Culture and Identity in Post-Communist Europe

Abstract

The political culture of Central and Eastern Europe was probably never more fluid than in the early 1990s, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism. Various value systems were on offer, some derived from the pre-communist past, some conditioned by the anticipatory socialisation of communism and some structured by expectations of ‘entering Europe’. Elements taken from all three broad possibilities were combined in a variety of ways to produce an uneasy and complex situation, in which no one political culture could be described as dominant. Nor was there a universally or generally accepted official political culture; on the contrary, after four decades of communism, the idea that the state should play a significant role in the shaping of social, political and economic attitudes was strongly contested. Different social categories sought to emphasise their own values and to insist that theirs should be used by the new order as its basic building block. Political parties were as much involved in the establishment of basic values as in the representation of interests. Indeed, the definition of interest was a crucial feature of the new politics. The political conflicts of the early years of post-communism centred essentially on the determination of the kinds of institutional frameworks that would most successfully articulate one or other of these cultures.