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This chapter offers a historical overview of the legacies shaping women’s citizenship practices in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina through a wider time frame that takes into consideration the reverberations of state socialism and post-1989 political transformation as mediated through the specific regional context of the former Yugoslavia.

This chapter explores change and continuity in gender and beauty discourses in Russia since the collapse of state socialism, drawing on in-depth interviews with readers of women’s magazines. It demonstrates how some Western-origin gender/feminist critique (for example, bodily disciplinarity) is applicable in a post-socialist context, but also considers the intersection of gender with context-specific discourses (for example, national identity). Participants framed an increased socio-cultural emphasis on building a ‘feminine’ appearance (‘beauty labour’) in various ways: whether negatively in terms of a perceived rise in individualistic or man-pleasing values in the post-Soviet era, or positively in terms of social progress. However, they also discussed the phenomenon as historical continuity or a specific attribute of (both Soviet and post-Soviet) Russian women.

This chapter traces the establishment of the institutions of male dominance in Central and Eastern Europe to political actors’ deployment of two strategic resources at their disposal during the transitions from communist rule: (1) organisational networks, which enabled them to draw on predominantly male memberships when negotiating the collapse of state socialism and then when selecting their candidates for the founding elections of 1990; (2) symbolic repertoires, which enabled them to portray themselves as representatives of broad social groups such as ‘civil society’ or ‘the nation’ rather than particular interests, and to construct women as citizens with gender-specific roles in the process of democracy-building.

India’s ‘democratic capitalism’ and China’s ‘market socialism’ have more areas of divergence than convergence. Different historical legacies, state structures, bureaucracies, orientations of industrialisation, and sources of finance contributed to sharply differing developmental policies. The chapter highlights how India’s state system, burdened by the combined weight of merged ‘social caste’ and ‘economic class’ categories, could not introduce policies aimed at resetting state–society relations, whereas China’s powerful state launched the ‘open door’ policy to recast state–society relations. China’s economic dynamism contrasts with India’s subdued economic performance, and this has resulted from policies that produced socially embedded and socially unembedded capitalist experiments.

China, it might be said, has made a number of attempts to join the modern world; where these include the late nineteenth-century elite top-down reforms that were organized by a decaying pre-modern empire, an early twentieth-century republican revolution engineered by groups looking to examples outside the country, the confusions and progress of the 1930s Nanjing Decade and then, via warfare and revolution, a period of peasant-centred state socialism, and now, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a species of developmental state turned towards the formal goal of peaceful rising has been constructed. The dazzling and ambiguous achievements of this last noted period were celebrated, as the legatee of earlier efforts, particularly those associated with the Communist Party, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics: tagged by observers as ‘China’s coming out party’. However, a cursory acquaintance with the long trajectory of the shift to the modern world in China reveals the difficulties—the violence, the setbacks and the abrupt changes of policy and direction—with the current configuration able to be read as simultaneously successful, disfigured and less than entirely convincing in respect of the solidity of its future. The success is clear, the problems, such as corruption and pollution, routinely noted, and so too the tricky demands of the inevitable reform. Here, with enquiry operating at a macro-scale, the unfolding historical trajectory of the shift to the modern world will be considered. The process is open-ended, and the general direction of travel likely inevitable, and it is also thoroughly contingent as neither the past nor current elite declarations are a clear guide to the future.

Since the collapse of state socialism in 1989, the transformation processes of Poland in the fields of economy and politics have been characterized by a clear ‘turn to the market’, deregulation, decentralization and withdrawal of the state. The process, also called shock therapy, has moreover been quite rapid and dramatic, causing abrupt changes in the social structures and everyday practices of Poles. Tosics (2005) has listed the most important changes in urban development in post-socialist societies, and, although not using the term neoliberal, stresses the role of market forces, along with the diminished role of the public sector in development, being limited to ‘making private investment possible’ (2005, p. 60). The introduction of property rights was dramatic in these societies, as the majority of the population lived in state-owned housing before 1989, and the situation has shifted radically to what has been called 'nations of owner-occupiers’ (Dimitrovska-Andrews, 2005; Hirt, 2012; Lux, 2003). In her analysis of physical planning and regional and housing-policy practices, Dimitrovska-Andrews (2005) shows how they were characterized by ad-hoc decisions and tendencies to use economic tools as drivers of local development. In my own work (Polanska, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014a), I have underlined the shortcomings of urban policy in Poland, running in parallel with quickly spreading processes of consumerism, competitiveness, pro-investment policies, individualization, privatization, gentrification, decline and gating in the urban sphere.

Below, I reconstruct as accurately as possible a remarkable conversation I happened to have while walking with my dog today on Hampstead Heath. Barrington (my dog) is a sweet but strong-willed terrier, prone to pursuing his own inclinations. This afternoon, we were taking advantage of a rare break in the clouds, following one of the Heath’s many improvised paths when Bear (as he is affectionately known) suddenly broke away, dashing through a hedgerow and barking with great animation. Giving chase, and incurring some minor scratches on the way, I was relieved upon emerging from the brush into a small clearing to find Bear retrieving a tennis ball thrown by a girl of around ten, much to her delight and that of her two younger sisters. Near where the girls were playing, a middle-aged man with a heavy beard sat on a blanket, surrounded by the remains of a picnic and several newspapers. I apologized for Bear’s poor behaviour, and was trying to bring him to heel when the man put down the volume from which he had been reading aloud (Shakespeare if I’m not mistaken) and addressed himself to me.

