East European Politics and Societies

This article is part of the special cluster, “National, European, Transnational: Far-right activism in the 20th and 21st centuries”, guest edited by Agnieszka Pasieka.

Bolesław Piasecki, the leader of the Polish National Radical Movement (RNR), was one of the influential far-right activists in the 1930s. This article examines his political leadership through the lens of Weberian charismatic authority, enhanced by Anthony Ammeter’s framework for analyzing the power dynamics of leadership. Through a close investigation of the development of his political career, the article shows—in contrast to much of the existing literature—that Piasecki’s power was forged through triangular interactions between his skills and influential personality, the expectations and needs of his associates, and as a result of a series of events in which he displayed the ability to wield political impact. This approach sheds light on the ways in which political leadership is reliant on a wider network of relationships and shows that Piasecki’s charismatic authority was to a large extent an image constructed by his closest associates. At the same time, it shows parallels and connections between the RNR and other European fascist movements. This approach enables us to define and specify more precisely the nature of the RNR, and dig deep into the complex dynamics lying behind the final failure of the movement and Piasecki’s leadership.

Foreign students and researchers in Germany became, after 1933, a tool of Nazi propaganda. Those receiving financial support from the Germans, such as the recipients of the Humboldt fellowships, were further compromised. This article aims to shed light on the role played by Humboldt fellowships in the political and ideological transfer between Nazi Germany and Romania. It aims to re-create the profile of the fellows and the influence of the fellowship on the Romanian fellows’ political and ideological development, in order to establish how they functioned as Nazi propaganda tools. Throughout the 1930s, the number of young Romanians going to study and carry out research in Nazi Germany increased considerably, while the financial support they received from the Germans became more significant—including a larger number of Humboldt fellowships. This shows not only that Nazi Germany had a special interest in developing its relations with Romania but also that Romania was embarked on a path of far-right radicalization, with students and youth becoming sympathizers of Nazi Germany and sometimes members of the Iron Guard. The Romanian Humboldt fellows were politically instrumentalized by the Third Reich: they were engaged in far-right political activism, were influenced in their professions and writings by the Nazi ideology, and sometimes they even went on to occupy various positions in the Romanian bureaucratic or diplomatic apparatus.

This article analyses the use of Europeanizing discourses in the travel writing of Croat visitors to the Third Reich. Situating these visits in the context of transnational exchanges in Hitler’s new Europe and the war against the Soviet Union, it considers a number of specific case studies of travel between Croatia and Nazi Germany. It argues that the European discourse of writers, journalists, and youth activists in the Ustasha-led Independent State of Croatia served a number of specific purposes. First, they created a space of normality in an extremely violent state, providing an illusion of stability. By bringing the sights, sounds, and pleasures of travel to the near abroad back to Croatia in the form of books, magazine articles, and mobile film reels, they also gave citizens a glimpse of the good life, consumption, and materiality. As such, these travelogues and accounts of journeys overseas also aimed to persuade intellectuals and members of the cultural elite who did not support the Ustasha regime of the various material and professional “club goods” that might accrue to them by becoming active supporters of the regime. Furthermore, they served to create an impression of mobility in a surveillance state in which even internal travel was extremely restricted. Finally, in depicting Nazi-led war in the East and the struggle against the “East within”—in the form of the campaign of genocide against Serbs, Jews, Roma and so-called “asocials”—to building European brotherhood, modernization, and becoming an essential member of the new Europe, they became a source of regime legitimation, thereby telling us important things about the subjectivity of both the state and ideological tourists in a time of terror, war, and occupation.

This article belongs to the special cluster, “National, European, Transnational: Far-right activism in the 20th and 21st centuries”, guest edited by Agnieszka Pasieka.

Research on populism attributes great significance to mapping the distinctive discursive logic of populist reasoning (e.g., the trope of pitting corrupt elites against the people). This article aims to move beyond the primary focus on discursive structures to stress the role of symbols, objects, and different modalities of circulation in the political communication of populist ideas, using the case of Hungary. By tracing the history of one of the key symbols of nationalist populism—the image of “Greater Hungary”—from its emergence in the interwar period to its present-day use, the article shows how the meanings and material forms this symbol assumed in political communication that evolved under different political regimes. The analysis builds on extensive archival, ethnographic, and online data to highlight how the diversity of material forms and the conduits through which this image circulated have contributed to its endurance as a key political symbol. Symbols, like the Greater Hungary image, condense complex historical narratives into a powerful sign that can be easily objectified, reproduced, and diffused. Today’s differentiated consumer markets provide convenient conduits for this kind of material circulation. These symbols carry meaning in and of themselves as signs, and once they are turned into everyday objects, they facilitate the normalization of radical politics by increasing their salience and broad visibility.

