1989 and the Great Transformation (Jannis Panagiotidis): täielik transkriptsioon

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,760
So, we do see the repercussions of what happened in East-Central Europe and the Soviet Union
2
00:00:08,760 --> 00:00:10,120
on a global scale.
3
00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:16,080
We can also start conceptualizing East-Central Europe as a node in a larger set of global
4
00:00:16,080 --> 00:00:17,080
transformations.
5
00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:22,559
You are listening to the transformative podcast brought to you by the Research Center for
6
00:00:22,559 --> 00:00:38,720
the History of Transformations at the University of Vienna.
7
00:00:38,720 --> 00:00:43,279
You're listening to an in-house edition of the transformative podcast today with me,
8
00:00:43,279 --> 00:00:49,279
Rosamund Johnston, and my colleague and superior here at RedCet, Yanis Panayiotidis, with whom
9
00:00:49,279 --> 00:00:54,480
alongside six other editors based at RedCet over the past four years, I've been working
10
00:00:54,480 --> 00:00:58,139
on the Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation.
11
00:00:58,139 --> 00:01:01,480
And today, Yanis and I would like to give you a first glimpse of that following its
12
00:01:01,480 --> 00:01:05,519
release with Routledge on the 1st of January this year.
13
00:01:05,519 --> 00:01:08,440
So Yanis, thank you very much for joining me today.
14
00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:10,040
Happy to be here.
15
00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:14,239
As someone who has been involved in this project from the very, very beginning, perhaps you
16
00:01:14,239 --> 00:01:19,239
would be best placed to talk about the conceptual foundations on which this handbook was built.
17
00:01:20,199 --> 00:01:26,040
This handbook in its whole genesis and conceptual outlook is really closely tied to RedCet
18
00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:32,000
as such, which takes this broad perspective on transformation.
19
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:37,519
And of course, the title of the handbook already contains a thinly veiled hint at our main
20
00:01:37,519 --> 00:01:43,440
inspiration, 1989 and the Great Transformation, of course, refers to Karl Polanyi's work on
21
00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:47,760
the Great Transformation, published in 1944.
22
00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:51,800
Obviously Polanyi was not talking about the transformations we are looking at around the
23
00:01:51,800 --> 00:02:00,040
year 1989, but he provided a certain conceptual framework that he developed against the backdrop
24
00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:07,360
of the emergence and collapse of the classical liberal order in the 19th century and first
25
00:02:07,360 --> 00:02:09,360
half of the 20th century.
26
00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:16,520
There are some key mechanisms there that he identified, which are helpful for understanding
27
00:02:16,759 --> 00:02:20,039
some of the key processes in this regard.
28
00:02:20,039 --> 00:02:22,279
He called them the double movement.
29
00:02:22,279 --> 00:02:28,119
So a simultaneous movement of marketizing and protectionist forces in society, or as
30
00:02:28,119 --> 00:02:35,000
he also called it, disembedding and re-embedding forces, which on the one hand aim to impose

31
00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:41,160
the market as the main or the sole mechanism of social organization on society.
32
00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:44,960
And on the other hand, you have society resisting these trends.
33
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:49,960
This is something that Polanyi wrote from the vantage point of someone who had seen
34
00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:56,000
liberalism collapse, who had seen the emergence of fascism as one response, but also the emergence
35
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,800
of what he called embedded liberalism.
36
00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:05,160
So essentially the modern welfare state, as you could already see it emerge in the 1930s,
37
00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:07,880
United States with the New Deal, etc.
38
00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:13,520
We're talking about something that you could frame as a second Great Transformation for
39
00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:20,119
which the year 1989 is of great importance as a pivot, if you will, in a long-term development
40
00:03:20,119 --> 00:03:26,119
that we argue already started in the 1970s with the advent of neoliberalism.
41
00:03:26,119 --> 00:03:32,919
So a second coming of liberalism, so to speak, and its rise and global spread, which definitely
42
00:03:32,919 --> 00:03:38,639
reached an important point in 1989 when the socialist world collapsed.
