Botond173
2d ago
You're absolutely right in that they didn't particularly start out that way, instead they only took on that image afterwards.
Botond173
6d ago
If we consider the period before the outbreak of WW1 in Eastern Europe, we can absolutely surely say that the ideas of freely functioning political parties, democratic elections, rule of law, civil society, parliamentarianism, personal liberty, freedom of expression etc. had precisely zero influence in Russia, and that this was the case ever since the Russian state existed. And yes, this is true even when compared to imperial Germany.
Botond173
5d ago
As opposed to Russia, where the meekest similar attempts even at creating token institutions were likely to land you in a Siberian penal colony. Degrees of differences do matter.
Botond173
5d ago
The "democratic tradition", the way the term is being used nowadays, of western Europe is more a result of the Cold War and it's alliance with the USA, than it does with anything that happened before the war. Even Spain and Portugal were dictatorships until the 70's.
Huh? France and the Benelux states had already been democracies for a long time before WW2, and France was already a republic to boot.
Spain and Portugal joined NATO only after those dictatorships fell, which I think bears mentioning here.
Estonia? Latvia? Lithuania? Poland? Romania? Bulgaria? Hungary?
To be fair, 4 of these didn't even exist as sovereign nations before 1918, which complicates matters. Regarding Hungary I already replied in a different comment. The Baltics used to be ruled by German/Germanized nobles for a long time and thus have a shared legacy of Western orientation; that much is certainly relevant in this case. The Poles have a bygone but long and cherished legacy of being a republic with a parliament which, for example, is very markedly different from the Russian experience.
I could imagine that if the reunification went well the east Germans could be bread-and-circused into complacency, and would be just fine with brilliant ideas like importing seven zillion Syrians and Afghans, putting people in prison for speech, but locking them in a women's cell after they declare themselves a woman, and fining people €10K for misgendering them, but it's not immediately obvious to me.
It could have probably worked but nobody even tried. East Germans have consistently been shut out from positions of power and influence in the 'reunified' German state to an extent that makes the past discrimination against African-Americans in the US pale in comparison. They were seen as hillbillies with poisoned minds who don't matter. The economic transition was also completely bungled.
Botond173
6d ago
Since you specifically referred to ‘Wilson's deranged fantasies’ I picked Czechoslovakia because if there’s one tangible Eastern European development that can be called the result of Wilson's deranged fantasies, it’s the creation of Czechoslovakia. Also, just to nitpick further: in the case of Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania there was zero democratic tendency after WW1 to slide back from towards authoritarianism.
Botond173
6d ago
There are two glaring problems with that. Imperial Germany had a legacy of democratic norms already - there was a legislative assembly, elections, political parties, political discussions in a free press etc. Also, Germany isn't in Eastern Europe.
Ah yes, the long rich democratic tradition of the 20 years between the World Wars, that were imposed by Woodrow Wilson's deranged fantasies, and managed to revert to authoritarianism even within that short timespan.
What is this meant to be a reference to please? Czechoslovakia? Because there was no reversion to authoritarianism in that case.
The attachment to democracy was so short that we were seriously debating if it's not better to take the Asian Tiger route, and only implement democracy after authoritarian reforms.
The Asian Tiger route was a strictly Southeast Asian (Confucian) phenomenon in the specific context of the Cold War and facilitated by generous and targeted American capital investment and the proto version of offshoring. None of that applied to Eastern Europe after 1989.
It can work if the stars align just right, but has the tendency of taking it's necessary conditions (like everybody having roughly the same values) for granted. The moment these conditions are not met the democracy enjoyers themselves will start begging for it's end, arresting opposition candidates, and seriously considering the banning of political parties, for the high crime of people voting the wrong way.
It was all a long-term consequence of German 'reunification' (the annexation of the former GDR into an unchanged federal state structure) being a complete shitshow which incidentally the Americans played no part in.
Botond173
5d ago
You even have to invent additional just-so stories to explain the relative "failure" of the democratization of the GDR
Yes, I argue that the democratization of the newly annexed Eastern provinces of the FRG after 1990 is at this point largely seen as a failure by the West German establishment and their supporters. I think this is pretty much bunk because it ignores that a new political synthesis should have been worked out in the first place, a process that should have made reunification real instead of just a BS word for what in reality was annexation.
even though they it should have been the most successful of all
No, I think the most successful of all democratic transitions should have been and did in fact turn out to be the Czech, because it was the sole Soviet satellite state that in fact functioned as a democratic pluralistic republic before it was Sovietized; and because the Czechs were influenced by Holy Roman / Germanic culture for centuries before that, which made the country ripe for Westernization after 1989.
Botond173
6d ago
It’s a bit of a mischaracterization to argue that ‘Germany and Russia gave up [Polish] territory between them’, isn’t it? It wasn’t exactly a matter of choice in either case, especially not in the case of czarist (or Soviet) Russia. I’ll concede that Wilson probably had a significant role in the creation of Poland as well, although this is not a subject I’m familiar with.
Anyway, I agree with your point in the sense that Hungary did in fact have a bicameral parliamentary system as the member state of a dualist monarchy before and during WW1, and was as such exposed to Western concepts of rule of law, civil rights, freedom of the press etc. although to a limited extent indeed. The transitional period of 1918-21 in contrast was characterized by wars, unrest, socio-economic collapse, internment, pogroms, terror and the general brutalization of the population, which hardly constitute a breeding ground for democratization. The regime that ended up consolidating itself was clearly right-wing and authoritarian, but the bicameral parliament and the multi-party system remained, which was still something. In the case of Bulgaria and Romania, I imagine whatever political role their parliamentary system was equally or even more limited.
It has been true in almost all cases that the Russian army blunders and stumbles during the initial phase of the war but then shows itself to be capable of gradually learning and adapting even if the final outcome is defeat, as in WW1 for example. See the Brusilov offensive of 1916 in that case, characterized by John Keegan as “the greatest victory seen on any front [of WW1] since the trench lines had been dug on the Aisne two years before” (as quoted in Wikipedia). And there are cases when the important lessons are only learned after the war, such as the war against the Japanese in 1904-5 (which, by the way, wasn’t a cakewalk for the Japanese army by any means). I assume this is the consequence of the intellectual sloth and naïve romanticism that generally characterize the Russian people, the legacy of languishing as slaves for centuries etc., probably the Mongol yoke also has something to do with it, but this is largely beside the point. There are also a few cases when that initial period of incompetence is rather short, like during the naval war against the Ottomans in 1788-91, whom were soundly beaten.
In the case of WW2, the Red Army clearly demonstrated an ability to gradually gain competence, although the results generally appeared only in the final phase of the war. The offensives in the territory of present-day Belarus, Moldova, Romania and Poland in the summer of 1944 or the invasion of Manchuria in 1945 were impressive by anyone’s standards. The Russians are slow to learn maybe, but they do learn. Even the Afghanistan war wasn’t just a series of one blunder after another, just look at the battle for ‘Hill’ 3234 for example.
Westerners apparently have this usual tendency to concentrate on Russian blunders while ignoring every other factor and then assume that winning against them will always be easy. (Hence the recent proliferation of militarist neocon feminist girlboss politicians all around the EU, for example.) It never turns out great.
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