Central and Eastern Europe in Transition: Democracy Half Done ∗

Ágh Attila , ‘A felemás fordulat éve (The Year of Incomplete Changes)', Magyarország politikai évkönyve 1991 (Hungarian Political Yearbook 1991), Budapest 1991, pp. 16–31

OECD Economic Surveys: Hungary 1991 (OECD: Paris, July 1991), esp. pp. 21, 22

In the special – and very important – report for the Commission of the European Communities Alternative Scenarios for Central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) of July 1991, the author, Hans van Zon, assumes that the transition process in three mentioned countries ‘will last one generation rather than 5 years' (p. 5)

Data collected from many different sources. Unemployment and inflation rate in Hungary – a communiqué of the Finance Ministry after the first 9 months of 1991 in Népszabadság, 7 November 1991. Comparative data for Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the rest of East and Central European countries in: Wprost (Straight on, a weekly published in Poznan), no. 46, 17 November 1991, pp. 18, 19; according to findings of International Monetary Fund experts in their report on the region

According to official communiqué. Election attendance – 43.2%; Democratic Union, a party which ‘won' the election assembled altogether 12.31% of the vote. In the newly and democratically elected Parliament there are representatives of 28 different political parties. Rzeczpospolita (official governmental daily), 3 November 1991 and Polityka weekly no. 46, 9 November 1991, p. 2

Moisi expressed his views during an interesting and important discussion on Europe, organized late fall 1991 by the Aspen Institute, Berlin. Time magazine, no. 49, 9 December, 1991, p. 14

In one of his many penetrating reports and essays in The New York Review of Books, later published in book form in Polish and in Hungarian

Up to now only Germans seem to understand well the situation in the East, probable mainly from their own experience after ‘absorbing' the former East German territory. Horst Teltschik, another participant in the Aspen Institute panel, said ‘I'm convinced that neither Soviet Russia nor Eastern Europe can solve their problems without Western European support'. Time, as above, p. 20

Hans van Zon has rightly observed that we are now in the first and decisive phase of the developments in subsequent phases. ‘Mistakes made in the first phase will be difficult to repair', Alternative Scenarios, p. 9

Excellent in-depth material on Western adjustment to the revolutionary changes in the East: Kux Ernst , ‘Revolution in Eastern Europe – Revolution in the West?' Problems of Communism, Vol. 40, May–June 1991, pp. 1–13. The whole question of eventual major Western involvement is complicated, as shown by this example: Iván T. Berend, former chairman of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, now on the staff of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), wrote an important article ‘Sziszüphoszra várva' (‘Waiting for the Sisiphus'), Népszabadság, 9 November 1991, pp. 18, 19, expressing the idea that Eastern and Central Europe cannot manage a peaceful transition towards democracy without a ‘new Marshall Plan'. Just one week later there was a no less convincing answer to this persuasive and well documented article by Iván Völgyes, Professor at the University of Nebraska, temporarily at that time in the country of his origin, in Hungary. Völgyes stated bluntly: ‘Forget it'. He went on to say that there are too big expectations on the Eastern side for Western help; as well as an exaggeration by Eastern Europeans of their particular role in world politics, while ‘we are not very important for the Westerners'. That is why – he argued – there should be ‘no illusion' about another Marshall Plan for Central and Eastern Europe this time. Iván Völgyes, ‘Hirek, hitek, vélemények' (new, convictions, opinions), Népszabadság, 16 November 1991, p. 21

Arytmia Jerzy Kleer , Polityka, no. 1, 4 January 1992, p. 11. In this analytical effort to describe the economic situation in Central and Eastern Europe at the threshold of 1992, the author concludes by mentioning several major barriers to be overcome for a successful transformation of the region. They are the following: ‘market barrier' (lack of market institutions, wrong proportions of property rights and wrong production structure); ‘personnel barrier' (probably the most important one), ‘human factor' (a need to change social psychology and restore the working ethos of the people); ‘capital barrier' and ‘infrastructure barrier'

Michnik Adam , ‘The Two Faces of Eastern Europe', The New Republic, no. 23, 12 November 1990

As quoted by Professor Aleksander Smolar, from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, in his interview with Polityka, ‘Zdekomunizujemy sie' (‘We will decommunize ourselves'), Polityka, no. 51, 52,; 21–28 December 1991, p. 3. On the same issue of this weekly there is an interesting essay by psychologist Józef Kozielecki, who describes the current mentality of Polish society as inherited from its communist past. Kozielecki identifies four major types of mentality, clearly connected with the previous rule: bazaar mentality (cheating, not observing the law, black marketeering, etc.); megalomaniac mentality (‘we are the best', ‘we won and defeated Communism', etc.); beggar mentality (‘we are so poor, please help us', etc.); lackey mentality (‘better to serve those who are above us'). Józef Kozielecki ‘Kombinatorzy, megalomani, lokaje …' (Swindlers, megalomaniacs, lackeys …) Polityka, 21–28 December 1991, pp. 1 and 7

Izyumov Aleksei , ‘No Time for Half Measures', Newsweek, 16 September 1991, p. 18

Newsweek, 2 September 1991, p. 15

Here we shall not go into the whole complicated case of ethnic tension and strife. This is a theme definitely connected to the problems raised in this article, but very specific and complex. Just mentioning it, without elaboration, creates the danger of oversimplification. The whole question should be treated in depth separately