Photo: Martin2035 [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Three decades after the fall of communism, Eastern Europe’s democratic development is seen in increasingly gloomy terms. However, we may need to find a more pragmatic, middle way in assessing the region, argues Seán Hanley.

The region termed Central Europe or Central and Eastern Europe – the body of small and medium-sized states between the former USSR and the established democracies of Western Europe – was once seen as the great success story of post-communist democratisation:  rapid and peaceful political transition in 1989-90; a quick return to economic growth; flawed but functional liberal democracy; relatively rapid integration into the EU; political elites who seemed, whether out of conviction or pragmatism, willing and able to imitate West European political, economic and ideological models – although these were (and are) diverse, ranging from Nordic style welfare capitalism to British-style deregulation and neo-liberalism.

Since mid-2000s, however, the intellectual climate  among both commentators and political scientists the agenda has shifted from one of understanding consolidation, integration and consolidation or remedying the flaws of stable, but weakly performing post-communist democracy to one of deep gloom.

Now, compared to early hopes of the liberal project, the narrative has become a pessimistic one. Of democratic decline or even backsliding toward authoritarianism. The rejection by voters and elites in Central and Eastern Europe of Western European models – and the EU status quo – as too socially and economically political for their traditions and societies. And of constitutional liberalism as constraining the democratic will of the people, or holding back the emergence of a capable modernising state.  Economic catch-up with Western Europe, especially in terms of the living standards of poorer, older, less educated, seems a chimera.

Populist critics now decry the locking in of Central and Eastern Europe as, once again, an exploited peripheral Europe (including Mediterranean democracies of Southern Europe and the Balkans) – analogous, but on a much bigger scale to the “left behind” marginalised regions within Western European countries, which have fuelled populist electoral insurgencies.

Given ineffective and cumbersome procedures for enforcing the rule-of-law – in what was supposed to a club of liberal-democratic nations – the EU, as R. Daniel Kelemen has suggested, is becoming a patchwork of  regimes encompassing democracies, semi-democracies and downright authoritarian states, hamstrung by North-South and East-West splits.

What is especially jarring is that some of the supposed frontrunners democratisation in the region – Hungary and Poland – are now the vanguard of “democratic backsliding”, conservative counter-revolution and experiments in liberal governance. Some prominent governance indices, such as Freedom House’s ‘Freedom In the World’, now classify Hungary as having slipped below out of the zone of fully liberal democratic ‘Free’ societies. Poland is rapidly heading the same way.

Worse still, some of the treasured mechanisms of building democracy such as civil society development and grassroots activism have turned out work in ways quite opposite to that  envisaged in 1990s. In Hungary and Poland, the electoral breakthroughs of the Fidesz and Law and Justice (PiS) parties were prefigured years before through the development of networks of conservative civil organisations and right-wing civic initiative at grassroots level.

Moreover, the main vehicles for illiberalism have not been ‘red-brown’ alliances of ex-communists and fringe nationalists, but parties and politicians with often impeccable roots in the anti-communist opposition, accepted by West European centre-right as mainstream conservative parties and political allies.

That said, there are many varieties of populism and democratic decline, ranging from the conservative electoral revolutions of Hungary and Poland, to the longstanding weak, but oddly stable corrupt democracies of Bulgaria and Romania, to the fragmented and feverish political landscapes of  Slovakia and Czechia – and the strange “technocratic populism” of Czechia’s billionaire prime minister Andrej Babiš ,who still unsure if he wants to be the Czech Macron or the Czech Trump.

George Orwell’s dictum that “All revolutions are failures, but they are not the same failure” is, unsurprisingly, often quoted these days in relation to East Europe. We could also paraphrase Tolstoy and say that all unhappy democracies are unhappy in their own way. Or we might remember the historians Joseph Rothchild and Nancy  M. Wingfield’s characterisation of the region – made originally after the decline and fall of communism in late 1980s – about Eastern Europe’s “return to diversity”. (more…)

Our evening class student, Carol Griffiths, shares her experience of translating a short story from Slovene into English in the Slovene Advanced Plus course.

