Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.1
K. Doolan, Dražen Cepić
According to this article, “Estate agents are reporting a surge in sales of vast country estates and former castle properties, which until COVID-19 struck had become increasingly hard to shift as the richest of the rich instead opted to live in luxurious skyscraper penthouses, on tropical islands or superyachts.” According to authors such as Atkinson (2015), whichever theoretical approach to class one takes, there is always the “tricky issue of how it relates to other forms of inequality and difference” (p. 81). First put forward by feminists of color, intersectionality encompasses “the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities” (Collins, 2015, p. 2). According to the authors, a possible explanation for this is that, unlike gender, ethnicity, disability, age, religion/belief, and sexual orientation, social class is not “a justiciable inequality” (p. 232).
{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue on Class Dynamics from Socialism to Post-Socialism","authors":"K. Doolan, Dražen Cepić","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"According to this article, “Estate agents are reporting a surge in sales of vast country estates and former castle properties, which until COVID-19 struck had become increasingly hard to shift as the richest of the rich instead opted to live in luxurious skyscraper penthouses, on tropical islands or superyachts.” According to authors such as Atkinson (2015), whichever theoretical approach to class one takes, there is always the “tricky issue of how it relates to other forms of inequality and difference” (p. 81). First put forward by feminists of color, intersectionality encompasses “the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities” (Collins, 2015, p. 2). According to the authors, a possible explanation for this is that, unlike gender, ethnicity, disability, age, religion/belief, and sexual orientation, social class is not “a justiciable inequality” (p. 232).","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47428471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.84
Ondřej Daniel
This article aims to illuminate the links between culture and class in the post-socialist years in the Czech Republic. To this end, it considers the reception of two music acts—the country folk duo Bratři Nedvědi in the 1990s and the “nationalist rock” band Ortel in the 2010s—and discusses the labeling of their fans based on their social class profiles. My analysis draws on mainstream Czech media coverage of these acts, materials reflecting fans’ perspectives, and broader scholarly debates about the links between music consumption and social class. One similarity between these bands lay in their decision to forsake their original subcultural fans for a more mainstream audience. A second commonality relates to the dismissal of their mainstream fans by cultural elites, who saw them as backward and out of step with the norms of liberal democracy and Western capitalism. These critics often described these types of Czech music as lowbrow and regressive. Meanwhile, the two bands continued to insist that they were making songs for “ordinary people” rather than elites: their fan bases, while not homogenous, remained largely working class. This study considers key intersections between class, age, ethnicity, and gender in Czech post-socialist society. I argue that certain kinds of local musical taste reflect class differences, which are further shaped by age, gender, and political orientation.
{"title":"Songs for Ordinary People","authors":"Ondřej Daniel","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.84","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.84","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to illuminate the links between culture and class in the post-socialist years in the Czech Republic. To this end, it considers the reception of two music acts—the country folk duo Bratři Nedvědi in the 1990s and the “nationalist rock” band Ortel in the 2010s—and discusses the labeling of their fans based on their social class profiles. My analysis draws on mainstream Czech media coverage of these acts, materials reflecting fans’ perspectives, and broader scholarly debates about the links between music consumption and social class. One similarity between these bands lay in their decision to forsake their original subcultural fans for a more mainstream audience. A second commonality relates to the dismissal of their mainstream fans by cultural elites, who saw them as backward and out of step with the norms of liberal democracy and Western capitalism. These critics often described these types of Czech music as lowbrow and regressive. Meanwhile, the two bands continued to insist that they were making songs for “ordinary people” rather than elites: their fan bases, while not homogenous, remained largely working class. This study considers key intersections between class, age, ethnicity, and gender in Czech post-socialist society. I argue that certain kinds of local musical taste reflect class differences, which are further shaped by age, gender, and political orientation.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46582874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.11
A. Dević
This article opens by situating the Yugoslav academic perspectives on class and politics within the framework of recent studies dealing with class in post-socialist Europe. It then presents the ways in which the first Yugoslav dissidents understood the “new class” (the embourgeoisement of the party elite), followed by a review of a large number of studies on the disintegration of workers’ self-management project, students’ protests, and workers’ strikes. The diverse scope of research conducted between the 1960s and 1980s provided a corrective to the League of Communists’ hegemonic perceptions of the growing social inequalities, the causes of the economic crisis, and the stalemates of political decision-making, showing the deepening, while “invisible,” sense of powerlessness among workers and the opaqueness of the polycentric, increasingly fragmenting and clashing centers of political power. In the conclusions, changes in the perceptions of class in post-Yugoslav states are discussed.
