Research Papers Summary

ANUL LII 2007

S T U D I A UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI

STUDIA EUROPAEA 2

EDITORIAL OFFICE: Republicii no. 24, 400015 Cluj-Napoca ♦ Phone 0264-40.53.52

SUMAR – CONTENTS – SOMMAIRE – INHALT This special issue of Studia Europaea gathers the first group of the most relevant of the proceedings of the International Conference on “The New Frontiers of Europe. International, Inter-ethnic and Inter-confessional Relations in Central and Eastern Europe”, organized by the Faculty of European Studies (Babeş-Bolyai University) in Cluj (April 2006). The next issue of Studia Europaea (No. 3/2007) will gather the second group of papers presented within this international conference. P O L I T I C A L S C I E N C E A N D I N T E R N A T I O N A L

R E L A T I O N S

MICHAEL SHAFIR Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea: Wrong Time, Wrong Face, Wrong Place........5

ATTILA PÓK Remapping the Mind: East and West in Post – Communist Eastern and Central Europe...........................................................................................................49

ZOLTÁN I. BÚZÁS Constructing a Better Democratic Peace Theory...................................................63

RUXANDRA IVAN Patterns of Cooperation and Conflict: Romanian-Ukrainian Bilateral Relations, 1992-2006 ..................................................................................................99

ANNA CZYZ What is the Future of the Visegrad Group as an Example of Regional Cooperation ...........................................................................................................131

E U R O P E A N U N I O N A N D E U R O P E A N

I N T E G R A T I O N

JONATHAN MENDILOW European Identity in the Age of the Internet: A Tocquevillian Perspective ...145

FRANK DELMARTINO AND VALÉRIE PATTYN The Constitutional Debate in the European Union. A Quest for a New Paradigm ..................................................................................................................167

KATHARINA NIEMEYER AND VALENTINA PRICOPIE New and Old Frontiers of Europe – Rhetoric of Emotion in the Media ..........193 E U R O P E A N E C O N O M Y A N D I N F O R M A T I O N

S O C I E T Y

VALENTIN COJANU The Case for Competitive Areas of Integration: A Literature Review.............213

ALINA ANDREICA IT Strategies in Increasing Business Competitiveness........................................235

MONICA IOANA POP SILAGHI Exports and Growth in Romania – A Causal Relation? .....................................245

B O O K R E V I E W

MARINA PISICA Dominique Schnapper, Qu’est-ce que l’intégration ? Gallimard 2007, 240 pages .........................................................................................................................263

EMILIE CHAPULLIOT Julien Benda, Discours à la nation européenne, Gallimard, 1933. .........................267

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2, 2007

CONSTANTIN DOBROGEANU-GHEREA: WRONG TIME, WRONG FACE, WRONG PLACE1

Michael Shafir*

Abstract Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea might have become an internationally famous socialist thinker and/or one of the founding fathers of the sociology of knowledge. He became neither, and this was largely due to his having settled in a country where socialism was regarded as a “foreign plant” and where his Jewish origins were a serious hindrance, of which he was keenly aware. Advocating assimilation, Gherea was not a Zionist. Advocating gradual socio-economic development, he was suspicious of Leninist voluntarism. There is a striking resemblance between Gherea and “young Karl Marx”, to whose writings he is unlikely to have had access. His perceptions of the role intellectuals play in society place him along such later figures as Antonio Gramsci, Karl Mannheim or Roberto Michels.

In May 1990, some six months after the toppling of the Communist regime in Romania, I paid a first visit to Bucharest, the town where I was born. In the twenty-nine years that had passed since I had emigrated from the country, a lot had certainly changed, and as far as I could tell, nothing had changed for the better. The city had doubled in size, and I would have been certainly lost in any of the new typical communist neighborhoods that had sprung up like mushrooms after rain and, just like them, looked exactly the same: some larger, some smaller, and all full of mud. The city- center, on the other hand, looked quite familiar, but triggered in me a strange, oneiric feeling: I knew I had been there before, but faces were different; I understood the language people were using, yet pronunciation

1 This article uses, amends and updates Shafir, 1984b, 1985a, and 1985b. * Michael Shafir is a PhD Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of European Studies

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seemed to have changed and linguistic violence somehow lingered in the air. The buildings around the seat of the Central Committee of the former Romanian Communist Party (PCR) were bearing the scars of the still- unclarified events that followed the flight from the Central Committee roof of communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, executed after a sham-trial on 25 December 1989, three-days after his ignoble departure. The shooting had been attributed to “terrorists” faithful to the former PCR leader, but, strangely enough, the Central Committee building, where the new leadership had gathered, was nearly untouched. Right across, at the corner of what was now called Revolution Square and the Dem I. Dobrescu street, laid one of the most affected buildings. I was told the building used to serve as a Securitate (communist secret police) citadel for Ceauşescu personal guard. The street’s name had been recently altered, and it now bore the name of a former Bucharest mayor. When the events that brought about Ceauşescu dismissal were taking place, the street used to be called Oneşti. The word has a double meaning: on one hand, it designates a town in eastern Romania; on the other hand, it also means “the honest ones.”

The reader is probably wondering by now what could possibly be the connection between this article’s title and its author’s autobiographical and geographical reminiscences. It is time to clarify this point: on Dobrescu street, at that time, was the main office of the historical Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSDR). I was heading at the time I fist came into contact with these geographical marks to interview Constantin Avramescu, first PSDR deputy chairman (I was then working on an article on Romania’s post-communist political parties). Both the PSDR and Avramescu are since dead. The latter of age, the former of impotence, leading to its being swallowed up by for the second time in history by a much larger political “fish.” Whereas in 1948 the PSDR was forced to merge with the PCR (at that time called Romanian Workers’ Party [PMR]), on 15 June 2001 the PSDR was merged into the main leftist political formation, the Party of Social Democracy in Romania (Stoica, 2004, p. 87), a chief-inheritor of the PCR’s outlook, wealth and personnel. But unlike in 1948, when the PSDR had been deprived of its name, in 2001 it was “merely” deprived of its identity: instead of joining the larger “sister-party” under a new name as in 1948, in 2001 it was the “sister-party” that took up the denomination of the PSDR. Times had certainly changed: in 1948, Romania was embracing the Stalinist Soviet model, in 2001 it was “chic” to pose as a western

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democracy. Or had they? In the interior courtyard of the reborn PSDR headquarters in Bucharest I passed by a bust of a bald, goateed gentleman. I asked Avramescu whom did the bust represent, “Oh, he replied, it is Dobrogeanu-Gherea. We saved it from destruction. Many people believed it represented Lenin and wanted to smash it.”

While Gherea’s physical traits might have reminded one of Lenin, the resemblance certainly stopped there. The posthumous socialist thinker’s fate is to a great extent a repetition of the story of his life. He was, and continues to be, the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, as a famous Ella Fitzgerald tune would have described him. Who was Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea? Why were his person, work and legacy subjected to so many ordeals and misinterpretations, and why do they continue to be so are among the main questions that this article attempts to clarify. To do so, it first briefly reviews some biographical details and it raises the question of the importance for Gherea of his Jewish roots. Second, it reviews the isolation of Dobrogeanu-Gherea as reflected in his approach to literary criticism and the political premises of his literary production, while at the same time pointing out that this isolation was by no means a matter of simplistic anti-Semitism among his ideational opponents. Finally, the article reviews the pioneering contributions of Gherea to the sociology of knowledge, which remain to this day practically unknown. A Jew and a Country in Search of Identity

Born as Solomon Katz in the Ukrainian village of Slavinka (Ekaterionoslavsk district) in 1855, Gherea first set foot in Romania when he was twenty years of age. By that time, he was on the run from the Czarist secret police, the okhrana. Already during his high-school times in Kharkov, he had become involved in the narodnik movement. In 1875, when he first arrived in what was to become his country of adoption Gherea was totally unfamiliar with the country’s language, culture or traditions. Yet he would eventually become the head of a school of literary criticism, produce one of the most incisive analyses of the country’s social and historical evolution, and even earn a decoration for cultural merits from the

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authorities, which he refused to accept as a matter of principle.2 He did not intend in 1875 to settle down in what were still called the Romanian Principalities. Gherea traveled on to Switzerland, but was entrusted by the movement in which he was active with smuggling revolutionary literature into neighboring Russia and had to soon return. The 1877-8 Russian- Turkish war marked a traumatic experience, for the okhrana’s “long arm,” now present in the principalities alongside Czarist troops, finally reached him. Although he then carried a false American passport under the name of Robert Jinks, the Czarist secret police abducted him and Solomon Katz landed in the notorious Petropavlovsk fortress, being later banished to Menzen, on the shores of the White Sea. One year later, he managed to escape via Norway, London, Paris and Vienna, and by September 1879 he was back to Romania.3 His wife, Sonia, was at that time expecting their second child, Alexandru (Sasha) (Ornea, 1982, p. 142). It is very probable that Solomon Katz’s encounter with Sonia Parchevska, the sixteen-years-old daughter of a Jewish-Polish refugee but a Romanian citizen by birth, greatly influenced his decision to make Romania his adopted home-country, as witnessed by the petition addressed by Sonia to the local authorities following his abduction, in which the core argument was based on her citizenship (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, pp. 339-40). The petition apparently had some effect, for when the Norwegian authorities inquired about the identity of their unexpected guest”, the authorities’ reply was sympathetic (Ornea, 1982, pp. 141-2). In view of these personal experiences, it is hardly surprising that Gherea turned into a bitter foe of “Europe’s gendarme,” as Karl Marx and many others called Russia.4 Indeed, when in 1916 Romania once more found herself allied with Russia,

2 Cf, his interview on the occasion in Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. III, p. 513. 3 Gherea described this experience in an article first published in 1907, as well as in letters addressed to poet Dimitrie Anghel, as well as in letters addressed to his daughter and son- in-law, Ştefania and Paul Zarifopol. Cf. “Amintiri din trecutul îndepărtat” in Dobrogeanu- Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, pp. 388-400 and Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, pp.3-4, 109. 4 Cf. his articles “Politica externă” in Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II (pp. 396-409), “Un semn bun,” Vol. III, pp. 90-4, “Asupra socialismului în ţările înapoiate,” Vol. V, pp. 43-75, “Conflictul româno-bulgar,” ibid., pp.83-118, “Social-democraţia şi epoca cadrilateră,” ibid, pp.119-158, “Despre oligarhia română,” ibid., pp. 176-231, “Război sau neutralitate,” ibid., pp. 237-76 and Neoiobăgia: Opere complete, ibid. Vol. IV, pp. 40-2.

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Gherea thought it wiser to leave the country temporarily, for, as he put it in a letter in 1909, by then he had learned that an involuntary visit to Russia was easy enough, but the return home was a lot more difficult (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, p. 4). Indeed, other refugees from Russia, such as Dr. Nicolae Russel (Nicolae K. Sudzilovski)5 or Dr. Nicolae Zubcu Codreanu6 shared the same sentiment and apprehensions (Shafir, 1984b, p. 298). Foremost among these was Constantin Stere, who shared with Gherea a narodnicist past and enforced banishment in Russia, but unlike him, would travel ideologically to other shades of the Romanian political spectrum. Stere went as far as to oppose Romania’s entry into the Great War on the side of the Entente, advocating instead an alliance with Germany, as he believed Russia was, and would for ever remain, Romania’s arch-enemy (Ornea, 1989, pp. 21-129, 1991, pp. 7-138). The outbreak of the 1917 revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviks produced no radical change in Gherea’s attitude towards Russia. Unlike his Bulgarian-born friend and disciple Christian Rakovski—who in 1913 had condemned the Romanian bourgeois oligarchy for having “remained impassive before the annexation of Bessarabia” by Russia, but who, six years later, as a Bolshevik official, would deliver an ultimatum to Romania demanding the evacuation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, and plan the

5 Russel’s life could easily make the subject of a Hollywood motion picture. Expelled from Romania in 1881, he settled down in Sofia as a general practitioner. He later emigrated to France, from whence he proceeded to the United States. By 1891, carrying now the name of Kauka Luchini, he was in Hawaii, where he became president of the Senate in a rebel-led armed insurrection. Following defeat, Sudzilovski-Russel-Luchini was once more on the run, and after a short spell during which he became the owner of a large sugar-plantation in a Pacific island, this unrepentant rebel arrived in Japan, where he became engaged in revolutionary propaganda among Russian prisoners of war. He met his death in China in 1930, at the age of 83, not before having re-married a Japanese of noble birth. Cf. Ornea, 1982, pp. 208-209 n. On Russel see also Petrescu, 1944, pp. 53-5, 63-9, 71, 177, 200, 343-4 and Hitchins, 1994, pp. 128-9. 6 No kin of Romania’s Iron Guard leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Cf. on him Ornea, 1982, pp. 27, 85, 87, 93-5, 97-101, 106-7, 110, 113, 115-7, 120-23, 125-7, 131,133, 180-8, 194,197,206, 384, as well as Petrescu, pp. 52-4, 67, 71, 343-4 and Hitchins, pp. 128-9.

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country’s invasion for joining-up with Béla Kún’s forces7—Gherea ventured no sign of changed national loyalties. The difference most likely stemmed from the two leaders’ opposite orientation on the side of the emerging socialist barricade. Having evolved from vaguely Bakuninist positions to Marxism, Gherea was essentially a Plekhanovist. He always insisted on the indispensability of the bourgeois revolution and of industrialization as prerequisites of socialism. Rakovski, of course, was first a Leninist and then a Trotskyite, for which he would pay with his life under Stalinist rule. The same fate would await Sasha Dobrogeanu-Gherea, one of the founders of the RCP, who met his death in the Stalinist Gulag in 1938 (Tismăneanu, 2003, p. 283, n.71). Unlike either of them, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea seemed to have a remarkable vision on what revolution would bring about in the absence of its prerequisites. Socialism, he wrote in November 1919, was not supposed to “organize starvation and a glistening poverty.” Shortly before his death in 1920, he warned—in a manner reminiscent of Marx’s Early Writings and of the Critique of the Gotha Program—that, should the endeavor be attempted before such evolution had been brought into fruitition, society might “develop regressively, towards medieval society, towards primitive communism.”8 It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why, upon coming to power, the then Soviet-orientated Romanian communist leadership castigated the “Menshevik” orientation of Gherea and of the early Romanian socialists (Gheorghiu-Dej, 1952, pp. 518-19). Although Gherea-the-literary-critic was used in the 1950s in juxtaposition to “bourgeois” literary criticism, Gherea- the-socialist-theoretician was denounced as late as 1961 (Gheorghiu-Dej, 1961, pp.426-27). It was only in late 1970s and early 1980s that the official PCR publishing house Editura Politică would release an 8-volume edition of Gherea’s complete works. By then, national communism required that Romania demonstrate that socialist thought had ample roots in the country’s tradition. But this, of course, was precisely what socialist thought

7 România muncitoare, 3 February 1913, as quoted in Clark, 1927, p. 185; Degras, 1983, pp. 155-7; Conte, 1975, Vol. I, pp. 240-243. On Rakovski cf. also Shafir, 1985a, pp. 9, 11, 14-21, 23, and Tismăneanu, 2003, pp. pp. 42-5, 50, 61-2, 74, 124. 8 Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, “Dezorientare: Tot in chestiunea interviului meu” Vol. V, p. 326. Compare with Marx, 1963, p.153, as well as Marx, Engels, 1969, pp. 323-5.

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lacked in Romania. Rather than being an exemplification of the rule, Dobrogeanu-Gherea was an outstanding exception. These positions are all the more remarkable, as Gherea is unlikely to have had access to “young Marx’s” writings. As David McLellan notes, the essays published in 1844 in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher “were long out of print and forgotten”, and the 1845-published Holy Family (on which the Romanian thinker could hypothetically draw) was such a rarity that Marx himself did not posses a copy till 1867 (McLellan, 1972, pp. 266, 269). It was not until 1927-32 that D. Rjazanov edited a complete edition of Marx’s Early Writings (a partial reprint was produced by Marx’s biographer Franz Mehring in 1902), and by then Gherea had been dead for several years. It is therefore natural to wonder whether the Romanian Marxist thinker did not make the wrong choice when the returned to Romania from Switzerland. He apparently chose the wrong place, at the wrong time. Had he stayed in the West, his name might have become widely known among socialist circles. It was not to be. As Gherea wrote shortly after the death of his friend, playwright Ion Luca Caragiale, “Poor and unfortunate are our small, underdeveloped countries, but poorer and more unfortunate the great men born there” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, p. 419). Caragiale had moved to Berlin in 1904, having left Romania in disgust, but the words could stand as an epitaph on Gherea’s own grave. Just like Caragiale, who died in 1912, Gherea was still pondering in 1905-1906 whether to move to Germany (Ornea, 1982, pp. 408-10). One would, indeed, search in vain for even a single paragraph dedicated to Romania in Leszek Kolakowski’s seminal three-volume (1978) work on Marxism’s main currents. For Romanians, who were just beginning to forge their national identity and lacked a proletariat in the Western sense of the word, a doctrine preaching the withering away of the state had little chance of gaining popularity. When Gherea first came to Romania, the principalities had hardly been united for less than two decades and 9 The letter (addressed to V. G. Korolenko) refers to Russia and Romania as belonging to the same category.

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Transylvania was still part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. By the time of his death, the nation-building process was just in the throngs of birth. This meant that options other than those based on nationalism stood little chance (Livezeanu, 1995). The Romanian intellectual elite - unavoidably functioning as chief socializer into the new national identity—perceived socialism, as Gherea would put it, as an “imported exotic plant” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 216-7; 1976-83, Vol. I, pp. 369-74, 386- 94, 404-7 and Vol. II, pp. 60-61). The émigré from Russia born as Solomon Katz was considered by many to be its chief prophet. The accusation was not without foundation, for, as Gherea confessed in a letter to Karl Kautsky in 1894, when he had “first arrived in Romania as a Russian refugee, not even the word ‘socialism’ was known” there (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, p. 35). After some time spent in the country in Gherea’s company, Pavel Axelrod had predicted that “not even the greatest optimist would dare entertain hopes that modern socialist ideas could take root” here (cited in Haupt, 1967, p. 31). Yet Gherea did not lack notoriety among international socialist personalities. He had met in person Engels, Axelrod, Georgi Plekhanov, Trotsky and Vera Zasulich, and regularly corresponded with others, among them Karl Kautsky. In vain did Gherea attempt to demonstrate that the accusations of “cosmopolitanism” or “rootlessness” were irrelevant, pointing out in one of his articles that their proponents belonged to the bourgeoisie, which “wears foreign suits, studies with foreign books…convalesces at foreign health- resorts and in exchange, exports…the national nutrition to the cosmopolitan market, while the national producer, the peasant, is starving (Dobrogeanu- Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. III, p. 41. Emphasis in original). In the absence of any real proletarian electorate, and both unable and unwilling to cope with the stigma of “rootlessness”, the handful of intellectuals who in 1893 had constituted the backbone of the Romanian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (PSDMR) joined the National Liberal Party in 1899, in an act later to be known as the “treason of the Generous”. Significantly, this splinter group originally decided to change the party’s name into National Democratic and was opposing demands to extend suffrage rights to Jews (Institutul de Studiistorice, 1969, pp. 684, 689, 701-7). The rebirth of a socialist party in Romania had to await a decade.

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What chiefly made Gherea’s views unacceptable among the bulk of Romania’s intelligentsia and political class of his time were his views on the nation. The “family-nation”—a concept he attributed in 1886 to the Romanian Liberal revolutionaries of 1848— was in his eyes but a “sentimental ideological utopian fallacy” which “never existed, does not exists and never will exist” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, p. 134). These differences were not only a matter of ideological options. They had immediate consequences for practical politics too, and particularly led to clashes concerning the most important issue of the times—the feasibility of a “Greater Romania” and its envisaged ethnic and geographical borders. Gherea opposed Romania’s entry into the Second Balkan War in 1913, seeing it as an imperialist reflection of the ruling oligarchy’s internal policies; instead, he supported the Rakovski plan for a Balkan federation, as a possible solution to the region’s border conflicts. In the wake of the war, Gherea condemned the incorporation of the “Cadrilater” into Romania, warning that the conflict with Bulgaria would only play in the hands of the Czarist and—at various stages and for a variety of reasons, all somehow connected with his anti-Russian views—advocated either neutrality or an alliance with Austria-Hungary against the “Eastern menace.” Although a supporter of the Romanian claims in Transylvania, once the hostilities of the First World War had broken out, he rebuked the voices calling for an immediate march on Transylvania, warning that, at worst, the Habsburg Empire’s designs on Romania could lead to a temporary loss of state independence, whereas an alliance with Russia would endanger Romanian nationhood. Although both the Russian and the Austrian-Hungarian empires were multinational, he wrote, Transylvanian Romanians had been capable of safeguarding national rights and a separate identity, whereas an eventual incorporation into the Czarist empire - as demonstrated by the 1878 Bessarabian, and by other precedents—would be followed by enforced Russification (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. V, pp.237-76). Once more, it is quite obvious why Romania’s Stalinist rulers of the late 1940s-early 1960s, subservient as they were to the “Great Friend from the East” could not possibly allow Gherea’s political writings to circulate. What is remarkable, however, is also Gherea’s anticipation of the difference social science would make later that century between the processes of “nation

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building” and “state building” and his warning that both processes could be “unbuilt”. Such stances led to an interpellation in Parliament, where deputy Gheorghe D. Dobrescu accused Gherea of lack of loyalty towards the host-nation (and of personal corruption as well), demanding the revocation of the citizenship he had acquired in 1890 (Ornea, 1982, p. 449). Though without further repercussions (after all, such foremost “genuine” Romanians as Titu Maiorescu and Stere had also advocated an alliance with the Central Powers), the incident was symptomatic. Already in 1888 he had been forced to request an audience with Maiorescu, at that time a minister in the Conservative government, fearing expulsion on grounds of socialist agitation. Remarkably, Maiorescu, who had been the target of Gherea’s attacks in polemics that would become a milestone in Romanian literary criticism, assured him that there was no intention to expel Gherea from the country (Ornea, 1982, p. 359). Yet the legal mechanism for such steps was not lacking: a “Law on the status of foreigners,” adopted in 1881 in the wake of socialist demonstrations commemorating the Paris Commune, had already been applied to Axelrod and Dr. Russel, and would be invoked against Rakovski in 1907 (Ornea, 1982, p. 207, Haupt and Marie, 1974, pp. 393-5, Conte, 1975, Vol. I, pp. 93-97). Furthermore, Gherea had grounds to fear that he might be expelled just because he was Jewish. His reputation as man of letters would not have stopped such intentions: In 1885, the authorities had expelled Moses Gaster, a reputed pioneer of comparative ethnography10, alongside a plethora of Jewish journalists. And while Gaster (like Gherea) was engaged in the struggle for the naturalization of Jews— though not as a socialist—other prominent Jewish intellectuals would soon follow suit despite of having opted for baptism. This, for instance, was the case of philologists Haiman Tiktin—the author of the first Romanian etymological dictionary— and Lazăr Şăineanu, winner of an important prize of the Romanian Academy of Sciences (Iancu, 1996, pp. 214-15, 277; Voicu, 2003, pp. 139-41). Against this background, it is all the more remarkable that though Gherea had polemized against Maiorescu’s views of aesthetics (vulgarly later presented by the communists as “Art for Art’s Sake”), he supported Gherea’s naturalization in the Chamber of Deputies 10 On Gaster cf. Eskenasy, 1998, Stanciu, 2003 and 2004.

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— to the dismay of its anti-Semitic opponents (Ornea, 1982, pp. 31-33, 338- 340). Incidents involving attempts to establish a connection between Gherea’s Jewish origins and his socialist outlooks repeatedly occurred during his lifetime. In one of the more ostentatious instances, poet Alexandru Vlahuţă, who once had been close to socialist circles, wrote in winter 1904 that he “found consolation” in the sentience which had enabled him to “abandon” the [socialist] ship in time, before she had sailed for the ocean’s wilderness, for the shore was still in sight and I could jump into the first life-saving boat.”11 In May that year, Vlahuţă distributed a ferociously anti-Semitic pamphlet directed against Gherea, with pornographic inscriptions in Yiddish added as ornament (Drimer, 1923, pp. 51-53). Gherea did not react. In fact, he seemed to be scared. Likewise, when in 1911 his Jewish socialist friend Emmanuel Socor attempted to enroll his expertise on behalf of the defense, in a libel suit brought before the courts by the “founding father” of modern Romanian anti-Semitism, A. C. Cuza, whose opus magnum Socor had revealed as crude plagiarism, Gherea did his utmost to eschew the assignment (Socor, 1911; Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, pp. 83, 85, 13912). In his own literary work, Gherea occasionally made use of the Jewish stereotype, and at times such use also slid into other productions. It was crystal-clear to him, for example, that Jews were—and should be depicted as—cowards. In 1890, he found unsatisfactory a finale of a short story written by his friend I. L. Caragiale because, instead of being molested or killed, a Jew turns into a torturer of his would-be executioner. “It goes without saying,” he explained, “that all nations have their cowards, but surely nowhere is the sentiment as common as among Jews” (Dobrogeanu- Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 92-8). Nearly twenty years later, the European powers were reminding him of “the Jew in that anecdote who, finding himself at loss…provokes and threatens everyone, because he is so terribly

11 Cited by literary critic Horia Bratu in his notes to Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, p. 469n. 12 Socor was eventually cleared of the libel. This was not the only instance in which Cuza’s “scholastic” work proved to be a forgery. One of his more famous anti-Semitic pamphlets was plagiarized after Édouard Drumont.

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scared” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. III, p. 155). Were instances such as these a typical case of self-projection triggered by the thinker’s own personal situation? Gherea appears to have been indeed inhibited by his ethnic origins. Occasionally, he was even willing to make what must have been humiliating efforts to hide them. It is not irrelevant that the adopted name that was to make him famous in Romania—Gherea— derived from the Hebrew Ger, i.e. stranger, or foreigner, as revealed by his close assistant and collaborator Barbu Lăzăreanu (Haupt, 1967, p. 31). His Romanian biographer, Zigu Ornea (1982, p. 29), seems to have been unaware of Lăzăreanu’s testimony, but reaches the same conclusion. In 1892, Gherea wrote to historian, politician and literary critic Nicolae Iorga (founder of the so-called “sowist” — Sămănătorism —school) that his name at birth had been Constantin Cass—thus clearly indulging into an attempt to efface the genealogically obvious Katz (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, p. 33). In his application for citizenship, on the other hand, the literary critic indicated his name was Constantin Cassu Dobrogeanu. According to historian Georges Haupt, in the naturalization papers submitted to the authorities Gherea gave his name as “Cass” to conceal his Jewish identity; but his biographer writes that “Cassu” was a Romanianized formulation of Katz and that Gherea was aware it would be useless to hide it, as his record was well-known by the okhrana and at the Russian diplomatic representation in Bucharest. That information was leaked to opponents of his naturalization, and the newspaper Poporul [The People] was revealing on 27-28 June 1890 that the name under which naturalization had been requested was “nothing but the pseudonym of a kike raised in Bessarabia, namely Nukim Katz.” The source of the information was disclosed to be the Russian legation, and Poporul wondered why should “yet another side-curled” citizen on whose loyalty to the Romanian nation one could not count, and who on top had a nihilist past, be received in its midst (Ornea, 1982, p. 31). The Commissar, the Lotus and the Latke: The Social Democrat, the Literary Critic, the Jew In 1945, Arthur Koestler published in London a book that juxtaposed the “Yogi” and the “Commissar.” The book was divided into three parts. The first two, “Meanderings” and “Exhortations”, were essays

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on literature, politics and problems of his time. The third part, “Explanations,” was a well-documented survey of the Soviet intellectual experiment by the author of Darkness at Noon. The first essay began by imagining “an instrument which would enable us to break up patterns of social behavior as the physicist breaks up a beam of rays.” Such a “sociological spectroscope” would “spread out under the diffraction- granting the rainbow-colored spectrum of all possible attitudes of life.” According to Koestler, on “one end of the spectrum, obviously the infra-red end, we would see the Commissar”. He is the one who “believed in Change from Without,” who is persuaded that “all the pests of humanity, including constipation and the Oedipus complex, can and will be cured by Revolution”, by “a radical reorganization of the system of production and distribution of goods.” The Commissar is also convinced that “this end justifies the use of all means, including violence, ruse, treachery and poison;” He is no less persuaded “that logical reasoning is an unfailing compass and the universe a kind of very large clockwork in which a very large number of electrons once set into motion will forever revolve in their predictable orbit.” In other words, Koestler’s Commissar is a strict determinist and in the writer’s imaginary “sociological spectroscope” the end at which the Commissar stands “has the lowest frequency of vibrations…but it conveys the maximum amount of heat” (Koestler, 1971, p. 9). At the other end of the spectrum, however, “the waves become so short and of such high-frequency that the eye no longer sees them, colorless, warmthless but all-penetrating.” It is at this end that the Yogi “crouches” as it melts away in the ultra-violet. The Yogi “has no objection to calling the universe a clockwork, but he thinks that it could be called, with about the same amount of truth, a musical box or a fishpond” (Koestler, 1971, pp. 9-10). One learns from Koestler that “All attempts to change the nature of man by Commissar methods have so far failed” but also that “The attempts to produce Change from Within on a mass-scale were equally unsuccessful” (Koestler, 1971, pp. 10, 11). “Obviously,” he concludes, “the prospects for the masses of common people are not brighter under this inverted Machiavellianism [Yogi] than under the leadership of the Commissars.” Koestler’s way out of a dilemma in which

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the two adversaries “may call it quit” (p. 12) need not preoccupy us beyond this point. For Gherea never acted like Koestler’s Commissar, nor has he ever dovened [prayed] while murmuring to himself some exotic socialist mantra. A skilled pamphleteer, nay, even a musketeer always ready for turning words into swords, he was as far as can be imagined from those who “organize saintliness by exterior means,” —to use once more Koestler’s depiction of the Yogi. And he insisted that what Koestler calls Commissar action would lead to counter-Utopias. So who was Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea? If one were to stick to Koestler’s oriental metaphor, I believe the Romanian socialist thinker’s specter was bipolar, though not necessarily polarized. At one end there was Gherea-the-Lotus-man, and at the other Gherea-the Lotke-eater. The Lotus embodies both preoccupation with aesthetics and with social justice. The Lotke (a potato pancake served at Hanukah feasts) was the main hinder Gherea encountered on his way to rejoicing the Lotus. Gherea definitely did not like Lotkes. But as a Man-of-Lotus he had to stand up for the rights of those who believed they could eat lotkes and matzoth and still be loyal citizens of Romania. This subchapter illustrates some aspects of the clash triggered by the two spectral poles of Gherea’s personality. In the realm of aesthetics, Gherea’s main divergences emerged in opposition to both those who were either inclined to universalize rabble patriotism (and who were just one contingent among the day’s Romanian literati) or to those who would appraise his analytical work. Yet it was not just anti-Semitism as such that triggered adversity towards Gherea, but also his refusal to forego his socialist credo. The relationship with Stere was emblematic. The Generous, to which Stere belonged, would therefore gradually turn into victimizers of their former friend. Albeit never formally a member of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP), Stere had been close to the party’s leadership and to Gherea, sharing with many RSDWP founding members narodnik influences brought from Bessarabia. However, Stere would gradually evolve in nationalist directions. Attempting to justify this transformation, he explained that young intellectuals who arrived in Romania with noble

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socialist ideas valid for other environments had founded the RSDWP, only to realize after a while that they had been militating for a practically nonexistent social class. Such intellectuals, he wrote, were “spiritually foreign” to the people in the midst of whom they lived. They followed the “tyranny of abstract formulas” while the peasant “in vain keeps waiting for the liquidation of ancient debts.” While narodnicist ideas were still powerfully present in Stere, he faulted the “tyranny of abstract formulas” with another cardinal sin, namely the disregard of “national essence” — a leit motif later to be embraced by Romanian extreme right thought:

I do not understand a socialist…if he feels no…compassion for genuine people around him; I do not believe in the sincerity of a fighter for a juster and more humane a social structure if he tells me “let the whole Romanian nation perish, as long as socialism is victorious,” if he does not comprehend…that people do not exist for socialism, but rather socialism for the people…I do not admit the identification of internationalism with nationalism, as this disregards the people’s vital political, economic and cultural interests (cited in Ornea, 1972, p. 42. Emphasis in original).

