Accidental Occidental: Economics and Culture of Transition in Mitteleuropa, the Baltic and the Balkan Area

Introduction

Introduction The title of this book occurred to me at dawn on Sunday, August 7, 2011 when I was sitting at the eleventh floor balcony of a quite decrepit hotel in Mangalia, a small resort town on the Romanian littoral. While marveling on the magnificent view of the sun as it was rising from the waters of the Black Sea, I was reflecting on my fantastic experience the day before. I arrived to the coast by train from Bucharest early afternoon on Saturday . Having checked into the hotel, I wished to order a light lunch. The restaurant was overcrowded, but only one large group was enjoying their meal at the spacious poolside bar. When I asked the young bartender what was on offer to eat there, he said that, according to prevailing rules, there were no meals to be had at the poolside bar. When I risked the question how then it was possible for the large group to have a sumptuous buffet, he leaned close to me and whispered that they were the largest investors of the hotel. My memory of the early days of post-communist transition came back vividly. Time seemed to have stopped over the Romanian littoral. In terms of economics and culture, this shocking experience was not without lessons. First, it was interesting to see that those were the first to breach the rules who must have set them up in the first place. Second, they did it not behind the scenes but in the open and plain daylight; and they could not care less about the impact it might have on outsiders. Worse still, many locals must have considered their behavior as completely natural and expected . Third, the owners clearly felt that they were entitled to have, and even demonstrate, privileges. Like in the “good old days” of Ceauşescu, the Stalinist-nationalist dictator of Romania, until the very end of the 2 Introduction communist system in 1989, those who happened to be at the higher end of the societal ladder were thinking in terms of privileges rather than earned respect in a competitive environment. Fourth, they did not even recognize their own enlightened self-interest: the maximum satisfaction of customers may, by and large, enhance their profit and the value of their precious property. Quite the opposite: they seemed not to have been really concerned about the maximum possible exploitation of the hunger and thirst of the guests in the hotel and around. Of course, this small incident could have happened anywhere else in the transition world and similar events do occur still quite often in many places. But it is revealing in a distinct way that nascent or renascent capitalism has different rules in economics and culture in this part of world. It may not be like that forever but it is absolutely sure that it is going to be like this for a very long historical period of time. Transition is far from over and even if it was in the narrow and formal sense of economics , it has certainly not been completed in terms of institution building and human behavior.1 To use a German word, Mitteleuropa, for the subtitle of this book may seem strange and sound preposterous to the scholarly audience nurtured by the recent and prevailing Anglo-Saxon tradition of using cautious neutral words. It is somewhat less dangerous to Central and Eastern European readers. Mitteleuropa is not only a term circumscribing a specific geographic area but a well-known concept coined by Friedrich Neumann almost hundred years ago.2 This concept reflects a rather unique culture and civilization that had existed for almost a millennium before 1900, has survived in various forms ever since and, with remarkable modifications, continues to exist even today. While Central Europe is a mere geographic expression,3 Mitteleuropa clearly constitutes a unique culture with very special life feelings (lebensgefühl). It is a rather pessimistic and introvert culture reflecting several centuries of failure of the peoples of the region 1 My Black Sea experience highlights the peculiar culture of transition, an eloquent illustration capturing the distorted and distorting spirit of capitalism in the region which, in turn, anchors the development of these countries rather firmly in their not fullyWesternized political and cultural tradition. It is exactly this specific cultural heritage and experience which makes transition in Central and Eastern Europe a process which can be characterized in a somewhat ironic way as accidentally occidental. 2 Neumann (1915). 3 In strict geographic...