How to Conceptualize State Socialist Globalization?

Abstract

This chapter discusses the plausibility of key concepts competing in the interpretation of state socialist globalization, particularly ‘alternative globalization’ and ‘socialist protoglobalization’. Throughout the state socialist era, countries in East Central Europe, as well as Eastern European nations overall, sustained moderate economic and cultural ties with the Global South. East-South trade represented only a small fraction of world trade, and the East-South relationship cannot be considered central to the Third World either. Similarly, cultural ties with the Global South had little impact on the East Central European societies. The notion of an ‘alternative globalization’, as proposed by revisionist approaches to Eastern European state socialist globalization, does not seem useful because the connections that the East Central European countries established with the Third World could not compensate for their limited links with the West. Instead of ‘alternative’, the terms ‘fragmented’, ‘selective’, and ‘uneven’ appear more valid for conceptualizing state socialist globalization. Focusing on these features of globalization in state socialist East Central Europe can bridge the gap between earlier approaches that focused on the region’s isolation and more recent revisionist research.

Over the last decade and a half, ambitious attempts have been made to conceptualize the globalization of Eastern Europe, including East Central Europe, during the state socialist period. Several of these have already been mentioned in our study. The new ideas included the relatively straightforward notions of ‘red globalization’ and ‘socialist globalization’, but there are also concepts and related interpretations that do not merely attribute specific features to the globalization of the state socialist countries, but instead assume a more or less separate globalization process involving these countries, and thus make explicit claims about globalization as a whole. Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson suggested the term ‘halved globalisation’ (halbierte Globalisierung), according to which the world disintegrated into an increasingly interconnected Western or capitalist part and a socialist bloc that separated itself from the rest of the globe, consequently cutting globalization itself into two ‘halves’.¹ Elsewhere, the same authors explicitly claim that in the decades following World War II the process of globalization “split in two”.² Others speak of the socialist states experiencing their ‘own’ globalization,³ following a line of reasoning that also includes the concept of ‘alternative globalization’.⁴ The latter is not only the most popular among the related interpretations emerging in recent years, but it has also met with a favourable critical response.⁵ At the same time, as we have seen, of all the concepts describing state socialist globalization in Eastern Europe, it is the most elaborately discussed in the research literature. This approach brings a radically new narrative and has fundamental implications for the interpretation of East Central European globalization, including the dynamics, chronology, and numerous other dimensions of the process. All this justifies a closer examination of the content and plausibility of this concept in relation to East Central Europe, but the study of this region also provides lessons for the globalization of the entire Eastern Bloc.

Such an analysis is complicated by the fact that the notion of ‘alternative globalization’ appears in the literature and in the broader discourse in more than one sense. Sometimes, it carries a political meaning. In these cases, ‘alternative globalization’, also known as ‘alter-globalization’ or ‘the global justice movement, refers to various social movements that seek global cooperation and interaction in order to resist the negative effects of what they consider neoliberal globalization.⁶ Even within the specific academic context of post-World War II state socialist countries, the term is employed rather inconsistently, even by the same authors on occasion. The ambiguity of the usage is reflected by the question marks that often appear after the concept ‘alternative globalization’ in the titles and subtitles of publications addressing this issue. Authors recurrently interpret ‘alternative globalization’ as a political and economic programme, i.e., the not necessarily realized aspiration of the state socialist countries, to achieve a form of globalization other than that led by the West. Furthermore, it has also been proposed that “the notion of alternative globalization suggests a critical rethinking of the history of Western-centred globalization in which events and actors in other parts of the world actually play an important role”.⁷ In other words, in this case, the concept denotes a historiographical programme.

However, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, there is also a growing perception that alternative globalization has been achieved, that is, that the Eastern European state socialist countries have managed, at least for certain periods, to create their own globalization, which, as an eminent exponent of the concept, James Mark argues, came to an end in the 1980s and 1990s.⁸

Given the uncertainty in the use of the terminology, it seems to be useful to explore the meaning of the adjective ‘alternative’. The term ‘alternative’ may imply any one of several meanings: it may simply indicate that something is different from the usual in terms of its characteristics; it may also refer to mutual exclusivity, along with parallelism; or it may denote substitution. Interpreting the concept in the context of globalization, the first option can be ruled out, since if ‘alternative’ only means that the globalization process in Eastern Europe showed particular characteristics, then the term loses its analytical power and serves no purpose other than to attract attention. The second option, mutual exclusivity of the globalization process in Eastern Europe and in other parts of the world cannot be supported empirically. The Eastern European state socialist countries maintained relations with each other as well as with the Global South and the Western countries. These relations were far from symmetrical in most areas, but they cannot be regarded as mutually exclusive. Rather, the global connections of the Eastern European region and the West or other world regions were quite entangled, as demonstrated by research.⁹ In fact, many of the contributions of the revisionist direction of research argue for the existence of worldwide interconnections.¹⁰ For similar reasons, it is also hardly plausible to assume that the state socialist countries of Eastern Europe were involved in one of several globalization processes running in parallel. This leaves us with the fourth possible interpretation: the Eastern European state socialist countries were able to build new international relationships to compensate for the shortcomings of their existing connections with the Western world and with many other world regions. Indeed, this is an idea that often surfaces in the works committed to the revisionist approach.

With the accelerating disintegration of the colonial system from the 1950s onwards, many political leaders and other decision-makers as well as numerous academics and cultural figures in the Eastern European countries believed that their countries could establish international relations with the Third World that could substitute for their restrained links with the Western countries. The Global South also embraced the idea that mutually beneficial cooperation could be established with Eastern Europe, replacing former colonial powers. Within the framework of these visions, such new relationships could have driven rapid technological development and, above all, industrialization in the former colonial countries, while providing the state socialist countries with markets and raw materials, as well as military and geopolitical leverage.¹¹

Against this background, several of the revisionist accounts offer rich descriptions of a wide range of links between the socialist countries and the developing world. These are important research findings which show that previous interpretations of the international relations of the Eastern European socialist states have in many ways exaggerated the extent of the region’s isolation. However, the revisionist studies are mainly concerned with specific areas of politics and culture, and draw mostly upon the ideas of, and encounters between, members of the political leadership and higher echelons of culture. From this point of view, it is symptomatic that the chapter on development projects for the Third World in the volume Socialism Goes Global, arguably the most comprehensive and systematic contribution of the revisionist approach, mainly describes development-related political and academic plans and visions, with little reference to the everyday, down-to-earth implementation of those development ideas; in fact, no attempt is made to explore the significance of the development projects that were actually implemented.¹² The revisionist studies are thus often confined to presenting the intentions and claims rather than the realities of global connections; not only is there no assessment of the weight of the economic, cultural, and other links between the Second and Third World, but the exploration of the actual extent to which these factors affected individual Eastern European societies is also lacking.

Recent research has abundantly documented the limitations of the Third World's relations with the state socialist countries, and these results are also confirmed by all the findings of our research in all the areas studied, from information flows to tourism. The real magnitude of such linkages is all the more crucial because the socialist countries of Eastern Europe only established closer relations with a relatively small number of developing countries, namely the so-called countries of socialist orientation, such as Angola, Mozambique, and South Yemen. It is therefore not surprising that their economic ties with the Third World only marginally contributed to globalization; the total volume of trade between all European socialist countries and the Global South never exceeded 1% of world trade.¹³ Nor can the relationship be considered central for the developing world as a whole, as is illustrated by the development of aid policy. In the 1980s, development assistance from all socialist countries to the Third World amounted to about one-tenth of the total value of aid those countries received from the West.¹⁴

The expansion and deepening of the new international relations were hampered by a number of factors rooted in the state socialist system. After initial high expectations, it quickly became clear that those in control of the Eastern European economies typically saw the countries of the Global South as a market for low-quality goods and services, with little regard for local needs.¹⁵ A case in point, for instance, is the policy of a Soviet locomotive company that fulfilled an order from Africa by also sending a snowplough along with the locomotive, as was the procedure for domestic deliveries. The main reason for this inflexibility was the centrally controlled economic system. In other cases, ideological constraints led to adverse outcomes: Eastern European politicians and military advisers, based on Marxist revolutionary ideology, often tended to escalate local armed conflicts rather than promoting peaceful settlements.