Here’s our challenge. In our SSEES UCL Advanced Plus Slovene class we were presented with a short story by the writer and activist Suzana Tratnik. Translating it on the surface seemed pretty simple, but Suzana is herself a translator and I would be reading our class’ translation in front her at the 100^th anniversary of the University of Ljubljana celebrations at the Slovene Embassy. No pressure there then.

Suzana’s story is a beguiling tale about a hen which begins to speak. The writing which had seemed simple at first glance, proved pretty challenging for us to translate. First we had to pick our way through an evocative description of chicken behaviour, a subject on which we had previously not spent much time. Then we hit the name puzzle. The chicken’s name was Bejla – that translator’s nightmare, a play on words. How can you translate this chicken into English where the word for white is actually white? Eventually we decided to call the bird ‘Whitey’, which captured some of the essence of the Slovene name and felt like a credible option.

Having worked this out we then had a vigorous debate about how to render Slovene chicken-speak into English? Some of us felt that as the original had a clear meaning in Slovene the expression would have to make sense in English; others disagreed and wanted to leave it in the Slovene original.

In the end we opted for a transcreation (‘advertising-land speak’ for adapting a message from one language to another).  This went some way to making sense of the bird’s utterance, but only Suzana really knows if we pulled it off or not!

So it was, like so much translation, a puzzle that needed unpicking.  I love this kind of challenge: working through a text in close detail; divining the author’s intention; trying to ensure that every nuance is acknowledged and captured; and delivering all this in correct and fluent English. For me this really detailed work is a relatively painless way of picking up grammar and is one of the most enjoyable aspects of our Slovene class.

Suzana kindly said that she enjoyed the translation, so I breathed a sigh of relief, picked up a glass of the aptly named Krasno (which I’ll translate here as ‘wonderful’) Slovene wine and toasted my co-translators Maria Jansen, Martin Leeburn, Aidan Rush and Izidor Talampoikas, and our krasna teacher Maja Rančigaj Beneš.

Carol Griffiths

Suzana Tratnik

KO SPREGOVORI BELA KURA

Stara mama je kot furija privihrala v kuhinjo. Naslonila se je na podboj vrat, zajela sapo in z žarečimi očmi vernice izdahnila:

»Bejla je spregovorila.«

Trenutek tišine je pretrgal stari oče: »Kaj pa je rekla?«

»Rekla je beee,« je vneto pojasnjevala stara mama. »In potem še nekaj takega kot teee-beee, ampak s človeškim glasom.«

Oče, mama, stari oče, podnajemnik in jaz smo stekli ven na dvorišče in se vsi ustavili pri kurniku. Obraze smo prislonili tesno ob žičnato ograjo in se zastrmeli v Bejlo, ki je živčno premikala glavo, negotovo stopicljala, kakor da bi ji bilo nerodno pred vsemi človeškimi pogledi izza ograje, in slednjič obstala z eno taco v zraku.

»Poslušajte, poslušajte, ljudje!« je rekla stara mama, ki je prihitela za nami, in tedaj se je bela kura s taco, ki jo je prej molela v zrak, popraskala po svoji ušivi glavi.

»A zdaj pa je ne boš zaklala, stara mama?« sem vprašala.

»Molči, sicer je ne bomo slišali govoriti!« mi je ukazala.

In potem smo še dolgo dolgo tiščali obraze ob žičnato ograjo in čakali, da Bejla ponovno spregovori. Kot nalašč se je sprehajala po kurniku in nas gledala postrani, vedno z leve ali z desne, kot so pač k temu primorane vse kokoši, ki imajo oči ob straneh glave. Včasih je kljunila kakšno zrnce ali smet na tleh, včasih kakšno drugo kuro, ki je od presenečenja zafrfotala s perutmi. Vmes je tudi dvakrat zazehala in pokazala trikotni jeziček, toda spregovorila ni več.

»Dober dan!«

Vsi smo se zdrznili od vzklika za našimi hrbti in nekateri smo se prijeli za srce.

Tam za nami je stal poštar in rekel: »Prišel sem vam samo povedat, da tudi danes ni nič pošte za vašo hišo. Da me ne boste zaman čakali.«

Potem je visoko zavihtel desno nogo, se usedel na svoje vedno bleščeče se moško kolo, se v pozdrav s prstom dotaknil svoje poštarske kape in se odpeljal naprej po ulici.