43
00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:44,520
When we say 1989, of course, we mean 1989 till 1991 and the end of the Soviet Union.
44
00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:49,440
But basically, we're talking about the point in time when socialism, state socialism as
45
00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:57,199
the main alternative to liberal capitalism disappeared or mostly disappeared, at least
46
00:03:57,199 --> 00:04:03,520
from the European continent, and liberalism in its neoliberal guise achieved an important
47
00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:06,360
high point of its development.
48
00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:10,880
So actually, one of the things you just mentioned there was this kind of timeframe with 1989
49
00:04:10,880 --> 00:04:16,799
being crucial, but maybe not all explanatory or all encompassing in and of itself.
50
00:04:16,799 --> 00:04:21,160
And that actually leads us to kind of the four, I suppose, main takeaways that we as
51
00:04:21,160 --> 00:04:26,720
editors kind of found amassing these 40 plus chapters of the handbook that all these different
52
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:34,119
authors were kind of pointing to, which was somewhat decentering 1989 as this crucial
53
00:04:34,119 --> 00:04:38,559
moment for understanding the dynamics of a transformation, great or otherwise, that
54
00:04:38,559 --> 00:04:40,880
took place at this time.
55
00:04:40,880 --> 00:04:46,040
As you mentioned there, the 1970s really seems to be a kind of interesting alternative starting
56
00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:50,399
point and a starting point that many of the authors to this handbook wanted to flag in
57
00:04:50,399 --> 00:04:55,160
terms of thinking through different economic ideas, in terms of political reform.
58
00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:59,679
If you decenter East Central Europe and the revolutions of 1989 and you look instead at

59
00:04:59,679 --> 00:05:04,679
Southern Europe and the kind of democratic revolutions that took place there then.
60
00:05:04,679 --> 00:05:09,320
And then if we kind of want to complicate or blur 1989, and I think there are some good
61
00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:14,040
reasons we'll discuss this further for doing so, then we also find that it maybe isn't
62
00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:19,279
this clear and sharp break in important ways that socialism and the legacies of socialism,
63
00:05:19,279 --> 00:05:23,799
the built environment, some of the thinking, some of the connections, international connections
64
00:05:23,799 --> 00:05:27,959
that had been fostered during that socialist period continue to really matter beyond this
65
00:05:27,959 --> 00:05:33,440
1989 moment and shape the, again, dynamics or contours of this great transformation that
66
00:05:33,440 --> 00:05:38,839
we see taking place in East Central Europe and beyond over these years.
67
00:05:38,839 --> 00:05:43,320
And I would say those are kind of two of the more temporal, I suppose, findings or arguments
68
00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:44,799
that we came to with this handbook.
69
00:05:44,799 --> 00:05:48,679
But maybe you want to talk about, there are a couple of spatial ones that we kind of came
70
00:05:48,679 --> 00:05:54,239
to distill and maybe you want to round up what those were and what their significance
71
00:05:54,239 --> 00:05:55,239
is.
72
00:05:55,519 --> 00:06:00,079
The spatial implications are, to some degree, of course, tied to these temporal implications.
73
00:06:00,079 --> 00:06:06,880
So by extending the timeline to the 1970s, we necessarily look beyond East Central Europe
74
00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:09,380
and we consider a global scale.
75
00:06:09,380 --> 00:06:13,640
So the rise of neoliberalism was a global development.
76
00:06:13,640 --> 00:06:18,760
It had to do with global economic trends, with the oil crisis, also with challenges
77
00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:23,640
from the decolonizing world and the guise of the new international economic order, which
78
00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:29,640
was perhaps a main contender to this emerging neoliberal order.
79
00:06:29,640 --> 00:06:35,160
And at the same time, when we talk about 1989 and what followed, it is very helpful to look
80
00:06:35,160 --> 00:06:42,600
at East Central Europe in comparison with other regions in the world where transformations
81
00:06:42,600 --> 00:06:47,920
did take place, where economic transformations in particular did take place, but perhaps
82
00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:50,440
political transformations not to the same degree.
