
socialist countries.
Thus it is difficult to pin a date on the beginning of a conflict that turned
out to be often bitter and accusatory. In any case, it should be acknowledged
that the 20th Congress of the CPSU represented the first public expression of
legitimisation of an ongoing debate which was to unravel in the years to
come.3
Publicly, in fact, the sessions acknowledged the feasibility of national paths
to socialism and actually de facto admitted the lawfulness of alternatives to
the Soviet system. In this secret speech (which only remained so for a few
months) the process of “de-Stalinisation” was taken to the point of no return,
in spite of the ambiguities that were to emerge in the various phases of its
implementation. In 1956 it was possible to examine more openly and criti-
cally the main aspects of the development model in place since 1929, and
propose its modification, at times radical.
Behind all this was the need, certainly ideological in origin, and also dic-
tated by deeply rooted economic and social reasons, to demonstrate the abil-
ity of the socialist system to respond more adequately than capitalism to the
transformation and development needs of underdeveloped societies.
Hence there were three dimensions to the problem:

 the first concerned the efficiency of the Soviet system of production and
distribution;
 the second focused on alternatives within the socialist system;
 and the third concentrated on the ability of socialism as a whole to be able
to handle the challenge of the industrialised West in a global context.

Though the above dimensions were obviously highly interdependent, as we

will continue to point out in the following pages, for the purposes of narrative
clarity they need to be dealt with separately.
Although the question of the Soviet system’s efficiency came up in the
attempts at reform initiated by the Kremlin on Stalin’s death, the issue only
114 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
became the object of intense public debate at the beginning of the 1960s. At
that time, on the one hand, Khrushchev had defeated the conservative oppo-
sition within the Party, which had gathered around Molotov, Kaganovich and
Malenkov during the confused days of May–June 1957 (the so-called “anti-
Party Group” conspiracy). On the other hand, growth rates in the USSR had
begun to decline. At the same time, the need for military expenditure had
grown, and would soon be increased by the crises in Berlin and Cuba.4
At the centre of criticism now was the functionality of a “command econ-
omy”, the system of production set up by Stalin based on a centralised and
hierarchical system of decision making (headed by the ministries), in which
there was a limited number of sectors considered priorities, and where terror-
based coercion, in the absence of career opportunities and/or monetary
rewards, constituted the most powerful (negative) incentive in the workplace.
In reality, this form of coercion had been quickly abandoned after Stalin’s
death. Under Khrushchev, it was replaced by repeated references to the Leninist
origins of Soviet politics (this was also used to legitimise the de-Stalinisation
process, which started with the 20th Congress and resumed with greater vigour
at the 22nd), as well as the “race to break records” and other voluntary methods
to achieve goals. They soon proved to be unrealistic, as in the case of meat
production, which was supposed to treble in 18 months, or the exploitation of
the Virgin Lands of Kazakhstan and Siberia beyond the Russian Volga.
Therefore the model that emerged after the 1930s, already changed in its
general composition, had to deal with the need to multiply investment prio-
rities in order to promote growth of an increasingly wide range of products,
as the growing distance between technological results achieved in a short
time, the population’s low standard of living and shortages of consumer
goods were becoming more and more obvious.5 Therefore, the role of enter-
prises in the Soviet production system acquired unprecedented importance
and became the centre of an economic debate (with clear political implica-
tions) that challenged those responsible for the implementation of the plan
(Gosplan), their lack of coordination and their management methods.
These aspects of the work of Gosplan became, from 1962, the target of cri-
ticism from a group of academics led by the statistician Vasily S. Nemchinov
and the Leningrad mathematician Viktor V. Novozhilov. They, in turn, had
been inspired by the work of the Soviet mathematician (and Nobel Prize
winner in 1975) Leonid V. Kantorovich, who in 1939 had already succeeded
in developing linear planning methods (only slightly earlier than American
economists), but had been ignored at the time.6
Using Kantorovich’s theories as a starting point, the School of Mathema-
tical Economists, as it was later called, focused on precise mathematical
methods to apply to planning, in order to enable an “objective” evaluation of
the criteria that could be applied to the quality of the goods produced, to
their distribution, and to the suitability of available materials. In order to
work, the system not only foresaw the use of electronic calculators
(forerunners of the computer), but also encouraged a radical review of the
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 115
price-setting system, arguing that arbitrary pricing, in other words prices fixed
by the Gosplan, should be abandoned.
In other words, there was the possibility of differentiating between the
macroeconomic competence of the central plan and the microeconomic one
for enterprises, in a framework in which new formation mechanisms would
contribute to determining prices. Among these mechanisms, as Novozhilov
had clearly indicated, there would also be room for the relationship between
supply and demand.7
The proposal put forward by the School of Mathematical Economists drew
negative reactions from economists like Yakov A. Kronrod who remained
loyal to the Soviet planning inherited from Stalin. Their arguments on the
risk of “sliding” towards marginalist theories actually revealed the fear of
cutting back Gosplan’s powers, thereby winning the approval of a large part of
the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus. So the debate moved rapidly from an
apparently technocratic level to an exquisitely political one.
Contributing to this view was the position articulated by a new line of
thought, the so-called Kharkov School, led by such economists as Evsej
Liberman, Vadim Trapeznikov and Lev Leontiev, which emphasised enter-
prises’ decision-making autonomy by reducing planning, to the point of
making profit the only “success indicator” for enterprises.
Liberman’s theories had actually already been published in an article on
planning and incentives that appeared in Kommunist in July 1956. They were
later taken up and developed in articles appearing in Voprosy Ekonomiki and
Pravda in the late summer of 1962. These were followed by various con-
tributions from other scholars and academics, soon joined by Nemchinov.
Basically, Liberman proposed allowing enterprises to draw up their work
plans, fix salaries and determine costs and profits autonomously. At the same
time he suggested creating an “incentive fund” for investments of general
interest to the country by taxing enterprise profits, a part of which would be
kept by the enterprises for their own use.8
Liberman felt it was essential to create a mechanism of enterprise incentives
because he was convinced this would have positive effects on society. As he saw
it, Gosplan would still be responsible for the main planning indexes, from
finance to accounting, and from the budget to investments, whereas profit
would be calculated on the basis of goods sold and would no longer be based
on goods manufactured, thus encouraging companies to satisfy the needs of
their customers, in other words to meet the market’s demands.
Regarding prices, Liberman accepted the idea that they should continue to
be controlled by planning, though the criteria for fixing them would become
more flexible than in the past. There was soon agreement on this point with
the School of Mathematical Economists, which, by calling for the introduction
of non-arbitrary prices, was in effect, along with A. Birman, asking for the
substantial liberalisation of all prices, leaving the state to control just a lim-
ited number of key products such as electrical energy, steel and oil. In turn
Nemchinov, just before his death in 1964, pressed for the adoption of
116 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
measures that would allow businesses to trade directly with each other, envi-
saging the introduction of forms of competition, and enterprise planning that
no longer required the formal approval of the state.
What innovative economists and mathematicians actually had in mind for
the country was the establishment of a market socialist economy. The plan
would be reorganised and continue to regulate a number of macroeconomic
aspects considered crucial for the country, but this would be accompanied by
the introduction of an entrepreneurial system aimed at maximising profits,
taking into account wholesalers’ orders and customer demand. In other
words, they thought that reorganising the planning mechanism to put enter-
prise autonomy at the centre of the country’s interests would encourage
improvements in product quality by initiating forms of competition and
facilitate the emergence of a managerial class of managers and technicians
who would be stimulated by the positions they had achieved to promote both
innovation and improvements in living standards through the growth and
strengthening of enterprise activity.
This proposal – as was to be expected – was openly opposed by Arseny
Grigoryevich Zverev (former minister of finance under Stalin and his succes-
sors, until 1960), and other economists, who lamented the risk of heavy
industry losing subsidies and the incomprehensible idea of abandoning plan-
ning (which they saw as one of the main achievements of the 1917 Bolshevik
Revolution). Above all, they feared a return to “capitalist chaos”.9

5.3 The plurality of development models in socialism

The controversy over planning, enterprise autonomy and price reform, which
addressed the issue of the compatibility of markets and socialism, moving
away from the Stalinist mode of production, did not involve just the Soviet
Union but all of Eastern Europe.
At the end of 1956, for example, just a few days after the resolution of a
political crisis which had dramatically affected Polish-Soviet relations, Oskar
Lange, a well-known econometrician, and the economist Czesław Bobrowski
(known for having published an in-depth study on Yugoslav self-management
in 1955 while in exile in France) were called by the Polish leader Władysław
Gomułka to direct the State Economic Council. The following year at a
conference on the Polish path to socialism, Lange stated the need to seek out
new types of relations between planning and enterprises, whereby decision-
making autonomy should take on the characteristics of self-management by
workers and cooperative members. He argued that prices should be fixed
based on the “law of value” (i.e. market rules), as well as being under state
control, while property, divided into state and group property (i.e. munici-
palities, cooperatives, etc.), would encourage direct decision making by
workers. In this way, the working class would gradually overcome its weak-
ness, typical of developing societies, which in Lange’s view was also the main
cause of bureaucratic-administrative predominance.10
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 117
Lange’s ideas were shared and developed by a large group of economists
and academics outside Poland. In Czechoslovakia, for example, the renowned
economist Ota Šik, who later became vice-premier during the “Prague
Spring”, voiced even more radical ideas, inspired by theories that had been
developed by Nemchinov, on economic decentralisation and price formation.
According to Šik, the backwardness of Czechoslovak society was to be
attributed to the extensive character of economic production. He acknowl-
edged that an extensive economy could play a role in the initial phase of
development, but he warned of the risks of inefficiency, inadequacy and waste
that it would inevitably produce in the long run. Thus transition to an inten-
sive economy was essential, even for a country where planning dominated.
Planning would have to be reassessed in order to abandon controlled pricing
and replace it with a system he defined as “production prices”, based on the
laws of supply and demand. This was the only way to stimulate enterprise
efficiency, promote worker and enterprise participation in planning, and
increase the quality and growth of production.11
The early 1960s also saw the start of industrial price reform in the GDR,
“planning from the bottom up” in Bulgaria and the preparation of the
much more radical New Economic Mechanism in Hungary. The Hungarian
leader János Kádár resolved to carry out a “soft” planning reform, limited to
the main macroeconomic spheres (large-scale investment, national income
formation criteria, accumulation and consumption policies, foreign trade,
and industrial and agricultural production). In reality the measures
announced in Budapest foresaw quite radical changes, at least when com-
pared with those in Berlin or Sofia. However, the Hungarian leadership soon
felt obliged to tone down the changes by adopting temporary measures,
which while postponing the increase in enterprise importance and autonomy,
made possible a gradual opening of the Hungarian economy to the international
market.12
Kádár’s caution in carrying out the Hungarian experiment was largely a
consequence of the tragic failure of the 1956 revolution (in which Kádár had
participated as Nagy’s deputy until he had been called to Moscow by the
Soviets on the eve of the Red Army’s second intervention and convinced to
take responsibility for its repression). Nevertheless, this moderation was also
the result of an unexpected change in the political climate, which came about
in the Soviet Camp with Khrushchev’s fall from power in October 1964.13
The feeling of change felt in Moscow was not immediately apparent in
Hungary or in the rest of the region. The controversy over market socialism
and price reform continued in the months following the Soviet coup de main.
In September 1965, the new prime minister, Aleksei Kosygin, presented a
reform which, while cautious, moved in the direction indicated by the refor-
mers. Birman, for example, was enthusiastic because among the changes
announced was acknowledgement of a profit index for enterprises, a portion
of which would be managed by the companies themselves, and new methods
for determining prices as well as incentives and indirect bonuses.14
118 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
However, a crucial aspect differentiated reform pressures in the USSR from
what was taking place at that time in the rest of the Socialist Camp. Though
in essence they were quite similar and in some ways even the product of
reciprocal influence, in these countries, as is clear from both Lange’s and Šik’s
approaches, the desire for change was closely linked to the goal of defining
the specific features of what was called “national roads to socialism”.15 The
reference to self-management was, from this point of view, the most obvious
element.
This was not because reformist economists, intellectuals and politicians
wanted to copy or transfer the economic and social system in place in Yugo-
slavia since 1950 to their own country, but because the mere existence of this
system and its continuation over time – legitimised among other things by
Khrushchev’s reconciliatory visit in 1955 – constituted both encouragement to
achieve greater independence from the USSR, and the acceptance of a vision
of a society that was more complex than the Soviet one, without questioning
its socialist orientation.
After all, after 1950 Yugoslavia had dismantled its old hierarchical pyramid
structures inherited from Stalin’s system to create workers’ councils and elec-
tive management committees within enterprises. These were responsible for
drafting statutes, work programmes and plans, as well as being able to control
a percentage of the profits and vary a part of salaries according to pro-
ductivity. Moreover, Yugoslavia had abandoned five-year planning and had
proceeded with decentralisation, which soon proved advantageous especially
for municipalities. While still in a context that continued to feature the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, the changes introduced in factories and the
reduction of the state’s centralised decision-making powers indicated an
inclusive system which differed from the Soviet one in that it was more parti-
cipatory, at least as far as industrialised work was concerned. This stirred up
hopes that change was possible even in the European area dominated by the
USSR.16
In fact it was no coincidence that almost all insurrectional or protest
movements that took place in the Soviet Camp, from the Hungarian revolu-
tion of 1956 to the “Prague Spring”, and from the Polish protests of the 1950s
to the economic and social strategies developed by Solidarność after 1980–81,
referred to the concept of self-management. For example, there were the
workers’ councils established with the National Trade Union support on 24
October in Miskolc, or in the Csepel factories at the time of the first Soviet
military intervention in Hungary. Another example was the workers’ councils
that were pressed for by the Czechoslovak government in June 1968, the for-
mation of which influenced trade union reorganisation that was going on, and
continued to have influence in the months following the invasion of the
Warsaw Pact troops, at least until March 1969 (in January the first National
Conference of Councils had in fact met), when the “Prague Spring” was
definitively crushed. A third example was the Polish Workers’ Council
reforms of 1958 and, later, the Statute of Solidarność which, in section VI,
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 119
made explicit reference to the self-managed republic, and urged for studies
and projects that were carried out in the following years, even after the
Wojciech Jaruzelski coup in 1981.17
The aspirations to self-management expressed a desire to participate in the
work of institutions as well as economic and industrial development. Fur-
thermore, these calls also indicated a political dimension to the issue of
enterprise autonomy, which its supporters believed would yield various
results: better quality and more productive management due to it being given
direct responsibility, and a substantial democratisation of society, which
would alter the single party’s monopoly.
In some ways self-management was attractive because it offered reform
communists the opportunity to re-launch anew the debate on the “people’s
democracies”, which had been only vaguely outlined in the years 1944–46.
Although it is quite often underestimated in the international literature on
communism, which tends to focus much more on understanding the forma-
tion of “Cold War communism”, that debate had indeed left its mark on
Central-Eastern Europe beyond the Iron Curtain.18
In fact, when this debate emerged it revealed how the probable arrival of
communist parties in many European governments in the post-war period
would, on the one hand, put an end to Soviet isolationism of the previous
decades and, on the other, would force communists to pursue new strategies
in order to avoid the revolutionary failures following the Great War – espe-
cially those experienced in Soviet Hungary, Slovakia and in Bavaria. Actually
it was this latter concern that encouraged one current of thought and a
number of political leaders since 1944 to consider what the contents of the
proposed “people’s democracies” should be.
In Poland, for example, Władysław Bienkowski’s ideas regarding social
alliances and evolutionary models of change, as well as those of Adam Schaff
on the concept of hegemony, probably influenced Gomułka and, in November
1946, encouraged him to emphasise the difference between the Soviet system
and the construction of post-war Polish democracy. Schaff, particularly
inspired by Gramsci and in agreement with Traianin, had stressed that power
could be maintained without resorting to a dictatorial system and that, as he
argued could already be seen in the case of Poland, the proletariat would be
able to maintain its power in ways similar to those used by the bourgeoisie in
capitalist systems – that is, through a policy of general consensus under its
leadership.
Similar ideas were voiced in Bulgaria by Dimitrov. At the end of 1946, he
insisted on the popular character of the political system that should be
adopted in his country, specifying that it would not mean establishing a
Soviet republic, but rather maintaining a system of social alliances (of course,
in this case, not based on parties). It was at this stage that these calls for
broader convergence were reflected in the People’s Fronts, i.e. in a form of
coalition that was basically governing Eastern European countries without
any significant opposition. This was because the opposition was represented
120 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
only by politically discredited ideas, because it was close to fascism and
Nazism.
Similarly, Gottwald – as surprising as it may seem in light of his later ten-
dencies – warned his own militants not to forget that the Party intended to
focus on the “national and democratic” transformation of Czechoslovakia
and not the socialist revolution. On some occasions, “surprising” theories
were put forward, as in the case of Bierut who, in a speech in Krakow in
June 1946, declared that he was in favour of private property and private
enterprise.19
Moreover, it has been noted how such ideas were opposed within the com-
munist movement itself. The fiercest critics at that time were the Yugoslav
communists, and in particular Tito and Edvard Kardelj, who repeatedly
emphasised how the dictatorship of the proletariat was an integral part of
building a “people’s democracy” and how the Soviet model was the only
reference that could be used to construct a communist power system.20
On the other hand, indications of the salient features of “people’s democ-
racy” remained unclear. Basically this theory had not been formulated, per-
haps because there had not been time to develop coherent theses due to the
rapid succession of events. In Moscow in 1947 (when in many Eastern Eur-
opean countries’ relations in the Fronts had already started to deteriorate
irreparably), Eugene Varga, A. Leontiev and I. Traianin attempted to sketch
out a distinction between “people’s democracies” and “proletarian democ-
racies”, associating the latter with the dictatorship of the proletariat and
hence the Soviet system. Varga in particular dwelt upon the character of the
transformations being carried out in the countries of Central-Eastern Europe
and pointed out how changes were being made within existing institutional
structures (even through the unprecedented coexistence of monarchies and
coalitions led by People’s Fronts, as in the case of Romania and Bulgaria) and
not simply by subverting these structures, thereby indicating how institutions
inherited from the past could in fact still be reformed.21
All these suggestions indicate how the debate, albeit with the limits men-
tioned, focused on the difference between the Soviet system and other
communist-led countries. This was a difference that left space for: a) the
reluctance to support collectivisation; b) a certain sensitivity towards the
policies of alliance and the role of the People’s Fronts as a tool for building
government coalitions; and c) sensitivity towards the plurality of forms of
ownership.
Thus it was this difference that encouraged a theoretical return, which
began from the moment de-Stalinisation offered the communist parties of the
countries in the Soviet Camp the possibility of regarding forced Stalinisation
of the years 1949–53 (which had already started in 1947/48) as an “unplea-
sant parenthesis”. It gave these leaders the possibility to reassess their poli-
tical and economic experience in light of the potential changes announced by
the formation of a collective leadership at the head of the Soviet system a few
hours after the death of Stalin.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 121
Consequently, the “national road to socialism” that Khrushchev legitimised
with his speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU was interpreted by refor-
mist communist factions as the most convincing opportunity ideally to return
to that brief and unfortunate phase immediately after the war, as in the mid-
1950s (unlike in the recent past) they were able to cite a “successful example”,
which the example of self-managed Yugoslavia appeared to be – in other
words, a system that had gradually developed following the break with the
Communist Information Bureau (Kominform) in 1948.
It was in this context that Imre Nagy’s main line of thought can be found,
and especially his obstinate conviction that Hungary’s national independence
and the protection of its socialist position could be expressed and safeguarded
by returning to the cooperative relations existing within the government coa-
lition of 1945 and the spirit of the “people’s democracy”. Consistent with
these beliefs were his decisions of 30 October on re-establishing a multiparty
system, and 1 November when he declared Hungary’s neutrality outside the
Warsaw Pact.22
Some aspects of Czechoslovak historiographic revisionism were similar
when, in the years before and during the “Prague Spring”, on the wave of the
debate over the future of the National Front and the review of trials, the
events of 1948 were reconsidered, including events following the Prague coup/
revolution. The aim was to understand if, and to what extent, the “national
road to socialism” for which Gottwald had pressed for so hard up to that
moment, could still be developed after February, later agreeing that the
determining moment for the country’s Sovietisation was the expulsion of
Yugoslavia from the Kominform and the subsequent wave of trials.23
Tito’s deep-seated conviction, which he tenaciously cultivated between 1955
and 1958 in particular, can also be seen from this perspective. This was the
belief that he would be able to play a leading role in the de-Stalinisation
process both as its herald, and as the leader of a country which, thanks to
self-management, seemed capable of not only becoming an alternative magnetic
force to the Soviet one, but also of occupying that role within the existing
socialist framework by depriving the USSR of its central power in the area.24
The failure of this attempt was symbolically confirmed by Imre Nagy’s
execution in June 1958. This followed the second Yugoslav-Soviet breakdown
in relations engineered by Khrushchev, with the condemnation of the new
Party programme approved at the Seventh Congress of the Yugoslav League.
It was this failure that finally drove Yugoslavia to look to Asian and African
countries with which it had enjoyed close ties for some time as a result of
Tito’s many journeys to India, Burma, Ethiopia and Egypt since 1954. Con-
vergence on the principles of active neutralism outlined in Bandung in 1955
and discussed again in Brioni in 1956 also led to Yugoslavia sponsoring the
first conference of the Movement of the Non-Aligned Countries, in 1961 in
Belgrade.25
In the meantime, however, the parameters for Yugoslav autonomy from the
USSR were being defined. Though it remained within Lenin’s political legacy
122 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
and the path proved difficult, contradictory and tortuous, Yugoslavia decided
to formulate a political theory and practice founded on self-management.
Well beyond the 1950s in the countries within the Soviet Camp this helped
keep alive the project of establishing a developed, modern society by com-
bining “national roads” and entrepreneurial effectiveness, emphasising enter-
prise freedom, which would in turn be helped along (at least this was the
hope) by reforms of prices and planning.
Thus the push for change in the first half of the 1960s in the USSR was
crucial for European socialist countries, as they intended to give their devel-
opment policies a new, more solid strategic and concrete basis, incentivising
intensive, quality production as well as that of consumer goods, after the
years of deprivation and exploitation of the countryside aiming – according
to Stalinist dictates imposed in 1949 – to create and consolidate heavy
industry under conditions of scarce capital.
The call for enterprise autonomy as opposed to centralised planning could
be clearly seen in references to self-management. The 1965 Yugoslav reform
was the most radical act of a transformation process included in a wider
framework of change affecting the European socialist area at the time.26 It
liberalised most prices and emphasised decision-making autonomy of self-
managed bodies and of enterprise managers. It recognised the possibility of
withdrawing state support from ineffective enterprises, thus allowing worker
mobility (even at the cost of accepting unemployment and emigration as
social evils to be dealt with through policies that differed from the
“administrative” response inherited from Stalinism). It also gave its citizens
passports and freedom of movement, thus opening the country up to
international tourism.
These measures were largely “inaccessible” for the other countries in the
Camp, but their contents and the direction shown by the whole of these
reformist policies highlighted the interdependence between the radical reform
of Yugoslav self-management introduced in 1965 (and widely opposed by
Tito’s favourite, Aleksandar Ranković, who was forced to resign in 1966),
and the debate on the creation of a market socialism and the democratisation
of the decision-making process (still limited to enterprises), which was taking
place at the time in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and even the Soviet
Union. This is confirmed by the fact that the issue of price reform, along with
studies on the role of demand and profit in planned economies and enterprise
management mechanisms, were the subject of intense debates among econo-
mists in different countries, for example the Yugoslav Aleksandar Bajt, the
Hungarian Béla Csikós-Nagy, the Poles Janusz Zieliński and Jan Lipiński, the
Czechoslovaks Josef Goldman and Josef Flek, and the East German Hans
Böhme.27
This interdependence had clear regional-political origins. The fact that they
were pressing to decentralise economic organisation, to increase the impor-
tance of enterprise management and structurally to reorganise development
policies enabled Yugoslavia to continue to present itself on the European
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 123
communist scene as being at the forefront of a general process of change. This
had potential (and unexpected) repercussions in the Soviet Camp, and the
“national road to socialism” came to acquire visibility and programmatic
significance focusing on society’s complexity and the diversity of experiences
in socialist countries.
However, Yugoslav-USSR reform of the socialist system and Camp rela-
tions was only one dimension of the problem. Another side can be seen in the
parallel project, endorsed by Khrushchev, radically to transform the Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in order to lay the foundations
for market integration in the socialist world.28 The debate, which developed
on these issues during the 1960s, was symptomatic of this view. Price reform,
in fact, offered the opportunity to reassess economic relations within the
Soviet Camp and, above all, to eliminate the practice, which was still current,
of mainly bilateral product exchange based essentially on state barter.
In other words, the idea of creating a multilateral trading system was based
on a reform of the Comecon, which would involve coordination of the dif-
ferent plans and diversification of production in each socialist country based
on each one’s economic potential. This was, after all, the aim that had per-
suaded Khrushchev to encourage forced integration of the economies within
the Socialist Camp, according to a logic of productive interdependence, cap-
able of superseding a process of industrialisation that slavishly imitated the
Soviet system and which, after 1949, had transformed the economies of the
countries in its sphere of influence into “clones” of the USSR, which did not
always, and not necessarily, turn out to be successful.29
If it is true that Khrushchev’s starting point was his need to build a system
that could compete in some ways with the European Common Market
(ECM), it is also true that the stimulus to increase trade within the region
drew inspiration from positions that had already emerged in the Bolshevik
experience of the NEP (Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika, or New Economic
Policy).30
Despite this, Khrushchev’s project was halted by Romanian opposition.
Bucharest, in fact, interpreted Soviet proposals as an attempt to stop indus-
trialisation in Romania based on new commercial relationships with oil-
producing countries, in particular the Middle East. The Romanian communist
elite interpreted Khrushchev’s plan as a way of condemning their country to
mainly rural production, whereas the benefits would have been solely ascribed
to regional integration between a) the mining industry of the Carpathians,
b) the Hungarian textile industry, and c) Wallachian-Bulgarian and Moldavian-
Ukrainian agricultural cooperation. This appeared to be in line with a policy
aimed de facto at the break-up of Romania.31
Although Romanian opposition thwarted Khrushchev’s project in the early
1960s, the Kremlin’s pressures for regional interdependence did not wane and
were actually reinforced by the construction between 1960 and 1980 of a
dense network of oil and natural gas pipelines. Thus Soviet oil from the Volga
oilfields was distributed to Central Europe along two main axes, the first in
124 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
the direction of Poland and the GDR, and the other towards Czechoslovakia
and Hungary, while Bulgaria was supplied by sea, transforming the port of
Burgas into a refinery. Natural gas flowed to Bratislava across Ukraine,
coming from central Siberia. From L’viv, natural gas pipelines went to
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the GDR. These were subsequently
extended to Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Italy and
France. Thus a new network of East-East interdependence was established,
whereas connections gradually established with some West European coun-
tries, thanks to German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, contributed to
lessening the Iron Curtain’s rigidity.
Similar to what happened to the market socialism idea, pressures for
reform in the Camp survived Khrushchev’s fall, at least until “stagnation”
was imposed by Brezhnev after 1969. While Kosygin was putting forward his
proposals, a plan for price reform based on the combination of fixed and
variable parts, taking into account the laws of supply and demand, seemed to
offer new opportunities for the growth of multilateral trade in the Comecon
area, as did the progressive reduction in the gap between prices set in indivi-
dual countries, and that between domestic and international prices. This was
to provide the basis for the creation of a customs union among the member
states.
According to socialist (especially Hungarian and Polish) economists’ cal-
culations, this strategy would make it possible to reduce the rigidity of cen-
tralised planning in individual countries as well as lessen direct control over
imports, exports and licences. This would free up energies to be used for
technical innovation, and supplies of goods in terms of quality and quantity
on the market and at the retail level would grow.32
In sum, during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s a truly trans-
national reformist offensive in terms of development and growth models was in
progress. This was an offensive in which reforms of prices both domestically
and on the level of Comecon trade relations aimed at laying the foundations
for broad-based, radical change which was not openly acknowledged, but was
implicit in the nature of the proposed changes.

5.4 Social complexity, cultural change and political reform

Thus, in spite of the apparent technical nature of the debate and the focus on
prices and planning, the diversification of economic production and the
greatly sought-after enterprise autonomy created the conditions – starting
with the economic fabric of enterprises – for articulating social interests.
These interests were an expression of the need to place products on the
market, ensure the growth of individual enterprises and achieve better
conditions for expanding economic activity. This would inevitably lead not
only to a sort of economic competition (in Hungary it was referred to as
“controlled competition”), but also to the unprecedented interaction of eco-
nomics and politics, resulting in enterprise managers putting pressure on the
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 125
representational centre (the Party, the Soviets, parliaments) in order to reap
hoped-for benefits.
The growth of the technical-scientific intelligentsia was already at hand.
Economic expansion, the need to innovate, the push to raise production
quality and the formation of a complex economic and social system were
encouraging social stratification, whereas the diffusion of higher and uni-
versity education in subjects such as economics, engineering, chemistry and
mathematics had gradually begun to undermine the primacy of humanistic
intellectuality. Not that this would have underestimated such processes: on the
contrary, the subject was thoroughly discussed by Lukács (who focused on
economic-social and factory practices) and the Budapest School of Philosophy, as
well as Ágnes Heller, who elaborated her theory on the rebirth of needs by
reflecting the social reality of her time, to the contributions of the Yugoslav
journal Praxis and the Korčula School on economic efficiency, strikes, intel-
lectuals’ social role and Karel Košík’s reflections on work, classes and social
structure.33 However, it is true that managers were acquiring increasing power
in society, especially where cartels or large companies were multiplying: with
their knowledge, they had begun to challenge the power of the bureaucracy in
the certainty of building a technical structure that needed to free itself of
mediocrity in order to bring about a technological revolution capable of
breaking all dependence on foreign innovation.34
During the 1970s higher education including universities and academies
underwent heady expansion. In places where these institutions did not exist,
such as in Albania, they were created. New managers had to be educated.
Young people were encouraged to pursue their studies and numerous technical-
scientific faculties were opened. This process, common to all countries in
the Camp, in the USSR and Yugoslavia, entailed a general increase in
knowledge but also – inevitably – a greater request for the autonomous
use of knowledge. This conflicted with the persistence of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, with individuals’ convictions and with the various religions,
whose clergy (especially the Catholic clergy in Poland and Croatia) wished to
oppose the state’s secularisation and atheism actively, at the same time
regaining a dominant role in educating the citizenry.
Meanwhile women’s position in society had also changed. In the USSR
female emancipation, legislated by Bolshevism, had actually encountered
enormous difficulties on a practical level. Since then, women had taken on
prominent positions on several occasions, albeit with strong discontinuity. In
the 1930s, for example, labour shortages and production needs set out in five-
year plans opened up the world of work to women. During the Second World
War they actively participated in the conflict in the armed forces as well as in
industry, while in Belarus and behind German lines they stood out among
partisan ranks.
The experience of the war constituted a powerful factor of female emanci-
pation in the Balkans as well, where there were many women in Tito’s resis-
tance movement, including some in positions of leadership. However, family
126 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
relations in all of Eastern Europe remained limited by the prevalence of
patriarchy, both because Stalin had returned to valuing it and because it
had essentially never disappeared from social relations. Once the war was over
and in spite of demographic imbalances in many regions, the lack of nurseries
and concrete support for women on maternity leave again reduced the female
presence at work.
Nevertheless, during the 1950s and 1960s there was a profound turning
point. After years of legislative uncertainty and embitterment, socialist coun-
tries began to adopt more liberal policies regarding divorce, abortion, mater-
nity leave and work (the most visible exception was Romania, which returned
to prohibiting abortion in 1966). The growth of the service sector contributed
to a growing female presence in production, even though this was often con-
fined to specific sectors (from health to maintenance, and from education to
retail trade) or limited to lower production levels. Although they were often
paid less than men (and in Romania pushed into reproductive roles), some
began to pursue their careers and obtained significant positions in politics,
while at universities and research centres (especially in Yugoslavia but soon all
over the Soviet Camp) critical thought began to develop regarding emanci-
pation, patriarchy and gender differences, interacting with West European
feminist thought.35
In the midst of these tumultuous and contradictory changes, the existence of a
mechanism for diversifying social interests would have been able to pave the
way for subsequent reform of the political system: in other words, in the
socialist world there was widespread conviction that overcoming centralised
planning would have led to the identification of new forms of pluralistic
representation of social interests, according to mechanisms that at the time
were neither elaborate nor predictable, but which perfectly explain the return
in the mid-1940s to the autonomist ideas of the “people’s democracies” and
the popularity of self-management.
In this sense a precedent had already been set in the USSR. In the period
leading up to the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev had committed
himself to limiting each party position’s eligibility for election to two
mandates, which stirred up strong resistance among the Party apparatus.
Later, in November 1962, Khrushchev had promoted an organisational
reform of the Communist Party, somewhat rough but politically significant,
which was approved by the Central Committee of the CPSU. Subsequently,
two parallel structures were established, one based on industry and the other
on agriculture.
The division of responsibility, which was cancelled by Brezhnev two years
later, had the immediate effect of escalating conflict and tensions due to the
confusion it had created among Party militants, totally unprepared for the
change. In reality, this indicated the confused perception that the diversifica-
tion of economic and social interests linked to the introduction of reforms
would have led to the political representation of different interests, thus
bringing the monopoly of the Communist Party to an end.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 127
Thus Khrushchev sensed that new forms of political dialectics needed an
institutional channel, even if at the time he definitely did not link this decision
to the Kharkov School reformers’ demands, but rather to his continuous
efforts at territorial reorganisation of the economy. This involved getting rid
of the technical ministries of the Union, establishing provincial economic
councils, and their subsequent downsizing. This all happened within the space
of a few years and greatly contributed to a sense of uncertainty and bewil-
derment in the country. Although the Soviet leader spoke favourably of
Liberman’s theories, he never put them into practice.
During these confusing changes there was evidently no time to grasp the as
yet embryonic political meaning of reorganising the Party by dividing it into
two branches. Nor did the reformers realise that Khrushchev’s fall in October
1964 would put an end to this period of change.
A few months earlier, in fact, the director of the Institute for World Economy
and International Relations (IMEMO), the academician A.A. Arzumanian,
wrote an article for Pravda, which was followed shortly after by an article by
Nemchinov in Kommunist, which offered new and sound arguments in favour of
Liberman’s theories, especially those recommending the strengthening and
expansion of light industry. This was followed by a renewed battle for reform. At
this point Khrushchev, with growing difficulty, was forced to promise a new
strategy for increasing consumption and strengthening the autonomy of enter-
prise management. He did not have time to implement this strategy, but – a week
after he was forced to step down (on 14 October) – public officials’ and state
bureaucrats’ strong mistrust of the reforms put forward by the Kharkov School
was countered by the news that experiments based on Liberman’s theories,
carried out in a number of enterprises, had yielded positive results.
New announcements followed in Party newspapers, and the experiments
were extended to the L’viv region. By the new year, a few hundred enterprises
throughout the country were involved, giving the impression that there was a
possibility of change in the planning system, more rigid in the case of heavy
industry, but much more flexible for light industry. In the autumn, as men-
tioned earlier, Kosygin presented the contents of his reform. This explains
why the change in the USSR leadership was not initially seen as a con-
servative turn. In fact, the debate, still ongoing within the Soviet Camp, in
some countries (such as Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and, outside the Camp,
Yugoslavia) opened the way for laws in which the political dimension, albeit
unstated, was perceived as being inherent in economic reform.36
Thus the most radical drive in the direction of change took shape within
this context. It culminated in 1968 in the “Prague Spring”. The rise of
Dubček and, with it, the opportunity for the new Vice-Premier Ota Šik to test
out his theories on decentralisation of the economy, prices and enterprises
mentioned above, made it possible to channel the reform process towards a
bold mixture of changes in the relationship between economics and politics,
similarly to what was happening in the rest of the European communist area,
but much more explicitly.
128 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
In short, pluralism and democratisation entered the communist debate on
modernity, following a path connected precisely with the political representa-
tion of interests, which the economic reforms were to emphasise. Yet more
broadly speaking, culture also had an essential role in formulating these
objectives: just think how incisive Eduard Goldstücker’s contribution was
when in 1963 he organised a conference to rehabilitate Kafka’s works. This
was followed by the intense liberalisation of intellectual production, public
criticism of Czechoslovak foreign policy in the Middle East (as this involved
relations with Israel and reflected the controversial relationships between
political power and Judaism), the Fourth Congress of Writers and the sig-
nificant correspondence on freedom, communism and the West between
Günter Grass and Pavel Kohout.37
Years later, speaking of this experience, Zdeněk Mlynář (president of the
commission on the reform of the Czechoslovak political system at the time of
the “Spring”) wrote that Czechoslovak reformist communists wanted to
“replace the existing, totalitarian, political system characterised by cen-
tralisation and not by democracy … ” with another one “in which different
social interests and needs had the concrete possibility to participate in the
formation and implementation of the country’s politics”.38
The goal was ambitious. At the time socialist modernity did not con-
template the creation in a brief period of a democratic and multiparty system
like those in place in Western Europe, even though this had been cautiously
discussed in Party back rooms. Rather, the reformists’ intentions contained
the idea of a more complex society founded upon a pluralist representation of
interests by acknowledging trade union autonomy, the decision-making
autonomy of workers’ councils in enterprises (with direct voting in factories),
enhancing the value of freedom of expression, dividing up responsibilities and
checks on power within the different institutions (parliament, local adminis-
tration, etc.), the democratisation of decision-making mechanisms within the
Party and the differentiation of Party responsibilities from state institutional
ones. Finally, the role of mass organisations (youth, women, intellectuals,
peasants … ) was also considered, to free them from any programmed
protection by the Communist Party.39
There was plenty of material to draw up an alternative to the Soviet
experience: the projects outlined by the “Prague Spring” made it clear, with-
out the shadow of a doubt, that there was a close relationship between
enterprise autonomy (and, therefore, self-management) and the organisation
of a political system which, drawing inspiration from the most “liberal” ideas
of “people’s democracy”, would attempt much more consistently to reflect
and represent a society that over time had become more heterogeneous and
composite compared with both the pre-war period and the simplifications of
Stalinism.
The fact that this might have led to party pluralism, though this prospect
had not been officially included among the aims of the Czechoslovak reform
process, was not something to be excluded a priori, at least looking with
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 129
hindsight at these events. However, at this point the conservative offensive was
triggered, forming around the new secretary-general of the CPSU, Leonid
Brezhnev. The state apparatuses in the USSR and in Czechoslovakia and the
other countries of the region did not want to give up the positions of power
they enjoyed as a result of central planning. The Party’s ideological ortho-
doxy was willing to accept only a monolithic view of society; the bureaucratic
machine did not intend to watch a gradual dwindling of its immense power
caused by a managerial and technical class from the economic sphere which,
becoming more autonomous, was demanding greater political power. The
“technocracy” and “liberal ideas” of the reformist communists thus became
the new “enemies of socialism”, just as 30 years earlier the controversy over
primitive socialist accumulation had ended with the identification of two
bitter adversaries of the Soviet socialist project: Bukharin on the right and
Trotsky on the left.
The repression of the “Prague Spring” represented the end to a period of
reform and the political defeat of managers. The impact of this conclusion
was felt across all European communist countries, whether or not they were
included within the Soviet sphere of influence.
In fact, it was precisely because the reform process had been transversal
that the impact of the Warsaw Pact’s intervention in Czechoslovakia was just
as trans-national. Not only was the Prague experience cancelled, but even in
the USSR, Poland, Bulgaria and the GDR, pressure for reform was drasti-
cally reduced and later halted with the removal of Kosygin from the Soviet
leadership. Reform momentum was also intimidated in Hungary, where a more
cautious version of the original New Economic Mechanism was introduced.
The dramatic end of the “Prague Spring” in 1968 also had repercussions in
Yugoslavia, both because it heightened the fear of Soviet aggression (a fear
also shared by Maoist Albania), and because the youth and university pro-
tests of June 1968 against the social inequalities that had emerged as a result
of the implementation of the economic reform had, to their regret, encour-
aged the conservatives to reorganise. The conservatives had been defeated two
years earlier, after the dismissal of the federal Vice-President Aleksandar
Ranković, but were encouraged by the events in Czechoslovakia in August and
succeeded in slowing down the reform process started in 1965. The nationalist
protests that exploded in Kosovo that autumn shifted the attention of politics
from social issues to nationalistic ones, which in the following years became a
contentious question particularly in Croatia, as well as in other republics.40
However, the repression of the “Prague Spring” convinced Tito, and along
with him Hoxha, to reassess the country’s defence system by studying new
strategies of military dissuasion. In Yugoslavia this meant introducing “pop-
ular defence”, coordinated by the republics, and in Albania the construction
of bunkers all over the country. Yugoslavia also underwent an ideological
offensive against “technocracy” and “liberal” leanings, the latter associated
with “anarchic” positions and critically attributed to the dissident Milovan
Ðilas.41
130 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
This was an offensive that continued for many years and affected many
Party cadres and directors, and above all made the implementation of self-
management problematic when this was once again reformed. This reform
was radical and extended to society as a whole, according to a project that
soon proved to be as ambitious as it was complicated, if not convoluted.
In fact, the repression of reformist currents imposed on the entire Camp,
more or less effective, resulted in a long period of stagnation. Yugoslavia, in
spite of an anti-technocracy campaign, changed the system of self-management
through two important measures. The first involved large-scale territorial
decentralisation based on republics and autonomous regions, and was sanc-
tioned by the approval of a new Constitution in 1974. The second measure
introduced the principle of association of labour and resources and created a
vast network of assemblies, committees and organisations, the duties and
responsibilities of which were set out in 671 articles of the “Associated
Labour Act”, passed in 1976.
Thus it seemed that once it had overcome the nationalist tensions that had
tormented it at the beginning of the decade, Yugoslavia had essentially
returned to being on its own, venturing along a road towards a “different”
pluralism.
In reality, in spite of the clampdown on reform, the tumultuous events of
the 1960s in the Soviet Camp had not swept away the “national roads to
socialism”. Romania and Albania, for example, had moved ahead along this
path. In Bucharest and in Tirana, autonomy from Moscow did not mean
reform of the economic and social system to support, or adapt itself to, the
social complexity of the country. Quite the contrary, this became an oppor-
tunity for the leaders of these two countries, namely Nicolae Ceauşescu and
Enver Hoxha, to reinforce their despotic power in distinctive and dramatic
ways.
Thus these solutions were very different from that of Yugoslavia, where a
new wave of reforms was launched in the mid-1970s. In fact, it was thanks to
what had happened in the Yugoslav federation that self-management still had
a firm grip in the Soviet Camp, as demonstrated by the Solidarność
programme in 1980.
In spite of the muddled nature of the system created in Belgrade, which
gave workers the right to choose enterprise managers and managing boards
directly (through competitive public examinations), it did open up the path
for trade union autonomy and a plurality of institutions with different
responsibilities and tasks, through a complicated system of checks and bal-
ances. It was actually its very complexity that in 1977 rekindled the idea of
linking the country’s economic, social and institutional complexity to a
reform of the political system, enabling it to represent this complexity.
Edvard Kardelj, considered at the time to be the highest theoretical
authority on self-management, was the main inspiration behind the new
Constitution and the “Associated Labour Act”. In some of his essays he
clearly referred to the existence of a “pluralism of self-managed interests”.42
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 131
The reference to the “Prague Spring” of 1968 was clear, with the difference
that in Yugoslavia besides enjoying full autonomy from the USSR, the extension
of the self-management system from enterprises to all non-productive social
activities had been legalised in 1974–76. Institutionally the country now
appeared to be composed of a dense network of public administrations, par-
liaments, political and social associations, enterprises, cartels, workers’ coun-
cils and mixed committees of workers and territorial representatives: in short,
plurality was a fact. However, it had to be ideologically legitimised and have
an explicit representational mandate, which would have undoubtedly radically
changed the League of Communists’ (the name of the Communist Party in
Yugoslavia) role in society.
Kardelj’s foray filled the communist orthodoxy inside and outside the
country with consternation, all the more so because ideological intimidation
against technocracy and liberalism were still alive. It resulted in a debate in
which disapproval was often shrouded in convoluted, contorted language, to
which Kardelj himself was no stranger. After all, this meant an obvious break
from the view of self-management as defined in all official state and Party
documents (including the Constitution) as a “specific form of the dictatorship
of the proletariat”.43 However, how much of all this actually would have
remained if the pluralism created by enterprise self-management and the
autonomy of public administrations and social organisations had turned into
a dialectic representation of political interests?
Many years earlier, between 1953 and 1954, one of the highest exponents of
Yugoslav communism, Milovan Ðilas, had written a series of articles in Borba
in which he had formulated the idea that if the recent change of the Com-
munist Party’s name into League of Communists was not to be a purely
formal modification, it would need to imply the opening of a debate and
greater freedom of thought and comparison of its different parts. In other
words, the League would become a forum where various political groups
could express their views. The price Ðilas paid for voicing these theories was
exclusion from all Party positions and, soon after, when he expressed himself
in favour of a two-party system, prison.44
Now Kardelj was reintroducing an issue similar to the one proposed by the
latter-day communist Ðilas, although in this case the focus was on self-
management as an institution rather than the Party. How was it possible,
though, not to see a connection between these theories and the debate of the
1960s regarding market socialism, or the ideas of enterprise self-management
(expressed more or less explicitly) and, further back in time, the confused
aspirations of “people’s democracies” in the period preceding the Cold War,
and even a relationship with elements of the NEP?
The fact remains that this theme remained unexplored in Yugoslavia, too.
Kardelj was already ill, and died in February 1979. Then came the death of
Tito the following year. There was less and less talk of reforming self-
management. In 1980 while the country was gripped by an economic crisis,
various commissions developed theories and proposals for changing the social
132 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
and political system. However, their proposals were ideologically resisted by
conservatives (concerned with maintaining the existing social state and one-
party system), and opposed by vetoes from a plurality of territorial-based
interests of mainly bureaucratic-administrative nature. These interests were
becoming more and more deeply rooted and dominant, ready to identify
nationalism as their mobilising ideology.45
So one can see that territorial interests were becoming increasingly irre-
concilable, bureaucratic and administrative behaviours less and less inclined
to mediation and compromise, accompanied by persistent ideological ortho-
doxy. These factors at times worked separately and at other times converged,
imposing insurmountable barriers to policies aiming to democratise socialist
society and the Communist Party when this process concerned Yugoslavia as
a whole. In fact, the tensions created were preventing economic and social
plurality, bolstered by the same economic transformation desired by com-
munism, and kept it from turning into a network of autonomies and being
reflected politically in the country’s institutions. By then, many factions within
communism had agreed, as we have seen, that this was the only way to ensure
the future of society’s autonomous development, in the broadest sense of the
term.
In conclusion, the dramatic end of the “Prague Spring” and, in the Yugo-
slav case, the concomitance of a serious economic crisis and the death of two
of the country’s most representative leaders marked the end of a long period
of reforms of European communism, just when the pluralism of socialist
societies most needed governance that was appropriate for the times.