Mi pa smo zrli za njim z vtisnjenimi sledovi žičnate ograje na obrazih.

Suzana Tratnik

WHEN THE WHITE HEN BEGAN TO SPEAK

Grandmother burst into the kitchen like a fury.

She leant on the door frame, took a deep breath and with the blazing eyes of a believer, gasped: “Whitey has spoken”.

Grandfather broke the moment of silence that followed: “So what did she say?”

“She said meheh,” grandmother excitedly explained. “And then something like meheh-beyey but in a human voice.”

Father, mother, grandfather, the tenant and I ran out into the yard and we all stood by the henhouse. We pressed our faces tightly against the wire fence and stared at Whitey, who was nervously moving her head, stepping uncertainly from one leg to the other, as if she were uncomfortable with all these humans looking through the fence, and finally she stopped, with one foot in the air.

“Listen, listen, everyone,” grandmother said, hurrying after us, whereupon the white hen scratched her lice-ridden head with the foot she had previously held off the ground.

“And now you won’t kill her, grandma?” I asked.

“Quiet, or we won’t hear her speak!” she ordered me.

And then we pressed our faces for a long, long time against the chicken wire and waited for Whitey to speak again. As if on purpose she was walking around the henhouse, looking at us askance, always from the right or left, as all chickens are obliged to do, their eyes being on either side of their heads. Sometimes she pecked at a grain or some scrap on the floor, sometimes she pecked at some other hen, which fluttered her wings, out of surprise. Meanwhile she twice yawned and showed the triangle of her tongue, but spoke no more.

“Hello!”

We all jumped at the shout at our backs and some clutched at their hearts.

There behind us stood the postman, who said “I just came to tell you that there’s no post for you again today. Just so you won’t be waiting in vain.”

Then he swung his right leg high, mounted his always-gleaming bicycle, touched his postman’s cap in farewell, and pedalled off up the road.

We just gazed after him with the mark of the chicken wire imprinted on our faces.

Translated in the SSEES UCL Advanced Plus Slovene course by Carol Griffiths, Maria Jansen, Martin Leeburn, Aidan Rush and Izidor Talampoikas

Dr Dogus Simsek is a Teaching Fellow in Political Sociology at UCL SSEES.

This article was first posted in the Crisis Magazine on 1st of October.

Since 2011, Turkey has received more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees. This is almost half of the global Syrian refugee population. In the early phases of the refugee influx, Turkish authorities framed Syrians as ‘guests’ rather than refugees. Under the assumption that the crisis would end quickly – and Syrians would, therefore, return home after short stay – the country adopted an “open door” policy on Syrian migration. While seemingly hospitable, Syrians’ guest status fell outside any legal definition in international refugee policies. Although Turkey signed the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Additional Protocol on the status of refugees, the country applies a geographical limitation that excluded Syria. For Syrians in Turkey today, this means international asylum rights don’t apply.

What does apply to them is the Temporary Protection (TP) regime the Turkish government adopted in October, 2011. This ensured all Syrians humanitarian assistance and the right to a limitless duration of stay in Turkey. It also confirmed adherence to the principle of non-refoulement, the idea that refugees must not be returned to a country where they would be in likely danger of persecution. Given the dangers of return, this Temporary Protection regime gave Syrians registered as refugees in Turkey access to healthcare and protection from forced return. Managing this scheme became the responsibility of the Turkish Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), a body that works under the authority of The Ministry of Interior. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of August 2019 there were 3,649,750 Syrian refugees registered in Turkey under this protection program. It’s estimated that an additional 500,000 Syrians are living in Turkey, unregistered.

In April, 2014, Turkey adopted a new Law on Foreigners and International Protection that further elaborated the Temporary Protection status of Syrians in Turkey. This law focused on guaranteeing that Syrians could not be returned to Syria until safe conditions and access to fundamental rights there were guaranteed (non-refoulement). In addition, the rights of Syrian nationals in Turkey came to include lawful stay in Turkey until the Syrian conflict was over. Furthermore, access to health care, education, and social assistance were guaranteed. This even included, for example, home care assistance to families with a disabled relative. Under this law, access to the labour market was also granted as a right, and the task of enforcing this was delegated to the Ministry of Social Security and Work. An additional regulation was then issued in 2016, which allowed registered Syrian refugees to apply for work permits, in a step to formalize Syrian labour and enable access to workers’ rights.