83
00:06:50,799 --> 00:06:56,079
The main case in point here is, of course, China, which is almost like a natural experiment
84
00:06:56,079 --> 00:07:01,880
of what could have been East Central Europe transforming under capitalist auspices, but
85
00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:06,720
without the communist power giving up its grip on political power.
86
00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:11,600
This is one main comparison we have here in the handbook and also here at RATESET more
87
00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:12,600
generally.
88
00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:16,519
But of course, it's also interesting to look at other parts of the world, Latin America,
89
00:07:16,519 --> 00:07:17,519
for instance.
90
00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:23,359
We have one contribution by Rafael Pedemonte on Cuba, which, of course, was also affected
91
00:07:23,359 --> 00:07:28,760
by what happened in East Central Europe and in particular in the Soviet Union, which used
92
00:07:28,760 --> 00:07:32,679
to be the main sponsor of Cuban socialism.
93
00:07:32,679 --> 00:07:38,200
But importantly, and this is something that comes out of Pedemonte's article and already,
94
00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:42,959
once again, complicates the timeline, Cuba already had its problems with Soviet reforms
95
00:07:43,119 --> 00:07:44,119
since 1985.
96
00:07:44,119 --> 00:07:49,559
So with Perestroika, the reforms of Soviet communism within the communist system.
97
00:07:49,559 --> 00:07:56,519
So we do see the repercussions of what happened in East Central Europe and the Soviet Union
98
00:07:56,519 --> 00:07:57,720
on a global scale.
99
00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:04,480
We can also start conceptualizing East Central Europe as a node in a larger set of global
100
00:08:04,480 --> 00:08:05,480
transformations.
101
00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:10,119
East Central Europe in many ways became an important testing ground, if you will, for
102
00:08:10,320 --> 00:08:16,359
of the neoliberal ideas that were in the air at the time, which had already been applied
103
00:08:16,359 --> 00:08:22,440
to some degree in developing countries through mechanisms of structural adjustment and which
104
00:08:22,440 --> 00:08:28,279
through these transformations post 89 came back to the European continent, maybe entered
105
00:08:28,279 --> 00:08:33,359
the European continent in the first place, which then also had repercussions for not
106
00:08:33,359 --> 00:08:38,559
just for East Central Europe, but for the wider continent and the West with a capital
107
00:08:38,960 --> 00:08:44,719
W, which is a process that Philip Teer, who's the founder of Red Set and one of the editors
108
00:08:44,719 --> 00:08:47,640
of this handbook also has termed co-transformation.
109
00:08:47,640 --> 00:08:51,520
So the transformation in the East did not leave the West untouched.
110
00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:56,119
On the contrary, this then shows us how East Central Europe really occupies an important
111
00:08:56,119 --> 00:09:01,000
space in this longer trajectory from the 1970s up until the present.
112
00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:06,200
Which is so important because very often looking at or writing about East Central Europe sort
113
00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:13,239
of suggests that it is in some way an outsider to many kind of more global debates and discussions.
114
00:09:13,239 --> 00:09:17,640
And for example, some of the authors talk about transformation is often used instead
115
00:09:17,640 --> 00:09:21,400
of the term globalisation to discuss what's taking place in the 80s and the 90s in this
116
00:09:21,400 --> 00:09:22,400
region.
117
00:09:22,400 --> 00:09:26,320
And our handbook emphatically makes the argument through a range of different perspectives
118
00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:33,000
for looking at events in East Central Europe as parts of broader global processes over
119
00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:34,000
those years.
120
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:39,200
So we kind of broke it down into eight different sections, I suppose, after saying 1989 isn't
121
00:09:39,200 --> 00:09:40,200
the be all and end all.