The solution, according to Stere’s “poporanist” (populist) doctrines, rested in avoiding the evils of capitalist industrialization and in creating a society with institutions corresponding to the peasant national character, and serving rural interests. Little wonder, then, that Stere would eventually land in the National Peasant Party. Such disputes as that in which the socialists confronted the “poporanists” had an echo larger than one would expect, for, just as Gherea, who launched in 1881 a socio-cultural review called Contemporanul (a translation of the Russian Sovremelnik), his ideological adversaries were also combining politics with literature and an interest in the arts. Gherea antagonized not only the “poporanists”, but even more so the nascent (yet increasingly powerful) Volkish-oriented “sowists”. In his opinion, the partisans of this literary current were drawing inspiration

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from an imaginary idyllic past and evincing a falsified perception of patriotism:

When in our national and patriotic dramas of the last [1877- 1878] war, soldiers…peasants in the Griviţa fortifications, utter patriotic speeches, these, of course, are not art but a parody of art, because they are lies. The Romanian peasant is not in the habit of pronouncing patriotic speeches anywhere, least of all when he dies of hunger and bullets. Similarly, in our historic- patriotic national dramas, the heroes utter a plethora of patriotic words, such as “our country”, “Romania,” “Romanian bravery,” which seemingly never stop flowing. But such types are not real, they are talking engines…Their speeches could have been pronounced by phonographs [and with an equal measure of verisimilitude] (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 30).

He dubbed “reactionary democratism” the idealization of the “organic” unity of peasantry and gentry, typical of the “sowists,” and criticized the Weltanschauung of Romania’s national poet, Mihai Eminescu, precisely on those grounds that had determined the “sowists” to idolize the writer. Eventually, this stance would provoke one of the foremost literary historians of the interwar period, George Călinescu, into writing that “like many Jews,” Gherea was “incapable of contemplating ideas” and hence unable to “overcome his foreignness” (Călinescu, 1941, pp. 485- 6). Gherea was and remained painfully sensitive to the accusation of “foreignness,” which apparently influenced to no little extent his political activity. In a letter addressed in 1902 to his daughter and son-in-law, Ştefania and Paul Zarifopol, he complained “in our country I am, and always was, in a false situation, for I am not a native Romanian, and after all, I remain but a foreigner.” (Emphasis mine). He went on explaining:

To be capable of standing up alone, against everyone else, one must by all means be a native, one must enjoy secure civic and

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national rights. Otherwise, any ne’er-do-well [secătură], who nonetheless was lucky enough to be born a native, has the right to ask you “But who invited you to mingle in our affairs? If you don’t like it here, go back to wherever you came from”…Consequently, I sense perfectly well what should be done in this country, what should be said, and how important it would be to speak up, but I cannot do it myself. I must be silent and squash that which I should be…shouting from the top of my lungs in the middle of the street (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, p. 113).

Ten years on, in a letter addressed to Russian narodnicist writer V.G. Korolenko, Gherea complained that the Romanian government and the ruling classes were keeping the bulk of the Jewish population “in a state of total political slavery.” While the Jews “fulfill all the civic and political duties of the Romanian citizen”, they “have absolutely no political rights.” With but a few exceptions, he added, Romania’s intellectuals were just as anti-Semitic as the Russian intelligentsia, and possibly even more so. As political leaders, these intellectuals were guilty of bad faith, he said, for, following Western pressure, Romania had undertaken to enfranchise its Jewish population in exchange for recognition of its independence. In practice, however, citizenship had been extended at a rate of three Jews every year, which meant that the obligation “shall be fulfilled in the course of the forthcoming one hundred thousand years” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1972, pp. 41-2). Obviously, Gherea was referring to the famous Article 7 in the 1866 Constitution, which stipulated that only foreigners of the Christian faith could be naturalized in Romania. The article was amended in October 1879, in the wake of the Berlin Congress, which made recognition of Romanian independence conditional on granting civil rights to foreigners regardless of confessional belonging; yet instead of granting the naturalization right collectively, it did so only individually, provided the applicant could prove residence in the country for at least 10 years, as well as “demonstrate by deeds his activities are useful to the country.” Furthermore, each individual application required the approval by parliament by special law, which practically meant the 1866 Constitution amendment’s many opponents could procrastinate

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endlessly (Iancu, 1996, pp. 173-205, text of amended Article 7 on p. 200). As Gherea put it in 1913, right after the Second Balkan War and the annexation of Dobrudja by Romania, the government wished to enforce the “Romanianization” of some 300,000 Bulgarians, while a quarter of million Jews, otherwise fully integrated in the country’s social and economic life, had to make desperate efforts to acquire Romanian citizenship. The situation was of “such inconceivable absurdity,” he added in a sarcastic note, that one was tempted into concluding that the entire affair was “nothing but a malicious invention of international Jewry” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. V, pp.168-9). 13 Apart from Maiorescu, Gherea’s naturalization request was also backed in parliament by Petre P. Carp and by Theodor Rosetti (Ornea, 1982, pp. 30-31). All three belonged to the “Junimist” school, most of whose members were also political pillars of the Conservative Party. Ideologically, they all shared mistrust in the attempts of the Liberals— and, of course, the Socialists— to emulate Western models to Romanian realities. Maiorescu spoke in this sense of “forms without essence”. According to the memoirs of Junimea member Gheorghe Panu, with the exception of Carp, all these prominent Romanians shared one more thing: anti-Semitism (G. Panu, Amintiri de la “Junimea” din Iași, as quoted in Petreu, 2006, pp. 72-3). As Marta Petreu demonstrates, the generalization was grossly exaggerated. While Maiorescu— in a display of what I call “utilitarian anti-Semitism” (Shafir, 2001b, pp. 419-20, 2002, p. 57)—in 1879 backed legislation taking the wind out of Jewish emancipation’s sails14 (Cf. supra), his gentleman-like support of Gherea’s naturalization, as well as numerous other instances in which he (like Carp) supported gradual Jewish emancipation and integration, hardly put him in the category of economic anti-Semites of the likes of Mihai Eminescu and Vasile

13 Between 1879 and 1900, Parliament approved the naturalization of only 85 persons; 104 were naturalized between 1901 and 1911 (Iancu, 1996, p. 212). 14 He did so, as Petreu shows, under the pressure of street demonstrations against the Berlin Treaty provisions mandating the amending of Article 7 in the 1866 Constitution. In his memoirs, Maiorescu (1994, p. 112) nonetheless called the wording of that article by the 1866 Constitutional Assembly “thoughtless” and “bound to be punished at some point ” [nechibzuita redactare a articolului 7 trebuia să se pedepsească odată].

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Alecsandri, not to speak of Romania’s first racial anti-Semite, the philosopher and historian Vasile Conta (Petreu, 2006). In his major work, Neo-Serfdom [Neoiobăgia], Gherea refuted both the poporanist and the Junimist argument of “forms without essence”. To do this, however, he proceeded in a Marxist manner, i.e., adopting the Junimist epistemology and producing its critique “from inside out.” Gherea’s theory concerning the evolution towards capitalism in underdeveloped nations, which constitutes the backbone of his argument in Neo-Serfdom, had been outlined as early as 1896, in his first theoretical pamphlet, “What Do Romania’s Socialists Want”. The Liberal revolutionaries of 1848, he claimed, had indeed imported from the West ideas which were “foreign” to local conditions, but, far from having committed a “crime,” they had actually acted as the (mostly unconscious) tools of social evolution. History’s List der Vernunft, to use Hegel’s term, of necessity required that advanced capitalism should spread its influence in search of markets, whereby smaller, less-developed nations would benefit by being pushed into the modern world (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, pp. 7-126). Without claiming that the underdeveloped nations of Europe had vegetated in a state of “oriental despotism”, as Marx did in his critique of colonialism in Asia, Gherea’s argument nonetheless stemmed from similar premises concerning modernization (Avineri, 1969). And from these premises Gherea was to prophesy in Neo-Serfdom that socialism would be brought to the underdeveloped countries of Eastern Europe on western wings. Gherea’s theory, however, is closer to Immanuel Wallerstein’s “World System” approach than is to Marx’s views on the paradoxical benefits of colonialism (Wallerstein, 1974, 1979, 198015). The introduction of contemporary capitalist models in the Romanian principalities, indicated Gherea, had not been accompanied by corresponding social transformations. Whereas in Western Europe the introduction of a capitalist superstructure had in fact been an outcome of the process of economic growth, in states such as Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the process had begun at the level of the superstructure, as a result

15 This is implicitly indicated in Chirot, 1976, pp. 132-6.

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of the influence of the more developed nations. But it had also stopped there. The situation, he believed, was dissimilar to that of Russia, where the feudal superstructure, i.e. authoritarian rule, had not yet disappeared. Its special characteristic consisted in the gap between the pays légal and the pays réel. What is striking in this analysis is not merely its relevance for the past, but—one dares say—for the present. All one has to do to grasp this relevance is to substitute the protocapitalist superstructure of late 19th-early 20th century with the postcommunist superstructure of early 21st century. Was Gherea the first Romanian “analyst” of postcommunism? Moreover, was he the fist “analyst” of Russian postcommunism, as one might conclude by juxtaposing Gherea’s pays légal vs. pays réel and Richard Pipes’ concept of “patrimonialism” (2005)? Having outlined these historical developments, “What Do Romania’s Socialists Want” proceeded to lay down the future tasks of socialists at the local level, in a section unmistakably inspired by Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?, and bearing the same title. But if the title was identical to Lenin’s book of similar inspiration (published, nevertheless, sixteen years later), the solution envisaged was totally different. Rather than planning Leninist tactics, the Romanian socialists copied the Erfurt Program of German social democracy (Ghelerter, 1980, p. 246), which Gherea had transposed to local conditions. Socialist activity, according to Gherea, should be directed at “pouring content” into empty “forms”; the “content,” should be bourgeois, however, though this would eventually further socialist aims as well. Romania’s socialists, as he put it in several articles in 1894-5, must be “legalists,” for strict adherence to the letter of bourgeois law meant universal suffrage, the extension of other civil rights, and land reform bringing capitalist forms of production to the countryside as soon as possible, all of which would hasten the approach of a socialist order (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. III, pp. 183-5, 186-210, 249-56). In other words, before the socialist order could be envisaged, the bourgeois order of things had to be universalized. Once more: the wrong face, at the wrong time, at the wrong place. Gherea was preaching universalism in a place obsessed with its emergent particularism; what is more, he was writing his own sentence for the first decade of communist rule, when the emulation of the Leninist

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model would constitute the sine qua non of pseudo-Marxist Stalinist “political correctness.” Intellectual Sociology in the Bud

Applying to Gherea the Leninist formula of “two cultures in one” (“we take from each national culture only its democratic and socialist elements; we take them only and absolutely in opposition to the bourgeois culture and the bourgeois nationalism of each nation”16) but doing precisely the opposite of what was claimed by the formula, Gherea’s legacy in the early communist period was subjected to selective exploitation. His polemics with Maiorescu on literature were blown out of proportion, aiming to justify Zhdanovist “socialist realism,17” while his social-democratic legacy was either criticized (cf. supra) or (as more often was the case) ignored. Yet at closer examination, Gherea-the-literary-critic18 is just as surprisingly innovative for his times as Gherea the socialist-theoretician is. It is within this latter framework that in 1891, in the second volume of his Studies in Criticism, that he published an article purposing to analyze the causes of pessimism in literature.19 Arguing against those who assumed pessimism to be basically an inborn inclination, the literary critic attributed the somber tones of such artistic output to socially determined conditions. Thus far, no Zhdanovist would raise objections. But one is immediately struck by Gherea’s echoing of “young Marx,” as well as by his pioneering of an academic discipline that was non-existent at the times he put his thoughts on paper. I have in mind the sociology of knowledge, of which, I dare claim, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea is the still-unacknowledged

16 Lenin, 1970, pp. 43-4, citation from “Critical Remarks on the National Question”, 1913. Emphasis in original. 17 As Ion Ianoşi (1996, p. 106) shows, Maiorescu, who was gradually leaving behind preoccupation with literature and the arts, hardly responded to Gherea at all and left this task to his many disciples. 18 This literary activity practically ceased in 1897, when Gherea began concentrating his publicist activities exclusively on social and political aspects. 19 “Cauza pesimismului în literatură şi viaţă,” in Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I., pp. 129- 61.

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founding father. If there ever has been justification for the so-called Romanian “protochronism,”20 it is Gherea that best provides it. Modern (capitalist) society, according to Gherea, is above all characterized by de-personification. This affects the entire gist of human relationships and is the direct consequence of universal mercantilism. Modern man lives under a constant sense of dependency, of being unable to cast his own part in life, for, as all other things, his fate hinges on the division of labor and on the requirements of the market. Capitalist dependence is, however, qualitatively different from the master-servant relationship which characterizes medieval society, for under feudalism dependence was personal: “Medieval man dependent on the person of the feudal baron, on king or emperor.” Even God, wrote Gherea, echoing Ludwig Feuerbach with whose writings he was familiar21, was “severe, punishing, powerful, and at the same time good and just.” Deity was therefore a “combination of the real master, which any man could see before his [own] eyes, and the ideal master, which he wished he had.” On the other hand, modern man’s dependency is wholly impersonal:

He does not depend on a cruel master, who nonetheless would be a person, a human being. He depends on the social circumstances, on something undefined, very vague, faceless. And this dependency manifests itself throughout his life, step by step, and in most cases, man does not even understand on whom he depends or why.22

To be sure, such faceless dependence does not affect the creative artist alone. “In any merchandize-producing society,” Gherea wrote in 1892, “once produced, the goods escape the control of producers.” Since the product “is destined for selling, for exchange, and not for the producer’s 20 A Romanian approach to universal culture reminiscent of the Stalinist attempt to transform all mankind’s major achievements into Russian inventions. The protochronist school was based on the use and abuse of an article written in 1974 by literary critic Edgar Papu (ironically enough, a converted Jew!). Cf. Verdery, 1971, pp. 167-214. 21 Cf. his citation of, and elaboration on, Feuerbach’s Das Wesen der Christentums in Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 137, 142 and “A. Vlahuţă” in ibid., Vol. II, pp.162-3. 22 Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 141-2.

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own use, it leaves him and enters the world of merchandize” (Dobrogeanu- Gherea, 1956, pp.18-9). This can have quite unexpected results for capitalist and worker alike. The former, for instance, might find the guns he has produced turned against himself. The latter might produce a highly sophisticated engine which would make him superfluous as producer. Capitalist division of labor, in any case, “transforms modern civilized man into a wheel of the enormous social machinery. The whole life of this wheel-individual depends on the totality of the social machinery: the individual himself is but a small screw in it, thereby depending on, but unable to control, it” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I., p. 251). Modern man, in other words, is alienated man. Though Gherea never employed the term, the similarity to Marx’s Early Writings—which, one must repeat, he could not possible have read— is striking since it does not stop here. From whence the Romanian thinker drew his inspiration is impossible to establish. One possible source might have been the writings of the British romanticists and their echoes in the British labor movement.23 Gherea’s “faceless dependency” and his “wheel individuum” recall Thomas Carlyle’s “universe,” which is “all void of life, or purpose, of volition, even of hostility,” that “huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling out on its dead indifference” (Carlyle, 1907, p. 133). Yet, again, Carlyle is never mentioned in Gherea’s writings. On the other hand, the same esprit du temps, in one variation or another, was present in the writings of Shelley and of Thomas Hardy, whom he greatly admired, and mutatis mutandis, in positions adopted by Carlyle’s disciple, the Labor leader James Keir Hardie, whose pacifist stances Gherea applauded.24 It is possible (though by no means certain) that via his readings of these, and perhaps other sources, Gherea managed to bridge between Feuerbach and

23 Cf. I am grateful to my friend Professor Jonathan Mendilow, Rider University, for drawing my attention to this source. 24 Cf. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp.301, 305 for Shelley and ibid., p. 344 for Hardy. For Hardie cf. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. V., p. 82. Although the British Labor leader is mentioned only in his pacifist stance, it is almost unconceivable that Gherea, who was familiar with practically every line written by Western socialist contemporaries, would not be acquainted with the British socialist’s views on capitalism-induced alienatory phenomena.

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“late” Marx’s “fetishism of commodities (cf. Marx, n.d., pp.81-96), reconstructing Marx’s own philosophical evolution. Proceeding to apply these premises to an analysis of intellectuals and of creative activity under capitalist conditions, the Romanian Marxist indicated that this social stratum, through its training and education, was naturally more sensitive than other categories to social injustice (Dobrogeanu Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 246-7). While narodnicist echoes are unmistakable here, Gherea is at the same time innovating. As Antonio Gramsci would eventually put it25, out of its own needs the capitalist system generates a social stratum that is both articulate and trained to be critical and raise questions. But such questioning is not altruistic. Being dominated by demand and supply fluctuations, the capitalist system is often unable to satisfy the social needs of the stratum it has produced out of its own needs. In other words, the ideational “market” is periodically overflowed, due to a “crisis of intellectual and scientific overproduction” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 139, 352-6). Intellectual propensities to pessimism are therefore rooted in that foremost aspect of modern society which is “lack of security” derived from a constant “struggle for existence”. This struggle “is not regulated through any form of intelligence, human consciousness or a rational plan, but by a blind and unconscious form which is called free competition”:

Let us exemplify, not by taking the case of a person, but that of the whole class which gives pessimism its greatest contingent…the so-called liberal professions: lawyers, physicians, professors, architects, musicians, journalists, etc. In a merchandize-producing society, such as ours, intellectual work becomes also merchandize, subject to buying and selling…it is dependent on the market, on the economic law of supply and demand, on competition; and if the supply is greater than the demand, then any offer of merchandize, in our case of intellectual produce, loses its value; its owner, the

25 Cf. “The Formation of Intellectuals” in Gramsci, 1971, pp. 10-12 and Davidson, 1978, p. 49. On the centrality of Gramsci’s views on the intellectuals cf. Cammett, 1967, pp. 201-3, 206-9; Merrington, 1968, pp. 160-9; Boggs, 1976, pp. 75-9; Davidson, 1977, pp. 256-9.

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physician, the professor, the engineer, the musician, the journalist, the book-keeper, is free to starve as much as he likes…

Consequently, “just as under the present social conditions, man does not dominate social living conditions but is dominated by them, so the intellectual does not dominate modern science, but is dominated by it” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 139. Emphasis in original). Gherea thus anticipates Gramsci, according to whom modern society entrenches “the possibility of vast crises of unemployment for the middle intellectual strata,” as a result of “competition” and of ”overproduction in the schools” (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 13-14). The Romanian socialist thinker precedes not only Gramsci, however, but also Robert Michels. According to Michels’ 1932-published article, the oversupply of intellectuals, stemmed by critical reductions in job opportunities, creates an “intellectual proletariat.” But this is precisely the terminology Gherea employed in his 1891-written article on pessimism, and on which he further elaborated two years later. It is often, he indicated, that one encounters the unwanted association of “proletariat” and “poor.” Yet the brawler who makes a living out of “electoral operations” is “as much of a proletarian as a shopkeeper, no matter how poor.” What determines one’s being or not a proletarian is one’s position vis-à-vis capital. If one’s sole means of existence is acquired through the sale of one’s labor, then he belongs to the proletariat. Viewed from this vantage-point, there are two categories of proletars: “the manual proletariat, who earns its living through manual labor, and the intellectual proletariat, or the cultured proletariat, who earns it through intellectual labor” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 245-6n.). Marx would have approved of the distinction, for he defined himself as “a head-worker, not a hand-worker” (cited in Shafir, 1985b, p. 326). At first sight, this might read as reflecting the basic premises of dichotomist polarization in the social stratification process. Not only would such reading be consistent with the Communist Manifesto’s “precipitation” of the intellectuals into the proletariat, but it would also fit neatly into Paul

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Lafargue’s prediction that the “swarming and famishing throng of intellectuals whose lot grows worse in proportion to the increase in their numbers…belongs to socialism” (cited in Brym, 1980, p. 14). However, Gherea’s elaboration on the issue is considerably richer and many-faceted. To begin with, the social stratification process as viewed by him refutes a simplistic grasp of class antagonism. In every class, he indicates, “there are elements which have something in common with several classes at one and the same time.” Such multi-class affiliation creates a mosaic which complicates and even pre-empts a dichotomist polarization analysis. Not only the intellectuals, but even the manual proletariat “have their own aristocracy, which in its upper-strata—economically speaking—touch on the privileged classes” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 246n). As Gramsci (1971, pp.13-14), then, Gherea was aware of the fact that some intellectuals are close to the ruling elite, while others are less so. Moreover, social stratification in capitalist society was also affected by the process of social mobility. The “intellectual proletariat,” he deemed it necessary to specify, was neither the elite-supporting intelligentsia nor the aristocracy of the manual proletariat. The term referred only to those affected by the “struggle for existence.” This was a necessary, yet by no means sufficient condition for the intellectual to become a potential ally of the manual proletariat. Protest against social conditions, Gherea indicated in 1894, could also generate self- introspection and detachment from society as such. He called this the “reflexive propensity” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I., p. 269). Some forty years later, Karl Mannheim would write in Ideology and Utopia (first published in 1935) that one of the alternatives open to the intelligentsia in modern society was to “shut [itself] off from the world” and consciously renounce “direct participation in the historical process.” Faced with the same problems, according to Mannheim, another group of intellectuals “takes refuge in the past and attempts to find there an epoch or society in which an extinct form of reality-transcendence dominated the world, and through this romantic reconstruction it seeks to spiritualize the present.” A similar function, according to the Hungarian-born sociologist, “is fulfilled by attempts to revive religious feelings, idealism, symbols and myth”

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(Mannheim, 1968, p. 233). In other words, the intellectual proletariat may also turn itself into the chief socializer of a reactionary ideology26, a point also stressed by yet another prominent sociologist of knowledge, Edward Shills (1974). On his part, Gherea was indicating in 1894 that empathy for the declining classes under capitalism (the peasantry and the landed gentry), sometimes led the intellectual proletariat into postures of “reactionary democracy,” by which he meant the attempt to advocate return to an idealized image of social harmony, unrealistically attributed to past society (Dobrogeanu Gherea, 1956, Vol. I., pp.248-9). In a manner similar to Mannheim, then27, Gherea implies that the division of labor in capitalist society, on one hand does affect the intellectuals as a group, but that, on the other hand, this impact is of less deterministic a nature than in the case of other social categories. To emphasize this aspect, which encompasses a certain measure of “freedom of choice,” Mannheim is reputed to have innovated the sociology of intellectuals by introducing the concept of the “relatively classless stratum” or the “socially unattached intelligentsia” (relative freischwebende Intelligenz). But the concept’s primogenitor is, once more, Gherea—though in all likelihood Mannheim, who borrowed it from Max Weber’s discussion of bureaucracy (Mannheim, 1968, pp. 136-46. Emphasis in original), was not aware of it. The “relatively independent” intellect (Emphasis mine), albeit surrounded by wretchedness and by pain, is capable of discerning history’s true course. Consequently, “the same social conditions that provoke pessimism in some, may trigger optimism in others. The struggle for existence, which creates a large majority of vanquished, creates also a small minority of victors.” These “optimists” understand that “in its evolution, a social organization produces, on one hand, the conditions for its self- disintegration, but on the other hand, in its very bosom germinates a superior social organization,” Thus capitalism itself produces “ a class which represents the interests of future society, which comprehends that today’s society will give birth to another, by far its superior, that today’s

26 One wonders whether Mircea Eliade was familiar with Mannheim’s work. 27 This point is incisively discussed in Brym, 1980, pp. 57-8. He emphasizes that Mannheim’s “classlessness thesis” concerning the intellectuals has been often exaggerated and distorted.

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pain is the condition of tomorrow’s happiness” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, pp. 159-61). Obviously, the “class” Gherea was mentioning was the proletariat, but it should be noted that membership in that class was not, in his eyes, a sufficient guarantee for sharing such “optimism.” One should also be capable of comprehending history’s List der Vernunft and, as we shall eventually observe, it was the intelligentsia’s task to help bring about such comprehension to the proletariat, and thereby contribute to universal liberation—one that can be achieved by none else but a conscious working class. In other words, the intelligentsia’s “social being”—understood in the sense originally envisaged by Marx—put it in the unique position of being capable of choosing its future path. As we remarked, that choice was by no means a matter of determinism. Even the intellectual proletariat could opt for the road of salaried alienation (as did the professor who “teaches the required hour of his course only because he is paid—and only when he cannot eschew it,” or the student who “studies because…he must make a career, marry a girl with a dowry, all of which require a diploma”) (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 237). He could opt for dropping out or for taking refuge in an imaginary past. Yet, as Gherea put it in Neo-Serfdom, the intellectual was also in the unmatched position of being able to “liberate himself from the original sin of petite bourgeoisie origin and feel the true interest of the oppressed working masses” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976- 83, Vol. IV, p. 177). In this optional sense, Marxism was to Gherea not merely an economic or social doctrine, but also a code of ethics, and ethics are always a matter of conscious choice. Addressing his intellectual contemporaries in 1907, he stressed that at any given stage in social development, ethics, as indeed society itself, were never homogenous. Roughly, ethical attitudes corresponded to class divisions. “In each historical epoch there are…superior ethics and inferior ethics; the firmer represent precisely the ethical aspects of that epoch’s strive towards light.” Consequently, once he had understood history’s course, it was up to the intellectual to choose sides. And if persuaded he had cast his part on the side of progress, the intellectual could “follow…[his] course undisturbed and let people talk.”

