Eastern Europe and the Challenges of Modernity, 1800-2000

Stefano Bianchini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138687318
• eBook ISBN: 9781317566021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: History

This book presents a concise and comprehensive overview of the mainstream flows of ideas, politics and itineraries towards modernity in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans over two centuries from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the Gorbachev administration. Unlike other books on the subject which view modernity based on the idea of Western European supremacy, this book outlines the various different pathways of development, and of growing industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisation which took place across the region. It provides rich insights on the complex networks whereby very varied ideas, aspirations and policies interacted to bring about a varied pattern of progress, and of integration and isolation, with different areas moving in different ways and at different paces. Overall the book presents something very different from the traditional picture of the" two Europes". Particular examples covered include agrarian reform movements, in various phases, different models of socialism, and different models of socialist reform.

1 Development and backwardness

The social origins of East European politics

At the beginning of the 19th century when the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England began to be felt in continental Europe, the most dynamic centres in the fields of culture, finance, manufacturing and technical innovation had already moved from the Renaissance cities of northern and central Italy to North-Western Europe, between Paris, London and Amsterdam.

According to a wide range of literature on the topic,¹ within this triangle Belgium was the first, even before France and Holland, quickly to follow England’s example. The Industrial Revolution was already producing a rapid increase in the rate of development of the production of goods and services, and was thus exerting a strong influence above all on the continent, to acquire the new manufacturing techniques and main inventions.

The networks of relationships matured over the previous centuries in Eastern Europe were not excluded, as already mentioned, from this influence. This region was already sensitive to the topics of modernity promoted mainly by the Enlightenment and the new economic theories of the 17th and 18th centuries (from cameralism to physiocracy) due to the diffusion of the press, universities, academies and high schools, as well as economic and trade ties which over time had linked East European agricultural production to markets in North-Western Europe. The diasporas, intellectuals and a part of the nobility showed the most vivid interest in becoming part of the dynamic framework of changes, to receive the stimuli and re-elaborate them in relation to their own interests and the surrounding political climate.

However, institutional and legislative conditions, social relationships, and religious, cultural and mental predispositions varied according to region, forcing local political and economic players to measure for the first time so overtly the existing distance between the potential for development and the obstacles which, depending on the situation, impeded growth at the feverish rhythms perceived elsewhere. The topic of backwardness and how to overcome it became part of the political agenda, generating controversial aspirations to bring about a huge structural adjustment which essentially imposed on each society the alternative of either accepting, mixing with or rejecting the development model generated by Great Britain.

In reality, this dilemma was perceived as difficult to resolve – in addition to being obviously political in nature – as it imposed a choice between progressive economic, social and cultural autarky and an inevitable adjustment, between opening to new international métissage or rejecting it in the name of safeguarding local identity.

This situation contributed to the spread of a new (for those times) representation of intra-European relations, characterised by the consolidation of the Eurocentric-Western mythology according to which the sources of development (more broadly referring to the idea of “civilisation”) and backwardness (corresponding, on the other hand, to “barbarism”) were made to coincide respectively with the notions of “West” and “East”, in which the “degree of distance from the idea of civilisation” became more pronounced as one gradually proceeded eastward.²

From the cultural point of view this was indeed a radical approach, overturning the previous identification of the “civilisation-barbarism” binomial given to the “South-North” dichotomy based on a rather more traditional and, let us say, “classical” approach in view of its Latin origin, which up to that point had been dominant in European culture.

