Puzzled by the simultaneity of new authoritarians welling up across the globe, we seek common historical causes. But figures like Orbán and Kaczyński may be better explained by convergences in political strategy. One such is their abandoning of ’89 as a historical touchstone, argues Holly Case.
Articles
How we mark historical anniversaries says as much, if not more about our perception of the present as it does about the past. This familiar axiom has interesting results when we apply it to how the revolutions of ’89 have been remembered in each decade since.
The perpetual transition in eastern Europe has led to the spread of an angst-ridden politics. While the derailing of imported western institutions calls into question the project of Europeanization, transnational solidarity remains possible and necessary.
Clear ideological differences between East and West may be long gone. But recently solidarity itself seems to have become a thing of the past too. Public debate in Europe is now riven by a new volatile set of polemics about the European Union, the memory of the Holocaust and of communist crimes, nationalism and multiculturalism. The resulting misperceptions are of a different order to those of the Cold War.
Recommended topics
There is a certain type of post-Soviet anxiety that manifests itself in fear of state authorities, border controls or even doormen. The memory of 1989 may have largely faded, but the feeling of being ‘eastern’ has stayed with many – not least those who have built up lives and careers in the West, writes Júlia Sonnevend.
The Polish government’s attempt to abolish abortion rights in 2016 was one battle in a historical civil war, in a country where modernization has always been at the expense of sexual equality. But the Black Monday protests against the proposed laws have since been co-opted or have faded out for lack of mainstream appeal. Rebellion has now gone underground in art created by women.
‘An outrageous expansion’
Soundings, the New Left and the boundaries of politics and culture
Rejection of rigid Marxist orthodoxies and a strong focus on the cultural forces shaping politics and society were central to New Left thought after 1956. The British journal Soundings, co-founded by the influential New Left thinker Stuart Hall, emerged from this tradition.
Just because the map says so, doesn’t mean it’s true
Thirty years after 1989, from an island perspective
The workings of western capitalism were almost as unknown in the Eastern Bloc as the everyday realities of ‘real socialism’ were among western Trotskyists. Then, after ’89, eastern Europe disappeared off the political map of the left. Nowhere was this more so than in Britain, where ignorance about the east remains profound, writes Owen Hatherley.
Eurozine review
‘Osteuropa’ compares degrees of toxicity in Russia and Turkey; ‘Varlık’ debates post-Kemalism; ‘Czas Kultury’ explores Poland’s male retrotopias: ‘Esprit’ learns from the black sheep of Europe; ‘Il Mulino’ catches up with Italy’s diaspora; and ‘Rigas Laiks’ talks mad philosophers, linguaphiles and stray dogs.
‘Esprit’ re-reads Claude Lefort on disquieted democracy; ‘Mittelweg 36’ analyses authority and its opponents; ‘Merkur’ fears for German parliamentarism; ‘dérive’ surveys the urbanist precursors of 1968; and ‘Vagant’ considers nostalgic Russians and melancholy Norwegians.
‘L’Espill’ asks whether democracy would be better off without the EU; ‘Ord&Bild’ re-reads China’s Cultural Revolution; ‘Syn og Segn’ seeks sustainable solutions for Norwegian architecture; ‘Vikerkaar’ explores credit and debt beyond economics; ‘Res Publica Nowa’ discusses the parlous state of Polish NGOs; and ‘Symbol’ talks to Javier Cercas about the novel.
Partner journals
Focal points
When the Cold War came to a sudden end thirty years ago, the two halves of Europe declared in unison their intention to overcome the legacy of the division. Today, the hopes and ambitions of those heady days can be viewed as unrealistic at best. But is talk of a new East–West divide justified? A new Eurozine focal point asks what happened to ’89 in the intervening years.
Internet technologies are being used in ways that raise far-reaching questions about the resilience and sustainability of democratic systems. And they have fundamentally impacted on understandings of the political, transforming democracies from within.
Cultural journals have played a crucial role in the formation of the public spheres in Europe and beyond. Looking at their history helps understand where they are headed. A Eurozine focal point in collaboration with the Working Group on Periodicals Research.
Fake news has become big news. Post-truth is the new paradigm. Respect for facticity is becoming, by all accounts, a commercial anachronism. And behind it all, the spectre of an illiberal international waging ‘info-war’ against western democracies.
Eurozine Network
Journals met in Vienna for the 29th time: 2018 was a twofold anniversary: 35 years since the first European Meeting of Cultural Journals in 1983, and 20 years since the foundation of Eurozine as an online publication
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.