5.5 Development models and competition with the West

At this point, one aspect still remains to be clarified. The controversy that
was sparked off during the 1970s regarding “national roads to socialism” and
the creation of a market socialism was not merely regional. If this had been
the case, it could simply be traced back to the situation regarding the cultural
space of European communism and, therefore, to the relationship between the
USSR, countries of the Camp and the Yugoslav alter ego. The controversy
also took on an international dimension, which we could call competitive
with respect to the West and, in particular, to the American way of life. This
dimension went through a particularly dynamic phase between the end of the
1950s and the start of the 1960s and continued, in different forms, up to the
beginning of the following decade.
In this case, too, it was a complex situation and did not depend only on the
East–West conflict, even though this dynamic was certainly present and
played a leading role. Others also played a part: for example Yugoslavia once
again, and outside Europe, Mao’s China and what was known as the “Third
World”.
The controversy focused on the issue then known as “development
models”. Soviet industrial and technological growth had achieved a number
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 133
of symbolic goals that stunned many when they were made public. From
1949 when it tested the atomic bomb, to 1961 when they were the first to send
an astronaut into space, the USSR looked like a country that had in a short
amount of time succeeded in transforming the backwards rural society of the
turn of the century into an advanced industrial one, able to compete with the
United States.
The social and economic changes that had occurred in that lapse of time, in
spite of the tragedies suffered by the civilian population (many of which were
at the time still unknown or their magnitude was not known), had surprised
international public opinion, and there was widespread fear (or hope,
depending on the case) that the USSR was about to make another leap ahead.
For example, Isaac Deutscher, a well-known Soviet scholar, wrote in 1960 that
Soviet industrial strength would soon reach a level of development that would
render unnecessary the protectionism that had been ensured by Stalin’s isola-
tionist policies. He added: “it will not be long before the capitalist countries
will begin to fear an invasion of low cost goods from the Soviet Union.”46
Certainly Deutscher suspected that Soviet policies featured a certain amount
of bluffing and he did not foresee in the short term that the Soviets would be
able to meet the challenge of an open economy. Nevertheless, he felt that the
era of Soviet protectionism was about to end: “We know that in the next
decade,” he asserted, “the Soviet Union hopes to achieve economic parity
with the United States and we predict that from 1965 on the Soviet Camp’s
industrial production will make up more than half of worldwide production.”47
Only later would the world be able to observe how unrealistic these objectives
were. However, as we will see below, in the years when Deutscher was writing,
Western economies had just begun to open up their economies inter-
nationally; thus echoes of Friedrich List’s theses were still alive, in which
protectionism was necessary for consolidating a country’s industry before it
was ready to enter into international competition. Furthermore, not long after
this the Soviet Camp began a cautious policy of opening up to international
markets. Even though this was subsequently partially halted due to the con-
vergence of domestic and international factors, it established a degree of inter-
dependence from which the entire Camp would no longer be able to free itself.
Thus there were many reasons for carefully watching (with ill-concealed
concern, to a certain extent) the economic and social developments unfolding
in that area, even from outside the socialist world. Many scholars of world-
wide significance had already predicted the unexpected successes of the
socialist system. For example, between 1946 and 1949 the American econo-
mist and political sociologist Joseph A. Schumpeter, struck by how the Soviet
military-industrial machine had recovered from the Nazi invasion and
asserting that the “Russian question” should not be confused with the
“socialist question”, agreed with Marx that capitalism would in the end be
surpassed by socialism.48
It was at the height of that period of growth that Khrushchev took up the
Bolshevik slogan from the 1920s of surpassing capitalism, and transformed it
134 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
into “surpassing the United States of America”. In the end Khrushchev lent
new vigour to an issue that was part of Soviet expectations and had been held
out as a feasible goal back at the time of the first five-year plan, as it ended
up coinciding with the Great Depression. This had convinced Moscow that
the USSR’s growth rates soon would have ensured that it overtook the United
States. After all, such was the conception upon which the Soviet pavilion was set
up at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which the Americans had entitled
(significantly) “Building the World of Tomorrow”. This (involuntary) con-
sistency with Soviet ideas made the first close contact between the two sys-
tems possible: the USSR presented visitors with a tour that unfolded from
an initial dark-lit hall depicting “underdevelopment during czarist times”,
gradually leading to the bright socialist future, symbolised at the end with
the reconstruction of one of the monumental stations of the new Moscow
subway, much more attractive than that of New York.49 Thus Khrushchev
re-proposed an ambitious goal: his intention, however, was not confined
merely to mobilising the consensus of the Soviet population, but aimed to
confirm socialism’s superiority, and in the new international situation,
proposed the Soviet system as a suitable development model for former
colonial countries.50
Certainly Bolshevism had demonstrated on several occasions in the past its
rudimentary and scarce knowledge of Asia and Africa, due to the fact that
Europe was always the focus of foreign policy, for no other reason than the revo-
lution that was awaited there or for fear of invasion. Stalin, who applied his
theory of the five stages of development to “Third World” countries (primitive-
communal, serfdom, feudalism, capitalism and socialism), had never kept
secret his opinion that the former colonies were countries with limited sover-
eignty, as they were heavily influenced, if not directly controlled, by the
former European imperialists who had until recently dominated them.51
On the contrary, Khrushchev radically changed this orientation after
November 1955, when he visited India, Burma and Afghanistan, and stepped up
relations with Nasser’s Egypt. Shortly afterwards IMEMO was founded. This
organisation took a leading role in formulating analyses of the “Third
World”. From that point onwards the USSR viewed the “Third World” as its
potential ally as it was considered “anti-imperialist”, and established pre-
ferential relations with it. In this way Khrushchev began to break through
Stalinist isolationism and push Moscow towards new networks of relations,
re-calibrating USSR foreign policy between socialism (in the Camp) and non-
capitalist development (in the former colonies), thus forming the basis for new
interdependencies.
The American response to this dynamism, as we know, was immediate and
was expressed in Kennedy’s “New Frontier”. Massive exploitation of “black
gold” (as oil was called at the time), an affluent consumer society, and the
space race became the principal symbols of a “free and successful” society, an
example which was to be imitated all over the world. It was implicit that
countries and people who followed that path would benefit greatly.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 135
In a way the stages of development identified by Walt W. Rostow in those
years reflected the American view of reality. Rostow developed a well-known
model with five chronological phases of human society, starting with the
phase he called “traditional”. Subsequently, following a period of preparation
marked by revolutions in trade, agriculture and transport, human society
would reach the take-off phase (as he called it, in a book written a few years
earlier) and then a phase of maturity before reaching the final stage, a society
of mass consumption. The features of this final stage bore a striking resemblance
to the dominant characteristics of American society.52
This model certainly echoes the Marxian approach to history in the sense
that, albeit in different ways and forms, Rostow also strove to divide human
society into historical periods based on the irreversible succession of phases.
Instead of concentrating, as Marx did, on the changes in economic organisa-
tion from slavery to socialism, emphasis was placed on the development
models gradually adopted. Yet this approach betrayed an obviously Western/
Eurocentric conception of historical development. In identifying the funda-
mental shifts in human events as a whole, Rostow neglected to take into
consideration Chinese, Indian, Arab and Turkish contributions, thus con-
tributing decisively to the reformulation and spread of the mythical idea of
human civilisation principally influenced by the West.
At the same time, the formulation of new theories on development coin-
cided with the late 1950s, early 1960s when the West was just beginning to
liberalise its markets with the formation of the European Common Market
and the adoption of progressive income tax systems, instead of the previous
indirect taxation (and protectionist customs tariffs).53
Rostow’s model was criticised from many sides, which we will not go into
here.54 Rather, it is interesting to observe how overall, this period in the West
saw a renewed debate over development models; this exclusively Eurocentric
debate involved historians, economists and sociologists who were all careful to
point out the reasons for backwardness, the conditions for overcoming it, and
the timeframes and ways to achieve development. Among the contributors to
that intense intellectual debate were Alexander Gerschenkron, Eric Hobs-
bawm, Pierre Massé and Witold Kula, and before them, Colin Clark and
Jean Fourastié.
Gerschenkron used the historic-economic, comparativist approach. He
explored the factors hindering industrial take-off and studied the cases of
Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia in order to identify not just the
elements that hampered development, but also those potentially capable of
stimulating it, by analysing the role played, depending on the individual case,
by the business community, the financial system and the state in promoting
the growth of the country. On the other hand, Hobsbawm stressed the differ-
ence that accompanies those who arrive “first” and “last” in the indus-
trialisation process and how, for the latter, the advantages of acquiring
technology are reduced by tough international competition and the risk of
yielding to protectionist policies, which would re-start the vicious circle
136 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
created by socio-economic isolationism and by the consequent lack of innovation
and loss of markets.55
The sociological approach used by Colin Clark and later by Jean Fourastié
(who published it) was quite different from Gerschenkron’s and Hobsbawm’s
historic-economic approach. They identified only three main phases in the
development of human society. These phases coincided, they argued, with
production activity in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors which, de
facto, turned out to coincide with the economies of underdeveloped countries,
those of the socialist area and, finally, with the transatlantic economy (i.e. that of
the United States and Western Europe), respectively.56
The French economist and planning commissioner Pierre Massé, on the
other hand, chose a structural approach that focused on a society’s economic
goals and not on the inevitability of transition from one phase to another. He
thus differentiated between economies based on power or dominance over
man and the environment from consumer economies, economies of leisure
time, economies of solidarity (based on the transfer of wealth between differ-
ent sectors and regions within a national framework), and economies of
creation based on durables that cannot be measured in terms of profitability
like, for example, urban facilities.57
The Polish economic historian Kula, in turn, emphasised the contrast
between a “realist” approach, which tended to represent reality as being his-
torically determined and therefore examined, and a “conventional” approach,
more inclined to accept division into periods as a “necessary evil” for under-
standing reality, while keeping in mind the arbitrariness and relativity of
events.58
Overall, though concise, this summary of some of the positions that
emerged at the time makes clear the extent to which these theories reflected
the times in which the writers were living. The launch of Sputnik, the intro-
duction onto East European markets of the Trabant (a utilitarian car pro-
duced in the GDR which soon became very popular, and at the time
presented several significant technical innovations such as a “Duroplast”
body, a plastic and resin material, plus an electronic starter);59 Aeroflot’s
expansion to long-distance flights with the TU 114 (one of the fastest com-
mercial aeroplanes in the world) and the IL-18 (with similar performance to
Western carriers of similar class); the expansion of the welfare state; and the
economic and technological stand-off between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
In other words, as we mentioned at the beginning of this section, in the
polarised international context of the Cold War, intellectuals’ apprehensions
were mainly addressed to identify, with the most diverse means from mathe-
matics to management, from historic-economic and sociological research to
the analysis of “politics”, the most convincing arguments for defining the
features of the “better society” because it was fairer, more affluent, more
balanced or more effective. This was happening at a time when the West was
obviously concerned and curious about whether the USSR was really able to
overtake the capitalist model in terms of attractiveness.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 137
It was obvious what was at stake. The end of European colonial empires,
with the independence process that was now unstoppable in Africa and Asia,
meant that the new elites of these countries faced a crucial choice in terms of
the type of political economy they would pursue to ensure development. In
other words, for the new governments of the “Third World” the issue of
which reference model to adopt became an unavoidable aspect of their position
in both domestic and international politics.60
So the new field of competition between the American and Soviet models
was clear: both aspired to being the model to imitate in the vast theatre of the
world. The United States presented an image of itself as a country of anti-
colonial origin that had achieved wealth and power, whereas the USSR
emphasised its rapid transition from a rural, peasant economy to a highly
industrialised one, which could challenge and perhaps outperform the United
States after just a few decades of rapid growth.
Concrete steps in this direction had been taken in Moscow, starting in
November 1960, when on Khrushchev’s impulse (who had already grasped
the potential of new alliances with anti-colonial movements during the 1956
Suez crisis, which he had labelled anti-imperialist), the issue of relations
between the Socialist Camp and the “Third World” was addressed at the
Conference of 81 Communist and Workers’ Parties. At the end of the pro-
ceedings documents and suggestions were adopted which outlined the condi-
tions (mainly political-ideological in nature) under which the USSR and the
Comecon countries would have been able to provide economic aid for devel-
opment to the countries of the “Third World”. The main goal was to promote
“non capitalistic”, modern economic growth in the former European colonies,
with the USSR as the reference model.61
Certainly, the debate in Moscow over “non-capitalist development models”
suffered from this typically ideological controversy over whether and to what
extent “socialist” and “non-capitalist” were the same thing or whether they were
two distinct concepts, going back to the notion of “transitory development” for
post-colonial movements.
Soon three schools of thought began to emerge. The first (sustained by
Georgiy Mirskii and IMEMO) observed how the most radical regimes to
break Western opposition as well as that of entrepreneurs, were not only
revolutionary in terms of anti-colonial nationalism, but had founded state-run
economies, best represented by Nasser’s nationalisations.
The second school, led by Vladimir Kiselev and the most ideologically
orthodox, was struck by the anti-communist repression carried out by Iraqi
officials in 1963 and concluded that Mirskii’s model (to which the Iraqi
example could be traced back) did not accept that “petty bourgeois nation-
alism” was incapable of promoting the “liberation of the proletariat”, and
was thus unable to differentiate itself from the more general anti-democratic
behaviour Kiselev attributed to the bourgeoisie.
The third school of thought was elaborated at the Institute of Oriental
Studies by a department director, Nodari Simonya, who emphasised the
138 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
ambivalence of the changes underway in Africa and Asia, where the processes
of independence had momentarily obscured internal ethnic and tribal divi-
sions that he felt would have emerged later on. Thus according to him, the
consequentiality between anti-colonial revolution and the subsequent socialist
transition (as occurred in Cuba) was unrealistic, because he felt that even the
Bolshevik Revolution was the product of specific local historical circum-
stances. Unlike Simonya, but still following the same approach, Vladimir
Khoros felt rather that the “non-capitalist” regimes of Algeria and Burma
were characterised by an anti-capitalist attitude of traditionalist-rural origin,
in many ways similar to Russian Narodnichestvo, and therefore, in his opinion,
very far from evolving towards socialism.62
In reality, regardless of ideological references (inevitable due to the era and
place in which these viewpoints came about), what emerged from the Soviet
debate was the problem of understanding the signs of political-social change
which, due to the competition between development models, not only made it
possible to redesign Soviet foreign policy, but also to confirm the primacy of
socialism in accessing non-capitalistic and more efficient modernity.63
While this discussion was underway, Comecon’s exports to the “Third
World” were growing at accelerated rates for the entire decade; Soviet uni-
versities and those in other Comecon countries were opened to students from
Africa, Asia and Latin America. So in light of Soviet orientations already
evident in 1956 and on the eve of such activism, it was not by chance that on
the other side of the ocean Walt Rostow published in 1960 his essay on
development stages in a surprisingly short time.
On the other hand, for countries with essentially rural economies like the
former European colonies, which of the two development models – American
or Soviet – appeared more attractive (because it would have opened up their
access to modernity) to their leadership, to be “adopted”, with inevitable
repercussions on international alignments, both in terms of regional alliances
as well as redesigning the balances at the United Nations (UN) General
Assembly? This was the main issue motivating scientific research and the
academic debate on the stages of development. In other ways this process
reflected the contents of a crucially important political issue at that time. It
was this same issue that explained, among other things, why the identification
of a market socialism and the growth of a socialist consumer society through
enterprise autonomy, raising the quality of production and reducing the role
of planning were so important in socialist culture, when during de-Stalinisation
it addressed the crux of reform of its development system and presented itself
as a model able to ensure the intensification of basic production as well as
widespread well-being in social equality.
Likewise, just when the number of countries belonging to the UN was
rapidly multiplying and the role and functions of UN international organisa-
tions were visibly changing, this same question soon involved not just two
players (the United States and the USSR), but a plurality of international
political actors, going far beyond the competition between East and West.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 139
One need only think of the role of China, another giant of socialism, with
an even more evident and widespread rural background than the Soviet
Union, as well as a revolution behind it that had become intertwined with an
anti-colonial liberation movement. This aspect made Beijing even more sen-
sitive than Moscow to the problems of the “Third World” – as they liked to
call it – motivating it to set up convergences with the newly independent
countries after the revolutionary victory. After all, this was how for a certain
period, at least until the mid-1950s, China entertained the possibility of
implementing a sort of “division of labour” with the USSR. Beijing proposed
itself as the leader of the anti-colonial movement, which the Chinese leader-
ship felt was made up of the “proletarian nations” of developing Asian and
African countries, in juxtaposition with the “capitalist-bourgeois nations” of
the Euro-Atlantic Camp.
In the end, by supporting an ideological view of international relations
stemming from the dualist patterns of the class struggle between capitalists
and the proletariat, Maoism presented itself to the countries of the “Third
World” by leveraging their common economic starting points and the
common experience of national liberation. Thus China proposed – in new
forms – anti-Western polarisation with which China would have broken out of
the international isolation it found itself in after 1949 (do not forget that at
the time China did not even have UN representation, as Taiwan was in the
Security Council, with the right of veto).
An historic meeting between Zhou Enlai and Nehru in 1954 led to the
formulation, in a diplomatic document, of five principles of peaceful coex-
istence (Pancha shila) and the start of a broader and more wide-ranging con-
vergence between Beijing and the former colonial countries. In large part it
was India’s and China’s convergence that ensured the success of the Bandung
Conference in 1955.64
However, in 1955 Mao Zedong intensified the repression of opponents and
intellectuals and launched a campaign for the rapid collectivisation of agri-
culture. This was followed, after the brief interval of the “Hundred Flowers”
campaign, by the setting up of the People’s Communes and the start of the
“Great Leap Forward” policy. At the same time, however, relations with India
began to deteriorate. Overall, all these events marked a heightening of the
aggressive ideological approach of Chinese communism, but this adversely
affected the process of construction of alliances with Asia, which had only
just begun. Questions were soon asked about how sound this alliance would
be, thus increasing the mistrust felt by its potential partners. The leaders of
these countries feared (fears that were historical, cultural and demographic in
origin, a result of the considerable Chinese diaspora) a resumption of Chinese
expansionism in Asia, and they were also very reluctant to accept communist
ideology, though finding some aspects of its economic and social system
attractive (and, in some ways, even compatible with local interests).65
In fact, China ended up abandoning this course of action, which it had
itself initiated and ratified with the Afro-Asian Conference of Bandung, held
140 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
as planned on 24 April 1955 in the presence of delegations from 23 Asian and
six African countries. Though not present at Bandung, it was Tito who in the
end benefited from Chinese withdrawal. Unlike China, his country did not
arouse expansionistic fears. Furthermore, Yugoslav communism appeared
much less dangerous due to its “specific” nature, as a result of the clash with
Stalin (and we could also say thanks to this) and the good relations estab-
lished by Belgrade with the West and confirmed later when Yugoslavia signed
the Balkan Pact with Greece and Turkey (both North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) member countries) in 1953.
Finally, Tito had personally travelled several times to South-East Asia,
India and the Horn of Africa, starting in the autumn of 1954, and had had
the opportunity to establish a direct connection between the anti-imperialism
of the former European colonies, the Yugoslav anti-fascist struggle against the
imperial aims of Hitler and Mussolini, the multinational character of Yugo-
slavia and that of the newly independent countries (a good example here is
the influence of the Yugoslav federal experience on the Union of Burma fol-
lowing Tito’s visit in 1954), and finally the search for an autonomous devel-
opment model that was not necessarily that proposed either by the Americans
or the Soviets.66
Consequently, although it had not participated in the Conference of Ban-
dung, Yugoslavia soon found itself playing a leading role in forming the
Movement of the Non-Aligned Countries. At the time, Khrushchev was still
concentrating on reversing Stalin’s old theory that active neutrality of former
colonial countries was to be regarded as a sign of aversion towards socialism.
He instead took a more open view, in which a country that opted for neu-
trality was considered a “natural ally” of the Soviet Camp in its competition
with the United States. Nonetheless, despite these efforts, the USSR was not
able to make a good impression. The process of reform had been halted and
soon lost its ability to attract, while the repeated moves of the USSR against
change in countries within the Soviet sphere harmed its image and strengthened
the suspicion of hegemonic, if not imperial, aims.
In contrast, Tito gave strength to a movement that was in many ways quite
uneven: despite the undoubted impetus and original contribution of countries
such as India, Algeria and the former Portuguese colonies, the theoretical
ideas of the Non-Alignment programme, as they developed in the following
years, came mainly from the scientific and academic world of Yugoslavia.67
In sum, it is to this that we owe the extensive theoretical work on the issues
of reform and development of the UN General Assembly, the “new international
economic order”, security and disarmament, national sovereignty and inter-
national law, and globalisation (already observed at the time and mentioned
in numerous documents).
Nonetheless – probably because of the jealous protection of state sover-
eignty and the principle of “non-interference” deriving from a sensitivity that
was a result of Yugoslavia’s historical experience and the historical experience
of Europe’s former colonies – self-management never became a reference
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 141
model, even when it seemed to enjoy “excellent health” at home, and despite
the presence of Yugoslav theoretical and scientific contributions in “Third
World” libraries, as well as of the presence of many young Asians and Afri-
cans who were educated in Yugoslav universities between the 1960s and the
1980s (in competition with Moscow). Then when, following the death of Tito,
the crisis started to grip Yugoslavia in increasingly more dramatic ways, self-
management also lost what little force of attraction it had been able to build
up on the international scene during the expansive phase of Non-Alignment
and Yugoslav-Soviet polarisation.
***
In conclusion, the prospect of “non-capitalist development” (and with it,
access to non-capitalist modernity) was not just the prerogative of Soviet
socialism as those in Moscow had believed (or hoped), but had numerous
competitors, as socialist-inspired options gradually diversified on the world
scene. As a result, new networks of trans-national relations had gradually
formed and begun to harbour ideas, projects and mobility, resulting in a new
métissage emerging in as yet unexplored ways.
At the same time, competition between development models (Soviet, capitalist,
self-management and Chinese rural-egalitarian) was particularly intense
during the years of détente and decolonisation, stimulating a dynamic inter-
national debate. The debate, which occurred on a theoretical/academic level
as well as a political one, was about the nature, pace and forms that economic
growth would assume. It failed, however, when the most innovative forces
originating from European communism in the late 1950s and early 1960s were
crushed, and attempts at reform outside the Soviet Camp or those that survived
within the region after the end of the Prague experience had been intimidated,
while in China the isolation of the “cultural revolution” was imposed.
In fact, at this time a phase of political uncertainty began about the pro-
spects of socialist models of development. While this phase followed partly
diverse, parallel or similar paths, what prevailed was a sort of retreat from the
Soviet, Yugoslav and Chinese experiences, until each one lost all capacity for
external attraction. Consequently, competition with the United States for
post-colonial “third parties” also ended: the Soviets’ hope (or risk, depending
on the point of view) of overtaking the West came to nothing, or appeared a
mere illusion or propagandistic slogan.
Nevertheless, new seeds had been sown, old closures mitigated and
isolationism, by now archaic, was abandoned.
The countries of Central-Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the USSR had
achieved widespread industrialisation and urbanisation at great sacrifice.
These countries had become aware of development and social welfare, and
were awaiting improvements in living standards as well as unprecedented
political transformation. Due to these high expectations, the retreat of the 1970s
and 1980s produced even more bitter disappointment and more widespread
frustration.
142 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
The perception strengthened of delayed technical innovation, inadequate
production and distribution of qualitatively satisfactory goods, and institu-
tional weakness vis-à-vis the rich and developed Western world, as well as the
unsatisfied demands of “Third World” countries. At the same time, however,
it had become impossible to halt the effects triggered by the networks of
relations that had come about in various international contexts. The hiatus
emerging from these networks and the dashed hopes heralded new crises but
also unexpected and unpredictable opportunities for change.

Notes
1 Interesting from this perspective is Isaac Deutscher’s judgement expressed in his
Stalin. A Political Biography, Oxford University Press, London, 1965, which says
that “the Communist-inspired agrarian reform fulfilled, albeit imperfectly, the
dream of many generations of peasants and intellectuals” to allow for the sub-
sequent and immediate “leap” to industrialisation (quotations from p. 749 of the
Italian edn). On the agrarian question in the socialist societies after the Second
World War see François Fejtö, A History of the People’s Democracies: Eastern
Europe since Stalin, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1977; also Jean le Coz, Le
riforme agrarie, Il Magellano, Milano, 1976, pp. 55–61; my book Tito, Stalin e i
contadini, Unicopli, Milano, 1987; and Andrea Segrè, La rivoluzione bianca, Il
Mulino, Bologna, 1994, p. 111ff.
2 On the fate of peasantist parties see Fejtö, A History of the People’s Democracies,
op. cit.; and Hugh Seton-Watson, The Pattern of Communist Revolution. A His-
torical Analysis, Methuen, London, 1953/1960; as well as David Mitrany, Marx
against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism, op. cit., pp. 198–204. On the
broader context of communist success in Central-Eastern Europe, see Norman
Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in
Eastern Europe 1944–1949, Westview Press, Boulder, 1997. The Russian point of
view was analysed by Fabio Bettanin in Stalin e l’Europa, Carocci, Roma, 2006.
3 On the Twentieth Congress see, among others, Adriano Guerra, Il giorno che
Chruščëv parlò, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1986; and Francesca Gori (ed.), Il XX
Congresso del PCUS, Angeli, Milano, 1988.
4 On political power and de-Stalinisation in the USSR the literature is endless. See,
among others, Alec Nove, Stalinism and After, Allen and Unwin, London, 1975;
Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Confiscated Power: How Soviet Russia Really Works,
Harper & Row, New York, 1982; Seweryn Bialer, Stalin’s Successors: Leadership,
Stability and Change in the Soviet Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1980; Fabio Bettanin, Pro e contro Stalin, Angeli, Milano, 1988; as well as the
biographies of Nikita Khrushchev, from the one by Edward Crankshaw, Khrush-
chev: A Career, Viking Press, New York, 1966; to that of Roy Medvedev, Khrush-
chev, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1983. Also helpful are the memoires by Khrushchev,
Khrushchev Remembers, Deutsch, London, 1971.
5 See for example, Alexandre Adler, “Politica e ideologia nell’esperienza sovietica”,
in AA.VV, Storia del marxismo, Einaudi, Torino, 1978–82, vol. IV, pp. 136–39. For
the performance of the Soviet economy in those years, cf. Moshe Lewin, Political
Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates. From Bukharin to the Modern Refor-
mers, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974; as well as Alec Nove, An Eco-
nomic History of USSR, op. cit.; Maurice Dobb, Soviet Economic Development
since 1917, op. cit.; and, by Lewin again, The Making of the Soviet System, Pan-
theon Books, New York, 1985. An interesting analysis of the Soviet economic
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 143
system and its functionality can also be found in Sergej Prokopovič, Storia eco-
nomica dell’URSS, Laterza, Bari, 1957. A recent, wide-ranging reconstruction of
the material life and behaviour of the Soviet people from the Second World War to
the start of de-Stalinisation is that by Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War. Hopes,
Illusions and Disappointments 1945–1957, Sharpe, Armonk, 1998.
6 Kantorovich’s essay can also be found in English. The original was published by
the University of Leningrad publishing house in 1939. It was then translated with
the title “Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production”,
Management Science vol. VI, 1960, 366–422.
7 On the theses of Novozhilov and the economists close to him see Lisa Foa (ed.), Piano
e profitto nell’economia sovietica, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1965; as well as Novožilov-
Strumilin, La riforma economica nell’URSS, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1969; Birman-
Novozilov, Gestione economica e socialismo, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1971; V.S.
Nemčinov, Valore sociale e prezzo pianificato, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1977.
8 Evsej Liberman, Economic Methods and the Effectiveness of Production, White
Plans, New York, 1971; “Improve Economic Management and Planning: The
Plan, Profit and Bonus”, Pravda, 9 September 1962, translated into English in
Current Digest of the Soviet Press vol. XIV, n. 36, 3 October 1962, 13–15. See also
Alec Nove, “The Liberman Proposals”, Survey n. 47, April 1963; and M.I. Gold-
man, “Economic Controversy in the Soviet Union”, Foreign Affairs, April 1963; as
well as Lewin, Political Undercurrents, op. cit. See also Predrag Vranicki, Storia del
marxismo, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1973, vol. II, pp. 228–30; however, the most
exhaustive reconstruction of the debate remains undoubtedly that by Arrigo Levi,
Il potere in Russia. Da Stalin a Brežnev, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1967, especially pp.
161–226.
9 Alec Nove, Was Stalin Really Necessary? Some Problems of Soviet Political Economy,
Allen and Unwin, London, 1964.
10 On Lange’s theories see in particular, Wlodzimierz Brus, Storia economica del-
l’Europa Orientale 1950–1980, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1983, pp. 141–43; but also
by Brus, The Market in a Socialist Economy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,
1962 and 1972. A concise presentation of the debate that developed at the time can
be found in Claudio Napoleoni, Le teorie economiche del Novecento, Einaudi,
Torino, 1963. Regarding Czesław Bobrowski, see this author’s work La formation
du système soviétique de planification, Mouton, den Haague, 1956; and Il socialismo in
Jugoslavia, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1956.
11 Among the most important works by Ota Šik, see Plan and Market Under Social-
ism, White Plains, New York, 1967; The Third Way. Marxist–Leninist Theory and
the Modern Industrial Society, Wildwood House, London, 1976; Risveglio di
primavera, Ricordi, Sugarco, Milano, 1988.
12 See Kádár’s speech at the Ninth Party Congress in December 1966, excerpts of
which have been published by Robert Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of
Communism, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1984, vol.
II, pp. 321–24; as well as Hans-Georg Heinrich, Hungary. Politics, Economics and
Society, Pinter, London, 1986, pp. 144–46. On the price reform in GDR, see Hans
Boehme, “La riforma dei prezzi nella Germania orientale”, in the volume edited
by the CESES, Il sistema dei prezzi nei Paesi socialisti, Angeli, Milano, 1977, pp.
237–57. On Bulgarian planning, see R.J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 198 and ff.
13 On this subject see Francesco Privitera, La transizione continua, Longo, Ravenna,
1996; but also Bruno Dallago, Riforma economica e direzione dell’economia, and
Guido Bimbi, L’Ungheria tra riforma economica e dibattito politico (1968–1973),
reports presented at the seminar “Politica, economia e cultura nell’esperienza
ungherese”, Gramsci Institute, Rome, 26–27 January 1979, mimeographed paper.
144 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
14 An interesting comment on Kosygin’s reform was published by Marshall I. Goldman,
“Economic Revolution in the Soviet Union”, Foreign Affairs, January 1967,
313–31.
15 On these aspects, see the essays by the protagonists of the Prague Spring collected
by Francesco Leoncini, Che cosa fu la Primavera di Praga? Lacaita, Roma, 1989.
16 See Stefano Bianchini, La diversità socialista in Jugoslavia, Est, Trieste, 1984, pp.
20–27; and, edited by the same author, L’autogestione jugoslava, Angeli, Milano,
1982. See also Ivanišević, Pavić, Ramljak, Samoupravljanje, Školska Knjiga,
Zagreb, 1974; Veljko Mratović, Teorija i praksa samoupravnog socijalizma, Školska
Knjiga, Zagreb, 1976; Horvat and others, Il sistema jugoslavo, De Donato, Bari,
1980.
17 The trade union programme calling for the creation of workers’ councils in Hun-
gary was published by Népszava on 26 October 1956. On the documentation
regarding the Hungarian councils, see Laszlo Sekelj (ed.), Socijalni pokreti i poli-
tički sistem u Mađarskoj. Dokumenti, Univerzitet u Beogradu, Beograd, 1988; cf.
also François Fejtö, Ungheria 1945–1957, Einaudi, Torino, 1957, pp. 267–70, pp.
355–65; but also the speeches by Nagy collected in Imre Nagy on Communism: In
the Defense of the New Course, Praeger, New York, 1958; also György Krassó,
“L’esempio del consiglio operaio di Budapest e la rivolta del 1956”, and Sándor
Rácz (interview), “Il Consiglio operaio, come un sigillo, autenticò la rivoluzione”,
both in Classe n. 1, 1986, 167–91; and Ferenc Töke, “Ce que furent les conseils
ouvriers hongrois”, L’Autre Europe n. 11–12, 1986, 164–82. As regards Czecho-
slovakia cf. H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1976, pp. 436–43; or the essay by Franco Bertone,
“Classe operaia e consigli di fabbrica nella ‘Primavera di Praga’”, in Istituto
Gramsci, Il ‘68 cecoslovacco e il socialismo, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1979, pp. 84–
93; or also the essay by Karel Kovanda, “I consigli operai in Cecoslovacchia”, Aut
Aut n. 169, January–February 1979, 2–19; while as regards Poland, see “Il Pro-
gramma di Solidarnosc”, L’Ottavogiorno n. 0, 1982, especially 45–47; or again
Jerzy Osiatynski, Wlodzimierz Pankow and Michal Federowicz, Self-Management
in the Polish Economy 1981–1985, Polish Sociology Association, Warsaw, 1985. A
journal that tenaciously followed the move towards self-management in Europe
was the Yugoslav Socijalizam u Svetu, translated in various languages and titled in
English Socialism in the World. The journal, which contained articles by authors
from around the world, was published regularly in Belgrade until the fall of
communism.
18 In spite of broad-based opinion spread by the media in the wake of the Cold War
that identified “People’s Democracies” with the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe,
these two phases are conceptually and chronologically distinct. There are two
schools of thought, just as different from each other, that address the relationship
between these two phases: the first viewed the “People’s Democracies” as an
intermediate phase, consciously used by the communists to build their own mono-
poly of power (Hugh Seton-Watson); the other emphasised the not inevitable con-
sequentiality between them, as Sovietisation was caused by Stalin’s decision to
bring about “Cold War communism” and was manifested by his opposition to the
Marshall Plan and the formation of the Kominform in June–September 1947
(Fejtö). In any case, the most extensive theoretical analysis of “People’s Democ-
racies” is by Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Soviet Camp: Unity and Conflict, Praeger,
New York, 1967. On the other hand, many of the speeches and writings quoted by
Brzezinski are amply quoted, with references to the sources, by Edvard Kardelj in
his O narodnoj demokratiji u Jugoslaviji, Kultura, Beograd, 1949, especially p. 9
and pp. 16–26. It is also useful to compare these texts with Adriano Guerra, Gli
anni del Cominform, Mazzotta, Milano, 1977, pp. 61–66; and François Fejtö, A
History of the People’s Democracies, op. cit.; Karel Kaplan, The Short March. The
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 145
Communist Takeover in Czechslovakia 1945–1948, Hurst, London, 1987, pp. 33–49,
193; and Hugh Seton-Watson, The Pattern of Communist Revolution, op. cit.
19 In this regard some interesting citations from Dimitrov’s and Gottwald’s speeches
can be found respectively in Paolo Spriano, “Il movimento comunista fra guerra e
dopoguerra 1938–1947”, and Jaroslav Opat, “Dall’antifascismo ai “socialismi
reali”: le democrazie popolari”, in AA.VV., Storia del marxismo, op. cit., vol. III,
tome II, pp. 721, 750. Edvard Kardelj talks explicitly about Bierut in O narodnoj
demokratiji op. cit., p. 26.
20 See Josip Broz Tito, “Temelji demokratije novoga tipa”, Komunist n. 2, January
1947, p. 10; or even his speech at Rijeka/Fiume, “O našoj i zapadnoj demokratiji”,
Borba, 26 October 1946; and in Tito, Izgradnja nove Jugoslavije, Kultura, Beograd,
vol. II, 1948, pp. 204–10.
21 Evgeniy Varga’s work “Demokratja novogo tipa”, is in Mirovoe hoziaistvo i mir-
ovaya politika n. 3, 1947; that of A. Leont’ev appeared in Planovoe hoziaistvo n. 4,
1947; and that of I. Trajanin, “Demokratija osobogo tipa”, in Sovetskoe
gosudarstvo i pravo n. 1 and 3, 1947.
22 See the collection of documents edited by Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne and János
M. Rainer, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents, CEU Press,
Budapest, 2002, pp. 290–91, 334–35.
23 See for example the conclusions of the Piller commission appointed during the
April plenary assembly of the Central Committee to review the trials of the 1950s
and the theories expressed by its secretary, the famous historian Karel Kaplan, in
Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, op. cit., p. 389. The
thesis was explicitly taken and elaborated by François Fejtö in his book Il colpo di
stato di Praga 1948, Bompiani, Milano, 1977, pp. 10–11, 215–21.
24 On this complex Yugoslav-Magyar-Russian matter, see the most recent documents
published in Budapest regarding the revolution of 1956 and, in particular, the study
by Zoltan Ripp on Hungary and Yugoslavia and the biography of Nagy by Janos
Rainer dated 1996–99. On this subject there is a detailed reconstruction available in
Italian in the degree dissertation of Vincenzo Pallucca, Ungheria, da Imre Nagy a
János Kádár e i rapporti jugoslavo-sovietici 1953–1956, University of Bologna, Forlì
campus, academic year 2003/04; the collection of documents edited by Békés et al.,
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, op. cit.; and the memoirs of Yugoslav Ambassador
Veljko Mićunović, Moscow Diary, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1980.
25 On the Yugoslav-Soviet relationship in those years and on the start of the politics
of non-alignment, cf. Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945,
St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998, pp. 76–85; my study, “The USSR and the
Soviet Camp between Ideology and Realpolitik, 1947–1958”, in Antonio Varsori
(ed.), 1945–1990: The End of an Era? Macmillan, London, 1994, pp. 117–40; the
important “Hronika nesvrstanosti 1956–1980”, by Olivera Bogetić and Dragan
Bogetić, in Bojana Tadić, Osobenosti i dileme nesvrtanosti, Komunist, Beograd,
1982, especially pp. 103–8; and the volumes by Leo Mates, Međunarodni odnosi
socijalističke Jugoslavije, Nolit, Beograd, 1976; and by Ranko Petković, Nesvrstana
Jugoslavija i savremeni svet, Školska Knjiga, Zagreb, 1985.
26 On self-management in Yugoslavia and in particular on the reform of 1965, I refer
to Carlo Boffito (ed.), Socialismo e mercato in Jugoslavia, Einaudi, Torino, 1968;
Rudolf Bićanić, Economic Policy of Socialist Yugoslavia, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2010 [1973]; my La diversità socialista, op. cit., pp. 57–71; and
my edited volume, L’enigma jugoslavo, le ragioni della crisi, Angeli, Milano, 1989,
with an extensive bibliography on the subject.
27 On the subject of price reform and the debate within the European socialist area,
see in particular the volume edited by CESES, Il sistema dei prezzi, op. cit.; that by
Joseph Wilczynski, The Economics of Socialism, Allen and Unwin, London, 1978;
and the volume by Wlodzimierz Brus, Storia economica, op. cit., pp. 150 and ff.
146 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
28 Comecon, originally the economic organisation of the European communist states,
was wanted by Stalin in 1949 just after the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the
Kominform, with the main purpose of imposing Stalinisation of the economies of
the socialist Camp countries according to the principles that prevailed in the USSR
following the radical turn around of 1929 and based on centralised five-year plan-
ning, prioritary development of heavy industry, collectivisation in the countryside,
nationalisation of production and distribution, and systematic recourse to coercion.
It became necessary to wait until 1959, i.e. ten years after its establishment, for
Comecon to give itself a statute. On Comecon, see in particular Michael Kaser,
Comecon: Integration Problems of the Planned Economies, RIIA, London, 1967; S.
Ausch, Theory and Practice in CMEA Cooperation, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest,
1972; and Marie Lavigne, Le Comecon, Cujas, Paris, 1974.
29 See for example, Peter Wiles, Communist International Economics, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1982; and Edward Hewitt, Foreign Trade Prices in the Council of Mutual
Economic Assistance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974.
30 On the relationship between the reforms in the 1960s and the NEP, see the revealing
book by Moshe Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates, op. cit.
31 At that time the Romanian Communist Party suffered from a syndrome that saw
agricultural development as an expression of backwardness, to the point that it
muted the contribution of one of Romania’s few Marxists, Constantin Dobrogeanu-
Gherea, because he had dedicated his analyses (published in Bucharest in 1910,
and which proved to have a significant impact in the 1920s) to forms of neo-serfdom
(neoiobǎgia) in the countryside and not to aspects of industrialisation. On this
subject, see Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, CEU
Press, Budapest, 2001, p. 71; and more broadly, on the subject of Soviet-Romanian
relations, Vlad Sobell, The Red Market, Industrial Co-operation and Specialisation
in Comecon, Gower, Aldershot, 1984; as well as François Fejtö, A History of the
People’s Democracies, op. cit.; and my Sarajevo, le radici dell’odio, Edizioni
Associate, Roma, 2003, pp. 119–21.
32 On this subject, see the vast volume by Tibor Kiss, The Market of Socialist Eco-
nomic Integration, Kiado, Budapest, 1973; and by the same author, “L’integrazione
dei mercati nel mondo socialista”, and the reply by John Pinder, “Una Ostpolitik
per la Comunità Europea”, in AA.VV., Riforme e sistema economico nell’Europa
dell’Est, IAI-Il Mulino, Roma-Bologna, 1972, pp. 45–91.
33 Cf. presentations by Antonio Jannazzo, Alberto Scarponi and Roberto Gatti at the
conference Politica, economia e cultura nell’esperienza ungherese, Rome, 26–27
January 1979, mimeographed doc., Istituto Gramsci; or Federica Olivares, “Praxis
e la società jugoslava”, Documentazione sui Paesi dell’Est, CESES, Milan, n. 1–2,
January–April 1976; Jean Marabini, Dossier Russia, Casini ed., Roma, 1968, pp.
389ff.; or AA.VV., Storia del marxismo, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 145–219.
34 See Alexander Yanov, The Russian New Right: Right-wing Ideologies in the Con-
temporary USSR, University of California, Berkeley, 1978; and by the same
author, Détente after Brezhnev: The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy,
University of California, Berkeley, 1977.
35 There is a vast international bibliography on this subject. For an initial approach,
see Wendy Godman, “Le donne nella società sovietica”, in Michel Dreyfus, Bruno
Groppo et al. (eds), Il secolo dei comunismi, Net, Milano, 2004, pp. 194–205; and
Sabrina Ramet, “In Tito’s Time”, in Sabrina Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the
Western Balkans, Penn State Press, University Park, PA, 1999, pp. 89–105; and
Barbara Clements, Bolshevik Women, op. cit.
36 From this viewpoint it is interesting to see with how much wit and intelligence
Arrigo Levi commented on the relationship between price reform and the drive
towards democratisation in his book, contemporary to the experiments of the time, Il
potere in Russia, op. cit., pp. 223–26.
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 147
37 See Antonín Liehm, “Dalla cultura alla politica”, in Leoncini (ed.), Che cosa fu la
“primavera di Praga?”, op. cit., pp. 127–50; Günter Grass and Pavel Kohout,
Dialogo con Praga, De Donato, Bari, 1969; and Stefano Bianchini (ed.), “La
Primavera di Praga vent’anni dopo”, thematic edn of Transizione n. 11/12, 1988,
Cappelli, Bologna. Ample excerpts from presentations at the Fourth Congress of
Czechoslovak Writers with speeches by Kundera, Kohout, Goldstücker, Klíma,
Havel and Vaculík are in Gianlorenzo Pacini (ed.), La svolta di Praga, Samonà e
Savelli, Roma, 1968.
38 See Zdeněk Mlynář, “Idee sul pluralismo politico nella linea del Partito comunista
di Cecoslovacchia nel 1968”, in Leoncini (ed.), Che cosa fu, op. cit., p. 2.
39 Ibid., pp. 9–39. See also Milož Hájek, “La democratizzazione del Partito”, in
Francesco M. Cataluccio and Francesca Gori (eds), La primavera di Praga,
Angeli, Milano, 1990, pp. 235–40; Roberto Gatti, “Società civile e pluralismo nel
‘68 cecoslovacco”, in Istituto Gramsci, Il ‘68 cecoslovacco e il socialismo, Editori
Riuniti, Roma, 1979, pp. 123–31; on the philosophical thought of the “Spring” see
also Predrag Vranicki, Storia del marxismo, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 274–81.
40 On this subject see more extensively my La diversità socialista, op. cit., especially
pp. 99ff.; from the perspective of the debate over ideas, see also Predrag Vranicki,
“Što se dogodilo u Čehoslovačkoj”, Naže teme n. 2, 1970; and by the same author,
Socijalistička alternativa, Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 1982.
41 On the debate unleashed in those years in Yugoslavia against “technocracy” and
“anarchic liberalism”, see, for example, the volumes by Dragan Marković and Savo
Kržavac, Liberalizam od Ðilasa do danas, Sloboda, Beograd, 1978, 2 vols; or Fuad
Muhić, SKJ i opozicija, Radnički Univerzitet Veljko Vlahović, Subotica, 1977; on
Albania see Antonello Biagini, Storia dell’Albania, Bompiani, Milano, 1998 and
Stephanie Schwandners-Sievers and Bernd J. Fischer (eds), Albanian Identities.
Myth and History, Hurst, London, 2002.
42 The document referred to is the presentation by Kardelj to the Presidency of the
League of Communists on 13 June. See Edvard Kardelj, “Nova područja ljudske
slobode i demokratije”, Komunist, 20 June 1977. Later, Kardelj went back over
these subjects in a more explicit way in his essays: “Pluralismo democratico degli
interessi autogestionali”, Questioni attuali del socialismo n. 5, 1978; Slobodni udru-
ženi rad-Brionske diskusije, Radnička Stampa, Beograd, 1978; Self-Management and
the Political System, STP, Beograd, 1980.
43 See the Fourth General Principle of the Constitution of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Edit, Rijeka, 1974.
44 On Ðilas, see in particular the articles published in Borba from 11 October 1953 to
4 January 1954 (later collected in Anatomy of a Moral: The Political Essays of
Milovan Djilas, Praeger, New York, 1958); followed by the statement issued to The
New York Times, December 1954, on the two-party system; and the essay The New
Class. An Analysis of the Communist System, Praeger, New York, 1957.
45 On the proposals for economic and political change see the work done by the
Krajger and Vrhovec commissions and in particular the documents: “Polazne
osnove dugoročnog programa ekonomske stabilizacije”, Borba-dokumenti, Beograd, 19
April 1982; “Zaključni deo dugoročnog programa ekonomske stabilizacije”, Sav-
remena Praksa, Beograd, enclosure to issue n. 966, 14 July 1983; Kritička analiza
funkcionisanja političkog sistema socijalističkog samoupravljanja, Centar za rad-
ničko samoupravljanje, Beograd, 24 July 1985 (second edn, same editor, 22
November 1985). See also Bianchini (ed.), L’enigma jugoslavo, op. cit.
46 See Isaac Deutscher, The Great Contest, Russia and the West, Oxford University
Press, London, 1960 (quotation from p. 61 of Italian edn).
47 Ibid.
48 See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Allen and
Unwin, London, 1954.
148 Market socialism and national roads to socialism
49 Alan M. Ball, Imagining America, op. cit., pp. 156–59.
50 On Khrushchev’s views in those years and competition with the United States, see
in particular Khrushchev’s responses to Bertrand Russell’s open letter written to
him and Eisenhower of 23 November 1957 and the reaction of US Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles. The correspondence is in Bertrand Russell, Lettera ai
potenti della terra, Einaudi, Torino, 1958. In addition, see Giuseppe Boffa, Storia
dell’Unione Sovietica, Mondadori, Milano, vol. 2, pp. 565–66; and Crankshaw,
Khrushchev: A Career, op. cit.
51 What convinced Stalin of the validity of these theories were the Westernist choices
of Atatürk in Turkey as well as Chiang Kai-shek in China, and subsequently
India’s decision to join the British Commonwealth. In fact, after the Second World
War and the beginning of the process of colonial independence, Soviet economic
and political isolationism and autarky continued. See Jerry Hough, The Struggle
for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American Options, The Brookings Institution,
Washington, 1986, pp. 36, 114–19, 226–27.
52 Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1960.
53 John Hobson, The Wealth of States: A Comparative Sociology of International
Economic and Political Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp.
210ff.
54 On Rostow and his critics, see Bernard Cazes, “Dagli stadi dello sviluppo alle
finalità economiche”, in L. Cafagna et al., Problemi storici dell’industrializzazione e
dello sviluppo, Argalia, Urbino, 1965 pp. 55–69.
55 Cfr. Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, op. cit.; with Eric Hobs-
bawm, “‘First Comers’ and ‘Second Comers’”, in Cafagna et al., Problemi storici
dell’industrializzazione, op. cit., pp. 71–102.
56 Colin Clark, National Income and Outlay, London, 1937; and Jean Fourastié, La
Civilisation de 1960, Paris, 1947.
57 Pierre Massé, Prévision et prospective, Puf, Paris, 1967, and previously in
Prospective n. 4, November 1959.
58 See Cafagna et al., Problemi storici dell’industrializzazione, op. cit.; or also Witold
Kula, The Problems and Methods of Economic History, op. cit., pp. 265ff.; and
Ruggiero Romano, Tra storici ed economisti, Einaudi, Torino, 1982.
59 Significantly, the first Trabant model produced was named Sputnik.
60 In this regard, see Hough, The Struggle for the Third World, op. cit. This volume
can be accompanied by reading some volumes that were published at the time of
the US–Soviet dispute, which paint a vivid picture of the passions and topics of the
time. See in particular, Deutscher, The Great Contest, op. cit.; and George Kennan,
Russia, the Atom and the West, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1958.
61 Cf. on this topic Vasilii G. Solodovnikov and Viktor V. Bogoslovskii, Non-Capitalist
Development. An Historical Outline, Progress Publ., Moscow, 1975; and Vassil
Vassilev, Politique d’Aide du Camp Soviétique aux pays en voie de developpement,
OECD, Paris, 1969.
62 We should not forget that at the time Soviet socialism was very critical of
Narodnichestvo.
63 See Hough, The Struggle for the Third World, op. cit., pp. 156–65.
64 The Pancha Shila were actually mentioned for the first time by the Indonesian
leader Sukarno in 1945 and referred to the five Aryan virtues (do not steal, do not
kill, do not lie, do not become inebriated, do not be depraved). In the agreement of
Tibet reached by Zhou Enlai and Nehru on 29 April 1954, the five principles
became the rejection of aggression, the disavowal of interference in the domestic
affairs of other countries, the respect for territorial sovereignty and integrity,
mutual cooperation based on equality, and peaceful coexistence on an interna-
tional level. The Sino-Indonesian Joint Statement of 1954 and extracts of the
 Market socialism and national roads to socialism 149
speech by Zhou Enlai at Bandung have been published by Robert Daniels (ed.), A
Documentary History, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 217–19. See also Ranko Petković, Velike
sile i politika nesvrstanosti, Centar za kulturnu djelatnost SSO, Zagreb, 1979, pp.
141–50; and Daniel Colar, Le mouvement des pays non alignés, La documentation
française, Paris, 1981, pp. 11–19; but also Leo Mates, Nesvrstanost. Teorija i
savremena praksa, IMPP, Beograd, 1970, pp. 78–96.
65 On the role of China in Asia at the beginning of the 1950s, see Seton-Watson, The
Pattern of Communist Revolution, op. cit.; Enrica Collotti Pischel, Storia della
rivoluzione cinese, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1973. As to the Conference of Bandung,
see O. Guitard, Bandoung et le réveil des peuples colonisés, PUF, Paris, 1976.
66 On Tito’s foreign policy regarding the Balkan Pact, see Stefano Bianchini, Sarajevo
le radici dell’odio, Edizioni associate, Roma, III ed., 2003, pp. 215–18; and by the
same author, “I mutevoli assetti balcanici e la contesa italo-jugoslava (1948–
1956)”, in Marco Galeazzi (ed.), Roma-Belgrado. Gli anni della guerra fredda,
Longo, Ravenna, 1995, pp. 11–37; as well as Duško Lopandić and Jasminka
Kronja, Regionalne inicijative i multilateralna saradnja na Balkanu, Evropski
Pokret Srbije, Beograd, 2010, pp. 33–50; Milan Skakun, Balkan i velike sile, Arion,
Zemun, 1986; John Iatrides, Balkan Triangle, Mouton, The Hague, 1968. On his
foreign policy toward Asian and African countries in the 1950s, see instead,
Dragan Bogetić, Koreni jugoslovenskog opredeljenja za nesvrstanost, ISI, Beograd,
1990.
67 Among the most important Yugoslav theoretical contributions, see the prolific
Ranko Petković, whose only works we mention here are Teorijski pojmovi nesvr-
stanosti, Rad, Beograd, 1974; and Nesvrstanost, Školska Knjiga, Zagreb, 1981; as
well as Bora Jevtić, Međunarodna uloga nesvrstanosti, Rad, Beograd, 1976; Čedomir
Vučković, Nesvrstani u podeljenom svetu, Rad, Beograd, 1981; Bojana Tadić,
Sukobi među nesvrstanim zemaljama, Međunarodna politika, Beograd, 1987; and
Milan Šahović, Droit International et Non-alignement, Međunarodna politika,
Beograd, 1987. Among the few non-Yugoslav contributions, see the volume by K.P.
Misra and K.R. Narayanan, Non-Alignment in Contemporary International Relations,
Vikas, Delhi, 1981, which gathers together the notes of Indo-Yugoslav talks.
6 Between otherness and globalisation
“Real socialism”, modernity and
Gorbachev