122
00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:45,280
We actually open the handbook with a section of articles on the significance or relative
123
00:09:45,280 --> 00:09:48,840
insignificance of the year 1989 around the globe.
124
00:09:48,840 --> 00:09:53,400
And that was edited by our colleague here Sheng Pen before then taking quite a Polanian
125
00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:57,960
structure really to thinking about the different aspects of this transformation.
126
00:09:57,960 --> 00:10:03,159
So thinking, first of all, about economic transformations edited by Anna Calori and
127
00:10:03,159 --> 00:10:08,239
societal or social transformations, which was a section I edited, kind of seeing them
128
00:10:08,239 --> 00:10:13,320
in some ways as maybe preceding the political transformations that occurred quite abruptly
129
00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:19,640
in some cases around East Central Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.
130
00:10:19,640 --> 00:10:23,119
And then we also have some sections that are maybe more the strengths of RETA and not something
131
00:10:23,119 --> 00:10:25,280
that Polanyi himself focused so much on.
132
00:10:25,280 --> 00:10:30,640
So specifically, they're thinking about cultural transformations and intellectual transformations
133
00:10:30,640 --> 00:10:35,400
and then migration, which is something that RETA said we have done a great deal of research
134
00:10:35,400 --> 00:10:36,400
into.
135
00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:40,239
And it's not something that was so highly flagged by Polanyi as being a kind of important
136
00:10:40,239 --> 00:10:44,520
component of thinking about the great transformation.
137
00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:47,840
And so, I mean, I suppose I could talk a little bit more about the process, but I think that
138
00:10:47,840 --> 00:10:52,239
what might be more interesting than that is kind of what emerged as we put together these
139
00:10:52,239 --> 00:10:55,960
48 chapters over four years through a series of workshops.
140
00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:59,280
And so I don't know, Yanis, if you maybe want to talk about some of the things that became
141
00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:05,280
quite apparent that we had missed in the way that we structured this handbook and had originally
142
00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:06,280
put it together.
143
00:11:06,280 --> 00:11:13,679
Well, yes, once you've completed 550 pages of handbook, it's, of course, most fun in
144
00:11:13,679 --> 00:11:19,719
a way to think about what you didn't cover in this massive enterprise, because surprisingly
145
00:11:19,719 --> 00:11:25,239
or unsurprisingly, there are still some gaping holes, you could say, in the analysis, one
146
00:11:25,239 --> 00:11:28,280
of which is the issue of war and conflict.
147
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:33,400
It's not completely absent, to be fair, especially to our colleagues like Jelena Djurenovic working
148
00:11:33,400 --> 00:11:39,119
on former Yugoslavia, where obviously war and the aftermath of war is absolutely crucial
149
00:11:39,119 --> 00:11:41,400
for understanding this period.
150
00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:49,119
But still, by and large, we're not talking so much about war in a self-critical perspective.
151
00:11:49,119 --> 00:11:54,960
One could say that we are perhaps operating in this post-89 mode of thinking more about
152
00:11:54,960 --> 00:12:00,719
as a, you know, the post-Cold War period as an era of peace, where we could reap the peace
153
00:12:00,719 --> 00:12:06,039
dividend, which in an academic sense would probably mean not having to talk about war,
154
00:12:06,039 --> 00:12:09,599
but talking about all these other things that we're discussing.
155
00:12:09,599 --> 00:12:15,859
Of course, this illusion has come crashing down at the very latest in February of 2022
156
00:12:15,859 --> 00:12:18,539
with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
157
00:12:18,539 --> 00:12:25,780
I guess if you were paying attention before, it came crashing down before and perhaps one
158
00:12:25,780 --> 00:12:27,619
never had this illusion.
159
00:12:27,619 --> 00:12:33,859
But be that as it may, war and conflict certainly, if we were to redo this handbook, or if we
160
00:12:33,859 --> 00:12:38,940
had started conceptualizing it after February of 2022, would certainly play a much bigger
161
00:12:38,940 --> 00:12:40,820
role than it does now.