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The citation (segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti) was from Dante and — certainly not by coincidence—it had served Marx in his closing words of Das Kapital’s first edition (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 415-6 and Marx, n.d., p. 16). The argument, to be sure, is both tautological and self-defeating for, once history’s course “understood” (provided there is only one possible course) there is hardly any room left for choice. Moreover, ideological adversaries are either supposed to be incapable of “understanding”—and therefore of “choosing”—or to have chosen the side which they know to be “regressive”, which makes even less sense. However, to impute such fallacies to Gherea is tantamount to imputing him his Marxism, and it is not Marxism as a belief-system that is the subject of scrutiny in this section of my article, but rather a sociology of knowledge constructed from Marxist premises. That Gherea should attribute to the intellectual the quality of lonely visionary, implied in the segui il tuo corso plea, is nonetheless surprising for (to employ George Konrád and Ivan Szelényi’s distinction) his analysis of intellectuals as hither unfold reflects a genetic rather than a generic approach. The former “entails a description of the functions their cultural mission serves and the interests it articulates in specific social contexts;” the latter emphasizes “the intellectuals’ tendency toward transcendence” viewing it as the “essence of their function…quite independently of historic ages and modes of production” (Konrád and Szelényi, 1979, pp.11-12). Yet there can be little doubt that Gherea’s grasp of the intellectual combines both these approaches. To him, the intellectual was not only a member of a potentially progressive stratum, but also an individual distinguished from others precisely by his timeless quality of homme révolté. As such, the intellectual acquires a symbolic essence, present in human history from its dawn. He is the “demon”, sometimes called Prometheus, other times Faust or Mephistopheles, who, revolting against his condition and against fatality, opens new roads for others to follow (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, p. 9). Gherea’s admiration for Shelley, for example, went far beyond mere appreciation of his poetry. Above all, he saw in the author of

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“Mount Blanc” the mountain-like solitary genius that could be judged only by “akin spirits” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 315). Intellectual activities were consequently viewed in hierarchic perspective. The ingenious revolutionizer of human scientific knowledge, or the artist, were to be evaluated by a different yardstick than that employed for measuring the high school teacher or the journalist. He was to be subjected to qualitative, rather than to quantitative criteria. This “category within a category” constituted the creative workers. Just as Raymond Aron (1955, pp. 213-16), in the 1950s, would distinguish between qualitatively different intellectuals (scribe—expert—lettré), so Gherea in 1894 visualized “creative work” as a superior form of intellectual performance. Set apart from what he termed as [intellectual] exercise-work. The latter, nonetheless, was not to be frowned at, for no “creative work” could emerge without earlier accumulation of existing knowledge and its diffusion, both of which fell in the realm of “exercise.” In a similar manner, Shills would make a distinction between “productive” and “reproductive” intellectuals, specifying that all “production” (Gherea’s “creative work”) was conditioned by “reproduction” (“exercise-work”) (Shills, 1972, pp. 21-22). The Romanian socialist thinker, it should be added, was not the only Marxist to indulge into such differentiation, but was the first Marxist to do so.28 Of these latter days theoreticians, it is naturally with Gramsci that Gherea’s affinity is strongest, for, as Marxists, both were preoccupied not merely by a “theory” of intellectuals, but also—and mainly—by questions concerning the revolutionary praxis. As Gramsci put it in “The Study of Philosophy and Historical Materialism,”

Critical self-consciousness signifies historically and politically the creation of intellectual cadres: a human mass does not

28 According to Gramsci, “intellectual activity must…be distinguished…according to levels which…represent a real qualitative difference—at the highest level would be the creators of the various sciences, philosophy, art, etc, at the lowest level the most humble ‘administrators’ and divulgators of pre-existing, traditional, accumulated intellectual wealth” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 13).

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“distinguish” itself and does not become independent “by itself,” without organizing itself (in a broad sense), and there is no organization without intellectuals, that is, without organizers and leaders, without the theoretical aspect of the theory-practice nexus distinguishing itself concretely in a stratum of people who “specialize” in its conceptual and philosophical elaboration (Gramsci, 1970, p. 67).

On his part, Gherea pointed out in 1892 that European literature had hitherto “exaggerated the insignificance of the cultured stratum in social transformations;” that scientific socialism would be inconceivable without the foundations laid by Marx and Engels, who were hardly proletars; that German social-democracy would be much poorer without the leadership of Karl Liebknecht or Augustin Bebel; and that French socialism had been retarded by the liquidation or banishment of its intellectual leaders in the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune. Yet, “it was sufficient that a number of cultured and conscious organizers, such as Deville, Guesde, Lafargue, etc., appeared or returned from exile, for the organization of the proletariat to advance with gigantic steps.” It was thus the task of the intelligentsia to “organize the proletariat and make it conscious” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, vol. II, p. 444. Emphasis mine). This may sound as an earlier version of Ilich’s What Is to Be Done, the more so as Gherea was not only acquainted with the works of the spiritual fathers of Leninism (Haupt, 1967, p. 34), but also mentioned the need of a “strong enough core, conscious of its aim” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, pp. 439-40). However, Gherea was no more of a “Leninist” than Gramsci. In fact, Carl Boggs’ words (1976, p. 75) concerning the latter could perfectly well suit the former: “While the intellectual stratum articulates a new conception of the world by guiding, teaching and inspiring, it does not—in the strict Leninist sense—become the final repository of revolutionary ideas or the vehicle for constructing socialism.” Time and again, Gherea stressed that socialism could not conquer the “state” before it had triumphed in “society,” i.e., before it had become victorious in the minds of the masses. No intellectual leadership could substitute itself for the proletariat, and no

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lofty ideas could deliver the world—or the proletariat intellectual—from capitalist conditions except via a conscious proletariat. Already in his first pamphlet of some theoretical proportions, published in 1886, Gherea warned his fellow-socialists:

…[We] cannot organize, we cannot impose such organization on the people, we cannot raise demands for it and in its name— that would be a sure recipe for failure. Not by constituting ourselves into a supreme court of judgment, not by taking over the government shall we be capable of organizing production, not by decree—that would be utopia; not we, but the working people themselves must demand land, for [setting up] rural communities; not we, but the workers’ societies must demand credits for organizing [self-managing] factories; our activity is perhaps less glistening, but no less beautiful: on the contrary, it is moral and useful, we must enlighten the people on the country’s real situation, on the demands it must make, how to make them and how to organize itself; our activity must be directed at organizing the working people, at lifting its moral and intellectual powers, at building up its political and economic strength, and all these through the people and by the people (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, p, 113).

Social transformation, Gherea argued in 1901 against the anarchists, must precede the final act of revolutionary takeover, because “society does not evolve from morals, but vice-versa.” Should the attempt be made to implement change without having first brought about an alteration of societal values, it would either fail completely or generate “empty forms” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. III, pp. 353-4). Under post- communism, of course, this sounds very much as a debate about the angels’ sex, only after the fall of the Byzantium. But is it really so? Gherea’s argument sounds very much as Gramsci’s theory concerning the intellectual’s mission to bring about social change by “hegemonic” transformation, i.e., a persuasion that change cannot be imposed by “state” on “society”, but rather springs from, and is conditioned by, the institution of an earlier “hegemony” of the values pursued (cf. Gramsci,

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1971, pp.52, 57, 211-76, as well as Davidson, 1968, pp. 44-53 and Boggs, 1976, pp. 36-54 and passim). Dares one assume that neither Gherea nor Gramsci figure on the list of “required readings” that US President George W. Bush received from his aids before deciding to “bring democracy” to Iraq? Conclusion: A Dialectical Post-communist Tragicomedy My memorable 1990 visit of the late PSDR headquarters in Bucharest ended with Avramescu’s embarrassed admission that his political formations had ties to neither workers nor intellectuals—the electoral backbone of socialist parties anywhere in the world. The former, he said, were “Ceauşescu’s animals”, whereas the latter were “allergic to the word socialism.” Besides, “socialism” was still associated with the Soviet Union (at that time still in existence) and with “Judeo-Bolshevism.” In a generation or two, things might change, he said; but till then, all his party could hope for was to survive. It did not. Dobrogeanu-Gherea would recognize the circumstances. Whether or not he would have agreed with Avramescu is open to debate. It never occurred to Gherea that socialist thinkers elsewhere were envisaging a different solution for the identity dilemma he was torn by. Or, if it did, he was careful never to mention it in writing. This well-informed observer of international turmoil—including the plight of Russian Jewry, which he indicted in most unambiguous language (cf. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, pp. 348-50) makes no mention of the Zionist movement. One must conclude that for Gherea there was no solution to the “Jewish problem” other than assimilation. The “Jewish problem” was quite extensively dealt with by Gherea in 1910, in Neo-Serfdom, where, among others, he rebuked Stere for laying the blame for the 1907 peasant uprising at the door of Jewish lease- holders (arendași). Much of the same line of thought, however, could be distinguished in earlier writings. In 1887, and again in 1901, he requested his opponents to provide an explanation for the wretched state of the peasant in those parts of the country where there was hardly any land

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leasing to Jews (Dobrogenu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. IV, Neoiobăgia, pp. 161, 181-2; 1956, Vol. II, pp. 248-72 and 368). Romanian anti-Semitic publications which raised these—or related—arguments were repeatedly ridiculed in his articles, one of which stated that Jews would gladly devour their victimizers, were they not prohibited from doing so by dietary laws (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. I, p. 385). That Jewish exploitation of “native” labor existed in Romania was not denied. According to Gherea’s views, however, such exploitation was nothing but an essential feature of emerging capitalist forms of production. In other words, it was part and parcel of the process of giving real “content” to hitherto empty “forms.” It is, however, pertinent to remark that Gherea’s argument bore a striking resemblance to that developed by “young Marx” in his two articles on the Judenfrage. Marx, as is well known, had identified Judaism with the practice of selling and buying, and consequently viewed bourgeois society as the embodiment of the Jewish spirit (Avineri, 1964). Distinguishing “human” from “political” emancipation, Marx rejected Bruno Bauer’s argument against the emancipation of Jews, arguing that the latter, which was basically a recognition of political rights, can and should be achieved by the bourgeois polity, which is basically the “civil society” dominated by the “profane basis of Judaism,” i.e., practical need, self-interest, huckstering and money:

The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only by acquiring the power of money, but also because money had become through him and also apart from him, a world power, while the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves in so far as the Christians become Jews (Marx, 1963, pp. 34-5. Emphasis in original).

In the aforementioned “What Do Romania’s Socialists Want,” Gherea pursues a similar argument. For Marx, bourgeois society has “Judaized” even family relations, for “the relation between man and woman becomes an object of commerce. Woman is bartered away” (Marx,

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1963, p. 37). For Gherea, the bourgeois family is “family transformed into a business affair, accompanied by prostitution and adultery” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, p. 66). It is perfectly true that such lines could have been inspired by Marxist literature of great circulation, such as “The Communist Manifesto” or “The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State” (cf. Marx, Engels, 1969, pp. 49-51, 504-8). But it should be noticed that in writing of the family which turns into a “business affair,” Gherea employs the word “gesheft” [gheșeft]—which in Romania is solely and unmistakably associated with Jews—an association absent from the “Manifesto” or “The Origins of the Family,” but one which forms the backbone of Marx’s argumentation against Bauer. Furthermore, describing the process leading to what Gherea would eventually label as “Neo-Serfdom,” he notes that the old aristocracy leased its lands to “kikes [jidani] of Mosaic or Christian rites,” plunging into a life of pleasure and gluttony on the income provided by the lease (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. II, p. 76. Emphasis mine). As a Russian native, Gherea was certainly aware of the distinction between evrey and zhidy and of the fact that—in both languages—only the latter carries a pejorative connection—one he did not hesitate to employ. But he extended the pejorative to the entire Romanian land-leasing gentry. In other words, exploitation by private entrepreneurship, and not the religious faith of the exploiter, is the essential feature of the phenomenon, one in which, as Marx put it. “The Christians have become Jews.” One year later, arguing once more against the attribution of rural Romania’s plunder to Jews alone, Gherea wrote: “According to Mr. Gherghel, it would seem that all Moldovan fields are in the hands of kikes, that all big Moldavian landlords are kikes. We are inclined to believe him, but they are kikes of Christian rite, with Moldovan blood running in their veins” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, p. 250. Emphasis mine). And if for Marx the “politically free inhabitant of New England” had made Mammon into “his idol which he adores not only with his lips, but with the whole force of his body and mind” (Marx, 1963, p.135), in Gherea’s eyes the entrepreneurial Liberals, who had launched the country’s industrialization, served “God and Mammon at one and the same time” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1956, Vol. II, pp. 138, 141).

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Just as for Marx mere political emancipation was to be loathed—and yet to be viewed as a prerequisite stage for capitalist transcendence (Aufhebung) of the system’s inherent alienatory features, for Gherea, the universalization of rights—including Jewish emancipation—was a sine qua non of future transition into socialism, and precisely for the same reasons. Gherea, as noted, described the capitalization of the countryside in the darkest colors—and yet it was the task of the socialists to work for land reform, which would induce such capitalization, as a transitionary stage to socialism. In a similar manner, Gherea (and indeed Marx) denounced bourgeois democracy, yet regarded Jewish emancipation as part and parcel of its necessary universalization. In Romania’s case, where the Jewish minority played an important part in the country’s industrialization, the necessity of giving “content” to “form,” according to Gherea, was of a twofold nature: it was required by the infrastructural prerequisite of capitalist development, and it had to be reflected in the superstructural order. “We demand the irrevocable amalgamation of the Jewish masses into the organism of the Romanian lands,” he stated in an interview on the “Jewish question,” “both because it is of great necessity and of great utility for the entire future development of the country” (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1976-83, Vol. V, p. 170). In other words, not only should Jews be granted civic rights, but, as agents of modernization, they should be encouraged to take an active part in the process. This was precisely the position adopted in parliament in 1879 by P. P. Carp. Unfortunately, Carp’s was a voice in the wilderness. Enough, I believe, has been said to convince the reader that Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea’s thought was strikingly similar to that of “young Marx” at a time when he was more than unlikely to have been familiar with Marx’s early writings. It is an old saying among historians that research in the discipline should never be undertaken using the “as if” approach; and there is probably no rule other than the Seventh Commandment that has been broken more often. “Counterfactuals” have actually squeezed into history, political science and the discipline of international relations (Nye, 2003, pp. 50-1). Avoiding “iffy” questions remains a virtue, but it endangers virtuosity. I do not believe Gherea’s “wrong face, at the wrong time and in the wrong place” would have

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changed history if he were to land in the West at the turn of the last century. But I incline to believe it might have changed Gherea’s personal story. In the field of literary criticism and in the sociology of knowledge Gherea might have made a difference. After all, such East European Hungarian-born Marxist Jews as György Lukács and Karl Mannheim made a name for themselves, and so did in later years Gherea’s compatriot and coreligionist Lucien Goldman. In the last year of his life, at least, Gherea saw one of his dreams come true. Had he (another “if”!) lived twenty years longer, he would have witnessed the same dream crumble, for as of 1938, Romanian Jews began losing first civil, then property, and finally citizenship and life rights. As a “Judeo-Bolshevik” Gherea would have been a prime candidate, no matter he rejected Bolshevism from its earliest days. The Yad Vashem Memorial Institute’s archives are in possession of a document issued in autumn 1940 by the Iron Guard authorities ordering the exhumation of Gherea’s bones from the Christian cemetery where he had been laid to rest in 1920. In a supposedly transcendental world, the thinker was not to be allowed to transcend his Jewishness. Now—from transcendence to “transition”: I never visited again the headquarters of the PSDR after 1990. Passing by, however, I noticed that the building was taken over by the larger party that captured the name (PSD) after their 2001 merger. I wonder whether Gherea’s bust is still in the courtyard. Many former PCR members are leading figures in the new PSD. If the bust survived, they must find Lenin’s face quite familiar. Does Gherea’s story have morale? I cannot speak for the reader. But is has one for me. Although a “veteran Romanianologist,” I am also a “comparatist.” I believe one learns precious little if one’s interests exclude reasonable similitudes, and I am certain exceptions may only be explained in comparative parameters. In an article published back in 1984, and in a book published the next year I was noting that under communist rule “revisionism” and political reform were conditioned by the presence of a Marxist intellectual core capable of formulating demands for change in “an elite-penetrative”

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Marxist jargon. While this was not a sufficient condition for launching a reform process, I was stressing, it was a strictly necessary one. In both works I emphasized that this condition was “totally absent in Romania, where Marxist tradition was all but non-existent.” The notable exception was Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Consequently, I wrote, “even assuming that a revisionist faction had come into existence ex nihilo within the Romanian PCR national leadership” in the 1950s, 1960s or later, “its prospects of success would probably have equaled those of an officer corps without an army” (Shafir, 1984a, p. 457, 1985a, p. 20). The article was based on a comparison of Romania with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. My conclusions were challenged by Vladimir Tismăneanu (1989, pp. 336-7, 1995, p. 25), among other places in an article titled “The Tragicomedy of Romanian Communism”. They were, however, wholly embraced by Tismăneanu in his life-long opus on Romanian communism (2003), which I am glad to note. I am, however, less happy to observe that he forgot to mention his change of opinion, while making my insight into one of the main pillars of his otherwise exceptional tome. The tragicomedy of pays réel vs. pays légal has definitely spilled over the ocean. One wonders whether in Washington there is a street called Oneşti.

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44. Nye, Joseph S., 2003, Understanding International Conflict: An Introduction to Theory and History, New York, Longman, fourth edition.

45. Ornea, Zigu, 1972, Poporanismul, București, Editura Minerva. 46. Ornea, Zigu, 1982, Viaţa lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Bucureşti, Editura

Cartea Românească. 47. Ornea, Zigu, 1989, Viaţa lui C. Stere, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea

Românească, Vol. I. 48. Ornea, Zigu, 1991, Viaţa lui C. Stere, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea

Românească, Vol. II. 49. Petrescu, Constantin-Titel, 1944, Socialismul în România, Bucureşti,

Biblioteca socialistă. 50. Petreu, Marta, 2006, “’Chestiunea evreiască’ la Junimea,” in Ladislau

Gyémánt, Maria Ghitta (eds.), Dilemele convieţuirii: Evrei şi neevrei în Europa Central-Răsăriteană, Cluj-Napoca, Institutul Cultural Român, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, pp. 71-91.

51. Pipes, Richard, 2005, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture, New Haven, Yale University Press.

52. Shafir, Michael, 1984a, “ Political Stagnation and Marxist Critique: 1968 and Beyond in Comparative East European Perspective,” in British Journal of Political Science, Vol. XIV, no. 4, pp. 435-59.

53. Shafir, Michael, 1984b, “ ‘Romania’s Marx’ and the National Question: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea,” in History of Political Thought, Vol. V, No. 2, Summer, pp. 295-314.

54. Shafir, Michael, 1985a, Romania. Politics, Economics and Society: Political Stagnation and Simulated Change, London, Frances Pinter.

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55. Shafir, Michael, 1985b, “Sociology of Knowledge in the Middle of Nowhere: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea,” in East European Quarterly, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Fall, pp. 321-336.

56. Shafir, Michael, 2001, “Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues: Radical Politics in Post-Communist East-Central Europe,” in Studia politica, Vol. I, no. 2, pp. 397-446.

57. Shafir, Michael, 2002, Între negare şi trivializare prin comparaţie: Negarea Holocaustului în ţările postcomuniste din Europa Centrală şi de Est, Iaşi, Polirom.

58. Shills, Eduard, 1972, “Intellectuals, Tradition and the Tradition of Intellectuals,” in Daedalus, Vol. CI, no. 2, pp. 21-34.

59. Shills, Eduard, 1974, “The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis” in Eduard Shills, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 18-20.

60. Socor, Emmanuel, 1911, O ruşine universitară: Plagiatul D-lui A. C. Cuza. Cei doi Spencerşși alte descoperiri ale D-lui N. Basilescu, Bucureşti, Editura Facla.

61. Stanciu, Măriuca, 2003, “The Comparative Approach— A Ticket to Integration (A New Perspective on Moses Gaster’s Comparative Studies on Jewish Popular Literature),” in Studia Ebraica, pp. 163- 172.

62. Stanciu, Măriuca, 2004, “Moses Gaster: Landmarks of an Intellectual Itinerary,” in Studia Ebraica, pp.75-87.

63. Stoica, Stan, 2004, Dicţionarul partidelor politice din România 1989- 2004, Bucureşti, Editura Meronia.

64. Tismăneanu, Vladimir, 1989, “The Tragicomedy of Romanian Communism,” East European Politics and Society, Vol. III, no. 2, spring, pp. 329-76.

65. Tismăneanu, Vladimir, 1995, Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej, București, Editura Univers.

66. Tismăneanu, Vladimir, 2003, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, Berkeley, Berkeley University Press.

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67. Verdery, Kathrine, 1991, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu’s Romania, Berkeley, Berkeley University Press.

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STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2 2007

REMAPPING THE MIND: EAST AND WEST IN POST - COMMUNIST EASTERN AND

CENTRAL EUROPE

Attila Pók*

Abstract The world of academia is on the move in science just as much as in social sciences and humanities. Borders, at least in this sphere of life, seem to be vanishing. One semester here, another there, joining project teams paralelly in various parts of the world, talking to publishers via Internet, submitting manuscripts without paper from a distant hideaway are natural elemts of contemporary academic life - East and West alike. For my generation of East Central European intellectuals, when we, the so called 1968-er generation1, started our careers in the first half of the 1970s, the probability of this way of life was identical with having week-end houses on the Moon or the Mars. From a purely technical-scientific point of view, even life on these distant planets seemed to be feasible-sooner or later. The real question was what kind of a passport and visas shall we need in order to get there, to what an extent the political tensions of the bipolar Cold War world will allow us to travel there. The two decisive political experiences that basically shaped our minds took place in 1968: the student revolts in the West and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In this paper I would like to address a seemingly simple issue that, however, like a drop of the seawater reflects the composition of the ocean, mirrors the remapping of the minds of numerous intellectuals in Eastern and Central Europe during the last nearly four decades: the changing contents of the concepts of East and West in these minds.

* Attila Pok is the president of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1 Cf. the website: www.single-generation.de/kohorten/68er.htm that gives an interesting list of some better known, mainly German members (writers and scholars) of this generation and hosts a debate on their achievements.

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A Homogeneous East vs. A Homogeneous West During the time of our high school and college education both

culturally and politically we were thinking in terms of a bipolar world: East and West. America was generally considered to be the avantgarde, the leader, the decisive force of the West, be it in political and military confrontation with the Soviet Union, in economic, technological development, in all fields of culture, everywhere. That was the case in the anti-Western official communist propaganda as well, but, of course, with a negative connotation: American imperialism was presented as the quintessence of the Western enemy. Early anti-Stalinist and reform- communist dissent did not care about differences between Western Europe and the US either. A number of its representatives were looking for spiritual stimulation in the West at large, because the Marxist-Leninist- Stalinist official New Faith (as Cz. Milos called the official Communist ideology) was incapable of fully satisfying these needs. In the 1950s and 1960s the US-led West for many reform-communists just as much as for the dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s was not a social-political model based on private property but a source of vibrant intellectual stimulation. The West meant primarily not IBM, GE, big multinational corporations, not so much Adeneauer, De Gaulle, Nixon, not even Kennedy but moch more Polanski, Hemingway, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Pasolini, Amerigo Tot, students of Adorno, the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, Fellini, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Lawrence Olivier, Kerouac, Salingerʹs Catcher in the Rye, Steinbeck, Stanley Kubrick (especially his Clockwork Orange), the Nobel Prize for Pasternakʹs Doctor Zhivago, famous musicals as the Hair, West Side Story, David Ojstrah, Leonard Bernstein etc. 2

On a non-intellectual level the rhetoric of Radio Free Europe appealed to lots of people who developed a far from realistic image of a way of life in the free and prosperous West where everything is of much better quality than in the East, where everything always perfectly functions. Top quality equalled Western quality. Those average citizens of the Soviet Bloc countries, who were not interested in culture, when defining the WEST,

2 Cf. Gábor Klaniczay (2003), Ellenkultúra a hetvenes-nyolcvanas években (Counter-Culture during the Seventies and Eighties), Budapest: Noran.

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focused on consumption from Coca Cola and blue jeans to western made cars and not on the political or economic system.

Throughout the period of the Cold War in official Moscow or local Communist Party foreign policy strategies just as much as in most reform communist and anti-communist dissident rhetoric it was basically assumed that in spite of all regional peculiarities the US stood for and represented on the highest level the West and the SU the East.3 US-SU summits were by far the most important events of international politics and experience showed that the decisions taken on this level were indeed crucial for the fate of the whole world. The SU-led East was the OTHER for the US-led West and the other way round. This was true in spite of the pretty fast emerging other fault lines: following the acceleration of the decolonisation process, the Third World appeared on the stage of world politics and the Chinese- Russian rift seemed to be weakening the Soviet position.

Eastern Reservations about the West in the Bipolar World On the other hand, numerous reform-communist or anti-communist

Eastern intellectuals of the Cold War were also quite suspicious of the West that in spite of the great human and material losses of the wars never experienced the level of destruction that Eastern Europe had to face. For many of them, many of us parallel with the tribute paid to the West there existed also a longing for the Marxist-Leninist Method, the dialectical comprehensive understanding of the complex phenomena of he world.

This is the starting point of my argument that tries to explain how this bipolarity gave way to a gradual remapping of the mind. When Cz. Milos published his Captive Mind in 1951, he was 40 years old and has just broken with the communist system. The Method, he argued, ʺ exerts a magnetic influence on contemporary man because it alone emphasizes, as has never been before done, the fluidity and interdependence of phenomena….ʺ.4 The Method also has some mystery about it, but this ʺonly enhances its magic powerʺ 5- Milos argued. When I went to university in

3 John Lewis Gaddis (1997), We Now Know. Rethinking Cold War History, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1-53. 4 Czeslav Milosz (1990), The Captive Mind, New York: Vintage International Edition, 51. 5 idem

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Budapest during the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a loud call for going back to the ʺrealʺ non-Leninist, even less Stalinist Marx (we were frequently quoting Marx defining himself as a ʺnon-Marxistʺ and wanted to read only the pre-Communist Manifesto, early Marx) and made an effort at understanding György Lukács and Gramsci. With all our tribute to the culture of the West, we liked Che Guevara, rediscovered Rosa Luxemburg and organized demonstrations against the dictatorship in Greece and the American imperialists in Viet Nam. At the same time we certainly loved recordings from the performances of the Metropolitan Opera in New York as much as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Tom Jones songs or reports from Woodstock. Works by Djilas and Marcuse together with Pasternak, Solschenicin, Orwell and Koestler were being circulated. Under the spell of the events of 1968 many of us started to believe that the real front lines in the modern world were not so much between East and West but among generations, between North and South, in general between those inside and those outside power. We, the ʺ1968-er generation of intellectualsʺ, sincerely believed that by the time we are ʺSixty-Fourʺ6 we shall have created a New World.

Terminating Eternity Most influential minds on both sides of the bipolar worldʹs ʺfront-

lineʺ were captivated by the assumed eternity of this ʺbalance of powerʺ until 1968. The Hungarian Revolution in 1956 was, of course, also a crucial factor in shaping the thinking of Eastern and Central European intellectuals, freeing numerous captivated minds, but by the early sixties anger and disappointment gave way to hope. The Hungarian party leader, János Kádár at a party congress in 1962 declared that ʺ whoever is not against us, is with usʺ.7 As 1956 had clearly shown that the Eisenhower slogan of the liberation of the captive nations is just campaign rhetoric and not a political action programme, Central European intellectuals got more interested in reforming than dismantling the forcefully imported Soviet system. Most of these hopes vanished with the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In my part of the world this event shaped our 6 As the famous Beatles song put it. 7 VIIIth Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workersʹ Party, November 20-24, 1962.

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thought just as much as the news of the ʺWesternʺ student movements. The next wave of hopes was attached to Poland but the declaration of martial law on 13 December, 1981, to say the least, cooled down great expectations.

Still, the atmosphere of detente, especially the new German Eastern policy seemed to be promising. Promising what?

The Promise of Modernization One of the most important preoccupations of many outstanding and

not so outstanding Eastern and Central European minds has - since the early 19th century - been backwardness, underdevelopment, lagging behind of their homeland, of their historical region. The great hope attached to changes was to get impetus, help to this catching up process.

The backwardness was perceived in terms of political culture (representative democracy, secularization), various economic indicators (level of industrialization, per capita GDP, energy efficiency, overall efficacy of labour, transportation and communication network etc.), culture (number of functioning cultural institutions, level of illiteracy, per centage of respective age groups in institutions of primary, secondary and higher education etc.). One of the most fundamental dilemmas for patriotic politicians and political thinkers of partitioned Poland, Habsburg controlled Bohemia and Hungary, the Ottoman-ruled Balkans was the relationship between the implementation of the aims of national self- determination and modernization. After all, from a merely pragmatic point of view, larger territorial-political units can better deal with the construction of modern systems of transportation and communication, with modernization in every field of life than competing small sovereign states. On the other hand, it was frequently argued, the antiquated, pre- modern structures of political and economic rule, petrified social structures of conservative empires lacking mobility can also be major obstacles to modernization.

