The Role of 1989: Dedramatization at Its Extreme?

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of the year 1989 in the globalization of East Central Europe, a pivotal theme in related debates. Contrary to claims in recent literature that refer to 1989 as a ‘de-globalizing moment’, this study provides evidence that regime changes played a crucial role in fostering globalization in the region. Globalization in East Central Europe progressed slowly after Stalinism, but 1989 marked a breakthrough in this respect, affecting most social, economic, and cultural spheres significantly. Following this watershed moment, both foreign direct investment and the activities of transnational corporations increased dramatically. The same clear pattern can be demonstrated regarding the region's integration into the global telecommunications network. Moreover, the regime changes catalysed a substantial surge in international travel to and from the region, including intercontinental journeys. East Central Europe emerged as an important hub and destination within the international migration network, even though in terms of migration, globalization in the region after the regime changes was significantly less dynamic, especially when compared to other aspects of globalization in the region, and the trajectory observed in Western European countries.

The revisionist approach to the globalization of state socialist Eastern Europe casts new light on the role of 1989 in this process. As we have seen earlier, in addition to reassessing the link between the breakdown of the state socialist system and the process of globalization, some authors argue that the region's global integration in fact declined after the regime changes. This line of interpretation therefore transcends state socialist globalization and also makes explicit claims about the region's development after 1989. All this warrants a separate discussion of the subject, in addition to what has been said on this issue so far.

The great historical significance of the regime changes in Eastern Europe and the related symbolic importance of the year 1989 are self-evident to most observers. Ágnes Heller called the collapse of communism a “great turning point” in history, while Jacques Rupnik suggested that “it may have been the last time Europe constituted the centre-stage of a world event”, that is, became a significant factor in world history, because the “centre of gravity” has since been shifting eastward.¹ Many comprehensive historical works also interpreted this period as a watershed moment. Eric Hobsbawm's famous synthesis is an early example. In his view, the Eastern European regime changes marked the end of the “short twentieth century”. Since then, many other historical analyses have also seen 1989, or other years of regime changes, as the end or the beginning of a historical era.² Just to refer to a few examples, Martin Conway and his fellow authors chose 1989 as their starting point for writing the history of the continent in reverse chronological order, treating the post-1989 period as a completely different era; Philipp Ther started his own history of Europe from this point in time.³

However, more recently, several commentators have questioned whether the regime changes really represented such a strong historical divide in Eastern Europe.⁴ The increasing distance in time tends to relativize the break of 1990 and doubts have been raised about the scope of its reach and about the validity of the main narratives associated with it. The recent history of Eastern Europe is often regarded to be less a continuation of the authoritarian era and more a prelude to the present-day problems.⁵ Many doubt the extent to which the goals widely accepted at the time of the regime changes—such as the establishment of the rule of law—were achieved in post-communist Europe, and, in particular, in such parts of the region as Hungary. One feels less assured today than two decades ago that the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall should be understood as a third wave of democratization, as Samuel Huntington claimed in his 1991 book.⁶ Some argue that the generally accepted view regarding the triple transition needs to be modified, since marketization, democratization, and the establishment of civil society are not inevitably connected to one another.⁷

What is certainly a remarkable development, however, is that the dedramatization of the regime changes in Eastern Europe has also found its way into the field of globalization research. As we have seen, it has been suggested that the regime changes did not make Eastern Europe significantly more globalized, and 1989 can even be interpreted as a ‘de-globalizing moment’.⁸ The relevant argument is that globalization in Eastern Europe was much stronger than previously assumed, which can be traced back particularly to the extensive relations the region established with the Global South. However, from the 1970s onwards, a shift occurred in this respect: the Eastern European region rearranged its orientation from the Global South to the West. As a result, the extent of its globalization actually decreased, a problem very much related to the issue of alternative globalization as discussed above. Furthermore, it has been also argued that Eastern Europe's complete reorientation towards the West occurring at the time of the regime changes was a choice made by the Eastern European elites as to the nature of the globalization to be pursued.

