The Burdens of Freedom – Eastern Europe
since 1989 by Padraic
Kenney. Zed Books Ltd, 2006. pp 192. ISBN 9781842776636. Reviewed by Sandra
King-Savic.
Padraic
Kenney re-examines Eastern Europe’s recent political and economic history since
the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. He concentrates his attention on the
experience of 15 countries, from Estonia to Macedonia, explaining that though
states such as Yugoslavia and Poland had differing systems and experiences,
they nevertheless all followed the path to democracy and a market economy.
Another common experience, writes Kenney, was the leitmotiv of national
liberation and Eastern Europe’s return to Europe. In his own words, “But what
is that Europe that East Europeans saw ahead of them? Most of all, it was free
of borders, walls and ceilings, in which one could travel, have access to goods
or ideas formerly inaccessible; and where one could see, or believe hat one
wished. In that Europe, one could finally be Czech or Slovene or Estonian”.[1]
Kenney explores the question of Eastern Europe’s place and arrival in Europe by
explaining that “Eastern” Europe had simply become the “New” Europe. He
explains this process in the introductory chapter “Shock of the New”; and
subsequent five chapters he calls “Different Paths on an Open Road: Economic
and Social Change”; “In Praise of Ethnic Cleansing? National Struggles”; “Peeling
away the Past: Nostalgia and Punishment”; “Portraits of Hubris: Democratic
Politics”; “A New Europe: The East and the West” and concludes with “The Edge
of History”.
Kenney’s title is poignant for two
reasons. First, with freedom comes the newly formed states and their
governments’ responsibility to do right by its people. This is a difficult task
as governments often needed to re-define who the people exactly where – a
process that is still going on in Bosnia i Herzegovina, for instance. Second,
how much freedom is enough, or too much? New Europe needed to re-define its
governmental parameters and involvement for questions reaching from individual
freedom to practice one’s religion and cultural traditions to economic and social
welfare questions.
The
economic picture is generally positive, says Kenney. Unemployment is declining
and economies are growing as the largely young, urban and educated middleclass
coped well with the changes of the 1990’s. Yet, he urges to judge New Europe’s
success rate with caution and points toward the neoliberal privatization
process. With the end of Communism, Eastern Europe sought to find a third way –
an unsuccessful endeavor as the market economy became an inevitable goal.
Kenney voices doubts whether the market economy was right for Eastern Europe.
In New Europe, he argues, one fifth of the population lives below the poverty
line. The economic transition then, argues Kenney in chapter one, cannot be
said to have been successful. Interestingly, a great part of the successful
transition came about the resourcefulness left behind by the communist era. Kenney
explains that the old Communist systems did not produce a lazy people as was
commonly believed. Instead, the rigid pre-1989 system demanded of people to be
resourceful – a quality that served New Europeans well in the market driven
era. A recurring theme in The Burdens of
Freedom is Eastern Europe’s proximity to Western Europe. The success of
each state’s transition then, Kenney found, was contingent on its strategic
importance as well on how close to Western Europe the state was.
Chapter two opens with a joke that was
told in the former Yugoslav Republic and goes as follows; “How many countries
will there be in Europe in the year 2000? Seven: Europe, Serbia, Croatia,
Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia”. Nearly 20 years later, national identity
remains at the center of political debates all across New Europe. Importantly,
not all states have followed the path of violent breakup and Kenney names the
Baltic States as the most apparent example of peaceful dissolution and
subsequent continuation of conciliatory relations. Determinant factors to
peaceful dissolutions then were not simply prosperity and homogeneity of the
state, but the depth of the political society and lustration. Kenney recognizes
lustration as important for several reasons. First, a clean break with the past
is important for the fundamental legitimacy of the new state while, second,
allowing the post communist society to “purify its past”. In addition,
according to Kenney, lustration gives the post communist society hope that the
future will be unlike the past – “morally upright and free of the evil that was
communism”.[2]
Serbia may serve as an example here. Though Belgrade ‘apologized’ for its
crimes against humanity in Bosnia i Herzegovina, yet its politics may be a continuation
of war – to turn Clausewitz’s famous phrase on its head. Serbian politics are
still centered on identity and consequently the question on whom was the
culprit of the 1990’s conflicts – Dobrica Ćosić’s new book The Bosnian War serves as a case in point. Poland, in contrast,
fares well and does not suffer from fears of threats to language, identity or
ethnicity, states Kenney. Poland is also successful, Kenney contends, because
the roots of civil society and anti-communist resistance are especially deep in
Poland.
In effect, The Burdens of Freedom has correctly identified two common themes –
economic transition and national identity – that highlight the transitional
story of the fifteen states between Estonia and Macedonia since 1989. Kenney
emphasizes in 192 pages that the transition is not complete and not at all
identical across the board, yet underlines one important point; New Europe is
no longer a borderland between two superpowers, but is turning into a region
that promises to be a competitive contender in the modern market economy. Meanwhile,
Western Europe’s borders move ever further east thus changing common
perceptions about what it means to be European. This is perhaps the most
significant contribution of Kenney’s work. While there are plenty of problems
and bumps Eastern Europe had to overcome since 1989, he reminds us that New
Europe on the whole has moved
forward. In Kenney’s words: “Maybe Eastern Europe is riding in the back seat,
and can not be certain of the route, but it is now on board.”
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