{"title":"Class, Conflict, and Power between Hegemony and Critical Knowledge","authors":"A. Dević","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.11","url":null,"abstract":"This article opens by situating the Yugoslav academic perspectives on class and politics within the framework of recent studies dealing with class in post-socialist Europe. It then presents the ways in which the first Yugoslav dissidents understood the “new class” (the embourgeoisement of the party elite), followed by a review of a large number of studies on the disintegration of workers’ self-management project, students’ protests, and workers’ strikes. The diverse scope of research conducted between the 1960s and 1980s provided a corrective to the League of Communists’ hegemonic perceptions of the growing social inequalities, the causes of the economic crisis, and the stalemates of political decision-making, showing the deepening, while “invisible,” sense of powerlessness among workers and the opaqueness of the polycentric, increasingly fragmenting and clashing centers of political power. In the conclusions, changes in the perceptions of class in post-Yugoslav states are discussed.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46277565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.104
Dražen Cepić, K. Doolan, Danijela Dolenec
This article focuses on the role of class analysis in envisioning a better world, in both the past and the present. It critically reflects on class research conducted in the second half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia, and contemporary class research from selected countries of former Yugoslavia, in order to explore the place that class analysis as systemic critique occupied and occupies in a socialist and capitalist context. This approach is informed by Wright’s (2015) evaluation of different forms of class analysis through the game metaphor. According to Wright, whereas Marxist class analysis questions “what game to play,” Weberian class analysis engages with “the rules of the game” and Durkheimian class analysis examines “moves in the game.” Our historical case study of Yugoslav scholarship on class during state socialism illustrates that, despite its role in sanctifying the status quo, class analysis also drew on both Marxism and Weberian inspired life-chances research as tools for systemic critique. On the other hand, our review of post-Yugoslav class research suggests that, currently, class analysis as an instrument for the critique of capitalism is not prominent. Indeed, in contrast to the late Yugoslav period in which sociology engaged class analysis in order to question what game should be played, the post-socialist 1990s and 2000s brought a silencing of Marxist left critique, while sociologists transformed their research into what Wright (2015) would describe as struggles over the rule of the game: problematizing the variety of capitalism that emerged in post-socialism rather than capitalism itself.
{"title":"Class Analysis as Systemic Critique","authors":"Dražen Cepić, K. Doolan, Danijela Dolenec","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.104","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the role of class analysis in envisioning a better world, in both the past and the present. It critically reflects on class research conducted in the second half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia, and contemporary class research from selected countries of former Yugoslavia, in order to explore the place that class analysis as systemic critique occupied and occupies in a socialist and capitalist context. This approach is informed by Wright’s (2015) evaluation of different forms of class analysis through the game metaphor. According to Wright, whereas Marxist class analysis questions “what game to play,” Weberian class analysis engages with “the rules of the game” and Durkheimian class analysis examines “moves in the game.” Our historical case study of Yugoslav scholarship on class during state socialism illustrates that, despite its role in sanctifying the status quo, class analysis also drew on both Marxism and Weberian inspired life-chances research as tools for systemic critique. On the other hand, our review of post-Yugoslav class research suggests that, currently, class analysis as an instrument for the critique of capitalism is not prominent. Indeed, in contrast to the late Yugoslav period in which sociology engaged class analysis in order to question what game should be played, the post-socialist 1990s and 2000s brought a silencing of Marxist left critique, while sociologists transformed their research into what Wright (2015) would describe as struggles over the rule of the game: problematizing the variety of capitalism that emerged in post-socialism rather than capitalism itself.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42431626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.120
Yifan Shi
This research note is a textual comparison between different versions of Deng Xiaoping’s two speeches in May and June 1989 using recently accessible scanned copies of original documents distributed to local officials. It reveals numerous alterations—including both deletions and additions—in the later published texts. The research note suggests that in the context of the early 1990s, these editorial efforts were made to restore the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party by highlighting Deng’s image as a pragmatic reformer, maintaining Jiang Zemin’s position as the core of the new leadership, downplaying the party’s internal struggles and corruption, and assuring people that China would continue its market-oriented reform. More broadly, findings in the research note showcase the essential role of propaganda in legitimation under the Chinese communist regime.