6.1 “Otherness” and modernity in European socialist countries’

self-perception
The wave of reforms that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s in the part of
Europe controlled by communist parties definitely represented the most cru-
cial historical moment in which a modern, trans-national, but different
development model from the one pursued in the West was conceived, with the
hope (or the belief) that it would be equally as efficient if not, in perspective,
even better.
The “otherness” of communist ideas, or an approach that differed from
Western modernity and its capitalistic mode of production, was that it seemed
able to offer the prospect of well-being (with universal education, social security,
public health and urbanisation), potentially freeing up unconstrained competi-
tion on an international level, specifically with the Western model. Meanwhile,
some Western countries, continental Europe in particular but also the UK’s
Labour governments, were already constructing their own welfare systems.
At the same time, in spite of the dictatorship of the proletariat’s repressive
capability and the restriction of democratic freedoms, this “otherness” had
shown itself able to absorb part of the traditional conservative preoccupation
with safeguarding the cultural and social peculiarities of one’s own country.
Actually this was an anxiety reproduced (albeit without proper channels for
publicly manifesting itself and in spite of the profound changes that occurred
after the Second World War) in the behaviours and convictions of sectors
such as the political establishment, as well as public opinion in the Soviet and
socialist republics. These tendencies were especially deep-rooted among the
currents most sensitive to nationalism. In these cases, socialist “otherness”
and nationalism had managed to merge publicly, translating into extremely
peculiar political directions, expressed for example by Ceauşescu in Romania,
Hoxha in Albania, by the Croatian Maspok movement in 1971 or even in
how aspirations to “national roads to socialism” and “sovereignty” were
variously interpreted.1
In sum, communist “otherness” seemed able – for several decades – to
create a singular mix between “Westernism” and safeguarding local
 Between otherness and globalisation 151
specificities (which could sometimes be “read” as a form of ideological,
national and cultural protection … ) in which modernisation was presented
and/or perceived as a distinct and independent process from the Western
experience, even though it shared its main development track.
It is true, moreover, that the contents of this otherness in the communist
sphere was definitely not limited to the East–West conflict. On the contrary, it
was expressed in equally distinct policies that were in some ways even in
competition with each other, as shown by the chequered course of Soviet-
Yugoslav-Chinese relations and the conflicting appeals in Central-Eastern
Europe for “people’s democracy” at the end of the 1940s, as well as claims to
“national roads to socialism” and “sovereignty”.
Nevertheless, it is also true that at the time, most communist militants (not
only in Eastern Europe) firmly believed in this “otherness”, because they still
held on to emotionally sensitive memories of the revolution from the begin-
ning of the century, and because the Cold War encouraged a bipolar percep-
tion and a tendency dogmatically to take sides on opposing fronts in
international relations.
Seen from this point of view, the incisiveness of the political impact deriv-
ing from the economic and social changes promoted by communism (linked,
once again, to reorganising enterprises, decentralisation, revision of planning,
introducing market forms, and the growth of education and urbanisation) had
become increasingly evident, at least in Europe. In those years, the debate on
the pluralism of interests and democratisation of society constituted an una-
voidable corollary of the process of reform started in the USSR, in the Soviet
sphere and in Yugoslavia.
The time was ripe for developing a modern policy of mediation, with spe-
cifically designed institutions able to manage the economic and social com-
plexity that had become an unavoidable fact and an indisputable confirmation
of the profound changes that followed the Second World War.
Likewise, this debate revealed the pervasive resistance to change, in that it
proposed radical changes in power arrangements, mainly to the disadvantage
of the state and party bureaucracies, the elite’s mechanisms of co-optation
and, when these were linked to ethnic groups, the subsequent territorial
interests. All these groups had absolutely no interest in promoting reform.
Marxism-Leninism’s appeal to ideological loyalty, ossified in Stalinism and
perceived over the long term as a factor safeguarding Camp (or national)
peculiarities, consequently became a powerful instrument of intimidation vis-
à-vis communist innovators and was regularly used by the conservative
apparatuses to gather its forces to dilute, reshape and in the end block
reforms.
The restoration implemented by Leonid Brezhnev starting with the repres-
sion of the “Prague Spring” (although signals in this direction had already
been given in the USSR in 1966 when Brezhnev had opposed the use of the
term “reform” during the 23rd Party Congress2) had the effect of radically
changing the behaviour of Eastern Europe’s communist elite. These leaders
152 Between otherness and globalisation
quickly abandoned the most radical aspects of their reformist plans and, most
importantly, gave up any measures that could hypothetically be seen as
promoting institutionalised forms of democratisation of society.
In this spirit, Honecker reinstated state intervention in the economy and
returned to centralised planning in the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
starting in 1971. In Poland, once Gomułka had been removed in 1970 fol-
lowing the violent repression of protests which had exploded on the Baltic Sea
due to a sudden rise in prices on Christmas Eve, a new technocratic elite
came to power along with the new secretary, Edward Gierek, initiating an
ambitious programme of investment without implementing any changes in
production, nor the necessary structural reforms.3
In Hungary a bitter political struggle within the party ended in 1973 with
the defeat of the most innovative aspects, which induced Kádár to stop the
second phase of the New Economic Mechanism, renouncing the start-up of
the first moves towards formation of a financial market, promoting competi-
tion and overcoming monopolies, and instead reinstating centralisation and
planning. The situation was no different in Bulgaria, where during the 1970s
agro-industrial production was returned to centralised control. In Romania,
centralised decision making never came under serious discussion, while it was
restored in Czechoslovakia and ensconced in the Constitution starting in
1970, in sharp contrast to the liberalising forces of the “Prague Spring”. In
the USSR, finally, Kosygin’s economic management was publicly criticised by
Brezhnev in 1969 and its main inspiring principles – already mitigated com-
pared to the Soviet reformist school’s proposals – were quickly abandoned.4
In any case, the drastic changes in the economic-political scene in those
years were not only characterised by a generalised restoration of central con-
trol, which only Tito managed to avoid (in Yugoslavia, decentralisation of
power was reinforced in favour of the republics and autonomous regions).
Indeed, for most of the 1970s the population’s standard of living in many
socialist countries improved, including in Poland, Bulgaria, the GDR, Hun-
gary, Romania and especially Yugoslavia, which all experienced a significant
phase of expansion.
At the same time the change in political elites’ behaviours compared to the
previous reformist phase and the increase in the standard of living were
accompanied by an initially little-noticed penetration by the external world of
European socialist societies. This penetration, which was actually encouraged
and sought by these communist leaders, ended up being decisively important
for the future development of the entire East European macro-region and its
communist experience.

6.2 “Growth without reforms” and the external world’s penetration

of European socialist societies
The external world’s penetration of the European area of “real existing soci-
alism” or “developed socialism”, as the communist form of government
 Between otherness and globalisation 153
(including Yugoslavia in this case) began to be defined in the 1970s, led to dif-
ferent paths and stimuli in various countries, but triggered similar repercussions.
In fact, once the reformist aspirations of the 1950s and 1960s had been put
aside but the opening to the “Third World” continued, growth and develop-
ment were achieved with ambitious investment projects in the 1970s. As a rule
these projects changed neither planning priorities, which had already become
obsolete, nor the old production goals, and instead resorted to indebtedness
to international financial institutions. This applied most of all to the countries
of the Soviet Camp and Yugoslavia, while the USSR relied on intensifying
its foreign trade, mainly with the West.
In other words, heavy industry (from metallurgy to chemicals, from mining
to chemical derivatives) and the internal infrastructure grew thanks to Wes-
tern credits, in the conviction that this would suffice to create a flexible market
economy that could generate new products and more advanced technologies
capable of achieving constant and socially advantageous results, and without
regard for environmental effects and pollution risks.
Gierek’s Poland was one of the countries that pursued a policy of “growth
without reforms” with particular determination; Romania behaved similarly,
reinforcing its petrochemical sector through strict central control. However,
not even federal and decentralised Yugoslavia did less, as it dispersed credits
for building infrastructure only on the internal market (and thus did not
produce valuable foreign exchange, as in the case of the hydroelectric sector),
or superfluous items produced only to satisfy local demand.
Meanwhile, in the 1960s and 1970s relations intensified with the Arab
countries and the “Third World”, which were receiving the majority of the
socialist countries’ production, and soon Bulgaria also followed suit. The first
oil crisis of 1973–74 in many ways had a positive effect on the East European
countries and especially the USSR, as the high price of oil allowed Moscow to
purchase Western equipment to develop its own energy resources destined for
export. Thus in this period exports grew in most socialist countries, also because
this was the only way to acquire the valuable foreign exchange necessary to
pay back the debts, and this had positive repercussions on the standard of living.
Numerous studies were carried out at the time and after the fall of com-
munism which confirm the high growth rates in the first half of the 1970s in
some countries of the Soviet Camp (less so for the USSR), as well as the
growing impact of foreign trade on gross domestic product (GDP), which in
Hungary reached 50%.5
There is no doubt that at the founding conference of the Conference on
Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), held in Helsinki in 1975, its
“second basket” – dedicated to strengthening economic, scientific and envir-
onmental cooperation between the countries of the two Camps – in this con-
text represented a highly significant event, which the Polish leader Gierek had
worked tenaciously to achieve.
So thanks to the growth of foreign trade and international credits, the
external world gradually increased its penetration of the world of “real
154 Between otherness and globalisation
existing socialism”. This was not only a new political and cultural phenomenon,
as it reshaped the dominant approach of “closure or separateness or, even
more so, impenetrability” of the socialist sphere compared with the capitalist
one, according to the ideas inherited from Stalinism and basically accepted up
until the mid-1970s. This had potentially unimaginable repercussions, as it
was founded on economic and social interdependence that before then had
been little known or practised, but which was to have an incalculable impact
on the shape and definition of development models in the years to come,
continuing the process of weakening the Iron Curtain that had started with
de-Stalinisation.
The initial consequences of this interdependence began to be felt in the
second half of the 1970s, and they became increasingly noticeable in the fol-
lowing decade.6 The turning point was provoked specifically by the con-
vergence of international factors which had a devastating effect on the
intrinsic limits of “growth without reforms” begun in the Socialist Camp with
Brezhnev’s restoration. Indeed, interdependence required structural adjust-
ments that were not even taken into consideration for the above-mentioned
reasons, either in the Soviet Camp or even in Yugoslavia, where enthusiasm
for self-management, elevated to a generalised institutional system in the 1974
Constitution and the Law on Associated Labour of 1976, induced the poli-
tical elite to believe that they already possessed the most efficient, participa-
tory and socially just model, and thus underestimate the effects of the
international changes on Yugoslavia’s internal dynamics.
Since no further structural adjustments were forthcoming, heavy industry
continued to produce with methods and plants that had become obsolete, but
which required increasingly high energy inputs while productivity continued
to decline. Soon energy consumption was three to five times greater than that
of the West, causing the countries to increase their imports of oil or to diver-
sify the destinations of their own raw materials (as in the case of Polish and
East German coal) to export the higher-quality black coal on the interna-
tional market (to earn hard currency), while lignite was reserved for domestic
production. The lignite emitted sulphurous fumes for which there were no
efficient filters, with disastrous consequences for the environment.7
In the meantime, the relatively cheap supply of dollars and oil began to
decline due to the growing recession in Western countries, and then vanished
following the second oil crisis of 1979 and the United States’ changed attitude
towards the USSR, provoked by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and Ronald Reagan’s ascent to the US presidency.8
This combination of events which occurred in the space of a few months
thus became intertwined with the persistent poor quality of East European
products, their antiquated technology and obsolete equipment, making it
increasingly difficult to export products, while the energy dependency of
Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania continued to increase. In 1979 in
the official statistics of the USSR and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact,
“zero growth” was registered for the first time.
 Between otherness and globalisation 155
As mentioned above, outdated technology and poor production quality
gradually began to have a negative impact on the environment, worsening air
and water pollution and contributing to a drastic scaling down of the quality
not just of services, but also of people’s lives.
The damage caused by the chemical industry in Saxony, the destruction of
one third of forested land in Bohemia and Moravia due to acid rain, pollution
of nearly 21% of public drinking water in western Slovakia, as well as nearly
all the Baltic Sea coast, the abuse of improper fertilisers responsible for
increasing the acidity and salinity of Hungarian farmland, not to mention the
desertification caused by the excessive exploitation of Virgin Lands in the
USSR and partial drying up of the Aral Sea to irrigate cotton crops: all
this contributed not only to a drastic deterioration of production and quality
of life, but also brought about a series of processes of international inter-
dependency that the elite in power largely underestimated.9
In these situations, in fact, environmental issues became a mobilising factor
in many socialist countries, above all for the younger generation. Various
environmentalist groups formed and their actions, due to the specific char-
acteristics of the environmental problems, soon took on a trans-national
character, as was evident in the case of the project to reconstruct the Gabčikovo-
Nagymáros dam on the Danube between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or
the operation of the Kozloduy nuclear power station in Bulgaria (near the
border with Romania).
Naturally, the problems that had arisen in the environmental sector did not
only cross the borders of countries within the camp, but also those outside the
Camp: so if on the one hand in their dealings with the West, the envir-
onmentalists from the socialist sphere found useful tools to pressure their own
governments, the West, on the other hand, thanks to signing the Helsinki
Accords and the provisions contained in the second basket, derived legit-
imisation for its own pressures, as in the case of the Scandinavian countries or
Germany, which wanted to protect the interests and safety of their own
populations. Environmental interdependence gradually became a fact of which
the new Soviet leader Gorbachev was dramatically made aware when, as we
will see below, the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded.
The environmental question also presented another dimension to the pro-
blem, closely linked to the quality of industrial production; as Iván Berend
pointed out, environmental cleanliness and hygiene had already become
essential prerequisites for ensuring that new alloys or technical materials
function, as the impurities in these materials are measured in millionths of a
percentage point. These conditions were totally lacking in the East European
context where the rate of air pollution was continuously increasing and it was
impossible to use innovative technologies and materials, thus condemning
socialist production to obsolescence.10
It was this situation – essentially leading to a dead end since the end of the
1970s – that promoted the accumulation of trade deficits. This situation was
further worsened by the changing conditions of access to loans due to rapid
156 Between otherness and globalisation
growth in the value of the dollar and rising interest rates, so that exports –
including in some cases (such as the Polish one) food exports – just barely
served to pay interest on the debt, without affecting the principal amount.11
This trend was inevitably reflected by domestic prices (which had to be
raised) and the populations’ standard of living, which as a consequence began
to decline, dropping dramatically in the 1980s in Poland, Bulgaria, the GDR
and Yugoslavia. Only Hungary managed to limit the damage. Romania, on
the other hand, set out to pay back its entire debts at the cost of devastating
domestic consumption (from food products to heating), while the Soviet
economy was at zero growth due, among other things, to cost increases in the
military-industrial sector. Finally Albania paid for the international isolation
it had fallen into after breaking with China in 1978, which had previously
provided it with technology and finished products.
In sum, once started, opening (still relative) to the outside world could not
be stopped. Financial, technological and environmental interdependence were
exposed to changing international conditions, with visible effects on East
European economies that were already suffering from their own limitations.
The West, paradoxically, was undergoing a phase of recession and profound
restructuring of its production systems, in which the seeds of a new phase of
expansion were already being sown, thanks to the development of computer
science.
In contrast, the socialist countries’ greatest difficulty was in a crucial sector
that was now beginning to emerge as very promising for development pro-
spects: high technology, to which these countries were virtually excluded
access.
This does not mean that the political elite did not acknowledge its importance:
on the contrary, Suslov (who had been assigned the task of safeguarding
ideological orthodoxy during the Brezhnev era) had already understood the
importance of a “technological-scientific revolution” in the mid-1970s (this
was the Soviet terminology adopted at the time), urging innovation and
encouraging the work of specialists and scientists. Yet during these years the
number of researchers at the Academy grew almost excessively.12
In reality an ambivalent process was underway. On the one hand, financial,
technical and environmental interdependence and the push for industrialisa-
tion had gradually brought European societies closer, in spite of the Iron
Curtain. Social-democratic and communist welfare systems had further
contributed to reinforcing this process.
On the other hand, powerful limitations, of an ideological and political
nature, imposed by communist doctrinaires especially on information, just
when this was becoming a leading sector of development, were decisive in
retarding innovation. In the socialist countries, for example, communication
systems had remained backwards due just as much to ideological-Stalinist
closure and opposition, as to the division in Camps provoked by the Cold
War. Telephone systems – essential for the diffusion of new computer tech-
nology – were modest compared with the West, and the quality of
 Between otherness and globalisation 157
communication lines was even more mediocre, not to speak of the limits
imposed on telephone communication between the two Camps. At the time,
Stalin had condemned cybernetics as a “bourgeois science” and this had left a
lasting mark, for example keeping the ideas advanced by Kantorovich and
later by the School of Mathematical Economists from being applied and cir-
culated, which would have spurred further innovation and gradually a
broader social impact.
So the gap with the West was about to open again and one of its main
causes was ideological ossification (as had occurred in the past in Russia, the
Ottoman Empire, Italy and other countries following the inflow of anti-
modernist religious beliefs). Obsolete but experienced political cultures had
taken advantage of this, in turn bolstered by fear of syncretism, as a cultural
factor in more general terms (deriving from the spread of trans-national
métissage) and the fear of socialism’s “capitalistic regression”.
In other words, defending the “ideological purity” of socialism, which
formed the basis of Brezhnevian rigidity, was noted by some in the Party
apparatus and a part of public opinion as a useful tool for protecting local
peculiarities and traditions. The suspicion of capitalist penetration, or life-
styles considered Western or American, unexpectedly merged with the think-
ing of those who refused to understand their own culture as the original
product of a trans-national plurality of stimuli, and supported currents of
thought that would later become red-brown, or communist-nationalist.
Thus the vicious circle that had been formed between technological delay
and ideological resistance ended up promoting old isolationist impulses
among party apparatuses, not just in political-economic terms, but culturally as
well. This factor was bodily visible in the ageing Soviet leadership, increasingly
absent and ill, unable to make strategic decisions rapidly and in response to
changing times. In the end the tired persistence of this situation entered on a
collision course with effective interdependence, subjected to continuous pres-
sures ranging from calls for the protection of human rights or the environ-
ment to demands for economic cooperation, or as a result of countries’
indebtedness.
To aggravate the situation, military secrecy and the obsession with the
“enemy” combined with restrictions on freedom of thought and expression,
thus decisively obstructing the development of knowledge. Researchers found
themselves faced with a lack of essential tools for their work, from the lack of
photocopiers to extremely limited access to international publications and
libraries, from the impossibility of freely circulating the results of their own
studies or comparing themselves with their own colleagues to limits imposed
by the press and use of the telephone.13
Research in the field of computer science, promoted by Brezhnev in order
to be able to apply the results to centralised planning, was later abandoned
because the regime was afraid of not being able to control its impact on society.
As a consequence, the gap with the United States grew dramatically, as shown
by the award of Nobel Prizes or patents registered in those years.14
158 Between otherness and globalisation
Like the USSR and the Soviet Camp, Yugoslavia was also incapable of
joining the development of computer science, even though it was the socialist
state most open to Western influence. This was mainly due to the restrictive
import policy adopted by the federal government immediately after Tito’s
death to address the serious foreign debt.
The contraction in the field of innovation and information was a clear
contradiction to the growing flow of contacts that was developing in a Europe
that was still bipolar.
In fact, the stabilisation of relations between the two Camps during the
years of German Ostpolitik and the Helsinki Conference had an important
effect not only on foreign trade, but on the exchange of cultures and ideas.
In the 1970s and 1980s the flow of visits from the Federal Republic of
Germany (FRG) to the GDR grew constantly, as did telephone communica-
tion between the two Germanys.15 The number of Central-East European
listeners of Radio Free Europe – the American radio broadcaster that trans-
mitted from Munich – boomed during the 1980s; a similar trend was noticed
for televisions owned by almost all Central European and Yugoslav house-
holds thanks to the reforms of the 1960s, giving them indirect access to Wes-
tern channels. By the 1970s all the Balkan countries and even Albania had
access to Western television: access to Italian television had an especially
significant impact in Albania at the time communism fell. In the meantime,
Yugoslavia was experiencing increasing numbers of Western tourists, attracted
by its coastal beauty and competitive prices. This phenomenon also encouraged
the growth of private initiative and the diversification of ideas.
For the most part the third basket of the Helsinki Conference, focusing on
the respect for human rights (including the right to move for personal or
professional reasons, development of reciprocal information, journalism, and
cultural and educational cooperation) soon became a milestone in East-West
relations, in that it legitimised dissent in the socialist countries at the level of
international law, and at the same time gave it a reference document.16
In sum, thanks to the communist leadership’s adherence to the final act of
the conference, an aspect that they had originally considered of little value (as
they were mainly interested in stabilising borders and economic cooperation)
acquired increasing significance for trade unions, ecological, literary, religious
and philosophical associations and movements, which did not conform to the
rigid communist orthodox pattern and gradually formed that “underground
society” that was as dynamic as it was increasingly “parallel” to the officialdom
of “real existing socialism”.17
In other words, it was the existence of an international agreement on
human rights that imparted incisiveness to the actions of Charta 77 in Cze-
choslovakia, KOR and Solidarność in Poland, the ecological, youth and Pro-
testant movements in the GDR, the environmental protection activists in
Bulgaria, and the Hungarian intellectuals of Beszélö. Through Samizdat (self-
publication), these organisations spread alternative ideas to the dominant
ideology and established further bridges of communication with the West.
 Between otherness and globalisation 159
Meanwhile in the Soviet party a sort of “private reformism” began to
spread, led by distinguished specialists such as the Nobel Prize winner for
Physics Pyotr Kapitsa, Aksel Berg in cybernetics, the philosopher Ivan Frolov
(who edited Voprosy Filosofii from 1968 to 1977) or the director of the Insti-
tute for Social Sciences Yuri Krasin (often a guest in Yugoslavia), the econo-
mist Stanislav Shatalin or the Central Committee functionary Georgy
Shakhnazarov. By writing letters to Party leaders, reports, training courses
and public speeches, they insisted on the importance of scientific integrity,
drew attention to the risks of environmental disasters, but above all empha-
sised the significance of global movements and organisations, in opposition to
the neo-isolationist, autarkic and chauvinist tendencies present in the
USSR.18
Thus the so-called “Brezhnev stagnation” (which was only superficially so)
ended up becoming an era of progressive intensification of formal contacts
and underground ferment. This was just as much a product of radical social
change brought about by communism as it was the “stop and go” course of
reformist processes underway up to that time. However, it was also a result of
the growing impact of interdependence that had come about through the
thousands of networks that had been established between European East and
West, as was the awareness of its political and economic effects.
Thus while globalisation was starting to raise its head, penetrating socialist
societies that were formally resistant to change but actually in the process of
profound transformation, the brake applied to the reform movement in the
1960s had in fact provided the basis for a (still “underground”, but increas-
ingly lively) radicalisation of positions, and all those involved continued to be
faced with the problem of a development model and to ask themselves about
the relationship between modernisation and communist ideological references.
Polarisation, in other words, penetrated the nature of the reforms by dis-
tancing the upholders of “rationalisation” of the system from those who were
increasingly inclined to radical market measures, at the cost of overcoming
the power monopoly of the Communist Party. Among conservatives, the
supporters of corporate interests (such as the bureaucracy) were growing, but
also the nationalists (in that they were preoccupied with safeguarding local
peculiarities that from time to time harkened back to the glories of Stalinism
or ethnicity, or they mixed them up in the name of Russian supremacy or
separatism from Russia).19
Thus an explosive mixture of orientations and desires for change was in
process, in which ties with the outside world – on the part of Russia, the
USSR, the Socialist Camp or the Europe dominated by communist parties –
translated into economic, political and cultural aspirations aimed at cajoling,
absorbing, repelling or integrating into the outside world. These aspirations
thus took the form of political plans that were incompatible with each other
over the long term, ushering in a phase of tumultuous changes foreseen by
very few experts and scholars, but which made clear how communism had
definitively come out of its defensive cocoon built up since the 1920s.
160 Between otherness and globalisation
6.3 Modernisation and the “reformability” of the Soviet system
When on 12 March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became the secretary-general of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), international public opi-
nion sensed, to its surprise, that a phase of profound change was about to
take place. The drastic and rapid rejuvenation of the Soviet leadership
immediately made tangible the sense of change, although its implications were
still completely unpredictable. In reality, it was not only Soviet society that
needed a general rejuvenation but all of European socialism, where unstop-
pable modernising tensions had continued to exert dynamic and incisive
pressure, in spite of “Brezhnevian stagnation”.
While on the one hand the push for technological innovation had set the pace,
on the other the traditional socialist isolation had profoundly deteriorated, and
this dynamic had made structural adjustment to the demands of the times as
urgent as it was yearned for by a diverse range of political and social forces.
In fact, within just a few months, issues and problems from the late 1950s
and early 1960s in the socialist societies of the Camp began to re-appear, with
increasingly insistent references to the ideas that surfaced during the “Prague
Spring”. Soon there were also to be clear and unexpected references to the
New Economic Policy (NEP), thus establishing links, risky for those times,
between different periods of social, economic and cultural opening that had
occurred during “real existing socialism”, or “developed socialism”.
What was absolutely novel this time was the new Soviet leadership’s explicit
aim of linking economic revival with a programme of extremely important
political reforms. At this point it was inevitable that the international
spotlight should fall on the USSR.
From exile, into which he had been forced following the intervention of the
Warsaw Pact in August 1968 against his country, Zdeněk Mlynář opened a
rich and timely debate hosted in Italy by the weekly magazine Rinascita. The
debate focused totally on the initial stages of Gorbachev’s project, and
Mlynář warned (it was only October 1986) that “the attempts at economic
reform carried out in the USSR have failed thus far basically because they
have run up against political limits: in other words, changes in the political
and social system, not only in the economic system, were necessary. In the
end, fear of these changes has always been stronger than the desire for eco-
nomic reform”. Immediately after, however, he added that in any case he was
“of the opinion that the Soviet political system could be reformed”.20
As we mentioned earlier, the problem of reformability concerned not only
the Soviet system, but more broadly that of “real existing socialism” or
“developed socialism”, because in the mid-1980s even Yugoslavia, which had
been a crucial point of reference for the entire region, in terms of ideological
and systemic deviation from Moscow, found itself in such stormy economic
waters that there were inevitable repercussions on the functionality of self-
management and its political system, which meant urgent, radical reforms
even in Belgrade.
 Between otherness and globalisation 161
So the acquired conviction of the need for a far-reaching structural adjust-
ment which would have also affected the political sphere, triggered a lively
trans-national debate. This debate, much more intense than in the past, was
conducted by a great variety of actively interested parties. On the one hand
actors from East European politics were involved and rapidly forced to take
sides in favour or against the Soviet leader’s ideas, whereas the Yugoslav
reform experience ran aground on the banks of its republican or regional
elites’ reciprocal vetoes. On the other hand, the debate took on unprecedented
international importance in terms of its dimension, and impassioned East
European political émigrés, scholars and experts as well as the international
community’s leading elite were asking themselves in increasingly urgent tones
whether, and under what conditions, communism could be reformed.
In terms of its contents, the debate taking shape was of a profoundly dif-
ferent nature from the one that had enlivened academic circles and the world
of politics in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, as we have seen, the main
issue of contention was how to improve economic efficiency and the quality of
production in order to make the system more attractive internationally and
more competitive with the outside world. This possibility had gone so far as
to cause anxious concern in the West.
Now, after the years of Brezhnevian restoration and the long, ultra-
conservative gerontocratic and institutional interregnum that had dominated
since the late 1970s, the crucial question was whether the system could be
reformed, or perhaps more aptly its ability to adapt to interdependence, i.e. to
the international challenges of the times, specifically in political-economic
terms, as well as some obstacles of a cultural nature.
The controversy ignited at this time on the sustainability of radical reforms
in “developed socialism” did not address the central issue of the system’s
stability, nor did it grasp the signs of incipient globalisation. In other words, the
belief that the Soviet system, the East Camp and self-managed socialism were,
in Adriano Guerra’s words, “a stable historical given” was a widely accepted
fact in scientific research and political analysis, which lasted at least until the
end of the 1980s and was thus not considered noteworthy.21
For its part, in both the Soviet and Yugoslav systems, the convergence
between the party’s Stalinist ideological orthodoxy and powerful interests of
the government elite was supported by the traditional interdependency (mentioned
repeatedly above) between economics and politics. These interests decisively con-
trolled the entire economy, through central planning and/or the bureaucratic/
administrative apparatuses (as in Yugoslavia). However, this convergence had
already transformed into a powerful alliance opposed to economic and social
reform, even at the cost of obstructing changes in modes of production, each and
every time these changes portended an adjustment of the political system in the
democratic and pluralistic sense (although at times this also translated into requests
for or expectations in favour of a multiparty system).
Nevertheless, in spite of similarities as well as the diversity of experiences,
the Yugoslav case remained largely underrated by the international debate,
162 Between otherness and globalisation
which at the time, as in prior decades, was too focused on what was happen-
ing in Moscow. This was understandable, due to the impact, not just sym-
bolic, that a radical change in the USSR would have had on the entire Soviet
Camp, as well as the international importance of a great nuclear power like
the USSR. Yet this type of interpretation – which was dominant – ended up
losing sight of the general crisis of European socialism, as well as the complex
mechanism of regional interdependencies. In the end it left the West culturally
unprepared to deal with the simultaneous and rapid collapse of communism
in Europe, of the East European federations, and the repercussions that were
to stem from it.
These same networks of political, economic and cultural interdependence
formed throughout the European continent starting in the late 1970s, and the
limits they produced were aspects that were largely neglected in East Eur-
opean analysis. They were overlooked because the cultural influence exerted
by the divisions of the Cold War was still too strong to take into account
already existing trans-national flows.
Consequently the international debate on the reformability of real socialism
was limited to discussing Soviet socialism. While there were well-known fig-
ures like Mlynář, inclined to favour the latter, believing that the continuous
appearance of forces of change would, sooner or later, let them prevail, there
were also those such as Pierre Kende (Hungarian émigré in France), who
deemed it rather old fashioned and unrealistic to expect political change that
could even go slightly beyond the mere decentralisation of economic decision
making.
Moreover the old idea of the “convergence of systems” still held out,
according to which it was “inevitable” that capitalism and socialism would
gradually grow closer due to the process of transformation towards fairness
and justice in the first and democratisation in the second. This theory had
already been supported by Raymond Aron, Jean-Paul Sartre and then Andrei
Sakharov. It was thus up to Timothy J. Colton to foreshadow the democratic
transformation of the USSR without implying its institutional collapse. Other
intellectuals such as Alain Besançon felt the USSR could not survive the wave
of reforms rolling over it, whereas Edgar Morin, even more acerbic, foresaw a
“future without a future”, or the “continuation of the totalitarian system”
and the expansion of its empire.22
Robert Daniels, the American author of an important book on the
reformability of the Soviet system, left this question open, and after having
assessed the powers involved and the importance of the relationship between
change and resistance to it since Stalin’s time, opted for cautious optimism, in
the belief that a moderate return to the libertarian values of 1917 was still
possible. A group of eminent scholars, including George Breslauer, Stephen
White, Moshe Lewin, Michael Urban, and Giuseppe Boffa in Italy, all
thought along these same lines.23
On the other hand, other experts, such as Martin Malia, Richard Pipes,
Fred Coleman and in Italy Adriano Guerra, following a line of thought that
 Between otherness and globalisation 163
had influenced generations of specialists, blatantly rejected the possibility of
reform in the USSR. Curiously, however, it has been noted that most of their
works were published after 1991 (the year of the fall of the USSR), while
those that were more open-minded mainly came out at the time when
Gorbachev held the destiny of the Soviet Union in his hands.24
At the beginning of the 21st century there was a new outburst of polemics
in the United States following publication of an article by Stephen Cohen
who expressed his support – after the fact – for the USSR’s reforming capa-
city. Cohen pointed out, for example, the NEP as well as the Khrushchev
period, and invited critics to look at the Soviet experience rather by compar-
ing it to France and the United States to observe how in these countries there
were also various attempts to adapt the revolutionary past to the values of
much more recent eras.25
In some ways and apart from the propaganda publications of the 1930s, the
international debate on the reformability of the Soviet system revived an old
debate on the “inevitable collapse of the USSR” in a new form. George
Kennan (or “X”) can be considered to have initiated this debate with his
famous article in 1947, and he was followed, among others, by Hélène Carrère
d’Encausse, Amalrik and, in 1989, Brzezinski.26
In general, however, the discussion of whether or not the Soviet system
could be reformed suffered from determinism and in some ways a good dose
of ideologism. In most cases communists and anti-communists were fasci-
nated by its finalism and measured its “successes” and “failures” in terms of
some of its theoretical presuppositions which were often taken for granted,
even when they were contested, to the point that their intrinsic value was
misunderstood. This approach among political commentators and analysts of
the time can be understood in light of the conflicts generated by the Cold
War. It is much less comprehensible for historiography, since resorting to the
category of the “unreformability of socialism” conflicts with the facts;
socialism – as we have seen – was repeatedly reformed.
What we are most interested in here is not so much the extremely theore-
tical relationship between socialism’s philosophical finalism and political
practice, as the forms of constructing modernity in Eastern Europe. In this
framework, East European socialism constitutes one of the ways in which the
paths for accessing modernity were pursued (constructed) differently than in
the West, generating specific models and contents. We are attempting to
investigate these models in order to understand why at a certain point they
were no longer able coherently (or effectively) to adjust to the changes
imposed by a series of factors, including: a) technological change; b) economic
interdependence and a growing awareness (or perception) of the transversality
of cultures; and c) increasing internal social stratification.
Paradoxically, in view of the initial revolutionary and internationalist
movements, it seems that political and economic autarkic isolation and ideo-
logical closure (justifying isolation) decisively contributed to thwarting those
systems’ capacity to adapt to the dynamics of a continuously evolving
164 Between otherness and globalisation
situation, this being the greatest difference between socialist and capitalist
modernity. In other words, forced by the static nature of the “City of the Sun’s”
own ideological finalism, the communist movement ended up disarmed in the
face of transformations promoted by itself, and those it planned for the future.27
The lack of intellectual reflection on this point, when socialism was still a
vital and functioning political-economic system, helps to clarify why the dis-
cussion on whether or not Soviet socialism could be reformed in the 1980s did
not contribute to foreseeing the system’s collapse, as after all occurred in
Sovietology in general, including the Harvard School, which was too focused
on studying political changes in the Kremlin to notice the broader dynamics
underway in the entire socialist world.
To tell the truth, that debate did not even grasp the growing inter-
dependence between East and West in Europe (in fact, it is rare to find traces
of this28) and underestimated the profound changes occurring in East Eur-
opean countries, which in the space of a few decades had gone – not without
trauma – from imperial, aristocratic and agrarian as well as socially homo-
geneous societies, to industrialised, urban, secularised societies with complex
and intricate social stratification.
As a result, it was difficult to understand the evolution of differences and
mixing – in their widest social and cultural meaning – in an increasingly
dense framework of trans-national relationships, often underground, but lively
and intense. This difficulty made it problematic to identify mechanisms (like
globalisation) that were imposing a radical transformation on the fate of the
entire European continent (not just on Eastern Europe): this was a problem
that resurfaced again later in studies on post-communist transition, as we
pointed out in the Introduction to this volume.
So during the 1980s the debate remained circumscribed by the reformist
dimension that Gorbachev himself wanted to give to his policies (given that
he was interested in the reform of communism and not in its demise). There-
fore, he tended rather to ask himself whether that project would be successful,
if it would fall short of expectations or if it would simply be followed by a
new phase of conservatism, in the wake of what had happened after
Khrushchev, who was not able to assess the changes underway in terms of the
dynamics of growing European and world interdependency.29
From the thematic point of view, specialists focused their attention on three
aspects that were considered crucial: first, the reformability of the Soviet
Communist Party and, therefore, of the overall political system; second, the
reformability of the economic system with regard to the market, as well as to
the process of privatisation implicit in the legislative changes in the role of the
cooperatives and the progressive liberalisation of private enterprise; and
finally, the reformability of the Union, in other words the solidity of the
policy of nationalities as a whole and the relationship between hopes of
independence and safeguarding federal cohesion.
Moreover, there was no doubt that the origin of the changes promoted by
Gorbachev was economic. Critical analysis of the condition of the Soviet
 Between otherness and globalisation 165
economy left no doubt as to the need for a project of democratisation. When
he took on the leadership of the Party, growth rates had been constantly
decreasing, production quality had progressively deteriorated, the quality of
services had worsened and there was no coordination among the ministries as
regards the administration of resources. This all reflected a lack of liaison
within the general disorganisation of urban and productive development.
Once again, the issues to resolve were production methods and the system’s
efficiency. The need to abandon quantitative methods, which had survived
reform efforts in the past, and to accelerate the development and intensifica-
tion of production, again led to an emphasis on factory autonomy, the elec-
tion of company management, technological innovation, the introduction of
elements of competition and incentives for manufacturers.
At the 27th Congress of February 1986, the Party had openly admitted the
state of obsolescence that both agriculture and industry were in as a result of a
continued extensive approach to production. Just a few months later, the well-
known sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya seized the opportunity to return to the
controversial issue of setting up public institutions to mediate and govern conflict.
Zaslavskaya relaunched the “formula” of the pluralism of interests, empha-
sising the complex nature of relationships between nations and ethnic mino-
rities, urban and rural population, workers and intellectuals, and later went on
to stress how it was up to politics to harmonise these interests by offering them
an adequate institutional space, public and transparent, for mediation.30
In short, Gorbachev’s reform started from the point reached by the changes
20 years earlier, despite the lack of continuation due to the abrupt end
enforced during the two-year period of 1968–1969. A group of experts in
political affairs, sociologists and economists, all members of the Academy of
Sciences and its Siberian branch in Novosibirsk, including the aforemen-
tioned Zaslavskaya, Abel Aganbegyan, Fedor Burlatsky and Leonid Abalkin,
teamed up with the Soviet leader and formulated the main focal points of the
reform which was based, yet again, on enterprise autonomy. This would be
the first step and would not only encourage greater entrepreneurial and pro-
ductive dynamism, but would also create the foundations of a system capable
of attracting foreign investment and capital in the future.31
These were, however, still cautious initial moves: changes influenced by a
view of industrial production that focused in particular on the mechanical
sector, and by an idea of intensification of production and acceleration
(uskorenie, as it was called) that was not essentially unlike past approaches.
Nonetheless, the methodology adopted made it clear that, in a way, the
“ground was being tested” to get back into the mood for reform after 20
years of stagnation, aware that there would be strong opposition to change
from the administrative and party apparatus, and that the economic state of
the country was not fully understood.32
It was within this framework that on 26 April 1986 the unexpected disaster
at Chernobyl nuclear power station took place. It was a disaster that had
radical repercussions both in domestic and foreign politics.
166 Between otherness and globalisation
One result of that event was that both the fragility of the country’s energy
infrastructure and the role exercised by the security service in drastically
restricting the scope of the Soviet information system even in situations of
serious danger to public health became public knowledge. The situation was
worsened by the international scale of the environmental damage that fol-
lowed, as well as Western criticism of communist authoritarian practice and
its negation of human rights. In fact, the toxic effects of the cloud released at
Chernobyl affected a geopolitical space much larger than the USSR, reaching
Scandinavia and Northern Europe, to the point where the long silence
observed by the Soviet authorities in the ten days following the accident
seriously affected organisations dealing with the emergency in these countries.
It suddenly became clear to Moscow how closely connected information,
government action and international interdependence were, after the Brezhnev
years, apparently immobile but still penetrated by the outside world.33