Several young Eastern European authors rose to international prominence around the year 2000. They were greeted enthusiastically by some parts of the literary establishment, which hailed these ‘Young Wild Ones’ as representatives of a ‘new sincerity’, merciless in their depiction of the state of the youth a decade after the end of state socialism, which they regarded as pretty dire (Kratochvil, 2006; Makarska, 2008; Stelmaszyk, 2008; Rutten, 2012): How many young souls are lost because they were unable to create a business plan? How many hearts has privatization policy torn apart? Wrinkles on parched faces and a yellow, metallic shimmer in the eyes, the results of fighting for survival — that is our country, that is our economy, your path and mine to immortality […]. (Zhadan, 2006, p. 7)

Using a historical approach, the chapter examines the process of state–family integration under state socialism during the Mao era (1949–1978). More specifically, it depicts ways in which patriarchal families have been transformed in an egalitarian direction, and the state has been molded into a paternalistic system exercising tight control over the economic and political lives of families while providing extensive social welfare benefits to urban families and forging common interests. It also discusses how the state has transformed gender and class both within and outside the family without weakening families as intact reproductive units. The cultural notion of obligation equality is introduced in this chapter to help the reader better understand China’s unique contours in gender and class transformation processes.

The economic, military, and diplomatic bonds between Nazi Germany and Spain have received much attention (Garcia Perez, 1994; Leitz, 1996, 1999; Vinas, 2001; Bernecker, 2002, among others), but we still lack an overall approach to the cultural relations between the two countries (Hera, 2002: 223–431, stops in 1939; see the first pages of Sanz, 2010). This is an important historiographical issue: when the National Socialists came to power in 1933, culture had already been an essential part of German foreign policy for a long time.

Based on the life stories of the women and men of the revolutionary cohort, this chapter shows the limitations of state socialism for women’s liberation, but not merely from the perspective of gender inequality, as many feminists see it. Rather, it does so from the vantage point of a three-way interaction between the state, families, and women, and shows the triple burden borne by women in fulfilling their national and family obligations: serving the nation, helping support the family, and continuing to shoulder the lioness’s share of routine domestic responsibilities. Finally, it finds that collective gains for Chinese society are the principal compensation for the sacrifices made by urban women and men.

The Romanian version of state socialism, developed by the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, is described as one of the most repressive within the Soviet bloc. The purpose of this chapter is to take a close look at Ceaușescu’s dictatorship and to identify the way in which the political system and its ideological apparatus coped with the local youth culture and its musical expressions. An important level of interpretation is the description of the mechanisms by which the Party propaganda integrated western-style music into its wider social persuasion mechanisms. This mixed method research evaluates the impact of pop-rock in Romania during two decades, by discussing fandom and its influence on different cultural representations, from art to literature and cinema.

The consequences of the Great Depression led many, including writers and scholars, to believe that the capitalist system was doomed. The author summarises Joseph Schumpeter’s classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) in which not only the term ‘creative destruction’ is elaborated but also capitalism’s built-in decline and fall. Schumpeter wonders whether socialism is a viable system to replace capitalism. It is, says Schumpeter, provided quite a few conditions to make it work are in place. The author also provides a summary of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944) in which Polanyi analyses capitalism’s annihilating tendency. Both summaries are preceded by biographies of Schumpeter and Polanyi.

Marxist-Leninists always considered it important that their actions be rooted in theory. Convinced that historical evolution follows definite laws, they were careful to justify their policies theoretically and to demonstrate harmony between theory and practice. To understand the reasons why the Esperanto movement was extinguished in the Soviet Union, after two decades of official tolerance and even of goodwill, we will attempt to analyze the relationship between socialism and the idea of an international language. Three questions arise. First, can we explain the disappearance of Esperanto in the Soviet Union in terms of the tradition of socialism, particularly its Marxist variant? Second, do the ideas behind socialism provide theoretical justification for the existence of an Esperanto movement? And, third, what was the nature of the efforts taken by the Esperantists in the Soviet Union to formulate a theoretical basis for their activities?

This chapter contributes to debates about queer existence under real existing socialism, and particularly about the space for individual and collective agency under a political and economic system which was arguably able to exercise particularly strong forms of coercive and disciplinary power over the private lives of its citizens. It has been persuasively argued that the constraining effect of homonor-mative ideals was stronger in communist regimes than in western societies, where similar medical and legal discourses aimed at regulating ‘deviant’ sexualities also existed (Kon, 1997; Healey, 2001; Liśkova, 2013). Nonetheless, a question that remains largely unanswered is the extent to which ‘disciplinary drives’ controlled by the Party-state and inspired by collectivist ideology shaped lived experiences under state socialism, and the extent to which they allowed ‘for agency, reflexivity and change’ (Liśkova, 2013, pp. 14–15). Drawing on an analysis of original interview material, this chapter explores the lived experiences and subjectivities of Russian women involved in same-sex relations, or experiencing same-sex attraction, in the late Soviet period.