{"title":"Editing Legitimacy","authors":"Yifan Shi","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.120","url":null,"abstract":"This research note is a textual comparison between different versions of Deng Xiaoping’s two speeches in May and June 1989 using recently accessible scanned copies of original documents distributed to local officials. It reveals numerous alterations—including both deletions and additions—in the later published texts. The research note suggests that in the context of the early 1990s, these editorial efforts were made to restore the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party by highlighting Deng’s image as a pragmatic reformer, maintaining Jiang Zemin’s position as the core of the new leadership, downplaying the party’s internal struggles and corruption, and assuring people that China would continue its market-oriented reform. More broadly, findings in the research note showcase the essential role of propaganda in legitimation under the Chinese communist regime.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48203202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.62
Tanja Vuckovic Juros
The goal of this study is to highlight the embodied nature of social class inequalities in education. Drawing from a larger study that examined educational outcomes and work careers of young people whose families received welfare benefits in Croatia when these individuals were of high school age, the article focuses on biographical narrative interviews with three young individuals. These strategically selected cases were characterized by a shared experience of living in poverty that was, nevertheless, marked by very different initial intersections of social advantages and disadvantages (middle-class fall into poverty, intergenerational poverty, and poverty intersecting with anti-Roma racism). Based on the comparison of these three life stories, this study utilizes Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a conceptual tool, incorporating both cognitive and affective schemas, to examine how these young individuals framed their lives and educational trajectories. In doing so, this study builds on the work by scholars such as Reay who extend the explorations of embodied social inequalities in education into the realm of emotions, which are—in line with the growing body of work in the sociology of emotions—understood as embedded in (unequal) social relations. Therefore, the analysis of this study focuses on how, in the three examined life stories, the horizons of probable, possible, and unimaginable were perceived very differently and shaped by distinct affective structures. The findings of this study suggest that cognitive and affective schemas function jointly, as integral elements of a social inequalities’ mechanism rooted in the compounding of advantages or disadvantages.
{"title":"“I Have Always thought that, If I Am Poor, I’m Also Supposed to Study Poorly”","authors":"Tanja Vuckovic Juros","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.62","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.2.62","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this study is to highlight the embodied nature of social class inequalities in education. Drawing from a larger study that examined educational outcomes and work careers of young people whose families received welfare benefits in Croatia when these individuals were of high school age, the article focuses on biographical narrative interviews with three young individuals. These strategically selected cases were characterized by a shared experience of living in poverty that was, nevertheless, marked by very different initial intersections of social advantages and disadvantages (middle-class fall into poverty, intergenerational poverty, and poverty intersecting with anti-Roma racism). Based on the comparison of these three life stories, this study utilizes Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a conceptual tool, incorporating both cognitive and affective schemas, to examine how these young individuals framed their lives and educational trajectories. In doing so, this study builds on the work by scholars such as Reay who extend the explorations of embodied social inequalities in education into the realm of emotions, which are—in line with the growing body of work in the sociology of emotions—understood as embedded in (unequal) social relations. Therefore, the analysis of this study focuses on how, in the three examined life stories, the horizons of probable, possible, and unimaginable were perceived very differently and shaped by distinct affective structures. The findings of this study suggest that cognitive and affective schemas function jointly, as integral elements of a social inequalities’ mechanism rooted in the compounding of advantages or disadvantages.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49230289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.24
C. Cowell
This article examines the issue of democratic breakthroughs in highly geopoliticized, fractured regions in the post-Soviet space. While recognizing the political challenges of democratic transitions in such regions, it investigates specific conditions conducive to effective democratic openings in such regions. Using a case study method, it focuses on Armenia’s Velvet Revolution in 2018, which successfully challenged the previously-entrenched authoritarian regime in the country. This was particularly significant as it occurred in Russia’s security orbit. Armenia has been firmly wedged in Russia-centric regional organizations, in parallel to the deep bilateral ties between the two countries developed since the Soviet collapse. This article argues, first, that the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience campaign played a key role in ushering a peaceful democratic breakthrough. This strategy is also credited for explaining Russian restraint as the events unfolded throughout the year. Second, it also highlights the specific form of Armenia’s authoritarianism and the institutionalization of the state that it had produced. It posits an autocrat’s dilemma: greater state institutionalization to defend the “soft” authoritarian system at some point becomes a liability. This dual-track approach to the study of Armenia’s Velvet Revolution, the civil society and the state, is also used to explain Russian restraint as a factor in this case. The article concludes with a brief application of this dual-track transition model to the unyielding mass protests in Belarus, also occurring in Russia’s security orbit.
