The colonial relationship was reasonably straightforward. The empire dictated terms to the colony, and the colonial administration carried out the orders. Sometimes colonial subjects revolted. Sometimes the imperial agents went “native” and adopted the culture and perspectives of the people they were supposed to be pushing around. But the power dynamic was for the most… Continue reading Staying Critical
In the middle of Sofia is a big space where the mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov once stood. In 1990, the removal of Dimitrov’s preserved body, followed by its cremation and burial, was a symbolic rejection of the old regime. The mausoleum itself was taken down in 1999, though a majority of Bulgarians opposed the demolition.… Continue reading The Ideas Factory
Even at an intuitive level, sanctions never made much sense to me. If North Korea is such an isolated country, and isolation only reinforces the leadership’s paranoia, then adopting a policy of further isolating the country through sanctions seems counterproductive. If you want the people of Iran to rise up against their leaders, why give… Continue reading Life under Sanctions
The home movies show a bunch of young kids doing skateboard stunts all around their neighborhood. Without the sound, the action could be taking place almost anywhere. The kids have clothes and haircuts that look like the late 1970s, the town they live in has a prefab drabness. But their goofiness and exuberance is universal.… Continue reading Taking It to the Streets (in the GDR)
Anyone engaged in social change has grappled with the essential question. Should I work within the system or outside the system? In the United States, the question is often expressed geographically: to operate “inside the Beltway” or “outside the Beltway.” The Beltway is, of course, the ring road that encircles Washington, DC. Some start off… Continue reading Losing My Illusions
In the 6th century, in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, the historian Procopius penned an account of the misdeeds of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. The Secret History is a compelling account of the court intrigues of a treacherous emperor in a crumbling empire. That Justinian enjoyed a high reputation, the result of the military victories… Continue reading The Secret History of Yugoslavia
It looked and sounded like something out of the Deep South during the civil rights era in the United States. Angry protesters, men and women, were shouting racist slogans and trying to prevent a group of 50 young schoolchildren from entering an integrated preschool. Except that this wasn’t happening a half-century ago. It was happening… Continue reading Defending the Underdogs
I was struck by the banners in the airport in Belgrade. They hung in a series from the ceiling and highlighted different Serbian cities. Pirot was represented by a tire and the tagline “on the right track.” Loznica featured a pear surrounded by cherries and berries and the tagline “fruitful investment.” And Subotica displayed a… Continue reading Courting Capital
The state and the market have long been in a tug of war in East-Central Europe. The Communists were not the first political force to recommend that the state play a much larger role in the economy. During the inter-war years, for instance, democratic visionary Tomas Masaryk acted much like FDR by supporting state intervention… Continue reading The Green Marketeer
After 1989, some of the dissidents of East-Central Europe went back to their original jobs as journalists or engineers or teachers. Others threw themselves into politics, as Vaclav Havel somewhat reluctantly did. And then there was the smallest category of them all: the dissidents who turned professional. There were, after all, still some tyrants to… Continue reading The Regime Changer
It has not been easy for the countries of East-Central Europe to establish stable, functioning democracies. Strong-arm leaders – like Victor Orban in Hungary or, until recently, Vaclav Klaus in the Czech Republic – have persistent appeal. Corruption has claimed any number of political victims, from Adrian Nastase in Romania to Janez Jansa in Slovenia.… Continue reading Democracy Is Not Enough
The Party of Rights in Croatia traces its lineage back to Ante Starcevic, who is sometimes referred to as the father of Croatia. In 1861, when his country was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Starcevic co-founded the Party of Rights as a vehicle for creating an independent Croatia. The long “springtime of nations” was… Continue reading Croatia’s Unpopulist Party
Three items in Volen Siderov’s office reflect his current image. The religious icons on the wall speak to his embrace of traditional Bulgarian values and to the agreement his party concluded with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 2006. The antique sword hanging nearby stands in for his militancy. And the heavy boxing bag is part… Continue reading The World According to Ataka
The “case of the 13 imams” sounds almost mythic. But the current case the Bulgarian government is prosecuting against 13 imams from the area of Pazardzhik – west of Plovdiv on the way to Sofia – is very real. They stand accused of preaching radical Islam, with potential criminal sentences of up to five years.… Continue reading Religious Freedom in Bulgaria
The incidence of HIV/AIDS in Serbia is comparatively low: 0.1 percent of the population compared to 0.6 percent in the United States, 1 percent in Russia, and 25 percent in Swaziland. Nevertheless, those who live with the disease report that they are stigmatized, ostracized, and have difficulties gaining access to treatment. Some are fired from… Continue reading Speaking Openly in Serbia
