Revolutions in Eastern Europe

Osiatyński, Wiktor; Ash, Timothy Garton; Echikson, William

doi:10.2307/1599975

Cited by 38 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…According to Osiatynski (1991), the enactment of the martial law represented "the military victory of the establishment, and moral victory of the nation" -suggesting, if using the terminology of the Needs-Based Model, that the communists were superior in terms of power, whereas their opposition (i.e., Solidarity) was superior in terms of morality. This asymmetry was still evident when the two parties reached the negotiation table in 1989.…”

Section: The Social Exchange Of Psychological Commodities In the Rounmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Round Table Talks allowed each party to restore the impaired dimension in its identity. That is, it allowed the communists to reclaim their lost moral legitimacy and earn positive recognition in Poland and the West, and Solidarity -to gain power through its re-legalization and fully free election to the Senate, free elections for 35% of parliament seats, and trade union pluralism (see Osiatynski, 1991).…”

Section: The Social Exchange Of Psychological Commodities In the Rounmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the Round Table Talks from the perspective of the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation: Observations and insights

Shnabel

2020

Soc. Psychol. Bull.

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This commentary analyzes the democratization process triggered by the Polish Round Table Talks using the framework of the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation, which conceptualizes reconciliation as a social exchange transaction in which perpetrators gain moral-social acceptance, whereas victims gain power. I argue that the talks allowed the restoration of communists’ moral-social identity, and Solidarity’s power and voice. I further argue that to complete such a transaction, both parties must believe that they would gain more through compromise than through violence. They must also overcome the “magnitude gap”; namely the systematic discrepancy between victims’ vs. perpetrators’ estimation of the severity or immorality of the same transgressions or social arrangements. Finally, as is the case for any exchange transaction, people may question its benefits. When doing so, however, they might take the non-violent nature of the transition to democracy for granted – due to “the hindsight bias.” Taking into account that the alternatives were probably worse may contribute to undermining conspiracy theories about “dirty dealings” between the parties, and commemorating the legacy of the Round Table Talks as an inspiring moment in history.

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Section: The Social Exchange Of Psychological Commodities In the Rounmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Social Exchange Of Psychological Commodities In the Rounmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the Round Table Talks from the perspective of the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation: Observations and insights

Shnabel

2020

Soc. Psychol. Bull.

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“…This struggle was very much complicated by the legacy of Communist nationalism, though this is hardly recognized by many Western scholars. The late 1950s and 1960s are sometimes regarded as a period of “nationalist communism” (Osiatynski 1991:847). After the decline of the centralizing ideology of Stalinism, national Communist parties in the Soviet bloc countries adopted nationalist rhetoric in order to win more popular support.…”

Section: Constituting a Nation: Ethnic And Civil Traditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstituting Paradise Lost: Temporality, Civility, and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Constitution-Making

Priban¹

2004

Law Soc Rev

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This article focuses on constitutional developments and legal policies in Central Europe since 1989 and elaborates on their temporal analysis with special emphasis on the distinction between demos and ethnos in the political and legal discourse. Using various social theories of time, identity, and codification of social traditions, I argue that the difference between civility and ethnicity does not involve simply a conflict between liberal democratic aspirations and ethno-nationalist myths of authoritarian politics, but rather represents two distinct traditions manipulated by political agents and codified in the process of recent constitution-making. The process of selecting different traditions and political manipulations of the past is reflected at the level of both constitutional symbolism and specific governmental policies in post-Communist Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The final part of the text analyzes relations between the abstract symbolic language of constitutional documents and concrete, ''ethnos-'' based legal policies implemented in these countries of Central Europe.

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“…In Albania, Enver Hoxha avoided any revisionist thinking or movement: all foreign influence, however innocuous, was denounced. No civil society in the sense of 'a network of underground organizations outside of communist control' (Osiatynski, 1991) ever emerged in Albania. The political system which prevailed was, to quote Walter Laqueur (1992: 548), 'a curious mixture of primitive communism and nationalism in which clannishness played a crucial role'.…”

Section: Albania's Go-it-alone Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16. Osiatynski (1991) describes this process most eloquently: 'As with waves at sea, each revolution picked up some energy from the preceding one and could not avoid building its own momentum'.…”

Section: The Last Domino: Whar Next?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Albania's Road from Communism: Political and Social Change, 1990–1993

Tarifa

1995

Development and Change

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Until the late 1980s, Albania was one of the least known countries in the world and virtually inaccessible to foreigners. Most studies on Eastern Europe lacked reliable and complete information about Albania; it was usually either mentioned as the smallest and the least developed country of Europe or totally ignored. For their part, Albanian scholars have made little contribution, if any, to analysing their society under Hoxha's Communist regime. As with all totalitarian systems, Albania's Communism was immune to criticism for almost forty‐five years, and information on domestic issues was tightly controlled. This article aims to throw some light on and to systematically analyse Albania's road from Communism. The country's inherited social, political, cultural, and economic conditions have made Albania's move from Communism the most difficult and convulsive of all the East European countries. They are also likely to put considerable obstacles in the path of establishing a true democracy, making Albania's post‐Communist transition highly uncertain.

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Revolutions in Eastern Europe

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

Examining the Round Table Talks from the perspective of the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation: Observations and insights

Examining the Round Table Talks from the perspective of the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation: Observations and insights

Reconstituting Paradise Lost: Temporality, Civility, and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Constitution-Making

Albania's Road from Communism: Political and Social Change, 1990–1993

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