When the current government of Macedonia came to power and I signed
on as its economic advisor, I was asked by local journalists, with
genuine amazement: "what are you doing with these
villagers?" "Villagers" is just about the most pejorative word
applied here to rivals and adversaries. In a Macedonian, the word
evokes the image of uncouth, rough-hewn and yahoo usufructuaries.
Transition is a messy affair even in the best of times and the last
decade of Central and Eastern European (CEE) history has been by far
the worst in the last 50 or so years. Politics mirrored this age of
mayhem and upheaval. It unfolded along several axes of conflict:
The Rural versus the Urban
This is a maelstrom oft overlooked. The countries of CEE are
manifestly rustic and dependent on the vapid effort, ignorant labour
and dilapidated machinery that indigenously pass for agriculture.
Urbanization - though in full force - is a relatively recent event.
Scratch the veneer of a city-dweller and you are likely to find a
full blooded yeoman. Employment is an oppidan phenomenon and
immigrants flock to cities and stoke the virtuous cycle of job
creation with their new demand. Only a war reverses this flow as
people prefer the home grown vegetable to the soup-kitchen.
The demise of communism has demoted previously extolled workers,
both industrial and agricultural. These rejects of a failed
ideology, frustrated, angry and insistent - stand behind political
parties and grassroots populist organizations from Russia to Poland
and to the Balkan. Their natural and accosted enemies are the envied
well-educated, the despised intellectuals, the self-proclaimed new
elite, the foreigner, the minority, the rich. They are manipulated
by their former masters cynically and by new masters naively and
they are growing more powerful as the debacle that the transition
process is unfurls.
See: Forward to the Past - Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe
The Young and the New versus the Old and the Tried
Perhaps nowhere in the world is the cult of youth more prominent
than in these parts of the world. This is because nowhere in the
world has the failure of previous generations been so utter. In the
battle joined with the new and the untried, the old and tried and
failed - fail yet again. Macedonia's Minister of Finance is 30 years
of age, its Prime Minister barely a few years older. This is the
range of ages of senior politicians, managers, entrepreneurs and
journalists across this region. Yet, this is far from a foregone
conclusion. The inexperienced temerity of the young has landed them
in some hot spots. Most of them are too identified with the pratfall
of "reforms". Age and experience reassert themselves and with them
the disingenuous habits of the past. The young are in retreat and as
revolutionaries age, they turn territorial and hidebound. Turf wars
are likely to intensify rather then recede.
The Technocrats / Experts versus the Lobbyists
In the elysium of communism, managers were trained mostly to
wheedle, lobby and to cadge. The fall of communism, the
impoverishment of the state and its dependence on multilateral (and
tightly supervised) financing, brought these skills into desuetude.
This claque of suppliant supplicants suddenly had to trade their
irenic and craven nature for the untoward and alert aggression that
is capitalism. The many failed and in their stead a novel breed of
predators emerged, fully armed with expertise, fully attuned to
markets and to profits, fully enslaved to competition. In a
rearguard skirmish, the old guard expropriated the decrepit assets
of the dying system. But these "privatized" enterprises were soon
taken over by foreign investors, or shut down. The old guard lost
its capital - both pecuniary and political - decisively.
The Bureaucrats versus the Politicians
The distinction between an a-political civil service and its
political - but, luckily, transient - masters has yet to permeate
the post communist societies. Every appointment in the public
sector, down to the most insignificant sinecure, is still
politicized. But politicians - faced with the (mainly economic)
disintegration of their countries, finally resorted to a cadre of
young, foreign educated (or well travelled), dynamic and open minded
bureaucrats. These are still a negligible minority but not for long.
And as their power and ubiquity increase, so does their political
prowess. A clash between the lugubrious and supernumerary class of
professional politicians and the trenchant group of professional
professionals is both inevitable and soon.
The Nationalists versus the Europeans
Villains of all stripes as well as outré fanatics constitute the
malignant outer fringes of patriotism in CEE. No country is exempt
and no minority absolved of their censorious rants and worse. From
acts of vandalism to ethnic cleansing, the inimical spectrum of
nationalism, a spectre of demented past and vicious future, hangs
hazily above these lands. Its pull is strong, as portentous election
results and sycophantic panegyrics to "strong men" and past
dictators show. This tendency is balanced only by the strong urge to
belong to Europe and to enjoy its auspices. This too is strong -
witness the patience with which the interminable and arduous process
of EU enlargement has been endured. But the outcome of this clash
between parochial nationalism and Europeanism is far from certain
(as Yugoslavia has demonstrated until recently and Belarus still
does).
The Centralists versus the Regionalists
This is a pan-European variance. The centrifugal force of the
century old nation state has weakened greatly and the centripetal
energy of regions has increased. Such fragmentation is effected
peacefully (USSR, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Yugoslavia and
Macedonia) - or through war (Chechniya, the Yugoslav Wars of
cessation including Kosovo). Minorities tend to concentrate and
disrupt the continuity of otherwise homogenous states. Majorities do
their damnedest to eradicate these discontinuities by various means - from assimilation to extermination. CEE is Africa at the heart of
Europe. Arbitrary colonial-era borders cut across ethnic groups in
historically-charged lands. Expect further eruptions.
See: The Minmaj Rule
These axes of tension, these funnels of frustration, these channels
of violence will not deliquesce. They are the landscape of this
wasteland as surely as its polluted rivers and ashen air. They
pulsate with fear and hatred and self-interest. They seethe
underground and dictate in their subversive manner the contours of
this new creation, the post communist countries in transition.
Ultimately, they will dictate the shape of things to come.
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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International
(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com