In reality, as Larry Wolff relates, the map of civilisations was already in the process of being reconstructed, in the wake of perceptions pondered by 18th-century European intellectuals and travellers.³ These perceptions had become interwoven with the rooted conviction of Voltaire and many followers of the Enlightenment, when they posed themselves the problem of Europe’s future and how to reform its political systems. Though theirs was a mainly philosophical and geographic point of view, again according to Wolff’s definition, they too referred, as did the physiocrats in their salons, to categories of backwardness and development. In so doing they arrived at a dichotomous East-West interpretation of Europe which, in their case, was mainly used to offer their services to the East, as that region was (mistakenly) perceived as a tabula rasa, or clean slate, a space without history’s negative limitations and, therefore, receptive and ripe for building a society free of the vices of the Western Ancien Régime (where most intellectuals of the Enlightenment expressed a positive assessment of “orientalism”).⁴

It was, therefore, within the context of a re-orientation of the mental maps of Europe that the Industrial Revolution ended up supplanting Afro-Asiatic primacy, held since the 18th century in science, technology, manufacturing and trade and even military, by Indians, Arabs, Turks and Chinese.⁵

In other words, the Industrial Revolution which started in Great Britain began, with all its transformative force, to impose decisive changes on economic and social organisation, rapidly demonstrating the technical power, innovative efficiency and the capacity to trigger social repercussions that had not been seen in Europe – with such breadth and rapidity – since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Soon the impact and the attractive force it was able to exert – in connection with the political ideas of the French Revolution – proved to be of universal importance, incomparably greater than any other model of reference. It shook deeply rooted habits and ways of thinking, and undermined the roots of a centuries-old stability of relations between production, commerce, city and village. It also radically altered concepts of space and time, which for centuries had been determined by the speed of communication permitted by the horse and the sailing ship.⁶

From that moment, not only did everything radically change, but the pace of change also rapidly increased. Hence, it was inevitable from the start of the 19th century that the priority of politicians and intellectuals would be to overcome any obstacles or constraints on development. It was especially Eastern Europe, geopolitically on the edge of the area generating new forms of production, that felt its impact, dynamics and implications.

This, of course, does not mean that differences in development did not exist before the Industrial Revolution. When Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974 used the concepts of “Centre” and “Periphery”,⁷ the former had been identified with Western Europe since the 16th century and the latter assigned to Eastern Europe (as well as Latin America). Wallerstein was in fact drawing on a debate that had been around for some time in European and East European studies, at least since 1887 when Georg Friedrich Knapp⁸ had associated the origin of differentiated development in Europe with the development, on the right bank of the Elbe, of a manor system of land use, whereas on the left side large landed estates prevailed.⁹

It was this difference, with its juridical and social implications and geographical location, which accounted for the unevenness of East European economic development, especially according to Polish (and later also Hungarian) historiographic views that emerged during the Sixth World Congress of Historical Sciences in 1928.

As a result, however, not only was an interpretation of modernisation as a process of “catch-up and imitation” along the West–East axis endorsed, but an explanation was preferred that arbitrarily extended the situation on one side of the Elbe to the entire half of a continent. This subsequently triggered heated debates which dragged on for decades and led other scholars¹⁰ to propose different classifications, by segments or areas. However, the extent of backwardness in one region inevitably ended up being compared to the “radiating centre”, i.e. Western Europe.

Of course it is difficult to deny that the “Centre-Periphery” dichotomy proposed by Wallerstein did not have a significant effect on Europe, and that it did not provide a motivation – far beyond the interpretations offered by historians, politicians, and an increasingly well-informed and lively public opinion – for cultural and political frustration, crushed expectations, hopes and “alternative” plans vis-à-vis the West which surfaced on various occasions from the beginning of the 19th century in the less developed areas of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

In interpretative terms, however, Wallerstein’s arguments encouraged some prominent experts in East European economics to ask themselves once again about the origins of East European backwardness. A 1985 meeting of the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio provided the opportunity to do this. The result was a successful publication edited by Daniel Chirot, in which the authors basically highlight how different levels of development had existed in Europe long before the Industrial Revolution.¹¹ In other words the authors agreed that a combination of factors dating far back in time contributed in different forms and ways, depending on the region, to determining East European backwardness and its dependency on the West.

