From Revolution To Uncertainty: The Year 1990 In Central And Eastern Europe

285 Pages·3.273 MB·English

by  Joachim von Puttkamer, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Stanislav Holubec

From Revolution to Uncertainty
Throughout Eastern Europe, the unexpected and irrevocable fall of com-
munism that began in the late 1980s presented enormous challenges in the
spheres of politics and society, as well as at the level of individual experi-
ence. Excitement, uncertainty, and fear predicated the shaping of a new
order, the outcome of which was anything but predetermined.
Recent studies have focused on the ambivalent impact of capitalism. Yet,
at the time, parliamentary democracy had equally few traditions to return
to, and membership in the European Union was a distant dream at best.
Nowadays, as new threats arise, Europe’s current political crises prompt us
to reconsider how liberal democracy in Eastern Europe came about in the
first place.
This book undertakes an analysis of the year 1990 in several countries
throughout Europe to consider the role of uncertainty and change in shap-
ing political nations.
Włodzimierz Borodziej is professorof History at Warsaw University, Stanislav
Holubec is a researcher at the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of
Sciences,Prague,andJoachimvonPuttkamerisprofessorofEasternEuropean
HistoryatJenaUniversityandco-directoroftheImreKertészKolleg.
Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe
Hungary since 1945
Árpád von Klimó, translated by Kevin McAleer
Romania under Communism
Denis Deletant
Bulgaria under Communism
Ivaylo Znepolski, Mihail Gruev, Momtchil Metodiev, Martin Ivanov, Daniel
Vatchkov,IvanElenkov,PlamenDoynow
From Revolution to Uncertainty
The Year 1990 in Central and Eastern Europe
EditedbyJoachimvonPuttkamer,WłodzimierzBorodziej,andStanislavHolubec
Identities in-Between in East-Central Europe
Edited by Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah and Marius Turda
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Histories-of-Central-and-Eastern-
Europe/book-series/CEE
From Revolution to
Uncertainty
The Year 1990 in Central and Eastern
Europe
Edited by Joachim von Puttkamer,
ł
W odzimierz Borodziej and Stanislav
Holubec
Firstpublished2020
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Names:Borodziej,Wlodzimierz,editor.|Holubec,Stanislav,editor.|
Puttkamer,Joachimvon,editor.
Title:Fromrevolutiontouncertainty:theyear1990inCentralandEastern
Europe/editedbyWlodzimierzBorodziej,StanislavHolubec,andJoachim
vonPuttkamer.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2019.|Series:
RoutledgehistoriesofCentralandEasternEurope;4|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2019008484|ISBN9780815351788(hardback)|ISBN
9781351140324(ebook)|ISBN9781351140300(ePub)
Subjects:LCSH:Europe,Central–Politicsandgovernment–1989-|Europe,
Eastern–Politicsandgovernment–1989-|Post-communism–Europe,Central–
History–20thcentury.|Post-communism–Europe,Eastern–History–20th
century.|Nineteenninety,A.D.
Classification:LCCDAW1051.F762019|DDC943.0009/049–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019008484
ISBN:978-0-815-35178-8(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-351-14032-4(ebk)
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Contents
Illustrations vii
Contributors viii
Introduction 1
WŁODZIMIERZBORODZIEJ,STANISLAVHOLUBECANDJOACHIMVON
PUTTKAMER
1 Gropinginthedark:expectationsandpredictions,1988–1991 10
PHILIPPTHER
2 Catalystsofthecollapseandofthetransition,1989–1990 21
MARYELISESAROTTE
3 Polandandthecollapseofthepatronin1989–90:asseenfromthe
PolishembassyinMoscow 32
WŁODZIMIERZBORODZIEJ
4 Teawiththeprimate:attherootsofpoliticalconflictinPoland 50
JOACHIMVONPUTTKAMER
5 Czechoslovakia’syearofdecision:fromthesocialistrevolutionof
1989tothe‘real’revolutionof1990 80
JAMESKRAPFL
6 Talkin’’boutarevolution:onthesocialmemoryof1989in
Hungary 103
ÉVAKOVÁCS
vi Contents
7 Atransitiontowhatandwhosedemocracy?1990inBulgaria
andRomania 117
BOGDANC.IACOB
8 WhentheSlovenianSpringturnedintoahotsummer 142
MARKOZAJC
9 1990:buildingdemocracyinYugoslaviaandthedangerofwar 164
MARIE-JANINECALIC
10 Transformingindustry:onthecorporateoriginsof
post-socialistnostalgiainPoland 182
JOANNAWAWRZYNIAK
11 Germanreunificationandthedynamicsofmigration 202
TIMSCHANETZKY
12 Thepartyisover:theidentitiesandbiographiesofCzechoslovakand
EastGerman(post)communistsintheyear1990 212
STANISLAVHOLUBEC
13 Poland,theGermanquestion,andGermanunification,
1989–1991 245
WŁODZIMIERZBORODZIEJ
14 TheGermanquestionanditsEuropeansolution 259
WILFRIEDLOTH
Index 271
Illustrations
Figures
5.1 RatesoflocalOF/VPNformation 88
5.2 WorkplaceOF/VPNopinionsonthespeedofeconomic
transition 93
Tables
5.1 Opinionsonthedirectionoffurthersocietaldevelopment 85
10.1 ThedynamicsofgrowthoftherealvalueofFDI
(previousyear=100) 184
10.2 FDIinPoland,1993–1998.Overview 185
10.3 Employmentincompanieswithforeigncapitalshare,Poland,
1991–1998 186
10.4 Strikesandunemployment,Poland,1990–2000 188
12.1 Czechoslovakand(East)GermanElections1990 223
12.2 Czech,Slovak,andEastGermancommunistsandtheir
post-1989politicalcareers 242
Contributors