But even if the program of dismantling the outlived empires is successfully implemented and the incoming new national states prefer cooperation to rivalry, another dilemma might still stay on the agenda: will the import of modern Western institutions not endanger the integrity and cohesion of smaller Eastern nations? All these issues are brilliantly

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summarized in a most insightful book by the outstanding Polish historian, Jerzy Jedlicky.8 What he writes about 19th century Polish intelligentsia, applies in a chronologically and geographically much wider Eastern and Central European circle: ʺ/19th century Polish intelligentsia/ regarded its own country as a poor and neglected suburb of Europe, a suburb that looked at the metropolis with contradictory feelings of envy, admiration and distrustʺ.9

For many captive minds socialism - communism promised (and at a terrible price but seemed to implement) fast, comprehensive modernization: industrialization, urbanization, easy access to education and medical care as parts of some kind of an overall redemption. 1956, 1968, 1981 but also the news about Soviet domestic politics, domestic social life (via anti-Communist dissidents and occasionally anti-dogmatic reform- minded communists) helped to get out of the magic spell but the discard of the official communist ideas and program was not always coupled with the elaboration of feasible alternatives. The Politics of the Concept of Central Europe

Another major intellectual historical development of in the course of the history of the historical-political interpretations of East and West during the 1980s was the fast spread of the concept of Central Europe. The concept that emerged long before Kunderaʹs famous 1984 article on the tragedy of Central Europe defined a region by transgressing Cold War political and mental borders: it included ʺEasternʺ (Czech, Polish, Hungarian) territories together with ʺWesternʺ (Austrian, North Italian) regions and parts of the non-aligned Yugoslavia (Croatia, Slovenia). The discourses on and with the help of this concept directly, indirectly addressed one of the most important problems of our 68-er generation, the responsibility for communism.10 What is the proportion of external and internal factors in the gaining ground of authoritarian regimes, especially communism, in our countries? Was communism imposed on our country

8 Jerzy Jedlicki (1999), The Suburb of Europe. Nineteenth Century Polish Approaches to WesternCivilization, Budapest: CEU Press. 9 Jerzy Jedlicki, op. cit. 10 László Péter (1999), “Central Europe and Its Readings into the Past” in European Review of History 6, No, 1, 101-111.

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only by Soviet imperialism or it had internal roots as well? In other words and from a broader perspective: do the societies of the countries of the Soviet Bloc show any structural, historically determined similarities? Is it a pure coincidence as Jenő Szűcs put it in 1979 that the Iron Curtain was drawn almost exactly along the line that after 1500 divided off the eastern part of Europe as the scene of the second serfdom? He also pointed out, on the basis of the spread of dioceses, architectural styles, legal institutions etc. that ʺthe line of the old Roman limes would show up on Europeʹs morphological map, thus presaging right from the start the birth of a ʺCentral Europeʺ within the notion of the West.ʺ 11

Euphory and Disappointment, 1989-90 and the Aftermath The euphory of 1989-90 temporarily vieled the complexity and the

difficulties of the transition. Ralf Dahrendorfʹs insightful forecast (you can build up democratic political institutions in six months, market economy in six years but to change deep-rooted attitudes, mentalities calls for at least sixty years)12 was not taken very seriously.

ʺWhere are we headingʺ? was the great question in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Block. If I now look back, the first major item on the post-communist Central European agenda was the problem of the fast proliferation of new national states (successor states of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and primarily the Yugoslav disintegration process). It was believed that the removal of unwanted bonds, the gaining ground of national self-determination goes hand in hand with the democratization of the societies/countries concerned. To the most shocking extent Yugoslavia but to a lesser extent, the experiences of all the East Central European post-communist countries showed that this was not the case, xenophobia and the emergence of authoritarian leaders, the lack of a fair ruling of the position of national minorities ranked high on most of the new national agendas.

It was clear that in order to prevent greater disasters direct or indirect external intervention could not be avoided. Experience had quickly

11 Jenő Szűcs (1983) ”The Three Historical Regions of Europeʺ in Acta Historica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae 29, Nos 2-4. 12 Ralf Dahrendorf (1990), Reflections on the Revolution, New York: Crown.

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shown that consolidation, peace and security could be implemented only if the EU and NATO made substantial financial, political and military efforts in the region. Numerous influential politicians inside and outside East Central Europe assumed that ultimately this was to be achieved only if all the countries of the former Soviet Bloc were integrated into these two organizations. This became an axiom for the political leaders and most of the leading intellectuals of these countries.

The EU was most appealing as it preached and seemed to truly establish unity in diversity, creating a cohesive unity without destructing particular identities. Being no melting pot, its political philosophy well fitted into the broader post-modern understanding of the world. It was assumed that in contemporary America this view was shared, Richard Rortyʹs pragmatic but humanitarian philosophy was frequently quoted. Rortyʹs post-modern, anti-Platonic philosophy accepts solidarity as a basis of ethical norms but denies the existence of a reason-guided Kantian overall axiomatic transcendent truth. It was exactly this approach that appealed to intellectuals disappointed in comprehensive Methods based on class, race, nation or religion. 13

There was, however, a wide-spread worry: Just the same way as 19th century intellectuals of and with an interest in the region, their late 20th century followers feared chaos and anarchy if the West leaves the East alone.

A Divided West Faces a Divided East The first stage of the NATO-US intervention on the Balkans was

promising, led to the November 1995 Dayton agreement. Dayton had the message that you can intervene from outside efficiently in the interest of saving human rights and human lives without imposing an alien political system on the perpatrators and victims. Later developments, however, gave food for more worries than hope. From the perspective of changing mental borders, the changing historical-political content of East and West,

13 Béla Bíró: “A ʺnagy történetʺ feltámadása? (Resurrection of the Grand Narrative?)” Egyenlítő, 2003/I/ 27-30. For a good insight into Rortyʹs debates with Jürgen Habermas and some other outstanding contemporary thinkers cf.: Józef Niznik and John T. Sanders (eds.) (1996), Debating the State of Philosophy, Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

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four events can be pointed out: the air-raids against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, 9/11, the beginning of the Iraq war and the accession of the 10 new EU member states in May 2004.

In philosophical terms, for many of us the war on terrorism seemed to signal the termination of the so much desired pluralism, it gave an inspiration for the resurrection of a protestant-messianistic ʺGrand Narrativeʺ that many of us feared. Let me explain! NATO Enlargement, 1999 Air Raids against Yugoslavia

Hungary, together with Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Roumania, Bulgaria joined NATO in order to fill a security gap, to find safety under a protective umbrella. A few weeks after the festivities in Washington NATO planes were dropping bombs on Yugoslavia, destroying among others one of the most important bridges over the Danube, a few miles away from the Hungarian border. Refugee Serbs from Kosovo started flooding into this region with a substantial Hungarian minority, adding ethnic tension to material suffering. Intellectuals of the region were divided on the issue. One of the most prestigious Hungarian intellectuals, György Konrád wrote numerous articles in German and Hungarian papers arguing that although there was clear evidence on the crimes committed by the Milosevic regime, external interference into the conflicts of radical nationalisms could only worsen the situation and would support radical Albanian nationalists. In a most passionate way did he refuse arguments that supported the intervention as a preventive action to avoid prospective greater disasters. 14Others praised the intervention going as far as saying that just the same way as in both World Wars, again it was only America that could help freedom-loving Europeans in times of crisis.

9/11 9/11 had a great intellectual echo in my part of the world.

Numerous East Central European minds thought that a most promising time period, starting with the fall of the Berlin wall, with free elections in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, came now to an end. During the 14 E. g. in the most widely read Hungarian daily, Népszabadság on July 12, 1999.Quoted by Béla Bíró: op. cit. 29.

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1990s the democratic changes in Eastern and Central Europe together with similar Latin-American developments, with the new waves of international NGO movements that tried to increase the awareness of the worldʹs decision makers of health, social and environmental hazards in what used to be called the Third World, seemed to offer a chance to make our globe a better place to live in. In the aftermath of 9/11 fear, worry, strategies of self- defence with all kinds of preventive actions came into the foreground. 15 When dealing with this situation Europe both on a political and an NGO or social level turned out to be very much divided. In the course of trying to look into the deeper lying causes of the Fall of the Towers, much political and scholarly interest was devoted to looking for structural differences betweeen the US and Europe.

Iraq War

This tendency continued after the beginning of the Iraq war in the spring of 2003. Some outstanding minds, however, have changed their views concerning the legitimacy of external intervention. For example, György Konrád who four years earlier, as I have mentioned, powerfully criticized the air raids against Yugoslavia, now argued as follows: ʺ We, Central European dissidents are interested in decreasing the number of dictatorships in the world. That is why we do not like the renewed anti- imperialist propaganda…that - just as much as during the Cold War - shows a grotesque understanding for murderous dictatorships. That is why we do not support the despot of Iraq against his own country and the neighbouring peoples… Just as much as cities, the world also needs policemen. We demand security and not rhetorics from the policeman.ʺ16 He also added that hostility towards America was a new kind of Anti- Semitism. He was here arguing not only against those who were against the war by definition but also against those who demanded UN 15 Miklós Tamás Gáspár: “A katasztrófa. (The Catastrophy)”, Magyar Hírlap, September 13, 2001. A good survey of reactions to 9/11: László Andor: “Nekünk New York kell” (We Need A New York, in Hungarian this is reference to a great Hungarian historical tragedy in 1526, when Ottoman Turks defeated the Hungarian army at a place called Mohács. We need a Mohács in Hungarian means that it is only after a great disaster that we can seriously face our problems!). Eszmélet, 52 (2001) 16 Népszabadság, March 1, 2003. Quoted by Béla Bíró: op. cit. 29-30.

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authorization on the basis of clear evidence on arms of mass destruction in Iraq, as, for example, Günter Grass and numerous former East Central European dissidents.

EU Enlargement The splits further increased after May 1, 2004, a day we had been

looking forward to for so many years. The restraints on sovereignty resulting from EU membership turned out to be conspicuous, the help, support came with a tremendeous bureucratic burden and great delays. Still, and this is already taking us up to our days, in the course of debates about medium and longer terms perspectives of our regionʹs social and and economic development, most recently on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Polish system-changing trade union, the Solidarnosc and the 15th anniversary of the 1989-90 changes gave food for much public debate about the post-communist transition.

In these debates America frequently appears as the encorporation of the worst and most disgusting features of capitalism: imperialist expansion, lack of sensitivity for social, especially welfare problems, disregard of human rights. Much less attention is paid to impressive American indicators of economic efficiency, culural diversity combined with cultural and scholarly success. The European West, the EU of the 15 is generally perceived as a tamed form of capitalism where social solidarity is still a much more important issue than in the US: This point played an important role in the official pro-EU campaigns before accession. Mutatis mutandis, this evaluation, this approach could be compared to the debate on socialism with a human face in the 1970s17, in comparison with the harshness of ʺrealʺ socialism in pre-perestroika SU and Eastern Germany. Now the US presents the brutal aspect of capitalism, the EU capitalism with a human face. For numerous leading politicians (both right and left) in East Central Europe the rising stars are China, India, smaller Far East and South East Asian countries and strangely enough the lack of social care is rarely referred to when praising these small and larger tigers. 17. Cf. the works by Rudolf Bahro, especially Die Alternative, Köln, 1977.

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The Multiplication of the West in Eastern Eyes Whereas even 15 years earlier it was widely believed that capitalism

is basically the same in the US and Western Europe with the US politically and economically taking the lead, now, as Tony Judt put it a recent New York Review of Books article: ʺIt is becoming clear that America and Europe are not way stations on a historical production line, such that Europeans must expect to inherit or replicate the American experience after an appropriate time lag.ʺ18

An important question is what similarities and differences with foreign cultures shape European and American identities? Generally defining what one does not share is more important than a normative list of the ingridients of this identity. Jürgen Habermas suggests19 that focusing on transatlantic value differences could be of great use in generating cohesion in Europe but this could hardly be a successful scenerio in the time of global threats of all kind. Strangely enough from an East Central European angle the US in some ways shows more resemblance to Russia than Western Europe. Tony Judt summarized these assumed similarities in his above-mentioned New York Review of Books article as follows: ʺ… its suspicion of dissent, its fear of foreign influence, its unfamiliarity with alien lands and its reliance upon military strength when dealing with themʺ. In some other argumentations on US-Europe basic value differences the large scale use of the death penalty in the US (not tolerated in EU member countries) and what in the longer run seems to be especially significant, the role of God and religion in American politics are given prominence. For numerous East Central Europeans, however, the US is still the country of the Jeffersonian compromise (in Richard Rortyʹs words: trading a guarantee of religious freedom for the willingness of religious believers not to bring religion into discussion of political questions), we learnt about the civil rights, civil society, anti-racism, feminism, the idea of self-government, protection of environment and the consumer ) from the US.20 I think that some of our great debt to America could be repaid if in the spirit of Timothy Garton Ashʹs ʺDeclaration of Interdependenceʺ, i.e. ʺAmerica

18 New York Review of Books, vol.52., No. 2.( February 10, 2005) 19 Quoted by Tony Judt in the article referred to in footnote 18. 20 Miklós Tamás Gáspár, “A katasztrófa” in Magyar Hírlap, September 13, 2001.

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should want Europe to be a benign check and balance on its own solitary superpowerʺ21

In addition to that in the recent East Central European debates, the West is differentiated not only along the very marked US-Western Europe divide but also along the lines of clashing political, economic and military interests within the European Union as well.

Conclusions

An obvious consequence of the fall of the Soviet Bloc was the total vanishing of the homogeneous concept of the East as well. The first major step along the line of redrawing the mental borders in this respect was the spread of the concept of Central Europe during the 1980s that I have already referred to. After 1989-90 the very differing paces of postcommunist transition, the differing schedules of EU and NATO accession, the differences and similarities of party political landscapes present the Eastern part of the continent much more colourful, much more heterogeneous than in the early times of the Cold War.

East Central European enlarged minds are now perhaps more perplexed than ever. They are no more captivated by Milosʹ Method but by the idea and achievements of European integration. No more a vague West, but the concept of Europe became the democratic counterpoint to authoritarian or in some cases despotic communist rule that in the longer run led to economic decline and at best to overall stagnation in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. It is, however, clear that without the economic and military strength, political influence, the immense cultural potential of the US, hardly any global problem can be tackled. The concept of an abstract, homogeneous West gave way to a much more realistic picture of differences and competition. During the last decade and a half it was not only the political maps of Eastern and Central Europe that were redrawn but the mental, intelllectual landscape of the region did undergo an equally substantial change as well. We can no more think in terms of clearly defined homogeneous poles: a culturally or politically attractive West and an authoritarian, anti- 21 Tony Judt: op.cit.

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democratic East. The redrawal of this mental landscape of my generation of East and Central European intellectuals started long before 1989-90 but it certainly speeded up after the ʺYear of Miraclesʺ and we are still looking for the new compass that helps us in finding our way on this map.

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2, 2007

CONSTRUCTING A BETTER DEMOCRATIC PEACE THEORY

Zoltán I. Búzás*

Abstract At the risk of oversimplification we can distinguish between pessimist and optimist research programs on European security. In the present paper I focus on the optimistic democratic peace theory, since the empirical evidence seems more supportive of it. After reviewing the democratic peace literature, I find that the normative/cultural strand provides most of the explanatory power of this research program. I suggest that constructivism has the potential to improve this component because it is specialized to deal with norms. Finally, I draw hypotheses based on this social constructivist interpretation of the normative/cultural strand, and specify a test for it regarding European enlargement. As a caveat, the paper is a first draft and as such a work in progress, and thus it certainly needs further work to overcome its present limitations.

I. Introduction

As we look back to the past, we can easily notice that Europe hosted the most and most intense armed conflicts.1 However, since the end of the Second World War the European Union seems to be peaceful. While realist theories explain the Long Peace2 of the Cold War with the existence of a common enemy (the Soviet Union), from this perspective it is not so clear why the post-Cold War EU remains peaceful. As we look at the literature on the European security, two categories of answers become clear: optimistic and pessimistic ones. In the former we primarily find (neo)realist

* PhD student in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware since 2004. 1 Gleditsch, N. P., “Democracy and the Future of European Peace,” European Journal of International Relations, No. 4, Vol. 1, pp. 539-572. 2 John L. Gaddis, (1987), The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press.

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theories, while in the latter we find mainly (neo)liberal and constructivist theories. The structure of the paper is the following: first, I take a brief look at the empirical evidence about conflicts in the EU, and I claim that the pessimistic approaches offer unsatisfactory explanations for it. Second, I review the democratic peace literature, which seems to be able to better account for the post-Cold War EU security outcomes. I also find that the normative/cultural approach provides most of the explanatory power of the democratic peace thesis. Therefore, in order to improve the theory and through it our understanding of empirics I suggest a social constructivist approach to it since this latter is better able to handle normative analyses (where normative means based on norms). Finally, I propose hypotheses and a test geared to European enlargement for this constructivist democratic peace approach.

II. The Pessimistic Research Program and the Empirical Record

1) The Pessimistic Research Program

After the end of the Cold War, several neorealists expected a return to the conflictual Europe of the past. This was a logical consequence of their reasoning which located sources of the Long Peace in Europe in the equality of military force, nuclear weapons, and the bipolar structure of the international system including a common enemy (USSR). Since these factors evaporated, many of them in the front with Mearsheimer expected that the post-Cold War period in Europe “would probably be substantially more prone to violence than the past 45 years.”3 It is certainly true that offensive realism is not the only realist strand, and others can better account for the post-Cold War European security outcomes. For instance the defensive realist Waltz claims that Europe moved so far toward unity that probably cannot progress more, but it also cannot go back.4 Similarly,

3 John J. Mearsheimer (1995), “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War”, Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Steven E. Miller, (eds.), The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, p. 79. 4 Kenneth N. Waltz (1995), “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” in ibidem, p. 68.

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based on Walt’s balance of threat5 theory one could reach a more optimistic prediction about European security. Since states balance not against power per se, but against threat, there is no good reason for an intra-European conflict. Next, Schweller’s balance of interest6 approach could serve as a basis for the deductive statement that European peace can be explained by the fact that member states bandwagon for additional gains rather than balance. Wohlforth, as a supporter of the Gilpin-type hegemonic transition version of neorealism would probably explain European peace by the presence of a powerful hegemon with 100000 troops.7 Finally, optimist realists sharing Glaser’s “contingent realism,” would argue that structural realism “properly understood predicts that, under a wide range of conditions, adversaries can best achieve their security goals through cooperative policies, not competitive ones, and should, therefore, choose cooperation when these conditions prevail.”8

While for these latter approaches the post-Cold War peaceful Europe is not as anomalous as for Mearsheimer, they usually do not give satisfactory answers to the following questions. It is not enough to say that European states did not have an interest in fighting each other, or that they did not perceive each other as threatening. The real question is why this was the case. Why is it that European states do not perceive each other as threatening and have similar interests so they can bandwagon? Why can they cooperate under a wide range of conditions if the international system is anarchic, relative gains matter? Rather than answering the question regarding the lack of intra-European conflict, these approaches merely push it back with one step. In order to discover these deeper causes I will turn to democratic peace theory. Until then, let us briefly look at the empirical record.

5 Stephen M. Walt (1995), “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” in ibidem. 6 Randall Schweller (1995), “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” in ibidem, p. 251. 7 William C. Wohlforth (1995), “Realism and the End of the Cold War,” in ibiudem, pp. 3-41. 8 Charles L. Glaser (1995), “Realists as Optimists,” in ibidem, p. 378.

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2) The Empirical Record

On the 1st of May 2004 the European Union had its biggest enlargement ever, with ten new member states included in the EU. Throughout the past fifteen years there was a considerable effort not only to widen, but also to deepen the EU. For instance the Maastricht Treaty, The Treaty of Amsterdam all arguably contained important steps in this direction; the Treaty of Nice is especially relevant in this regard, providing for instance new rules on closer co-operation. While in 1999 Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland joined the NATO, on 29th of March 2004, seven more countries formally joined. This was the fifth, and the largest, round of enlargement in the Alliance’s history. Thus, if one takes a look at the European map, Kant’s enlarging zone of peace comes into mind.

Of course, this is only half of the story. Let us now look at the post- Cold War conflicts, focusing on Europe. I use Eriksson and Wallensteen’s data, who count armed conflict those situations where the number of battle-related casualties reaches 25 per year, and count as war those with minimum 1000 casualties.9

Looking at the data below, at the first glance it seems that the realist were at least partly right, since Europe is the third most conflictual region after Asia and Africa in terms of number of conflicts. However, if we take an intra-European look, Appendix 1 below shows us that most of these conflicts occurred outside the EU. While there was some conflict in Spain and Northern Ireland, both of these were intra-state ones (not the interstate one anticipated by realists) and they did not reach the level of war. The other conflicts occurred mostly at the periphery of Europe and were mostly intra-state ones, not the conflicts for regional hegemony anticipated by realists.10 This is clearly not to say that there were no conflicts of interest among states in the EU, but these were solved at the table of negotiations. Indeed, war between European states seems unthinkable to most people today. One has to ask why this is the case, if the world is indeed anarchic and based on self-help.

9 Mikael Eriksson and Peter Wallensteen (2004), “Armed Conflict, 1989-2003”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 625-636. 10 See Appendix 1 in Peter Wallensteen an Margareta Sollenberg, (2001), “Armed Conflict, 1989-2000”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 38, no. 5, p. 637.

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In conclusion, it seems that pessimistic approaches do not give a satisfactory explanation of the post-Cold War EU peace. As mentioned above, wars are unthinkable, or, as Bourdieu would put it, EU peace is part of doxa (of that which is taken for granted).11 I turn now to the democratic peace explanations, which not only better fit the empirical evidence, but have the potential to shed light on its deeper causes.

11 Pierre Bourdieu, (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 166.

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II. A Review of Democratic Peace Theory

According to Jack Levy “the absence of war between democracies comes

as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations,”12 while Bruce Russett states that democratic peace contains “one of the strongest nontrivial and nontautological generalizations that can be made about international relations.”13 This research program challenges realism’s pessimism and its systemic level approach. In this subsection I first turn to the roots of the democratic peace thesis. Next, I look at the definition problematique and I continue with discussing the different strands of explanations. Finally, I review critiques of democratic peace and I conclude with the argument that the normative/cultural strand provides most of the explanatory power of the democratic peace research program.

1) The Roots of the Democratic Peace Thesis

The roots of the democratic peace thesis date back to the Kantian idea of perpetual peace.14 The growing zone of peace mentioned by several supporters of the democratic peace is quite similar to Kant’s “foedus pacificum.” Although at the individual level Kant seems a pessimist like Hobbes, at the supra-individual level he is more optimistic, believing in the progress of humanity toward perfection and peace. According to the Kantian idea republics are more cautious to declare war because the people who decide have also have to support to burden, an also it is difficult to justify war against other republics.15 However, most supporters of 12 Jack S. Levy, (1989), “Domestic Politics and War,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (eds.), The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,, p. 88. 13 Bruce Russett (1990), Controlling the Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, p. 123. 14 Immanuel Kant (1972), Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, New York: Garland Publishing Inc.; see also Kant’s Definitive and Permissive Articles for instance in Howard Williams (1992), International Relations in Political Theory, Milton Keynes, PA: Open University Press, p. 87. Although Kant clearly distinguishes between democracy and republicanism, today’s democracy fits his definition of republicanism. 15 Immanuel Kant (1991), “Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch,” in H. Reiss, (ed.), Kant. Political Writings, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 100.

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democratic peace are skeptical about the restraint the cost-benefit analysis suggests to democratic citizens, because it seems not to work against nondemocracies. Most of the contemporary theoreticians draw on the second section of Perpetual Peace, containing the Definitive Articles of a Perpetual Peace16 according to which:

1. The civil constitution of each state shall be republican (constitutional law): this constitution includes equality of citizens, common legislation for all subjects, freedom, and the consent of citizen to wage wars.

2. The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states (international law): this refers to an alliance of a particular kind, foedus pacificum, which differs from a peace treaty (pactum pacis) in that the latter is meant to end one war, the former is meant to gradually end all wars.

3. The rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality (cosmopolitan law).

As an increasing number of states accept Kant’s three definitive articles, the pacific union is enlarging and Perpetual Peace gets closer.

Closer to our times, starting with the behavioralist revolution in political science, several quantitative studies found that democracies seem to be more peaceful with each other. Thus, Dean Babst argued that democratic states did not fight interstate wars.17 Similarly, in a very comprehensive study Rummel has reached the same conclusion that democratic states do not fight each other.18 Subsequently, a large body of literature was produced on this phenomenon. Maoz and Abdolali find that although democracies seem to be as war-prone as other regime types, “the proportion of disputes in which [democracies] participate that escalate to war is significantly lower than that of nondemocratic polities.”19 This result is supported by the findings of Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, who look 16 Kant, op. cit., pp. 120-140. 17 Dean V. Babst, “A Force for Peace,” Industrial Research, Vol. 14 (April), pp. 55-58. 18 Rummel, R.J., (1975-1981), Understanding Conflict and War: Vols. 1-5, Los Angeles: Sage Publishing. 19 Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abdolali, “Regime Tpyes and International Conflict, 1817-1976,” Journal of Conflict Resolution , Vol. 33, (March, 1989), p. 18.

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at European militarized conflicts and find that regime type of both the target or the initiator state independently increases the chances of avoiding escalation of conflict; even if only one of the states is democratic, the chances of peaceful conflict resolution significantly increase.20 Also, Bremer’s analysis focused on all dyads of the international system from 1816 to 1956 indicates that war between nondemocratic regimes is approximately four times as likely as between democratic and nondemocratic or only between democratic regimes.21

2) The Definition Problematique

A key component on which the validity of democratic peace depends is the definition of democracy and interstate war. Based on these one can dismiss or accept the alleged exceptions to the democratic peace proposition. A detailed discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of the paper, but I will briefly provide the main definitions on which the theory builds. Russett defines democracy in terms of elected government, voting rights of the majority of the adult citizens, popularly elected executive or one which is accountable to elected legislature.22 According to Owen, liberal democratic countries are states “where liberalism is the dominant ideology and citizens have leverage over war decisions.”23 Free speech and election of the representatives who are competent in declaring war are important features of these democratic regimes. This type of liberalism values self- preservation, considers material well-being as the universal goal of all peoples, and perceives freedom and tolerance as the best way to achieve it. According to Ray democracy is defined as a “form of government in which the identities of the leaders of the executive branch and the members of the

20 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, “Empirical Support for Systemic and Dyadic Explanations of International Conflict,” World Politics, Vol. 41, pp. 1-20. 21 Stuart A. Bremer, “Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 36 (June), pp. 309-341. 22 Bruce Russett (1993) Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 11-16. 23 John M. Owen (1996), “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace, Cambridge: The MIT Press, p. 118.

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national legislature are determined in fair, competitive elections.”24 A regime is sufficiently democratic if at least two formally independent political parties compete for votes, at least 50% of the adult population exercises voting rights, and there is precedent of peaceful power transfer from one party to another. Another variable often introduced is perception. It is argued that it is not enough that a state is democratic, but it must also be perceived as such by the fellow democracies (see Owen or Russett below).

Regarding the definition of war, usually the Correlates of War project is followed by the supporters of the democratic peace proposition.25 According to this, only those armed conflicts qualify as wars which involve at least 1000 battle casualties. Parties at war can be considered those with at least 1000 troops committed to battle, or with 100 battle fatalities. Finally, to be considered interstate wars, these conflicts must take place between sovereign states.26

Based on these and similar definitions, supporters of democratic peace based the main thesis of the research program: mature democracies of the right type, which also perceived each other as such, do not fight interstate wars against each other. But what are the explanations? What causal mechanisms underlie this phenomenon? The next subsection deals with these questions.

3) Explaining Democratic Peace

Since the thesis itself establishes only a correlation between democratic regimes and the lack of war between them, theories are needed which can explain this correlation, or can specify causal mechanisms which underlie this phenomenon. Although there are several possibilities to categorize the different attempts of democratic peace approaches, there are three widely recognized strands: (1) the structural/institutional, (2) the normative/cultural, and (3) the economic interdependency variants. Their arguments are briefly the following:

24 James Lee Ray (1995), Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition, Columbia: South Carolina Press, p. 97. 25 See for instance the acceptance of the COW definitions in ibidem and Russett, op.cit. 26 Melvin Small and J. David Singer, (1982), Resort to Arms, Beverly Hills: Sage Publishing.

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1. The institutions of democratic regimes constrain the ability of leaders to wage wars. Institutional constraints in democracy such as checks and balances, separation of powers, and public debate slow down or block ways to war. Democratic leaders perceive each other as being constrained, and they do not fear surprise attacks.27

2. The shared domestic norms of democracies cause a peaceful perception about each other. According to the cultural/normative model the ideas and norms of democracy lead to peaceful conflict resolution between democracies, but not necessarily between democracies and nondemocracies. Democratic decision makers tend to externalize domestic norms of peaceful conflict resolution when dealing with other democracies since they expect reciprocation, but they are suspicious of nondemocracies and use nondemocratic norms of conflict resolution with these latter.

3. Democracies are characterized by economic interdependence, which in turn lowers the probability of wars between democracies since war is not profitable.