6.4 Gorbachev’s modernity: from globalisation to the “socialist

rule-of-law state”
After Chernobyl it became crystal clear how the isolation of the Socialist
Camp countries and the USSR, so dear to Stalin and his successors, no
longer made any sense, but above all could no longer be pursued (or justified)
as a factor essential to the country’s security.
Gorbachev thus seized the opportunity to launch his famous watchword of
“openness” (in Russian glasnost)34 and move more quickly towards a radical
change in foreign policy that would see the end of the East–West conflict and
the Cold War.
What persuaded him to take such a step was the difficult economic situa-
tion in which the country found itself. In other words, by dramatically dis-
playing the effects of a process of globalisation that had already been
underway for some time and had begun to pose limits to socialism, the
Chernobyl disaster gave him the opportunity to insist on modernisation
founded upon growing international interdependence and the reciprocal
influence of peoples and countries in a number of areas such as security, the
environment and technology. Based on this, by pursuing détente with the
West, he aimed to obtain the credit essential to the success of the economic
reforms, while simultaneously reducing internal resistance.
Once again, this explains the close relationship between economics and
politics. In this case the political aspect took on an international dimension,
forcing Gorbachev, who was still tied to the communist ideological frame of
reference, to seek ideological legitimisation by explicitly referring to ideas that
were fashionable in the 1960s and from a theoretical aspect clearly inspired by
the NEP.
In fact, at the 27th Party Congress he included among the main moder-
nising directions the need to “decisively extend the margins of autonomy of
consortia and enterprises; to broaden their responsibilities in order to achieve
 Between otherness and globalisation 167
better final results”. He continued: “To this end, consortia and enterprises
must start using real economic calculation, and become self-sufficient and
self-financing, and link collectives’ profits directly to labour efficiency.” He
then proposed changing the pricing system, creating an organised system of
large, medium-sized and small enterprises, and overcoming the “prejudice
toward monetary and trade relations … ”35
References to the NEP were thus clear and soon found new legitimisation
with the full reinstatement of Bukharin, which took place at the beginning of
1988. These references were no longer tied to the internal dynamics of the
USSR but were linked to a reform strategy which for the first time was
explicitly connected to a series of major changes in foreign policy.
Heralded by Shevardnadze’s appointment to the post of Soviet foreign
minister, replacing Gromyko (who became president of the Supreme Soviet
Presidium of the USSR), a few months after the election of the new secretary-
general, the changes in foreign policy came into effect in October 1986, with
the first withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and numerous disarmament
proposals that led to the Reykjavik summit with US President Reagan, just a
step away from success after years of US–Soviet tension. Relations with
China improved rapidly, following the reduction in the number of Soviet
troops on the Sino–Soviet border, and further improved when Gorbachev
announced unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. Meanwhile, the
first agreement was reached with Washington regarding the elimination of
mid-range missiles, and there was a cooling of tensions in various parts of the
world with a movement towards peace in Southern Africa, Indochina, Central
America and the Persian Gulf.
Overall, a radical change in atmosphere in East-West relations was in pro-
gress. Gorbachev counted on this to reduce the costs of the arms race, attract
foreign investment and obtain substantial access to international credit, which
he desperately needed to ensure the success of his reforms.36
At this point, the echo could be heard of similar orientations from the
1920s under Lenin, during the days of the NEP and Rapallo. In fact,
Gorbachev tried this route between 1986 and 1987 when a series of measures
enabled artisans to run their own businesses (although this was restricted
because of excessive taxation, which was lowered two years later) introduced
the concept of tenancy in agriculture and considerably extended enterprise
autonomy, including granting enterprises the freedom to negotiate without
ministerial “mediation” and granting some of them the right to enter into
contracts with foreign companies. Finally, in 1988, a new law on cooperatives
legalised private businesses, employee contractual relations and profit control
by the owners.37
Actually, as had occurred with the NEP, all these efforts did not lead to the
significant results expected by the Soviet leadership. First of all, because the
reforms did not live up to the expectations and the needs of the Western
capitalist market, the West preferred to stand and watch, waiting to see to
what extent the changes being introduced were irreversible before granting
168 Between otherness and globalisation
credit or investing in the USSR; and second, because resistance from the
country’s state and Party administration was enormous when it came to pas-
sing from the formulation of ideas to the application of reforms. This resis-
tance actually succeeded in postponing some crucial changes, as in the case of
price reform.
However, seen from an East European perspective, the leitmotiv of the
proposed structural changes appeared to move in the direction of inter-
dependence, acknowledging the limits it imposed and accepting a prospect of
a mingling of European social systems with the continuation of Camp
contrapositions.
The conservative reaction that then began to show itself openly was una-
voidable, with the by now “classical” call for ideological loyalty to Stalinism
and his monolithic view of society (without returning to its bloodiest version).
In other words, while the innovators were aiming to strengthen enterprise
autonomy, decentralisation and the pluralism of interests, modernising these
ideas in relation to interdependence, the conservatives, by calling for ideolo-
gical purity, tended to engage in patriotic-national discussions of Slavophile
origin. These were graphically illustrated in a letter by Nina Andreyeva with
critiques of “militant cosmopolitanism” combined with those of “neo-liberals
who look to the West”, Trotsky’s Judaism and the role of the Jews as a
“counterrevolutionary nation”, along with exalting the “heroic generation of
victors of Fascism”, the great military commanders and even Stalin, with
phrases attributed to Churchill.38
Thus once again Soviet public opinion – in a climate of greater circulation
of the ideas allowed by glasnost – was exposed to ideas and topics that pro-
posed the need to protect the homeland’s characteristics and the cultural
patrimony forged in the past (with a few anti-Semitic gestures), mainly to
justify the rejection to reform. These groups perceived reform as an expres-
sion of “opening to the West”, a cultural surrender to a project of moder-
nisation considered extraneous to a Soviet culture that was “different” from
the capitalist world. This school of thought then led to more extremist ver-
sions such as the cultural association “Pamyat”, which linked opposition to
change with the reassertion of Russian nationalism, in ways that did not differ
much from those in the late 1800s.39
Meanwhile, in 1987 and 1988, efforts to restructure the Soviet economy
(which took on the name perestroika), promoted by Gorbachev, significantly
picked up on the themes of “socialist social self-management” or “socialist
self-government of the people”, which Mlynář had dwelled upon when he
commented on the initial steps of Gorbachevism.
Actually, the reference to self-management can be clearly found in his
speech to the 27th Congress and in the one on perestroika presented at the
plenary assembly of the Central Committee of the Party on 25 June 1987.
This was emphasised again in his speech at the 19th All-Union Conference of
the CPSU on 28 June 1988, refocusing attention on enterprises and their
autonomy, the need to elect enterprise management (to free them up from the
 Between otherness and globalisation 169
practice of Party appointments established in 1920), modernising equipment
and machinery, and on recognising enterprise risk by eliminating state aid, in
a framework of direct democracy starting from factories.40
All these ideas had been widely debated in Yugoslavia for some time. When
Gorbachev went there on a five-day official visit in March 1988 he acknowl-
edged not only that no one had the right to impose their own social model on
others, but also how the Yugoslav experience of self-management could lead
to a stimulating exchange of information. Actually, as had occurred in the
past with Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, it was not the exportability
of the Yugoslav model that interested the Soviet leader, but rather the
experience accumulated in managing enterprises (where managers had been
selected on the basis of open competition for some time already) and
constructing a complex and organised system of social representation.
It was ironic, though, that Moscow was so interested just when Yugoslav
self-management was headed for a deep crisis. Self-management was an inte-
gral part of the general crisis of the European socialist system on the level of
information and managerial freedom. It was no accident that this “alter-
native” experience for the USSR, though still considered part of the cultural
context of Lenin’s legacy, was already troubled by a considerable increase in
strikes, and production and administrative inefficiency. To make matters
worse, regulations and provisions were multiplying, and instead of ensuring
the exercise of rights (as the legislators had hoped), this increased bureaucracy
on the local and national levels, for example restricting enterprise autonomy
every time contracts needed to be drawn up between enterprises from different
republics and regions. At this point there inevitably arose the ideological
concern with preventing potential “neo-colonial dependencies” from being
established between backward areas and more developed ones.41
Nonetheless, this unprecedented Soviet focus on self-management revealed
the context in which Gorbachev’s project of reforms was to be set. As men-
tioned at the beginning of this section, his aim was to modernise socialism,
not subvert it (even though his “anti-Western” adversaries accused him of
this). As a consequence, Gorbachev’s predominant objective – once again –
translated into an effort to define a development model in which elements of
socialist specificity maintained a distinctive feature compared to the Western
example, albeit explicitly acknowledging for the first time the importance of
interdependence, and actually leveraging this to make the changes happen.
From this point of view self-management in and of itself appeared con-
sistent with a position that instead drew inspiration and legitimacy from a
spirit that in many ways pre-dated even the NEP and can be associated with
aspirations to direct democracy (not just economic, but also political), which
was part and parcel of the Russian Soviet experience of 1917–18. Similarly,
the international perspective on these problems forced the Soviet leader to
propose a “new way of thinking”, starting with the interdependence of the
three worlds he identified as capitalist, socialist and non-aligned. With this he
did not intend to nullify the specific nature of the communist experience, but
170 Between otherness and globalisation
rather to point out its ability to dialogue and interact which would enable him
to gain the trust, technology and capital necessary to give new impetus to
East European development.42
Thus we can see from all of the reforms designed by Gorbachev his inten-
tion to acknowledge that globalisation was changing the international frame
of reference, and this entailed institutional and cultural adjustment. However,
he was just as convinced that this was possible without losing socialist otherness.
With this project, hopes of introducing competition (albeit controlled)
between labour collectives and hopes of worker participation in the con-
struction of development policies were contained under the heading of self-
management. This was to lead to a process of overall democratisation of
society, without, however, reducing or even doing away with the role of the
Communist Party.
Of course, Gorbachevism’s innovation lay in its strategy to incentivise
active participation in economic and social institutions and also reform poli-
tical institutions. In this way the spirit of change promoted by the Soviet
leader was likened by various Czechoslovak authors to that of the protagonists
of the “Prague Spring”.43
After all, like them, Gorbachev intended to reform communism, basing
political and economic reform on the Russian council ideals of 1917–18 and
thus supporting the idea of the socialist state as a “‘half state’ which gradu-
ally evolves into social self-government”, undoubtedly Leninist in origin, but
with a theoretical system that in many ways was to be found in the Titoist
experience of self-management and in the Yugoslav theory of withering away
of the state.44
As proof of this, it is enough to reflect on the main guidelines of political
reform put forward between 1986 and 1988. Among the measures proposed
and later adopted, after a host of difficulties and conflicts, were that political
prisoners were freed; repression was considerably reduced; the media was
given autonomy, albeit relative; the freedom of individual opinion (i.e. not
organised or of a group) and human rights was acknowledged, with clear
reference first of all to social protection and hence to the political freedom of
the citizen and freedom of conscience and religion; and finally, there was a
move towards setting up numerous cultural, social, sports, youth and artistic
associations.45
On the whole, as we can see, there were many “pieces” to the puzzle which
were part of an orientation with the goal not so much of creating a multiparty
society, but rather of releasing energies that would stimulate dialogue within
the Party and within public institutions, in a framework of reference that
could guarantee a “socialist rule-of-law state”.
From the point of view of cultural policy, reference to the category a
“socialist rule-of-law state” had enormous implications. This was no longer
simply about removing the obstacles of political control over culture and
freedom as had already happened at times in the past, but allowing the
“underground society” to emerge, to break the informal networks of personal
 Between otherness and globalisation 171
relations (with which one accessed rights transformed into privileges, which
was the cause of widespread clientelism and corruption of the system), as well
as providing guarantees for citizens’ rights.46
In perspective, the end of the separation between formal society and the
“underground society” opened up a vigorous (and rapid) manifestation of
dissent, both liberal and conservative, populist and nationalist, just as it did
religious practices, and the review (once again) of trials and convictions from
the previous decades.
On an economic level calls for the rule of law (compared to the widespread
practice until then of the supremacy of ideology) were then linked to the
prospect of a reform of Soviet laws, the court system and the police, and the
introduction of legal departments in public administration and for businesses,
in order to ensure adherence to contracts and arbitration following the intro-
duction of “financial calculation and self-management” as part of the economic
reforms.47
In short, the detailed organisation of social and political interests that was
being set out could be traced back to a basic system of organising and exer-
cising power based on three pillars, i.e. the Party, the state and enterprises,
with the latter two no longer in a subordinate hierarchical relation to the
state, but in which relations were established in the Constitution and the law.
In this sense reference by famous authors like Robert Davis to the “spirit of
1917” and by Mlynář to the “role of the soviets” is particularly meaningful.48
Actually, if we think back to the international debate (mentioned at the
beginning of the section) that took place at the time of the reform phase
between 1985 and 1988, we can see how attention was focused on two main
aspects: the accomplishments of the “socialist rule-of-law state” within the
Soviet context, and the binary relationship between democratisation of the
Party and new relations between the Party and the Soviets. In fact, these two
aspects were closely related, because the principal innovation lay in thinking
of existing institutions as being structurally distinct from the Party.
The appeal for autonomy of the soviets was not only a declaration of the
separation of powers, acknowledging the primary importance of the councils’
legislative function compared to that of the executive. It also recalled the
initial days of the revolution, when the soviets, for a very short time and albeit
combining legislative and executive powers, had stood for a form of partici-
pation and direct democracy, within which there was space for a plural and
distinct representation.49
Truly, the diminished role and responsibilities of the Congress and Execu-
tive Council of the Soviets dated back to the weeks following the forced dis-
solution of the Constituent Assembly on 19 January 1918. Nevertheless, the
Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Republic of 10 July provided
for more frequently held elections, with deputies rotating every three months
in rural areas and annually in cities (art. 57), as well as extensive autonomy of
local administrations (even though they were already subject to control by
higher bodies). As we know, however, the civil war, War Communism, the
172 Between otherness and globalisation
centralisation of powers, bureaucratisation, and the Bolshevik conviction,
inherited from Plekhanov, that democracy had to be subordinate to the
interests of the revolution, meant that this was followed by a rapid and radi-
cal withdrawal of the powers from the soviets in favour of the Bolshevik
Party, while in the factories the protection of the decision-making bodies was
entrusted to the trade unions, which later became the “transmission belt” of
the Communist Party.50
Now Gorbachev’s modernisation, inspired by that brief phase of soviet
autonomy and ideologically justified in continuous references to Lenin, as
otherwise it would not have been possible given communist cultural (and
philosophical) logic, aimed to re-establish a system based on law by separat-
ing state-Party functions, and promoting, in the initial phase, elections with
multiple candidates, secret ballots for choosing Party leaders and enterprise
autonomy in choosing their decision-making bodies.
Later, a more extensive reform of political institutions was promoted with
the creation of the People’s Congress, responsible for electing, by secret ballot, the
Supreme Soviet as the permanent organ of power. Gorbachev proposed that the
Congress be elected in part by territorial districts and in part by the Party,
trade unions, and other professional and social associations. Furthermore, the
Congress would elect a Union president with extensive powers.51
In its overall framework, in which universal suffrage was limited by reliance
on representation by proxy among the higher institutions, Gorbachev’s pro-
posal did not differ markedly from what Yugoslavia had experimented with in
the mid-1970s. The nomination of representatives by category and associa-
tion, alongside the Party, closely imitated the composition of the Political-
Social Councils, and in general the Yugoslav chamber system. On the whole
this approach basically aimed at ensuring institutional representation and
mediation based on a diversity of social interests (thus following the theore-
tical guidelines of Kardelj, Mlynář and Zaslavskaya), and certainly not, or
perhaps not yet, based on competition between political parties.
Thus the new wave of modernisation was directed at supporting a system
of social organisation, the harmonisation of which required rules and regula-
tions based on the ideals of a constitutional state. At the same time the process
of gradual democratisation bore no relation to the Western liberal-democratic
model in that it was based on pressures and ideas from the reformist efforts of
the 1960s and the Yugoslav system, as well as the concept of the “pluralism of
interests”.

6.5 The end of European communist “otherness”

In hindsight, the reform process conceived by Gorbachev was motivated by
the Soviet leader’s strong conviction that he could promote a complex pack-
age of measures, aimed at modernising “real existing socialism”, by linking
these measures to a process of transformation of international relationships,
determined by increasing interdependency. Consequently, US-USSR relations
 Between otherness and globalisation 173
would no longer be the priority, as for Moscow, Europe had taken on a new
vital role.
In fact, for the first time in decades, at least since 1927,52 Moscow aban-
doned its vision of Europe as the source of danger for its security, against
which it had to defend itself by establishing direct control where possible, and
by stimulating anti-American sentiment in order to divide the adversary.
While a decisive role was not immediately attributed to the pan-European
dimension, some signs of it had emerged in the period 1985–86.
In reality, at least during the early years of the new Kremlin leadership,
relations with the United States were still dominated by the tradition of con-
solidated power politics, with Moscow and Washington acknowledging each
other as primary interlocutors in their leadership roles of two juxtaposed
Camps, both de facto holders of universal nuclear control. This is why Gor-
bachev hoped that by providing the United States with solid reassurances in
terms of security (by reducing arms expenditures and withdrawing its troops
from Afghanistan and the “Third World”) and encouraging economic, tech-
nological and environmental interdependence, this would encourage the flow
of Western financing he absolutely needed to be able calmly to implement the
promised reforms.
In the meantime, Gorbachev was confronted with some radical changes in
his sphere of influence in Europe, as well as internationally. From the military
point of view, the Soviet Camp had lost a great deal of strategic importance
after the United States deployed its cruise missiles with nuclear warheads in
Western Europe in 1983: from that time on, in fact, Washington (which had
never publicly renounced the first strike option for using nuclear weapons)
was capable of bombing the Soviet capital in the space of five minutes. This
reduced Central-Eastern Europe’s value as a “buffer zone” for military
operations in which recourse to conventional forces would have prevailed. In
fact, Stalinist military strategy, as traditional as it was increasingly obsolete
and oriented towards creating a vast protective space west of Moscow in case
of an invasion coming from Germany, was essentially defunct. With this
situation in mind but also consistent with his reformist plans, the Soviet
leader announced the withdrawal from the region of 50,000 Red Army troops
and 5,000 tanks, in an historic pronouncement to the United Nations (UN) in
December of 1988.53
In that speech, Gorbachev related the Soviet withdrawal to the recognition
that each country should have “freedom of choice”, meant as a “universal
principle to which there should be no exceptions”: this declaration was inter-
preted as the abandonment of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” and, therefore, as
reassurance according to which the USSR would no longer intervene in the
internal affairs of its “satellite countries”.54
In reality, the announcement was not new, as the principles of indepen-
dence of communist parties, of their responsibility to each country’s popula-
tion and their sovereignty in addressing development problems had been
expressed confidentially, but without hesitation, by Gorbachev to the Camp
174 Between otherness and globalisation
leaders reunited on the occasion of Chernenko’s funeral, even though it is still
unclear whether and to what extent this advice was taken seriously. On the
other hand, Gorbachev returned publicly to the issue during his visit to
Prague in 1987 and this had already induced some countries of the Camp
(with the obstinate resistance of Romania and the GDR) to begin reform
processes, in some cases timid, in others more decisive.
Later on, the concept of “freedom of choice” was included in the texts of
the 19th Party Conference, held in June 1988, even though at that time it was
passed over silently, as a verbal expression that was more formal than
substantial.
Gorbachev’s declaration to the UN, however, had a decidedly different
impact, especially as it sounded like it was confirming an orientation that had
been restated several times in the recent past and confirmed just two months
later, as the Soviet leader returned to the topic in Kyïv, and confirmed the
Kremlin’s intention to hold to the criteria of “equality and non-intervention”
in relations with the other socialist countries, and yet again in Strasbourg,
when on 6 July 1989 he gave another famous speech on the “Common
European Home”.55
In hindsight those moments, now constantly referred to in the international
literature, represented a crucial turning point which triggered a chain of events
that rapidly led to the end of European communism and the Soviet Camp.56
Nevertheless, the principal reason for Gorbachev taking steps of such
weight should be identified, once again, within the complex conceptual
system of reform that he intended to bring about. Neither Soviet subsidies to
the Camp’s economies, nor the qualitatively unequal flow of trade that had
been assured by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) fit
into this plan. The future of Comecon was the focus of the Soviet leader’s
concerns just a few months after he was elected, and again in Budapest in
1986 when, returning to Khrushchev’s intuition in another form, he insisted
on forming an economically integrated community, and then establishing a
special relationship with the European community.
Actually this project had to be given up because the low price of oil (which
rapidly declined again in 1987) did not allow the USSR to gather sufficient
funds to sustain its own reform nor those of other countries in the Camp, to
which oil was sold at “political prices” or traded for qualitatively modest,
obsolete or low-value products.
Nevertheless, and in spite of this, the fact remains that in 1987 Gorbachev
emphasised measures aimed at highlighting the USSR’s role in European
culture, politics and economics, overcoming suspicions inherited since the
1920s. In his book Perestroika, which came out in the West that year, he
dedicated an entire chapter to relations between Europe and the Soviet Union
to underline the importance of pan-European policies. Thus he anticipated,
with his choice of topics and key words, not only a different relationship
between the two Germanys, but also the contents of his speech in Strasbourg
on a “Common European Home”.57
 Between otherness and globalisation 175
It is within this context, therefore, which also included the establishment of
a European Institute in Moscow, that it is evident that the Soviets’ strategic
interest in keeping the Camp alive, or at least sustaining it under the same
conditions inherited from previous decades, was fading.
It is notable, after all, how the Soviet announcement of a gradual revision
of prices of raw materials (oil and gas) sold to Bulgaria as early as 1985 had
dealt a severe blow to that country’s economy. In general, however, the
change in Soviet behaviour – in concomitance with a general situation of high
international indebtedness, trade deficits and food shortages, due to the
above-mentioned crises of “growth without reforms” in the 1970s – con-
fronted all the socialist systems in the Camp with the need to proceed with
radical changes. The Kremlin’s instruction or suggestion was to react by
viewing the West differently, and actually encouraging Camp countries to
engage in closer ties with Europe beyond the Iron Curtain.
In spite of this, the group of leaders from the so-called “fraternal countries”
was essentially recalcitrant, if not openly hostile to promoting reforms, with
the exception of Poland (where the communists were losing control of society)
and Hungary (where the reformist wing of the Socialist Workers’ Party was
pushing for even more radical reforms than those begun in the USSR).
Certainly Gorbachev’s reformist strategies were focused on finding new
paths to economic modernisation in the USSR and creating a form of poli-
tical pluralism within the margins of the Russian-socialist experience and
Lenin’s theory. At the same time, though, the appeal – historically more per-
tinent for the communist leaders of the Camp – to the idealism of a “people’s
democracy”, both in its original 1944–47 version and in later forms put for-
ward by Imre Nagy or Alexander Dubček, was perceived by public opinion as
inadequate for addressing a profoundly changed reality. This reality was now
influenced by globalisation, to which the countries of the East Camp felt even
more exposed than the USSR, given the more intense international economic,
technological and financial ties established over the past decades, in spite of
limits imposed by Moscow.
In these conditions, redesigning the economic, social, political and envir-
onmental approach to development meant making courageous and risky
choices in order to respond with untried instruments to the challenges of the
new times. On the contrary, the tenacious (even obtuse) resistance of con-
servative apparatuses in the USSR as well as in other countries of the Camp
had the effect of radicalising the rapidly emerging “underground society’s”
expectations and behaviours. Thus growing social polarisation, combined
with overcoming the “Brezhnev Doctrine” – an expression of declining Soviet
interest in preserving the status quo – made the rapid collapse of the Soviet
Camp inevitable, and with it the waning of the goal of identifying a develop-
ment model internationally valid and different from the one pursued in the
West.
On the other hand, the USSR’s economic policies of those years had turned
out to be weak and unable to increase consumption and the availability of
176 Between otherness and globalisation
goods, keep inflation under control, or cause a qualitative leap in production
efficiency and the allocation of resources. Thus the changes were not producing a
clearly discernible improvement in the standard of living.
In the meantime, the political influence of the doctrinaires, the Party
bureaucracy and the administrative bodies intensified. First, there was the
strong reaction to Yeltsin’s attack (at that time he was the head of the
Moscow Party organisation) on Party unanimity during the plenary assembly
of the Central Committee on 21 October 1987. This was followed by Yeltsin’s
resignation from his office and the publication of Nina Andreyeva’s famous
letter criticising perestroika in March 1988, which became the manifesto of
the conservative opposition led by the second secretary of the Party, Egor
Ligachev.
These events led to the dramatic break between Gorbachev and Yeltsin and
marked the beginning of the divisions that would have serious consequences
on the reform front, creating heated and irremediable competition between
the two Soviet leaders.
This personal tension transformed into political polarisation after Yeltsin’s
election as president of Russia and his backing of the economic reforms pro-
posed by the young Grigory Yavlinsky (Abalkin’s collaborator). With his
“400-day plan”, Yavlinsky proposed the start of radical privatisation of the
Soviet system. Subsequent mediation between the Russian and Soviet gov-
ernments led to the dilution of the plan to 500 days, but also to so many
divergent interpretations of its contents by the two sides that negotiations
broke off and a new fracture opened up between Russia and the USSR.
Strategies of conflict as opposed to cooperation prevailed between the central
and Russian governments.58
The political and particularly personal conflict between Yeltsin and
Gorbachev in that moment of dramatic crisis took on devastating connota-
tions for the future of the USSR, with the first embodying Russia and the
second, the continuity, albeit reformed (or to be further reformed), of the
Soviet Union. So the process of renewal and the debate on development
remained totally limited by the political and personal conflict between “Rus-
sian Moscow and Soviet Moscow”, and rapidly lost relevance as the breeding
ground that could have furthered its contents quickly disappeared.
The national question, already percolating for some time in the border
regions of the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia, was heightened by the
USSR–Russia conflict and thus spread to the heart of the country. This issue
was symbolically embodied in all its potential for disintegration in the deci-
sion of the newly elected president (Boris Yeltsin) of the Congress of People’s
Deputies of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to
declare Russia’s sovereignty on 12 June 1990.
For the first time this event showed that the most important state component
of the Soviet federation was no longer interested in maintaining close connec-
tions with the other parts of the country. This approach was similar to what was
already happening in Yugoslavia, where the Serbian leadership – due to
 Between otherness and globalisation 177
changes imposed by Milošević on the Serbian state and party apparatuses –
had been showing a tendency to pursue a geopolitical and institutional plan
that was different from Tito’s federation. A similar tendency was also emer-
ging in the Czech regions following the publication on 3 May 1990 of an
article by Ludvík Vaculík that broke the silence (citing a sort of political
taboo) on Czech national interests and its relationship with the federation.59
In fact, in the three socialist federations the battle for national sovereignty
was beginning to be felt in the metropolitan heart of the country, thus creat-
ing the premises for the secession of the border regions, legitimising them and
in some cases even encouraging them. Along this path, within the space of
one year, the decision was taken (absolutely consistent with this approach) by
the presidents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to put an end to the Soviet
Union, while in Moldova, the Caucasus and Central Asia, as in Yugoslavia,
the process of disintegration – after having basically blocked the imple-
mentation of economic and political reforms – reached its most devastating
levels, triggering a chain of wars of secession of varying duration.
Thus between 1989 and 1991 the change of power system put in place by
East European communism (where it was pursued) so as to ensure new pro-
spects for development was halted by the economic-institutional collapse of
the entire Camp in 1989 and the dissolution of the federal states. With
Gorbachev’s defeat, along with the political and ideological collapse of com-
munism, the policy aimed at delineating a process of modernisation able to
follow its own logic, distinct and competitive vis-à-vis the capitalist West,
evaporated.
On the other hand, Gorbachev’s project, based on integrating economic
reform with the formation of a new system of international relations, had
encompassed the signs of changing times: indeed, it reflected an innovative
perception for the time, as it was based on the belief that the global dimen-
sion of problems (which today we call globalisation) transgressed the old
East–West divisions and identified in states’ territorial limits (at one time
called autarkic, today called nationalistic) the main obstacle to development.
Due to the experience of past decades, Gorbachev had also perceived how
global interdependence implied the democratisation of internal political sys-
tems – in that it was the essential key to consolidating trade relationships with
the community of states. However, he demonstrated that he was unprepared
in terms of governance, as on a cultural level the arduous task he had set out
to do implied activating new métissages, thus eliminating socialist “otherness”
in favour of integration, the mixing and merging of values, projects, achieve-
ments and interests, with inevitable repercussions for the entire European
space.
The West was also unprepared for (and ideologically resistant to) such
changes. It was much simpler (and more convenient) to interpret the process
of democratisation in Eastern Europe as a “demonstration” that democrati-
sation would require the absorption of Western values and principles, as
popular participation in decision making (which communism also required in
178 Between otherness and globalisation
principle) could not occur without fully accepting the ideas of freedom. As a
consequence, the process had to entail radical (as yet unclear) Westernisation,
accepting integration/homogenisation based on party pluralism, multiple
forms of ownership, economic liberalism, and new mechanisms for managing
the social complexity of society based on the state’s complete withdrawal
from the economy and society. This process was to occur in spite of the con-
crete differences in the experiences and orientations of the continental
European social welfare state model and the Anglo-American liberal model.60
However, there were alternatives to this path, and they continued to exist.
In Russia an old writer – in the past an exponent of Soviet dissent, and rather
lauded in the West – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in 1990 published a book which
was actually a political platform openly inspired to restore pre-revolutionary
Slavism by forming a “Russian Union” made of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and
the northern regions of Kazakhstan. The plan also outlined a development
model based on enhancing the value of the countryside, explicitly harking
back to the policies of Stolypin at the beginning of the century in favour of
small and medium-sized landowners, and the institutional restoration of the
zemstvos.61
In truth, Solzhenitsyn’s ideas could not possibly have been translated into
reality. The rather bucolic, peasantist vision he was proposing had been swept
away by a century of industrial transformation and the encroachment of con-
sumer and service society. His taking refuge in exalting Russian cultural identity,
so dear to much of the literary world, but also to the apparatus or ideological
nationalists (with their various facets from red to brown) of those years, was
based on the nostalgic exaltation of a past that had been socially swept away
at the end of the 1800s, as we have seen at the beginning of this book.
Yet we should not forget that his ideas – especially those harking back to
Russian culture – found attentive ears in many spheres, including those
apparently far from Solzhenitsyn, as in Yeltsin’s case, who revealed that he was
attracted to that vision in many ways close to his decision to ratify the
Declaration on the Sovereignty of the Russian state.62 Not by chance, when just
over a year later on the 8 December 1991, he agreed in the Belavezha forest with
the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to end the USSR and found a sort of open
commonwealth, as in Article 13, for other ex-Soviet states to join, this decision
raised suspicions and tension in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
Nazarbaev, president of Kazakhstan, did not publicly hide his condemna-
tion of what in his eyes appeared to be a “commonwealth of Slavic States”,
with other-potential-members playing a marginal role in the new organisa-
tion. Yeltsin felt compelled repeatedly to reassure the other republics of Cen-
tral Asia and the Caucasus that the Belavezha Accords did not in any way
mean the formation of a “Slavic Union”, but rather a “Commonwealth of
Independent States”. To this end, he not only accepted a proposal to hold a
meeting in Alma Ata for interested countries on 21 December, but granted
co-founder status, in a protocol signed there, to the five Central Asian
republics as well as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova.63
 Between otherness and globalisation 179
Thus with the epilogue of Russian Bolshevism, some “ghosts” of the past
suddenly appeared, even though they soon revealed their true nature: ghosts
with no possibility of returning to life. There was no more political space for
the Slavophile attraction, if nothing more than the tired reiteration of a
polemic with the West which actually only reproduced the old conflict
between assimilating the Euro-Atlantic capitalist model and safeguarding
local characteristics. Defining these characteristics had become increasingly
problematic and incapable of leading to a socially and culturally shared
vision, in a context in which globalisation was becoming an increasingly
dominant factor.
The alternative, however, appeared to be very different in both means and
content, as represented by Deng Xiaoping’s Chinese communist leadership:
the tragedy of Tiananmen Square bore incontestable witness to the anti-
democratic option in the process of communist modernisation. The intense
debate on democracy and reform in China in the previous years, especially
among intellectuals and students, had confirmed the existence of a lively and
sensitive movement that had struggled with the issue of development models
pursued up to then.64
The Chinese communist leadership put a tragic end to that debate on the
night of 3–4 June 1989, just when the first free elections in still socialist Poland
were being held (voting took place on 4 June). in which Solidarność took 99
seats out of 100 in the Senate and 160 out of 161 eligible seats (35%) in the Sejm
(the lower house). This opened the way – on 19 August of the same year – to
forming the cabinet of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who became the first premier of
a government no longer (since 1945) led by a communist or a close ally
thereof. This coincidence offers a highly symbolic reflection of the strategic
opening that had come about in communism worldwide, and which ended
with the division (as had already happened three times in the past) of Europe
from Asia.
Whether economic reform and the modernisation of socialist society could
come about without democratisation has been amply demonstrated by China
and Vietnam in the years following. In fact, as of the 21st century, the Asian
giant, in the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 2002, has become one of
the largest and most attractive global markets, with GDP growth rates of
between 8% and 10% annually.
Thus there were composite and various alternatives to Gorbachev’s policies,
containing not only the prospect – peaceful or violent – of the fall of com-
munism (with radically Western and liberal temptations, as there were Slavo-
phile, neo-imperialist and conservative ones), but also a path of continuity,
analogous but not necessarily similar to the one undertaken by China.
While in the end, among the various solutions put forward, that of peaceful
collapse prevailed – as it did – the explanation should first of all be traced
back to the characteristics gradually assumed by communism in Europe. This
type of communism ended up with Russia/the USSR joining the fate of the
Soviet Camp, characterised by deep (and growing) interaction with the
180 Between otherness and globalisation
Western part of the Old World which had returned to the centre of Russian-
Soviet interests (in particular France and Germany for historical-cultural
reasons) as well as with the “American myth”. For some time the USSR not
only shared myths with the United States, but was also competing with it for
models and in many ways had imitated its manufacturing and town planning
methods and even its young lifestyle and its music (from jazz to rock ‘n’ roll
to singer-songwriters).
This interaction was the outcome of processes of intra-European (and
transatlantic) interdependence which began during de-Stalinisation and con-
tinued though Brezhnev’s era, but certainly accelerated during Gorbachev’s
leadership. They had developed due to an increasingly intense network of
contacts and ties, of a new (and unexpected) cultural métissage with an
informal and underground dimension which gradually gained strength that
equalled and then surpassed formal and exterior power, until it peacefully
nullified the Iron Curtain.
The sharing of this opening was also encouraged by the absolute pre-
valence of transversal (and trans-national) orientation of European socialist
elite and public opinion. According to this orientation, the Communist Party
had become a factor holding back development, and the communist system
as a whole had shown itself to be inadequate in addressing the new challenges
of modernisation and approaching globalisation.
In the end, European communism yielded almost everywhere without
resorting to arms, while Asian communism took a different path, perpetuating
itself in ways that were inconceivable at the time.65
Consequently, with the “surrender of communism” in Europe the condi-
tions were created for making the formation of a “common European home”
a real possibility on the continent, supporting Gorbachev’s proposal, then
taken up by Mitterrand. This idea demonstrated the capacity to generate
great hope, and rapidly transformed into a myth of symbolic effectiveness as
early as the summer of 1989.
As with all myths, this one also revealed a fact: the existence of profound
interdependence among Europe’s geopolitical components. This was not
necessarily a trend toward standardised models; indeed, the differentiation
between liberalism and the welfare state was growing. Certainly, however, all
the former socialist countries were indisputably attracted to the Euro-Atlantic
institutions. Even in the special case of post-Soviet Russia, where dynamics
prevailed that were in many ways different from those in its former allies,
once the chaotic period of the 1990s was over, the Kremlin found a way to
link itself to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), get into the G8
(even heading it up in 2006), identify partnership prospects with the European
Union in certain defined areas such as in “the four common spaces”, and
prepare itself to join the WTO.66
Thus at the beginning of the 21st century, and in view of their dynamic
evolution over nearly two centuries, the processes that had made access to
modernity so longed for in the space we generically define as “Eastern
 Between otherness and globalisation 181
Europe” appeared to be closely linked to general developments on the Eur-
opean continent, as well as greatly limited by it. The flow of economic, poli-
tical, military and, more broadly, cultural relations had continued to be
strong in spite of the divisions and conflicts that emerged not only between
two juxtaposed fronts, but also within the individual societies. The trans-
national dialectic that had formed between imitation, adjustment and rejec-
tion of development models ended up spreading an inter-European cultural
system which extended all the way to Russia, and which – with its syncretism,
mergers and métissage – subsequently influenced developments across the
entire continent.
In other words, the course of events that led to the construction of moder-
nity in Eastern Europe occurred as part of a dialogical process of continental
dimensions, following paths that were partly autonomous and partly trans-
versal, trans-national and interdependent, but which contributed to bringing
about features in these societies as original as they were varied, and likewise
demonstrating the ability to reflect their intrinsic diversity.