This chapter provides an overview of the progress of gender equality in Croatia from the collapse of state socialism in 1990 to Croatia’s entrance as a full member of the European Union (EU) in June 2013. Efforts to promote gender equality during this period took place in the context of enormous social, political, and economic upheavals. The triple transition of political liberalization, marketization, and state-building unfolded in the context of war, stalling democratization and, after the breakthrough elections of 2000, the EU accession process. Gender roles and relations were directly shaped by these processes, as well as by the efforts of activists and civil society organizations. To what extent, we ask, have actors in civil society and within the state succeeded in their efforts to promote gender equality? How has the EU accession process mediated these efforts? What obstacles remain?

Some 30 years later after he left Romania, the psychiatrist Ion Vianu recalled that during his practice there he dealt with numerous patients suffering of ‘neurasthenia’ or ‘asthenic neurosis’. They were ‘exhausted, suffering of sleep disturbances, severe headaches, pains in the limbs and digestive disorders, complaining of a “pellicle on the brain”, or a “mist in the brain”’.1 Vianu remembers that neurasthenia was rather a regional disease affecting the populations of Eastern Europe,2 relatively unknown to his colleagues from Western Europe. As soon as a country entered the Soviet sphere of influence, its population was suddenly and largely affected by neurasthenia, he continued metaphorically.3 ‘Neurasthenia perfectly described the experience of individuals living under state socialism, […] Eastern Europe being transformed in a huge hospice of neurasthenic patients.’4

Underlying the radical reform proposals in the USSR were the assumptions that the backwardness of the Soviet economy and the lag in its capacity for innovation were due to its separation from the world economy, and that its centralized communist political formation was a hindrance to progress and political legitimacy. Joining the world economy and returning to its democratic European home became major objectives of the reform movement. Advocating a shift in the organizing principles of state socialism to globalizing ones were people from quite different backgrounds. Mikhail Gorbachev and reformers in the Soviet Union, advised by academics such as Manuel Castells, and prompted by organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), anticipated that the backwardness of the Soviet economy and its lag in capacity for innovation would be overcome following a movement to the world economy and the adoption of free-market economics. Immanuel Wallerstein, from a different point of view, regarded the move as the long-expected merging of the economies from the semiperiphery into the core of the world system. Others echoed Francis Fukuyama’s triumphal-ism: neoliberal globalization was the end point in human history. Many movers of the changes had an idealistic vision of the birth of a new era in world politics. George Bush described the ‘big idea’ as ‘a new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind — peace and security, freedom and the rule of law’.1

In hindsight the Cold War was an elaborate confection, a set of institutionally carried Manichean comparisons, which served to legitimate the military division of Europe into two camps. The Cold War comprised a set of mutually directed institutionally carried actions and claims which assisted the control exercised by respective lead nations over their territories; such activities/claims involved diplomacy, economy, politics, the military and culture. Thus, in respect of culture, the division of Europe into blocs was accompanied by an elaborate system of bloc-think, the creation of two sets of mutual characterizations and two sets of domestic discipline: overt, with politicians, soldiers and policemen, and covert, with propaganda, official deceit and the apparatus of low-level subversion and spying, with the one celebrating liberal democracy, the other state socialism. In the West, and thus in Britain, some elements of these activities became familiar parts of the public sphere, sometimes serious, thus, say, reactions to the construction of the Berlin Wall, and at others less so, thus the vogue for spy novels and later films, but, in all, the Cold War entered popular consciousness as variously expressed Manichean division. Now, decades later, it is clear that it has left its legacies: sometimes with significant political import, thus the habit of state-security machines, now turned to new putative enemies, presently, Islam; at others, merely as cliche, thus the reflex criticism of Russia, or, more popularly, the continuing recourse to certain cultural themes expressed in film and novels of spying: deceit coupled to moral and class betrayal.

Tadeusz Kowalik’s writings include meditations on the ‘crucial reform’ of capitalism in the middle of the 20th century, and on the possibilities for the ‘crucial reform’ of Poland’s ‘real socialism’ in the 1980s (for example, ‘In one of his earlier works Lange wrote that socialism is more concerned with objectives than with the means to achieve them. Achievement of social welfare is the central issue.’ Kowalik, 1986: p. 41). Kalecki and Kowalik wrote in 1969–1970 that capitalist society survived the middle of the 20th century via an unintended ‘crucial reform’ that dampened the anti-capitalist momentum of the working class. This chapter builds on Kalecki’s own model of capitalist accumulation and crisis, and on his pessimistic assessment of the prospects for sustained prosperity under capitalist systems with democratically elected governments. While this ‘crucial reform’ had avoided the clash between democratic politics and capitalist accumulation foreseen by Kalecki (1943, 1944b) in the midst of World War II, the Kalecki-Kowalik paper of 1969–1970 exposes a continuing concern with the fragility of capitalist economies.