In the following I will try to present the arguments on democratic peace organized around the most important authors. After reviewing their works, I will summarize the causal mechanisms of the three strands.

Reviving Democratic Peace-Doyle’s Kantian Mixture

The contemporary father of democratic peace is Michael W. Doyle, who, drawing on Kant’s ideas, analyzed the influence of liberalism on the conduct of foreign affairs.28 Doyle argues that liberalism can at least partly disrupt the realist balance-of-power type international relations, producing

27 Russett, op. cit., pp. 38-40. 28 Michael W. Doyle, (1996), “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, op. cit., pp. 3-58.

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a qualitative change in international relations among democratic states.29 He is cautious enough to assert that while democratic war is not impossible, it is highly unlikely.30 While liberal states are as war-prone as any other regime (or even more so) in their relations with nonliberal states, liberal democracies are peaceful among each other. His explanation for democratic peace is almost identical to that of Kant, because it involves the constitutional guarantee of caution, the international law’s guarantee of respect, and the cosmopolitan law’s material incentives (rights to hospitality is conducive to free trade). These three sources together connect in Doyle’s vision democracy with peace. An important component of his explanation is the normative/cultural strand, which emphasizes the externalization of domestic democratic norms and importance of perception: “In short, domestically just republics, which rest on consent, presume foreign republics to be also consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation.”31 Thus, it seems that the trust between democracies mitigates the power of security dilemma and promotes friendly relations between democracies. In contrast, while nonliberal states indeed act sometimes again democracies, at least “part of the atmosphere of suspicion can be attributed to the perception by liberal states that nonliberal states are in a permanent state of aggression against their own people.”32 The Normative Strand is the Best-Russett

Russett shares Doyle’s claim that while democracies are peaceful with each other, they are not necessarily so with non-democratic regimes. He nicely breaks down his interpretation of democratic peace to its components: “(a) Democracies rarely fight each other (an empirical statement) because (b) they have other means of resolving conflicts between them and therefore do not need to fight each other (a prudential statement), and (c) they perceive that democracies should not fight each other (a normative

29 Doyle in ibidem, p. 4. 30 Doyle in ibidem, p. 10. 31 Doyle in ibidem p. 26. 32 Doyle in ibidem p.32.

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statement about principles of right behavior), which reinforces the empirical statement.”33 He analyses several “alleged exceptions” to the democratic peace thesis from Athens versus Syracuse to conflicts in the post-Communist world (Armenia-Azerbaijan, Serbia versus Croatia etc.) and using his definitions of interstate war and democracy he finds that none of them constitutes an exception to democratic peace.34

Russett argues that democracies adopted an anti-war norm among each other at the end of the nineteenth century, as the 1895-96 Venezuelan Crisis demonstrates when American and English leaders appealed to shared liberal values. After that as the number of democracies grew, democratic peace became increasingly important and statistically significant. This argument is in conformity with his analysis of the imperfect democratic peace of Ancient Greece, where he finds 14 wars between democracies.35 Russett explains this with weak democratic constitution and ideology. Institutions provided weak constraints on war, perceptions about each other were very varied, in the sense that the political entities did not always perceived each other as democracies. He considers that the democratic peace thesis that democracies do not fight each other was just being born by that time, and its infantilism and misperceptions about each other reduced its efficiency.36 Russett also discusses the two models which offer explanations regarding democracy’s pacifying effect: the cultural/normative model and the structural/institutional model. He regards them as complementary and competing at the same time. It is hard to distinguish between them because norms shape institutions, and also all depends on whether democracies perceive each other as democracies. But he still thinks that we can devise tests which tell us which model is better. Such a test is carried out by Russett and Maoz.37 They formulate three distinct hypotheses and analyze them through multivariate statistical methods. The hypotheses are the following: “1. The more democratic are both members of a pair of states 33 Russett, op. cit., p. 4. 34 Ray, op. cit., pp. 86-125. See also Russett, op. cit., pp. 16-19. 35 Bruce Russett and William Antholis, “The Imperfect Democratic Peace of Ancient Athens,” in ibidem, pp. 43-62. 36 Ibidem, p. 62. 37 Bruce Russett and Zeev Maoz, “The Democratic Peace since World War II,” in ibidem, pp. 72-98.

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(dyad), the less likely it is that a militarized dispute will break out between them, and the less likely it is that any disputes that do break out will escalate. This effect will operate independently of other attributes such as wealth, economic growth, contiguity, alliance, or capability ratio of the countries. 2. The more deeply rooted are democratic norms in the political processes operating in the two states, the lower the likelihood that disputes will break out or escalate. (Normative/cultural model) 3. The higher the institutional constraints on the two states, the lower the likelihood that disputes will break out or escalate. (Structural/institutional model)”38 They look at all dyads of independent states from 1946-86, the unit of analysis being pairs of countries per year (dyad-year). The degree of institutional restraint is measured on a scale from 4 to 22, composed of degree of concentration of power, degree of executive constraint, centralization, and scope of government action. The measure of normative influence on conflict behavior is seen as the persistence of the regime in years. The other independent variables are wealth, economic growth, alliance, contiguity, and military capability ratio. Russett and Maoz use logistic regression to analyze the data, since the dependent variable is dichotomous (war/ no war; dispute/no dispute). Their findings indicate that democracy is an important predictor of the dependent variable even when one controls for the alternative independent variables. These findings are consistent with those of Bremer, and a previous study of Maoz and Russett.39 The more democratic the countries of the dyad are, the less likely a crisis between them or its escalation. Further, the results indicate that the normative/cultural model is superior to the structural/institutional one. Normative restraints are conducive to avoiding both the occurrence of disputes and the outbreak of war, whereas institutional constraints seem to prevent the outbreak of war, but do not prevent states from involvement in lower-level disputes.40 Overall, all three hypotheses are supported, but 2 is

38 Russett and Maoz, “The Democratic Peace since World War II,” in ibidem, pp. 72-73. 39 Stuart Bremer, “Democracy and Militarized Interstate Conflict, 1816-1965,” International Interactions, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring 1993), pp. 231-249; Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, “Alliances, Contiguity, Wealth, and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict between Democracies a Statistical Artifact?” International Interactions, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Spring 1992), pp. 245-267. 40 Russett and Maoz, “The Democratic Peace since World War II,” in Russet, op. cit., pp. 86- 90.

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more significant than 3. Reflecting on the future of democratic peace Russett thinks that “[t]he spread of democratic norms and practices in the world, if consolidated, should reduce the frequency of violent conflict and war.”41 Thus, he clearly claims that the normative/cultural strand is superior within the democratic peace theory.

An important point made by Russett is that “[r]epeating the proposition that democracies should not fight each other helps reinforce the probability that democracies will not fight each other.”42 Refining the Causal Logic-Owen An important contribution to the democratic peace argument is provided by John Owen, who refines its causal mechanism.43 Since one of the main vulnerabilities of democratic peace is the lack of theoretical foundation which clearly explains why democracies do not fight each other, Owen tries to rectify this. In his opinion liberal ideology and democratic institutions “work in tandem to bring about democratic peace.”44 Echoing one of Russett’s points, Owen agrees that perceptions are crucial for the democratic peace argument: democracies must perceive each other as democratic. He points out that the normative strand is very important, but if the countries do not consider each other democratic, the normative check on war will be absent.45 Neither structures nor norms alone account for democratic peace, but together they can, such as a car cannot run separately on gasoline and engine, but needs both.46 In his research design liberal

41 ibidem, p. 120. 42 Ibidem, p. 136. 43 John M. Owen (1996), “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, (eds.), op. cit., pp. 116-154. 44 Owen (1996) in ibidem, p. 118. 45Owen (1996) in ibidem, p. 120. Owen tests 7 hypotheses in four cases of crisis: the Franco- American crisis of 1796-98, and the Anglo-American crises of 1803-1812, 1861-1863, and 1895-1896. The examination of four cases of crisis between liberals shows that when they perceived each other as democracies, war was avoided. However, in the second Anglo- American crisis, when England was not perceived liberal democracy, war broke out. 46 Owen (1996) in ibidem, p. 121.

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ideas figure as the independent variable, which produces liberal ideology and domestic democratic institutions (intervening variables), which in turn push for democratic peace. The mechanism is the following:47

Ideologically, liberal democracies trust liberal democracies. Institutionally, citizen’s leverage on government’s decisions is important. Another argument added to the institutional stand of the democratic peace is that democratic leaders want to be reelected, and thus they are concerned about policy failures.48 As a consequence, they are more cautious about engaging in war. If they do, they fight in wars which they think thy can win, and they also fight harder to avoid defeat.

Owen introduces another qualification of his argument: illiberal democracies. Those states which have a democratic regime in the sense of a popularly-governed polity, but do not follow liberal ideology or define

47 See figure 1: Causal Pathways of Liberal Democratic Peace in Owen (1996) in ibidem, p. 131. 48 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 4, (Dec., 1999), pp. 791-807.

Liberal ideas

Ideology

Institution s

No wars against democracie s

Free debate

Constraints on government

Democrat ic Peace

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themselves not as abstract individuals but parts of a cultural-religious community, will not necessarily enter the zone of peace, and the democratic peace thesis does not necessarily apply to them.49 Economic Interdependence-Weede and Co.

These arguments follow Kant’s idea that the cosmopolitan law of hospitality favors commerce between democracies. As a consequence, trade between democracies will be more intense than between other regimes, and war will be more costly for them, since it disrupts the profit making through trade. Such an argument was made by Russett and Oneal, who analyze the politically relevant dyads for the Cold War era, and find that the pacific effects of trade were very significant.50 In a similar argument stressing the importance of trade, Weede argues that democratic peace is actually part of something broader: the “capitalist peace.”51 He shows how the promotion of prosperity reinforces democracy, and argues that peace rests on prosperity, capitalism, free trade, and democracy.52 His empirical case is the Marshall plan’s role in reinforcing democracy in post-World War II Europe. The causal chain is that trade creates prosperity, prosperity creates democracy, and democracy creates peace. Bliss and Russett test the hypothesis that democratic states will trade more with each other. According to some arguments, international trade seems to reduce conflict.53 Their results are consistent with this argument: they find that trade promotes peace and in turn peace promotes trade.

Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares however, try to answer the question whether trade between two states reduces the likelihood of conflict

49 Owen (1996) in ibidem, p.127. 50 See for instance John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett, “The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950-1985,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 267-293. 51 Erich Weede, “Capitalism, Democracy, and Peace,” in Gustaaf Geeraerts and Patrick Stouthuysen, eds., Democratic Peace for Europe: Myth or Reality? (Brussels: VUB University Press, 1999), p. 67. 52 Weede, “Capitalism, Democracy, and Peace,” in ibidem, pp. 61-73. 53 Bruce Russett and J. Oneal (1998), “The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations also Matter,” in Zeev Maoz and A. Gat (eds.), War in a Changing World, New York: Columbia University Press.

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between them.54 Their conclusion is that conflict is the result of the interests of states and joint characteristics of their institutions, rather than trade.

4) Criticizing the Theories

In this subsection I briefly discuss some of the major criticisms. The most frequent criticisms refer to the arbitrary definitions used by supporters of the democratic peace theory, to its statistical insignificance, to alternative causes of democratic peace, and that democracies are not that stable and can regress to totalitarianism.

Probably one of the strongest attacks on inside out explanations of peace can be found in Waltz’s Man, the State and War.55 According to Waltz the second image idea that domestic characteristics of states cause wars is wrong.56 In the neorealist vision inside-out explanations cannot be correct, since war has important systemic/third image causes. Thus, the democratic peace theory would be correct only if all the causes of war were dependent on the regime type of the state.

Mearsheimer also often criticized the democratic peace arguments.57 According to him the economic interdependence argument is not convincing because states are primarily concerned with survival not prosperity, and in the anarchical international system relative gains matter. Further, interdependence can lead to conflict as well as to cooperation, and it means vulnerability. The democratic peace argument is also weak because the mass of democratic citizens can easily support aggression. One of the sharpest critiques of democratic peace is Layne.58 He tests realism and democratic peace on four “near misses,” that is “crises where

54 James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Tressa E. Tabares, “The Wages of Peace: Trade, Democracy, Interests and International Conflict Among the Major Powers, 1907- 1965,” in Geeraerts and Stouthuysen, op. cit., pp. 91-105. 55 Kenneth N. Waltz (1959), Man, the State and War, New York: Columbia University Press. 56 Ibidem, p. 83. 57 John J. Mearsheimer, (1995), “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War”, in Brown, Lynn-Jones, Miller (eds.), The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security,(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press ,pp. 78-129. 58 Christopher Layne (1996), “Kant or Cant: The Myth of Democratic Peace,” in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds.), op. cit., pp. 157-201.

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two democratic states almost went to war with each other:”59 the Anglo- American Crisis I-the Trent Affair, 1861; Anglo-American Crisis II: Venezuela, 1895-96; The Anglo-French Struggle for Control of the Nile: Fashoda, 1898; Franco-German Crisis: The Ruhr, 1923. He deduces testable propositions from realism and the normative/cultural democratic model. His dependent variable is how democracies behaved in diplomatic interactions in crisis. Layne examines the crises by process-tracing method, and finds that realism is a better predictor of international outcomes. While democracies avoid wars, they do so not because of shared democratic norms, but based on calculated national interest, which is well predicted by realism. Layne concludes that the causal logic of democratic peace has small explanatory power. The problem with this critique is that it assumes a benefit-calculating state acting according to the logic of consequences, and this might not always be the case. Also, even if the state acts based on calculated national interest, this does not exclude the influence of the normative component of democratic peace. Since there is no objective national interest,60 what states perceive as their national interest and how they go about achieving it depends on what is included in their utility function. They might not perceive that it is in their interest to fight other democracies not because for instance materially it would not be advantageous, but because their utility function contains the normative check on war with other democracies.

While Layne uses small N study to disprove democratic peace, Spiro takes look at large N quantitative studies, and tries to show that the 0% of democratic wars is actually statistically insignificant.61 Before 1945 there were very few democracies, and so a low chance of war between them. Thus democratic peace might well be the result of random chance. Ray argues that is actually it is statistically unlikely that democracies would have avoided wars with each other, had they not been more peaceful towards each other.62 Spiro thinks that supportive evidence for democratic

59 Ibidem, p. 158. 60 Martha Finnemore (1996), National Interests in International Society, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 61 David E. Spiro (1996), “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace,” in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., pp. 202-233. 62 Ray, op. cit., p. 203.

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peace theory is based on the manipulation of definitions of war and democracy, and specific statistical methods. He speculates that democratic peace rests not on the peacefulness of democracies, but rather on the interest of democracies.63 However, this does not answer the question of why democracies have similar interests, and thus avoid wars with each other. Russett’s reply is that Spiro takes year-by-year approach and since he slices up the data to too small elements, no wonder that he finds democratic peace insignificant. He shows that a pooled-time series analysis or one which takes regime-dyad as unit of analysis shows that democratic peace is statistically significant.64 Another problem with statistical analyses trying to prove the significance of democratic peace is the interdependency of the annual observation of dyads, which means that the number of cases on which the significance tests are made is not really the N the authors put forth. Also, if the difference between wars involving other regimes, and those involving democracies is very low, the small numbers of exceptions to democratic peace, if proven to be right, might make this difference insignificant. Finally, democracies can becomes nondemocracies, so “all interactions among states involve states that are potentially autocratic.”65 This might mean that democracies cannot really mitigate security dilemma.

Faber and Gowa find both the normative and the structural explanations of democratic peace unconvincing. 66 The norm on which democratic peace is based, the norm of peaceful conflict resolution, is characteristic to all types of states since wars are expensive. The structural/institutional explanation is undermined by democracies’ propensity to fight with nondemocracies. They find democratic peace statistically significant only since 1945, and explain it as the product of Cold War. Systemic variables explain peace and war better than regime type. However, Gowa and Faber cannot explain why the norm of peaceful resolution is not used by democracies when dealing with nondemocracies, if it would be rational to do so. Also, not all democratic wars would be 63 David E. Spiro (1996) “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace,” in in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., p. 233. 64 Bruce Russett (1996), “The Democratic Peace-And Yet It Moves,” in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., pp. 337-350. 65 Ray, op. cit., p. 204. 66 Henry Faber and Joanne Gowa (1996), “Polities and Peace,” in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., pp. 239-263.

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expensive, in fact some might be profitable: why is that strong democracies do not take weak ones over? Finally, if the democratic peace was a product of the Cold War, why does it persist in the post-Cold War period? These questions can be answered referring to the normative strand of democratic peace theory.

Ido Oren has an interesting argument against democratic peace.67 It is not that countries which consider each other democratic do not go to war with each other, but countries which have interest in avoiding conflict define each other as democracies. Coding and judging regime type is always dependent on political relations. However, as discussed above, Owen showed that changing democratic labels of counterparts according to momentary interests does not work. These labels are not as manipulative as Oren thinks they are.

A widely cited finding is that although “mature democracies” usually do not fight each other, countries in the process of democratization are much more war-prone.68 Their examples include Britain in the Crimean War, Napoleon III’s France, Wilhelmine Germany’s lead to WWI, and Japan’s democratization in the 1920s. Some of the reasons they give is the new and old elite’s appeal to nationalism when competing for power in the new domestic arena, the newly mobilized public is hard to control, and if new democracies collapse their return to autocracy increases chances of going to war. New democracies do not have stable and stabilizing institutions. Since promoting democracy might cause wars, the authors propose alleviating measures.

A sharp criticism is put forth by Denny Roy, who argues that democratic peace supporters (he refers specially to Sorensen) often mix three weak arguments (normative/cultural, structural/institutional, and economic interdependence) in a supposedly stronger united one to support their thesis.69 After showing how each of these separate arguments is vulnerable, he questions the strength of their united explanatory power.

67 Ido Oren (1996), “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany,” in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., pp. 263-301. 68 Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder (1996), “Democratization and the Danger of War,” in Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller (eds.), op. cit., p. 302. 69 Denny Roy, “Neorealism and Kant: No Pacific Union,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 451-453.

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Based on the overview above I argue that these three strands are not weak, and as the overview discussion shows they have explanatory power not only together, but also independent from one another.

5) Summing Up the Causal Mechanisms

The following graphs70 (see Figures C1, C2 and C3 below) nicely depict the comprehensive mechanisms of these different approaches.

First, the institutional/structural strand has two main components. On the one hand, liberal ideas materialize in checks and balances type of institutional restraints, and in free public debate, both of which constrain the government. Thus, there is longer time to peacefully solve the conflicts, and lower chances for surprise attacks or misperceptions, which contribute to democratic peace. On the other hand, one of the main goals of democratic leaders is to be reelected, and thus they are less likely to engage in wars, or if they do, they engage in wars with weaker adversaries, to win quickly, without major material losses and casualties. The problem with the institutional argument is that it does not explain why the institutional restraints would function against democracies, but not against nondemocracies. As we have seen in the literature review, democracies are as war-prone (if not more) against nondemocracies than any other regime. The argument could be that since democracies are tougher adversaries in war, and is more difficult to defeat them,71 democracies avoid fighting with each other. The problem is that not all democracies are strong, and there are several asymmetric relations between democracies. Why do strong democracies avoid taking over weaker ones? Also, the institutional argument in itself is unconvincing, because it superficially excludes the normative component. Since institutions cannot function without being embedded in a normative context which gives meaning to them, this strand is weak without the normative component. In conclusion the institutional argument is unconvincing because it excludes norms, and thus cannot

70 For the graphs see www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1346/MR1346.appc.pdf. 71 David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 24-37.

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explain why sometimes democratic leaders can mobilize and pursue war fast against autocracies, but not against democracies. It also does not address the security dilemma problem properly, and thus cannot explain well why rational leaders would not try to benefit from the fact that other democratic leaders are institutionally constrained and take them over.

Second, economic interdependence arguments emphasize that democracies tend to trade more with each other than with other regimes, and thus want to avoid war which means losses, and try to gain through commerce. However, economic interdependence can also increase the chances of conflict between two nations, since there are more things to argue on. Further, it is not clear whether this interdependence is cause or effect of peace. Also, if relative gains matter more and states value survival

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more than economic benefits, then countries which gain less from the trade than their counterparts, but have a stronger army, might be tempted to take over the other country. Finally, very often we can see that interest is regime-blind. China for instance is a major trading partner of today’s democracies. Democracies trade with those who by what they sell, or sell what these democracies want. Thus, the economic interdependence argument might not be satisfying, as Norman Angell for instance could testify.

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Third, according to the normative/cultural argument democracies externalize their domestic norms of peaceful conflict resolution when dealing with each other. They also trust each other, and assume that they have peaceful intentions. The shared norms provide a common understanding of the situations, are conducive to communication, and restrain the options available for decision-makers. Thus, there is no fear of surprise attacks, and there is more openness to solve conflicts peacefully. Finally, institutions are based on norms, and cannot function without them.

Based on our literature review, we can state that the cultural/normative strand provides most of the explanatory power: for instance, Doyle shows the importance of externalization of domestic norms with other democracies; Owen and Russett emhpasize the importance of perceptions for the democratic peace argument; Russett demonstrates that the normative/cultural constraint against war is much stronger than the institutional one etc. Without looking at the normative/cultural component, we cannot explain why democracies exercise constraint with each other, but not with autocracies; we cannot understand why weak democracies do not go to war against infinitely weaker ones; we cannot understand why and how the security dilemma between democracies is mitigated; and we cannot see the previous two strands in context.

If we accept that the normative/cultural explanation offers most of the explanatory power to the democratic peace, then the next step should be to understand its practical implications and to improve it. One possibility could be to use a constructivism for this purpose, since it is better equipped to deal with norms and principled beliefs.

IV. Constructing a Better Normative/Cultural Approach 1) Theoretical Improvement A normative/cultural democratic peace argument which focuses only on the inherent peacefulness of democracies could not challenge the realist security dilemma, and its structural constraints. Thus, a proper normative explanation must show how democracies can substantially mitigate the

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security dilemma; it also must include the level of international interactions, and not only unit-level analysis.72 Thus, it must show not only that democracies are peaceful with each other, but also that they can modify the logic of anarchy through their interaction. The constructivist interpretation seems very useful in this respect and improves the normative/cultural approach at least in three respects:

First, the main argument of constructivism is that the entire international political system is a social construction which shapes and is shaped by the (inter)actions of the agents. As a consequence, “anarchy is what states make of it,”73 and so, it must be problematized, and not just taken as given and objective. This means that democratic states could modify the logic of anarchy (however, this does not imply that such change would b easy). Constructivism can well show why at the third image level interactions among democracies do not follow the Hobbesian logic of anarchy, but instead are closer to a Lockean anarchy.74 Also, besides constructing the environment of interaction, democracies also construct their friends and enemies by inferring friendly or aggressive intentions from the domestic structures of their counterparts. When dealing with democracies they externalize their peaceful conflict resolution norms, and expect reciprocation, but with nondemocracies they do not. Attribution theory’s claim that there is a tendency to judge others’ behavior in dispositional and own behavior in situational terms is also useful to understand this phenomenon. Thus, cooperative behavior is associated with fellow democracies, and competitive one with nondemocracies. The presumption that the other fellow democracy is essentially peaceful leads to trust, the mitigation of security dilemma, is reinforced by interactions, so is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fears of cheating are reduced, relative gains lose preeminence. Both democratic peace and aggressiveness towards nondemocracies is the result of learning the rule from previous interactions that external behavior and aggressiveness of the counterpart can be

72 Thomas Risse, “Democratic Peace-Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument,” in Geeraerts and Stouthuysen (eds.), op. cit., p. 24. 73 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2, 1992. 74 For different cultures of anarchy see Alexander Wendt (1999), Social Theory of International Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, esp. pp. 246-308.

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inferred from the degree of violence from the domestic structure of the counterpart.

Second, besides letting the analysts to see better how the interaction environment and the perceptions about the others is constructed and changing, a constructivist approach deals better with norms. Norms are very difficult to study, because they are hard to operationalize, measure, “see,” know when they matter and where do they come from etc.75 However, recent constructivist approaches such as the Norm Life Cycle help us to better grasp how norms come into being, become stronger, are internalized by the international actors, and then disappear.76 This approach might help us to understand when the normative/cultural constraints against war are strong or weak,77 what we can do to strengthen them, how we can socialize an increasing number of states in these norms, and how we can persuade them to internalize them.

Finally, Drawing on Dessler I think that the ontology (substantive entities and configurations of the approach) is the basis of explanatory power of theories.78 Thus, the more comprehensive the ontological basis of an approach is, the higher its ability to reduce independent phenomena, the better the theory is. While traditional IR theories see a constraining international structure which is material and is the unintended consequence of the interaction of units, constructivism sees an international structure which is also ideational and the result of both intended and unintended consequences. Thus, I argue that constructivism can extend the ontological basis of democratic peace, and thus serve as the basis of a progressive more successful research program.

75 For a representative constructivist study on international security see Peter J. Katzenstein, (1996) (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press. 76 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norms and Political Change,” International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, Autumn 1998, pp. 887-917. 77 For a representative work on conditions when international norms are adopted in the domestic context see Andrew P. Cortell and James W. Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact of International Relations: A Research Agenda,” International Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000, pp. 65-87. 78 David Dessler (1989). “Whatʹs At Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?,” International Organization, Vol. 43, No. 3

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2) Practical Implications and Test If the normative approach is indeed the one which provides the explanatory power of the democratic peace theory, then we have to look at what can it tell us about the European peace. One important development in Europe is the inclusion of most Central and Eastern European countries in the EU. If it is true that normative constraints matter more than institutional ones, than one should pay more attention to the former in order to avoid armed conflicts. These new members have strong enough institutional constraints against war, and they adopted the “acquis communautaire,” so it is reasonable to say that the institutional dimension of the democratic constraints is fulfilled by them. However, it is not equally clear that they fully internalized the normative constraints. It is doubtful whether they are fully socialized in “good countries do X.” And as the literature review suggests, countries with strong institutional restraints, but weak normative ones might go to wars easier. Also, these countries can be perceived by fellow democracies as not fully democratic or even unstable, and thus wage war against them. While this possibility seems unrealistic now, it cannot be ruled out on the long run. This especially is the case if we think about future enlargement possibilities towards Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina etc. To diminish the chances of potential armed conflict (both inter- and intrastate), one should work to strengthen the normative constraints in these new EU members.

In this regard, a modified “spiral model” could be useful.79 The model basically “serves to operationalize the theoretical framework of norm socialization, to identify the dominant mode of social interaction in each phase (adaptation, arguing, institutionalization), and, ultimately, to specify the causal mechanisms by which international norms affect domestic structural change.”80 It consists of five phases through which states evolve (but not necessarily in a linear fashion): repression and activation of socialization network, denial of norm validity, tactical

79 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (1999) (eds.), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, New York: Cambridge University Press. 80 Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction,” in ibidem, p. 19.

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concession (followed by self entrapment), prescription, and rule-consistent behavior. Of course, in our case the first two phases are not needed. However, the others are useful, because we might suspect for instance that some of the new members made only tactical concessions to get into the European Union without internalizing the respective norms of peaceful conflict resolution. In the last phase of the spiral model norms become constitutive of the collective identity of the state, and “cause” behavior in the sense that “good states do X.” This kind of causality might provide better explanatory power than the traditional ones, based on cost-benefit analysis. Instead of calculating the costs and benefits of a war with another democracy, democracies might simply not see it as an option, if they internalize the norm which prohibits war with other democracies. At different stages different socialization processes are dominant, although they always appear combined: in early phases strategic bargaining, later persuasion, argumentation, and finally institutionalization. The model involves activity at four levels: international-transnational interactions among INGOs, international regimes and organizations, and Western states; the domestic society of the target (norm-violating) state; links between domestic opposition and transnational networks, the national government of the norm-violating state.81

To relate the spiral model to European security, we could focus on the normative status of the new members: In which phase of the model are they? How can we get them to the final phase which involves not only institutionalization and internalization? After assessing their status, the appropriate socialization process can be used, depending on how advanced a country is in internalizing the norms.

My hypotheses would be the following:

1. The more/less a new member state internalizes the normative constraints, the more/less likely that it will avoid armed conflict. More specifically, as a country advances in the stages of the spiral model, the less war-prone it becomes.

2. The more/less a new member state internalizes the normative constraints, the less/more likely that fellow democracies will consider it an unstable

81 Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction,” in ibidem, p. 17.

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democracy, and thus it is less/more likely that their normative check against waging war will not work when dealing with it. More specifically, as a country advances in the stages of the spiral model, the less war-prone others (who already internalized the norm) become towards it.

3. The more/less member states completely internalize these norms, the less/more likely an intra-European interstate war is. More specifically, the more countries reach the final stage of the spiral model, the less likely a war among them will be.