Notes
1 From this point of view, the call for national sovereignty took on great significance,
even though it was cloaked in ambiguity. In fact, each time sovereignty was
attributed to each independent state (with the risk of triggering tensions and breaks
with Moscow), to the Soviet Camp as a whole, in opposition to the Western Camp
(this was the sense of the “Brezhnev doctrine”), or to populations constituting
socialist federations (from the Baltic republics to Croatia). There are no studies of
the history of the idea of sovereignty in socialism. However, useful indications can
be found in Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1999; Sergei Kovalev, “Sovereignty and the International Obligations
of Socialist Countries”, Current Digest of the Soviet Press (CDSP) n. 39, 1968, 10–
12; or Leonid Brezhnev, “Speech to the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers’
Party”, CDSP n. 46, 1968, 3–5. On the Croatian mass national movement
(Maspok), see my Nazionalismo croato e autogestione, La Pietra, Milano, 1983.
2 Adriano Guerra, Il crollo dell’Impero sovietico, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1996, p. 149.
3 On Gierek’s policies, see Carlo Boffito, “Appunti per una discussione sui rapporti
fra sistema economico e sistema politico nella Polonia degli anni Settanta”, pre-
sentation given at the conference Origini e momenti della crisi polacca, Ist.
Gramsci, Roma, 26–27 March 1982, mimeographed paper.
4 On the fate of the reform processes in the 1960s, see for more detail Iván Berend,
Central and Eastern Europe 1944–1993. Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 222–53; and Bülent Gökay,
Eastern Europe since 1970, Longman, New York, 2001.
5 In addition to the studies cited in the preceding endnote, see also Marie Lavigne,
The Economics of Transition. From Socialist Economy to Market Economy, St.
Martin’s Press, New York, 1998, pp. 79–87; and compare with the essays by AA.
VV., “Tendenze economiche dei Paesi socialisti negli anni Settanta: Polonia,
Ungheria e Unione Sovietica”, Quaderni Feltrinelli n. 11, 1980; or “Stabilità e
riforme nei Paesi dell’Est europeo”, Quaderni Feltrinelli n. 27, 1984. See also essays
by Paolo Brera, Carlo Boffito and Gabriele Crespi Reghizzi on self-management,
the Yugoslav banking system and the system of foreign investment, in Stefano
Bianchini (ed.), L’autogestione jugoslava, Angeli, Milano, 1982, pp. 195–220, 248–58.
182 Between otherness and globalisation
6 On the economic crisis of the late 1970s, see D. Mario Nuti, Economic Crisis in
Eastern Europe: Prospects and Repercussions, European University Institute, Fiesole,
1984.
7 Compare Iván Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, op. cit., pp. 229–32; with
Boicho Shushmanov, “Recent Program Developments in USSR and East Eur-
opean Socialist Countries”, Peabody Journal of Education vol. 51, n. 1, October 1973,
12–19.
8 Reagan was, nonetheless, always pragmatic enough to assume behaviours that did
not compromise the interests of his country; thus in 1981 he recalled the embargo
on grain sales to the USSR (implemented the previous year by his predecessor
Carter due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), since this conflicted with the
interests of US farmers, of which Moscow was an excellent customer.
9 On this topic compare Robin Okey, The Demise of Communist East Europe,
Arnold, London, 2004, pp. 38–39; Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism. An Introduc-
tion, Duke University Press, Durham, 1997, pp. 223–31; and Barbara J. Falk,
The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East Central Europe, CEU Press, Budapest,
2003, pp. 143–46.
10 Iván Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, op. cit., pp. 227 and ff.
11 On the state of these economies see, for example, the contemporary (and interest-
ing because of this) studies by Paolo Brera, “L’economia polacca fino allo stato di
guerra e oltre”, and Paolo Santacroce, “Crisi economica: a proposito di alcuni
luoghi comuni”, L’Ottavogiorno n. 0, 1982, 132–49; by Lucia Lanzanova, “Il
commercio Est-Ovest: né con te né senza di te”, and Paolo Brera, “Aspetti della
crisi economica nel Comecon”, L’Ottavogiorno n. 1, 1982, 49–66; or Zdenek
Mlynar, Stabilisation rélative des systèmes de type soviétique dans les années 1970,
Étude n. 2 du Project de récherche “Les crises des systèmes de type soviétique”,
Wien, 1983; as well as the extensive study by Dario Tosi, “Le politiche di investi-
mento nei Paesi dell’Est europeo: dalla fase di adattamento alle nuove direttrici dei
piani 1986–1990 e in prospettiva”, Est-Ovest n. 4, 1986, 65–132.
12 The 24th Congress of the CPSU focused on these topics in one of its conclusive
documents: see “Directives of the 24th Congress of CPSU on the Five-Year Plan of
Development of the National Economy of the USSR in the Years 1971–1975”, 9
April 1972, Current Soviet Policies vol. VI, 1973, especially pp. 151–53. In addi-
tion, compare Robert Daniels, Is Russia Reformable? Westview Press, Boulder, CO,
1988, pp. 106–11; and Giuseppe Boffa, Dall’URSS alla Russia. Storia di una crisi
non finita, Laterza, Bari, 1995, pp. 94–99. See also Žores Medvedev, Soviet Science,
Norton, New York, 1978; and Viktor G. Afanasyev, The Scientific and Technological
Revolution: Its Impact on Management and Education, Progress, Moscow, 1975.
13 On this topic, cf. Iván Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, op. cit., pp. 227; and
Lubomir Sochor, Contribution à l’analyse des traits conservateurs de l’idéologie du
“socialisme réel”, Étude n. 2 du Project de récherche “Les crises des systèmes de
type soviétique”, Wien, 1983, especially pp. 44–45.
14 From 1969 to 1989 only one Soviet won a Nobel Prize for Economics compared
with 15 Americans; if we then compare the period 1953–65 to that of 1966–90, we
see that Nobel Prizes for Physics won by Soviet scientists went from six in the first
period to one in the second, in Chemistry from one to zero, and just one in Eco-
nomics was won in the second period, while in Literature two were won in the first
period and two in the second. Finally, two Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded in the
second period, to the physicist Andrei Sakharov in 1975 and Gorbachev in 1990.
15 See Gustavo Corni, Storia della Germania, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1995, p. 421.
16 See Luigi Vittorio Ferraris, “I diritti dell’uomo da Helsinki a Belgrado: profilo
diplomatico-politico”, in E. Fanara (ed.), I diritti dell’uomo da Helsinki a Belgrado:
risultati e prospettive, Giuffrè, Milano, 1981, pp. 91–103.
 Between otherness and globalisation 183
17 Cf. Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas, op. cit.; with Nicolai Petro, The Rebirth of
Russian Democracy, op. cit.; or also Robert Daniels, Is Russia, op. cit., pp. 111–16.
18 On these aspects, see more detail in Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the
West. Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War, op. cit., especially pp.
127–53.
19 A more detailed description of positions on the future of reform in the USSR and
the Camp in the mid-1980s is by Philip Hanson, On the Limitations of the Soviet
Economic Debate, Discussion Papers of the Centre for Russian and East European
Studies, University of Birmingham, July 1985.
20 See Zdeněk Mlynář, “Il crocevia della riforma politica”, in AA.VV., Il progetto
Gorbaciov, Rinascita, Roma, 1987, p. 13.
21 See Adriano Guerra, Il crollo dell’Impero, op. cit., pp. 36–38.
22 Compare Zdeněk Mlynář’s essay, Can Gorbačëv Change the Soviet Union? West-
view Press, Boulder, CO, 1990; with Pierre Kende’s speech, “Gorbaciov non può
cambiare le regole”, in AA.VV., Il progetto, op. cit., pp. 78–82; by Tomothy J.
Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union, Council on Foreign Relations,
New York, 1986; and Alain Besançon, “Breaking the Spell”, in George Urban
(ed.), Can the Soviet System Survive Reforms? Seven Colloquies about the State of
Soviet Socialism Seven Decades after the Bolshevik Revolution, Pinter, London,
1989; as well as Edgard Morin, De la nature de l’URSS. Complexe totalitaire et
nouvel empire, Fayard, Paris, 1983.
23 See Robert Daniels, Is Russia, op. cit. See also George Breslauer (ed.), Can Gor-
bačëv’s Reforms Succeed? University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990; Stephen
White, Gorbačëv in Power, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1990; Michael
E. Urban, More Power to the Soviets: The Democratic Revolution in the USSR,
Edward Elgar, Brookfield, 1990. On the other hand, Moshe Lewin wrote an essay
full of hope of the possible meeting of political will (which he felt was assured with
Gorbachev) and reform programme in the USSR in the volume, La Russia in una
nuova era, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 1988. By Giuseppe Boffa, see “Socialismi in
movimento”, in AA.VV., Il progetto Gorbaciov, op. cit., pp. 83–90. Subsequently
the same author summarised many of his theories in a solid and well-documented
volume entitled Dall’Urss alla Russia. Storia di una crisi non finita, Laterza, Bari,
1995.
24 On this topic compare Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism
in Russia 1917–1991, The Free Press, New York, 1994; Fred Coleman, The Decline
and Fall of the Soviet Empire: Forty Years that Shook the World from Stalin to
Yeltsyn, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1996; and Richard Pipes, Communism: A
History, The Modern Library, New York, 1993. Adriano Guerra collected his
considerations in an essay rich in references to the international debate, entitled Il
crollo dell’Impero sovietico, op. cit.
25 This is a tendency visible also in Putin’s Russia. See Stephen F. Cohen, “Was the
Soviet System Reformable?”, Slavic Review n. 3, vol. 63, Fall 2004, 467. Cohen’s
provocatory analysis stimulated a revival of the debate on the reformability of the
Soviet system: participants in this debate included Archie Brown, Mark Kramer,
Karen Dawisha, Stephen Hanson and Georgi Derluguian, in the pages of the
journal Slavic Review n. 3, vol. 63, Fall 2004, 459–554, which also has an extensive
bibliography that we recommend.
26 We refer the reader first of all to the works of George Kennan (signed “X”), “The
Sources of Soviet Conduct”, Foreign Affairs n. 4, 1947, 566–88; Hélène Carrère
d’Encausse, Decline of an Empire. The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt, News-
week Books, New York, 1980; Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until
1984? Harper and Row, New York, 1970; Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Great Failure:
The Birth and Death of Communism in the 20th Century, Scribner, New York, 1989.
An extensive description of the debate on the topic, including publications from the
184 Between otherness and globalisation
interwar years, can be found in Adriano Guerra, Il crollo dell’Impero, op. cit.,
especially pp. 15–38. Anna Alberico has also written a rich survey on the subject,
La storiografia italiana su Russia e Unione Sovietica nell’ultimo trentennio, Graphos,
Genova, 1995.
27 The doctrinaires represented a powerful component of the CPSU (even before
Lenin’s seizure of power, as Barrington Moore, Jr stressed in his seminal book of
1951): there was a recurring need to control them in the power management under
communism with evident implications for the implementation of structural adjust-
ments whenever the socialist societies required them symbolically and in substance.
See Barrington Moore, Jr, Soviet Politics – The Dilemmas of Power, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1951, pp. 414 and ff.
28 A rare recent study that explicitly related the collapse of communism, at least in
the USSR, to its inability to cope and interact with globalisation has been pub-
lished after the fall of communism, by David Lockwood, The Destruction of the
Soviet Union: A Study in Globalization, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000, see especially
pp. 75ff.
29 This was the conclusion that the American scholar of Romanian origin Stephen
Fischer-Galati arrived at in his presentation at the ISDEE in Trieste in 1987,
summarised in “Eastern Europe in the Gorbachev Era. A Tentative Assessment”,
Est-Ovest n. 4, 1987, 77–82.
30 Compare Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon. A Historical Interpretation,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988; and the article by Tatyana Zaslavskaya,
Social Factors of Speeding-up the Development of the Soviet Economy, mimeo-
graphed doc. of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Novosi-
birsk, 1986; and the article by the same author in Kommunist n. 13, September
1986. See also Fedor Burlatsky, “The Gorbachev Revolution”, Marxism Today,
February 1987, 14–19.
31 Compare essays by two protagonists of economic reform at the time, Leonid
Abalkin, Il nuovo corso economico in URSS, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1988; and
Abel Aganbegyan, The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika, Hutchinson, London,
1988; with the most comprehensive analysis by Anders Åslund, Gorbachev’s
Struggle for Economic Reform: The Soviet Reform Process 1985–1988, Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, 1989.
32 Compare for example Thane Gustafson and Dawn Mann, “Gorbachev’s First
Year: Building Power and Authority”, Problems of Communism n. 3, May–June
1986, 11–12; with “Le XXVII° Congrès du PCUS”, Problèmes Politiques et
Sociaux, La documentation française, n. 539, June 1986, 7.
33 The long Soviet silence after the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power station
had had a precedent that the world vividly remembered: just three years earlier, on
1 September 1983 over central Siberian skies a South Korean civilian Boeing 747
jet was shot down, mistaken for a spy airplane. On this occasion as well, lies and
silence characterised the Moscow authorities’ behaviour for six days. The repetition
of this behaviour after Chernobyl highlighted the persistence of political continuity
that could have compromised Gorbachev’s reformist image at its outset.
34 Glasnost was inaccurately translated in Italian as “transparency”; actually, it means
(mental) opening or “openness”.
35 Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 27th
Congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union. Speech, Novosti Press Agency,
Moscow, 1986 (quotation from Italian edn, pp. 59–68).
36 See Lapo Sestan (ed.), La politica estera della perestrojka, Editori Riuniti, Roma,
1988; but also Eduard Shevardnadze, Crisi del potere e diplomazia internazionale,
Lucarini, Roma, 1991.
37 On the relationship between the NEP and Gorbachev’s first reforms, see Robert W.
Davis, “La riforma economica sovietica: una prospettiva storica”, Transizione n.
 Between otherness and globalisation 185
10, 1988, 95–109. For an analysis of the reforms in the second half of the 1980s, see
Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution. Political Change from Gorbachev
to Putin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, especially pp. 40–43.
38 Nina Andreyeva, “I Cannot Waive My Principles”, in Isaac J. Tarasulo (ed.),
Gorbachev and Glasnost. Viewpoints from the Soviet Press, DE: Scholarly Resources
Inc., Wilmington, 1989, pp. 277–90.
39 On these subjects see Aldo Ferrari, La rinascita del nazionalismo russo, Ed. all’insegna
del Veltro, Parma, 1990; AA.VV., La Russia che dice di no, Ed. all’insegna del
Veltro, Parma, 1992; and Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia. Russian
Nationalism and the Soviet State 1953–1991, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 2000.
40 Compare Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU, op. cit.; and by the
same author, Toward a Better World, Richardon and Steirman, New York, 1987.
See also Zdeněk Mlynář, “Oltre i Soviet”, in AA.VV., Il progetto Gorbaciov, op.
cit., p. 50.
41 Compare Raif Dizdarević, From the Death of Tito to the Death of Yugoslavia,
Šahinpašić, Sarajevo, 2009, pp. 176–82; and Giuseppe Boffa, “Socialismi in movi-
mento”, in AA.VV., Il progetto Gorbaciov, op. cit., pp. 88–89; with the two essays
by Paolo Brera, “L’autogestione svogliata”, Rinascita n. 22, 7 June 1986, 36–38,
and “Chi decide nella rete dei poteri”, Rinascita n. 24, 21 June 1986, 28–30.
42 See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika. New Thinking for my Country and the
World, Harper and Row, New York, 1987.
43 See for example, Michal Reiman, “La perestrojka sovietica e la Primavera di Praga
del 1968”, Transizione n. 10, 1988, 59–78; Zdeněk Mlynář, “La politica della ‘pri-
mavera di Praga’, l’URSS e la riformabilità dei sistemi comunisti”, in Stefano
Bianchini (ed.), “La Primavera di Praga vent’anni dopo”, Transizione n. 11–12, op.
cit.; but also the excellent study by Zdenek Strmiska, Stagnation et Changement
dans les societés de type sovietique. Project d’un cadre théorique pour une analyse,
Étude n. 15–16 du Project de récherche “Les crises des systèmes de type soviétique”,
Wien, 1989.
44 Compare Documents and Materials: 19th All-Union Conference of CPSU; Reports
and Speeches by Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the CPSU Central
Committee. Resolutions, Embassy of USSR, Washington, DC, 1988 (quotation
from Italian edn, p. 44); AA.VV., Il sistema jugoslavo. Dall’impresa alla società
autogestita: esperienze e progetto, De Donato, Bari, 1980; as well as Milentije
Popović, Udruženi rad i neposredna demokratija, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1977; Edvard
Kardelj, Socijalističko samoupravljanje u našem ustavnom sistemu, Svjetlost, Sar-
ajevo, 1976; and on the withering away of the state, Josip Broz Tito, Samoupravni
socijalizam, Školska Knjiga, Zagreb, 1975, especially pp. 61–86.
45 Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee, op. cit.
(quotation from Italian edn, pp. 46–49); see also Stephen Cohen, “Was the Soviet
System Reformable?” Slavic Review” n. 3, 2004, 471–81; and Michael Urban (with
Vyacheslav Igrunov and Sergei Mitrokhin), The Rebirth of Politics in Russia,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 79ff.
46 John Willerton, Jr, Clientelism in the Soviet Union. An Initial Examination, Center
for Russian and East European Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, n.
154, 1979; and Gerald M. Easter, Reconstructing the State. Personal Networks and
Elite Identity in Soviet Russia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
47 Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee, op. cit.
(quotation from Italian edn, p. 70). See also Enrico Melchionda, “L’autogestione
di tipo sovietico. Il caso dei collettivi di lavoro”, Quaderni, Department of Social
Sciences, IUO (Eastern University Institute), Napoli, n. 1, 1988, 113–30.
48 Compare Robert W. Davis, “La riforma economica sovietica”, op. cit., p. 109; and
Zdeněk Mlynář, “Oltre i Soviet”, op. cit., pp. 51–52. An effective comparison can
186 Between otherness and globalisation
be made with the more extensive and systematic study of Soviets and their origin
by Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers
Councils 1905–1921, Pantheon Books, New York, 1974.
49 Compare on this subject Enrico Melchionda, “La chance del presidenzialismo”, in
Rita di Leo (ed.), Riformismo o comunismo. Il caso dell’URSS, Liguori, Napoli,
1993, pp. 265–307.
50 Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, op. cit. On Plekhanov and the primacy of the revo-
lution over democracy, elaborated at the Second Congress of the Russian Social
Democratic Party of 1903, see Israel Getzler, “Georgij V. Plehanov: la dannazione
dell’ortodossia”, in AA.VV., Storia del Marxismo, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 426. The text of the
constitution of the RSFSR is in Michel Mouskhély (ed.), L’URSS. Droit, économie,
sociologie, politique et culture, Sirey, Paris, 1962–64.
51 See Documents and Materials: 19th All-Union Conference of CPSU, op. cit. A sti-
mulating study of the development of politics with the new institutions created by
Gorbachev is that of Michael Urban (with Vyacheslav Igrunov and Sergei Mitrokhin),
The Rebirth of Politics in Russia, op. cit.
52 Here we refer to the complex dynamics that characterised the phase prior to
Trotsky’s defeat and the “turning point of ‘29”, discussed in Chapter 4.
53 Speech made in New York on 7 December 1988, in Mihail Gorbačëv, La Casa
comune europea, Mondadori, Milano, 1989, p. 122.
54 Ibid., p. 116.
55 Compare “Tesi per la XIX Conferenza del PCUS”, in Documenti dall’URSS:
Perestrojka. Amici e nemici, published by L’Unità, Roma, 1988, p. 109; the Kyïv
speech of 23 February 1989 and that of Strasbourg of the 6 July 1989 are in Mihail
Gorbačëv, La casa comune, op. cit., from which see in particular, respectively,
pp. 182 and 212–13; the Prague speech is in Current Digest of Soviet Press, 13 May
1987 (the original appeared in Pravda on 11 April).
56 See, among others, Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity, Oxford University
Press, 2000, p. 228; David S. Mason, Revolution in East Central Europe, Westview,
Boulder, 1992, pp. 50–53; Seweryn Bialer (ed.), Inside Gorbachev’s Russia, West-
view, Boulder, 1989, p. 241; and Robert Donaldson and Joseph Nogee, The Foreign
Policy of Russia. Changing Systems, Enduring Interests, op. cit., pp. 108–9.
57 See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika, op. cit., pp. 254–80. The speech is also available
in the Current Digest of the Soviet Press vol. LVI, n. 27, 1989, 6ff.
58 On the dramatic events that led to the Soviet collapse between 1989 and 1991, see
Giuseppe Boffa, Dall’URSS alla Russia, op. cit.; Andreï Gratchev, L’Histoire vrai
de la fin de l’URSS, Editions du Rocher, Monaco, 1992; Rita di Leo, Vecchi quadri
e nuovi politici, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1992; Mihail Gorbačëv, Dicembre 1991. La fine
dell’URSS vista dal suo presidente, Ponte alle Grazie, Firenze, 1992; Robert Daniels,
The End of the Communist Revolution, Routledge, London, 1993; John Dunlop, The
Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, Princeton University Press, Prince-
ton, 1993; Victor Zaslavsky, Storia del sistema sovietico, Carocci, Roma, 1995. On
the “500-day plan”, an extensive reconstruction can be found in McFaul, Russia’s
Unfinished Revolution, op. cit., pp. 97–103.
59 On this topic, regarding the USSR, see Michael McFaul, “The Sovereignty Script.
Red Book for Russian Revolutionaries”, in Stephen Krasner (ed.), Problematic
Sovereignty, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001, pp. 195–223; and the
extensive attached bibliography, as well as John Löwenhardt, The Incarnation of
Russia, Duke University Press, Durham, 1995, pp. 82–91; regarding Yugoslavia
and the role Serbia assumed see my Sarajevo, le radici dell’odio, Edizioni Associate,
Roma, 2003 (III ed.), pp. 54ff.; and my essay “Antijugoslavismo e irredentismo: la
rinascita dell’’interesse nazionale serbo’”, Europa Europe n. 1, 1995, 79–100.
Regarding the Czechoslovak case, compare Václav Žak, “The Velvet Divorce –
Institutional Foundations”, in Jiří Musil, The End of Czechoslovakia, CEU Press,
 Between otherness and globalisation 187
Budapest, 1995, pp. 252ff.; with Ladislav Holy, The Little Czech and the Great
Czech Nation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
60 On this topic see the illuminating book by Robert English, Russia and the Idea of
the West, op. cit.
61 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1991.
62 On Yeltsin’s position regarding Solzhenitsyn’s pamphlet, see John Löwenhardt, The
Incarnation, op. cit., p. 89.
63 Compare Robert Donaldson and Joseph Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia, op.
cit., pp. 177–78; and Ann Sheehy, “Commonwealth of Independent States. An
Uneasy Compromise”, RFE/RL Research Report vol. 1, n. 2, 10 January 1992, 2–3
(this contains the text approved by the three Slav presidents at Belavezha); with the
text of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s press conference on the 9 December 1991 in
Ronald Grigor Suny, The Structure of Soviet History, Oxford University Press,
New York, 2003, pp. 471–72.
64 On these topics compare in particular the two volumes by Su Shaozhi, Democracy
and Socialism in China, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1982; and Marxism and Reform
in China, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1993; with Yu Guangyuan, China’s Socialist
Modernization, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1984; the intensive publications
of Mao Zedong’s Centre for Marxist-Leninist-thought in Beijing between 1981 and
1985; also the interpretations of Italian scholars in AA.VV., URSS e Cina. Le
riforme economiche, Angeli, Milano, 1987; and Enrica Collotti Pischel, Dietro Tian
An Men, Angeli, Milano, 1990.
65 On the reasons leading to the diversification of approaches and solutions between
the USSR and China and the impact of Gorbachev’s “Europeanist” vision, see the
acute observations of Georgi Derluguian, “Alternative Pasts, Future Alternatives?”,
Slavic Review n. 3, 2004, 548–49.
66 The “four common spaces” were defined at the EU-Russia summit in St. Peters-
burg on May 2003 and refer to economic cooperation (including energy and
environment); cooperation in the fields of freedom, justice and security; cooperation in
the field of foreign security (which includes the fight against international terror-
ism); and cooperation in research, education and culture. See Commission of the
European Communities, European Neighbourhood Policy. Strategy Paper, 12 May
2004, COM (2004) 373 final, p. 6.
7 Conclusion
The challenges of modernity and
post-modernity

7.1 Eastern Europe’s paths towards modernity

Can 4 June 1989 be reassessed as an emblematic date in the European and
international history of our time?
Certainly the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later took on undeniable
symbolic value: still, it had more of a potent meaning for Europe than for the
world, and in any case was foretold by the events of the 4 June. Does the fact
that on that same day Polish citizens participated in the first free elections
since the Second World War, while Deng Xiaoping ordered the massacre in
Tiananmen Square, perhaps represent the tangible image of a sharp split
between Europe and Asia in terms of conceptions of modernisation and values
upon which it should be based?
From the perspective of “real existing socialism”, elections in Poland would
not have occurred without Soviet assent; at the same time it should not be
forgotten that Gorbachev had just taken a trip to China that had stirred great
hopes for democratisation in that country.
The fact that two opposing solutions were simultaneously implemented by
European and Asian socialist countries to the relationship between moder-
nisation and democracy highlighted the existence of a distinct split within the
communist movement, in spite of continuing Western mythologies based on
the identification of European (and Russian) orientalism with “non-Europe”,
if not with “Asian despotism”.
The events that made 4 June possible in Poland (like those that followed in
all of Eastern Europe including Russia/the USSR) stemmed from a long
experience of modernisation, well-anchored in a more vast pan-European
context, in which many different views and policies had gradually manifested
themselves (and had remained different), as well as the gradual sharing of
some basic values – at least on the level of principles – such as democracy, a
market economy, the abandonment of resorting to arms against fundamental
liberties, and respect for human rights.
In spite of the disparities that still characterise Central-Eastern Europe, the
Baltics, the Balkans or the Danube-Balkan area and Russia, each of these
areas has formed its own relationship with modernity which has interacted
 Conclusion 189
with the broadest continental dynamics. In other words, the push for “Wes-
ternisation” was not merely an exchange of models, or just the East’s attrac-
tion to the West (even though this trend is undeniable). As it came about, it
produced a variety of relationships, conceptual reformulations and behaviours
of métissage that can be traced back to (or “re-read” in) an overall European
framework. If it is true that throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the
Polish, Czechoslovak or Hungarian leadership often claimed they belonged to
the “West”, recalling their “traditional ties of civilisation”, neither can the
role of Jewish, cosmopolitan and trans-European culture be underestimated,
nor the importance of Eastern policies in Jagiellonian Poland, for centuries
directed towards Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Black Sea, nor Swedish
penetration into Russia, nor Hungary’s Balkan attraction. These are events
that interwove with the “Westernisation” of the Russian czars, from Peter the
Great to Catherine II, with Venetian and Genoan “orientalism”, and – again –
with the secular and bloody tradition of conflict between Catholics and Protes-
tants that has never followed dividing lines between East and West. All this
confirms what Larry Wolff and other scholars pointed out when they attributed
the conceptual division of the European continent to much more recent events.1
The fact that this took a concrete political form halfway through the 20th cen-
tury did not wipe out the multiplicity of European relations. On the contrary,
these relations remained intense and, after the end of Stalinism, became even
stronger, in spite of the continuation (ever weaker) of the Iron Curtain.
If one does not start with this fact – that is, the close correlation of mod-
ernisation and European métissage – it will never be understood why the
communists of Eastern Europe decided to sign the final Helsinki Accord,
urging economic cooperation between the two Camps and accepting the
“third basket” on human rights. Even though the implementation of these
principles was contradictory (and continues to be, in Putin’s Russia), that
Charter, just as all the major international conventions on democracy, human
rights, and the freedom of movement of people and capital produced by the
Council of Europe, the United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) were
endorsed by all the countries of Eastern Europe, including Russia.
In contrast, China has aimed to distinguish itself from this point of view, in
the 1990s advancing an alternative for itself and others by asserting “Asian
values” such as respect for authority, the primacy of the family and the social
community over individual rights, and the quest for economic success. In this
way it has largely distanced itself from the secular, rational and democratic
value system of modern Europe.2
Naturally there were – and still are – different ways of “being in Europe” and
constructing modernity. Yet the call for local “specificity” (often ambiguously
interwoven with nationalism and provincialism, for fear of cultural syncretism)
is a constant on the European continent, from Holland to Bulgaria, from
Sweden to Russia, although a persistent myth identifies the word “Europe” with
the “West” and “transatlantic relations”, attributing to these categories a
190 Conclusion
homogeneous political and cultural significance. As reality eschews simplifica-
tion, it is helpful to remember that a widespread, popular attitude from Russia to
the Balkans and Central Europe attributes an indisputable urban-Western value
to the concepts of “normality” and “civilised conduct”.
In sum, a cultural relationship of attraction and distinction exists in rela-
tion to modernity that is as ambivalent as it is transversal, and here Eastern
Europe is no exception. A quick review of the modernising phases and pro-
jects of the last two centuries is enough to ascertain this. In his time, Jürgen
Habermas provided a renowned and incisive definition of modernity,
describing it as a project promoted by 18th-century Enlightenment, which
pursues as its main principle human emancipation and whose developments
are founded on the contribution of three main instruments, each with their
own rationality: a) objective science (to control nature to the advance of
human development; b) the universal right (to oppose the arbitrary use of
power); and c) autonomous art (able to represent society’s intrinsic logic).3
Thus let us think of the ideas of the Enlightenment, promoted by Austrian,
Russian and Prussian imperial despotism, and how the ideas of the French
Revolution penetrated Russia and the Balkans on the heels of Napoleon’s
army. This had a powerful influence on encouraging local reformist spirit, and
enabling aspirations to human emancipation to spread through cultural net-
works (of the diasporas and religions), educational networks (universities,
academies and gymnasiums), the circulation of inventions (such as the press)
and increased communication. These influences met up with the egalitarian-
ism of small or landless farmers, who for centuries had constructed their own
social relationships based on solidaristic institutions governed within the
family and village community.
From this amalgam of impulses, what took root among the Narodniks was
not so much forced liberalism as the critique of capitalism. Their liberation
from serfdom was the first step towards human emancipation, conceived – as
Chernyshevsky asserted – just as much in terms of a critical assessment of the
institutional heritage coming from the countryside, as from the perspective of
equal gender opportunities, at the same time elaborating ideas and policies
(through the academies) destined to form “rural socialism” and overcome
patriarchal discrimination against women. For many years these thought
contributions were much more advanced than developments underway in the
West, reflecting a special sensitivity to the values of cooperation, solidarity,
education and equal opportunity.
These ideas formed the basis for the Narodnik view of universal rights. This
was a view that proved true in the simultaneous struggle against czarist
autocracy and capitalism, both considered manifestations of the arbitrary use
of power to the detriment of the rural collective, still considered to be “una-
ware” of its own moral and political strength, and thus needing to rely on
intellectual “revivalists”.
They not only had the task of pushing through change, spreading ideas and
promoting new gender relations, as well as stimulating their acceptance and
 Conclusion 191
formulation, but also defining and evaluating artistic and literary expression,
considering legitimate only those forms that were able to reflect social reality
critically. In this way they complied with the intrinsic logic of analytical ration-
ality and a secular vision, as Vissarion Belinsky had suggested, receiving (as we
have seen) the enthusiastic consensus of the “Westernist” school of thought.
If the peasant community system had been able to bring about an anarchic
society, as Bakunin dreamed of, or a state founded on autonomy, as the
Narodniks desired, from this perspective this is a mere detail. Overall, the
Narodnik movement intended community structure to be a rational form of
social organisation around which an efficient economic system could have
been built, respectful of the surrounding natural environment, able to rely in a
balanced way on scientific innovation which at the time was largely perceived
as the fundamental means for governing in order to ensure an equitably dis-
tributed standard of living among the population, and a “continuity of identity”
with the past, seen as the essential source of national identity.4
It is also true that there was no room for an industrialised society in their
conception. They actually wished to avoid this, although they were aware of
its echoes and had sometimes gained direct knowledge of it in the West, albeit
rapid and superficial. So their appeal to social ideals and modern policies
manifested itself in enhancing the value of farming and peasant culture (in
itself pre-modern) according to an attitude dictated by political realism, or
rather by the awareness that this was the dominant characteristic of Russia
and, for their Balkan imitators, of South-Eastern Europe.
At the same time, sensitivity towards the changes underway induced them
to prefigure the “modernisation of rural institutions”, without this excluding
co-operation with the working class, but also by virtue of an ethical view of
life based on respect for nature. From this perspective, the widespread view in
the Anglo-Saxon literature on the Narodniks as an anti-modern movement
appears to be only a partial view.5
However, the Narodnik approach was dismissed by the Slavophiles, stan-
dard bearers of a traditional, theocratic and conservative view of society, in
which the countryside was indeed the pivotal reference point, but within a
political and cultural view that openly opposed modernity, in that it saw it as
a vehicle of change capable of eradicating the roots (as it actually did) of the
landed aristocracy’s and autocracy’s system of power.
Therefore, when confronted with the prospect of modernity, while the
Narodniks’ and the Slavophiles’ views and strategies had become incompa-
tible, in spite of their common belief that social hegemony should be rural,
there was a very different sort of connection in terms of ideas between the
Narodnichestvo and peasantism, in terms of the implications of modernity
and the conflicting relationship between agriculture and industry.
The fact that the Narodniks chose to address Karl Marx directly regarding
the validity of his institutional and economic-social theories, out of the con-
viction that modern rural communism was possible, profoundly marked the
differences between Narodnichestvo and peasantism, and also greatly
192 Conclusion
influenced Balkan spirits. In contrast, rural movements in Central and Eastern
Europe and the Balkans a half century later preferred to position themselves
in a different way, not by collaborating, but as an alternative to the search for
a “third way” between capitalism and Bolshevism.
Nevertheless, in spite of peasantists’ different theoretical-political views
(from Aleksandŭr Stamboliyski to Ante Radić, from Virgil Madgearu to
Dragoljub Jovanović), all of them – peasants and Narodniks – shared the view
that the goal was human emancipation based on granting political dignity to
the rural sphere. This was a concept reinforced by East European demography
and the adoption of male and in some cases universal suffrage, which was often
implemented much earlier than in the most important Western countries.
Peasantists and Narodniks also shared the idea of objective science, linked
to enhancing the value of the countryside, through agrarian studies and rais-
ing the qualitative standards of agricultural production. The acceptance of
Darwin’s theories on selection of species contributed to this, as its application
to agriculture opened the way for a decisive improvement of crops.
Very different, however, from the Narodniks’ approach was the peasantist
exaltation of rural life, partly mythological and partly idyllic and mystifying,
against the backdrop of a view of the natural environment as the source of
well-being and a healthy, wholesome and prosperous life, which gradually
transformed into a bucolic-nationalist conception of society.
On the contrary, the Narodniks’ sensitivity to the solidaristic traits of the
rural community was taken up by the peasantist movement, which attributed
a universal ethic to cooperative rationality. In reality, however, only a limited
swath of the peasantry held this belief, given their generalised narrow-
mindedness, widespread illiteracy, and cultural and social prejudice. On the
contrary, as peasantism was aware of these limits, it made the protection of
peasant rights into an essential formal tool to reduce the arbitrariness of power,
identified with urban centres, the activities of independent professionals and
industrialisation, which were extraneous to the needs of the countryside.
Following the First World War, autonomous peasant art was gradually
discovered through the spread of naïf painting, especially in Poland, Yugo-
slavia (where in the 1930s the paintings of Ivan Generalić began to be
famous, and are now known worldwide), but also in Russia, Georgia and
Romania. The style of this painting depicted rural scenes in vivid colours,
with instinctive, dream-like traits. A similar trend was found in poetry and
fiction set in agrarian scenes, strongly promoted by publishing houses linked
to the peasantist movement. The contents of these works were soon
acknowledged for their national value as it was possible rapidly to construct
around them a good part of the state’s symbology and identity.6
It is also true that part of peasantism’s theoretical system definitely did not
identify with the idea of modernity, especially when it demonstrated its
reluctance to accept urbanisation and industrialisation, and only within cer-
tain limits, which was extensively referred to. Yet this political experience, as
ambitious on an international and local level as it was belated in terms of
 Conclusion 193
feasibility (in spite of Mitrany’s desperate theoretical-ideological attempts,
also too late), tried to respond to the challenges of modernity which would
have enabled them to interact. In other words, peasantism was a political-
cultural form of critical adherence to modernity which contained tendencies
that were not always consistent with the process of modernisation, such as in the
case of the sensitivity shown towards national identity (in itself a modern aspect),
but from an anti-urban and anti-industrial (e.g. pre-modern) point of view.
On the other hand, if one excludes contemporary Bolshevism and Western
industrialisation, there were no other indigenous models at that time in
Central-Eastern Europe that could oppose peasantism, if not the vigorous
political resistance aimed at preserving the power of the landowning aris-
tocracy, as well as the nationalistic, racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic
fanaticism that coloured those political movements culturally oriented
towards refusing any form of mixing or métissage with “others”, if the latter
were connected to urban-industrial development, liberalism or Bolshevism.
On the other hand there was no doubt left by the theory, widespread in the
international literature, that Bolshevism and the East European communist
movement were a response – much more consistent with the logic of modernity
than peasantism – to the challenges of Western industrialisation. After all, it is
not difficult to identify in the celebrated emancipation of the working class and
the theoretical prospect of a society without exploitation (in which the state
progressively withers away) the communists’ goal of human emancipation.
In turn, society’s organisation and the tools put forward during socialist
societies’ complex experience were constantly legitimised by appeals for
objective science, identified in Marxism-Leninism. The solid trust in its sci-
entific character was accompanied by an emphatic response through state
culture and iconography, machines, technical innovation, atheistic rational-
ism, the rationality of large enterprises, and town and regional planning, in
which the construction of the suburbs – as we have seen – followed models
that differed little (especially due to the poor materials and techniques used)
from those used in the 1930s in the United States, and which can be seen, for
example, in the northern suburbs of Manhattan in New York and in some
neighbourhoods of Boston.7
Consistent with that view, “socialist realism” in painting and sculpture as
well as theatre (but before this Futurism, with its exaltation of machines) was
perfectly embodied in the idea of art able to reflect the rational logic of a
society that wanted to be “perfect”.
The values of equality (linked to a society in which, once classes were
overcome, was imagined to be free of conflict) were the main body of a uni-
versal ethic to be fully realised with the yearned-for victory of the revolution
in advanced capitalist societies. In turn, the emancipation of the working class
(and later, women), access to education, the assurance of a dignified and safe
life (from work to pension, from home to health) in a solid society, free of
waste and in some ways austere, were the main features of a doctrine of uni-
versal rights, in which the idea of democracy was not so much associated with
194 Conclusion
fundamental liberties (even though formally proclaimed), as it was with the
public offering of guarantees capable of respecting constitutionally recognised
social, economic and production management rights. This approach – which
does not justify the underestimation of political democracy, but helps to
explain the causes – drew its origin from an idea of freedom (already noted by
Narodnichestvo) that was strictly limited by the combination of egalitarianism
and emancipation of the subordinate classes, considered essential for over-
coming social and economic imbalances which in the most backward regions
appeared as profound as they were morally unacceptable.
Further confirmation of the modernist system inherent in “real socialism”
was the role attributed to the bureaucracy in building and operating the state,
just as the ideological insistence – translated with conviction into daily practice –
on the priority of values related to work (actually Article 18, title II, of the
Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
literally stated that “those who do not work do not eat”!) and industrial
growth.8 The first sharp debate between Bukharin and Preobrazhensky
revolved around these topics; Stalin’s policies constantly referred to them after
the turning point in 1929 and during the “war against the peasants”, just as
did subsequent controversies over reform during de-Stalinisation.
To summarise, during the last two centuries when specific projects were
organised in Eastern Europe, as well as the forms and tools with which to
pursue them, there was constant reference to the principle contents of moder-
nity, even when in successive stages various types of anti-capitalist definitions
were carried on. These definitions were acknowledged and often presented as a
manifestation of nation-state identity, allowing them to be recognisable (thus
avoiding the risk of homologation with the Western model) and to compete with
the West, as appeared possible during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Within this frame of reference, at a complex and ambivalent time, the
protectionist and isolationist pressures that emerged in the Soviet Camp as
well as timid theories of people’s democracy ambiguously found their places:
the Yugoslav experience of self-management, like the reform projects started
in successive stages in Poland, or during the “Prague Spring”, with Imre
Nagy’s policy directions and the much more cautious ones of János Kádár. In
the pursuit of modernising policies aimed at combining socialism and national
identities, development models and local peculiarities, anti-capitalism and socia-
list diversity, there were also countries like Albania and Romania where
instead – while still referring to these aspects – the will prevailed above all to
defend the leader’s absolute power.