Questioning the pivotal role of 1989 in the process of Eastern European globalization seems difficult to support with comprehensive empirical evidence, just as the interpretation of 1989 as a ‘de-globalizing moment’ cannot be supported by comprehensive empirical evidence. Our results show that while the process of globalization certainly advanced in the East Central European region in the 1970s and 1980s, 1989 clearly marked a breakthrough. This can be seen in foreign trade and the extraordinary growth both in FDI and in the activity of transnational corporations, actors often considered the main drivers of globalization. In this respect, countries of the region soon outpaced other societies with a similar level of economic development and even several more economically advanced countries, such as neighbouring Austria as well. Similar processes took place in the field of telecommunications. Although the hierarchy of the global telecommunications system was generally very stable in the 1990s, the position of the East Central European societies in this network changed: they migrated towards the centre. Moreover, a wealth of data confirms that after 1989, there was a dramatic surge in international travel and visits to the region, and while the boom was mainly seen in travel within the continent, the number of visits beyond Europe also multiplied. East Central Europe also became an important node and, for the first time, a destination in its own right within the international migration network.

These findings are supported by a number of other analyses, including the most respected globalization indices, such as the KOF Globalisation Index or the Maastricht Globalisation Index (MGI). These composite indicators cover politics, society, economics, and culture and employ data on diverse aspects such as the number of foreign or foreign-born residents, the number of airports that offer at least one international flight connection, and the number of international bilateral or multilateral treaties signed by the country.⁹ The indices are mostly available for the last few decades, wherefore they are not really suitable for long-term analysis; however, they do cover the period of regime changes in East Central Europe. The measures demonstrate that the level of globalization of the East Central European countries increased significantly after the regime changes. After 1989, they were among the fastest globalizing countries of the world, and, as a consequence, the countries of the region reached a high level of globalization by the second decade of the twenty-first century even in international comparison.¹⁰

The dynamics of globalization in East Central Europe after the regime changes can mainly be explained by developments within the region. However, the 1980s saw the start of global processes that also had a significant impact on East Central Europe's international connections. This new era, also referred to as hyperglobalization, has seen a major increase in the dynamics of globalization, mainly as a result of breakthroughs in information and communication technologies, the opening up of China and several Third World countries to the world economy, and the decisions of a number of governments to embrace free trade.¹¹ Alongside internal changes in East Central Europe, this acceleration of globalization also helped to increase the region's international embeddedness. Hyperglobalization affected all regions of the world even if in varying degrees; consequently, the fact that it coincided with the fall of state socialism in Europe further undermines the plausibility of the thesis about the declining level of globalization in Eastern Europe after 1989.

A further remarkable claim appearing in the revisionist literature about the role of regime changes is that after 1989, Eastern European elites decided to adopt a new form of globalization; in other words, the reorientation towards Western-centred globalization was a conscious decision adopted by the local elites.¹² The authors advancing this argument interpret globalization as a project, and thus, in our view, obscure the mechanisms through which globalization proceeds.¹³ Political and economic decision-making was undoubtedly highly centralized in the state socialist countries; hence, their participation in the globalization process was also often highly controlled. At the same time, globalization is also determined by a number of factors, such as technological change, that no single country, group of countries, or other actors can fundamentally influence.¹⁴ Accordingly, the state socialist countries and their elites only had partial choices in the course of globalization and were unable to manage their participation in it in a controlled, project-like manner. Moreover, it is also not self-evident how fragmented groups of elites across such a vast region can make shared decisions about their positions on globalization and enforce them.

Even more importantly, the proposition of a conscious decision on the type of globalization greatly overestimates the choices available to the East Central European societies around the time of the regime changes. In the late 1980s, the developmental paths of the region were severely constrained. Experts of the centrally controlled economies, such as János Kornai, clearly demonstrated that uncompetitive firms, a severe lack of capital, ineffective economic institutions, low levels of social capabilities, and other dire legacies of state socialism left the East Central European, and more broadly, the Eastern European state socialist countries with very few options by the late 1980s.¹⁵ To transform themselves into functioning market economies, they needed to open up to Western companies, the major sources of capital and technology. Consequently, it is highly doubtful that East Central European societies had any meaningful choices in terms of how to embrace globalization after 1989.