Despite a growing number of novel approaches to the far right and new explanatory models, one feature appears to persist in the scholarship: namely, a tendency to discuss the developments in Western Europe and in postsocialist countries separately. Bucking this trend, this article investigates the similarities between the activism of Italian and Polish far-right movements, focusing on the field of historical politics. More specifically, it investigates the ways in which the memories of World War II and accounts of victims of communism are mobilized in the two countries, as well as the question of “censorship” and “mainstreaming” of far-right historical narratives. Apart from comparing the developments in these countries, the article discusses various forms of cooperation between Polish and Italian far-right movements, which reveal their mutual influences but also the limits of transnational networking.

In recent years and decades, authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies have passed and enforced punitive memory laws, intending to ban certain interpretations of past events or sheltering official versions of history against challenges. This comes as no surprise in countries whose governments undermine pluralism and assume the existence of a historical truth that is stable over time, invariable, and self-explanatory. But why do liberal democracies, committed to political pluralism and open debate, pass laws that penalize challenges to certain interpretations of the past and restrict freedom of speech? This article argues that liberal democracies may do so yielding to bottom–up pressure by courts and to regulate civil law disputes for which existing legislation and jurisprudence may not suffice. Based on case studies from Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, we also found punitive memory laws in liberal democracies narrower and more precise than in nonliberal states.

In ethnically divided societies and political systems organized according to the principles of consociationalism, demography plays a crucial role as a powerful tool for promoting ethno-political interests. The aim of this article is to evaluate to what extent the first post-war 2013 census in Bosnia and Herzegovina became a hostage to the principle of ethno-politics. This study is grounded in Horowitz’s analysis of censuses in deeply divided societies, which assumes that ethnic identity in fragmented societies provides an explanation of who people vote for, and the reverse. We use the data on ethnic voting in 2014 as an indirect estimate of the ethnic structure of the population to verify the 2013 census findings. To do so, we determine the extent to which people enumerated as residents in the 2013 census actually live at the places they were counted, as required by the census law. Although we found that the indirect estimate of ethnic demography based on ethnic voting is largely in line with the census results, we also identified specific structural discrepancies between census results and voting patterns that indicate possible flaws in the census data in general. The method we used revealed significant territorial discrepancies, bringing into question the validity of the census data about the presence of Bosniak and Croat returnees in the Republika Srpska, and especially for Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina. We argue that these discrepancies may have significant political consequences for the fragile Bosnian power-sharing system based on ethnic quotas and proportionality.

This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor and splinter organizations survived the collapse of communism, and all three countries entered transition with relatively high density rates in both organizational populations. We also find partial support for the density dependence hypothesis. Surprisingly, the EU integration process, the intensity of legislative activity, and media attention do not seem to have meaningfully influenced founding rates in the two populations.

The article focuses on the differences in pledge fulfilment strategies in majority and substantive minority governments. Issue ownership and dynamic agenda-setting literature are applied, expecting that government parties will focus on fulfilling the party’s most salient pledges, and also the pledges that are publicly salient for the whole electorate. Adding these expectations to the context of substantive minority governments, parties must accommodate these attempts because they face the opposition actor(s) with veto power and their own policy motivation. Compared to majority governments, the odds of adopting party-salient pledges should decrease for minority coalition parties. The effect of public-salient issues should also differ from the majority governments. This analysis is conducted on government party pledges in one minority and two majority governments in the Czech Republic (formed after 2006, 2010, and 2013 elections). The analysis shows a generally weak effect for party and public issue salience on pledge fulfilment. The decreasing effect of party issue salience for minority government parties is supported; the effect of public issue salience does, however, not differ in its decreasing direction from the majority governments. The additional model including combinations of the high and low party and public salience shows that for minority governments, public salience decreases the odds of fulfilment regardless of party issue salience. The article concludes with a contextual explanation of the minority government’s special character in the Czech case.

Focusing on the “state” rather than the “nation,” this article explores the interplay between nation branding and Poland’s soft power statecraft. Contextualised by Poland’s European orientation in foreign affairs, this Bourdieusian study focuses on the field of diplomacy and statecraft, particularly its communicative practices for the articulation of soft power. Aided by policy documents and campaign artefacts, this analysis of interviews (n=45) with state actors and newcomers to the field, nation branders, traces their actions, and unfolds the effects of their practices on soft power statecraft. The central argument emerging from the analysis of findings rests on the cultural conditions and ideological effects of nation branding on the field. On the one hand, I find, these effects advance the process of “corporatisation” of Poland’s soft power statecraft. On the other hand, the embeddedness of nation branding in Poland marks a cultural shift in soft power statecraft towards technocratic and transactional promotional culture.