However, accessing work permits remained difficult and depended upon employers’ willingness to offer contracts. As a result, the number of work permits granted to Syrian refugees remains low according to the latest figures made available. From the 1st of January, 2016 to the 30th of September, 2018, only 27,930 work permits were issued to Syrian workers, with 25,457 permits going to men and 2,473 to women. The majority of Syrians in Turkey reside in towns and cities rather than in refugee camps, and their populations are primarily concentrated in the governorates bordering Syria and large metropolitan areas. There, they struggle to access adequate accommodation, social services and job opportunities.

The reality for most Syrians in Turkey remains that they work in an informal economy without social security, faced with exploitation and lack safe working conditions. They are overworked and underpaid, with no social security or pension rights. Syrians primarily work in the largely informal agricultural and textile sectors, and with few safety protections. According to figures from the Worker Health and Safety Council (İşçi Sağlığı ve İş Güvenliği Meclisi), 108 refugees lost their lives in work-related accidents in 2018. In turn, Syrians’ low socio-economic status leads to their relative exclusion from wider Turkish society. Syrians who work in the informal market face difficulties building bridges with the Turkish working class, due to competition over employment opportunities.

The Turkish labour market also poses high exploitation risks for children, given the widespread phenomenon of child labour in areas such as agriculture, textile factories, as well as restaurants in various cities of Turkey. According to a United Metalworkers Union report, the textile sector employs approximately 19% of underage workers. 29% of these underage workers are Syrian children under the age of 15. In fact, the majority of school-aged Syrian children are working instead of attending school. As of 2019, 645,000 Syrian children were enrolled to Turkish state schools, while 400,000 Syrian children in Turkey were out of school. In addition to child labor, various other barriers obstruct access to children’s education, including a lack of parents’ knowledge about school registration procedures and the education system, and discrimination in schools. Findings from my own research indicate that many Syrian refugees experience financial hardship due to having limited access to the labour market, which also has a negative effect on Syrian children’s access to education.

In 2016, it was announced that millions of Syrians living in Turkey would be granted Turkish citizenship. As of 2019, 79,820 Syrians were granted citizenship in Turkey. Granting full citizenship is an important development but it remains unclear whether citizenship would be accessible for all Syrians under Temporary Protection. The deputy prime minister has clarified that ‘citizenship will be granted initially based on criteria such as employment, education level, wealth, and urgency of the applicant’s individual situation.’ This has raised concerns that Syrians who lack economic resources and are less skilled will be denied access to citizenship rights. Such concerns seem founded, as Turkey’s refugee integration policy favours those skilled contributors to the economy and those refugees with access to financial capital. This integration processes excludes refugees who are unskilled and have limited economic resources for investment in the receiving country.

Such a policy does not equally support the integration of all Syrians residing in Turkey but is class-based; only ‘selected’ Syrians are deemed worthy of state support. The Turkish government has pursued a neoliberal approach to the integration of Syrian refugees, where their economic utility has come to form the main entry point for accessing rights. Current integration policies, therefore, undermine Syrian refugees’ access to fundamental rights by making such rights directly conditional to Turkey’s economic gain. Social tensions between the Syrians and Turks have risen to peak levels in recent months, as riots occurred in Istanbul in July this year. As these tensions persist, the rights granted to Syrians will likely face further pressures in the future.

Authors: Olena Yermakova (@O_Yermakova) and Michael Cole (@NotTheMikeCole), Early Stage Researchers for the UCL SSEES-led FATIGUE project

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke” – Will Rogers, American actor 1879-1935

It has been almost a century since American actor Will Rogers made that observation about US politics, yet in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential elections such a description has proved to be even more apt. Often referred to off the record as some kind of ‘Wonderland’, in Ukraine the roles of joker and king are now both being performed by just one person. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a popular comedian, who’s been mocking politicians on stage for the past two decades, is the new President of Ukraine.