Later on, having overcome the transformation crisis, the countries of the region entered a new millennium with more options available to them. However, despite their increasing room to manoeuvre, the countries of the region remained committed to integration into the world economy, mainly by welcoming Western multinationals. This was not coincidental. As their economic convergence with Western Europe after the turn of the millennium has shown, the countries of East Central Europe were among the winners of globalization, and thus there would have been no incentive for them either to seek alternatives or to opt out of globalization even if these options had been available.¹⁶

In addition to the effects of the aforementioned revolutionary transformation of information and communication technologies, the preferences of broader segments of East Central European societies should not be underestimated either. The desire for the freedom of movement and information and the yearning for access to consumer and cultural goods were all factors that encouraged broad sections of these societies, and not just their elites, to seek Western links and to embrace, one might say, realexistierende globalization.

As we have seen in the historiographical overview, the dedramatization of the regime changes in the process of globalization in East Central Europe and in the broader Eastern Europe has gained a further analytical instrument by the introduction of the notion of ‘socialist protoglobalization’. As a brief reminder, the concept proposes that the reform socialism of the 1970s in the East Central European countries led to a significant increase in the number of partnerships with Western firms and this process largely paved the way for the globalization of the region after the regime changes.¹⁷

This conceptual innovation has met with a favourable critical response.¹⁸ However, the use of the term ‘socialist protoglobalization’ raises a number of problems beyond the obvious fact that its core concept ‘protoglobalization’ is already well established in other contexts, especially in the early modern and modern periods, and might therefore lead to misunderstandings.¹⁹ More importantly, the prefix ‘proto’ is commonly used in historiography to denote a first, original, or early form of a phenomenon, often in the context of tracing the development or origins of a particular process, political organization, technology, or cultural development. It is in this sense that the prefix has been used to create the concepts of proto-industrialization, proto-renaissance, proto-nationalism, and proto-democracy.²⁰ Consequently, the concept of ‘protoglobalization’ can also only be justified if we consider it as the first stage of globalization, or if we date globalization—‘real’ globalization—from a certain point in time and distinguish a preparatory phase before that time in which globalization had not yet taken place, but certain elements of it had already appeared. Until now, the term ‘protoglobalization’ has indeed been used in this sense.

Taking this into account, it is difficult to make a case for the application of the concept of ‘socialist protoglobalization’. In Eastern Europe, and in the East Central European region in particular, the process of globalization was clearly underway long before the 1970s and 1980s. It is therefore not plausible to insert a phase designated with a label that starts with the prefix ‘proto-’ right in the middle of an already ongoing process since this procedure fully distorts any sensible periodization of the globalization process seen in the region and beyond. Nor is it conceivable to use the term ‘socialist protoglobalization’ in the sense that it paved the way for later globalization during socialism, as the 1970s and 1980s represented the last phase of state socialism in Eastern Europe, never to be followed by a subsequent stage of actual ‘socialist globalization’.

More substantial considerations also challenge the understanding behind the concept. Contemporary research has already documented that in Eastern nations multiple factors hindered the growth of East–West collaboration. These factors included the limited decision-making authority of the enterprises, constraints forced on them by plan directives, restrictions imposed by foreign trade strategies, specialization decisions made by the COMECON, and non-convertible currencies, as well as fluctuating price relationships and the resulting difficulties in price calculations.²¹ The literature favouring the term ‘socialist protoglobalization’ does not convincingly demonstrate that the East Central European countries attracted enough foreign capital or technology to significantly transform their economies, or that they were able to achieve such transformation by any other means in the 1970s and 1980s. A major reason for the demise of state socialism was that these countries could not compete in the global economy because they did not have access to the most advanced technologies or could not apply them effectively. Czechoslovakia, in particular, was very weak in this respect, yet it heavily attracted foreign companies to settle in and invest after the regime change. As a result, the link between the supposed protoglobalization of the 1970s and the economic openness of the 1990s cannot be convincingly demonstrated here. All this indicates that the importance of the otherwise existing and expanding East–West business-to-business relations in the 1970s and 1980s is over-interpreted by those advocating the concept of socialist protoglobalization.

Finally, the argumentation behind this approach only deals with the economic aspects and fully neglects other dimensions of globalization, such as the flow of information and the movement of people. Therefore, although it may seem obvious at first, it should be stressed that research must always take into account the multi-dimensionality of globalization: generalizations about the dynamics of the process cannot be derived from economic change alone.