This chapter examines the often negative approach adopted by socialists towards manifestations of Jewish national or group identity. Whilst most socialists advocated Jewish assimilation, it is argued that in practice there was a wide spectrum of ideas concerning Zionism and the legitimacy of a Jewish national state in Palestine. Moreover, socialists regularly distinguished between the maximalist Zionist aspiration to settle all Jews in Palestine/Israel, and the more minimalist Zionist goal to create and preserve a Jewish national homeland or refuge in Palestine/Israel. Most socialists were reluctant to endorse the former goal, but many supported the latter.

The growth of the intelligence state was only one of a number of socio-political factors that made scepticism a defining feature of 1945–89 society. While the Cold War witnessed a burgeoning of anti-government protest in nations across the world, much of the dissent lacked a clear political agenda for reform and did little to alter the course of national life. In the West, the state’s reliance on an expanding network of bureaucracies, regulatory mechanisms and propagandistic media systems was as likely to produce despair about the possibilities of reform as a conviction that reform was necessary. By the 1950s, consumer capitalism was further eroding belief in political alternatives, ushering in a stage of history that social scientists would variously term the ‘post-industrial society’, the ‘media society’ or the ‘society of the spectacle’. The ability of postmodernity to ensnare the individual was captured in Irvine Howe’s definition of the ‘mass society’ as ‘a relatively comfortable, half welfare and half garrison society in which the population grows passive, indifferent and atomized … and in which man [sic] becomes a consumer, himself mass-produced like the products, diversions and values that he absorbs’.1 If Bradbury’s supposition is right, that ‘[t]he history of the novel can perhaps be described, grandly, as a history of cultural epochs expressing themselves as forms’, then the paranoid, labyrinthine plots of espionage and postmodernist fiction expressed something of Cold War conditions.2 This chapter seeks to illustrate the new pessimism by charting the cultural shift from the left-wing radicalism of the 1930s to the postmodernism of the 1970s and 1980s, a shift prompted by a number of Cold War factors. These include the intractable nature of corporate capitalism, the association of left-wing ideologies with ‘fellow-travelling’ and the eradication of socialism from mainstream political life.

Sociology often prides itself on its ability to raise questions; a critical sociology (Bauman 1976a) of emancipation (Boltanski 2011) aims to question what is and to show its specificity across time and space, rather than consider the social world as taken for granted or ‘natural’. This is not simply a task of justifying a field of study but is also seen as a greater good since, ‘whatever else the “science of society” might do, it ought to be conducted for the benefit of society and not for the applause and self-aggrandisement of other “scientists of society” ’ (Bauman and Beilharz 1999:337). To fulfil this task ‘the twin roles we, sociologists, are called on to perform … are those of the defamiliarizing the familiar and familiarizing (taming, domesticating) the unfamiliar’ (Bauman 2011a:171). This can then lead to sociology becoming a normative pursuit; not only is the specificity of the social shown but its unfairness or inequality can then be criticized.

At a high level of generality, the notion that it is valuable to search for the middle ground has a long and distinguished history. For Aristotle, the so-called ‘golden mean’ is the desirable middle way between two extremes (thus, he would argue, courage is the opposite both of cowardice and of recklessness); and similar ideas can be found in other traditions. The idea of the middle ground can also be fruitful at the more mundane level of political and social systems—thus, social democracy clearly occupies a kind of middle ground between unfettered capitalism and state socialism. In the realm of international theory, it is also sometimes possible to identify a middle way; members of the English School (ES) believe that their key organizing concept, International Society, can be seen as the product of two oppositions—between the notions of an international system and an international community, although whether this particular middle way is desirable or not is contested (Brown 1995, 2010).

Socialism is the best antidote to social injustice. Yet this solution is unsatisfactory unless we find an answer to a further question: which socialism?1 The unceremonious end of the communist experiment in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe post 1989 has forced Western socialists to go back to the drawing board. Over the past 20 years, this process of socialist self-examination has produced some striking results, in terms of originality and erudition. In particular, three bodies of literature deserve special mention: Liberal Socialism (exploring the congruencies between the traditions of liberalism and socialism, especially on questions of social justice), Democratic Socialism (promoting a model of socialism along the lines of associative or deliberative democracy), and Market Socialism (reconciling socialism with the market system).

The core ideal of socialism can be summarized as the progressive emancipation of labour from alienation. This requires continuously increasing workers’ control over the labour process and broader economic and social affairs, which, in turn, entails expanding non-market provision of the materials necessary for improvement in the cultural capacity of workers. Yet feasible socialism implies that the implementation of socialist principles must be based on the existence of certain material conditions — socialism, in short, must prove to be more efficient than capitalism. Theoretically, socialism embodies distinctive efficiency attributes vis-a-vis the market system. At one level, there may be loss of allocative efficiency associated with limiting the free operation of the market. At another level, there may be gains in efficiency in the form of economies of scale through planning or economies of scope through co-operation. Feasible socialism thus depends on both the appropriate technical and social conditions, that is, the techno-economic paradigms in question. The conception and experience of central planning provide important insights in this regard.