Professionals arriving in developing countries from Eastern Europe tended to be isolated from the local population and showing patronizing attitudes towards their local partners. As one author puts it, “the expatriate communities were often insular and claustrophobic.”¹⁶ There was little sincere openness to local culture: for example, Hungarian engineers working in Algeria were more interested in learning about the French mores and way of life than the local culture.¹⁷ For most people from state socialist Eastern Europe, the incentive for working in the Global South was purely economic: the opportunity to earn higher wages in hard currency and purchase Western goods, so that upon returning home they could achieve better living conditions.¹⁸ In many ways, the relationship emerging between the local population and their Eastern European partners replicated those existing between the colonial countries and their former colonizers.

The links of East Central Europe and, more broadly, Eastern Europe to the Global South had little impact on the internationalization of these societies and their social conditions as a whole. As we have seen in the previous chapter, relatively few people travelled to and visited the Global South through these connections. Relations outside the government administration and officially recognized bodies were also limited in other respects; it is symptomatic that Poland’s Solidarity movement maintained very few links to the Global South in the 1980s, and the existing relations were largely shaped by the movement's Western allies.¹⁹ Just as East Central European professionals working in the developing world tended to live in isolation, the same was true of Third World workers and, to a lesser extent, students working and studying in East Central Europe. For example, even though the mission of the boarding schools for Korean refugee children in Eastern Europe in the early 1950s was to integrate Korean children into local communities, in reality, boarding schools both nurtured and enforced children's separation from those communities.²⁰

The very institutional system set up to facilitate the new international relations proved to be a barrier to expanding them at scale. The links of the state socialist countries with the Global South were predominantly based on bilateral intergovernmental agreements or agreements between government and party organizations.²¹ These agreements left no room for the initiatives and the free movement of citizens or the autonomous decisions of economic actors, which would have served to make the global networks denser. Kristin Roth-Ey’s conclusion therefore seems plausible, indicating that “[t]he overwhelming majority of people in the Second World did not have direct, personal experience of the global in any way; they did not move beyond socialist borders in societies where mobility was tightly bound to privilege; they were not physically connected in a culture that glamorized the connected. For them, the experience of the global was, if anything, a mediated experience […].”²²

In view of the foregoing, the revisionist interpretations do not convincingly demonstrate that the Eastern Bloc’s relations with the Third World adequately made up for the missing links in other relations.²³ It is, therefore, doubtful whether the concept of ‘alternative globalization’ adequately reflects the globalization process emerging in state socialist Europe.

More general considerations also argue against the use of this concept. Globalization in Eastern Europe was clearly linked to the general trends of globalization. As elsewhere in the world, its determinants included technological developments, especially in transport and telecommunications. These areas were largely transformed by innovations from the Western world; the Eastern European state socialist societies were not able to find ‘alternative’ paths of technological development that stimulated globalization, but largely adopted innovations from the Western world, as in the case of the television and the container. Moreover, it seems implausible to interpret globalization as a phenomenon comprising a set of distinct elements largely isolated from one another, as the notion of globalization would lose much of its analytical power. This notion can only be a useful addition to the conceptual toolbox for understanding social relations if it has a distinctive focus on shared experiences, transplanetary flows, and interdependence. In this sense, the very nature of globalization implies that its various dimensions are thoroughly interwoven, and that the activities of its diverse actors are rather intertwined. It is therefore implausible to conceptualize globalization as a process that can be divided into parts. Instead, the focus should be on the extent to which different entities are involved in the same process.

On the basis of the results presented in the previous chapter and the observations just made, East Central European state socialist globalization cannot be seen as an alternative process; it is instead appropriate to take a different approach. For our part, we would stress above all the selectivity and the unevenness of the process. In this context, ‘selectivity’ focuses on making choices or preferences concerning globalization, while ‘unevenness’ emphasizes the lack of uniformity or the presence of disparities in the process. The two terms are related in the sense that selectivity in making choices can lead to unevenness in the outcomes of globalization. However, as indicated earlier, we do not consider East Central European globalization the sole outcome of the decisions of local actors.