It’s not easy to find people in East-Central Europe who will put in a good word for government. First there are all the traditional complaints: government is slow, inefficient, corrupt. On top of that is the residual anti-communist belief that current state structures are only cosmetically altered versions of the old system. Then throw in… Continue reading Two Cheers for Government
Even today, the country in Europe with the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDP) is Serbia. More than a decade after the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, more than 200,000 people remain in limbo in Serbia. Many ethnic Serbs fled – or were expelled from — Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo during those conflicts… Continue reading Finding a Normal Path in Serbia
Slovenia and Bulgaria are, respectively, the best-case scenario and the cautionary example of “transition” states. Both have struggled to transform communist-era economic and political structures. Both are now members of the European Union and NATO. But their economic and political realities place them practically on different planets. Slovenia has a per capita GDP of $29,000… Continue reading A Tale of Two Reforms
It’s been 20 years since Czechoslovakia split apart. The divorce took place without violence and without a referendum. The two leaders – Vaclav Klaus from the Czech side and Vladimir Meciar from the Slovak side – decided along with their respective political advisors that it was best for their countries to part ways. This was… Continue reading The Velvet Divorce
It took two decades, but the Erased finally got their day in court. And the court ruled in their favor. On June 26, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a lower court ruling that Slovenia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights in its treatment of the roughly 25,000 people stripped of… Continue reading Restoring the Erased
One of the most remarkable and disturbing aspects of the Erasure in Slovenia was that it took nearly a decade before it became a public issue. After the country became independent, roughly 1 percent of the population lost their residency in the country practically overnight. Thousands were deported. Many were sent to detention centers. And… Continue reading Erased and Forgotten
You are born in a country. You are a citizen of that country, and you don’t give it much thought. It’s like the air that you breathe. And then the country disappears. Everything that you took for granted has vanished. The ground beneath your feet has shifted irreversibly. Your national identity is up for grabs.… Continue reading Becoming Erased
In 1968, protests erupted around the world: Chicago, Mexico City, Paris, Warsaw, Tokyo. The protestors, most of them part of a new generation untouched by World War II, demanded an end to war, dictatorships, economic follies, and the culture of death promoted by sclerotic leaders in the East, the West, the North and the South.… Continue reading High Times in Yugoslavia
In Bratislava, as the Velvet Revolution unfolded in November 1989, musicians played a key role in the Czechoslovak opposition movement. Yes, they participated in the demonstrations and spoke out against the communist authorities. But their main contribution was more prosaic: amps. The dissident community, which had been silenced for decades, needed to get their voices… Continue reading Rock the Regime
It was breathtaking. We emerged from the forest on the outskirts of Moscow and saw, looming above the tall grass, an enormous ruined palace. It was 1985, and I was studying Russian at the Pushkin Institute. We heard a rumor about a grand edifice, the unfinished palace of Catherine the Great, that was moldering not… Continue reading You Don’t Know Squat
The worlds of rock music and academia are not entirely separate. Noam Chomsky has appeared on stage with Rage Against the Machine. Poet Paul Muldoon and fellow Princeton professors play gigs as the Wayside Shrines. And, of course, plenty of students opt for courses that deconstruct Madonna, probe the historical impact of the Beatles, and… Continue reading Punks and Professors
The GDR Museum in Berlin is actually two museums in one. And these two parts, both devoted to everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, subtly contradict one another. That might not have been the intention of the museum founders. But this tension actually captures the ambiguities of East Germany and the ambivalence that many… Continue reading Eating History
Poland was unique in East-Central Europe for the size, strength, and pivotal role of its labor movement, Solidarity. In no other country in the region did workers take the lead in challenging the communist system. But that doesn’t mean that worker movements were not important in other East-Central European countries. In Bulgaria, for instance, Podkrepa… Continue reading The Same Mistake as Solidarity
In the early 1990s, I helped put together a delegation on the topic of women and workplace in East-Central Europe. Several U.S. groups invited the delegation to the United States, with support from the German Marshall Fund, to meet with women’s organizations, trade unions, and a variety of Washington-based organizations. It was not an easy… Continue reading The Perpetual Crisis
The Germans have a great expression for life in a competitive, dog-eat-dog country. They call it an “elbow society.” People in capitalist countries have sharper elbows, and they use them more readily. In Bulgaria, some people look back on their time during communism, the time before the introduction of the elbow society, as the “calm… Continue reading Remembering the Calm Life