After almost a decade of strong economic growth, China’s economic reform encountered its first full-blown crisis in the late 1980s. This culminated in the 1989 Students Movement, the tragic end of which further compounded and prolonged the economic crisis. The year preceding and those that followed the 1989 Tiananmen incident are often referred to as the Tiananmen interlude (1988–1992). The Chinese term for crisis literally means danger and opportunity, and this four-year period was full of danger for the reform agenda; there was a real possibility that reform might be rejected altogether.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the main environmental, technical and economic debates influencing the politics of climate policy in rapidly industrializing countries. The discussion focuses on major developing countries that have not agreed to legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and on Russia, a country which is an Annex I party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that has undergone considerable economic upheaval during its transition from state socialism to a market-based economy. Because of the different economic circumstances of rapidly industrializing countries, the issues discussed vary from those highlighted in debates elsewhere on the politics and economics of climate change in more affluent countries (see Compston and Bailey 2008). For example, most developing countries maintain that the world’s most economically advanced and highest per-capita emitting countries should lead global mitigation efforts, although traditional distinctions between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries are becoming blurred by strong economic growth in countries like China, India and Brazil (Gurney 2009). Additionally, there is an expectation that there will be substantial financial transfers from Annex I countries to developing countries under the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements to support adaptation and mitigation actions.

It is difficult to imagine the ‘Black and Red’ conference (in which this volume originated) having been conceived of, were it not for the epochal events of the 1980s and 1990s and the subsequent depolarisation of global politics, the generalised ideological crisis of the Left and the increased ‘illegibility’ of many social struggles since then, the emergence of movements of resistance to globalised capital such as zapatismo (seen by some as ‘post-ideological’2) and the blossoming of the worldwide ‘movement of movements’ and the associated Social Forums.3 The corollary of this seems to have been not only a renewed interest in the history and theory of anarchisms (in Europe and North America, at least), but also a new willingness to revisit the essentialist tribalism that has arguably always (but especially since the Comintern’s ‘Bolshevisation’ of the mid-1920s) characterised the Left. Many would concur with John Holloway’s remark that ‘One thing that is new and exciting about the re-articulation of ideas is that the old divisions between anarchism and Marxism are being eroded.’4 These re-examinations of how anarchist and communist theories and practices interact — and how some of the old divisions within the radical Left milieu might be overcome — have acquired a renewed sense of urgency following the 2008 economic and financial crisis and the search for a new emancipatory politics. David Harvey, in a recent discussion of the changing nature of present-day anticapitalist movements, stated: Contemporary attempts to revive the communist hypothesis typically abjure state control and look to other forms of collective social organisation […] . Horizontally networked, as opposed to hierarchically commanded, systems of coordination between autonomously organised and self-governing collectives of producers and consumers are envisaged as lying at the core of a new form of communism . […] All manner of small-scale experiments around the world can be found in which such economic and political forms are being constructed. In this there is a convergence of some sort between the Marxist and anarchist traditions that harks back to the broadly collaborative situation between them in the 1860s in Europe before their break-up into warring camps after the Paris Commune in 1871 and the blow-up between Karl Marx and one of the leading radicals of the time, the anarchist Michael Bakunin, in 1872.5

Twenty years after the fall of the Wall, 2009 has provided critics and commentators with a perfect platform for observing the successes and failings of the process of German unification. From the vantage point of the present, we can see that although the systemic transition from state socialism to liberal democratic capitalism was officially sealed by the Unification Treaty of 3 October 1990 which formally erased the former territory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the transference of East German emotional and identificatory allegiances to the new German state have proven more difficult to negotiate.1 This ‘affective transition’ has been impeded by two main factors. Firstly, the circumstances of ‘transition through unification’ meant that former East Germany was simply absorbed into former West Germany. Unification was effected at rapid speed using Article 23 which simply extended the constitution’s area of jurisdiction. This meant that East Germans were expected to reorientate themselves towards former West Germany’s cultural norms and values. Rather than a fusion of equals, unification appeared to be a victory for the West, whose superiority was confirmed by the very collapse of the East. Secondly, the social and economic circumstances of post-unification Germany resulted in dissatisfaction with unified Germany; despite the financial investment from the West, modernization of the East resulted in deindustrialization and a rise in unemployment. The combined effects of disorientation in, and dissatisfaction with, the unified present, led to the development of a reactive ‘eastern identity’ during the 1990s which seemed to impede the drive towards ‘inner unity’ because of its backward-looking nostalgia.