This study analyses relations in the triangle Poland–Russia–Ukraine since 2004, bringing an insightful perspective to the realist concept of competition in international relations. For the last sixteen years, despite their unequal power, Poland and Russia have competed in Ukraine. This competition involves not only a fight for influence (quite limited in the case of Poland), but also in respect of the political and economic model that is to be implemented in Ukraine and its international identity. Poland wants Ukraine to become “European”: stable, democratic, and with a free market economy, to secure the eastern border of Poland, and to limit Ukraine’s dependence on Russia. This policy is executed both through bilateral cooperation and the Euro-Atlantic institutions, especially the European Union (EU). Russia, on the other hand, wants Ukraine to keep its post-Soviet identity. An authoritarian and corrupted Ukraine, remaining culturally a part of the “Russian world,” is perceived as guaranteeing Russian interests there, in particular in the context of the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance and EU towards the East. For this reason, Russia aims at impeding the development of Polish–Ukrainian cooperation. Until 2014 Russia was largely successful in realizing its agenda thanks to the multiple channels of dependence existing between it and Ukraine. However, since the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of the Russian war against Ukraine, the latter has engaged in a clearly discernible, though uncertain, path to Europeanization, which may favor the implementation of the Polish scenario for Ukraine.

This article presents the history of for-profit mobility from communist Poland, that is, transnational labor migrations and the movement of cross-border petty traders. On the basis of primary research in archives and new scholarship on the history of communist Poland, it presents the scale and dynamics of cross-border movements since the partial opening of the borders in the mid-1950s to the final erosion of the communist regime in 1989. It analyzes the main factors and patterns of the expansion of mobility in both its legal and irregular streams, including the relevant policies of the Polish government and the governments of migrants’ destination countries, the mechanisms of the gray and black markets, especially of hard currencies, and the development and diffusion of social practices of migration. It argues that for-profit mobility was a large part of the second economy as well as a form of disengagement from the communist state and its first economy, a way of selective opting out of socialism. Analyzing the relations between its expansion and the evolution of the communist regime, the article claims that for-profit mobility produced un-communist social spaces and was an important factor eroding the regime’s legitimacy and control over its subjects, thus paving the way to the post-1989 stage of Poland’s transformation.

This article analyzes the wave of strikes that flooded Poland in 1980 and their effect on the birth of a social movement. It retraces the process of emerging protests and their spread throughout factories and regions. It also discusses the role of the Interfactory Strike Committees and shows the mechanisms of circulation of newsletters and leaflets published by strikers. The article demonstrates how the spread of information influenced the rate and scale of mobilization. The author focuses on the role of social networks and the mechanisms that enabled diffusion of the elements of this social movement. The spread of the protests to other cities relied largely on direct contact between individual factories but was also facilitated by the independent press and audio recordings. The analysis also addresses the role of “brokers,” that is, people who disseminated information about the strike and increased the range of the protests. These “political tourists” observed the protests while on vacation or on business at the seaside and, on returning home, reported what they had seen, often bringing back strike-related information leaflets. The other group comprised “political emissaries” or people who intentionally established contact between individual protest centres. The article thus retraces the emergence of Solidarity starting from spontaneous strikes to the formation of a nationwide organization.

The article analyzes the biographies of the regional leaders of the Solidarity union and examines the process by which activists were recruited into the social movement and subsequently rose through its ranks. Though there exists an abundant body of research on Solidarity, the recruitment process for the trade union’s middle management has never been analyzed. Such an examination of the regional leadership is important given the significant diversity that existed in the selection process. Activists were selected in regions where strikes occurred (Gdańsk and Wałęsa) and in ones where there were no strikes. This article attempts to identify these regional leaders and their role in Solidarity. It poses questions about the social movement’s center of power. Did the regional leadership represent a grassroots social movement, or were they merely carrying out orders from the center? The subject of this analysis is a group of thirty-nine chairmen comprising the regional leadership of Solidarity. The article employs classical historical analysis methods combined with elicited sources (interviews conducted with selected leaders). It presents a prosopographical analysis based on statistical, historical, and sociological data. The questions posed in the article involve such issues as the Solidarity recruitment process, the social backgrounds of the leaders, their individual personality traits and biographical features, and the goals and motivations that led them to join the movement. The analysis reveals the qualities shared by the majority of the regional leadership of Solidarity.

The article aims at contributing to the social history of the Solidarity movement by tracing the collective biography of its elected representatives. It will focus on the life trajectories of the 900 delegates to the First National Congress of Delegates. The convention, held in Autumn 1981, is commonly perceived as a focal moment in the history of Solidarity and plays a crucial role in almost every academic narrative on the anti-communist opposition. Often seen as a first genuine Polish parliament since pre-war times, its main task was to forge the political and economic programme thus furthering the revolution. The projected research will draw on genuine methodology, combining prosopographical and oral history approach. The research will address mainly the following issues: what social strata the elites came from, what was their cultural and educational background, what motives/causes/expectations drove them to engage with Solidarity, to what generations did they belong, how did they embrace the character of political transformation of 1989, and to what extent and how did they get involved in the political, economic, and social life of post-communist Poland. In general, the paper seeks to shed a new light on our understanding of Solidarity’s social roots—for instead examining to what extent the contesting, revolutionary elites were a product of the Stalinist social advancement. It also tries to depict the level of continuity between the elites of 1981 and post-1989—thus testing the common theories whether the Third Republic is (or is not) rooted in the legacy of Solidarity.