7.2 The construction of modernity between autarky and interdependence

It is worthwhile to dwell briefly on the relationship between aspirations to
modernity and the protection of local specificities, as the cultural tensions this
triggered profoundly limited the historical and political path of the East
European regions in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 Conclusion 195
Just think, for example, of the Narodniks and the peasantists: both groups
asked themselves whether and to what extent capitalism could become a
nation-wide mode of production. Both, however, came to the conclusion that
this goal could be achieved only at the cost of Russian or Central-Eastern
European capitalism remaining peripheral in character.
Thus they convinced themselves that the conditions for developing the
capitalist mode of production, once imported from the West, would or could
not be equivalent to those developed in the so-called “Centre”. This was
because the conditions of backwardness – in terms of availability of capital,
entrepreneurial classes ready to invest and take on risk, availability of labour
and political and economic institutions able to sustain such an undertaking –
would not allow these countries to achieve results comparable to those in the
West, despite some radical changes already underway locally. In fact, these
changes were geopolitically and culturally too isolated to transform into a
driving force for the whole country, in a reasonable amount of time: in other
words, areas of cutting-edge economic activity did not have widespread
influence over the structural adjustment of the country’s economy and its
institutions. These considerations convinced them that by mixing the new
with partial protection of the old, agricultural-rural modernisation would be
an adequate response to the challenges of industrialisation.9
On the contrary, Slavophiles believed that the alteration (already underway)
of traditional balances between cities and the countryside and between agri-
culture and industry should be blocked as soon as possible, instead adopting
an alternative social model to modernisation, able to protect the rural, auto-
cratic, traditionalist-patriarchal identity of the Russian Empire, even at the
cost of increasing the country’s social and cultural isolation. This argument
was certainly not far from the one found in Fichte’s Addresses to the German
Nation.10
For the Bolsheviks, however, the anti-capitalist option remained ideologi-
cally anchored in modernity, as the search for an alternative model of devel-
opment found a place in this frame of reference, whereas linking it to the
Soviet identity under construction soon became an urgent necessity.
Given Soviet Russia’s isolation at the end of the civil war – in spite of
Lenin’s attempts, with the New Economic Policy (NEP) and participation in
the conference in Genoa, cautiously to open up to Western entrepreneurs –
dealing with the problem of obtaining resources for investment in domestic
industry had become unavoidable.
The subsequent debate between the Krestintern and Green International,
and between Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, reflected Bolshevism’s uncer-
tainty between the “policy of alliances” and the industrial-revolutionary mis-
sion. Radić’s case is emblematic of how ambiguously Croatian identity
impulses were intertwined with the prospects of a “rural state” and the revo-
lutionary tendencies already present in some areas of Central-Eastern Europe,
intersecting with Bolshevik hopes (and illusions).
196 Conclusion
Meanwhile, on the Soviet side, two opposing tendencies had gradually
crystallised. On the one hand, as we have seen, there was a visible effort to
forge closer relations with the countryside, by sharing ideas and strategies, in
many ways close to Central-Eastern European peasantism.11 On the other
hand, the call for implementation of the laws of value and primitive socialist
accumulation indicated the formation of a “Soviet path to industrialisation”,
in which the state would have the double function of collecting resources and
investing, while a differentiated use of taxes and the imposition of an unba-
lanced relationship between agricultural and industrial prices would have
transformed the countryside into “internal colonies”, or predestined victims,
in the race to realise the principles of modernity elaborated by communism.
Yet the trust placed in state capacity should not be surprising: this was not
just a Bolshevik cultural prerogative. At that time peasantism (particularly in
Bulgaria, Croatia and Czechoslovakia) also assigned similar tasks to the
public administration, to be implemented with the fiscal lever, in order to
direct at least a portion of investment to electrification and agricultural ser-
vices, as well as relieving the countryside of the burden of usury, which in the
Balkans was turning peasant indebtedness into a real social emergency, sig-
nificantly obstructing the modernisation of crop-growing techniques and
equipment. Overseas, the collapse of Wall Street soon marked the end of
economic liberalism, and with the New Deal the US public administration –
at Keynes’s urging – began actively to intervene in the economy.
What made the Soviet model particular was the omnipotent interpretation
Stalin assigned to the state and the coercive way he implemented it, after the
turning point of 1929, by combining centralisation, new patriarchal hierarchies,
and pervasive forms of control and the use of violence.
At this point autarky and isolation intensified, but those were not years in
which these policies inevitably produced backwardness. On the contrary, as
numerous 19th-century theories suggested, protectionism in the investment
phase and the growth of national industry were still an essential prerequisite to
consolidating production before competing on international markets, if the
state could count on a “minimum size”.12 Stalin’s USSR, in spite of the violence
perpetrated, enjoyed in many ways a similar situation in which isolation ended
up carrying out the functions of capitalist protectionism, whereas accumulation
to the detriment of the countryside enabled investment (albeit disorderly and
extremely wasteful) in support of state industry. At the same time, as had
already happened in other parts of Europe, economic growth in autarkic
conditions occurred alongside the rise of nationalism (and encouraged it).
At the end of the Second World War, due most of all to military triumph,
that model appeared to European communists as the most efficient one for
implementing an anti-capitalist solution to modernity by developing indus-
trialisation, urbanisation, mass education and the welfare state, in a climate of
atheistic rationalism. It also sounded like a sort of guarantee for success, able
to impose a clean break with the agrarian past (largely perceived by militant
communists as pre-modern) and to form the basis for constructing socialism.
 Conclusion 197
At the same time, the identity issue in the immediate post-war period
prompted the critical acceptance of that model. Various theories of mediation
were contemplated, and were seriously considered in the first reflections on
people’s democracy, but were then swept away by the Cold War and the Sta-
linisation of Eastern Europe. As soon as Stalin died, however, the issue res-
urfaced with “national roads to socialism”. In an increasingly complex
international situation, a new phase began, aimed at breaking the crystal-
lisation of the past and finding policies to anchor the socialist welfare system
(founded upon social security, full employment and egalitarianism) to an
efficient economic system able to promote flexible production and innovation,
consumption growth, enterprise autonomy and effective stimuli in agriculture.
At that time self-managed and non-aligned Yugoslavia was the most
advanced country in terms of radical reform and international openness to
trade: by audaciously combining dictatorship of the proletariat and political-
cultural permeability to cope with stimuli coming from various parts of the
world, this country constituted an essential point of reference for the structural
adjustments evolving in the Socialist Camp.
The debate, as we have seen, was critical and produced numerous reforms,
with varying results which were in any case conditional upon international
openness. This led the entire European socialist area gradually towards inter-
dependence, not only financial but also environmental and technical-cultural
interdependence with the West. At a certain point Brezhnevism sensed the
danger of its potential repercussions and – consistent with its ideological
conservatism – attempted, in its decadent phase, to stop this, while the Yugoslav
leadership found itself uncertain about its future, caught between economic
crises, the death of Tito and security fears exacerbated by the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan.
However, by the mid-1980s the close relationship between state identity
(Soviet or popular-socialist) and the development model promoted by com-
munism had weakened considerably. The main cause can be identified in the
convergence of growing economic efficiency (especially in relation to the
spread of high technology in the West) and the gradual, intense penetration of
the outside world in European socialist societies, in which a strong positive
cultural predisposition to the industrialised West still endured – even though
it was ossified by ideology.
Furthermore, these were neither the 1930s nor the 1950s: at this point iso-
lation and protectionism produced backwardness, whereas social, economic
and cultural development required dealing with incipient globalisation.
It took a humanitarian tragedy, triggered by a malfunction in a nuclear
power plant, to reveal the wide-ranging political-social degeneration under-
way. It was up to the new general secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev, to draw conclusions, realising that
incipient globalisation was a worldwide trend, capable of bringing about
epochal change.
198 Conclusion
The vivid political perception that resulted had actually been anticipated by
themes related to interdependence as well as the formation of a new
mechanism of collective security, by the UN’s unfolding policies towards the
work of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues
(otherwise called the Brandt Commission), and almost simultaneously, the
Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security (also called the
Palme Commission), in which the top Soviet expert on American and Canadian
Studies and director of the same institute, Georgy Arbatov, had participated on
behalf of the USSR.
Thus as a result of many different events and experiences, both domestic
and international, an unprecedented Soviet awareness began to form of the
changes underway on a global level. An orientation arose aimed at evaluating
the country’s – the entire Camp’s – situation in relation to these changes. From
this originated the political will to sustain innovative reforms and encourage the
revision of the existing development model, consistent with the new interna-
tional context, even if this implied overcoming – once and for all – the
socialist protectionist and autarkic system, which had been pursued up to that
point with the significant but incomplete exception of Yugoslavia after 1965.
This was an objectively realistic process, as it took into account the inter-
national changes that had occurred, but it was subjectively traumatic, because
the causes and motivation that led to Soviet/socialist isolationism had been
numerous, even though its roots were to be found in Europe’s historical
experience as a whole (and not just the Eastern part). Indeed, culturally
driven by 19th-century West European ideas, as well as widespread political
practices from Great Britain to Germany, at least until national industry had
been able to compete successfully on an international level,13 socialist pro-
tectionism had largely been provoked by the Anglo-French policies of the
cordon sanitaire and the prevalence of its Bolshevik antithesis, the “besieged
fortress” policy.14
After the Second World War these policies were protracted by the bipolar-
ism of the Cold War and the formation of the Soviet Camp, expressly desired
by Stalin in continuity with the logic of “socialism in one country”, promoted
by him in December 1924.
It is true, however, that this orientation was actively supported by a sub-
stantial part of the population, which over time had come to adhere to a
traditional political culture, inherited from the countryside and self-sufficient
village communities, as well as behaviours that were widespread – as we
emphasised – even among the East European nobility prior to the 19th century.
Yet it is also true that Soviet isolation was largely triggered by Bolshevism’s
ideological approach, as its original goal of promoting worldwide revolution
through the Komintern, even when all revolutionary attempts in Europe after the
First World War failed, had contributed to reinforcing the “fear of communism”
and caused other countries to react.15
“Revolutionary internationalism” persisted even after 1945, even though it
was actually abandoned by Stalin, whose foreign policy had reverted to the
 Conclusion 199
more traditional objectives of preserving territorial power and equilibrium, as
shown by his signing the non-aggression pact with Joachim von Ribbentrop
in 1939 and the Moscow percentages agreement with Winston Churchill in
1944. These latter agreements were ones to which the Georgian dictator
remained strictly loyal until the end.
Stalin’s “about face” was neither understood nor shared by other commu-
nist leaders of great international prestige, who had remained Kominternists in
their own ways, like Tito (at least until he was expelled from the Kominform),
Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.16
In conclusion, the prospect of the final victory of the revolution and/or
socialist ideas persisted in the communist theoretical system, albeit in other
forms, and was recognisable in the idea of the “expansion of socialism”, like
Khrushchev’s notion of “competition with the West”. So while communism
found new spaces in which to expand in the Far East, Central America and
sub-Saharan Africa, its ideology (ossified as it was) held out for radical social
change in the West, actually reinforcing – especially in Eastern-Central Europe
and Russia – the sense of belonging to Europe. In the meantime, the West
remained militarily and psychologically a prisoner of the “communist threat”
and acted with all the various means at its disposal to obstruct its “contagion”.
All this contributed to upholding the frontally opposed logics of the Cold
War and sustaining – for decades – an isolationist-type political-economic
culture and practice in the socialist countries, which were unable to extract
the benefits of the international technical transformations and technologies to
which they aspired. Western Europe, on the other hand, at a certain point
reached a turning point that was to have long-term repercussions, as it began
to abandon the systematic recourse to indirect taxation and tariff protection-
ism, instead to use progressive income taxation. This policy was made possi-
ble in the 1960s by its more developed and mature administrative
centralisation, which allowed it better to control citizens’ income flows, as
well as growing popular consensus as a result of democratic consolidation
and popular participation in institutions, in turn brought about by the general
adoption of universal suffrage and the activities of mass parties after the
Second World War.
So these fiscal changes, which coincided with the beginning of international
détente between the two Camps only after the signing of the Treaties of Rome
and the gradual start-up of the European Common Market (ECM), all encour-
aged the expansion of free trade in the West and, along with this, the strength-
ening of opportunities to trade and exchange scientific and technological
knowledge.17
So a quarter of a century later when Gorbachev became secretary-general
of the CPSU and understood the urgent necessity of opening the Soviet Camp
to the world and had the power to do it,18 the framework for international
relations, including economic and trade ties, had profoundly changed and had
become more intense and trans-national.
200 Conclusion
In the meantime, the differential with the West had deepened to the point
that prospects for the European socialist space were to be “peripheral”,
dependent – once again – on the penetration of ideas, capital and innovation
from the “Centre”, from which it had been excluded. This in spite of the
hopes and convictions it had nurtured and had even had the possibility –
especially during the mature stages of socialism (when reformist pressures had
arisen concomitant to the successes of the “space race”) – of demonstrating
how its own model of development had actually been effective and, in
perspective, competitive, in addition to retaining its own distinct identity.
Instead, just when free trade was becoming stronger in the West, so-called
Brezhnevian stagnation ended up with the ideological re-proposal of socialist
autarky coinciding with a contradictory but constant process of the external
world penetrating socialist economies. This occurred via mechanisms that
were not that dissimilar from those pointed out by the Narodniks and pea-
santists when they perceived, albeit in a different context, the existence of
the serious and unresolved issue of the concomitance of development and
backwardness.
Thus it was in a similarly contradictory phase, in a society that in the
meantime had become much more complex, rich in ferment and socially
much more complicated than the years prior to the Second World War, that
the growing obsolescence and inadequacy of the socialist growth model could
be measured in relation to the needs of its time.
Meanwhile, the Camp countries had to different extents experimented with
autonomous relations with the West, the “Third World” and China, or they
had had to deal with an increasingly polyphonic world, the persistence of
ideological and economic autarky increasingly clashing with aspirations of
development.
Within this potentially explosive dynamic, Gorbachev’s decision to accept
the challenge of interdependence meant abandoning Soviet autarkic pro-
tectionism and consequently overcoming that 19th-century socialist culture of
political economy that was reflected in the Camp. Poland and Hungary in
particular were much better prepared than the USSR to act in a framework of
interdependence, as their economic policies of the last two decades had lar-
gely bet on this, even though after 1969 radical reforms had been postponed
to better times.
Meanwhile, Yugoslavia – the old Soviet alter ego – floundered in similar
problems, squeezed between heavy foreign debt, the re-launch of the previous
but partially halted opening and the uncertain (and contested) identification
of much bolder reforms, given the high social cost these would have implied.
In particular, Belgrade found itself entangled in a net of inflexibility deriving
on the one hand from the desire to safeguard a costly but not always efficient
welfare state, and on the other hand clumsy and muddled federal governance.
Under these conditions, the absence of a dynamic and malleable institu-
tional system with public spheres for political mediation, in times that called
for marked versatility and elasticity, brought the entire European socialist
 Conclusion 201
experience to collapse. In other words, the will demonstrated by Gorbachev
and some other East European communist leaders to implement changes,
even radical ones, in order to make existing institutions more flexible, basi-
cally arrived late in relation to the combined impact of: a) the depth of
transformations underway in all socialist societies; b) the conservative inter-
ests of an administrative apparatus that did not intend to lose its power
obtained in the institutions of “real socialism”; and c) the aggravated technical-
scientific obsolescence of structures and apparatuses, just when it was necessary
to cope with globalisation.
Furthermore, although the East European countries had generally intro-
duced universal suffrage before the West, as mentioned in Chapter 3, the
democratisation of society had continued to suffer strong limitations, especially
to the detriment of individual freedom and due to the de facto absence of the
rule of law. In contrast, administrative centralism, instead of transforming
into a factor of efficiency in accessing services and guaranteeing citizens’
rights, had become a bureaucratic-despotic form of wielding power as well as
a way to oppress minorities.
Growing discontent among the population, stemming from an unsatisfied
evaluation (depending on the contexts and times) of promises, potentials and
results produced with the models implemented, was further fed – as we have
seen – by myths of exclusion from Western and European development
trends. These were myths handed down along with historic memories of
crushing defeats incurred in the modern era (think of the Polish-Bohemian-
Hungarian triangle and the myths of the partitions, of White Mountain,
Trianon or Munich); of centuries-old Ottoman obscurantism (which recent
international historiography has contested in many aspects with effective
arguments); of the West’s alleged abandonment of European regions – espe-
cially Polish and Greek – to the mercy of empires considered “Asian” (mainly
meaning Russia and Turkey); of a Western cultural and political attitude that
was basically ambiguous, dismissive – even haughty – when dealing with
Russian Europeanism.19 Over time other convictions intertwined with these,
including those blaming the West, cosmopolitanism and internationalism for
the loss of national characteristics, from time to time accusing it of “export-
ing” not just the Industrial Revolution, but also communism, Judaism and
Freemasonry to Eastern Europe, and encouraging cultural syncretism (per-
ceived as a sort of “contamination”) and métissage, which had “marred” the
country and “deprived” it of its “traditions” and its “purity”.
In conclusion, disappointment due to the limits of East European moder-
nisation reinforced these conflicting feelings of belonging to Europe, being
excluded from Western well-being, but also the rejection of “imported”,
homologising development models.
Thus constant anger grew up around the development-backwardness issue
which comes through in all five great debates – in some ways thematically
repetitive – the evolution of which we have briefly reconstructed here. At the
same time the various alternatives on the agenda – “latching on” to the
202 Conclusion
industrialised West, joining the course of its events, defining their own path to
modernity, rejecting all cultural and institutional homologation, or preserving
their own would-be homogeneity – all these attitudes could be found within
the framework of interdependence and métissage, not always recognisable as
such, but which actually produced a flow of relations so intense that it overcame
the Camp’s opposition.
In the end, the controversies we have analysed anticipated many of the
apprehensions, very close to our time, and linked to the quality and sustain-
ability of “industrial development” (later generally known as “Western devel-
opment” because of its de-industrialisation and conversion to services). They
also anticipated its repercussions on culture and local political organisation,
according to typical mechanisms of globalisation, or an economic phenom-
enon which – as Ulrich Beck said – acting on a global level, “crumbles the
foundations of the national economy and the nation-state”.20

7.3 Modern and post-modern: politics in a globalised Eastern

Europe
In a continuously transforming framework, politics in Eastern Europe has
had to fundamentally contend with the need to ensure economic efficiency
along with social solidarity and egalitarianism, e.g. supporting values inherited
more from pre-modern rural culture, ideologically reformulated in modernity
by communism, than from democracy.21
Politics has also struggled between encouraging (at times less so, at other
times more determinedly) individual initiative and protecting the central
power’s prerogatives against autonomy (with the sole exception of Tito’s
Yugoslavia after 1965). This has been for reasons stemming from the resis-
tance of administrative apparatuses, as well as – specifically in the Russian
case – ensuring control over an enormous and sparsely populated territory,
extending across 11 time zones. In this case centralism is still perceived by
many apparatuses and a majority of public opinion as an essential instrument
of security.22
These issues’ significance and their constant replication over time explains
why the alignments in East European politics have followed essentially dif-
ferent paths from those of Western political families, even though when
inspired by them they have taken on the same names. On the one hand, the
development/backwardness antinomy produced some original movements
such as Narodnichestvo, peasantism (albeit with the Danish exception in the
interwar period), and the diverse sphere of anti-communist dissent. On the
other hand, even when the names were similar, as in the case of the national
or popular, socialist/social-democratic or communist, fascist and, in part, lib-
eral parties, the main element of distinction within the country was the social
controversy over aspects of development, to the point that this topic crossed
party divisions. In other words, despite inspirational references to West Eur-
opean political parties, this controversy was the real discriminating trait, able
 Conclusion 203
transversally to penetrate groups and movements, rearranging alignments and
political feelings of belonging, revealing that it was able to go beyond formal
election alliances with Western ideological principles often to converge in the
elaboration and/or re-proposal of original and unprecedented theoretical-political
views.
So the transversality of orientations linked to how to bring about moder-
nity ended up reshaping, in East European political organisations, those
ideological-religious and class distinctions that characterised the experience of
West European political parties. As a consequence, the social origins of poli-
tical practice in the area of our interest – discussed in the first chapter –
contributed not only to forging behaviours in subsequent centuries, but also
(and paradoxically) weakening ties between parties and social classes. In fact,
Narodnichestvo entrusted its fortunes to the intellectual “revivalists”; the
peasant parties could never overcome social diversity in the countryside and
even among communists the function of the working class changed and defi-
nitely shrank over time. This encouraged a culture of mutability which made
politics appear unstable and transformative, sometimes even marked by the
prevalence of unscrupulousness in setting up bold, albeit temporary alliances,
and contributed to relativising or even reversing the parliamentary meaning
of the “right” and the “left” established in the West, as mentioned in the
Introduction.
In sum, the transversality of East European politics ended up bringing
about political polymorphism, an indefiniteness or changeable sense of
belonging as well as a particular sensitivity towards social, cultural and ethnic
differences, to the point that it appeared almost typically post-modern.23
However, this took place in a context in which the totally modern process of
building the nation-state was still not completed, in which autarkic-protectionist
temptations and pre-modern political cultures still persisted.24 All these fac-
tors have contributed to determining widespread cultural unease, which ended
up reverberating in the complexity of East-European societies’ encounter with
modernity.
So, on the one hand, up until the early 1950s the process of state building
had to take into account the controversial city-countryside and industry-
agriculture relations. Then it focused on the forms of modernisation to
pursue, taking inspiration from both the principle of “national roads to soci-
alism” as well as models from the United States, the USSR, Yugoslavia and
China. Finally, with the collapse of the European socialist system and the
advance of globalisation, all the countries of former “real socialism” had to
cope with the problem of joining, with full rights, the international economic
system, which in turn posed a direct threat to modernity founded upon the
“nation-state, social state and national democracy” triad.
On the other hand, faced with the changes brought about by joining the
international economic system, some autarkic-protectionist tendencies re-
emerged. These tendencies, considered consistent with the nation-state and
which once again emerged transversally, found convinced supporters in a wide
204 Conclusion
range of political-cultural currents, however distant among themselves. Just
think, for example, of the nationalist, xenophobic and fascist movements
(concerned with safeguarding the identitary oneness of the nation), as well as
communism’s successors (decisive about protecting the social state as much
as possible), or the Greens (inclined to identify in the nation-state a bulwark
of environmental protection against the devastation of nature provoked by
uncontrollable and indiscriminate international markets).
Under these conditions, a new state of tension was created in Eastern
Europe at the end of the 20th century: in particular, friction arose out of the
attraction of modernity and the joint presence of certain post-modern beha-
viours; including the affirmation of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity and
the nation-state’s levelling and homogenising stabilisation; the protection of
local peculiarities and inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic development model (still
erroneously perceived in the East as a single system, in spite of the existing
deep differences between the Anglo-American and continental European sys-
tems); between states’ claims for “full sovereignty” and the need to join a
globality able to make the formation of closed spaces fictitious.
New uncertainties thus came about, silhouetted against the horizon, in a
continuous historic process of conflict between backwardness and develop-
ment, between hopes for change and given limitations, between autarky and
opening to the outside world, between Europeanist claims and feelings of
exclusion, between modern and post-modern.25 In the persistence of this
complex relational dynamic, in which behaviours, values and policies featur-
ing a mixture of attraction and rejection have transversally intersected (and
are still intersecting), it remains to be seen how pressing relations between
modernity and Westernisation will turn out to be in Eastern Europe.
In itself, this prospect seems inevitable due to two critical elements. On the
one hand, the fear of remaining entangled in the web of “orientalism” exer-
cised a decisive cultural influence on the East European imaginary. On the
other, this anxiety was fed by the Bolshevik – original Leninist – ideological
approach, according to which the development of socialism was still linked to
overtaking Western capitalism: this conviction was still a major factor among
Soviet party apparatuses during Brezhnev’s and Suslov’s time.
After all, the notion of “orientalism” – in spite of Edward Said’s recent
elaboration26 – was notoriously rooted in Marxist thought, and easily verifi-
able in a Eurocentric view (in reality, Euro-Western-centric) of the world,
widespread in the 1800s and taken up later by Max Weber. Without entering
into the details of such a complex and rich controversy, which originated in
the 18th century and influenced many political-cultural schools of thought,
here it is sufficient to remember how Karl Marx on several occasions revealed
his critical attitude towards Asia (and China in particular), so that in his
Communist Party Manifesto, as well as Das Kapital, he dedicated some cri-
tical passages to the “Asiatic means of production”. Marx also raised many
doubts about the future of Russia, which after Napoleon’s defeat he con-
sidered the bastion of European reaction and the pillar of the “Holy
 Conclusion 205
Alliance”. Thus considering the political weight of Marxist thought in East-
ern Europe throughout the 1900s, it is easy to understand how this philoso-
phy and its ideological representation was a powerful theoretical and cultural
medium, which helped to spread a positive view of the future of civilisation in
relation to expected developments in the West. For all these reasons, so full of
symbolism, 4 June 1989 appears to be an emblematic moment in the process
of identifying a common destiny for Europe.
Conversely, the formation of Western myths, from British laissez-faire to
white racial superiority, from the Western “Christian, progressivist and
developed” myth to that of the civilising mission of a rational and “minim-
alist” state, so fashionable in the 19th century, contributed decisively to
embedding an imaginary dichotomy of Western virtues and Eastern limits, in
which the West’s “other” was identified in an East with extremely unstable
borders, and therefore able to incorporate (depending on one’s point of view)
a good part of Europe.27
In this obviously patriarchal-inspired antithesis, with the West assigned a
“strong” male identity and the East a fragile feminine one, East European
experiences were often confined – in the West’s superior view of itself – to
stereotyped, exotic or denigrating representations. In correspondence to this, a
real phobia of orientalism had formed in Eastern Europe, aimed at asserting
its own full membership in a process of modernity that Western myths and
Marxist heredity had unquestionably assigned to the Euro-Atlantic space.
This in spite of the fact that Eastern Europe had expressed development
models that were just as modern, and encompassed anti-capitalist tendencies
as well as those aimed at preserving identities.
Moreover, come to think of it, many of the defects attributed to the notion
of “East” cannot be found in East European cultures and experiences. Just
think of the image of passivity, dependence and immobility attributed to
“orientalism”: from the 1800s onwards, to remain in the historical period we
are examining, was there ever this type of situation in Russia, Central-Eastern
Europe or the Balkans? Just look at the chronology to verify how the debates
and the great reformist inspiration of the last two centuries prove that actu-
ally, the contrary is true: the entire East European area continuously pro-
duced movements and change, reform and new political systems aimed at
pursuing their own way of constructing modernity. These factors determined
the evolution of history and the formation of politics in this region, in many
ways actually anticipating issues, problems and anxieties which then ran
through Western societies.28
After all, does not the Western self-imaginary of rationality, scientific
nature, discipline, order, independence and functionality, freedom and toler-
ance, based on “Christian civilisation”, conflict with an historic-cultural
legacy in which inquisition, witch-hunts, the genocide of pre-Columbian
peoples, anti-Semitism, Nazism and the Shoah, the imposition of religious
precepts on other cultures, and slavery took place? To what extent could this
controversial legacy explain why the United States was one of the last
206 Conclusion
countries legally to guarantee universal suffrage in 1965 (with the Voting
Rights Act), followed only by Portugal in 1970 and Switzerland in 1971?
Certainly, perceptions are a factor distinct from reality, and should not be
confused with it, but they are also undeniably capable of limiting developments,
and even altering them.
***
In conclusion, what emerges from the critical and trans-national examina-
tion of the five East European debates on development and reference models
is a process that we could define as “constructing new métissage”, despite and
in contrast to the homogenising trend imposed by building the nation-state.
By basing itself on a network of trans-European relations formed between
the Middle Ages and the modern era, this process produced further occasions
for encounter and mixing, and at the same time proved able to destabilise and
recompose cultural and political phenomena, as the forms and ways in which
modernity was constructed had to contend with an increasingly fluid and
changeable international environment.
So the interweaving of a) the attraction and rejection of modernity; b)
isolationist/protectionist forces and the requirements of economic, commercial
and cultural exchange; c) the growth of trans-European and world (and local)
interdependence; d) building the modern nation-state, ethno-cultural homo-
genisation and the refusal of “otherness”, gradually contributed to establishing a
shared ground of relationships, anxieties, expectations, objections and con-
victions of a trans-European nature, which made it possible peacefully to
overcome the obstacles and open the path for integration of the European
continent.
In other words, with all its peculiarities, the transformation of East Eur-
opean society between the 19th and 21st centuries occurred within the para-
meters of a modern culture shared in Europe, and was sealed by the events of
4 June 1989.
The intellectual and political elite, along with public opinion in these
countries, gradually grasped the potentialities, the limits, problems and
uncertainties of a process confined by homologation and the peculiarities of
identity, between development and its sustainability, homogenisation and
managing diversity, integration and the rejection of “otherness”. The ways in
which their behaviours were manifested in terms of values and identitary
political practices followed similar paths to those developed in the West. Thus
in their defensive aspects, mechanisms similar to French Anglophobia, Greek
or Italian anti-Americanism or British Euro-scepticism were produced.
At the same time, the encounter caused by the progressive interaction of
shared paths and cultures, faced with rising modernity, made possible the
formation of a common background, sufficiently solid to lend prospects to the
future of European integration, after the 2004, 2007 and 2013 enlargements,
on the condition that Western Europe take note of it. Furthermore, as we
have seen, many of the social, cultural, economic and legal implications of the
 Conclusion 207
changes prompted by modernisation raised growing problems of governing
the complexity. This aspect caused the unprepared East European institutions
to be challenged by harbingers that were in many ways surprising and not to
be underestimated.
In sum, as controversial and hard-won as the acceptance of modernity was,
at the beginning of the 21st century the social differentiation that has gradu-
ally formed in East European societies presented problems of governability
essentially not too different from those on the rest of the continent, also
between modernity and post-modernity.
At the end of the 19th century the pre-existing ethno-cultural, linguistic
and religious diversity in Eastern Europe was contained within a relatively
simple political-social framework, as well as being pre-modern. However, this
ethno-cultural and religious polyphony survived the massacre, deportations,
ethnic cleansing and genocide that ravaged the 20th century. Meanwhile
states, social stratification, institutional and administrative structures, political
and sectorial entities, and associations and movements multiplied and popu-
lations became increasingly mobile. In a framework of the progressive secu-
larisation of society, religious activism grew, as after the fall of communism
there was a new expansion of Protestantism, Greek Catholicism and Islam,
subsequently accompanied by new convictions and precepts of Asian origin.
In addition, requests for the acknowledgement of human rights as well as
those guaranteeing differences of gender, generations, sexual orientation and
new minority groups became increasingly urgent.29
As we can see, these issues are similar to the ones on the political agendas
of those engaged in the process of European integration. Thus the outlook
changes and this requires a reconsideration of history that is more attentive to
the flows of cultural exchange between peoples. For example, in the 1990s
some scholars attributed the start of Westernisation in Eastern Europe to
Germanic penetration eastwards.30 However, this observation prompted an
approach that was as Euro-Western-centric as it was limiting, as it favoured
once again the route going from Central Europe towards the Volga, under-
estimating the dense, multidirectional network of relations already present
during the Byzantine-Carolingian conflict, which then developed further as a
result of Venice’s trade with the Orient (through the Balkans), as well as cul-
tural and technical-scientific flows that reached Europe for centuries from
China or other Arab countries by way of the Middle East, Sicily, Muslim
Spain and the Sublime Porte. Just as important was the influence of Hellenic
nationalism in the early 1800s on English romanticism; the role played by the
Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish diasporas in all European culture; the reci-
procal limitations that arose between German and Serbian folklore; not to
mention, finally, the cultural métissage promoted by the Roma’s nomadic life.
These are just some examples, but they tell us much about the transversal
and culturally integrated European hinterland, which made it possible to
trace the outline of the eastern part of the continent, in which the construction
of modernity subsequently rooted itself.
208 Conclusion
Considering this hinterland, it was inevitable that modernity – beyond its
economic-social dimension – had to contend with the difference, or with the
existing cultural, ethnic and religious polyphony existing within the same poli-
tical society and which “contaminates” and produces métissage, but the rejec-
tion of which opened conflicts that turned out to be at times incurable,
especially when it came to the problem of building the nation-state. In other
words, since its origin, the process of achieving modernity (in itself homo-
genising) in Eastern Europe has had to cope with the requirements of gov-
ernability dictated by a typically post-modern element such as diversity. This
had to be done while taking note – often with great difficulty – of the
dynamics stemming from cultural complexity, inescapable because it was a
product of inevitable syncretism and métissage.31
So largely anticipating the theories of Aronowitz, Huyssens or Carol
Gilligan,32 Eastern Europe found itself having to construct modernity con-
cretely under partially post-modern conditions. This helps us to understand
perhaps better and more effectively the torment caused by the search for
models that could keep pace with the challenges coming from the West and,
at the same time, respond to situations originally characterised solely by
ethno-cultural diversity, and subsequently by the interweaving of this and an
increasingly complex political and social situation. To this, new pressures for
emancipation were gradually added (for example, of workers, women, youth
and, after the fall of communism, homosexuals) and new forms of living
together, starting with the family.
In sum, the process that has marked daily life with intense debate, project
formulations and profound changes – the construction of a way of living
with modernity – by the various countries that are part of the East European
constellation, had to contend over time with the relation between devel-
opment and differences, revealing a dimension of lively and stimulating
relevance.
In the meantime, if one widens the objective of analysis, once can see how
the push for European integration in the 1990s and enlargement to the East at
the beginning of the new century, the acceleration of the processes of non-EU
immigration and internal EU mobility, the intensification of networks of
relationships, the harmonisation of legislation and deepening, have posed new
challenges to governability in the European Union. In this case, too, these are
challenges that increasingly affect the ability of its institutions to manage
effectively the pieces of a polyphonic and extraordinary mosaic: a mosaic that
is as variegated as it is still incomplete, in which syncretism and métissage
represent richness and not a loss of values, in that they ensure the future of
Europe. The contrary, or the defence of inexistent purity, in addition to being
anti-historic, would inevitably lead its peoples to sterility and dissolution.
Governing this mosaic of cultures and the métissage that stems from it, is
transforming European integration into a perspectively post-modern and
above all objectively shared political reality, at least on the level of transversal
problems to be dealt with in the near future, and those medium-term ones
 Conclusion 209
from finance to security, from environment to protecting cultural heritage,
and from social policies to higher education.