{"title":"How to Train Your Dragon","authors":"C. Cowell","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.24","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the issue of democratic breakthroughs in highly geopoliticized, fractured regions in the post-Soviet space. While recognizing the political challenges of democratic transitions in such regions, it investigates specific conditions conducive to effective democratic openings in such regions. Using a case study method, it focuses on Armenia’s Velvet Revolution in 2018, which successfully challenged the previously-entrenched authoritarian regime in the country. This was particularly significant as it occurred in Russia’s security orbit. Armenia has been firmly wedged in Russia-centric regional organizations, in parallel to the deep bilateral ties between the two countries developed since the Soviet collapse. This article argues, first, that the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience campaign played a key role in ushering a peaceful democratic breakthrough. This strategy is also credited for explaining Russian restraint as the events unfolded throughout the year. Second, it also highlights the specific form of Armenia’s authoritarianism and the institutionalization of the state that it had produced. It posits an autocrat’s dilemma: greater state institutionalization to defend the “soft” authoritarian system at some point becomes a liability. This dual-track approach to the study of Armenia’s Velvet Revolution, the civil society and the state, is also used to explain Russian restraint as a factor in this case. The article concludes with a brief application of this dual-track transition model to the unyielding mass protests in Belarus, also occurring in Russia’s security orbit.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45111308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.76
Mariia Shynkarenko
The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic ethnic group, remain the most oppressed group in Crimea after the 2014 Russian annexation. The Ukrainian public tends to view them as obedient victims forced to accommodate Russian demands, while scholars mainly avoid the issue. My ethnographic fieldwork in Crimea, however, demonstrates that what might seem like obedient behavior from the outside is, in fact, an expression of agency. This reading is based on close-range observations and conversations with people who speak and behave in ways that initially appear as compliant acts, but which do in fact challenge Russian authorities—arguably more so than other overt forms of resistance in this context. I argue that the ability to decipher many Crimean Tatars’ behavior as tactics of resistance, depends on our understanding of authorities’ contrary expectations. Portrayed as religious fanatics and a security threat, Crimean Tatars are stereotyped as terrorists, likely to engage in extremist activity. In light of this, Crimean Tatars’ compliant behavior, expressed through patience and etiquette, festivity and humor, proves that narrative wrong. Furthermore, other seemingly compliant behaviors—such as accepting Russian passports in order to remain in Crimea—should be interpreted as an act of resistance to the political aims of state actors. By undermining the state’s aim to push out Crimean Tatars and increase the Slavic population, the decision to remain in Crimea in fact challenges state power, rather than affirms it.
