Part II

Temporary success and terminal failure: the

post-Stalinist decades-modernization, erosion,
and collapse

The prospects of breaking loose from the periphery during the post-
Stalinist order appeared promising. High accumulation, a rapid rate of
growth, and the industrial breakthrough together with the decision to
liberalize dictatorship and develop all-embracing welfare institutions
and even in some instances modest consumer societies created a cohe-
sive sense of security among the inhabitants (though certain countries
complemented or replaced it with a policy of small-power nationalism).
Would regimes that for the first time in the region's history had begun
to close the gap with the West in terms of economic growth, social
welfare, and consumption - would such regimes gain legitimacy?
A radical transformation in the world economy and its dramatic
structural crisis soon put an end to the gap-closing process. In the new
circumstances the genuine weakness of the import-substituting indus-
trialization model and its insensitivity to international competition led
to the erosion of previous economic and social achievements. State so-
cialism proved incapable of adapting to the new technological and
structural demands, and the region sank into a long economic - and
political — crisis. Internal opposition increased, and the ruling elites lost
their faith in the possibility of controlling the situation. When Soviet
control ceased to be a factor, the dictatorship of modernization, identi-
fied largely with the huge demands it had placed upon the population,
collapsed almost without resistance.
The separate path, the withdrawal from Europe that once promised
an escape from the periphery, proved to be a dead end. The experi-
mental flight that took off from the peripheries of Europe now landed
back in the peripheries of Europe.

153

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 200.32.101.226 on Wed Nov 17 19:10:31 GMT 2010.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511581748.006
Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010
Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009
Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 200.32.101.226 on Wed Nov 17 19:10:31 GMT 2010.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511581748.006
Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010