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Politics

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General
Vladimira.dvorakova@vse.cz
Petr.vymetal@vse.cz
Midterm november 8th Multiple choices Short answers, brief definitions Open questions Short essay questions
Final test before Christmas December 20th
Final: 302 SB 20.12.2011

Power point presentation
Seminar starting next week (every other week) 10:55
Treason – Verrat

Day 1
Ethnical and religious cleavages in central and eastern Europe
Does Europe exist? Where should be the borders? Russia and Turkey had a big influence on Europe as well. They dispatched parts of Europe for a long time. Of course the path dependency is present in these regions. The process of European integration started later there.
European identity is difficult to describe. Distinction between east and west means post-communism (eastern).
Central Europe: Czechs feel like being central Europeans (since they don’t want to be part of eastern Europe.) → idea of central Europe is based on Austrian-Hungarian-Empire + parts of Germany eg Bavaria. The link is also the way of making decisions, working, doing things, tradition, waking up early (Franz Josef) → many similarities.
Lot of conflicts in Europe are still connected to events that happened hundreds of years ago.
Poland (republic)
Linguistic Group: Western Slavic
Religion: Catholic (important part of national identity)
Ethnical Minorities: German, Ukraine, Belorussian (small and not important)
Often divided (Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary)
Is called state of wheels → always moving
We are Poles because we are not Russian, not German → religion became very important for their identification.
Day 2
Post-Yugoslavia states
Tito managed to unify Yugoslavia after WWII and to keep it independent from Russia. → self-managed socialism (market orientation). More contact to the west.
Authoritarian system but not as closed as the other eastern states. Before he died he passed a new constitution that came into effect after his death. → start of decentralization of Yugoslavia.
Conflict: movements for more autonomy, different attitudes to possible reforms, many of the states experience first free elections after 1989 → neither politicians nor voters were prepared for that, moment of uncertainty, if in such a moment of uncertainty a person comes and uses the ethnical card → it can be very successful (since our identification is one of the few things that are clear to the people)→ conflict finished in 1995 (Dayton agreement: peace in Bosnia and Herzigovina)
Slovenia
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: Catholic
Ethnical Minorities: Italian, Austrian – not politically important
Member of NATO and EU
Croatia
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: catholic (national identity)
Ethnical Minorities: Beginning of 90ies – Serbs, most of them left the country
Bosnia &Herzegovina
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: Croats (catholic), Serbs (eastern orthodox), Bosniaks (Muslims)
Ethnical Minorities: Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks
After the conflict: Bosnia and Herzegovina Confederation; 3 presidents, republic of Serbs + Federation of Croats and Bosniaks
Serbia
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: eastern orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Germans, Czechs, Croats, Hungarians – (Vojvodina in Serbia)
Montenegro
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: Eastern Orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Serbs, Romany (Gypsy)
Kosovo
Republic
Linguistic group: Albanian
Religion: Muslims
Ethnical Minorities: Serbs
1389 a battle that was lost by the Serbs and still provides kind of identity
Macedonia
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic (near to Bulgarian)
Religion: eastern Orthodox, Albanians Muslims
Ethnical Minorities: Albanians, Greeks
Albania (never been part of Yugoslavia)
Republic
Linguistic group: Albanian
Religion: Muslims, Catholic
Ethnical Minorities: not important
Cleavage: tribal or clan identity
One of the strongest communist regimes. Corruption → will take some generations to implement a working democracy
Bulgaria
Republic
Linguistic group: Southern Slavic
Religion: Eastern Orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Turkish, Romany (Gypsy)
Stable, no deeper conflicts, daughter of president changed education system, one year has to be passed in French or English (highschool), every year had a theme eg Shakespear, …

