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  • A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe ed. by Balázs Trencsényi et al.
  • Malgorzata Fidelis (bio)
Balázs Trencsényi, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baár, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček (Eds.). A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Vol. 2: Negotiating Modernity in the "Short Twentieth Century" and Beyond, Part 2: 1968–2018 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 392 pp. Selected Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-19-882960-7.

The rise of authoritarian populism in East Central Europe calls for a critical reassessment of the region's recent history and especially its engagements with modernity. The authors of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe attempt to respond to this challenge by shifting the interpretative framework from "democratization," which had dominated political histories of the region until a few years ago, to a more complex story that takes into account the "fragility of liberal democracy in this part of the world and beyond" (P. viii). The book is a collective work of six authors, who are specialists on different parts of East Central Europe. Together, they present a rich and fascinating account of political ideas and debates starting in late socialism, through the collapse of communist regimes and the first three decades of liberal democracy.

The six chapters of the book follow a chronological order. The first three focus on the period between 1968 and 1989, and the second part of the book (or part 3 of the entire series), titled "Farewell to Modernity? Thinking Politics after the 'End of History,'" explores more contemporary themes of postcommunist democratization, European integration, and "backsliding."

One of the strengths of the book is that it discusses a broad range of countries, topics, and intellectuals. The book includes not only a set of countries conventionally defined as East Central Europe (former states of the Eastern bloc and Yugoslavia), but also the former Soviet Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), Moldova, and Ukraine. Each chapter devotes attention to the whole region by discussing how specific political ideas developed in individual countries, while also highlighting comparison and cross-fertilization. In general, the focus is on individual thinkers and politicians in a specific national context rather than on social groupings or movements.

The authors consider 1968 an important turning point for the region marked by "the defeat of the vision of 'socialism with a human face'' and the rise of "various 'consolidation' or 'normalization' regimes" (P. vii). The 1970s are presented not only as the time of "scientific management" and domestic consumption financed [End Page 243] by western credits but also as the decade of expanding sociological and cultural research, and public debates on topics such as "the socialist way of life," patriotism, or the relationship with the interwar tradition. At the time, in Lithuania, for example, historians began tracing the origins of the Lithuanian state to Western European culture rather than to Russia and the Soviet Union (P. 22). The authors thus stress continuities between the 1970s and the decades that followed and suggest that the reformist discourses of late communism eventually came into dialogue with postcommunist market reforms. The Gorbachev era, and the attempts to democratize socialism, in particular, produced fruitful analyses of the political and economic system under state socialism such as János Kornai's, The Economy of Shortage, in which the author pointed to "systemic flaws that occur in all spheres of the economy" as the root of the poor economic performance of the communist system (P. 29). At the same time, Gorbachev's perestroika produced diverse reactions in the region. While Hungary and Poland became the most open to experimentation, countries such as Bulgaria rejected reforms. The Bulgarian leader, Todor Zhivkov, saw perestroika as a threat to his political power and national sovereignty.

The period between 1968 and 1989 was also the height of dis sident activity at home and abroad. Two chapters focus on this topic: one on "Political Thought in Exile" and the other on "Dissident and Opposition Movements." Like the dissidents at home, East Central European émigré circles included a spectrum of political orientations from conservative nationalists and liberals to Marxists and the radical...

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