{"title":"Compliant Subjects?","authors":"Mariia Shynkarenko","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.76","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.76","url":null,"abstract":"The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic ethnic group, remain the most oppressed group in Crimea after the 2014 Russian annexation. The Ukrainian public tends to view them as obedient victims forced to accommodate Russian demands, while scholars mainly avoid the issue. My ethnographic fieldwork in Crimea, however, demonstrates that what might seem like obedient behavior from the outside is, in fact, an expression of agency. This reading is based on close-range observations and conversations with people who speak and behave in ways that initially appear as compliant acts, but which do in fact challenge Russian authorities—arguably more so than other overt forms of resistance in this context. I argue that the ability to decipher many Crimean Tatars’ behavior as tactics of resistance, depends on our understanding of authorities’ contrary expectations. Portrayed as religious fanatics and a security threat, Crimean Tatars are stereotyped as terrorists, likely to engage in extremist activity. In light of this, Crimean Tatars’ compliant behavior, expressed through patience and etiquette, festivity and humor, proves that narrative wrong. Furthermore, other seemingly compliant behaviors—such as accepting Russian passports in order to remain in Crimea—should be interpreted as an act of resistance to the political aims of state actors. By undermining the state’s aim to push out Crimean Tatars and increase the Slavic population, the decision to remain in Crimea in fact challenges state power, rather than affirms it.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49252200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.1
Peter Gries, Richard Q. Turcsányi
During the past decade, China has rapidly emerged as a major player in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Will it divide Europe? Might these formerly communist countries align themselves again with a communist superpower to their east? Or does their past experience of Russia and communism generate suspicions of China? This article explores what public opinion data from a fall 2020 survey of six CEE countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia) can teach us about the drivers of CEE attitudes toward China. It suggests that China has become a “second Eastern power” beyond Russia against which many people in the CEE have come to define themselves. Although there are large differences between CEE publics in their views of China, individual-level self-identifications with the East or West, and attitudes toward the communist past and communism today consistently shape views of both Russia and China. Russia looms large for all in the CEE, but especially for Latvia and Poland, whose views of China appear to be almost completely mediated through attitudes toward their giant Russian neighbor. We conclude with thoughts on the implications of these findings about the structure of CEE public opinion toward China for the future of the “16+1” mechanism and CEE-China relations more broadly.
{"title":"The East Is Red…Again! How the Specters of Communism and Russia Shape Central and Eastern European Views of China","authors":"Peter Gries, Richard Q. Turcsányi","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"During the past decade, China has rapidly emerged as a major player in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Will it divide Europe? Might these formerly communist countries align themselves again with a communist superpower to their east? Or does their past experience of Russia and communism generate suspicions of China? This article explores what public opinion data from a fall 2020 survey of six CEE countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia) can teach us about the drivers of CEE attitudes toward China. It suggests that China has become a “second Eastern power” beyond Russia against which many people in the CEE have come to define themselves. Although there are large differences between CEE publics in their views of China, individual-level self-identifications with the East or West, and attitudes toward the communist past and communism today consistently shape views of both Russia and China. Russia looms large for all in the CEE, but especially for Latvia and Poland, whose views of China appear to be almost completely mediated through attitudes toward their giant Russian neighbor. We conclude with thoughts on the implications of these findings about the structure of CEE public opinion toward China for the future of the “16+1” mechanism and CEE-China relations more broadly.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47803469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.52
O. Malinova
This article follows the transformations of the official narrative about Russia’s post-Soviet transition over 20 years of Putin’s stay in power. To detect how the gradual evolution of political regime toward authoritarianism was legitimized, it focuses on comparison of concise narratives articulated in the Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly between 2000 and 2020. The method of research is computer-assisted qualitative content analysis. The article reveals how the declared stages of modern Russia’s development correlated with the evolving representations of the West. The initial goals of establishing democracy, the market economy, and the rule of law over time were either reinterpreted or dissolved into minor practical tasks. The most often articulated policy goal was raising the people’s living standards, which was narrated as overcoming the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the hard 1990s. In the Addresses, Russia became represented as a country that completed its transition between 2012 and 2018, with restoring its international positions and military strength, as well as resources for better social welfare. The “democratic society” was declared to be instituted; however, this term was associated with formal elections and facilitating civic participation, not with the alternation and accountability of power.
{"title":"Legitimizing Putin’s Regime","authors":"O. Malinova","doi":"10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.52","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/j.postcomstud.2022.55.1.52","url":null,"abstract":"This article follows the transformations of the official narrative about Russia’s post-Soviet transition over 20 years of Putin’s stay in power. To detect how the gradual evolution of political regime toward authoritarianism was legitimized, it focuses on comparison of concise narratives articulated in the Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly between 2000 and 2020. The method of research is computer-assisted qualitative content analysis. The article reveals how the declared stages of modern Russia’s development correlated with the evolving representations of the West. The initial goals of establishing democracy, the market economy, and the rule of law over time were either reinterpreted or dissolved into minor practical tasks. The most often articulated policy goal was raising the people’s living standards, which was narrated as overcoming the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the hard 1990s. In the Addresses, Russia became represented as a country that completed its transition between 2012 and 2018, with restoring its international positions and military strength, as well as resources for better social welfare. The “democratic society” was declared to be instituted; however, this term was associated with formal elections and facilitating civic participation, not with the alternation and accountability of power.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43055455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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