In particular, they argued that the reasons behind the unfavourable conditions for modern development in South-Eastern Europe lay in the persistence of a predominantly pastoral economy and low demographic density. What also emerges from their study, however, is how the Balkans experienced phases of prosperity and population growth, and how these very factors led to intense exploitation of agricultural land, followed, as in other parts of Europe, and particularly in the Mediterranean, by “political crises, environmental degradation, migration, and demographic decline”.¹²

As we can see, this scenario does not attribute the origins of backwardness in South-Eastern Europe to long Ottoman rule, as does Balkan nationalist historiography. On the contrary, it tends to highlight a variety of economic, environmental and cultural phenomena which appear to have been common to other European Mediterranean regions such as Spain in the 17th century, contravening the theory founded on mere East-West contrast.

On the other hand, the mechanisms that affected South-East Europe differ profoundly from those that characterised the evolution of the Baltic area.¹³ Here it was the factor of barter trade with the West – based on grain in exchange for manufactured goods – that led to a growing dependence on technology, thus contributing to a decline in the importance of towns and cities, while the great landed estates became more firmly established. In the process, the aristocracy basically abandoned the sword for the plough and soon demonstrated they were able to control agricultural production directly through the large landed estates. This led in turn to the establishment and spread of serfdom.

The line of argument developed during the meeting in Bellagio, on the other hand, was that Bohemia constituted a special case. Because of its geographical position between the Baltic area and the Danube-Balkan region, it was able to keep step socially and economically with the surrounding regions of Austria and Bavaria, despite the re-introduction of the feudal system, urban reorganisation, the levying of taxes and excises on trade following the surrender of Prague in 1547, and despite its loss of independence as a result of the disastrous defeat of White Mountain in 1620 to the Catholic House of Habsburg.

Hungary in turn followed a different path. After its return to Catholic rule as a result of the Habsburg victories, the retreat of the Turks between 1683 and 1699 (ratified by the Treaty of Karlowitz) and the defeat of the insurrection mounted by Ferenc Rákóczi II, the Habsburg monarchy and the landed aristocracy formed a solid anti-bourgeois alliance which extended across the geopolitical area of the Danube. As in the case of the Baltics, this enabled the large landed estates to prevail over the urban classes, and permitted the consolidation of serfdom to the detriment of the peasantry.¹⁴

In Poland, on the other hand, the success of the “Republic of Nobles” ¹⁵ was not only an indication of the strength acquired by the magnates, but also of the deep-rooted conviction that a “weak state” would make the country less “dangerous” and therefore less attractive to potential enemies.

The outcome, as we know, was very different: Poland’s partitioning at the end of the 18th century. This ended up being an advantage, however, also for Russia, the backwardness of which compared to Poland’s at the time had been progressively mitigated by the construction of an industrial base, albeit oriented mainly towards military imperatives. Paradoxically in some areas of Poland the subsequent growth phase came about as a result of the occupation and the need to develop pilot areas to take the lead and produce benefits which could then potentially have more general effects.¹⁶

Overall, the conclusions of the Bellagio debate drew a complex picture of the economic and social dynamics in Eastern Europe with regard to development, pointing out the various levels of backwardness, traditions, cultures, and social and political histories of the regions involved.

Nonetheless, despite the diversity of the East European area’s initial conditions – from the Baltic to the Danube, from Sarmatia to the Balkans, there is no doubt that the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and its impact on Eastern Europe marked a watershed, indelibly marking the politics of those regions.

Once contact had been established between industrial forms of Western development and the agrarian societies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans (as different as they were originally), this contact produced a political and social situation that was profoundly influenced by the dilemmas which arose in the search for the most effective reference model. The adoption of any particular model was, in fact, con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: industrialisation, modernity and development in Eastern Europe
• 1. Development and backwardness: the social origins of East European politics
• 2. Capitalism or rural socialism? The dilemmas of renewal in Russia and the Balkans
• 3. The “peasant state”: ideology and politics of agrarian movements in Central-Eastern Europe between the two world wars
• 4. Communism and the “third peasant way”: competing internationals and development models in the USSR and Central-Eastern Europe
• 5. Market socialism, national roads to socialism and competition with the West
• 6. Between otherness and globalisation: “real socialism”, modernity and Gorbachev
• 7. Conclusion: the challenges of modernity and post-modernity
• Bibliography
• Index