Impressions from a Journey in Central Europe
Michael Howard
Casual tourists from the West, travelling in air-conditioned buses and staying in modern government-sponsored hotels, may be pleasantly surprised by their first sight of Central Europe.[*] In what used to be East Germany the countryside looks as prosperous and cultivated as anywhere in the West. City centres have been tidied up and carefully rebuilt, while the apartment blocks on the outskirts are no worse than one would find in the United Kingdom – in some places rather better. In Poland agriculture is picturesquely archaic, and in the bustling small towns the people look as well clothed and fed as they would at home. In Czechoslovakia Prague sparkles like a jewel, its streets thronged with happy holiday-makers. As for Hungary, it is hard to realise one is no longer in the West: the huge plains being efficiently (to all appearances) harvested by echelons of combines; the signs of prosperous well-being in industrial centres like Miskolc; the weekenders crowding the shores of Lake Balaton; above all, Budapest, a city in its elegance still more comparable to Paris than Vienna – is there anything seriously wrong here? The region is certainly ‘backward’ compared with Western Europe and the United States, but it always was. The cars and roads are smaller, the trains shabbier, the shops fewer and selling a more limited range of goods. But so it was with Spain or Southern Italy a few decades ago, a ‘backwardness’ almost attractive to the overfed, over-urbanised Westerner, and anyhow, surely remediable by a judicious infusion of capital, technology and expertise?
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[*] I use this term to cover East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary: the old lands of Western Christendom. Strictly speaking, it embraces Croatia and Slovenia as well. Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and Serbia have a different historic and cultural heritage and present different political and economic problems. More important, I did not visit them.
Letters
Vol. 12 No. 23 · 6 December 1990
From Branka Magas
In the old days, Communist rule in Eastern Europe used to be condemned on the grounds that it barred the local populations from enjoying the benefits of Western-style democracy. Today we are increasingly told that Western-style democracy is not appropriate for them. This is the basic message of Michael Howard’s ‘Impressions from a Journey in Central Europe’ (LRB, 25 October). He tells us that ‘what Central Europe needs today is not so much formal democracy on the Western model as strong government commanding broad consensus, responsive to popular needs, and operating within the rule of law.’ The catch lies in the seemingly innocuous phrase ‘formal democracy on the Western model’.
Common sense might suggest that a government in command of a ‘broad consensus’ and ‘responsive to popular needs’ would not have to be any stronger than its counterparts in the West. However, the account the author gives us of the situation prevailing today in what he calls Central Europe – the lands of ‘Western Christendom’ lying east of the Nato countries – makes clear why he is ready to dispense in so cavalier a manner with the ‘formalities’ of a democratic order. It is because of his sympathy for governments currently planning or executing measures that precisely do not command any ‘broad consensus’. For the dismantling of the significant public welfare provisions left behind by the previous regimes, the generation of large-scale unemployment, and the reintroduction of sharp social polarisation – all in the name of free-market values – can hardly fail to reduce the popularity of the new post-Communist governments. They are, therefore, contemplating a ‘rule of law’ which will precisely do away with the imperative of maintaining a ‘broad consensus’.
Here lies the root of the problem. The populations seem most unwilling to give a mandate for this kind of social surgery. If governments proceed without one, they might indeed even rebel: ‘it would not be, therefore, surprising if quite bitter social conflicts develop in Central Europe.’ Consequently, according to Howard, to ‘contain that conflict and make it fruitful’ strong but not necessarily democratic governments are required.
This prospect, of course, plays havoc with the Cold War rhetoric of ‘struggle against totalitarianism’. To justify himself, the author is obliged to invert reality. Rather than ascribing future limitations of democracy to the new rulers, he places the burden of responsibility upon the peoples themselves: ‘the failure of the peoples of Central Europe instantly to adopt democratic ways’. The reasons for this alleged failure are, interestingly, not to be sought in the ‘numbing effect of living for generations under a totalitarian rule’: that would not wash, given the record of popular participation in the momentous changes of the past year. The explanation instead lies in the whole previous history of the countries in question. This history, abruptly brought out of the cupboard and dusted off for our benefit, turns out – not surprisingly – to be made up of an absence of ‘democratic traditions’. Even the poor Czechs are not absolved, since they allowed a strong Communist Party to develop before the Second World War. The verdict is clear: ‘the history of Central Europe has produced a political culture distinct from that of the West.’ In contrast to their combative Western neighbours (‘growth of self-governing institutions’, ‘drastic destruction of the feudal order’), these peoples are steeped in a culture of ‘acquiescence if not submission, tempered by scepticism and evasion’.
An obvious retort springs to mind: if the population does not aspire to Western-style democracy – being genetically, so to speak, predisposed to acquiescence tempered by evasion – then why should there be any need for ‘strong governments’ to rule over them? But the traveller is not concerned with logic. His job is to propel his Western readers gently along the path of submission to the idea that what Eastern Europe requires today is not more but less democracy. If ‘we cannot, from such roots, expect modern liberal democracy to emerge overnight,’ then we should accept the idea that backward, illiberal and anti-democratic regimes – the kind of regimes we would not tolerate here in the West – will and must emerge there.
Indeed, the problem of democracy in Central Europe, he argues, is not a function of economic difficulties (an alleged ‘forty years of stagnation and neglect’), and thus cannot be solved through Western economic aid and investment. Democracy in Central Europe will not only ‘take time’, but its end-product ‘is likely to be along lines rather different from our own’. ‘We must accept,’ Howard concludes, ‘that in our new European house, there are likely to be many mansions, and that in some of them we [of the West] may not find ourselves entirely comfortable.’
Under the guise of benign liberalism, this approach to the potent issue of democracy serves only one purpose: to legitimise in advance the emergence of authoritarian political structures in East Central Europe. The language of the Cold War – of what the author calls the ‘Manichaean division’ of the world into ‘totalitarian and democratic, slave or free’ – is no longer needed today. The Rights of Man can once again be safely defined as the Rights of Western Man. The worry remains, however, that ‘once the present excitement is over … nostalgia for the good old days, when currency was stable and jobs were secure, may become a serious problem.’ The spectre of Communism (albeit in a new guise) may well come back to haunt Europe. The discomfort of cohabiting with authoritarian regimes within the ‘new European house’ may be a price worth paying to avoid such a prospect. But what if the peoples of Central Europe decide differently? What would happen to Howard’s application to the issue of democracy of the old maxim of cuius regio, eius religio if Central Europe were once again to tilt strongly to the left?
Howard’s West, whose democratic credentials he takes for granted, includes countries that have given birth to fascism (Italy, Germany), that were not long ago run as dictatorships (Greece, the Iberian peninsula), that colonised much of the world (Britain, France. Holland) and that have supported as part of the ‘free world’ some of the most obnoxiously undemocratic regimes. His democratic ‘Anglo-Saxon world’ was not long ago engaged in carpet-bombing the villages and towns of Cambodia and Vietnam, mining the ports of Nicaragua, invading sovereign countries. By contrast, over the past year the peoples of East Central Europe have gone through peaceful and orderly elections, and since then maintained – despite the enormous problems they confront – a commitment to democracy that is in many ways unparalleled in the European West, where civil war (Northern Ireland, Spain), the rule of organised crime (Italy) and near-universal racist ferment form part of everyday life.
If the costs of the Cold War were higher in the East, that does not mean the West was spared them either: the progressive shift of power from legislative to executive branches of government, and bloated military budgets, are two obvious examples. The West also has its ecological ruins. If Europe is to be a truly new house rather than a refurbished old one, it must be constructed as a single mansion.
Branka Magas
London W11