Notes
1 See in particular Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization,
op. cit.
2 Compare Amartya Sen, “Human Rights and Asian Values: What Lee Kuan Yew
and Le Peng Don’t Understand about Asia”, The New Republic n. 2–3, 1997; and
Xiaorong Li, “‘Asian Values’ and the Universality of Human Rights”, Report from
the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy vol. 16, n. 2, Spring 1996.
3 Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Incomplete Project”, in H. Foster (ed.), The
Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture, Bay Press, Port Townsend, WA,
1983.
4 The topic of identity and the nation-state does not pertain to our study for reasons
already mentioned in the Introduction, but it constantly comes up in combination
with the topic of development and its reference models. To save time we refer the
reader to the extensive literature on this topic, from which we suggest for an initial
approach the following studies: Federico Chabod, L’idea di nazione, Laterza, Bari,
1979; Jean Plumyène, Le nazioni romantiche, Sansoni, Firenze, 1982 (original,
Les Nations Romantiques. Histoire du Nationalisme. Le XIXe siècle, Fayard, Paris,
1979); Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalisms, op. cit.; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations
and Nationalisms since 1789: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1990; Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Basil
Blackwell, Oxford, 1986; as well as Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil. Conflict
and Cooperation in Eastern Europe, Westview Press, Boulder, 1995; Rogers Bruba-
ker, Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New
Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996; Geoffrey Hosking and
George Schöpflin, Myths and Nationhood, Hurst, London, 1997; Milan Kangrga,
Nacionalizam ili demokratija, Razlog, Zagreb, 2002; Jyoti Puri, Encountering
Nationalism, Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2004. For my part, as I was already inter-
ested in the topic, please refer to my Sarajevo le radici dell’odio, Edizioni Associate,
Roma, 2003 (III ed.); and Partitions. Reshaping States and Minds (written with
Rada Iveković, Ranabir Samaddar and Sanjay Chaturvedi), Frank Cass, London,
2005.
5 See Boris B. Gorshkov, “Debating ‘Backwardness’ in Russian History”, in AAASS
Newsnet vol. 47, n. 2, 2007, 3.
6 In Croatia both Hrvatska Pučka Seljačka Tiskara and Seljačka sloga were active in
the publishing field, whereas in Sibinj a peasant theatre was founded, but also in
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania peasant literature or literature
dealing with the peasantry flourished, while sociological institutes, for example in
L’viv and Bucharest, dedicated books and journals to the history and culture of the
villages. Subsequently even international anthropology addressed these topics and
names like Dimitri Gusti, Henri and Paul Stahl, Joel and Barbara Halpern, Joseph
Obrebski and David Anderson conducted studies in this field. See among others
David Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism, op. cit.,
pp. 143–46.
7 On the formation and development of Soviet territorial policies compare the cri-
tical analysis of Glauco d’Agostino, Governo del territorio in Unione Sovietica.
Politiche territoriali e sviluppo regionale 1917–1991, Gangemi, Roma, 1993, espe-
cially pp. 46–63; with Richard Cartwright Austin, Building Utopia. op. cit.; and
Alan M. Ball, Imagining America. op. cit.
210 Conclusion
8 Michel Mouskhély (ed.), L’URSS. Droit, économie, sociologie, politique et culture,
Sirey, Paris, 1962–64, vol. II.
9 Compare Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, op. cit.
10 See Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, The Open Court
Company, London, 1922, especially VI, VIII and XII.
11 Andrea Graziosi, citing Michael Confino, points out how the NEP was interpreted
to a large extent by the peasants especially in Ukraine as a confirmation of the
feasibility and plausibility of “peasant utopia”, not just propagandised by East
European agrarian parties, but also very much a part of rebellious Ukrainian and
Cossack peasants’ programmes in 1918–19. See Andrea Graziosi, The Great Soviet
Peasant War. Bolsheviks and Peasants 1917–1933, op. cit., pp. 24–25, 41.
12 Like Mazzini, when it came to the question of self-determination of peoples in
terms of secession in Lenin’s writings from 1916 and subsequent years, Lenin
frankly expressed the conviction that the “state’s minimum size” was essential for
ensuring an acceptable standard of nutrition and the prospect of well-being for the
population, to the point of making the working class’s attitude in favour of secession
conditional upon a “minimum size”.
13 In the course of the 19th century protectionism – for the purpose of consolidating
national industry before entering into competition on international markets with
other countries’ production – was pursued without hesitation by the governments
in London which maintained 20% tariffs on imports until 1860, reducing them to
10% up to 1879 and to 6% only in 1880. Protectionism, justified by national
interest, was theoretically elaborated and scientifically supported by Friedrich List
and the German school of economic history, of which Gustav von Schmoller was
one of the most famous exponents. On this subject compare the volume by Roman
Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism. Karl Marx versus Friedrich List, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1988, especially chapter 13 on Russia; with Witold Kula,
The Problems and Methods of Economic History, op. cit., pp. 140–41; as well as
John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of the Western Civilisation, op. cit., p. 251.
14 On Soviet policies in the 1920s, see for more detail Anna di Biagio, Le origini
dell’isolazionismo sovietico. L’Unione Sovietica e l’Europa dal 1918 al 1928, Angeli,
Milano, 1990.
15 The fear of worldwide revolution had disturbed the sleep of European
conservatives since the time of de Maistre. It was he who first prognosticated the
possibility of a worldwide revolution starting from Russia and expanding over
Europe, decreeing its decline. Even though communism was still not a widespread
term at the time of the Congress of Vienna, there was still a phobia that lasted
throughout the entire 20th century, during which revolutions followed each other
with growing intensity. See Dieter Groh, La Russia e l’autocoscienza d’Europa, op.
cit., pp. 130–31.
16 For example, think from this perspective of the impact the Greek Civil War, the
Korean War and the Vietnam War had in the West, as well as the defeat of the Bay
of Pigs and the Sandinista revolution, followed by – during Brezhnev’s nuclear
parity – the Soviet penetration of the Horn of Africa and the Soviet-Chinese
competition in Angola and Mozambique.
17 The West’s secular predisposition for free markets is a myth that one Anglo-
American school of thought in the international literature has dismantled over the
last decades, with solid arguments and factual analysis. Compare, in this vein,
Peter Flora, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe 1815–1975, vol. I,
Macmillan, London, 1983, pp. 281ff.; and John Hobson, The Wealth of States, op.
cit., pp. 19–20, 210–11; as well as Hobson, The Eastern Origins, op. cit., p. 289.
18 See the Soviet leader’s significant speech of the 25 December 1991, when he was
forced to abandon his office due to the dissolution of the USSR: “We Opened
Ourselves to the World”, in Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism. A
 Conclusion 211
Documentary History of Eastern Europe since 1945, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1996, pp. 292–94.
19 A stimulating collection of studies is the book edited by Leonidas Donskis and
.
Ineta Dabašinskiene, European Memory. A Blessing of a Curse? Longo, Ravenna,
2010.
20 Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000 (quotation from
Italian edn, p. 14).
21 Here we refer to political democratic claims which in the 1800s played a crucial
role in reducing the liberalism of the early part of the century and its mistrust of
the state. This does not mean that these ideas were not attractive or influential in
Eastern Europe as well, but here it is important to emphasise how some typically
democratic values, such as solidarity and equality (the latter perceived more as
egalitarianism) arose following their own internal paths.
22 On the conception of space in the USSR and Russia, see Silvio Fagiolo, La Russia
di Gorbaciov, Angeli, Milano, 1988, pp. 122–29; and George Kennan, Possiamo
coesistere? Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1982.
23 “Post-modern” is a highly contested concept in politics and literature; however, I
personally think that our European societies are facing dramatic changes that go
far behind the attributes of modernity. Particularly, they are increasingly char-
acterised by polyphonies, métissages, diversities (from gender to generations, from
sexual orientations to cultures or multiple religious prescriptions), and hetero-
geneity. All these elements are, in my view, bridging to a post-modern society as
they are liquefying the pre-existing, modern, homogeneous links of the nation-
state, full sovereignty, state religion, standardised language, group identity and the
heterosexual family (with its notions of morality, virility and respectability).
Following Zygmunt Bauman’s inspirations, and meditating on the growing societal
diversities, I see post-modernity as a prospectively “post nation-state cultural
society”, based on métissages, multiple differences and identities, shared sover-
eignty, multi-level governance, and a high level of people’s mobility, the attributes
of which are already in place, but the acceptance (and democratic management) of
which could be a painful process and may lead to new (trans-national) confronta-
tions. See Leonidas Donskis (ed.), Yet Another Europe after 1984. Re-thinking
Milan Kundera and the Idea of Central Europe, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2012.
24 Little has been written on the complex relationship between pre-modern, modern
and post-modern in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, see in particular Raivo Vetik,
Estonian Nationalism: Premodern, Modern and Postmodern, presentation prepared
for a conference at the State University of Tallinn, “Contested Modernities: An
Interdisciplinary Approach”, Käsmu, 14–15 August 2006, and George Schöpflin’s
reply, as well as that of Raivo Vetik, “The Cultural and Social Makeup of Estonia”, in
Pal Kolstø (ed.), National Integration and Violent Conflict in Post-Soviet Societies,
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2002.
25 Mutatis mutandis, this behaviour was not that different from the resistance to neo-
liberalism which emerged in the West between the 20th and 21st centuries, parti-
cularly in France, Germany, Italy and Austria, where the diffusion of public property
and the welfare state, of social-democratic and Christian-social origins (according
to a logic not far removed from rural solidaristic and East European communist
cultures) appeared in these countries’ predominant opinion to be in conflict with
trends of economic globalisation, based on privatisation, delocalisation, and the
transfer of fiscal and decision-making offices in a global approach that entailed
denationalising the state.
26 Edward Said, Orientalism, Penguin, London, 1991 [1978].
27 Compare on this topic Martin Bernal, Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of
Classical Civilization, Vintage, London, 1991; and Linda Weiss and John Hobson,
States and Economic Development, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995; Clive
212 Conclusion
Trebilcock, The Industrialization of the Continental Powers 1870–1914, Longman,
London, 1981.
28 See the interesting West-East comparative diagrams in Hobson, The Eastern
Origins, op. cit., pp. 8, 16.
29 The old EU member states were increasingly absorbed by their Euro-Western-
Centrism and anti-Islamic phobia, particularly after 11 September 2001. As a
result, they did not realise which unprecedented problems the new minorities and
migratory flows were generating in the new member states after the 2004 enlarge-
ment: actually, Central-Eastern Europe – from Estonia to Bulgaria, from Poland to
Slovakia, not to mention Serbia – also because of the USSR’s and non-aligned
Yugoslavia’s “Third World” policies after the 1960s, began to attract unexpected
flows of Chinese, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Moldavians and Africans. See for
example, Carla Tonini, “Poland after Schengen. Bridge into East or Bulwark of
Europe?”, in Stefano Bianchini, George Schöpflin and Paul Shoup (eds), Post-
Communist Transition as a European Problem, Longo, Ravenna, 2002, pp. 105–15;
and Luisa Chiodi (ed.), The Borders of the Polity. Migrations and Security across
the EU and the Balkans, Longo, Ravenna, 2005.
30 See, for example, Domenico Caccamo, Introduzione alla storia dell’Europa Orientale,
La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma, 1991, pp. 103–30.
31 See in particular Ihab Hassan, “The Culture of Postmodernism”, Theory, Culture
and Society n. 3, vol. II, 1985, 119–32.
32 Compare on this subject, Paul A. Bové, “The Ineluctability of Difference: Scientific
Pluralism and the Critical Intelligence”, in Jonathan Arac (ed.), Postmodernism
and Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986; Andreas Huyssens,
“Mapping the Post-Modern”, New German Critique n. 33, 1984, 5–52; Carol
Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1982; Stanley Aronowitz, The Crisis in
Historical Materialism: Class, Politics and Culture in Marxist Theory, Praeger,
New York, 1981.
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Index
Abalkin, Leonid Ivanovich 165, 176,
184n31
Abortion 14, 88, 102, 126
Abosch, Heinz 106n32
Academy: Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences 61n27, 230; Russian
Academy of Sciences 36–37; Serbian
Academy of Sciences 61n27; Smorgon
Academy 47, 52, 60n12; Narodnik
academies 153, USSR Academy of
Sciences 105n26, 156, 165, 184n30
Accumulation: capital of 13, 32, 97, 98;
policies of 117; primary 32; primitive
socialist 17, 91, 93, 97–98, 106n29,
129, 196; sources of 96; usury 14;
wealth 34
Adanir, Fikret 39n12
Adler, Aleksandr 142n5
Aeroflot 136
Afanasyev, Viktor Grigoryevich 182n12
Afghanistan: 134; Soviet invasion of
154, 182n8, 197; withdrawal from
167, 173
Aganbegyan, Abel Gyozevich 165,
184n31
Agosti, Aldo 104n10, 104n12, 105n16
Agrarian Left 66
Agrarian Parties: 18, 57, 64–65, 71–72,
79, 82n14, 86, 110, 210n11
Agriculture (see also collectivization):
14, 17, 35, 75–77, 80–81, 85, 97, 126,
135, 167, 192, 197; and industry 5, 15,
58, 64, 68, 76, 79, 93, 96, 98, 101, 109,
111, 165, 191, 195, 204; and rural
organisation 58; capitalist agriculture
39n7; mechanisation of 48; investment
in 97
Agurski, Mikhail 23n21
Aksakov, Ivan Sergeyevich 54
Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeyevich 54
Akselrod, Pavel Borisovich 53
Alberico, Anna, 53
Albania 35, 125, 129–30, 150, 156, 158,
194
Alexander I (Russian Czar) 43, 59n2
Alexander II (Russian Czar) 43, 49,
61n17
Allcock, John B. 22n13
Algeria 138, 140
Amalrik, Andrei Alekseevich 163,
183n26
American myth 180
Anarchism 5, 42
Ancien Régime 26, 56
Anderson, Benedict 6, 21n7
Anderson, David 209n6
Anderson, Kyrill M. 106n35
Andreyeva, Nina Aleksandrovna 168,
176, 185
Andrić, Savo 61n26
Anti-Communism 88, 108
Anti-fascism: 145n19; anti-fascist coalition
109–10; anti-fascist struggle 140
Anti-imperialism: 140; anti-imperialist
134, 137
Anti modernism: anti-modernist
aristocrat 37; anti-modernist values
76; anti-modernist wing of 57; beliefs
157; Catholic Church's 31; cultural
orientations 57; movement 191
Anti-Semitism: 4, 32, 43, 68, 76, 88, 108,
205; anti-Semitic fanaticism 193;
gestures 168; prejudice 43; tendencies
23n19; anti-Semitic views 76
Antohi, Sorin 22n13
Antonio, Robert J. 23n17
Anweiler, Oskar 186n48, 186n50
Arac, Jonathan 212n32

Aral sea 155
Arbatov, Georgy Arkadyevich 198
Aristocracy: 28; 29, 32, 34, 37, 43, 44,
49, 69, 71; aristocracy (and war), 33;
landed aristocracy 4, 9, 29, 32, 109,
191, 193; dvorjane 33; magnate
aristocracy 37; privileges of the 5, 9
Arkin, Markus 21n5; 104n9
Aron, Raymond 162;
Aronowitz, Stanley 208, 212n32
Artel 50, 61n19
Armenia 178
Arzumanian, A.A. 127
Asian Values 189, 209n2
Aslund, Anders 184n31,
Atatürk (see Kemal Mustafa)
Ausch, Sándor 146n28
Austin, Cartwright Richard 100,
106n33, 210n7
Autarky: 21n1, 38, 58, 148n51, 194, 196,
200, 204; conditions, 196; culture 26,
35; autarkic-nationalist views 67, 177;
protectionism 200, 203; context of 54;
dimension 99; isolationism 102, 163;
model 29; prospect 99; resistance 43;
system 198; tendencies 159; vision 111
Austria 8, 10, 28, 211n25
Austria-Hungary (see Austro-Hungarian
Empire)
Austro-Hungarian Empire 5, 15, 32, 57,
71
Autonomy: 7, 8, 43, 121, 166, 170–71,
191, 202; administrative autonomy
66, 73, 131, 171; decision-making
autonomy 35, 115–16, 122, 128;
enterprise autonomy 116–17, 119,
122, 124, 127–28, 138, 165, 167–69,
172, 197; from Moscow 130–31; of
civil societies 15; of magistracy 22n13;
union autonomy 128, 130; Yugoslav
autonomy 122
Avramović, Mihailo 79, 84n29
Azerbaijan 178
Bairoch, Paul 38n1
Bajt, Aleksandar 122
Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich 5, 42,
44, 50, 52, 61n20, 62n35, 191
Backwardness: XVI, 1, 10, 13, 25–41,
45, 58, 61n23, 62n28, 76, 97, 117, 135,
146n31, 148n55, 195–96, 209n5,
210n9; and development 2, 5, 16, 13,
26, 29, 54, 73, 91, 200–202, 204;
legacies of XIII; of Eastern Europe
Index 233
22n15, 28, 16, 36, 39n11, 39n16;
origins of 28, 39n11, 39n12, 39n16,
39n17; in South Eastern Europe 28;
in Russia 39n16, 97, 209n5; of
Czechoslovak society 117
Balkan federation 52, 74
Ball, Alan M. 22n12, 105n24, 106n34,
148n49, 209n7
Bandung (conference of) 121, 139–40,
149n64, 149n65
Barman, Ömer L. 40n24
Bauer, Otto 5
Beck, Ulrich 202, 211n20
Békés, Csaba 145n22, 145n24
Belavezha 178, 178, 187n63
Belarus: 3, 66, 87, 89, 125, 177–78,
189
Belgium 1, 25, 69
Belinsky, Vissarion Grigoryevich 45–46,
60n10, 191
Bell, John 81n3
Belyaev, Ivan Dimitriyevich 56, 62n36
Berend, Iván T. 39n10, 62n30, 84n34,
155, 181n4, 182n7, 182n10, 182n13
Berg, Aksel Ivanovich 159
Berlin wall 188
Bernal, Martin 38n2, 211n27
Bertone, Franco 144n17
Besançon, Alain 162, 183n22
Beszélö (samizdat journal) 158
Bettanin, Fabio 142n2, 142n4
Bettelheim, Charles 105n18
Bezbozhnik (weekly) 88
Bhabha, Homi K. XVII
Bialer, Seweryn 142n4, 186n56
Biagini, Antonello 147n41
Bianchini, Stefano 144n16, 145n 26,
147n37, 147n45, 149n66, 181n5,
185n43, 212n29
Bibó, István 76, 83n24
Bićanić, Rudolf 84n31, 145n26
Biénkowski, Wladyslaw 119
Bierut, Boleslaw 120, 145n19
Bimbi, Guido 143n13
Birman, Alexandr Mikhailovich 115,
117, 143n7
Black, Cyril 62n29
Blagoev, Dimitar 53, 62n28,
Blok, Alexander Alexsandrovich 87
Boban, Ljubo 81n1, 81n2
Bobbio, Norberto 23n17
Bobchev, Stefan S. 61n27
Bobrowski, Czeslaw 116, 143n10
Boehme, Hans 143n12
234 Index
Boffa, Giuseppe 148n50, 162, 182n12,
183n23, 185n41, 186n58
Boffito, Carlo 145n26, 181n3, 181n5
Bidlo, Jaroslav XIII
Big spurt (see Take off) 32
Bogetić, Dragan 146n25, 149n66
Bogetić, Olivera 146n25
Bogoslovskii, Viktor Vasilevich 148n61
Böhme, Hans (see Boehme)
Boia, Lucian 146n31
Bolshevism: 11, 19, 22n10, 23n21, 64,
80–81, 88, 109, 111, 125, 134, 179,
192–93, 195, 198
Borba (daily) 131, 147n44
Borejsza, Jerzy W. 82n11
Botev, Hristo 53, 61n27
Bourgeoisie: 5, 14, 32–33, 37, 47, 65, 67,
73, 76, 81, 95, 119, 137
entrepreneurial 9; national 4;
neo-bourgeoisie 4; urban 70, 110
Bosnia-Herzegovina 34, 40n26
Bové, Paul A. 212n32
Brandt, Willy 124,198
Breccia, Alfredo 81n2
Brenner, Robert 39n16
Brera, Paolo 60n4, 181n5, 182n11,
185n41
Breslauer, George 162, 183n23
Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich 11, 112, 124,
127, 129, 146n34, 151–52, 154,
156–57, 159–62, 181n1,187, 204,
210n16; doctrine 173, 175, 180,
180n1; stagnation 200
Briand, Aristide 10
Brioni 121
Brodsky, Joseph XIV
Brown, Archie 184n25
Broz, Josip (see Tito)
Brubaker, Rogers 209n4
Brudny, Yitzhak M. 185n39
Brunazzi, Marco 60n3
Brus, Wlodzimierz 143n10, 145n27
Brusilov, Aleksey Alekseyevich (Russian
general) 103n4
Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. 144n18, 163,
183n26
Bugajski, Janusz 209n4
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich 91–93,
95–97, 99, 101, 104n15, 105n25,
106n30, 106n31, 107n41, 129, 142n5,
167, 194–95
Bulgaria: 3, 6, 9, 11, 23n23, 51–53,
61n27, 62n27, 62n28, 64, 67–68,
72–74, 77–80, 81n3, 82n7, 83n26,
84n28, 86, 89–91, 93, 104n10, 117,
119–20, 124, 127, 129, 143n12,
152–56, 158, 175, 189, 196,
212n29
Bulgarian Agrarian National Union 67,
81n3, 78, 93
Bunce, Valerie 181n1
Burke, John Francis XVII
Burlatsky, Fedor Mikhailovich 165,
184n30
Burma 121, 134, 138, 140
Buttino, Marco 82n10
Byrne, Malcolm 145n22
Caccamo, Domenico 23n21, 39n8,
212n30
Caccamo, Francesco 82n10
Cafagna, Luciano 148n54, 148n55,
148n58
Callari Galli, Matilde XVI, XVII, 21n1
Camp: Euro-Atlantic Camp 139; Soviet/
Socialist Camp XIV, 17, 19, 109,
111–12, 117–18, 120, 122–27, 130,
132–34, 137, 140–41, 144n18, 145n25,
146n28, 149n61, 151, 153–62, 166,
173–75, 177, 179, 181n1, 183n19,
194, 197–200, 202; two Camps
(competition) 111, 154, 156–58,
168, 173, 189, 199; Western Camp
181n1
Capitalism: 4–5, 16, 22n17, 31, 39n10,
44–48, 53–55, 62n30, 72, 75–76,
80–81, 85, 87, 106n29, 111–13,
133–34, 147n48, 162, 190, 195;
anti-capitalism 194; capitalism and
Bolshevism 54, 71–72, 80–81, 111,
162; controversy over 23n19, 42,
44–45, 51, 59n1, 60n11, 60n13, 64,
190; Euro-Atlantic 20; surpassing
capitalism 133; Western 72, 204
Carol (king of Romania) 68
Carr, Edward H. 23n20, 61n20, 94,
104n11, 104n14, 105n21, 105n23,
106n27
Carter, Jimmy (James Earl) 182n8
Castro, Fidel 199
Cataluccio, Francesco M. 147n39
Catherine II, the Great or Yekaterina
Alexeevna (Russian Empress) 35,
38n4, 189
Catholicism: 5–7, 20, 28, 31–33, 37, 56,
63n38, 65–66, 88, 108, 125, 189, 207;
Greek 88, 108, 207; Uniate 5
Cazes, Bernard 148n54

Ceauşescu, Nicolae 23n23, 130, 150
Chaadaev, Pyotr or Petr Yakovlevich,
54, 62n34
Chabod, Federico 209n4
Chagall, Marc 87
Chamberlin, William H. 23n20, 94,
105n21
Chang, Ha-Joon 82n9
Charta 77: 158
Chaturvedi, Sanjay 209n4
Che, Guevara (Guevara de la Serna
Ernesto) 199
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 19
Chernobyl 155, 165–66, 184n33
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Gavrilovich 46,
48, 52–53, 60n14, 190
Chernyi Peredel 49, 61n18
Chiang, Kai-Shek 148n51
Chicherin, Georgy Vasilyevich 92
Chiodi, Luisa 212n29
Chirot, Daniel 28, 39n11, 39n12, 39n16,
39n17
Christianity: XV, 2, 5–7, 31–32, 34, 43,
46, 48, 55–57, 63n38, 66, 70. 74, 88,
205, 211m25
China: 61n22, 102, 132, 139–41, 148n51,
149n65, 156, 167, 179,187n64,
187n65, 188–89, 200, 203–4, 207
Church (see Catholicism, Christianity,
Islam, Orthodoxy, Protestantism and
Religions)
Churchill, Winston 110, 168, 199
Cipolla, Carlo M. 39n12
Clark, Colin 135–36, 148n56
Clements, Barbara 104n6, 146n35
Coexistence: 86, 120; peaceful
coexistence, 139, 149n64
Cohen, Stephen 104n15, 106n30, 163,
183n25, 185n45
Colar, Daniel 149n64
Coleman, Fred 162, 183n24
collectivisation: 90, 101–2, 120, 139,
146n28
Collotti, Pischel Enrica 149n65, 187n64
Colton, Timothy J. 162, 183n22
Comecon (CMEA): 123–24, 137–38,
146n28, 146n31, 174, 182n11
Commissions: Brandt 198; Krajger and
Vrhovec 147n45; Palme 198; Piller
145n23; Wilson’s 10
Committee: Central Committee 126,
145n23, 159, 168, 176, 184n35,
185n44, 185n45, 185n47; Komintern
Executive 90–91; Joint Distribution
Index 235
95; Lublin Committee 110;
Management Committees 118
Commonwealth: British 148n51; of
Independent States 178, 187n63; of
Slavic States 178; Polish-Lithuanian
2, 7
Communist Party: 110, 128, 159, 170,
172, 180, American 106n35;
Bulgarian 62n28, 78, 89, 104;
Czechoslovak 93; Manifesto of the
204; Romanian 146n31; of Soviet
Union (CPSU) 98, 108, 113, 121, 126,
129, 160, 164, 168, 182n12, 184n27,
184n35, 185n40, 185n44, 185n45,
185n47, 186n51, 197, 199; Yugoslav
131–32, 147n42
Community: bratstvo 35; business 135;
European 174; farming 55; fis 35;
integrated 174; international 161; of
states 177; mir 35, 42, 48, 56, 75;
obshchina 35, 42–44, 47–48, 50,
55–56; rod 35; peasant 191; rural
44–45, 50, 54, 192; sat 35; self-
sufficient 73; sense of 95; service 67;
social 189; transnational 88; village
50, 62n35, 190; zadruga 35, 40n28,
52, 84n30
Conference: All Union 168, 185n44,
186n51; Balkan 80, 84n33; Bandung
(see Bandung conference); Bellagio
29, 39n16; for Kafka’s rehabilitation
128; Genoa 94, 195; Helsinki
conference 153, 158; Krestintern
founding 91; Krestintern second
conference 91; of Czechoslovak
councils 118; of 81 Communist and
Workers’ parties 137; of Non-Aligned
Movement 121; on Polish socialism
116; Yugo-Bulgarian 61n27
Confino, Michael 210n11
Conquest, Robert 107n40
Constantine (Roman Emperor), 63n38
Conte, Francis XIII, 41n28, 61n19
Corni, Gustavo 182n15
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nikolaus
of 10
Crampton, Richard J. 84n32, 143n12
Cordon sanitaire 94, 198
Cosmopolitanism 4, 10, 70, 168, 201
Council of Europe 189
Council: Association 91; as Soviet 44,
183n23; Executive Council of the
Soviets 171; Polish State Economic
116; provincial (zemstvos) 43;
236 Index
Revolution of 68, 82n8; Security
Council 139; Soviet provincial
economic 127; Yugoslav Political-
Social 172; Workers’ 118, 128, 131,
144n17, 170–71, 186n48
Counter Reformation 5, 7
Crankshaw, Edward 142n4, 148n50
Creationism 10, 61n17; theories of 56
Crespi Reghizzi, Gabriele 181n5
Csepeli, György 82n6
Croatia: 6–7, 34, 125, 129, 181n1, 196,
209n6
Croatian Peasant Party 65, 76, 84n31,
92
Csikós-Nagy, Béla 122
Culture: autarkic culture see autarky;
alternative 87; American 100; and
freedom 170; and iconography 193;
art and 95; education and 79–80,
187n66; globalization and 202; history
and 79; humanistic 19, Islamic 6;
Jewish 9; national culture 79; of
mutability 203; of postmodernism
211n23, 212n31; modern 206, 209n3;
peasant and rural 65, 76, 79, 84n31,
191, 202, 209n6; popular and local
63n38, 75; physiocratic 9; political 7,
17, 23n22, 35, 71, 75–76, 198–99; 128;
pre-modern 202–3, 207; production
and 85; religious 55, 63n38; Russian
and Slavic 45, 54–56, 62n33, 178,
186n50; socialist and Soviet 139, 186,
200, 210n8; understanding 157; urban
67–68; Western or Central-West
European 2, 19, 26, 174, 189, 207
Cvetković-Maček, (Agreement), 81n2
Czech republic 12
Czechoslovakia: XIV, 12, 65–66, 68, 72,
77, 79–80, 81n1, 86, 108, 117, 120,
122, 124, 129, 144n17, 144n23, 152,
155, 158, 169, 187n59, 196, 209n6
Da̧bal, Tomasz 91
Da̧bski, Jan 66
D’Agostino, Glauco 209n7
Dallago, Bruno 143n13
Daniels, Robert 94, 105n21, 107n39,
143n12, 149n64, 163, 182n12, 183n17,
183n22, 186n58
Danilevsky, Nikolay Yakovlevich 56,
62n36, 63n37, 63n38
Danube-Balkan area/region 28, 110,
188
Darwin, Charles 49, 52, 60n16, 192
Darwinism: 10, 49, 56, 60n16, 61n16
Davies, Robert W. 184n37, 185n48
Dawisha, Karen 183n25
Day, Richard B. 106n32
Debogori-Mokrijevič, Vladimir 53
Decembrists 43–44; 59n2
De Custine, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor
(marquis) 37, 41n33
De Maistre, Joseph 37, 41n33, 210n15
D’Encausse, Hélène Carrère 142n4, 163,
183n26
Delsol, Chantal 83n22
Democracy: 19, 22n10, 22n13, 23n22,
80, 119, 128, 147n48, 172, 179,
183n17, 186n50, 187n64, 188–89,
193–94, 202–3; direct 169, 171;
people’s 20, 120–21, 128, 151, 175,
194, 197; rural or peasant 67, 78
Deng, Xiaoping 179, 188
Denmark 68, 71
Derluguian, Georgi 183n25, 187n65
Deutscher, Isaac 105n18, 133, 142n1,
147n46, 148n60
Despotism XIV, 44, 188, 190
De-Stalinisation: 17, 19, 108, 111,
113–14, 120–21, 138, 142n4, 143n5,
154, 180, 194
Development: XIV, XVIn1, 1, 2, 5, 11,
13, 15, 17, 18, 20–21, 24n24, 25–30,
32, 35–38, 38n1, 39n10, 39n16, 40n20,
40n21, 41n32, 42, 44, 47, 51, 52,
57–59, 62n30, 63n38, 64, 67, 70,
84n34, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95–96,
99–100, 102–3, 104n10, 105n19, 109,
111–13, 117, 122, 124, 132, 136,
140–41, 142n5, 146n28, 151–53,
156–59, 165, 170, 173, 175–77,
180–81, 182n7, 182n12, 184n30,
186n51, 189–90, 194, 198, 201–2, 205,
208, 212n27, 212n32; and
backwardness (see backwardness);
and modernity XV–XVI, 1, 11,
16–17, 28, 52, 65, 110; capitalist
model of 18, 42, 137, 141; cultural 8,
46, 197; industrial XIII, 1, 14, 35, 55,
76, 80, 96–97, 108–9, 119, 193, 202;
non-capitalist model of 134, 137, 141,
148n61; patterns/models of 76, 85, 93,
108, 111, 116, 133, 135–38, 140–41,
148n61, 150, 154, 159, 169, 175,
178–79, 181, 195, 197–98, 200, 201,
204, 209n4; “Prussian model” of 9;
rural 54, 72, 74–77, 79–80, 93,
146n31; socialist model of 49, 204,

209n7; sustainable 80, 206; transitory
137; urban 7, 97, 193
Di Biagio, Anna 210n14
Diamond, Larry 22n13
Diasporas: 2–4, 5, 8–9, 14, 25, 190;
Armenian 2, 108; Bulgarian 51;
Chinese 139; German 2; Greek 2, 108;
Jewish 2, 4, 88, 207
Dictatorship: 72, 80; of the proletariat
78, 118, 120, 125, 131, 150, 197
Đilas, Milovan 129, 131, 147n41,
147n44,
Di Leo, Rita 186n49, 186n58
Dimitrov, Georgi Mihajlov (a Bulgarian
communist leader) 119, 145n19
Dimitrov, Georgi Mihov (a Bulgarian
activist agrarian leader) 77–78
Dimou, Augusta 61n24
Diversity: 29, 181, 186n56, 208; cultural
XVII, 204, 208; managing 206; of
experiences 123, 161; of interests 92,
172; of local peculiarities XV;
religious 207; social 203; socialist
194
Divorce 14, 48, 82n7, 88, 126, 187n59
Dizdarević, Raif 185n41
Dmowski, Roman 57
Dobb, Maurice 105n19, 142n5
Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin (born
Solomon Katz) 53, 62n29, 146n31
Dobrolyubov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich
46
Dogo, Marco 60n9
Donaldson, Robert H. 105n23, 186n56,
187n63
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich 43
Dowling, Maria 81n1
Dreyfus, Alfred 43
Dreyfus, Michel 146n35
Dubček, Alexander 20, 127, 175
Duma 44
Dunlop, John 186n58
Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste 105n22
Dvorník, František XIII
Dynner, Glen 40n21
Dzerzhinsky, Felix Edmundovich 95
Easter, Gerald M. 186n46
Economy: (see also market) 22n17,
39n16, 39n17, 72, 101, 109, 117, 127,
144n17, 152, 156, 161, 175, 178,
195–96; autarkic-nationalist 67;
Command 112, 114; extensive 117;
intensive 117; market economy 12,
Index 237
153, 181n5, 188; mixed 97; national
95, 182n12, 202; open 133; pastoral
28; political 99, 137, 143n9, 200;
peasant 137; rural 79; socialist
143n10; Soviet 94, 142n5, 165, 168,
184n30; transatlantic 136; village 35;
Western 210n17; World 2, 39n7, 127
Education: 6, 8, 17, 31, 36, 41n33,
62n28, 74, 78, 82, 109, 126, 150–51,
158, 182n7, 182n12, 187n66, 193; and
culture 79–80, 187n66; and equal
opportunity 190; classical 18;
compulsory 109; educational
networks 190; female 48; higher (or
secondary) 6, 72, 101, 110, 125, 209;
mass 37, 102, 196; narodnik 46–49,
52–53; political 52, 99; public 37, 88,
95; religious education 7, 31, 78;
technical 35–36; university 125
Egalitarianism: 5, 70, 109, 190, 194,
197, 202, 211
Egypt 121, 134
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 148n50
Emancipation: 4, 45, 208; female
125–26; human 190, 192–93; of serfs
5; of the working class 193–94
Engels, Friedrich 50, 61n22
English, Robert D. 22n11, 183n18,
187n60
Enlightenment: XIII, 10, 25, 27, 36,
38n3, 38n4, 46–47, 49, 50, 58, 190,
209n1; anti-enlightenment 75; Jewish
7, 9
Enterprises: 115–17, 120, 122, 124, 127,
151, 167, 169, 171–72; autonomy
115–17, 119, 122, 128, 138, 165–69,
172, 197; incentives 115; in the Soviet
system 114; management 95, 122, 124,
127, 130, 168–69; medium-sized 9,
167; planning 116; private 35, 120,
165; profits 115; self-management
131; participation 117–18
Environment: 28, 55, 59, 73–74, 79–80,
136, 153–57, 158–59, 166–67, 173,
175, 187n66, 191–92, 197, 204, 206,
209
Erlich, Alexander 93, 105n20
Euro-centric: conception 135; debate
135; mythology 26, 38n2; view 204
Estonia: 86, 211n24, 212n29
Ethiopia 121
European Union: 11, 13, 180, 187n66,
189, 208, 212n29
Europeanness: XIII, 45
238 Index
Fagiolo, Silvio 211n22
Falk, Barbara J. 182n9, 183n17
Fanara, E. 182n16
Farmers Union: 66, 78, 89
Fascism: 77–78, 82n11, 120, 145n19,
168
Federation: Balkan 53, 74, 78;
confederation of associations 50;
Czechoslovak 177; Czechoslovak-
Polish 83n26; European 77, 162; Slav
57; socialist 177, 181; Soviet 176;
Village confederation 40n28; Yugoslav
22n14, 130, 177; Yugoslav-Bulgarian
83n26
Federowicz, Michal 144n17
Fejtö, François 22n16, 142n1, 142n2,
144n17, 144n18, 145n23, 146n31
Ferrari, Aldo 185n39
Ferraris, Luigi Vittorio XVI, 182n16
Feuerbach, Ludwig 45–46, 52
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 54, 56, 195,
210n10
Finland XIV, 86
Firsov, Fridrikh Igorevich 106n35
Fischer, Bernd J. 147n41
Fischer-Galati, Stephen 184n29
Flek, Josef 122
Flora, Peter 210n17
Foa, Lisa 105n20, 106n30, 143n7
Ford, Henry 95, 100
Fordism 95
Fornaro, Pasquale 82n5
Fourastié, Jean 135–36, 148n56
Four common spaces 180, 187n66
Fourier, Charles 45
France: 1, 10, 25, 43–44, 56, 62n35, 69,
71, 94, 116, 124, 135, 162–63, 180,
211n25
Frankel, Jonathan 40n21
Freyn, Henry (and Co.) 99
Friedjung, Heinrich 15
Frolov, Ivan Timofeevich 159
Front: Farmer’s 77; national 121; People’s
78; popular 107n35; reform 176
Fubini, Anna Maria 60n3
Futurism 193
G8 180
Gabčikovo-Nagymáros, dam 155
Galeazzi, Marco 149n66
Garushiants, Iurii Misakovich 103n4
Gastev, Aleksei Kapitonovich 95
Gatrell, Peter 39n16
Gatti, Roberto 146n33, 147n39
Gellner, Ernst 6, 21n7, 83n16, 209n4
Gellner, Mihail 103n4
Gender: 2, 8, 82n12, 89; differences 126,
207, 211; discrimination 48;
opportunities 190; politics 146n35;
relations 14, 48, 87, 102, 190
General Electric 100
Generalić, Ivan 192
Genoa (see Conference)
Georgia 192
Germany: 1, 8,10, 19, 41n29, 51, 53, 69,
92, 101, 109, 135, 155, 173, 180, 198,
211n25; Federal Republic of 124, 158;
German Democratic Republic (GDR)
23n23, 113, 117, 124, 129, 136,
143n12, 152, 156, 158, 174
Gerschenkron, Alexander XIII, 31–32,
38n1, 40n20, 40n22, 41n32, 51,
61n23, 62n28, 135–36, 148n55, 210n9
Getzler, Israel 61n21, 186n50
Gibianskii, Leonid 142n2
Giddens, Anthony 13, 22n17
Gierek, Edward 152–53, 181n3
Gieysztor, Aleksander 81n1, 82n10
Gilligan, Carol 208, 212n32
Gitermann, Valentin 51, 61n22, 62n36
Glasnost 166, 168, 184n35, 185n38
Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich 19
Glinski, Dmitri 22n10,
Globalisation: 13, 21, 112, 140, 150,
159, 161, 164, 166, 170, 175, 177, 179,
180, 184n28, 197, 201–3, 211n25
Gmitruk, J. 83n26
Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich 46
Gökay, Bülent 181n4
Golden Bull 5
Goldman, Josef 123
Goldman, Marshal I. 143n8, 144n14
Goldman, Wendy 104n6
Goldstücker, Eduard 128, 147n37
Gomułka, Władysław 116,119, 152
Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich 17,
22n11, 155, 160, 163–70, 172–77,
179–80, 182n14, 183n18, 183n23,
184n29, 184n30, 184n31, 184n32,
184n33, 184n35, 184n37, 185n38,
185n40, 185n42, 185n44, 185n45,
185n47, 186n51, 186n56, 186n57,
187n65, 188, 197, 199, 200–201
Gori, Francesca 142n3, 147n39
Gorky, Maksim (born Alexei
Maximovich Peshkov) 19, 95
Gorshkov, Boris B. 209n5
Gosplan (see Plan)

Gospodarska Sloga 79
Gottwald, Klement 120–21
Gramsci, Antonio 119,
Grass, Günter 128, 147n37
Gratchev, Andreï 186n58
Graziosi, Andrea 106n36, 107n37,
107n38, 210n11
Great Depression 66, 87, 134
Great Britain: 10, 19, 25–26, 29, 36, 51,
60n16, 69, 77, 94, 136, 198
Great Leap Forward 139
Greece XIV, 109, 140
Greenspoon, Leonard J. 40n21
Gregory, Paul 41n31
Groh, Dieter 38n4, 41n30, 41n33,
210n15
Groppo, Bruno 147n35
Gross, Nachum 21n5, 22n8
Grosskopf, Sigrid 106n36
Groza, Petru 77
Gruzinski, Serge 1
Guerra, Adriano XVI, 103n4, 142n3,
144n18, 161–62, 181n2, 183n21,
183n24, 184n26
Guidetti, Massimo 28n41, 62n35
Guitard, Odette 149n65
Gunst, Péter 39n16
Gustafson, Thane 184n32
Gusti, Dimitri 209n6
Habakkuk, H. J. 40n24
Habermas, Jürgen 13, 22n17, 190, 209n3
Hájek, Miloš 147n39
Halecki, Oskar 24n23
Halpern, Barbara 209n6
Halpern, Joel 209n6
Hampel, Józef 83n26
Hanák, Péter 39n14,82n9, 83n23
Hanson, Philip 183n19
Hanson, Stephen 184n25
Hartwell, Ronald Max 38n1
Harvey, David 38n6,
Habsburg Empire 7, 9, 30, 40n21, 69
Hassan, Ihab 212n31
Haumann, Heiko 21n6, 60n3, 83n23
Haxthausen, August Franz von 37,
41n33, 56, 62n36
Haynes, John Earl 106n35
Heartland 10
Heffernan, Michael 32n11
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 45, 54,
56
Heinrich, Hans-Georg 143n12
Held, Joseph 23n19, 81n4, 82n6, 83n23
Index 239
Heller, Ágnes 125
Helsinki Accords (see Conference of
Helsinki)
Henry, of Valois 39n15
Herceg, Rudolf 73–74, 83n16, 83n19,
103n1
Herder, Johann Gottfried 36, 56, 83n21
Herzen Aleksandr Ivanovich, 23n19,
44–45, 52, 54, 60n7, 60n8, 61n18
Hewitt, Edward 146n29
Hirschon, Renée 82n10
Hitchins, Keith 81n1
Hitler, Adolf 80, 140
Ho, Chi Minh 199
Hobsbawm, Eric 41n35, 135, 148n55,
209n4
Hobson, John M. 38n2, 41n29, 41n31,
82n9, 148n53, 210n13, 210n17,
211n27, 212n28
Hodža, Milan 65, 86
Holmes, Leslie XVI, 182n9
Holy, Ladislav 187n59
Holocaust 88, 108
Holland 25, 71, 189
Holy Alliance 43
Homophobia 193
Homosexuality 102, 107n38, 208
Honecker, Erich 23n23, 152
Horowitz, Brion 40n21
Horvat, Branko 144n16
Horvat, Joža 84n31
Hosking, Geoffrey 209n4
Hough, Jerry 148n51, 148n60, 148n63
House Inquiry 10
Hoxha, Enver 24n23, 129–30, 150
Human rights: 157–58, 166, 170,
188–89, 207, 209n2
Hundred Flowers Campaign 139
Hungary: XIV, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 22n14,
23n23, 28, 32, 34, 37, 39n14, 64, 68,
71, 76–77, 82n5, 82n6, 82n8, 82n9,
108, 110, 113, 117–19, 122, 124, 127,
129, 143n12, 144n17, 145n24, 152–53,
155–56, 169, 175, 200, 209n6
Hutchinson, John 83n21
Huttenbach, Henry XV, 103n4
Huyssens, Andreas 208, 212n32
Iatrides, John 149n66
Identity: 5, 20, 21n4, 21n6, 22n9, 22n10,
24n24, 185n46, 197, 200, 206; and
modernity 21; and religion 5, 88; crisis
of 88; Croatian 195; group 211n23;
homogeneous 76; local 26;
240 Index
macroregional XIV; male 205;
national 13, 20, 75, 79, 81, 191, 193;
of peoples 20; patriarchal 195;
peasant 81; Russian cultural 178;
Slavic 56, 86; Soviet 195; state 20, 56,
194, 197, 209n4; symbology of 192;
Yugoslav 111
Igrunov, Vyacheslav 185n45, 186n51
Ilić, Mihailo 52
Imperialism: 41n31, 56, 58, 140
Indebtedness: 153, 157, 175, 196
India 61n22, 121, 134, 139–40
Indigenisation (see korenizatsya)
Industrial revolution: 1, 20, 25–29, 38n1,
52, 195, 201
Industrialisation (see also development,
modernity): XIV, 3, 9, 17–18, 32,
36–37, 50–51, 55, 59, 67, 72, 80, 85,
97, 109–10, 112, 123, 135, 141, 142n1,
146n31, 156, 192–93, 195; accelerated
96–97, 99, 102; and military
41n21; and Soviet–American
relations 106n33; Bulgarian 62n28;
de-industrialisation 202; gradual 101;
in Romania 123; Russian/Soviet 31,
88–89, 93, 99, 105n20, 106m29, 110,
196; Western 42, 193;
Industry: 106n28; and agriculture 5, 15,
58, 64, 68, 76–77, 79, 80, 93, 96, 98,
101, 109, 111, 165, 191, 195, 203; and
finance 71, 74–75; and handicraft 4;
and the city 81, 109, 111; and working
class 19; arms 80; chemical protected
41n29, 155; decline 89, 94; electricity
99; employment 88; heavy 97, 101,
103, 116, 122, 127, 146n28, 153–54;
light 97, 113, 127; mining 123;
national 133, 196, 198, 210n13; state
97, 196; steel 30, 99; textile 123;
women and 125;
Intellectuals: XIII, 18, 22n11, 25, 29, 59,
64, 74, 87, 106n35, 118, 125, 128, 136,
139, 142n1, 162, 165, 179, 183n18;
18th-century European 26, 36–37;
Balkan 58, 61n24; British 10; East
European 23n23; Hungarian 158; in
Central Europe XIV; Russian,
Belorussian and Ukrainian 87;
Russian progressivist 46–47; the role
of 18; urban 65; Zagreb 65
Intelligentsia: 18, 46, 52, 125
Interdependence: 38, 112, 122, 123, 154,
157, 159, 161, 168–69, 180, 198, 200,
202; Camp 133; cultural 162; East-
East 124; economic 163, 197, 194;
environmental 155–56, 173, 197; East-
West 164, 180, 197; global 177, 206;
international 166, 169; of communist
parties 109; regional 123; social 154
Interests: corporate 158; Czech national
177; pluralist representation 128;
pluralism of 151, 165, 168, 172;
pluralism of self-managed interests
130; Russian/Soviet180; social 124,
126, 128, 171–72; territorial-based
132, 139, 151
International (see also Komintern,
Kominform, Krestintern): Agrarian
91, 103n1; Communist 89, 146n29;
Green 17, 83n20, 85–86, 93, 103n2,
195; Peasant 83n18, 90–91, 103n1
Internationalism: 201; agrarian 103n1;
and nationalism 19; revolutionary
102, 198; socialist 5
Ionescu, Ghiţa 83n16
Irmscher, Johannes XIII
Iran 154
Islam: 2, 6, 19n40, 30, 40n18, 40n19,
154, 207, 212n29
Islamic revolution, 154
Isolationism (see also autarky): 112, 141;
socio-economic 136, 148n51; Soviet
111, 119, 134, 198
Israel 128
Italy: 5, 25, 60n11, 69, 124, 157, 160,
162, 211n25
Ivanišević, Stjepan 144n16
Iveković, Rada XV, 209n4
Izvestiya (daily), 97
Jackson, George D. 103n2, 104n13
Jackson, Marvin 39n10
James, George 38n5
Janjić, Dušan XV, 41n34
Jannazzo, Antonio 146n33
Janos, Andrew C. 22n15
Janowski, Maciej 22n9
Japan 57, 102,
Jaruzelski, Wojciech 119
Jelavich Barbara, 62n29, 83n27
Jelavich Charles, 62n29
Jevtić Bora, 149n67
Jews (see also Enlightenment and
Judaism): 2–4, 15, 32, 43, 70, 76, 168;
American Jewish Organisations 95;
Ashkenazi 3, 7; and East European
economy 21n5, 40n21, 104n9; and
liberalism 43; in Eastern Europe