Włodzimierz Borodziej is the author of The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (Uni-
versityof Wisconsin Press 2006) and Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert
(C.H. Beck 2010), and he has published numerous other monographs,
edited volumes, and articles on Polish–German history in the twentieth
century. He is a professorof history at Warsaw University and co-director
from 2010 to 2016 of the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena.
Marie-Janine Calic is the author of Geschichte Jugoslawiens im 20. Jahrhun-
dert (C.H. Beck 2010) and numerous books on the history of Southeast-
ern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the break-up of
Yugoslavia, and European Balkan politics. She is a professor of East and
Southeast European Studies at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich,
avisiting professor at the College of Europe, and a former advisor to the
Special Coordinatorof the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe.
Stanislav Holubec is the author of Ještě nejsme za vodou: Obrazy druhých
a historická paměť v období postkomunistické transformace (Not Yet Out
of the Woods: Images of Others and Historical Memory after 1989, Scrip-
torium 2015) and has written and edited many other books and articles
on communist-era and post-communist Czech history. From October 2010
to September 2016, he was a research fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg
Jena with responsibility for the Challenges of Modernity research area.
He is currently a researcher at the Department of 20th Century History
at the Institute of Historyof the Czech Academyof Sciences in Prague.
Bogdan C. Iacob is the co-editor with Vladimir Tismaneanu of two books –
Remembrance, History, and Justice: Coming to Terms with Traumatic
Pasts in Democratic Societies (2015) and The End and the Beginning: The
Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History (2012), both published
by CEU Press – as well as numerous articles on the history of commun-
ism in Romania and Europe. He has held fellowships at the Imre Kertész
Kolleg Jena and the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia among others
and is currently writing a monograph on the historyof the field of South-
east European Studies during the Cold War.
Contributors ix
Éva Kovács has authored, co-authored and co-edited numerous books and
articles in Hungarian and German on the history of the Holocaust in
Eastern Europe. She is the research programme director of the Vienna
Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and head of the Department
of Methodology and History of Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences.
James Krapfl is the author of Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Cul-
ture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992 (Cornell 2013) and is
currently writing a new book on the popular experience of 1968 in
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland. He is an associate
professorof history at McGill University.
Wilfried Loth is the author of Building Europe: A History of European Uni-
fication, trans. Robert F. Hogg (de Gruyter 2015), and Europe, Cold War
and Coexistence, 1955–1965 (Routledge 2004), as well as many other
books on the history of the Cold War, twentieth-century France, the
German Empire, and Soviet-German history. He has taught history at the
Free University of Berlin and the University of Duisburg-Essen, where he
is professor emeritus.
Joachim von Puttkamer has authored, edited, and co-edited numerous
books on Central and East European history, including Die Securitate in
Siebenbürgen, co-edited with S. Sienert and U. Wien (The Securitate in
Transylvania, Böhlau 2014), and Ostmitteleuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhun-
dert (East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,
Oldenbourg 2010). He is co-directorof the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena.
Mary Elise Sarotte is the author of, most recently, The Collapse: The Acci-
dental Opening of the Berlin Wall (Basic Books 2014) and the prize-
winning 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton
2009, updated edition 2014). She is professor of history at USC and is
currently a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German
Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, and a research associate at the
Centre for European Studies at Harvard.
Tim Schanetzky has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles
in German on economic and institutional histories of the Third Reich
and Cold War Germany, including, most recently, ‘Kanonen statt Butter’:
Wirtschaft und Konsum im Dritten Reich (‘Cannons Instead of Butter’:
Economics and Consumerism in the Third Reich, C.H. Beck 2015). He
teaches in the History Department at the Friedrich Schiller University in
Jena.
Philipp Ther holds the chair of the history of Central and Eastern Europe
at the University of Vienna. His Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Konti-
nent: Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa (Suhrkamp 2014) was
awarded the non-fiction book prize of the Leipzig Book Fair and has