Arts & Sciences

It was never all that easy to teach about the politics of what used to be called the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Among other things, it was very hard to stay awake (for students and professors alike) during the Brezhnev era. Today, of course, the politics of the region are a good deal more stimulating-perhaps, one could observe, too stimulating. We are shooting at a moving target. There are too many "formers" and too much future to allow for good analyses of the present-or any consensus regarding what we should be teaching about that present.

What this means in practice is that difficult questions. In particular how can we speak-or should we even attempt to speak-in a systematic way about the chaotic processes involved in postcommunist transformations? Does it make any sense to teach a course on the politics of postcommunism, when the experience itself features everywhere a close and highly combustible interaction among rapidly changing developments in the polity, the economy, and the society? What should constitute the geographical boundaries of our courses-should they focus on one or many cases, the postcommunist region or other countries as well, with the latter including regimes undergoing the processes of democratization, economic liberalization, and/or integration with Europe? What should constitute the temporal boundaries of our courses? How much emphasis, for instance, should we place on the postcommunist present versus the socialist period, or, for that matter, presocialist past? Finally, if the more theoretical literature in the social sciences is useful for analyzing postcommunist transformations (which is itself in question), then which segments of this literature should we incorporate in our courses?

I cannot pretend to have the answers to these questions. What I can do is to say a bit about my current thinking, which is informed not just by my own teaching and research experiences, but also by my participation over the past few years in national and international workshops held for advanced graduate students in east-central European studies and in post-Soviet studies.

Let me begin by saying that I do think that there is something meaningful that we can call postcommunism. It seems to involve in all cases (twenty-seven at last counting) the following characteristics: the end of the Leninist Party's monopoly over politics, economics, and society; a rapid, uneven, and uncertain liberalization of politics and economics; major changes in the class structure and in the relationship of the state to the international system; significant residues from the state socialist past (ranging from continuity of elites to institutions, interests, and culture); the proliferation of new institutions, which in many cases are we hybrids with the old and which in all now confront a series of extremely cases are weak; poorly defined interests; and considerable uncertainty with respect to future developmental trajectories. Within the parameters set by these characteristics, of course, there are significant variations-across time and space.

Second, my sense is that we can in fact privilege politics in our courses. This is primarily because politics, as in the Leninist past, is still "in command"-albeit with different objectives and embodied in different institutions. However, just as in the "old days," that does not mean leaving economics, culture, and social factors out of the picture. For example, one of the most interesting things about postcommunism is not just the interdependence between politics and economics, but also the often surprising ways in which this is played out-for instance, the relative weakness, not strength, of nationalism and political protest in a the postcommunist world characterized by considerable economic deprivation.

Third, I assume in my teaching that comparisons are inherently useful. This, along with the other premises, leads to a related point. We will impair our ability to analyze postcommunism if we continue, as is the pronounced tendency among many scholars these days, as well as among policymakers, to draw various kinds of rigid regional boundaries-most notably, between the Visegrad states and the Balkans, between east-central Europe and the former Soviet Union. This is not to deny variance, but, rather, to assert that what we see are in fact variations on a common theme-what I have termed postcommunism.

Fourth, I assume that history matters. The past, especially the socialist past, shapes what happens in the present. Russian politics did not "begin" in 1991.

Finally, I take a deeply ambivalent stance with respect to the issue of "social sciencizing" our discussions of the transformation. On the one hand, there are some very good reasons to pay a lot of attention in our courses to the social science literature. This helps free us from the regrettable tendency, built into situations featuring rapid change, of becoming "event-chasers." It also forces us to impose some discipline on the fluidity of the postcommunist experience by deploying parsimonious approaches, such as rational choice and microinstitutional analysis, and by applying to the postcommunist world insights and concepts from such well-developed areas of research as the work on transitions to and consolidations of democracy, social movements, the design of political institutions and their consequences, public opinion, and political parties. Finally, it allows us and our students to engage in a dialogue with those outside our narrow field of work. This is good for our minds and, quite frankly, good for the job prospects of our students.

On the other hand, there are reasons to question the value and validity of social science theories, empirical research, and the like. The extraordinary fluidity of the postcommunist experience is a fact, as is the absence of any historical precendent for what is being attempted in the postcommunist world. Both of these considerations seem to suggest that the social science literature may be limited in its applicability to the postcommunist world. This is a literature, after all, that is based on specific and in the postcommunist context "deviant" cases, and that presumes (even when dealing with political change) a relatively settled landscape.

What, then, should we do? Let me begin by noting what we should not do. We should not succumb to rushing after social science fads-whether it be rational choice or cultural studies. We should also break with what seems to be a central, but curious, development in the training of post-Soviet specialists versus specialists on east-central Europe; that is, the tendency for the former to base themselves heavily in the literature on American politics (a form of superpower camaraderie?) and the latter in the literature on western Europe (European ideational integration?). Instead of these alternatives, I would argue strongly for casting our theoretical net widely and cautiously when teaching courses about postcommunism.

Valerie Bunce is professor of government and director of the Russian and East European Studies Program. She is a specialist on "former" countries; that is, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Reprinted substantially from NewsNet, September 1996, vol. 36, no. 4., with permission from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.