In terms of a test, the independent variable would be degree of

norm internalization (or stage in the spiral model), while the dependent variable would be presence/absence of conflict. If we choose a quantitative study, we could use multivariate logistic regression since our dependent variable is dichotomous. However, process tracing case study seems more appropriate, since it is more difficult to quantify the factors we are dealing with. To analyze in which stage of the spiral model a country is, one could use process tracing method, with special attention to discourse analysis. The indicators could be the following: Are the actions and utterances of a state consistent with each other? Do the discourses in the country suggest that the norm is an organic part of the collective identity of the state? Does the state follow norms even when it is more costly for it than alternative actions? We also need to set up more specific criteria for putting a country in a stage or another. The case of the new Central and Eastern European states could be a test for these hypotheses, because most of them are not yet in the final stage of the spiral model. As they evolve, we should be able to see an increasing tendency toward peaceful conflict solving. One problem we might have is that at present we do not have too much variation in our dependent variable. However, we could still see (based on discourses, public opinion, negotiations) an increased tendency in these countries towards avoiding conflict with other democracies. A good indicator of internalization of the norm is when in the crisis situation s country does not even consider a non-peaceful resolution option.

An improvement in our understanding about how the norm works not only helps us improve the normative/cultural strand of the democratic peace argument, but it can also be conducive for the preservation on the long term of the European peace. After briefly outlining the hypotheses, the

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next step of this project will be to test them on the case of European enlargement to new member states, most of which do not belong to the narrowly defined Western core which center on Western Europe.

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STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2, 2007

PATTERNS OF COOPERATION AND CONFLICT:

ROMANIAN-UKRAINIAN BILATERAL RELATIONS, 1992-2006

Ruxandra Ivan* Abstract The Eastern European space proves itself full of instable spots and old disputes between States, regions, populations. The peaceful relations are constructed here by overcoming these legacies of the past, and through cooperation on multilateral levels. The relations between Romania and Ukraine are an example of this twofold trend. Inheriting a disputed border since the Ribbentrop – Molotov pact, and large minorities on their territories, the two States signed a Treaty of friendship and good neighborhood in 1997, when Romania was under pressure to fulfill the NATO accession criteria. After that, disputes re-emerged concerning the delimitation of the continental shelf in the Black Sea, and the question was brought before the International Court of Justice in 2004. On the other hand, Romania and Ukraine were partners in the attempts to give a solution to the Transnistrean conflict or in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

Observing the development of the relations between Romania and Ukraine since 1992, when the two countries established diplomatic relations, to 2004, we will argue that these relations follow a pattern of cooperation when conducted in a multilateral framework or when pressured by international organizations, while they are more prone to conflict when no other international actors are directly involved. These empirical findings support a liberal institutionalist approach to international relations in Eastern Europe, which will be the main theoretical approach adopted in our paper.

The empirical research will be based upon interviews with former Romanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs and secretaries of State, official documents, and press articles.

* PhD candidate in Political Science, Free University of Brussels and University of Bucharest. Teaching Assistant, Department of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the relation

between two neighbor countries in Eastern Europe: Romania and Ukraine, in order to understand the patterns of conflict and co-operation that emerged between them in the last fourteen years. While both States can be said geographically belonging to Europe, the political aspects of their positioning are not very obvious. Romania is a former communist country, placed in the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union after the Second World War, but having had a “non-conventional” foreign policy during the communist regime. In 2006, as we speak, Romania is a NATO member country, and is expecting an answer from the EU as to the date of its accession. Ukraine, on the other hand, is a former Soviet Republic which is undergoing a rather recent process of democratization which authentically started only with the Orange Revolution in 2004. Both countries are, in a certain way, placed in a peripheral area, a “buffer zone”1 between Western Europe and the Russian Federation. This is why their relationship is important for international stability from several points of view. First, by entering the EU, Romania will have to manage one of the Union’s external borders, comprising the border with Ukraine, too2. Secondly, both countries are gateways to Central Asia and the Russian Federation, be it for pipelines, trade, or trafficking. Finally, they have a common interest and a common foreign policy purpose: getting closer to the Western international organizations and, especially for Ukraine (but for Romania too in the first years after 1989), emancipating from dependency on Russia. In spite of this common interest, the relations between them have not always been smooth in the last fourteen years. As we will try to demonstrate in this paper, historical legacies that hinder this relationship were very difficult to overcome. If this finally happened, it is due, on the one hand, to the pressures of international organizations, and on the other hand, more recently, to very strong national interest issues, as perceived by the decision-makers.

1 Martin Wight (1978), Power Politics, London: Leicester University Press, p. 25. 2 In this context, V. G. Baleanu is wondering: “To what extent will Romania’s north-eastern border become the new line of inclusion-exclusion for the new Europe?”, in “In the Shadow of Russia: Romania’s Relations with Moldova and Ukraine”, Conflict Studies Research Centre Working Paper, G85, August 2000, p. 16.

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Thus, we will try to understand the way in which the relations

between the two countries evolved from a mutual distrust marked by their historical legacies to a more cooperative stance. We will start from the hypothesis that the external environment was a very strong factor in influencing the foreign policies of the two States towards each other. On the one hand, the external factor will be examined from a liberal institutionalist point of view, and we will show that international organizations have put strong incentives on both States to cooperate. On the other hand, we will argue that the external factor can also be addressed from a realist point of view, especially in times of crisis, and the case in point will be the energy crisis in Ukraine, in January 2006, when the two States were pushed into cooperation out of fear of Russia. The external factor that influences decision-making is doubled by two other variables: historical legacies, which in Central and Eastern Europe have an overwhelming weight, and domestic regimes.

The paper will be organized as follows. In the first part, we will draw a theoretical framework which will guide our research into the subject. Then, we will analyze the historical legacies that weight on the relationship between Romania and Ukraine, and the reasons why it proved rather ambiguous, and even conflicting, in a first phase. Then, we will try to assess the way in which different forms of co-operation emerged, and why this happened, insisting on the role of the international organizations and the need for survival in an anarchical system. The final part of our paper will be dedicated to a general assessment of the impact of the different variables that we took into consideration on the bilateral relations.

1. Theoretical framework The main theoretical framework at our disposal in order to study bilateral relations between Romania and Ukraine is foreign policy analysis (FPA). Various branches of FPA propose a number of variables which can go to more that 50, in certain cases. In an effort to simplify the framework proposed by traditional foreign policy analysis, we chose to limit the number of variables that we will take into consideration to three.

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An aspect which we consider very important – as in all Central and Eastern Europe – is the historical heritage, which, for these countries has not yet been overcome, like in the case of Franco - German relations. The historical heritage models the attitudes of one country to the other, especially in the first years after independence, when the two governments do not have any experience on bilateral relations and must start from a zero point. For the case of Romania and Ukraine, we will see that historical heritage was an important factor that hindered cooperation in a first stage of bilateral relations. If decision-makers have managed to overcome it, it is surprising to still see in the Romanian media allegations based on the ‘historical enmity’ between the two peoples. Thus, we chose not to insist too much on the public opinion as a variable in Romanian and Ukrainian foreign policy decision-making, as we will briefly assess its minor impact.

What we took instead into account was the variable of the domestic regime – which is, the political color of the different governments that were in power after 1991. The political color is of interest here inasmuch as it models foreign policy decisions, and not in what concerns internal reforms. This is why we will try to assess whether the different governments had a rather pro-Western, neutral or pro-Russian general orientation. Then, we will see whether there exists a correspondence between this general orientation and bilateral relations between the two countries.

Finally, a variable that always intervenes in foreign policy-making concerns external factors that influence decision-making. In our case, we took into consideration the main orientation of the important powers in the system. We did not treat separately the USA and the EU member countries, because they share a set of common values and norms of international conduct that channels the behavior of Romania and Ukraine in the same direction. Thus, even if they were treated separately, they would have certainly converged, as both the USA and the EU are interested in stability, cooperation and good relations among the countries in the East European region.

The other main power in the system that impacts on both countries’ foreign policy is Russia. For Romania, Russia is a very powerful State in its not very far abroad, whose past imperial tendencies have had a great impact on the country’s internal regime. In the case of Ukraine, we cannot speak of a simple calculus of power: Ukraine is part of Russia’s ‘near

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abroad’ and, during the last decade, it managed to get into the most important zones of Ukrainian internal politics3.

2. Patterns of conflict: the weight of historical legacies as national interest

The end of bipolarity brought about instability and allowed old historical legacies to spring out to surface. The relations between Central and Eastern European countries and former Soviet Republics are not framed by the Warsaw Pact and the strong hold of the USSR anymore. After 1991, they are to be re-built. But the issue here is how to find a foundation on which to build the relationship between Romania and Ukraine. Where to start over? The 1945 situation? But Ukraine did not exist as a State then. Actually, the two countries do not have a history of bi-lateral relations before 1991 at all. This is why it was very difficult to create such a relationship out of nothing.

Moreover, after 1991, each of the two countries strived for gaining a distinctive foreign policy identity. The issue is even more complicated in the case of Ukraine, whose problem was one of national identity building tout court, as it existed as an independent modern State only between 1918 and 1919. Perceived by everyone as naturally belonging to Russia’s sphere of influence4, Ukraine had to fight for its own statehood. As for Romania, it was rather reluctant to engage in cooperation with its Eastern neighbors5, fearing a resurgence of Russian imperialism.

This mutual fear comes on the background of historically unstable borders between Romania and the territory of nowadays Ukraine. Ukraine has inherited from the USSR some territories that were part of the “Greater Romania” in 1918. The Union of 1918 is one of the foundational myths of the Romanian State; the yearly commemoration of the Union is celebrated as Romania’s national day. These territories are northern Bukovina, the Hertza county, which seems to have been given to the Soviets because, at

3 See Janusz Bugajski (2004), Cold Peace. Russia’s New Imperialism, Westport, Connecticut, London: Palgrave, pp. 79-95. 4 Anne de Tinguy, «L’Ukraine, la Russie et l’Occident, de nouveaux équilibres dans une nouvelle Europe », in IDEM (ed.) (2000), L’Ukraine, nouvel acteur du jeu international, Bruxelles, L.G.D.J., Paris: Bruylant, p. 10. 5 Moldova is, here, a case of its own.

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Yalta, when they drew the frontiers, the pencil of Molotov had a bold top, which went over this county, initially not included in the negotiations; the Khotyn county, and the South of Bessarabia. All these territories belonged to Romania between 1918 and 19406. These territories were mentioned in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, as desired by the USSR. They were given to the USSR in 1940, along with the rest of Bessarabia, which forms now the territory of the Republic of Moldova. The Paris peace Treaty, in 1947, establishing the responsibility of Romania as an aggressor State, left them to the USSR. Thus, nowadays Ukraine has more than 40% of the territories lost by Romania to the USSR in 1940.

But the most controversial issue here is probably less territorial than economic. It’s that of the Serpents’ Island, a very small island (only 17 ha, not inhabited and with no water sources) situated near the Romanian town of Sulina, where the Danube flows into the Black Sea.

The Island belongs to the Romanian state since the Berlin Congress in 1878, being taken into consideration among the dobrudjan territories that Romania was entitled to in exchange for the southern Bessarabia (given to the Russian empire). It continued to be Romanian till 1948. The island got to the Soviets in very ambiguous circumstances. It was neither part of the discussion at the moment of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, nor in the Paris Treaty, and it was never mentioned as belonging to the USSR until the moment of 1948. But in 1948, a team of Romanian and Soviet engineers went on the field in order to establish the exact configuration of the border, which was to be traced according to the Paris Treaty. It seems that the Soviets claimed that the Serpents’ Island should be theirs, and the communist Romanian government of Petru Groza signed the Protocol on the trajectory of the State frontier between Romania and the USSR, the 4th of February 1948, which foresaw that the island was to be part of the USSR. The Romanian or the Soviet Parliaments never ratified this Protocol, and this is the basis on which, after 1991, the Romanian Government contested the legality of this act.

6 We only took into consideration historical events after the creation of the Romanian modern State in 1859, as before, the Romanian Principalities were either under Ottoman, Habsburg or Russian rule.

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Being very small, not inhabited and with no water sources, the island did not have great importance at the time. But it acquired it after the fall of the Soviet Empire, from several points of view. First, resources of oil and gas were discovered in the sea, around the island7. Being located between Romania and Ukraine, the island counts for the delimitation of the territorial waters of each of the two countries, and by way of consequence, for the exploitation of the underwater resources. Moreover, it is significant for the delimitation of the exclusive economic zones whether the island is inhabited or not; this is why Ukraine sustains it is. And indeed it is, in a way, because the Soviets established a strong military basis there, which surveyed the naval and aerial traffic in the Black Sea all through the Mediterranean. Now, the military facilities belong to Ukraine. But with the 1997 bilateral Treaty, an agreement was reached as to their disaffection.

Meanwhile, the local mythology went so far as to link (especially by way of etymology) the name of the Serpents’ Island to Atlantis and to trace a history of the island which goes as far as the Trojan war: it seems that Achilles had built some temples on the island8. Fortunately, this mythology does not have a very large audience in Romania; what can be striking is the fact that a Romanian author who writes on the international law takes it over when writing about the legal status of the island9.

In 1961 was signed the “Treaty between the Government of the Popular Republic of Romania and the Government of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics concerning the regime of the Romanian-Soviet State frontiers, collaboration and mutual assistance in problems regarding frontiers”, but this Treaty did not contain provisions on the delimitation of the territorial waters, exclusive economic areas and continental shelf. During the communist regime, starting with 1967, there were several attempts at the delimitation of the territorial waters, the continental plateau and the exclusive economic areas. The negotiations did not lead to an agreement, and they were abandoned in 1987. Thus, there was no bilateral

7 Stefan Deaconu (2005), Principiul bunei vecinatati in dreptul romanesc, Bucuresti: Ed. All Beck, p. 92. For a lengthy overview of the resources in the continental shelf, see George Damian, “Insula Serpilor, piatra de incercare a diplomatiei romanesti”, in Victor Roncea (ed.), Axa. Noua Romanie la Marea Neagra, (2005), Bucuresti: ed. Ziua, pp. 206-209. 8 www.tomrad.ro/iserpi. 9 Stefan Deaconu, op. cit., pp. 93-94.

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treaty between Romania and the USSR concerning the delimitation of the continental shelf in the Black Sea.

As showed by the declaration of the Romanian government on the occasion of the Ukrainian independence, Romania tried to found the relations with Ukraine on the recognition of the injustice done through the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, thus trying to make possible the retrocession of its former territories. Negotiations for a political basic Treaty between the two countries were blocked until 1995 mainly because of the Romanian request for the inclusion of a condemnation of the Pact, which would imply the recognition of the injustice of the border. The initial position of Romania towards Ukraine demanded the denouncement of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, and a solution to the problem of the Serpents’ Island, which, according to the Romanian part, did not legally belong to Ukraine. This radical position slowly changed in time, and one should look for the causes of the change. On the other hand, Romania was interested in not having a direct border with the Russian Federation, and, by way of consequence, in a real independence of Ukraine. This interest develops in the middle of the 1990’s, along with an interest of all the Western countries in having a democratic Ukraine between the European Union and Russia.

But during these first years, the stake was greater for Ukraine, which was struggling for its own survival as a State. The position of Ukraine towards Romania can only be understood in the broader context of regional relations among Russia, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Romania.

Firstly, Ukraine has a problem of national identity. Medieval historiography calls Ukrainians “the little Russians” (along with “white Russians” – the population of nowadays Belarus, and Russians), since the XIth century, while the name Ukraine seems to signify, etymologically, “border land”, “periphery”10. Moreover, just like the majority of former Soviet Republics, it had on its territory a very large Russian minority: around 22%, while the percentage of Russian native speakers was even

10 See Alain Ruze, (1999), Ukrainiens et Roumains, IXe – XXe siecle. Rivalites carpato-pontiques, Paris: L’Harmattan, p. 9.

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bigger: 33%11. The Russian minority is concentrated in the industrialized East, while ethnic Ukrainians populate the agrarian West, where there are also important Romanian, Hungarian and Slovakian minorities. At the moment of the declaration of independency, the Western countries manifested a lot of skepticism as to its possibilities of real autonomy12. This is why Ukraine had to prove, first of all, its capacity to be a real player in the regional system.

Secondly, there were territorial disputes with the Russian Federation, too13: mostly, the statute of Crimea. Crimea was transferred from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the ‘reunification’ between Russians and Ukrainians. The peninsula, in which the majority of the population is ethnically Russian, attempted at declaring independence in 1992, but the Crimean Parliament withdrew the decision in a few days. One year later, the 9th of July 1993, the State Duma in Moscow declared in unanimity Sebastopol, a “Russian city”. Russia also maintains its XIVth army in Transnistria, at the border between Moldova and Ukraine, thus having means of military pressure from both East and West. This is especially useful in the context of the Russian foreign policy doctrine of the “near abroad”, which is another way to assert the Russian sphere of influence on the former Soviet Republics. It is not difficult to see that territorial claims from both Russia and Romania, along with the lack of confidence and support from the West, made Ukraine feel very threatened in the first years after independence, and to adopt a realist approach of international relation relying on self-help14.

11 According to a 1989 counting of the population, quoted in Rainer Munz and Rainer Ohliger, «L’Ukraine post-soviétique: une nation en formation entre l’est et l’ouest », in Anne de TInguy(ed.), op.cit., pp. 79 – 107. 12 Anne de Tinguy, art. cit., pp. 12 - 15. 13 Roman Wiolczuk thinks that the main controversial issues in Ukrainian-Russian relations can be synthesized as follows: the recognition of borders (the problem of Crimea), the military balance between the two countries (the problem of the nuclear arsenal), the economic relations, the energy relations and the CIS integration. See his book 2003 Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991 – 2000, London and New York: Routledge Curzon, pp. 29 - 45. 14 Ibidem, p. 51.

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Under these conditions, Ukraine tries to distance itself from Russia, firstly by a policy of non-alignment. Some authors even say that “Ukraine’s drive to escape Russian domination was one of the single most important factors behind the collapse of the USSR”15. The newly independent Republic is very reluctant to advance with the integration into the Community of Independent States, especially in the field of security. Instead, it engages in regional cooperation with other former Soviet Republics willing to emancipate from Russia, by participating at the informal union of GUAM (Georgia – Ukraine – Azerbaijan – Moldova), founded in 1997. It also enhances cooperation with Poland and Germany, in an attempt to gain an identity of central European country: “it made the policy of a ‘return to Europe’, from which it says was artificially separated, the central element of an approach that allowed it to distance from the USSR and to get closer to the USA and the Western European countries”16. Nevertheless, the Russian Federation is and remains, during these years, the main economic partner of Ukraine. In 1993-1994, Russia raises the price of the oil delivered to Ukraine in order to align to the market prices17. In 1996, a new tax of 20% is imposed by Eltsin to all importations coming from Ukraine. Russian takeovers of Ukrainian economic assets were an important trend in 2000-2004. The latest development of the energy relation between Russia and Ukraine is the major crisis in January 2006, which, as we shall see, has an impact on the Romanian – Ukrainian relations as well.

Ukraine also used its nuclear arsenal as a means of pressure for both Russia and the Western countries. In 1991, Ukraine made a real breakthrough when, two days after the Moscow putsch (August 24, 1991), it placed under its jurisdiction all military facilities on its territory, which comprised 30% of the Soviet tanks, 25% of the aviation, the Black Sea fleet and 176 ICBMs and 1180 warheads18. Having accepted at first to give up its

15 Kathleen Mihalisko, « Security Issues in Ukraine and Belarus », in Regina Cowen Karp (ed.), (1993), Central and Eastern Europe: The Challenge of Transition, New York=: Oxford University Press, pp. 225-257, p. 237. 16 Anne de Tinguy, art. cit., p. 10. 17 About energy dependency, also see Margarita Mercedes Balmaceda, “Gas, Oil and the Linkages between Domestic and Foreign Policies: The Case of Ukraine”, in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 50, no. 2, Mar. 1998, pp. 257-286. 18 Cf. Roman Wolczuk, op. cit., p. 35. Kathleen Mihalisko confirms the number of missiles, but she raises the number of warheads to 1240 (see art. cit., p. 243).

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nuclear facilities, it comes back on the decision when it realizes that it can use them as a strong instrument of negotiation.

This new assertive position of Ukraine determined the Western countries to take it into account as a possible balancer for Russian imperialism in the region. This is why the relations between Ukraine and the Western countries went smoother and smoother; in 1994, the USA even offered security guarantees in exchange for the signature of the Non- Proliferation Treaty, by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear capabilities.

This overview of the Ukrainian position in the region in the very first years of independence allows us to make several remarks concerning its situation. Ukraine had all the reasons to feel insecure from several points of view. First, by being seen rather as an appendix of Russia, than as a country of its own, it had to strive for a distinctive national identity and statehood. Secondly, it had to confront territorial claims from its neighbors – let us remember that, besides Russia and Romania, Poland could have had such claims, too. Third, it had to emancipate from the Russian sphere of influence. Last, but not least, economic and energetic dependence on Russia was, and still is, an important threat.

All these legacies, be they more ancient, as the territorial or minorities questions, or more recent, like the economic dependency, deeply modeled the international and regional behavior of Ukraine since 1991. Consequently, they also affected its relations with Romania.

3. Some facts in bilateral relations One can reconstitute several important moments in the bilateral relations between Romania and Ukraine, which we shall consider turning points for our analysis. The first stage of the relationship is marked by rather cool relations and mutual distrust. This might be considered normal, given the declaration of the Romanian government on the occasion of the independence of Ukraine: “The recognition of Ukraine’s independence and the desire to develop mutually beneficial Romanian-Ukrainian relations do not entail the recognition of the inclusion in the territory of the newly independent Ukrainian state of northern Bukovina, the Hertza region, the Khotyn region or the region of southern Bessarabia, which were forcibly

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annexed by the USSR and thereafter incorporated into the territorial structure of Ukraine on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact”19. This declaration is followed by a similar one adopted in the Parliament.

The bilateral diplomatic relations were established on February 2, 1992, and during the first year in office, the Ukrainian foreign Minister visited Bucharest (September 1992). It’s an occasion for the official start of negotiations of a basic political treaty. The visit was not returned by his homologue until 1997, when the Treaty was finally signed. The two Parliaments sent visiting delegations to each other in 1992-1993. Nevertheless, the first forms of cooperation between the two countries appeared at a multi-lateral level, in June 1992, when both were founding members of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, an initiative launched by Turkey and joined, besides Romania and Ukraine, by Bulgaria, Russia, the Republic of Moldova, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Albania.

Both countries were also involved in the four-sided framework of talks concerning the situation in Transnistria, where the conflict had erupted on the 3rd of March, 1992. But Romania renounced to participate at these talks since 1993.

While Ukraine manages to set up very good relations with Hungary and especially Poland20, negotiations for the Treaty with Romania are deadlocked during the period 1992-1995, mainly because the Ukrainian side does not accept the inclusion in the basic Treaty of a condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It is only in 1995 that the two sides agree on the general form of the bilateral agreements: they were to be formed by a Treaty of good neighborliness and cooperation, a common Declaration of the two Heads of State which was to condemn the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, and a document containing guidelines for the establishment of the regime of common frontiers, which was to touch the issue of the Serpents’ Island, too. Negotiations are speeded up with the coming into office of the Romanian President Constantinescu. Having political basic Treaties with all the neighbors was one of the preconditions for NATO accession; or, NATO was to take a decision on this issue in 1997, at the Madrid summit (7-9 July). The Treaty was signed a few weeks before the NATO summit, on

19 Declaration of the Romanian Government, 29 November 1991. 20 The Treaty of Good Neighborliness with Poland was signed in May 1992, only a few months after Ukrainian independence.

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the 2nd of June, and it comes into force, after ratification in the Parliaments, on the 22 of October 1997. It was heavily criticized by a significant part of the Romanian public opinion. While Romanians usually agree on foreign policy goals, it seems that this Treaty split the public opinion into those in favor of the overcoming of the past, who also sustained the Treaty as a means of showing our good will to NATO, and those who consider it as a historical treason of the Romanian ideal of re-unification and of the Romanians that live in nowadays Ukraine.

The provisions of the Treaty were rather ambiguous concerning the disputed issues. The reference to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact is replaced by a very vague allusion, in the Preamble, to the “condemnation of the unjust acts of totalitarian regimes and military dictatorship”21. The Parts agree that their common border is inviolable (art. 2) and that their relations are founded on the respect, among others, of the Helsinki Final Act (which is the last international agreement mentioning that borders in Europe are recognized by all signatory parties and cannot be changed forcefully) (art. 1). Some vital issues are postponed: the regime of the common frontier is not decided upon, and the Treaty specifies in article 1.2 that it will be set by an ulterior Treaty (which has only been signed six years after, in 2003). This also involves the issue of the delimitation of territorial waters and the Serpents’ island. The article 5 states that the Parts “will sustain each other in their efforts for integration into the European and Euro-Atlantic structures”. The most significant provisions are those concerning the statute of minorities, set out in art. 13. The Romanian side obtained an important victory through the inclusion of a reference to the Recommendation 1201 of the Council of Europe, which enhances the rights of minorities. Nevertheless, the Treaty specifies that “this recommendation does not refer to collective rights and does not oblige the contracting Parties to grant to the respective persons the right to a special territorial autonomy status based upon ethnic criteria” (art. 13.1).

Most of the Romanian foreign policy decision-makers are rather optimist about the Treaty, especially for the article 13 concerning

21 “Treaty concerning the good neighborliness and cooperation between Romania and Ukraine”, Monitorul Oficial, partea I, nr. 157/16. 07. 1997, Preamble.

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minorities22. Nevertheless, former foreign minister Melescanu (1992-1996) thinks that, although in general the Treaty reflects the Romanian position, the way in which it is applied by the Ukrainian party is discriminating for the Romanian minority: “Ukraine applies it on a reciprocal basis: the rights that you grant to the Ukrainian minority in Romania will be hold by us to the Romanian minority: they will have as many schools as ours have etc, thus ignoring the huge difference that exists between the two minorities, in terms of numbers as well as in terms of its creation through political decisions that have nothing to do with the right to self-determination…”23.

The first bilateral visit at Presidents’ level took place on the occasion of the signing of the Treaty, when Leonid Kutchma came to Bucharest. The first Romanian President to visit Kiev was Emil Constantinescu, in May 1999. Later, Ion Iliescu went to Kiev, Odessa (2002) and Tchernautsi (2003). Traian Basescu visited Kiev in December 2004 and in February 2006.

The border question was not completely set up until now. In 2003 was signed a “Treaty concerning the regime of the Romanian – Ukrainian State frontier, collaboration and mutual assistance on border issues”, which entered into force in May 2004. The Treaty foresees the recognition of the borders agreed upon in the Romanian – Soviet Treaty in 1961. But the issue of the territorial waters remains unsolved. Between 1998 and 2004, there were 24 rounds of negotiations. Romania has given up the idea of getting back the Serpents’ Island; the only issue that separates now the two sides is the delimitation of the continental shelf, which depends on whether the island is considered as inhabited or not. Romania brought the case before of the International Court of Justice in Hague, on the 16th of September 2004. It is the first case involving Romania before the ICJ.

2004 is also the year of the construction, by Ukraine, of the Bastroe channel (begun on May 11). Before, the Ukrainian ships transiting the Danube had to use the Romanian channel of Sulina. It seems that this was bringing important losses to the Ukrainian economy, so it tried to find alternative solutions for navigation through the Danube Delta. But it also

22 Interview with former Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Severin, Bruxelles, March 23, 2006; interview with former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, Bucharest, January 2005. 23 Interview with former Romanian foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu, Bucharest, October 7, 2005.

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seems that the construction of the Bastroe channel brings about very important ecological consequences for the Danube Delta, underlined by various ecologist organizations24 and by the Romanian government, who protested against the channel. The Ukrainian part infringed the Treaty signed in 1997 and other international conventions25 by not consulting the Romanian part before the construction of the channel, which affects the Romanian portion of the Delta, sustains the Romanian government. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian part considers that, the works taking place on its territory, it should not have done so.

The issue had an important international impact. Among the states, the governmental and non-governmental organizations which mobilized against the construction of the channel, because of its apparently disastrous ecological consequences, are the USA, Germany, the EU, Ramsar-UNESCO, the Environmental Danube Forum, etc26. The international media also gave accounts of the story27. After numerous requests from the Romanian part, bilateral talks on the issue began on July 20, 2004, at experts’ level. But they did not lead to significant evolutions. 24 The reports of several NGOs are quoted on the official site of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, www.mae.ro. 25 These are: “The Convention on the conservation of wild life and natural habitats in Europe”, Berna, 19 September 1979, under the aegis of the Council of Europe; “The Convention on internationally significant wet areas, especially as habitat for the aquatic birds”, Ramsar, 1971; “The Convention on the evaluation of trans-border impact on the environment”, Espoo, 1991; “The Convention on the cooperation for the protection and sustainable utilization of the Danube river”, signed in Sofia, 1994; “The Convention on the access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice concerning environmental issues”, Bonn, 1979; “The Convention on the protection of the world cultural and natural patrimony”, Paris, 1972; “The Agreement between the Ministry of environment and territorial management of the Republic of Moldova, the Ministry of waters, forests and environmental protection in Romania and the Ministry of the environment and natural resources in Ukraine concerning the cooperation in the protected areas of Danube Delta and Lowe Prut”, Bucharest, 2000; “The Agreement between the Romanian and Ukrainian governments concerning the cooperation in the field of trans- border waters management”, Galati, 1997, and last, but not least, “The Treaty between Romania and Ukraine on the regime of the Romanian-Ukrainian State frontier, collaboration and mutual assistance in border issues”, Cernauti, 2003. Cf. the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.mae.ro. 26 Cf. the official site of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.mae.ro 27 See, for example, L’Express, 28 June 2004; Berliner Zeitung, 31 August 2004; Der Tagesspiegel, 31 August 2004; Le Figaro, 27 September 2004.