Virtual Politics

It all started with a TV show, The Servant of the People, where Zelenskiy plays a history teacher, who following  an impassioned rant against corruption which went viral, much to everyone’s surprise, not least his own, becomes President of Ukraine. The real-life Zelenskiy says in the show he was portraying his pipe dream for Ukraine ─ a dream of an honest man becoming President and really changing the country for the better. Then people around him started talking. Why not try and make that dream come true? Imagine all the Ukrainian people, joining him in that dream? And though Zelenskiy may be a dreamer, after gaining over 73% of the votes in the second round of the Presidential elections, it’s clear he’s not the only one.

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Written by Michael Cole and Olena Yermakova, – Early Stage Researchers for the UCL SSEES-led FATIGUE project
(This post was first published on 21 April 2019.)

Matryoshka Dolls for Sale on Adrivskiy Uzviz, Kyiv. Even here, customers can choose between Darth Vader, a Babushka in National Costume, ‘a Real Politician’ or a comedy character. Photo Credit – Michael Cole 2018

On May 25^th 2014, following the events of Euro Maidan, ‘Chocolate King’ Petro Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine in the first round of voting. Purely by coincidence, I spent the day visiting the ghost town of Pripyat and the Chernobyl exclusion zone. On the way to our destination we stopped at a service station, which seemed rather busy considering it was at the side of an otherwise deserted highway. The reason for the commotion was a brief visit to use the facilities by another presidential candidate on his way to Kyiv with his death stare firmly set on the main prize. Standing at a urinal next to Darth Vader, leader of the short-lived ‘Internet Party of Ukraine’, was just one of the many times when I realised that every time I start to think I understand, I’m only setting myself up for the next reminder that in Ukraine you really never do know what you’re going to get.

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Photo: Akron/ Wikipedia Commons

East Central Europe’s democratic deterioration is as much  about the limitations of mainstream liberal forces as the rise of illiberal populists argue James Dawson and Sean Hanley.

Less than a decade ago the newer EU member states of East Central Europe (ECE) were considered the great success story of post-communist democratisation. This success was held up by scholars as a textbook illustration of how the EU, through the attractiveness of its political and economic model, and the toughness of accession conditions, could make a decisive difference by empowering pro-European liberals in the region’s shakier democracies to push their countries firmly on track to liberal democracy (and EU membership).

While poorer and more corrupt than the EU’s West European core, ECE was assumed to be a region safe for democracy with good long-term prospects for economic and political catch-up. Today this narrative of democratic progress is dead, replaced by one of democratic backsliding – and even sliding into authoritarianism – under the auspices of populist and nationalist politicians.

What has been especially disconcerting is that it has been the early frontrunners of democratization – Hungary and Poland – where such democratic backsliding has gone farthest and fastest: after winning decisive election victories (Fidesz in Hungary in 2010, Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland in 2015) conservative-nationalist governing parties have moved rapidly to dismantle liberal checks and balances, capturing or neutralising constitutional courts, state agencies, public (and in Hungary private) media and NGOs.

More strikingly still, Fidesz and PiS were not radical outsiders emerging from the fringes, but large right-wing parties once considered part of a pro-Western centre-right mainstream, whose representatives still sit with German Christian Democrats and British Conservatives in the European Parliament. (more…)

Dr Daniel Brett, Teaching Fellow in Social and Political Science, UCL SSEES

(This blog was originally posted on LSE’s Europe Blog on 19 September 2018.) 

Romania has experienced large anti-government protests on multiple occasions in the last few years, most recently in August this year. Yet as Daniel Brett explains, the achievements of these protests have been modest and short-lived, with the country’s ruling Social Democratic Party still maintaining power. He highlights that while the protesters and opposition parties may be united in their opposition to corruption, they have radically different views on social and economic issues, hampering their ability to change the direction of Romanian politics.

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Review by Julia Klimova, PhD candidate at UCL SSEES.

On 16 and 17 of February 2018, School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at UCL hosted an international workshop on “Russia’s Global Legal Trajectories: International Law in Eurasia’s Past and Present”. Organized by Dr. Philippa Hetherington with generous support of the British Academy for Arts and Sciences and Pushkin House, the workshop was dedicated to the history of legal issues in Russia from the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Russian Federation. The workshop lasted for two days and consisted of 6 panels and the total of 14 speakers. It united historians with legal scholars, which provided a rich basis for discussions of issues of legality at various points in Russian history.

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