162
00:12:40,820 --> 00:12:49,580
A second issue that is somewhat absent is the environment, which perhaps should have
163
00:12:49,580 --> 00:12:55,739
already been more obvious to us in 2020 when we started planning and also because it was,
164
00:12:55,739 --> 00:12:58,979
of course, an important issue already for contemporaries in the 1980s.
165
00:12:58,979 --> 00:13:04,000
And I mean, there are interesting analyses that suggest that environmental degradation
166
00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:10,260
was actually one of the main factors contributing to the downfall of state socialism, which
167
00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:14,299
is with its non-sustainable economies, in a way.
168
00:13:14,299 --> 00:13:19,099
And of course, the simultaneous questions about, you know, the limits of growth as a
169
00:13:19,099 --> 00:13:24,940
fundamental challenge to the whole capitalist economic model, which we are, I guess, debating
170
00:13:24,940 --> 00:13:30,539
these days under different circumstances and with different terminologies of green transformation,
171
00:13:30,539 --> 00:13:34,460
which is something we had a festival about here at Redzet, which is not something that
172
00:13:34,460 --> 00:13:36,780
is very prominent in this handbook.
173
00:13:36,780 --> 00:13:41,619
And I guess a third issue, which is not a gap, but more like something that actually
174
00:13:41,619 --> 00:13:47,820
made it into the handbook, even though we didn't plan on it so much, is the issue of
175
00:13:47,820 --> 00:13:49,219
populism.
176
00:13:49,219 --> 00:13:53,440
This is something that came up in more than half of the contribution without us asking
177
00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:55,820
the authors to talk about it.
178
00:13:55,820 --> 00:13:59,960
And that, of course, has to do with what's happening in the region.
179
00:13:59,960 --> 00:14:05,940
It has to do with the emergence of self-declared illiberal regimes, such as Orban's government
180
00:14:05,940 --> 00:14:09,460
in Hungary, Kaczynski government in Poland, and so on.
181
00:14:09,460 --> 00:14:15,859
This is, of course, something that, if you look at it from the point of view of Polanyi's
182
00:14:15,859 --> 00:14:21,299
analysis, again, is really something that confirms how relevant his paradigm is for
183
00:14:21,299 --> 00:14:27,619
the analysis of this era, precisely because this populism or this illiberal backlash against
184
00:14:27,619 --> 00:14:34,179
neoliberal reform, but also against liberal institutions, can be understood as a counter
185
00:14:34,179 --> 00:14:39,299
movement in the Polanian sense, as a re-embedding movement, which, you know, doesn't necessarily
186
00:14:39,299 --> 00:14:44,739
mean that all these illiberal regimes aren't capitalist or anything, but it has something
187
00:14:44,739 --> 00:14:51,260
to do with sort of an entrenching of the nation, for instance, as an important frame of governance.
188
00:14:51,260 --> 00:14:58,340
And it has to do with a certain way of talking about protection of the nation, of the people,
189
00:14:58,340 --> 00:15:06,539
and so on, which finally, I think, also underscores an important point, namely that this re-embedding
190
00:15:06,539 --> 00:15:12,580
that Polanyi talks about, these protectionist forces, are not necessarily the good guys
191
00:15:12,580 --> 00:15:13,580
in history.
192
00:15:13,580 --> 00:15:20,460
You know, there is a very conservative or even reactionary element, or can be a reactionary
193
00:15:20,460 --> 00:15:22,979
element in these re-embedding movements.
194
00:15:22,979 --> 00:15:28,020
Of course, in the historical example, Polanyi also wrote about the emergence of fascism.
195
00:15:28,020 --> 00:15:35,099
So in that sense, it's no surprise that nowadays, once again, we're debating whether, you know,
196
00:15:35,099 --> 00:15:40,260
some of the current forms of governments that have emerged in different places, including
197
00:15:40,260 --> 00:15:43,140
the United States, are or aren't fascist.