40n21, 83n23; in Vilnius 21n3; Jewish
autonomy 7, Jewish diaspora 2, 4, 88,
207; Jewish culture 9, 189; Jewish
question 40n21, 88, 104n9;
Madagascar 43; Polish 40n21;
Russian/Soviet 40n21, 88, 104n8;
Sephardi 3, 7, 22n8
Jovanović Dragoljub, 66, 77–79, 83n27,
84n30, 192
Jovanović Jovan, 66
Judaism (see also Jews) 7, 128, 168, 201
Junker 37
Kádár, János 117, 143n12, 145n24, 152,
194
Kafka, Franz 128
Kaganovich, Lazar Moiseyevich 114
Kangrga, Milan 209n4
Kantorovich, Leonid Vitaliyevich 114,
143n6, 157
Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich 159
Kaplan, Karel, 144n18 145n23
Karađorđević (dynasty) 57
Karavelov, Ljuben 52–53, 61n27
Karavelov, Petko 53
Kardelj, Edvard 120, 130–31, 144n18,
145n19, 147n42, 172, 185n44,
Karlowitz (treaty of) 28
Károlyi, Mihály (count) 82n8
Kaser, Michael 146n28
Kazakhstan 114, 178
Kemal Mustafa (called Atatürk) 148n51
Kende, Pierre 162, 183n22
Kennan, George 148n60, 163, 183n26,
211n22
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 134, 136
Kerensky, Aleksandr Fyodorovich 89
Keynes, John Maynard 196
Khomyakov, Aleksey Stepanovich 54
Khoros, Vladimir 138
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich 95, 108,
113–14, 117–18, 121, 123–24, 126–27,
133–34, 136–37, 140, 142n4, 148n50,
163–64, 174, 199
King Charles, 82n13
Kireevsky, Ivan Vasilyevich 54
Kiselev, Vladimir 138
Kiss, Tibor 146n32
Klehr, Harvey 106n35
Klyuchevsky, Vasily Osipovich 40n23
Knapp, Georg Friedrich 27
Kochan, Lionel 39n16, 104n8
Kochanowicz, Jacek 39n16, 39n17
Kohout, Pavel 128, 147n37
Index 241
Kolkhozy 72, 79, 84n29
Kollontai, Alexandra Mikhailovna 88
Kolstø, Pål 211n24
Kominform: 121, 144n18, 146n28, 199
Komintern: 89–92, 100–103, 103n2,
104n10, 104n11, 104n12, 104n13,
104n16, 107n39, 198, 199
Kommunist (weekly) 115, 127, 184n30
Kongresówka 66
Konrad, György XIV, 23n21
KOR 158
Korenizatsya 87, 103n4
Kosík, Karel 125
Kosovo 129
Köstler, Arthur 107n41
Kosygin, Alexei Nikolayevich 117, 124,
127, 129, 144n14, 152
Kotkin, Stephen 106n33
Kovalev, Sergei Adamovich 181n1
Kovanda, Karel 144n17
Kozloduy 155
Kozyrev, Andrey Vladimirovich 9
Krajger, Sergej 147n45
Kramer, Mark 183n25
Krasin, Yuri 159
Krasner, Stephen 186n59
Krassó, György 144n17
Krestintern: 17, 90–93, 101, 104n13, 195
Krnjević, Juraj 84n31
Kronrod, Yakov A. 115
Kržavac, Savo 147n41
Kula, Witold 39n16, 40n21, 135–36,
140n58, 210n13
Kulaks 98
Kun, Béla 81n5
Kun, Miklós 22n10
Kundera, Milan XIV, 23n21, 147n37,
211n23
Labour: association of 130; Associated
Labour Act 130, 154; division of 47,
139
Lackó, Miklós 82n6, 83n22
Lami, Giulia 60n11, 60n16
Lampe, John 39n10, 39n12
Lane, Christel 105n24
Lange, Oskar 116
Lanzanova, Lucia 182n11
Laue, Theodore H. Von 61n23
Lavigne, Marie, 146n28 181n5
Lavrov, Pyotr Lavrovich 46, 52
Lázár, István 39n14
League of Communists of Yugoslavia:
121, 131, 147n42
242 Index
League of Nations 74, 86
Le Coz, Jean 142n1
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 38n4
Lenin, Nikolai (born Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov) 9–10, 59n1, 71, 85, 87–90,
94, 103n4, 104n11, 107n38, 121, 167,
169, 172, 175, 184n27, 195, 210n12
Leoncini, Francesco 144n15, 147n37,
147n38
Leontiev, Aleksei Nikolaevich 120,
145n21
Leontiev, Lev Abramovich 115
Leskov, Vladimir 62n36
Levi, Arrigo 143n8, 146n36
Levi, Margaret 62n35
Lewin, Moshe 22n16, 82n15, 104n11,
105n20, 106n30, 142n5, 143n8,
146n30, 162, 183n23, 184n30
Liberalism: 5, 10, 20, 21n4, 22n10, 32,
58–59, 61, 178, 180, 190, 193, 211n21;
anarchic 147; and democracy 37; and
technocracy 131; discrediting 76;
economic 178, 196; neoliberalism
211n25; Russian 42–43, 46, 49, 60n6,
Western 80
Liberman, Evsei Grigorievich 115, 127,
143n8,
Liehm, Antonín 147n37
Ligachev, Yegor Kuzmich 176
Lipiński, Jan 122
List, Friedrich 210n13
Lithuania (see also Commonwealth): 3,
6–7, 39n15, 189
Li, Xiaorong 209n2
Löwenhardt, John 186n59, 187n62
Lukács, György 125
Lukaszewski, Jerzy 83n26
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilyevich 87
Lunn, Eugene 22n17
Macartney, Carlile Aylmer 40n21
Macedonia: 3, 9, 34, 40n26, 67, 74
Maček, Vlatko 65, 81n1, 81n2
Machines: and Russian modernism 11;
arch-bourgeois 100; cultural
exaltation of 95, 193; modernity
based on 95; reflection about 10
Mackinder, Halford John 10
Macu°rek, Josef XIII
Madgearu, Virgil 76–77, 79, 83n26, 192
Magna Charta, 5
Magnitogorsk 99
Magocsi, Paul Robert 21n2
Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich 87
Malenkov, Georgy Maximilianovich 114
Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich 87
Malia, Martin 60n7, 162, 183n24
Management (see also Self-
management): 37, 94–95, 114, 118,
119, 136, 143n6 165, 182n12, 184n27,
194, 211n23; economic 143n8, 152;
enterprise 122, 127, 168
Managers: 3, 125, 169; enterprise
managers 122, 124, 130, 169;
managerial class 116; political defeat
of 129
Maniu, Iuliu 67, 110
Mann, Dawn 184n32
Mao, Zedong 139, 187n64, 199
Marabini, Jean 146n33
Marcialis, Nicoletta 105n24
Market (see also economy): 3, 19,
22n10, 50, 54, 79–80, 96–97, 101,
151–53, 159; East European markets
136; European common market 123,
135, 199; formation in Russia 51; free
competition 49; global 179;
international 117, 133, 154, 196, 204,
210n13; Market socialism 17, 108–42,
143n10, 143n11, 146n31, 146n32;
market relations 98, 101; Western 26,
33, 167, 210n17
Marković, Dragan 147n41
Marković, Svetozar 52, 60n9, 60n15,
61n26, 61n27, 62n29
Marshall, William 40n23, 41n32
Martin, Terry 103n4, 107n39
Marx, Karl Heinrich: 5, 22n17, 133; and
Asia 204; and Otto Bauer 5; and
modernity 22n17; and nationalism
210n13; and peasantry 82n14, 83n26,
84n31, 142n2, 209n6; and Russia
61n22, 204; and the Jewish question
104n9; Narodniks and Zasulich 13,
50, 191; and Weber 13
Marxism: 5, 10, 193; and Americanism
95; and modernism 22n17; and
Narodnichestvo19, 45–50, 58, 62n29;
and peasantry (see Marx); and
Stalinism 151; legal 24n24;
penetration in SEE 51–53, 62n28
Masaryk, Tomás Garrigue 10, 59n2,
60n11, 60n15, 62n34, 62n36
Maslowski, Michel 83n22
Mason, David S. 186n56
Maspok (see Movements)
Massé, Pierre 135–36, 148n57
Maternity leave 126

Mates, Leo 145n25, 149n64
Matteucci, Nicola 23n17
Mazowiecki, Tadeusz 179
Mazzini, Giuseppe 210n12
McClellan, Woodford D. 60n15
McFaul, Michael 185n37, 186n58,
186n59,
Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich 105n27,
142n4
Medvedev, Zhores Aleksandrovich
182n12
Methodists, 100
Métissage: XV, XVIn2, XVIIn2, 1–2,
10–11, 13, 18, 21n1, 26, 65, 70, 141,
157, 177, 180–81, 189, 193, 201–2,
206–8, 211n23
Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emilevich 87, 95
Melchionda, Enrico 185n47, 186n49
Mendel, Arthur 24n24
Mendelsohn, Ezra 83n23
Metternich, Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk
Lothar von 43
Mićunović, Veljko 145n24
Mihalache, Ion 110
Mikhailovsky, Nikolai Konstantinovich
46, 49, 60n11, 60n16, 61n16
Mikołajczyk, Stanislaw 67, 77, 83n26, 110
Milić, Danica 41n34
Milošević, Slobodan 177
Miłosz Czesław, xiv
Milyukov, Pavel Nikolayevich 51, 60n5,
62n31
Milward, Alan S. 38n1, 40n20, 41n32
Mincev, Boris 53
Minimum size 196, 210n12
Minorities: 66; ethnic 15, 66, 76, 165;
German, 108; new 207, 212n29;
oppressed 201; revolutionary 49
Miquel, André 40n19
Mir: 35, 42, 48, 56, 75
Mirković, Mirko 41n34
Mirskii, Georgy Ilyich 137
Mishkova, Diana 24n24
Misra, K.P. 149n67
Mitrany, David 82n14, 83n26, 84n31,
142n2, 193, 209n6
Mitrokhin, Sergei 185n45, 186n51
Mitrović, Đorđe 61n29,
Mitrović, Milovan 83n27
Mlynář, Zdeněk 128, 147n38, 160, 162,
168, 171–72, 182n11, 183n20, 183n22,
185n40, 185n43, 185n48
Modernity (see also development):
11–16, 18, 26, 30, 31, 36, 56, 58, 76,
Index 243
80, 138, 151, 164, 166, 180, 204–8;
and identity 21; and industry 4, 93,
95, 99, 109–10; and métissage 1–2,
10–11; and pre-modern past 80;and
progress 61n16; and religions 60n16;
and anti-Semitism 32; constructing 5,
15, 163, 189, 194–02, 205–8; East
European XVI, 1, 13–14, 181, 203; in
Europe XV; non-capitalist 18, 141,
196; modernity and agriculture 93;
paths to XVIn1, 20, 102, 112, 188–94,
202; socialist 17, 128, 164; views of
1–2; Western 151, 204–5
Mohács (battle of) 33
Moldova 3, 177–78
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich
(born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich
Skryabin) 100, 114; Molotov-
Ribbentrop pact, 100
Montenegro 6
Moore, Barrington Jr. 184n27
Moskovskiye Vedomosti (newspaper)
52
Morin, Edgar 162, 183n22
Mouskhély, Michel 186n50, 210n8
Mratović, Veljko 144n16
Muhić, Fuad 147n41
Multiparty system: 121, 128, 161, 170
Movements: agrarian/peasant 16, 19, 54,
65–68, 71–72, 74–79, 81n1, 84n31, 85,
87, 92, 192; anti-colonial 137, 139;
anti-modern 191; Bessarabian 67;
Chernyi Peredel 49; communist 120,
164, 188, 193; cultural 66; dissent 158,
189; fascist 204; global 159; Green
international 86; Going to the People
15, 47, 53, 61n16; Hussite 7;
internationalist 163; liberal 15;
Maspok 150, 181n1; Narodnik 23n19,
42, 44–45, 191; neo-Slavic 57, 86;
Non-Aligned (see also Non-Alignment)
111, 121, 140; pan-European 10;
revolutionary 51, 71, 86–87, 92;
Romantic 54; Slavophile 54; Sudeten
German 86; Transylvanian 67
Munich (Treaty of) 201
Musil, Jiěí 186n59
Mussolini, Benito 140
Mužić, Ivan 81n1, 105n17
Nagy, Ferenc 110
Nagy, Imre 20, 113, 117, 121, 144n17,
145n24, 175, 194
Naimark, Norman 142n2
244 Index
Napoleon Bonaparte I (Emperor): 37,
43, 55, 190, 204; Napoleonic era 15;
wars 36, 61n22, 166
Napoleoni, Claudio 143n10
Narayanan, K.R. 149n67
Narodnaya Volya 49, 53, 61
Narodnichestvo: 16, 18–19, 23n19, 42,
44–45, 47, 49–51, 53–54, 58, 60n11,
62n29, 64, 66, 68, 88–89, 92–93, 138,
148n62, 191, 194, 202–3; Narodnik
18, 20, 45, 47–55, 58, 60n12, 61n16,
67, 72, 80, 92, 190–92, 195, 200;
poporanism 54; Westernisers 45, 47,
58
Nasser, (El-Nasser), Gamal Abd 134,
137
Nathan, J. 61n27, 62n28
Nation: 15, 16, 24n24, 56, 75, 204;
Nation-building 15; capitalist-
bourgeois nations 139; counter-
revolutionary 168; Czech 187; 195;
German 195, 210n9; nation-state 5,
21, 35, 37, 80, 194, 202–4, 206, 208,
209n4, 211n23; proletarian nations
139
National Peasant Party 67
Nationalisations: 71, 97, 137, 146n28
Nationalism: 4, 15, 19, 40n21, 54,
60n10, 60n14, 65, 75, 81; cultural
83n21, 108, 132, 150, 189, 196, 209n4;
210n13; anti-colonial nationalism 137;
Estonian 211n23; Hellenic 207;
interpreters of 75; nationalist protests
129; pretty-bourgeois 137; Russian
55–56, 58, 60n6, 61n16, 62n31, 168,
185n39; xenophobic 20
NATO 140, 180
Nazism 77, 108, 120, 205
Nechayev, Sergey Gennadiyevich 52–53
Nehru, Jawaharlal Prasad 139, 148n64
Nekrič, Aleksandr Moiseyevich 103n4
Nemchinov, Vasily Sergeevich 114–15,
117, 127
Németh, László 75, 83n22
NEP: 79, 89, 91, 93, 96–99, 101,
105n26, 123, 131, 146n30, 160, 163,
166–67, 169, 184n37, 195, 210n11,
Network: XIV, XV, 1–2, 4–5, 8–10,
12–14, 16, 21n2, 25, 30, 54, 58, 64–65,
70, 79, 88, 95, 108–9, 112, 123–24,
130–32, 134, 141–42, 159, 162, 170,
180, 185n46, 190, 206–8
New Economic Mechanism: 117, 129,
152
New Europe (journal) 10, 45, 209n4
New Frontier 134
New Way of Thinking 169
Nicholas I, Pavlovich Romanov
(Russian Czar) 43
Nogee, Joseph L. 105n23, 186n56, 187n63
Non-Alignment (see also Movements)
17, 140–41, 145n25, 149n67
Norway 68
Nove, Alec 94, 105n19, 105n20, 105n21,
105n23, 142n4, 142n5, 143n8,
Novozhilov, Viktor Valentinovich
114–15, 143n7
Nuclear power station: Chernobyl 155,
165–66, 184n33; Kozloduy 155;
Nuti, Mario D. 182n6
Obolensky Dmitri Dimitrievich, XIII
Obrebski, Joseph 209n6
Obshchina: 35, 42–44, 47–48, 50, 55–56
Occidentalism 20
OECD 148n61, 189
Okey, Robin 182n9
Old Believers 31
Olivares, Federica 146n33
Opat, Jaroslav 145n19
Ordzhonikidze, Grigory
Konstantinovich (known as Sergo)
100
Oren, Nissan 84n28
Orientalism: 26, 52, 188, 204–5, 212n26;
Venetian and Genoan, 189
Orthodox Church: 5–7, 15, 20–21,
23n23, 31, 43, 45, 49–50, 55–58,
63n38, 88
Orthodox ideology: 105n27, 129,
131–32, 137, 156, 158, 161
Osiatynski, Jerzy 144n17
Ostpolitik 124, 146n32, 158
Otherness: 20, 150–51, 206; communist
150, 172; socialist, 150, 170, 177
Ottoman Empire: 8, 11, 22n8, 30–34,
36, 40n25, 52, 57, 157
Pacini, Gianlorenzo 147n37
Pallucca, Vincenzo 145n24
Palme, Olof Joachim 198
Pancha shila 139, 148n64
Pankow, Wlodzimierz 144n17
Panslavism (see also Movements): 8, 10,
45; Democratic Pan-Slavism, 57;
Neo-Slavism, 57; pan-Slavist policies
53; Slavism 56, 86, 178
Pasquino, Gianfranco 23n17,

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich 19
Patriarchalism 102
Paul I, Petrovich Romanov (Russian
Czar) 10
Pavić, Željko 144n16
Peasantism: 65–66, 71, 75–81, 82n14,
84n31, 86–87, 109, 111, 191–93, 106,
201; Balkan 53
Pelagić, Vasa 52
Perestroika: 168, 174, 176, 184n31,
185n42, 186n57
Perović, Latinka 62n29
Peter the Great (Russian Czar) 31, 33,
35–36, 39n16, 40n23, 41n30, 41n32,
46, 51, 55, 189
Petkov, Nikola D. 77–78, 83n17
Petković, Ranko 145n25, 149n64,
149n67
Petro, Nikolai 19, 23n22, 183n17
Petrovich, Michael Boro 41n34
Piast 66
Picchio, Riccardo 39n14, 39n15
Piłsudski, Józef Klemens (Polish
general) 66
Pinder, John 146n32
Pipeline 123–24
Pipes, Richard 40n23, 162, 183n24
Pisarev, Dmitry Ivanovich 46
Pius IX (Roman Catholic pope) 60n16
Pladne: group 77–78; newspaper 78
Plan: Gosplan 114–16; 400-day (and
500-day) 176, 186n58; five-year 101,
134, 143n8, 143n11, 182n13;
Khrushev’s 123; Kosygin’s 124;
Lenin’s 89; Marshall, 112, 144n18;
Neuer 80, 84n34
Planning (see also Prices): and incentives
115; and production 113, 117, 143n6,
143n8; Bulgarian 117, 143n12;
centralized 122, 124, 126, 129,
146n28, 152, 157, 161; criteria 115–16;
enterprise 116; Hungarian 117; linear
114; regional planning 193; Soviet
115; system 127, 138, 151, 153; town
or urban 95, 99, 112, 180; Yugoslav
118
Platt, D.C.M. 41n31
Plattner, Marc F. 22n13
Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich 50–51,
53, 172, 186n50
Ploughman’s Front 77
Plumyène, Jean 209n4
Pluralism (see also interests and self-
management): 30, 130, 175, 211n18,
Index 245
212n32; and democratisation 128; of
socialist societies 132; party 128, 178
Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich 57
Pogroms 32, 43
Poland: XIII, XIV, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 22n14,
29–30, 32, 33, 39n15, 43, 66, 68, 72,
76–77, 81n1, 82n10, 87, 89–90, 94,
103n4, 110, 117, 119, 122, 124–25,
127, 129, 144n17, 152–54, 156, 158,
169, 175, 179, 188–89, 192, 194, 200,
209n6, 212n29
Polish People’s Party 77
Pontieri, Ernesto 39n14
Popović, Dragutin 52
Popović, Milentije 185n4
Popular Front 81, 106n35, 109
Popular Party (Polish) 66
Portal, Roger XIII
Portugal 206
Postan, M. 40n24
Post-modernity: 38n6, 188, 202–4, 207–8,
209n3, 211n23, 211n24, 212n32
Prague Spring: 111, 117–18, 121, 127–29,
131–32, 144n15, 147n39, 151–52, 160,
170, 194, 209n2
Pravda (daily): 91, 97, 104n11, 107n39,
115, 127, 143n8, 186n55
Praxis (journal) 125, 146n33
Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni Alekseyevich
96–98, 106n29, 194–95
Prices: 74, 77, 106, 114, 115, 152–53,
156, 158, 174–75; fixed 115; in
agriculture 98, 105n19; liberalization
of 115; of industrial products 96, 98,
105n19, 196; political prices 174; price
reform 115–17, 121–24, 127, 143n12,
145n27, 146n29,146n36, 168;
production prices 117; revolution
33–34, 40n24
Privitera, Francesco XVI, 103n4, 143n1
Production: extensive 109, 117; 165;
intensification of 138, 165; qualitative
17, 77, 112, 142, 174, 176, 192;
quantitative 35, 77, 103, 109, 112,
165; quantitative investment on
labour 35, 102
Prokopovič, Sergei Nikolaevič 143n5
Protectionism: 5, 35, 133, 196–200,
210n13
Protestantism: 5, 207; penetration 7
Protestants: 6, 20, 33, 65, 108,176;
catholic-protestant conflict 6, 189;
ethic 22n17, 31;
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 45
246 Index
Prussia: 9, 30, 37, 190
Puech, Henry-Charles 40n19
Pugachev, Yemelyan Ivanovich 62n35
Puri, Jyoti 209n4
Quanta cura (papal encyclical) 32, 60n16
Quênet, Charles 62n34
Radek, Karl Berngardovich (born Karl
Sobelsohn) 90, 92, 95, 104n12
Radić, Antun (Ante) 65, 76, 83n18,
83n25, 192
Radić, Stjepan 57, 81n1, 86, 92–93,
105n17, 195
Radio Free Europe 158
Rainer, János M. 145n22, 145n24
Rákóczi, Ferenc II 28
Rákosi, Mátyás 23n23, 113
Ralli-Arbore, Zamfir 53
Ramet, Sabrina P. XV, 24n25, 146n35
Ramljak, Milan 144n16
Ránki, György 39n10, 62n30, 84n34
Ranković, Aleksandar 122, 129
Rapallo (Treaty of) 89, 167
Rataj, Maciej 66
Razin, Stenka (Razin, Stepan
Timofeyevich) 62n35
Reagan, Ronald 135, 167, 182n8
Red Army 94, 103n4, 117, 173
Reddaway, Peter 22n10
Regat 67
Reiman, Michal 185n43
Religions: XIV, 10, 14, 58–59, 87, 125,
170, 190; and atheism 88, 104n7; and
modernity 60n16; and politics 24n25;
and secularism 15, 46, 52, 58; religious
competition 5; state religion 211n23
Representation: 14, 26, 43, 125, 131,
205; by proxy 172; collective 14, 72;
communist worker 78; rustic 75; of
interests 126, 131, 169; political, 56,
126, 128, 171–72; UN
representation,139
Republic of Nobles 29, 39
Republican Party of Farmers and
Peasants 65
Revolution (see also Price): 1848
revolution 44; 1905 revolution 44;
1956 (or Hungarian) revolution 117,
145n22, 145n24; anti-colonial 138;
Bolshevik 17, 23n20, 69, 82n13, 86,
89, 91, 104n15, 106n30, 116, 138,
183n22, 103n4; communist 142n2,
145n18, 149n65, 186n58; counter-
revolution 101; cultural 141;
democratic 183n23; expectations/fear
of 19, 37, 71, 91, 93, 100–101, 134;
French 26, 37, 190; industrial 1, 20,
25–29, 38n1, 52, 195, 201; in the West
50, 52, 91, 96; Islamic 154; of the
Councils (or: Republic of) 68, 32n8;
permanent 106n27; romantic view of
50; Russian 11, 23n20, 37, 50, 57, 69,
72, 88–89, 105n21, 105n25, 106n28;
Sandinista 210n16; Scientific-
technological 125, 156, 182n12; sexual
48; socialist 50, 103n4, 120, 199;
worldwide 51, 97, 198, 210n15
Reykjavik (summit) 167
Reynolds, Henry 38n5
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. 40n23, 41n32,
60n5, 62n5
Ribbentrop, Joachin von 100, 199
Richardson, Al 105n25, 106n28
Rieber, Alfred J. 61n23
Riga (Peace of) 69, 94
Rihtman-Augustin, Dunja 40n27
Rinascita (weekly) 160
Ripp, Zoltán 145n24
Rizzi, Franco 104n11
Romania: 3, 6 ,8, 32, 35, 40n28, 51,
53–54, 67–68, 76–77, 79, 81n4, 82n13,
86, 90, 94, 108, 110, 120, 123, 126,
130, 146n31, 150, 152–56, 174,
184n29, 192, 194, 209n6
Romano, Ruggiero 148n58
Romanticism 10, 46, 207
Rome (Treaties of) 199
Rostow, Walt Whitman 135, 138,
148n52, 148n54
Rothschild, Joseph 22n16, 81n1,82n9,
84n32, 186n56
Rupnik, Jacques 22n13,
Ruskiy Vestnik (newspaper) 52
Russell, Bertrand 148n50
Russia: XIII, XIV, 5, 8–11, 13, 15–20,
22n11, 22n12, 23n20, 24n24, 29–33,
35–37, 38n4, 39n16, 40n23, 41n30,
41n32, 41n33, 42–45, 48–58, 59n1,
59n2, 60n5, 60n11, 60n15, 60n16,
61n16, 61n22, 61n23, 62n29, 62n31,
62n34, 62n35, 62n36, 64, 67–69, 71,
76, 85, 87–91, 94–95, 104n7, 104n11,
104n14, 105n21, 105n23, 105n24,
105n25, 106n27, 107n38, 135, 142n4,
143n5, 143n8, 146n33, 147n36,
147n46, 148n49, 148n60, 157, 159,
176–81, 182n12, 183n17, 183n18,

183n23, 183n24, 183n25, 184n26,
185n39, 185n45, 185n46, 186n51,
186n56, 186n58, 186n59, 187n60,
187n61, 187n 63, 187n66, 188–92,
199, 201, 204–5, 210n7, 210n13,
210n15, 211n22
Russian Moscow 176
Russian Union 178
Rutaj, J. 83n18, 103n1
Šahović, Milan 149n67
Said, Edward 204, 211n26
Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich 9, 162,
182n14
Salvi, Beniamino 23n18
Samaddar, Ranabir 109n4
Samizdat 158
Santacroce, Paolo 182n11
Sartre, Jean Paul 162
Saul, S. Berrick 38n1, 40n20, 41n32
Scarponi, Alberto 146n33
Schacht, Hjalmar 80, 84n34
Schaeder, Hans H. XIII
Schaff, Adam 119
Schlötzer, August Ludwig von 56, 62n36
Schmoller, Gustav von 210n13
Schools: agricultural 72–74, 78;
antitrinitarian 7; Budapest school of
Philosophy 125; German School of
Economics 210n13; girls’ 48; Hanafi
school 6, 30–31; Harvard 164; Jesuit
7; Korčula School, 125; neo-
Slavophile 56; of Kharkov, 115, 127,
152; of Mathematical Economists
114–15, 152, 157; of thought 10, 45,
54, 58–59, 137, 144n18, 168, 191, 204,
210n17; public 18, 25; religious 7, 18
Schöpflin, George XVI, 209n4, 211n24,
212n29
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 133, 147n48
Schwandners-Sievers, Stephanie 147n41
Scribe, Eugène 44
Secularisation: 4, 8, 14, 37, 58, 88, 95,
104n7, 125, 207
Šegedin, Petar 84n31
Segrè, Andrea 142n1
Sekelj, Laslo 144n17
Self-Determination: 10, 87, 103n4,
210n12,
Seleny, Anna 22n14
Seljačka Sloga 79, 209n6
Self-management (see also Management
and Interests): 20, 113, 116, 118–19,
121–22; 126, 128, 130–31, 140–41,
Index 247
144n17, 145n26, 147n42, 154, 161,
168–71, 181n5, 194
Sen, Amartya 209n2
Serbia: 34, 41n34, 51–53, 57, 66, 77,
186n59, 212n29
Serfdom: XIII, 28–9, 32, 34, 37, 45–6,
94, 134; ending/abolishing 43, 47,
61n17, 190; neo-serfdom 53, 146n31
Serge, Victor (born Victor Lvovich
Kibalchich) 105n18
Sestan, Lapo 184n36
Seton-Watson, Hugh 39n13, 60n10,
75–76, 81n1, 82n13, 83n24, 83n27,
142n2, 144n18, 145n18, 149n65
Shakhnazarov, Georgy Khosroevich 159
Shanin, Teodor 39n16, 61n23, 97
Shapiro, Leonard 60n6, 60n10, 60n14
Shatalin, Stanislav Sergeyevich 159
Shevardnadze, Eduard 167, 184n36
Shoup, Paul XV, 212n29
Shushmanov, Boicho 182n7
Šik, Ota 117–18, 127, 143n11
Simkins, Ronald 40n21
Simonya, Nodari Aleksandrovich
137–38
Skakun, Milan 149n66
Skerlić, Jovan 61n26
Skilling, H. Gordon 144n17, 145n23
Slavophiles (see also Movements): 45,
54–58, 62n31, 62n34, 63n38, 168, 179,
191, 195
Slovakia: 6–7, 119, 155, 212n29
Slovenia 9, 66
Smajlagić, Nerkez 40n19
Small Landowner’s Party 68
Smallholders’ Party, 110
Smith, Anthony 209n4
Sobell, Vlad 146n31
Sobieski, Jan 34
Sochor, Lubomir 182n13
Socialism (see also Market, Self-
Management): 17, 40n21, 42–44,
48–49, 52–55, 58–59, 84n30, 100,
108–9, 111–13, 129, 133–35, 138–40,
144n17, 145n27, 147n48, 157, 161–62,
164, 166, 181n1, 183n24, 187n24, 194,
199–200; Agrarian 45, 47; and
modernity 102, 169; Balkan 60n15,
61n24, 62n29; building/constructing
94–95, 97, 109, 196; communal 48;
developed, 50, 95, 99, 152, 160–61,
204; European 160, 162–63; industrial
111; in one country 97, 99, 102,
104n11, 104n14, 105n27, 198;
248 Index
national roads to 17, 108–42, 150–51,
197, 203; proto-socialism 55; real
existing socialism 152, 158, 169, 172,
188; reformability/reforms of 112,
160, 162–64, 183n25; rule of law state
166, 170, 171, 201; rural 18, 42–59,
111, 190; Russian 60n7, 62n9; Soviet
71–72, 141, 148n62, 162, 164, 183n22
Social stratification: 14, 72, 125, 163–64,
207
Sokolnikov, Grigori Yakovlovich (born
Girsh Yankelovich Brilliant) 97
Solidarność 118, 130, 144n17, 158, 179
Solodovnikov, Vassili Grigoriyevich
148n61
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich 178,
187n61, 187n62
Sovereignty; 150–51, 173, 186n59; full
204, 211n23; limited 134; in socialism
181n1; national 140, 177, 181n1;
popular 60; Russian 176, 178; shared
211n23; state 140; territorial 148n64
Soviet (see also Council): administration
94; ambassador 100; announcement
175; architecture 100; aspiration 99;
authority 166; autonomy 172;
behaviour 175; campaign (against
alcoholism) 100; capital 173; context
171; coup de main 117; culture 158;
development 100, 102; dissent 178;
economy 94, 142n5, 156, 168, 184n30;
expectations 134; experience 100, 128,
163, 169; federation 176; foreign
policy 138, 146n34, 167; foreign trade
101; Hungarian Soviet republic 68,
80, 81n5, 119; identity 195;
industrialisation 93, 105n20, 106n29,
132–33; information 166; interest 175,
180; invasion of Afghanistan 154,
182n8, 197; isolation/protectionism
89, 111, 119, 133, 198; law/rule of 92,
171, 201; leadership 23n23, 129, 157,
160, 167; literature 10; military 118,
133; model/path 102–3, 120, 137, 196;
Moscow 176; party 108, 159, 160,
163, 183n35, 197, 204; Polish-Soviet
relations 116; politics 91, 114, 133,
182n12, 184n27, 210n14; position
102; power 83n15, 96, 104n11,
105n20, 106n30, 107n38; public
opinion 168; Russian Soviet
Federative 171, 176, 194; satellites 19;
Sino-Soviet border 167; socialism
71–72, 141, 148n62, 162, 164, 183n22;
society 88, 100, 104n9, 160; Soviet
Camp XIV, 17, 19, 109, 112, 117–18,
120, 122–23, 126–27, 130, 133, 140–41,
144n18, 145n25, 153–54, 158, 162,
173–75, 179, 181n1, 194, 198–99;
Soviet communism 80; Soviet
populism 92; Soviet Russia 9, 23n20,
68–69, 87, 89, 94–95, 104n7, 104n8,
104n11, 104n14, 105n21, 105n22,
105n25, 106n27, 142n4, 180, 185n46,
195; Soviet state 91, 97, 102, 178,
185n39; Soviet-American relations
106n33; Soviet-Chinese relations
210n16; subsidies 174; Supreme Soviet
95, 167, 172; system 79, 109, 112–13,
119–20, 123, 134, 142n5, 160–63, 176,
183n22, 183n25, 185n45; tensions
167; terminology 156; troops 167;
urbanisation 88; Yugoslav-Soviet
relations 121, 125, 141, 145n25, 151,
153
Sovietology, 164
Soviet Union: XII, XIV, 103n4, 116,
122, 133, 139, 142n4, 143n8, 144n14
163, 174, 176–77, 183n22, 183n26,
184n28, 184n35, 185n46
Spahija (or sipahi) 33–34
Spain 28, 69, 207
Spendel, Giovanna 103n5
Špidlík, Tomáš XIII
Spriano, Paolo 145n19
Sputnik 136, 148n59
Stagnation (Brezhnevian): 11, 124, 130,
159–60, 165,185n43, 200
Stahl, Henri H. 40n28
Stahl, Paul H. 209n6
Stalin, Josif Vissarionovich (born Joseb
Besarionis Dze Jugashvili) 17, 89, 93,
97–98, 100–102, 105n27, 106n27,
107n38, 108, 110–16, 118, 120, 126,
133–34, 140, 142n1, 142n2, 142n4,
143n8, 143n9, 144n18, 146n28,
148n51, 157, 162, 166, 168, 183n24,
194, 196–99
Stalinism: 17, 102, 106n33, 107n38,
111–12, 122, 128, 142n4, 151, 154,
159, 168, 189, 211n18
Stamboliyski, Aleksandǔr 53, 67, 73–74,
78, 83n17, 85–86, 89, 91, 192
Stambolov, Stefan 53
Stȩpka, Stanisław 83n26
Stere, Constantin 53–54, 67
Stokes, Gale 210n18
Strada, Vittorio 42, 59n1, 104n5

Strmiska, Zdeněk 185n43
Strumilin, Stanislav Gustavovich
143n7
Sublime Porte: 3, 6–7, 30–31, 34, 36,
63n38, 207
Su, Shaozhi 187n64
Sukarno (born Kusno Sosrodihardjo,
president of Indonesia) 148n64
Suleiman I, the Magnificent I (Ottoman
sultan) 40n26
Suny, Ronald Grigor 82n12, 103n4,
107n39, 187n63
Supilo, Frano 10
Suslov, Mikhail Andreyevich 156, 204
Švehla, Antonín 65, 86
Svoboda (newspaper), 52
Swain, Geoffrey 145n25
Swain, Nigel 145n25
Syllabus, 32, 61n16
Sweden XIII, 36, 189
Switzerland: 52–53, 61n26, 69, 71, 206
Szabó, István 68
Szabó, Miklós 21n4
Széchenyi, István 9
Szekfü, Gyula 76
Szporluk, Roman 210n13
Szücs, Jenö XIV, 23n21
Tabula rasa 26, 38n4
Tadić, Bojana 145n25, 149n67
Take off (see Big spurt) 135
Tamborra, Angelo 23n23, 62n36, 63n39
Tanzimat 34
Taylorism 95
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich 19
Technocracy 129–31, 147n41
Technology: 26, 28, 55, 94–95, 135,
154–56, 166, 170, 197; technological
and financial ties 175; technological
challenges 111; change 163; delay 157;
growth 132; innovation 160, 165;
interdependence 156, 173; knowledge
199; results 114; (see also revolution);
stand-off 136; advanced technologies
82n12, 153; innovative technologies
155; technologically inadequate 36;
technologies 199;
Terrorism: 15, 49, 61n18, 187n66
Third way: 71, 81, 143n11, 192
Third World: 112, 132, 134, 137–39,
141–42, 148n51, 148n60, 148n63, 153,
173, 200, 212n29
Tiananmen Square 179, 187n64, 188
Timar 33–34
Index 249
Tismaneanu, Vladimir 22n13
Tito (born Josip Broz) XIV, 12, 78, 111,
120–22, 125, 142n1, 143n13, 145n20,
146n35, 149n6, 152, 170, 185n44, 197,
199, 202; and Non-Aligned movement
121, 140; and Stalin 113; and the
Prague Spring 129; death of 131, 141,
158, 185n41; federation 177
Tkachev, Pyotr Nikitich 49, 60n16
Todorova, Maria XIV, XV, 24n24,
40n28
Töke, Ferenc 144n17
Tolstaya, Tatjana Nikitichna XIV
Tomasevich, Jozo 39n16
Tonini, Carla 212n29
Topolski, Jerzy 39n10
Tosi, Dario 182n11
Touraine, Alain 62n32
Trabant 136, 148n59
Traianin, I. 119–20
Transversality: 203; of cultures 21n1,
163
Trapeznikov, Vadim Aleksandrovich
115
Trebilcock, Clive 212n27
Treptow, Kurt W. 81n4
Trianon (Treaty of) 68, 82n6, 201
Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (born Lejba
Bronshtein) 4, 10, 92–93, 96–97, 99,
105n18, 105n27, 106n28, 106n32, 129,
168, 186n52
Tschaadaieff, Pierre (see Chaadayev
Pyotr) 62n34
Tschizewskij, Dmitrij 62n33, 62n34,
62n36
Turkey XIV, 5, 36, 68, 99, 109, 140,
148n51, 201
Tvardovskaya, Valentina 42
Ukraine: 6–7, 61n18, 66, 89, 124,
177–78, 189, 210n11
Ulam, Adam 42, 59n1,
Underground society: 19, 158–59, 164,
170–71, 175
Union Treaty 89
United Nations (UN): 138–40, 173–74,
189; UN General Assembly 138, 140;
UN Security Council 139
United States of America: 69, 92. 95,
100, 103, 111–12, 133–34, 136–38,
140–41, 148n50, 154, 157, 163, 173,
180, 193, 203, 205
Universal Suffrage: 14, 38, 68–69, 82n7,
82n8, 172, 192, 199, 201, 206
250 Index
Urban, George 183n22
Urban, Michael 162, 183n23, 185n45,
186n51
Urbanisation: XIV, 9, 13, 32, 37, 45,
75, 80, 88, 102, 109, 141, 150–51,
192, 196
Uskorenie 165
Uvarov, Sergey Semyonovich (count)
57
Vachudova, Milada Anna 22n14
Vaculík, Ludvík 147n37, 177
Valota, Bianca 62n29, 81n1
Value (law of), 116, 196
Values (cultural, ethic, political): 5, 13,
21n1, 34–35, 47–48, 75, 162–63, 177,
188–90, 193–94, 202, 204, 206, 208,
211n21
Varga, Yevgeniy Samoilovich 90, 120,
145n21
Varsori, Antonio 145n25
Vassilev, Vassil 148n61
Velikov, S. 61n27
Venturi, Franco 22n16, 42, 59n1, 60n1,
60n7, 60n11, 60n16
Vernacular, 5–6
Vetik, Raivo 211n24
Vietnam 179, 210n16
Vilar, Pierre 40n24
Viola, Lynne 107n38
Virgin lands, 100, 114, 155
Vlajčić, Gordana 105n16
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 26, 36,
38n4, 40n23
Voprosy Ekonomiki (journal) 115
Voprosy Filosofii (journal) 159
Vpered (periodical) 53
Vranicki, Predrag 143n8, 147n39,
147n40
Vrhovec, Josip 147n45
Vučković, Čedomir 149n67
Vučković, Mihailo 84n30
Vysotsky,Vladimir Semyonovich 19
Walicki, Andrzey 23n19, 42, 47, 54,
59n1, 60n11, 60n13, 62n34
Wallerstein, Immanuel 27, 39n7
Wandycz, Piotr S. XIII, 83n26
War: against peasantry 101, 107n37,
210n11; cold war communism, 78,
119, 144n18; Cold war, 12, 21, 22n11,
109–12, 131, 136, 144n18, 151, 156,
162–63, 166, 183n18, 197–99; First
World War 14, 69, 109, 192; Great
War, 10, 38, 64, 67–69, 72, 85, 94,
119; Greek civil war 210n16; Korean
war 210n16; Russian civil war 69, 88,
94, 98, 99, 171, 195; Second World
War, XIV, 17, 69, 77–78, 81, 103,
108–11, 125, 142n1, 143n5, 148n51,
150–51, 188, 196, 198–200; Spanish
war 106n35; state of war 30; Thirty
Years War 30; Vietnam war 210n16;
war communism 69, 89–90, 94, 101,
171; War with Poland 87, 103n4
Warsaw Pact: 118, 121, 129, 154, 160
Weber, Max 13, 22n17, 31, 204
Weiss, Linda 211n27
Welfare state: 136, 178, 180, 196, 200,
211n25
Werth, Nicholas 105n21
Western Values 177, 190
Westerners (see Narodnichestvo)
White Mountain 28, 32–33, 201
White, Stephen 162, 183n23
Wickham, Steed Henry 23n18
Wieviorka, Michel 1, 21n1
Wilczynski, Joseph 145n27
Wiles, Péter 146n29
Willerton, Jr. John 185n46
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 10
Witos, Wincenty 66
Witte, Sergey Julyevich (count) 61,
61n23, 94
Wolff, Larry XIII, 26, 38n3, 189, 209n1
Working class: 19–20, 44, 46, 50–51,
73–74, 77–78, 81, 91, 93–94, 97, 99,
101, 110, 116, 191, 193, 203, 210n12
WTO 179–80
Wyzwolenie 66
Yanov, Alexander 146n32
Yavlinsky, Grigory Alexeyevich 176
Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich 9, 176, 178,
187n62
Yugoslavia: XIV, 12, 14, 17, 19, 22n13,
39n16, 65–67, 74, 77–78, 90, 92,
108–9, 111–13, 118, 121–22, 124–27,
129–31, 140–41, 145n24, 145n26,
146n28, 147n41, 147n43, 151–54, 156,
158–59, 161, 169, 172, 176–77,
185n41, 186n59, 192, 197–98, 200,
202–3, 212n29
Young Turks 7
Yu, Guangyuan 187n64
Zadruga 35, 40n28, 52, 84n30
Žak, Václav 186n59

Zaslavskaya, Tatyana Ivanovna 165,
172, 184n30
Zaslavsky, Victor 186n58
Zasulich, Vera Ivanovna 49–50
Zdravomyslov, Andrei Gligoryevich
62n36
Zemledelska Zashtita (newspaper) 67
Zemlya i Volya 45, 49, 53, 61n18
Zemstvo 5, 44, 60n5, 178
Zernov, Nicholas Michaelovich 63n38
Zhivkov, Todor 23n23
Index 251
Zhou, Enlai 139, 148n64, 149n64
Zieliński, Janusz 122
Zinoviev, Grigory Yevseyevich (born
Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich
Radomyslovsky Apfelbaum) 90–91,
93
Zola, Émile 45, 60n9
Zoltán, Dénes Iván 21n4, 21n6, 22n9,
22n10, 145n24
Zubkova, Elena 143n5
Zverev, Arseny Grigoryevich 116
l '. •.
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