After the era of state socialism in Europe came to a close in 1991, scholars began to rethink both the Second World War and the Cold War that followed it. Access to previously closed archives played a key role in the transformation of knowledge, but just as important was the questioning of seeming truisms. Tony Judt notes that What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air […] In retrospect the years 1945–89 would now come to be seen not as the threshold of a new epoch but rather as an interim age: a post-war parenthesis, the unfinished business of a conflict that ended in 1945 but whose epilogue had lasted for another half century.1

The shade of Keir Hardie acted as the conscience of the British Left, summoned up when old socialist shibboleths seemed in danger of being abandoned in favour of reformism. By the early 1950s, however, the Labour party had acquired another set of sacred reference points to cling to: a newer definition of what Labour stood for, based on what it had done, rather than what its founding fathers believed in. The achievements of Labour’s first majority administration (1945–51) in nationalisation and welfare provision addressed some of the Labour movement’s most enduring concerns. Such unprecedented peacetime intervention in the economy, and the establishment of a new ambitious ‘welfare state’ centred on the National Health Service, came to be identified as embodying the purposes and principles of the Labour party: the achievement of its defining historical commitments. Yet, when the delegate from Altrincham and Sale dragged Keir Hardie’s name into a debate on the party programme at the 1953 party conference, it was a reminder that some of the oldest radical causes remained as unfinished business. One notable absence from the agenda of the Attlee governments was the old socialist commitment to the public ownership of land.

When war broke out on 1 September 1939, it came as no surprise to ordinary German people. For years prior to its outbreak, Hitler had repeatedly stated that in order for Germans to assume their natural position as world leaders, the nation would need more living space, with access to more agricultural land and natural resources. To this end, the Nazi Party had focused on preparing the nation for war from the moment they came to power in 1933.1 Germany’s defeat in the First World War, the Nazis alleged, was caused by the so-called ‘Stab in the Back’ by Jews, who had undermined morale on the home front. With this in mind, the Party sought to create a unified nation committed to Germany’s success in war. This they set out to achieve in two ways: firstly by mobilizing the minds of the German population to their cause, and secondly by suppressing any independent thoughts or actions that ran counter to the realization of their goals.2

The 1990s were a turbulent period for most people in former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Political and economic changes after the fall of state socialism had wide-ranging consequences for the lives and careers of individuals. Capturing the essence of these early transition years and conditions in Hungary, Pal Schiffer produced the documentary trilogy Breaking Points (Schiffer 1996). This film authentically shows the everyday struggles of the unemployed and their families, as well as the economic stagnation of the city of Szekesfehervar — one of Hungary’s most industrialized cities before 1989. Despite the difficult post-transition years, the economic and social conditions in this region soon changed. The breaking point has been the settlement of foreign multinational companies (MNCs) in Szekesfehervar. With the inflow of MNCs, employment was rising again and by the mid-1990s, Szekesfehervar found itself among the most rapidly developing industrial parks in the world. Fifteen years after the first MNC inflow, the city is still flourishing and unemployment is down. Beyond growing employment, the inflow of MNCs also stimulated a growing variation in employment practices.

Tony Blair’s election to the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994 consolidated the process of reform begun by Neil Kinnock in the 1980s and continued by John Smith. These reforms targeted both the organisational structure of the Party and its ideological platform, with the ultimate aim of making Labour electable again.2 The key structural changes were Kinnock’s expulsion of the Bennite hard left from the Party, the replacement of the trades unions’ block vote with the ‘one member, one vote’ system, which Smith accomplished in 1993, and the rewriting of Clause IV of the Party Constitution under Blair. In terms of ideology, Kinnock initiated a ‘gradual transition from state socialism to a variant of European social democracy’, which purged Labour of its traditional socialist commitments to central economic planning and public ownership and led to a reassessment of key revisionist ideas.3 This process continued during Smith’s leadership and gained momentum under Blair, culminating in the rebranding of the Party as ‘New’ Labour.

In the exit from state socialism across the former Soviet Union, the emergence of, participation rates in, and the influence of business associations varies considerably. Perhaps nowhere have these patterns been of more concern for progressive collective action and policy formation than in Russia. While there are conflicting views on whether Russian business associations have captured the state (Hellman et al. 2000) or vice versa (Hanson and Teague 2005), there is little dispute that public welfare has borne the cost of state-business interaction (Hoffman 2003). This prevailing view is consistent with Olson’s (1982) thesis that when business associations emerge, they tend to advance their interests (Pyle 2006; Recanatini and Ryterman 2001) to the neglect or detriment of the public’s.

On 24 February 1956, at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes in a ‘secret speech’ criticising the rise of ‘the cult of personality’ and deviation from the doctrine of ‘collective leadership’.1 Khrushchev’s words came as a shock to Gheorghiu-Dej who felt that he was under attack for his authoritarian style. Gheorghiu-Dej was perceived as a Romanian Stalin and, returning from Moscow, took almost a month until he presented the directives of the Soviet Congress to the RWP. In his report to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RWP, held from 20 to 23 March 1956, Gheorghiu-Dej omitted Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ but criticised some of Stalin’s political measures without fundamentally condemning his legacy. He suggested that Romanian communists had managed to remove those associated with the Stalinist cult of personality in 1952, referring indirectly to the elimination of Ana Pauker. According to his opinion, Romania witnessed a de-Stalinisation process even in 1952, before the death of Stalin, and there was no need for further political transformations. Gheorghiu-Dej’s report faced public criticism from Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chis¸inevschi, who had attended the Moscow Congress with him. However, their comments did not have any impact on Gheorghiu-Dej’s position in the party.