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In order to solve this type of problems, in 2005 was created the Joint Presidential Commission Basescu – Yushchenko: the two Presidents thought that a direct high-level relation would smooth bilateral relations. And indeed it did: they met three times in 2005 and Basescu paid a visit to Kiev in February 2006, right after the energy crisis in Ukraine. They talked about setting up joint energy projects that would allow both countries not to depend on energy from Russia anymore, while Yushchenko declared that “The enhancement of our dialogue [with Romania] is the most characteristic feature of the year 2005”28.

Thus, if we were to trace some distinct periods of bilateral relations between Romania and Ukraine, we find the following:

1. 1992-1995: divergent initial positions, when negotiations do not lead to any result, as none of the two countries wants to distance itself from the initial position.

2. 1995-1997: negotiations are unblocked by a more pronounced tendency to compromise

3. 1997-2003: the most important Treaties are signed and several high-level visits take place.

4. 2003-2005: the issues of the Bastroe channel and the delimitation of the continental shelf divide the two countries.

5. since the end of 2005, new peak of cooperation, based on joint energy projects and Black Sea Cooperation.

4. Domestic factors and foreign policy

We will now move on to examine the second variable that we took into account in order to analyze the relations between Romania and Ukraine: the internal political regime. In applying this variable, we must look into the interaction between the domestic regimes of the two States, paying attention to the changes in the internal political configuration in each case. This is why a brief overview of the different governments and their foreign policies is necessary. Then, we will try to mirror the changes of governmental majority in the two countries with the periods of ups and downs in the bilateral relation. 28 Cf. Ukrainian Presidential site, ww7.president.gov.ua/en/news/data/print/5817.html

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In Romania, the first years after 1989 were of confusion about foreign policy. The turn towards West was not yet very obvious under Iliescu, who had a very bad external image, being considered a neo- communist. The decisive move that he makes towards a Western orientation of foreign policy comes with the signing of the Partnership for Peace, in 1994, and the Snagov Declaration in 1995, by which the entire Romanian political class (represented by all the parliamentary parties) affirms its intention to support the objective of the European integration for Romania.

The change of government in 1996 brings in Emil Constantinescu, a known intellectual (former President of the Bucharest University) and member of the “democratic opposition”. He has a very good image with the Western countries. He speeds up the negotiations for the Basic Political Treaty with Ukraine – observers say that in order to get a positive answer about Romania’s accession to NATO membership, which was to be decided in 199729, but the former President denies it30. The Treaty is finally signed in 1997. The way in which Romania accepted, in 1997, to sign the Treaty in its present form is significantly due to the change of government in 1996. While former Minister of Foreign Affairs Melescanu thinks that maybe we could have obtained more31, which means that he would have continued negotiating, for the new President in office it was important to show determination in overcoming legacies from the past and showing good will to the international community. So, firstly, the new President had to prove his commitment to international norms of cooperation and good neighborliness. Second, he had to prove that he was able to sign a Treaty that was not very popular among Romanian public opinion. The former President says that it was only possible to conclude this Treaty in his first year in office, because the great capital of trust he was enjoying in the country, and because he was known for his anti-communist orientation and thus would not be perceived as selling his country to the Russians32. The

29 Among others: V. G. BALEANU, loc. cit., p. 24; Roman WORONOWYCZ, “Romania, Ukraine settle territorial dispute”, in The Ukrainian Weekly, June 8, 1997, vol. LXV, no. 23 etc. 30 Interview with Emil Constantinescu, former President of Romania, January 2006. 31 Interview with former Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu, Bucharest, October 7, 2005 32 Interview with former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, Bucharest, January 2006.

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former President seems to be ready to forget the past and found bilateral relations on new bases, on the model of Poland which, he says, had much more to lose than Romania if we think in terms of historical borders, and yet signed a treaty with Ukraine some time earlier33. He is also the one who came up with the idea of a network of tri-lateral cooperations around Romania, the first of which was Poland-Romania-Ukraine.

The debates around the Treaty can also tell us more about the way foreign policy decisions are made in Romania and the weight of different internal factors, such as the relations between the responsible institutions or the public opinion. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adrian Severin, seems to have had some disagreements with the President on the way negotiations were run: “The fact that M. Ceausu34 almost constantly made declarations in the media about the negotiations before telling me what was happening, or the way in which he tried to take his mandate directly from the President, did not serve the cause too well”35. Moreover, the Minister even reversed some of the decisions of the chief negotiator appointed by the President36. As for the influence of the public opinion, we can say that the Treaty was signed in its present form in spite of vociferous protests of mass-media or civic associations, a fact that even confirmed by the former Minister37. Several critics were brought to the Treaty, beginning with the « historical treason » of leaving behind Romanian territories. Dominut Padurean, Professor of History at the Romanian Naval Academy and author of the single monograph of the Serpent’s Island38, thinks that the Treaty is “the worst and the most criminal Treaty signed by Romania in the last decades”39. Paul Nistor points out that all the public debate around the Treaty only emphasized the problematic historical heritage, instead of revealing the positive aspects of the bilateral relations40. The attitude of the

33 Ibidem. 34 The chief negotiator of the Treaty, appointed by the President. 35 Adrian Severin, Gabriel Andreescu, (2000), Locurile unde se construieste Europa, Iasi : Polirom, p. 49. 36 Ibidem, p. 50. 37 Ibidem, p. 54. 38 Dominut Padurean (2002), Insula Serpilor, Constanta: Ed. Muntenia. 39 Mircea Lungu, interview with Dominut Padurean, in Victor Roncea (ed.), op. cit., p. 215. 40 Paul Nistor, “Problema memoriei in relatiile internationale. Tratatul romano-ucrainean (1997)”, in Xenopoliana, X, 2002.

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public opinion towards Ukraine is also showed by a recent opinion poll. Measuring the “temperature” of the sentiments of the Romanian population towards foreign countries, the poll placed Ukraine in the “rather cold” zone, followed only by Russia and the Arab States41.

We should not look for the impact of public opinion on decision- making in Ukraine either, where observers say that “as the civil society is weak, the State defines by its own the country’s national interests”42.

The next legislature brought back Ion Iliescu as a President and a very strong government who had to deal with the issue of the Bastroe channel. Since 2004, the new president, Traian Basescu, continuously asserts his role in foreign policy and his strong orientation towards the strategic partnership with the USA, while having a rather cold relation with Russia. This stance, combined with the new orientation of Ukrainian foreign policy brought about by the Orange Revolution, led to a rapprochement between the two countries.

As for the Ukrainian part, the first elections after the independence were won by the incumbent President, Leonid Kravtchuk. He is a former communist party leader who managed to take power by taking advantage of the 1991 coup d’Etat in Moscow, and who tried to gain legitimacy by playing the independence card. His orientation in foreign policy was towards distancing Ukraine from Russia, by avoiding to be attracted into a reconstruction of the former USSR through the CIS; in order to do this, he sought alliances with Central European states, such as those of the Visegrad Group and Germany. In a documented study about foreign policy during the Kravtchuk regime, Charles Furtado shows that nationalism was certainly not an important determinant of Ukraine’s foreign policy43. On the contrary, Ilya Prizel sustains that Kravchuk’s foreign policy was nationalistic, following a post-colonial pattern in which leaders try to legitimize themselves through foreign policy. Thus, Kravchuk’s pro-

41 Institutul pentru Politici Publice (Institute for Public Policies), Percepţia opiniei publice din România asupra politicii externe şi a relaţiilor internaţionale, October 2005. 42 Oleksandr Dergatchev, “L’Ukraine entre l’Europe et l’Eurasie, une voie semée d’embûches», in Anne de Tinguy (ed.), op. cit., pp. 111 – 125, p. 121. 43 Charles F. Furtado, Jr, “Nationalism and Foreign Policy in Ukraine”, in Political Science Quarterly, vol. 109, no. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 81-104.

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Westernism is a mere instrumentalization of foreign policy for electoral purposes. But it didn’t pay, as he lost the 1994 elections44.

They were won by Leonid Kutchma, originating from the Eastern part of Ukraine and former director of the biggest nuclear missile plant in the world. Kutchma became Prime Minister of Ukraine in 1992, under Kravtchuk, and ever since there was a marked rivalry between the two leaders in order to gain support from the population. While Kutchma was seen as rather pro-Russian, predicating an Eurasianist doctrine that linked Ukraine to the former Soviet space45, he managed to pursue some important economic reforms which made him popular. A marked pro- Russian orientation in foreign policy is characteristic of his first term in office, while beginning with 1997, he becomes a virulent critic of the CIS and he pushes for alternative forms of regional integration, such as GUAM. Another shift intervenes in 2000, when Kutchma has to face an internal scandal that might have costed him his position; he is now supported by the Russians, with whom he is obliged to make important compromises.

Both countries changed government in 2004. While in Ukraine, that was the result of violent mass protest against the falsified elections that tried to impose the pro-Russian Yanukovitch as a winner, the Romanian President Basescu adopted the orange as the official color of his electoral campaign, with a direct reference to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. He also went to Kiev in order to assist to the confirmation of Yushchenko as a President. Thus, the relation between the two Presidents debuted under very promising auspices. Yushchenko, the new Ukrainian President, is well-known for his anti-Russian and pro-American orientation, as well as President Basescu. In spite of this, during 2005, there were several confrontational declarations from the two Ministries of Foreign Affairs linked to the Bastroe Channel and to the negotiations for the settlement of the Transdnistrean problem46. But the personal relation established between Basescu and Yushchenko seems to contribute to a better relation 44 Ilya Prizel (1998), National Identity and Foreign Policy. Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 374. 45 See Kuchma’s inaugural Presidency speech, quoted in Stephen R. Burant, “Foreign Policy and National Identity: A Comparison of Ukraine and Belarus”, in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 47, no. 7, November 1995, p. 1138. 46 See especially the Romanian newspaper Ziua, 13 and 14 June, 2005, but also Victor Roncea (ed.), op. cit., pp. 45-51.

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between the two countries. Ukraine and Romania are new partners in the framework of the Black Sea Cooperation (we should not forget that the Black Sea area is the main foreign policy preoccupation of Basescu’s administration), along with Georgia; it is with these two countries that Romania is trying to build a strategic partnership, and we must also note that these are the most pro-American countries in the Black Sea region. President Yushchenko announced, after Basescu’s visit to Kiev in February, that Ukrainian bilateral priorities in 2006 are agreements with USA, Poland, and Romania47. As for Poland, it is the country that had best relations with Ukraine since 1992.

Period Romanian domestic

regime Ukrainian domestic regime

Bilateral relations

1991-1992 Iliescu, undecided Kravchuk – pro-Westerner

Beginning of diplomatic relations and negotiations on the Treaty

1992-1994 Iliescu, undecided then becomes lightly pro-Westerner

Kravchuk, pro-Westerner

Transnistrean issue Beginning of cooperation in multilateral framework (BSEC)

1994-1996 Iliescu, rather pro- Westerner

Kutchma - Eurasianist

Unblocking of negotiations

1996-1999 Constantinescu, markedly pro- Westerner

Kutchma – pro-Westerner

1997: Basic Treaty First bilateral Presidential level visits

1999-2000 Constantinescu Kutchma 2000-2004 Iliescu, pro-

Westerner Kutchma forced by the Russians into

2003: Treaty on State frontier 2004: construction

47 ww7.president.gov.ua/en/news/data/print/6045.html

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their camp of Bastroe channel Romanian case to the ICJ on the delimitation of the continental shelf

2004-2006 Basescu, pro- American

Yushchenko, pro-Westerner

ICJ and Bastroe issues, then Joint Presidential Commission High-level visits Energy cooperation Black Sea Cooperation

The comparative table shows no superposition between the mandates of the different legislatures in the two countries and the evolution of bilateral relations. It is very difficult to find a linkage between domestic regime and foreign policy especially in the first years of bilateral relations between Romania and Ukraine. Both countries were in transition; both were rather preoccupied with internal reforms, economic and social problems. It is true that the basic political Treaty was signed once the democratic opposition gained power in Romania, but the Treaty was being negotiated for a very long time already. Moreover, the fact that Ukraine had no problem in finding agreements on basic Treaties with her other Eastern European neighbors in the first years after independence (like Poland or Hungary) does not point to any reluctance of its domestic regime in strengthening ties with neighboring countries, in spite of the existing problems of minorities or borders. The only regularity that we can notice is that relations were better between Romania and Ukraine when both Presidents had a pronounced, almost emphatic, pro-Western orientation and a very marked reticence to Russia: Constantinescu with Kutchma in his anti-Russian period (1996-2000), and Basescu with Yushchenko (2005-2006).

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5. External factors: distribution of power and/or institutional pressures

For almost 50 years, the international system could only be thought in bipolar terms. There were the two superpowers and their allies, while very few countries in the world were genuinely neutral. The end of the Cold War was followed by a rather brief period of euphoria, which led some analysts to consider that the ‘end of history’ was approaching48. In time, States began to re-define their national interests, by re-considering the international distribution of power. The relations between Romania and Ukraine can also be viewed through the lens of national interest, defined, as in Morgenthau, in terms of power49. Meanwhile, if we look at the international distribution of power, this will not tell us much in terms of variables: power as such is not a variable in our case, since we cannot assess whether the power of the USA, for example, increased or decreased since 1991. Moreover, if measured in absolute terms, the power of Ukraine was greater in the first years of the 1990s, when it had control over the nuclear weapons and over the Black Sea Fleet. Nonetheless, with no allies, it was rather isolated on the international arena. Thus, we can say that Ukraine is a more powerful state nowadays, through the good relations that it maintains with her Western neighbors and with Western powers in general.

So, instead of taking power, measured quantitatively, as a variable, we should rather consider the attitude of the significant powers in the system towards the international arena and towards the two countries that we study.

If Romania starts with a great capital of international sympathy after 1989, it loses it soon because of internal unrest (the events of June 1990, student’s manifestations in Piata Universitatii and the arrival of the minors), and because the new government in Bucharest is seen as a neo- communist50. As for Ukraine, the Western States are rather skeptical about 48 Francis Fukuyama (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, New York, The Free Press. 49 Hans Morgenthau (1948), Politics Among Nations, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 50 Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Teodor Melescanu (1992 – 1996) complains about the very bad image of the government in international for a, which was the most important challenge that he had to fight (Interview with Teodor Melescanu, former MAE of Romania, October 2005). We should nevertheless place his statement in the context: he changed party and is now member of the PNL, the main challenger of his former party.

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its capacity to be an independent State51. Moreover, the refusal of Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal attracted the mistrust of the West, at a time when relations between USA and Russia went rather smoothly: “This only brought a great amount of Western criticism of Ukraine’s policy as short- sighted, irresponsible, and dangerous. Kravchuk’s intransigence and misplaced assertiveness created a perception of Ukraine as a spoiler state bent on obstructing the emergence of a new security system stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok”52.

Both Romania and Ukraine had a cautious start in foreign policy orientations. Geographical proximity and historical ties with Russia prompted the two countries not to be very audacious in their orientation towards the West. This is why, in a first stage, both tried to keep their options open. Moreover, for Romania, the dismantling of the USSR was an opportunity to try to re-gain the territories lost after the Second World War: this is why its relations with Moldova were very romantic in a first period. Northern Bukovina and southern Bessarabia were also concerned. This is why, taking into account national interest, Romania pressed for the recognition of the historical injustices done through the Ribbentrop- Molotov Pact. On the contrary, Ukrainian national interest went in the opposite sense: as we showed in the fist section, this country had to consolidate its statehood, being threatened by minorities and territorial claims from several of its neighbors53. As documented by John Dunne in 1994, “Ukraine still lacks a consistent and detailed security policy. This lack of a detailed policy is evidenced in the mutability of policies such as Ukraine’s ‘block free’ status and its ‘non-nuclear’ identity. As it struggled to take account of domestic and international circumstances, Ukrainian policy has been reactive rather than pro-active”54. Under these circumstances, the relation between the two States can be seen as a zero-

51 Jean-Yves Haine, «La politique occidentale vis-à-vis de l’Ukraine», in L’Ukraine et la stabilité en Europe, Actes du Colloque organisé par l’Institut Royal Supérieur de défense, Bruxelles, 1994, pp. 15-27, p. 19-20. He also says that “All through 1992 and 1993, it was only the nuclear aspect that interested the West” (p. 24). 52 Ilya Prizel, op. cit., p. 383. 53 Kathleen Mihalisko, art. cit., p. 246. 54 John F. Dunne, «Ukraine’s Continuing Security Dilemma.A Summary Update», in L’Ukraine et la stabilité en Europe, Actes du Colloque organisé par l’Institut Royal Supérieur de défense, Bruxelles, 1994, pp. 29-41, p. 29.

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sum game: what is lost by one of them is gained by the other: mutual gains are not possible. Thus, a cooperative logic cannot be reached in the bilateral relation.

By 1995, Romania manages to define its two most important foreign policy objectives: accession to NATO and integration into the EU. As these organizations impose very strict membership political criteria, revision of the existing frontiers cannot go hand in hand with the Romanian objective of integration. This is why getting back the territories in question is not a viable perspective anymore. Once having renounced to territorial claims, the relations with Ukraine can start afresh.

By this time, Ukraine too settles to a policy of non-alignment with Russia and gains recognition from the USA and Western European countries. It manages to stay away from deepened integration with the CIS and signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty and START I, in 1994: both treaties are mediated by the USA, which in turn offer security guarantees and financial aid to Ukraine. Western countries now overcome their doubts as to Ukraine’s capacity to become an independent State; moreover, they are more and more interested in having a democratic country bordering both the EU (in the perspective of enlargement) and Russia55. In 1994, Ukraine signs the Partnership for Peace; in 1995, it becomes a member of the Council of Europe; in 1996, it sets as a long-term foreign policy objective the integration into the EU. Thus, the second stage of Romanian-Ukrainian relations coincides with the rapprochement of both countries to Western organizations, while the third stage – signing of the bilateral treaties and high-level visits – intervenes while Romania hopes for accession to NATO – and finally gets it in 2002, and Ukraine tries to find alternative options to CIS integration.

It is interesting to note that both countries are preoccupied by the way in which they are seen at the international level, by submitting their position to international forums. The account of former President Constantinescu about the way in which the issue of the basic Treaty was settled is very relevant in this sense: “It all took place at the OSCE meeting56 (…). Before going to Lisbon, I received a report from the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Service) on the position that Ukraine was to take at the OSCE. 55 Cf. Anne de Tinguy, art. cit., p. 12. 56 In Lisbon, December 1996.

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They were prepared for an attack against Romania, which was presented as a neo-imperialist State who does not want to sign the Treaty, maintains a situation of instability and does not recognize Ukrainian frontiers, unlike Poland (…) In the context of the change of government [in Romania], Kutchma, who had enough experience, postponed the manifestation of force in order to see our reaction in Lisbon (…) Having this report, I asked for a meeting with vice-President Al Gore and I insisted that this meeting should take place before Gore’s meeting with Kutchma. And my meeting with Kuthcma was fixed after his meeting with the Americans (…) I told Gore that we will solve the problem of the Treaty with Ukraine on the Polish model (…) and he told this to Kutchma (…) But I told him that the condition was a privileged attention in this Treaty to the Romanian minorities. And here, we would need American pressures (…). This was the basis of the Treaty”57. The European Union and the USA seem both interested in the development of Romanian-Ukrainian relation, as they congratulated the two governments for the signing of the Treaty58.

Meanwhile, the foreign policy orientations of Russia are an important determinant, especially for Ukraine, but for Romania too. But, unlike Romania, Ukraine is part of the geopolitical space considered by Russia to be its “near abroad”, with which it pretends a very special relationship. Immediately after the dismantling of the Soviet empire, Russia had a period of internal instability which did not allow it to be too assertive in foreign policy. It was the period when the “new thinking” of the Gorbatchev - Shevarnadze couple still survived, while Moscow also depended on the foreign aid for survival. This changed beginning with 1993: “Key policy documents adopted in the spring and fall of 1993, including the foreign policy concept and the new military doctrine, were characterized by marked suspicion of Western intentions, resentment against Russia’s apparent subordination, complaints about painful economic reforms allegedly imposed by the West, and a resolve to restore

57 Interview with former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, January 2006. The story is confirmed by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Adrian Severin, in Adrian Severin, Gabriel Andreescu, op. cit., pp. 47-48. 58 For the EU, see the statement of the Presidency, the Hague, 2 June 1997; for the USA, “Bill Clinton felicita presedintii Romaniei si Ucrainei pentru semnarea Tratatului de baza”, in Adevarul, 4 June 1997, p. 9.

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the country’s global position”59. Thus, at the end of 1993, the main objective of Russia’s foreign policy becomes the re-integration of the former Soviet republics, including, of course, Ukraine60. This line becomes even harder after the appointment of Evgheny Primakov as a Foreign Minister in 1996: he wishes to restore Russia as a great power and does not consider the former Soviet republics as sovereign States, but as Russia’s ‘near abroad’61. Relations with Ukraine are paid a special attention: in 1997, the two countries sign a basic political Treaty through which the irreversibility of the dismantling of the USSR is recognized. Thus, Russia tries to get closer to Ukraine so that the latter does not seek accession to NATO or the EU, while Ukraine accepts this, hoping to soften Russia’s position on these issues. Meanwhile, it also tries to escape Russian influence by taking the initiative of the GUAM in 1997. In 2000, Russia elaborates a new military doctrine and national security concept that depicts NATO expansion as a threat62, and Russia’s foreign policy becomes even more assertive. Thus, Russia manages to re-impose itself on the international arena. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, it softens its position on NATO enlargement, while still maintaining its claims to ‘peace-keeping’ in its ‘near abroad’. Since 2003, through bilateral agreements and investments, Ukraine becomes more and more dependent on Russian state-controlled energy sector, as well as trade.

In the context of the need to integrate with the West ant of the perceived threat from Russia, the relation between the two countries we study is not to be thought in terms of a zero-sum game anymore. If we are to put it in realist terms, Romania and Ukraine are balancing Russia on the issue of the energy. But we can also think of the latest evolutions of the bilateral relations in liberal institutionalist terms: by getting in touch with international institutions, the two States better understood and defined their interests and thus they came to cooperate for absolute gains, and not for relative ones, that is, by measuring whether the other has more to gain

59 Janusz Bugajski, op. cit., p. 8. 60 Ibidem. 61 Ibidem, p. 11. 62 Ibidem, p. 14.

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from the cooperation63. This change of perspective might also be linked to the socialization of decision-makers in international organizations: Adrian Severin, the Foreign Minister that signed the basic Treaty, appears to think in these terms: “I tried to convince the Ukrainian partners that this Treaty must not be seen as a trade contract (…), but as an association contract; not as a contract in which one side tries to sell the merchandise at its greatest price and the other to offer the smallest price, but a Treaty in which we must put together all that we have best in order to get something superior”64.

Period Attitude of

Western powers to Romania

Attitude of Western powers to Ukraine

Russian foreign policy

Bilateral relations

1992- 1995

Uncertainty as to Romania’s foreign policy orientation

Lack of confidence and interest

Internal weakness leads Russia to seek cooperation with the West; Search for a new sphere of influence since early 1994

Divergent initial positions; Beginning of negotiations on the Treaty, but no compromise

1995- 1997

Perspective of integration into NATO and the EU

Change of position: acknowledged need for the democratization of Ukraine

Harder line on former satellites; seeks equality with the Western bloc

Tendency to compromise; smooth negotiations

63 For a theoretical account of the absolute/relative gains, see the debate between John Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions”, in Michael E. Brown et al. (eds.), (1998), Theories of War and Peace, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press, pp. 329-383, and Robert O. Keohane, Lisa Martin, “The Promise of Institutionalist Theory”, in IDEM, pp. 384-396. 64 Adrian Severin, Gabriel Andreescu, op. cit., p. 52.

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as a ‘great power’

1997- 2003

NATO accession Preparation for EU integration

Western countries are increasing cooperation with Ukraine

Increasing assertiveness in foreign policy; Seeks good relations with Ukraine After 9.11, softens position on USA, but not on the ‘near abroad’

Signature of the Treaties; bilateral visits

2003- 2005

Romania continues to prepare for EU accession; Better relations with USA than the EU

Stress on the democratization of Ukraine

Russia enhances Ukrainian dependence on energy

Tensions on Bastroe channel and the continental shelf

2005- now

American military bases in Romania

Assertiveness in foreign policy; hardening of the position towards Ukraine

Joint energy projects Joint Presidential Commission

This overview of the complex relations established among the

important powers in the international system allows us to seize some regularities that link the attitude of these powers to the two countries that we analyze and their bilateral relations. Thus, we can see that in the absence

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of a marked interest from either Russia or the Western powers to the region (the period 1992-1995), the bilateral relations do not have a promising evolution. The two States are more preoccupied by survival and hard national interest than by cooperation. The situation changes in a second period, when, on the one hand, Western organizations are more and more interested in consolidating democracy in both Romania and Ukraine, and on the other hand, Russia begins to re-assert its sphere of influence. Better relations are thus supported by both the pressures from the West to democratize and to have good bilateral relations in the region (institutional pressures), and the danger that represents for both countries the re- emergence of Russia as a great power. The consensus reached by Romania and Ukraine can thus be explained following two paradigms of the International Relations theory: a liberal paradigm would stress the influence of the Western powers, exerted through institutions, while a realist explanation would purport to the need to balance Russia’s increasing power.

After September 11, the two tendencies that we signaled soften: the West is more preoccupied by containing terrorism, especially in the Middle East, than by the democratization of Eastern Europe. Russia, in turn, seizes the opportunity of the fight against terrorism in order to deal with separatist tendencies at its borders, and seeks an understanding with the USA. Immediately after, in 2003-2005, problems appear in the bilateral relation between Romania and Ukraine. It is true nevertheless that, while the link between international pressure and the signing of the Basic Treaty is rather obvious, we cannot establish a direct link between these later events and the bilateral problems. What we can do is point to a regularity that appears in the superposition of the international evolution and the bilateral relations, which might prove significant.

Beginning with 2005, it seems that the region becomes more and more polarized: not only the position of Russia hardens, but also that of the USA, Romania and Ukraine. Now, we can almost see the creation of two camps which, if they are not yet in conflict, launch rather confrontational declarations. USA creates military camps on the Romanian territory; Russia cuts energy supplies to countries with pro-American regimes in its ‘near abroad’ (Ukraine, Georgia) and promotes internal legislation in order to stop foreign (i. e., European and American) funding for Russian civic associations. In the context of this polarization, Romania and Ukraine

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cooperate for balancing Russia, whose rise is seen by the two countries as the most dangerous development in the region.

So, if the pattern of cooperation created by institutional pressures from Western powers and organization is more visible in the 1997-2003 phase, the recent polarization of the regional environment enhances a pattern of cooperation out of fear and points to a balancing behavior of the two States.

The analysis of our three major variables – historical legacies, domestic regime and international environment – leads us to several conclusions as to the impact of each variable on the relations between Romania and Ukraine. First, we can notice that historical legacies have more impact in the absence of other types of incentives. In the zero-point of bilateral relations, as well as in the absence of international pressures or external threat, the historical legacies are perceived as a hindering factor of cooperation.

Second, as far as the domestic regime is concerned, its impact seems rather low, as the changes of governmental majority does not superpose on the ups and downs of the bilateral relation. But we should stress an important aspect concerning the internal factor: when the two governments are markedly Western-oriented, the relations between them are smoother, like the periods 1996-2000 and 2005-2006. This does not happen when only one of the two is pro-Western (1992-1994 and 2000-2004).

Finally, the international and regional environments appear as very important factors that shape bilateral relations in our case. These can be interpreted from both a liberal institutionalist perspective and a realist one: in our case, the interpretations converge, even though they offer different explanations. From a liberal institutionalist perspective, we would say that the politics of different international organizations (such as the Council of Europe, the EU, or NATO) to consolidate democracy and good relations of neighborliness in the region managed to export rules of cooperation that were taken over by the two countries in question. From a realist point of view, it is rather the fear of Russia that determined the two countries to create ties that would help both of them to emancipate from their powerful regional neighbor.

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2, 2007

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE VISEGRAD GROUP AS AN

EXAMPLE OF REGIONAL COOPERATION

Anna Czyż*

Abstract After the fall of communism in 1989 Central and Eastern European countries started to change their political systems towards democracy. They also had to define their main aims in foreign policy. In 1991 Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland decided to create the Visegrad Triangle to be able to develop and to become members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union. After dissolution of Czechoslovakia their mutual initiative was called the Visegrad Group. During nineties XX century this regional co-operation between Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia experienced different vicissitudes. Finally their dream about integration came true- they became the part of Western organizations. So now when they reached their most important goals they have to determine the direction of mutual co-operation. As neighbouring countries with similar historical tradition and thinking they can search together for the solution of current problems in Europe.