198
00:15:43,140 --> 00:15:48,179
I'm always a bit skeptical with using the sort of the exact historical terms and looking
199
00:15:48,179 --> 00:15:50,900
for exact analogies and histories.
200
00:15:50,900 --> 00:15:56,580
It's more about thinking about, you know, certain structural similarities, perhaps,
201
00:15:56,580 --> 00:16:01,820
and this way, we can perhaps start developing a new vocabulary that allows us to better
202
00:16:01,820 --> 00:16:04,580
understand what is happening now.
203
00:16:04,580 --> 00:16:09,260
So you're absolutely right to bring up populism and populism as a debate, right?
204
00:16:09,260 --> 00:16:15,780
Throughout this handbook, there's not necessarily kind of one definitive answer offered to the reader.
205
00:16:15,780 --> 00:16:20,700
In fact, I would say there's a lively debate taking place across its 550 pages over whether
206
00:16:20,700 --> 00:16:25,340
populism is a helpful term, for example, to understand the current moment and whether
207
00:16:25,340 --> 00:16:30,659
it is, as you say, in this sort of Polanyi model, a kind of counter movement or some
208
00:16:30,659 --> 00:16:36,140
backlash based on some economic and social reforms that have taken place over the past
209
00:16:36,140 --> 00:16:38,260
30 or 40 years.
210
00:16:38,260 --> 00:16:42,059
And that's the other, I think, kind of important debate that comes up that I wanted to flag
211
00:16:42,059 --> 00:16:48,219
over the pages of this handbook, which is about what this transformation period is or
212
00:16:48,219 --> 00:16:50,260
was, whether it is complete, whether it is not.
213
00:16:50,260 --> 00:16:55,219
You mentioned 2022, the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine as being a kind of end
214
00:16:55,219 --> 00:16:57,099
point in some interpretations.
215
00:16:57,099 --> 00:17:00,979
That's certainly the interpretation, for example, of Philip Terr, and that would be the argument
216
00:17:00,979 --> 00:17:07,260
of Nino Aivazishvili-Gaynor and Ilona Grabmeier, also that this is a moment which has now closed.
217
00:17:07,260 --> 00:17:12,219
But also you'll find in these pages, Ned Richardson Little and Felix Jiménez-Botta, for example,
218
00:17:12,219 --> 00:17:15,859
talking about human rights and 1989 being this high point, right?
219
00:17:15,859 --> 00:17:20,420
And ultimately, really the end of that kind of human rights, having a great moral authority
220
00:17:20,420 --> 00:17:27,739
and a great kind of chance to, what should I say, shape the thinking of meaningful political
221
00:17:27,739 --> 00:17:31,699
alternatives that they've been deployed ever since, but with dwindling returns.
222
00:17:31,699 --> 00:17:36,459
So I think, you know, the handbook is full of debates specifically to do with periodization.
223
00:17:36,459 --> 00:17:41,699
However, I think we can go beyond saying we complicate issues, and it is complicated,
224
00:17:41,699 --> 00:17:46,260
towards saying that maybe one of the findings we have is that transformation taking place
225
00:17:46,260 --> 00:17:50,979
at different tempos, in different places, or perhaps indeed even within the same space.
226
00:17:50,979 --> 00:17:55,660
For example, if we look at the very local level, which my chapter does a little bit,
227
00:17:55,660 --> 00:18:00,180
at sort of different privatized parts of the same state-owned enterprise, for example.
228
00:18:00,180 --> 00:18:05,459
So I think those would be the kind of early takeaways that we as editors might suggest
229
00:18:05,459 --> 00:18:07,780
you can look forward to in the handbook.
230
00:18:07,819 --> 00:18:12,660
So with those questions open rather than closed, we invite you very much to read the handbook,
231
00:18:12,660 --> 00:18:17,060
and thank you very much for listening to this sneak preview of it on the Transformative Podcast.
232
00:18:17,060 --> 00:18:19,060
Join us next time for another episode.