David Lane - AcSS, Emeritus Fellow, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. Address: Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, Great Britain.The ‘power’ of a country in international affairs may be assessed from a number of points of view: its military capacity, which in turn is derived, in a large part, from its economic strength; its human and social capital - the size and quality (level of health and education) of its population; and finally, its moral and ideological values. To discuss the extent to which Russia is a world power, the author considers its economic capacity and research effort and the ideology of the Putin/Medvedev administration. He also outlines the economic strength of Russia’s companies and makes comparisons with China, the USA and the UK, and shows that, despite its energy wealth, Russia is not a major world economic power. The author then addresses the question of why Russia’s power in international affairs is exaggerated and why it is considered a ‘threat’.The data analyzed in this paper show quite conclusively that the economic power of Russia and China, as measured by the presence of their major corporations, is qualitatively at a lower level than the advanced Western states - particularly the USA. China has a wider range of companies in terms of economic sectors, but Russia is limited to companies in the primary sectors - oil, gas and materials - and is particularly lacking in high-tech industries. While Russia may have considerable cash and gold reserves, it does not qualify as a ‘financial power-house’.The author further analyses export profiles of various countries and shows that with the exception of China and Hungary (the latter is not discussed here), post-socialist societies have entered the global system, but they are low in value-added products and are competitive only in low-technology products. In this context, Russia would appear to be an economically weak country, not a leading economic power. China would seem to be a better candidate, though it is still in a qualitatively different league from the USA.Russia’s place in the world economic system is limited to a small number of energy companies. However, unlike the majority of the new (ex-socialist) states in the EU, in many respects Russia is not incorporated into the world system, as its economy has a high level of state ownership and control, and foreign companies have little penetration. (Its transnationality index is below the average for developed and developing economies.) Russia’s military and political elites (not discussed in this paper) are not integrated into those of the Western hegemonic states. The inclusion of the elites of the post-communist states in the European Union and NATO has strengthened the cohesion of these states (as represented by their elites) with the West, though not in the case of Russia.An assumption of many advocates of entry into the world economy, both before and after the fall of state socialism, is that participation benefits all. What is lacking in these accounts is recognition that the world economy is composed of rich and poor states, economically advanced and economically backward, militarily powerful and weak. Evidence suggests that the core countries extend their lead and keep to themselves research, design, finance, and ownership of intellectual and physical property. Their economic power is a necessary condition of their political hegemony. The quality and quantity of their weapons of mass destruction cannot be matched. The peripheral states act as manufacturing subcontractors. They provide primary and secondary products, and they experience an outflow of profits and labor in return for FDI and manufactured products.Many nations on the periphery, when confronted with the economic, political and military power of the core states, have little alternative than to accede to their policies. But some countries (Brazil, India, Russia and China) of the ‘semi-periphery’ may have more options than assumed by world system theorists and those who envisage a ‘one-world’ economy regulated by hegemonic American capitalism. There is divergence as well as convergence in the world economy. The ‘semi-periphery’ may lead to the rise of alternative groupings of states which interact with the core but are not part of it - in the same way as the state socialist societies did before their collapse. The economies of many countries have production which is local in character; regional companies and political actors have considerable scope for action independently of the global economy.In this context, the Russian Federation has a limited number of choices. Membership of the EU, as an alternative regional bloc sustaining political and economic networks, is not on the agenda. Russia has to trade as best it can on the world market and meet the conditions of global institutions such as the WTO. Concurrent with pursuing economic exchange with other actors in the world economy (EU, USA, Japan, China, India), it has opportunities as part of a wider CIS. Russia has an option for a type of national state-led capitalism as an alternative to participation in the global economy on the terms of neo-liberalism. Statist China rather than the neo-liberal West is a model for Russia to copy.

The remarkable collection of country studies as well as studies of issue areas in social policy that Cerami and Vanhuysse have assembled in this volume marks a step forward in charting the terra incognita of welfare states in the new member states which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. Apart from the one and a half small Mediterranean islands of Malta and the southern part of Cyprus, all new member states share the quality of having emerged, after 1989, from the economic, social and political regime of state socialism. One of the recurrent themes throughout the chapters of this volume is the following question: To what extent can the evolution of CEE welfare states be accounted for in terms of path-dependency and the continuity of state socialism as well as those institutional patterns that were adopted in the region during the interwar period — and to what extent do we encounter path-departures that were conditioned by the two dominant novelties of (a) the breakdown of state socialism with the subsequent deep transformation crisis and (b) the accession of the new members to the European Union and its patterns of capitalist democracy, as well as the conditionalities governing Eastern Enlargement. In dealing with these questions, the authors share an analytical frame that dominates much of the academic literature on current affairs in CEE. Stated at the most general level, this frame suggests that what we see happening in the region must be accounted for in terms of a joint outcome of ‘the past’ and ‘the West’.