Day 3
Romania
Republic
Linguistic group: Romance
Religion: Eastern Orthodox (typical for Slavic actually)
Ethnical Minorities: Hungarian, Romany (Gypsy)
Communist leader (Ceausescu). He controlled the country very strongly. Sultanistic regime → behaved as he possessed the country. Family members in high positions → cause whom else to trust. His wife was president of Romanian scientists. She was seen as the best scientist in the world (she probably never published anything but the population was told that she did). Nationalism was one of the basic tools of his regime. He tried to get rid of the Russian influence. His idea was to be really independent. So he paid all the debts and paid them with oil and food → lack of electricity for the population, in the same time his palace was enlightened during the night. → So the country was getting poorer and poorer as a consequence. To strengthen nationalism he suppressed minorities even more. Any opposition was imprisoned immediately. During the 80s any typewriter was registered by the police. End of the regime was connected with violence.
Secret police (securitate) was kind of his private army. They wanted to imprison priests of Hungarian minorities in 1989 since they could still listen to Hungarian radio and understood what is going on outside the country. → riots started. Some collaborators of Ceausescu used the army to fight against him and his party. The conflict then was about this two groups. He tried to escape and finally was captured by the army and was immediately sent to trial → directly broadcasted (nobody could see the judges). → decision: death sentence → carried out immediately. December 25th 1989. → so the year of miracles in Europe ended with a lot of violence. Collaborators won the next election since the opposition party just came out of the prison and could not interact so fast to really influence the population.
High level of corruption. Low level of trust.
Hungary
Republic
Linguistic group: Ugrofinnish (not IndoEuropean language)
Religion: Catholic, Protestant
Ethnical Minorities: not important
Most communist regime. Leader (Kadar) 1956 -1988. In 70s and 80s he liberalized the regime, opened the market. Possibility of small private activities. Changed the basic communist slogan (who is not with us is against us) to (who is not against us, is with us). Hungarians could already travel to Austria. Started with a very bloody regime and developed to a very soft communism. 21st century Hungary has some problems with debts and economic development. At the moment right-wing government enhances nationalism. There are actually more Hungarians outside the country than inside who start making problems, want back to their country. Government at the moment has constitutional power. Trying to get the support in the country the government discusses the problems of those guys to support them. The automatically get second citizenship → should get Hungarian textbooks with the history of Hungary …. Other countries are afraid that this destabilizes their country and increased nationalism also in these countries.
One condition for entering EU is to have no problems with your neighbors.
Slovakia
Republic
Linguistic group: Western Slavic
Religion: catholic (small group of protestants)
Ethnical Minorities: Hungarian, Romany

Post Soviet Union states
Moldavia
Republic
Linguistic group: Romance (Romanian)
Religion: Eastern Orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Ukraine, Russian, Jewish (historically)
Ukraine
Republic
Linguistic group: Eastern Slavic
Religion: eastern orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Russians, Poles
Bread basket. Everything would be produced there.
Belorussia
Republic
Linguistic group: Eastern Slavic
Religion: eastern orthodox
Ethnical Minorities: Russian (almost 40 %), Polish
Low level of national identity
Strong orientation to Russia. President (Lukashenka) is reelected again and again. Opposition does not really have a chance. One method to strengthen his power was to change the constitution → when too few people go to the election → nobody is gonna be elected → so less than 50 % of voters → he decides (cause MoP are too lazy (member of Parliament) → reached the population with this message → so he weakened the parliament and gave the power to himself. Nowadays there are some deeper economic problems.
Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
Estonia
Republic
Linguistic group: Ugrofinnish
Religion: Protestant
Ethnical Minorities: Russians (20-40 %)
There were guys who were fighting for Hitler and others fighting for Stalin → still big topic. Who is the bad guy and where is the historical truth.

Latvia (Baltic group)
Republic
Linguistic group:
Religion: Protestant Catholic
Ethnical Minorities: Russians (20-40 %)

Lithuania (Baltic group)
Republic
Linguistic group:
Religion: Catholic
Ethnical Minorities:

Bolshevik revolution 1903
(=majority) won the majority in the socialist party. In February 1917 it started to limit the power of the Tsar. (“great October revolution” → happened on November 7 → different calendars) → leader “Lenin”. Marx thought there would be a large revolution (whole world). Lenin thought it would start in a country in which you find the combination of underdevelopment and capitalism. → There were so many conflicts in Russia that it could be the country were the revolution starts. Lenin died in 1924.
1922-1924 New economic policy: there was open space for some changes. After 1924 Stalin became the leader. He formed a system based on personal authority refuting any system of pluralism. → Some opposing politicians were executed. Gulag = concentration camp in the east of Siberia. Show trials = trials that are already prepared by the secret police; in fact open for public or directly broadcasted via radio; the accused (who were tortured before) accept everything, promise to cooperate, many of them were high ranked communists, knew that they would die or at least get a life sentence but still supported the regime since they were “convinced” (=broken).
At that time nobody could trust anyone → so it is hard to cooperate since you don’t know who is your enemy. Propaganda and isolation fragmented the country.
Stalin was a victor after WWII and was even stronger afterwards. He died in 1953. After his death the question arose who would follow him. The new leader became Khrushev. He started to liberalize the regime. Stopped the crimes, show trials and executions. In 1956 20th congress of communist party he read the “secret speech”. For the first time he spoke about the crimes committed under Stalin’s regime. → was given to New York times and was published.
1956 uprising in Hungary. 1961 Berlin Wall, 1962 crisis in Cuba → connected to Khrushev’s personality.
Khrushev’s period was connected with a lot of optimism. The source was the development of technology, more freedom, less censorship. Then Sputnik happened and people thought socialism will reign over capitalism (for the last time). 1964 he lost the control → new leader was Brezhnev (-1982) → stopped the process of liberalization → bureaucratic socialism: the basic principle was that almost nothing was prohibited but you needed a permission for everything (eg. 10 or 12 stamps) → so in fact they had a lot of possibilities to stop anything. Was used to control all activities. Nomenclatura: any higher position in the state had to be occupied by a person who was approved by the communist party. Qualification was not so important but loyalty to the party. → this group was interested to switch to capitalism the most since they controlled all areas of the industries. They had a lot of advantages but limited.
Since there were no terms like in democracies the idea was to vote for old and sick guys in order to limit their time of reign. Eg Andropov (1 year). 1985 Gorbatschev was elected (50 years → very young “unexperienced” personality) → He started the reforms. Changed Brezhnev doctrine (intervention in any socialist country when socialism is jeopardized) → every country could do it their way → opened space for activity. 1985-1987 Gorbatschev focused on foreign policy. Gained strong popularity in western countries. Gorbatschev had almost no support within his country (no KGB, no military) → he finished the war in Afghanistan, started disarming the Army → therefore he was not accepted in the army. He lost the support of the nomenclature (privileged class → two groups, one in favor of Brezhnev time, did not accept that they lost their privileges because of Gorbatschev, the other one was linked to Jelzin, saw in Perestroika a possibility to change their system und to change their status from nomenclature to the owners of the companies they were leading, accused Gorbatschev that his movement does not go far enough → does not make them really rich, wanted to use prerestroika to get even more powerful (Oligarchs were born) ⇒ both groups were against Gorbatschev) No single important actor supported him.
1989-91 period of strong nationalist pressure. Many states asking for independence. Change in the constitution → open space for politlical competition, communist party was not automatically the victor anymore. Yelzin in 1991 elected president of Russia (not the Soviet Union), Gorbatschev was president of Soviet Union. In August Coup d’etat → army took over the power in order to save the integrity of the Soviet Union. Imprisoned Gorbatschev. Generals gave up and Soviet Union was immediately disintegrated. In December 1991 Gorbatschev declared the end of the Soviet Union.
Coup d’etat – how to do it?
• On the weekend
• List of names of most important personalities who need to be taken control of

Perestroika – reconstruction
Glasnost –
Growth of nationalism. Communist (nomenclature guys) → Nationalist started to use it to mobilize the public. 1991 immediate disintegration of Soviet Union. → Gorbatschev declared the end of the Soviet Union. He was really alone. Nomenclature cooperated with Jelzin.
Russia
Transition to to market economy and democracy. End of Perestroika. Radical change of the regime. The constitution was a problem in this respect. No one supposed that constitution would be

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Goverment and Politics

...Facing a Crisis of Democracy? By Catherine Bromley, John Curtice and Ben Seyd The Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends is an ESRC Research Centre based jointly at the National Centre for Social Research (formerly SCPR) and the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Democracy? by Catherine Bromley, John Curtice and Ben Seyd EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Britain is widely believed to be suffering a crisis of democracy. This briefing examines whether this perception is justified or not. Our findings - which are based on a four year research project funded by the ESRC - address four key issues: the legitimacy of governments, patterns of participation in politics, the impact of constitutional reform, and the explanation for any crisis. Legitimacy There has been a decline in levels of trust in government and confidence in the political system. Thirty years ago, four in ten people in Britain trusted government to put the needs of the nation above those of their political party; today, just one in five do so. But much of this decline set in during the early 1990s, although trust and confidence have fallen further since 1997. Participation Turnout at all elections has declined since 1997, most noticeably at the 2001 general election, when the participation rate was the lowest since 1918. At the same time, levels of non-electoral participation have increased somewhat. Meanwhile, it is not the case that...

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