While globalization, in general, exhibits uneven dynamics across its various aspects, this was particularly pronounced in the case of the changes unfolding under state socialism. Firstly, the process was uneven in geographical terms. On the one hand, the relations connecting the countries of the region with one another and with the Soviet Union widened greatly, and their links with certain Third World countries became much more extensive than ever before. This expansion was partly the result of general trends that also affected other parts of the world. Beyond the advancements in transport and communication mentioned earlier, economic growth and the increasing complexity of the economy further fuelled the demand for raw materials and other products that often could be sourced from distant locations. The preferential treatment of specific regions and countries was also motivated by obvious political considerations. On the other hand, as we have observed, relations in several other directions were limited and characterized by very uneven development. This was particularly true for the Western states, but also for many countries of the Global South.

Secondly, the course of globalization over time was equally uneven. The Eastern European state socialist countries initially participated only moderately in the post-World War II boom of global trade, as they tended to pursue either internal self-sufficiency or self-sufficiency at the COMECON level. In the course of time, however, they gradually opened up.

This change took place at different speeds and to different degrees in the different state socialist countries, which is a third manifestation of the unevenness already identified in other aspects. Focusing our observations on the East Central European countries, Poland and Hungary were much more open to international economic-financial institutions and international economic cooperation in general in the 1970s and 1980s than Czechoslovakia.

Fourthly, the unevenness was also strongly prevalent in the various dimensions of globalization. In some areas of the economy, culture, and politics, the international connections of the state socialist countries were considerable and grew more or less continuously after the mid-1950s. Popular culture is a case in point. Western popular music, in particular, attracted a wide audience in the region from the 1960s onwards, but it also inspired many local performers of jazz, pop, rock, and other genres. Other expressions of Western youth culture, ranging from hairstyles and fashion to sexual behaviour, were also diffused relatively widely.²⁴ The spread of Western popular culture generated opposition and resistance in the state socialist countries, especially, but not exclusively, from representatives of the official ideology. This often took the form of a generational divide, although these conflicts had more or less subsided by the 1980s.²⁵ Isolated but spectacular global transfers also took place in some economic sectors: Hungarian collective farms, for example, imported complete American machine complexes and technologies and successfully adapted them to local conditions.²⁶

In contrast, global links displayed only moderate dynamics in terms of travel, migration, or access to information and consumer goods. An illustration of this is the availability of branded and high-quality Western consumer products, such as chocolates, cigarettes, cosmetics, and tape recorders. Usually, these products could only be bought on the black market or at exclusive shops for privileged individuals, such as athletes, people receiving hard currency from relatives living abroad, and party officials.²⁷

In interpreting the state socialist globalization of Eastern Europe, focusing on the uneven and selective nature of the process has several advantages beyond drawing attention to the defining feature of globalization in this region. First and foremost, it recognizes that the globalization of the Eastern European state socialist countries was intense in certain dimensions and at certain times. Thus, it is able to bridge the gap between earlier approaches that focused on the isolation of the Eastern European countries, essentially neglecting their globalization and the more recent revisionist trends of research that draw conclusions about the overall globalization of Eastern Europe on the basis of intense changes in certain dimensions and directions of globalization. The proposed approach is also consistent with several demands made by researchers concerning the interpretation of globalization in Eastern Europe.²⁸ Hence, it does not consider globalization as a unilateral and all-encompassing process initiated and only shaped by the capitalist West. Moreover, it includes Eastern European agency by recognizing that state socialist countries also had their own policy preferences. This interpretation not only acknowledges that globalization occurred in the region under state socialism with a considerable intensity in some areas and during some periods, but is also able to track the dynamics of the process. In addition, it has an advantage over the concept of ‘alternative globalization’ in that it is fully compatible with the prevailing definitions of globalization, which emphasize the specific elements of global flows, interdependence between different parts of the world, and increased awareness of these processes.²⁹ This is much less the case for the concept of ‘alternative globalization’, which cannot account for the notion of a deepening global interdependence.