The disintegration of the state socialist system in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 led the new leaders in these societies in alliance with those in the hegemonic capitalist world to create, on the ashes of state socialism, a social system having a capitalist market economy, a polyarchic polity and a pluralist civil society. These were the intentions of the political leaders thrust into power after 1989. What type of society has emerged is a matter of intellectual debate. In this chapter I shall consider only one aspect of the transformation: the type of capitalism that has developed in the postcommunist countries, and particularly Russia. Prior to the discussion of ‘what type’ of capitalism is the definition of capitalism itself. This is of significance because many commentators dispute whether capitalism has been introduced in some of the postcommunist countries.

State socialism is widely seen as a system that had been remarkably successful in creating and maintaining uniform economic and political structures and institutions in a large number of initially very different societies. From this perspective it is puzzling that, once the system fell apart, its pieces, which shared its unifying legacy as a point of departure and were exposed to the same exogenous shocks of the collapse, entered, in a patterned rather than random way, radically different trajectories of capitalist development. Thus, instead of a single post-socialist economy, diverse forms of capitalism have been emerging.

Gender has long been recognised by sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and historians (amongst others) as a crucial structure influencing the organisation of societies and the positioning of women and men in relation to both public and private divisions of power and authority. The socially constructed and culturally defined understandings of femininity and masculinity upon which the gender order1 of any society is founded, affect the roles and responsibilities attributed to women and men, both in the private sphere of home and family and in the public domains of economic, political and social interaction, and, indeed, in intersections between the two. Dominant discourses and understandings of gender, propagated through media and cultural representations of women and men, public rhetoric and popular debate, prioritise equality and difference to varying degrees, both drawing on and feeding into state-led ideologies and policies. These in turn play an important role in determining the extent to which gender impacts upon the opportunities, rights, entitlements and duties of male and female citizens. Indeed, as Connell has pointed out, the state is ‘not just a regulatory agency, it is a creative force in the dynamic of gender’, one which ‘creates new categories and new historical possibilities’.2

When, on 25 February 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev launched the programme of perestroika, he presided over what was known as the ‘world socialist system’. This was made up of a core of 16 established states located in central and eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In addition, there were seven African states which defined themselves as ‘Marxist-Leninist’. These societies all had in common a centrally planned economy, a hegemonic communist party and a comprehensive state-based system of social welfare, science and education. They had large, well-organized armed forces and the USSR was equipped with nuclear weapons. State socialism was a world system and a competitor to capitalism.

The New Right presents its rejection of National Socialism as one of the major defining characteristics of the movement: Europa vorn points out that there is no room in modern Germany’s ideological baggage for the Hitler cult and nostalgia for National Socialism.1 It is certainly the case that many of the typical features of extreme right-wing propaganda in which the link with National Socialism has not been explicitly severed – such as Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism – are generally absent from New Right publications,2 and the programmes of the political parties associated with the New Right go out of their way to underline their commitment to democracy. Hitherto observers have tended to focus on individual statements by New Right authors and to detect a relativisation of National Socialism. Such is the critical view of Ich war dabei (I was there), for example, Franz Schonhuber’s best-selling autobiographical account of his years in the Waffen-SS, published in 1981 and leading to his dismissal from Bavarian State television.3 Relativisation of National Socialism is clearly an important trend in New Right thinking and it is one we shall pursue, yet considering the New Right’s views on National Socialism and fascism as a political and cultural whole reveals a further matter for analysis. As we shall see, a recurrent pattern in New Right thinking presents humankind with a stark choice between chaos and order, and this is coupled with the conviction that we are still living in the fascist era. This broad cultural context of New Right thinking must lead critics to look beyond the New Right’s basic assertion that is has distanced itself from National Socialism.

A debate on convergence and divergence of post-socialist development is no longer relevant. Demonstrated by various paths of development in the former and present state socialist countries, conceptualizing transition from state socialism should move beyond a simple one-way trajectory of transition towards political pluralism, democracy and the market. It needs to encompass the perception of diversity, deviation and regression in the process of system change.

The transformation of state socialism is widely interpreted as a’ system transfer’ involving the transition to capitalism and democracy. Alternatively it is viewed as a revolution involving a comprehensive change of the social political and economic institutions and their personnel, of ideology and foreign relations. Writers advocating such different interpretations, however, share in common the view that the dominant movers of transformation are elites. Whereas an earlier generation of scholars theorized social change in terms of class and social revolution, by the end of the twentieth century elites and ’system change’ have become units of analysis. This chapter considers empirically the social basis of the supporters and opponents of transformation in Russia and Ukraine; it is based mainly on public opinion surveys conducted by the author in the two countries. It is contended that though personal identity is defined in many ways, social class is a major form of identification and is a significant factor in the process of transformation.

If we are to discuss radical democracy and the Internet a good place to start is by considering what radical democracy is, or might be. This chapter compares two versions of the concept. The first is associated with the post-Marxist perspectives of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the second with the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who are today the most well-known theorists remaking a tradition of autonomist Marxism. These two accounts are by no means the only interpretations of radical democracy current today.1 But they are two of the most influential. Both respond to the crisis of left politics caused by the collapse of state socialism and the rise of neoliberalism. Both start in Marxism, but depart in heretical directions. Both are influenced by postmodern or post-structuralist thought. And both have been produced over the very period when the Internet, and the digital in general, has become a field of radical activism.