In Central Europe the centrally planned economic and socialist system collapsed at the end of the 1980s and the process of regaining of independence has started. As a first step, the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) had to be dismantled. By the summer of 1991 both the CMEA and the Warsaw Pact had disintegrated. Moreover the Soviet Union collapsed too and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia’s, Hungary’s and Poland’s territory became a fact. For the countries of this region the most obvious and logical choice in their foreign policy was a new political and economic orientation towards the West. The main aim was the process of NATO enlargement and integration with the European Union as a more developed and more dynamic group of countries. The president of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel was the first person who has presented a proposal concerning the

* PhD candidate, Silesian University of Katowice, Poland

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establishment of closer connections between Central European countries. It was his idea to carry out such a concept after the Velvet Revolution. The formal foundation of the Visegrad Triangle (V3- Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, later after the separation of Czechoslovakia on 1st January, 1993 Visegrad Group- V4) came with the adoption of the Declaration on Cooperation at the first summit held on 15th February 1991 at Visegrad, the site of a medieval royal summit in 1335. The participants (Polish president Lech Walesa, Czechoslovak president Vaclav Havel and Hungarian prime minister Jozsef Antall) pointed out that the Triangle was not aimed at forming any new block and was not directed against any other country or a group of countries. The aim of the tripartite cooperation was to become full members of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation but as Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier said: ‘the participants were not in a race to get there ahead of each other; the optimal solution would be to arrive there together’1.

It was written down in the Visegrad Declaration that ‘the similarity of the situation has determined for these three countries convergent basic objectives: full restitution of state independence, democracy and freedom, elimination of all existing social, economic and spiritual aspects of the totalitarian system, construction of a parliamentary democracy, a modern state of law, respect for human rights and freedoms, creation of a modern free market economy, full involvement in the European political and economic system as well as the system of security and legislation’2.The development of cooperation is ensured by the community of historical experiences, cultural identity, spiritual heritage, common roots of religious traditions, geographical nearness.

The cooperation was not always smooth because there were controversial issues between the member countries such as situation and rights of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, conflict over Gabcikovo- Nagymaros dam project. The new Czech prime minister Vacalv Klaus underscored that Visegrad is an artificial entity created at the request of the West and that the establishment of subregional structures has not

1 Magyar Nemzet, July 2, 1991, J.C.Kun (1993), Hungarian Foreign Policy. The experience of a New Democracy, London. 2 Visegrad Declaration 1991, http:// www.visegradgroup.org

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accelerated the process of integration with the EU and NATO3. In the first years following the collapse of the communist system when the primary challenge was to do away with its remnants (the Warsaw Pact, CMEA and the Soviet Union) the countries of the region had common interests and could act jointly. But it turned out that their commitment was diverse and insufficient to coordinate their actions in the process of integration with the EU.

In the V4 some worried that regional integration might slow down their progress towards becoming member of the EU. The Czech Republic and Hungary made it clear on various occasions that each state should be evaluated separately in compliance with the membership criteria. The break-up of Czechoslovakia, the arrival in power of Vaclav Klaus in the new Czech Republic and Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia and other problems in bilateral relations have slowed down the Visegrad cooperation in political area- the meetings were irregular and without any results. The only real results in the economic area was liberalising trade which brought Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) signed in Cracow on 21st December 1992. In 1995 the Agreement on Accession of the Republic of Slovenia to the CEFTA was signed, in 1997 similar agreement was signed with Romania and in 1998 with Bulgaria4.

From the mid-1990s the Visegrad Group has never been able to ‘speak as one’ especially when it turned out that each state of V4 will be attended with their accession negotiations individually. The revival of the Visegrad cooperation began in 1998 thanks to two important factors which had a positive impact on the prospects of regional cooperation of the V4 countries. The first factor was the NATO’s decision in July 1997 to invite three countries of the V4 (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) to join the alliance. The second one was the EU decision to start the accession negotiations with six countries among them with three ones from V4. An additional factor was the results of parliamentary elections in Slovakia in 1998. Because of some delay in political development Slovakia as the only one from V4 countries wasn’t invited by the NATO and the EU into the first wave of their enlargement. The new Dzurinda’s government has

3 M. Gwiazdowski, “Possibilities and Constrains of the Visegrad Countries Cooperation within the EU”, Foreign Policy Review, Volume 3, Nos. 1-2/2005 4 http://www.cefta.org

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changed the direction of Slovakia’s domestic and foreign policy. This positive development was acknowledged by the decision of the European Council in Helsinki in December 1999 which opened up the possibility of accession negotiations for Slovakia5.

Visegrad countries re-established their cooperation at the Bratislava 1999 meeting of the prime ministers and at the presidential summit attended by Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Vaclav Havel, Arpad Goncz and Rudolf Schuster held in the Slovak town of Gerlachovo. In the so called Tatra Declaration the presidents confirmed their satisfaction with the renewed cooperation within the Visegrad Group. Since then the political objectives of this cooperation have focused on the promotion of the Visegrad countries’ readiness for European integration and support each other in the preparation for EU membership. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland started to support Slovakia’s efforts and aspirations to join NATO. Then the aim of the group was to ensure the West that the Visegrad region is characterized by political stability, economic prosperity and open to cooperate with other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The idea of ‘Return to Europe’ after the iron curtain era in Visegrad countries was one of the objectives to achieve.

However, since the beginning of the 1990s the NATO countries were very reserved towards the Eastern declarations of joining the alliance. They feared that this might worsen its relations with Russia. The first proposal of cooperation was the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) functioning since December 1991. Next instead of offering enlargement in respect of the repeated requests in 1994 NATO answered with a proposal to take part in the ‘Partnership for Peace’ programme as a platform of military and political cooperation. Bill Clinton, the president of the United States, emphasized that the question was not whether NATO will enlarge but when it will happen6.

On May 1997 the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) replaced the NACC and after that at the Madrid conference of NATO heads of state and government on 8-9 July 1997 a decision was made to invite the

5 K. Dezseri, “Is it Feasible to Enhance the cooperation among the V4 countries within the EU? The economic aspects”, Foreign Policy Review, 1-2/2005 6 F.Gazdag: “From Alliance to Alliance: Hungary’s Path from the Warsaw Pact to NATO”, Foreign Policy Review, Volume 1, no. 1/2004.

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three states (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) to the first round of enlargement. Finally, on 12th March 1999 those three Visegrad countries became members of a military-political alliance that proved the most successful in preserving peace during the last half century and in assuring the security of its members. During the NATO summit in Prague in November 2002 seven states received invitations to start negotiations. Slovakia was among them and its accession to NATO became a fact in 20047.

The breakthrough of 1989 was the beginning of the new era in East- West relations. Western countries started to treat Central European countries as partners and support their economic and politic reforms by PHARE program. On 16th December 1991 the European Agreement was signed as a basis of association stage with Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. During the EU summit in Kopenhagen (21-22 June 1993) the EU membership criteria were adopted. To become EU member each country is obliged to fulfill the following conditions:’ be able to take on member’s duties, stability of democratic institutions, modern state of law, respect for human rights and minority rights, free market economy, economic capacity to face up the trade competition within the framework of European Union’8.

The next step on the way to the EU was to put in formal application for EU membership. Hungary applied on 31st March 1994, Poland on 8th April 1994, Slovakia on 27th June 1995, the Czech Republic on 17th January 1996. Those events have forced EU to set in motion the process of enlargement. Until now the EU was refraining from tightening the cooperation with Visegrad countries. The reason was the fear that enlargement will inhibit the European integration and EU efficiency. The EU was also afraid of the influx of immigrants from Central Europe which will increase the group of receivers of regional help. During the EU summit in Luxembourg (12-13 December 1997) on the basis of the European Commission recommendation six candidates were invited to start the accession negotiations in 1998. They were: the Czech Republic, Hungary,

7 H.Binkowski (2002),Visegrad Group Countries’ security and defence cooperation. Transformation in Central European Security Environment, Warsaw. 8 M. Szczepaniak (1994), Grupa Wyszehradzka w polityce Zachodu. W: M. Szczepaniak: Świat i Polska u progu XXI wieku. Toruń.

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Poland, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus. Slovakia was invited to negotiations during the European Council session in Helsinki (10-11 December 1999) together with Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta.

In 2002 the European Council in Kopenhagen decided to close 31 negotiation areas with ten among twelve candidates (without Bulgaria and Romania). The solemn act of signing the accession treaty had taken place in Athens on 16th April 20039. After that event the process of ratification according to national procedures has started. In Visegrad countries the national referendums were needed to accept the treaty- they had taken place one by one- firstly on 12th April 2003 in Hungary, then on 16th and 17th May 2003 in Slovakia, on 7th and 8th June in Poland, on 13th and 14th June 2003 in the Czech Republic. Finally, on 1st May 2004 Visegrad countries became the EU members.

Following the accession to the European Union some predicted the natural death of the Visegrad Group because the process of integration has come to an end. It turned out to be premature. Many issues like infrastructure, natural environment, tourism, migration, culture, education may be solved more efficiently within the framework of quadrilateral rather than bilateral cooperation. At the V4 summit in Kromeriz held on 13th May 2004 the New Visegrad Declaration was adopted and superseded the document adopted in 1991 upon the formation of the Group. Representatives of V4 decided that the originally set objectives were achieved and declared their readiness to develop cooperation between the four countries, already EU and NATO members. Among the areas of cooperation within the V4 there are such as: culture, education, youth exchange, science, continuation of the strengthening of the civic dimension of the Visegrad cooperation within the International Visegrad Fund and its structures, cross-border cooperation, infrastructure, environment, fight against terrorism, organised crime and illegal migration, Schengen cooperation, disaster management, exchange of views on possible cooperation in the field of labour and social policy, defense and arms industries.

In the Kromeriz Declaration it is also said that the future cooperation will be developed in the area of cooperation within the EU, with other partners and within NATO and other international 9 B. Płonka (2003), Polityka Unii Europejskiej wobec Europy Środkowej, Kraków.

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organisations. As to the cooperation within the EU it will concern the consultations on current issues of common interest:’ active contribution to the development of the New Neighbourhood Policy and the EU strategy towards Western Balkans, consultations, cooperation and exchange of experience in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, Schengen cooperation including protection and management of the EU external borders, visa policy, creating new possibilities and forms of economic cooperation within the European Economic Area, consultation on national preparations for joining the EMU (European Monetary Union),active participation in the development of the European Security and Defense Policy as a contribution to the strengthening of relations between the EU and NATO and deepening of substantive dialogue between both organisations’10.

Visegrad Group was always the forum of consultations without any institutional form. The only V4 institution is the International Visegrad Fund based in Bratislava which has been operated successfully for years starting in 2000. According to relevant decision of the prime ministers the Fund disposes of an annual budget of 3 million euros from 2005 onwards (the budget is created by V4 countries’ payments). From this amount can be financed small and standard grants, the Visegrad Strategic Programme, scholarships, also the Ukrainian scholarship programme launched in 2005 as well as the Visegrad Award11.

The mechanism of cooperation is based on meetings at various levels- meetings of Presidents of V4 countries, of Prime Ministers and Foreign Affairs Ministers, with National Coordinators at Ministries of Foreign Affairs taking the crucial role of initiators and rotating one-year presidency with its own presidency programme. Each presidency is closed in June by organising Visegrad summit to sum up all the activities and to set new challenges and to contribute to the achievement of the common goals of the V4 countries. At the beginning of July 2004 Poland had taken over the presidency of the V4 from the Czech Republic and after a year Hungary became a visegrad leader for the period of 2005/2006. As it can be read in the programme of the Hungarian presidency ‘the first new months passed since accession have confirmed that close cooperation among the four member countries will continue to be of outstanding importance also 10 Declaration in Kromeriz on 12th May 2004, http://www.visegradgroup.org 11 http://www.visegradfund.org

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in the framework of the European Union’12. It is said in the Document that the priorities are:’ Strengthening the V4 identity and developing a V4 communication strategy with a view to bringing the V4 even closer to citizens. Enhancing the V4 cohesion, capacity of consultation and cooperation on issues figuring on the EU agenda and on major international issues in other fora; consistent representation of adopted common positions on issues of common interest.

Promoting transformation and modernisation efforts in Central and Eastern Europe; contributing to efforts to improve the EU’s competitiveness, particularly in infrastructure development’13. Within the V4 framework the area in which the V4 states decided to strengthen their cooperation is culture (folklore festivals, plans for launching a joint TV channel focused on culture), education (youth exchange), tourism (preparation of thematic brochures, maps, updating and development of the www.european-quartet.com webpage). The civil dimension of the Visegrad is supported and it will be supported by the International Visegrad Fund especially by Visegrad Scholarship Programme. The increase of the number of applicants show a growing interest and need to continue the incoming, intra-Visegrad and outgoing scholarships. For youth exchange within V4 the most important are intra type scholarships which promote greater mobility and willingness to get to know each other within the group. In addition small and standard grants for joint projects realized by non-governmental organizations can be also financed by the Fund.

It seems that sectoral dimension of Visegrad cooperation, local initiatives in different fields aimed at promoting modernisation in Central Europe and development of regions can be the most essential part of the Visegrad regional cooperation. Meetings and consultations at various levels are important to initiate joint ventures. It can be cross-border cooperation within euroregions focused on environmental protection, public transportation (the harmonisation of the timetables of international trains and buses), coordination of regional infrastructural development- the main transport lines traversing the Visegrad countries connect the Western

12 Programme of the Hungarian V4 presidency, http://www.visegradgroup.org 13 ibidem

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Europe to the former Soviet Republics but there is still much to do on North-South directions14.

Within the EU national and regional interests can be better represented and implemented by each regional country group. The Visegrad countries could use their bargaining power to protect their common national priorities. The overriding priorities of the Polish presidency were the consultations on the New Financial Perspective of the EU for 2007-2013. The remaining priorities were the cooperation on the road to Schengen, participation in forming and implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy, cooperation in energy, infrastructure and scientific research. The V4 states sent their first clear message of cooperation in EU budget negotiations during the V4 prime ministers meeting in Warsaw in December 2004. The shared interest of all Visegrad states was to support the budget proposal of the European Commission which provided that within 2007-2013 at least half of the structural funds would be absorbed by the new EU members15. Later on Luxembourg proposal was offered- the majority of aid would be lost by the reach members but the Czech Republic would lose 15 percent while the loss of Hungary would come to 6,5 percent, Poland’s would be 4 percent, Slovakia would lose the least portion so it would bring the Czech Republic closer to Spain and Italy than to its V4 partners16.

During the EU summit in Brussels (16-17 June 2005) V4 countries one by one were joining the Poland’s appeal which declared its readiness to reduce the absorption of funds in the name of rescuing the EU budget. The work on the EU budget perspective for 2007-2013 showed that cooperation among the V4 countries was possible in case of a failure to adopt the budget which could pose threat to the new EU members. After budgetary negotiations’ fiasco in June 2005 during British presidency the discrepancies within EU seemed to deepen due to budget cuts which were proposed by Tony Blair. To bring the compromise closer the meeting between Visegrad representatives and British prime minister was organised in Budapest (2nd December 2005). Finally the EU budget for 2007-

14 K. Dezseri, “Is it Feasible to Enhance the Cooperation among the Visegrad Countries within the EU?”, Foreign Policy Review, Volume 3, Nos. 1-2/2005 15 http://www.visegradgroup.org-joint press release 16 A. Słojewska, J. Bielecki, Polska straci najmniej, ‘Rzeczpospolita’ 11.06.2005

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2013 was adopted but it wasn’t the only EU problem. Another issue is the future of the treaty establishing the Constitution for Europe after rejecting it by France and the Netherlands. At first Visegrad countries had taken the position that the process of ratification of the treaty should be continue because its adoption is the best way for the Union to be ready to face up to future local and global challenges. Currently this topic faded into the background partly because of negative attitude of the visegrad leaders. Presidents of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus and Poland Lech Kaczyński openly admit there’s no need to adopt the European Constitution. Following its enlargement on 1st May 2004 the European Union faced a completely new situation at its eastern borders- its direct neighbours became such former Soviet Republics as Belarus, Ukraine, Russia (the Kaliningrad Oblast) as well as Moldova following the planned accession of Romania in 2007. This new situation requires to prepare the new Eastern Policy.

It seems obvious that part of the responsibility for shaping this sphere of the EU external activity should rest with the new Central European members states. Among Visegrad countries the eastern border of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia became the European Union’s eastern borders and this border is the most important dividing line in Europe. Beyond this line there are three countries- including the two largest European non-EU states in terms of size and population being Russia and Ukraine- they will remain on the EU visa list17. Visegrad countries are particularly interested in formulating the EU Eastern Policy and they should be the co-makers of this policy. Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have established ties which stem for cultural, linguistic, historical closeness and geographical proximity.

Above that Visegrad countries are strongly economically linked to their eastern neighbours, especially to Russia. The position of Russian enterprises in the energy sector is dominant in Central Europe. This area is particularly attractive for Russian investors because of the most important transport corridors (road transport routes, railway lines, oil and gas pipelines) that connect Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The new Russian project includes building the pipeline under the Baltic Sea 17 K. Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, Polityka Wschodnia Unii Europejskiej: perspektywa krajów wyszehradzkich, Warszawa 2003.

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to avoid crossing the Polish territory and eliminate transit dependency18. The energy dialogue between EU and Moscow plays very important role in bilateral relations because Russia has become one of the major players on the world energy market. EU members could notice how significant issue it is at the beginning of 2006. As a result of Russia-Ukraine conflict gas supplies were reduced in Visegrad countries. This fact has reminded them how dependent on Russia’s energy they are and how urgent the necessity of supply diversification is. The Visegrad states should focus on inventing a more resolute energy procurement policy but as it can be observed these countries are not able to take a common stand on this matter and to exercise effective influence on EU policy towards Russia.

All Visegrad states were components of the Soviet block with historical experiences (Soviet invasion in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the events of 1956 in Hungary). Russia’s veto on NATO enlargement and the obstacle in building friendly relations was still alive memory of historical past (second world war crimes) In respect of the V4 Eastern policy, Poland is the most committed country but due to historical reasons also the one with the most problematic bilateral relationships with Russia which can be confirmed by last political event. The Russian president Vladimir Putin decided to visit two Visegrad capitals- Budapest and Prague in March 2006 but by excepting Warsaw he had given a strong signal that there’s still no political will to improve mutual relations especially after Polish commitment in Orange Revolution in Ukraine (named so after the colours of Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign). Ukraine bordering on three out of four V4 states is a neighbouring country with special significance. Since the beginning of nineties Poland has underscored that strengthening of the Ukrainian state is an important factor in greater stability in Europe19. Poland was perceived as a Ukrainian ally and advocate on the West. When demonstrators gathered in Kiev fighting for democracy proved their attachment to Western values, Polish representatives with president Aleksander Kwaśniewski expressed their support for Ukrainian aspirations and became mediators between two sides of Orange Revolution- Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yushchenko. Common Visegrad initiative was

18 K. Pełczyńska-Nałęcz (2003), Eastern Policy of the Enlarged European Union. Bratislava. 19 E. Wyszkiewicz, „Ukraina w polityce zagranicznej państw Grupy Wyszehradzkiej- podobieństwa i różnice”, Biuletyn (PISM) 2003, No. 41 (145)

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sending a joint team of observers to the presidential elections and inviting the Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Timoshenko as a guest at the V4 summit in Kazimierz Dolny (June 10, 2005) and launching in 2005 Ukrainian Scholarship Programme by the International Visegrad Fund for Ukrainian applicants. Within V4 a counterbalance for the Eastern direction of Visegrad Group efforts is the increased interest in the Western Balkans. Hungary supports the inclusion of Austria and Slovenia into Visegrad and was active advocate of Croatia’s aspirations towards the EU and NATO.

The split within the V4 emerged over the disputes on the commencement of accession negotiations with Zagreb-Poland did not opt for the commencement of negotiations20. From the standpoint of the future of the Visegrad Group within the EU the enhanced cooperation in implementing the Schengen remains a great challenge. The most favourable solution would be the removal of border check-points for passenger traffic by all states at the same time. Otherwise this could entail negative social and psychological consequences, discredit the idea of Visegrad within V4 societies. The fifteenth anniversary of the formation of the Visegrad group gives the opportunity to sum up its accomplishments.

The Visegrad Group reflects the efforts of the countries of the Central European region to work together in a number of fields of common interest. The formation of the Visegrad Group was motivated by four factors: the desire of eliminate the remnants of the communist bloc in Central Europe,the desire to overcome historic animosities between Central European countries,the belief that through joint efforts it will be easier to achieve the set goals, i.e. to successfully accomplish social transformation and join in the European integration process, the proximity of ideas of the then ruling political elites. It was especially in the initial period of its existence (1991-1993) when this regional group played its most important role during talks with NATO and EU. In the following years the intensity of cooperation between the V4 countries began to slow down due to the prevalence of the idea that individual efforts towards accession to the Euro- Atlantic structures will be more efficient. Visegrad Group was resumed in 1998 and since then closer contacts and meetings on various levels have been intensified. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became 20 Rocznik Strategiczny 2004/2005

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NATO members, in 2004 Slovakia joint the same organisation. All the V4 states together reached their mutual aim- EU membership on 1st May 2004. Their integration is another step forward in the process of overcoming artificial dividing lines in Europe because they’ve always been part of one civilization sharing cultural, intellectual values and common roots of religious traditions. It seems that the potential for political cooperation of the Visegrad countries on the EU forum is not massive but it can be useful in certain situations as a platform for articulation and implementation regional political interests.

The regional cooperation of V4 states can be effective and useful even despite the fact that these countries form other temporary coalitions from time to time depending on the issue concerned. As neighbours they can focus on enhancing the civil dimension of V4 cooperation by the International Visegrad Fund. As an example of regional cooperation it can develop on the lower level based on contacts between local governments and national departments to coordinate common initiatives.

Bibliography

1. Binkowski (2002): Visegrad Group Countries’ security and defence cooperation. Transformation in Central European Security Environment.

2. Deszczyński, Szczepaniak (1995): Grupa Wyszehradzka. 3. Dezseri (2005): “Is it feasible to enhance the cooperation among the

Visegrad countries within the EU?”, Foreign PolicyReview, Volume 3, Nos.1-2/2005.

4. Gazdag (2004): “From Alliance to Alliance:Hungary’s Path from the Warsaw Pact to NATO”, Foreign Policy Review, Volume 1, no.1/2004.

5. Gołembski (1994): „Grupa Wyszehradzka-próba realizacji koncepcji wielostronnej współpracy”, ‘Sprawy Międzynarodowe’,no. 3/1994.

6. Góralczyk (1999): Współpraca wyszehradzka. Geneza, doświadczenia, perspektywy.

7. Grajewski (1996): „Grupa Wyszehradzka-narodziny i zmierzch”, ‘Przegląd Polityczny’, no.32/1996.

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8. Gwiazdowski (2005): “Possibilities and constrains of the Visegrad countries cooperation within the EU”, Foreign Policy Review, Volume 3, Nos.1-2/2005.

9. Kupiecki (2000): NATO u progu XXI wieku.

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, STUDIA EUROPAEA, LII, 2, 2007

EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET: A TOCQUEVILLIAN PERSPECTIVE

Jonathan Mendilow*

Abstract The recent rejection of the proposed EU constitution gives credence to the conclusion that the goal of “ever closer union” will not be achieved by legal or economic means alone, and that the forging of a community (as against a common market) requires the promotion of a widespread sense of “Europeanness” among the citizens of the member states. The expansion of Union to include countries not traditionally associated with “Western Europe” rendered such project ever more necessary yet complex. The question has been examined from several vantage points: the horizontal (the impact of tourism, and the closer meshing of political and economic systems), bottom-up (the contribution of local level experiences to wider concepts of community), and top to –bottom (the effect of common institutions on the way people understand their identity).It seems odd that a dimension critical to all these perspectives has hitherto been neglected: the impact of the Internet on the production and communication of knowledge and symbols that could serve as basis for a projected pan European “imagined community” (Benedict Anderson) . The appeal of de Tocqueville in this regard lies in the connection he had made in Democracy in America between space and community building. Despite the obvious difference between the cyberspace and the geographical dimensions he had in mind, his ideas can be applied to the modern situation. A less well-known thesis advanced in The Old Regime and the French Revolution is however no less relevant. There he argued that underlying the sense of community is a narrative that directs the citizen’s understanding and hence behavior in the ‘real world’. Because it operates on the ‘here and now’ such a narrative is in constant flux. Old premises are discarded and new ones incorporated to become part of the general consciousness. What causes legitimacy crises is lack of synchronization between such shared narratives and the world of the here and now. The Internet extends the range while shortening the process of communication. Global in reach, it recreates the multi directional one on one * Professor of Political science at Rider University, Lawrenceville, N.J.

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communications that defines groups of people who link up with one another to pursue common interests. This may be conducive to the European project. Yet such communities may well be built on specialized interests, establishing spheres in which the broader public has little say. From the temporal perspective, this may lead to growing disjunction between two measures of time: one marking the tempo of change in the realm of individuals, the other the tempo of change in the operation of publics structures. Collective Narratives take time to establish themselves, percolate though society, become translated into symbols and activities, and eventually change. Yet a situation may develop where the growing rapidity of the production and assimilation of knowledge will create a situation where it is only assimilable by limited groups. The impact on social norms and identity may increasingly vary, reflecting a plethora of narratives gradually nibbling away at the common one. Should such conditions develop, the public may well be defined by its individuals primarily in terms of the consumption of the same services and the ability to produce an imagined territorially based community will be hampered.

If, as Carl Hilty asserted, failure is “unsurpassed as a means to self– knowledge and therefore to regeneration”, then the defeat of the referenda on the European constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands may prove highly instructive to disappointed advocates of greater European unity. Prior to the two plebiscites, the constitution had been ratified by overwhelming Parliamentary majorities (59 to 3 in the Austrian upper house with almost unanimous vote in the lower, 304 to 9 in Hungary, etc.) in nine EU constituent members. Yet in eight the issue was barely debated in public, and the vote was guaranteed by strong party discipline. Spain conducted a consultative referendum in which almost 77 percent voted in favor, but the turnout was the lowest since the restoration of democracy, a mere 42 percent. In contrast, France and the Netherlands witnessed vigorous public debates and relatively high rates of participation (roughly 70 and 63 percent respectively). The rejection of the draft constitution by large majorities in two of the founding EU members (close to 55 percent in the one, 61.6 percent in the other) despite the support of both governments and main oppositions is therefore of special significance.

This is not the place to examine the reasons that account for this result. Suffice it to state the obvious, namely, that the EU had failed to

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generate a sense of belonging sufficiently strong to counter whatever domestic and pan - European reasons may have been at play1. Six months after the referenda Bernard Henri Levi could explain to American audiences that there is a European identity that resembles that of the USA, so that he identifies himself as a European of French origins, just as his listeners would describe themselves as Americans from Carolina or New Jersey2. But the fact that the proposed constitution comprised mainly of existing EU treaties, and that its rejection could hence be interpreted as widespread recoil from the commitment to a full fledged Union, indicates that such a feeling is largely restricted to political and cultural elites. It was precisely general dissatisfaction “with the fact that Europe is a project of the elite, not the ordinary people” that the ballot in both countries reflected, according to senior Dutch Socialist and leader in the ‘yes’ campaign Michiel van Hulten3.

1It is important to note that at least some of the reasons cited by critics are country specific. Among the most common are unemployment and the state of the economy, repudiation of unpopular governments, questions of immigration, concerns about Turkish accession, and, especially in the Neverlands, fear that the country would be overwhelmed by an emerging European super- state and that a strong Europe would force the scrapping of liberal policies such as those concerning prostitution and euthanasia. Overarching European reasons critics mention include the rejection of the ‘one size fits all’ approach, especially in such spheres as foreign and defense policies, concerns about bureaucracy and lack of democracy in Brussels, and the inaccessibility and complexity of the draft constitution. See, among others, John C. Hulsman, “Cataclysm: The Rejection of the European Constitution and what it Means for Transatlantic Relations”, Research Europe, June 20, 2005; Michael Radu, “ Europe : The Breaks Are On”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, http://fpri.org/ww/0604200506.radu.europebrakeson.html. (Downloaded 13 March, 2006).An especially insightful analysis may be found in Alberta Sbragia, ʺAn American Perspective On the European Unionʹs Constitutional Treaty ʺ , Politics 27 (February , 2007) pp. 2-7. The argument is that the EU constitution is a mirror image of the American one . The latter gave the federal government the right to regulate foreign affairs and interstate markets , but to this day the states have a good deal of independence in all that relates to domestic affairs. By contrast, the logic of the proposed EU constitution was of gradual pooling of sovereignty in the domestic areas while leaving the members their external sovereignty. Under such conditions, the addition of new, poorer member states , was resisted by many Europeans as elite interference in their own economic wellbeing . 2 Interview with Charlie Rose, NPR, 28 January, 2006. 3 Interview, BBC I News hour, 1 June 2005. See also his BBC interview 5 May, 2005.

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