自由主義如何在東歐淪為“失敗的神”
How liberalism became 'the god that failed' in eastern Europe
共產主義垮台後，西方自由主義改變中歐和東歐的承諾從未完全兌現——如今，我們正目睹其遭遇的強烈反彈。
1990年春，26歲的美國人約翰·費弗花了數月時間遊走東歐，希望揭開後共產主義時代東歐未來的謎團，並撰寫一本關於他親眼目睹的曆史性變革的書。他並非專家，因此他沒有驗證任何理論，而是盡可能多地采訪各行各業的人士。他所遭遇的矛盾既令人著迷又令人費解。東歐人既樂觀又憂慮。當時，他采訪的許多人都期望在五年內，最多十年內，過上像維也納人或倫敦人一樣的生活。但這些希望中也夾雜著焦慮和不祥的預感。正如匈牙利社會學家埃萊梅爾·漢基斯所言：“人們突然意識到，在未來的歲月裏，誰將富貴，誰將貧窮；誰將掌權，誰將無權；誰將被邊緣化，誰將居於中心；誰將建立王朝，誰的子孫後代將受苦，這些都將塵埃落定。”
費弗最終出版了他的書，但他並沒有回到那些曾短暫地激發他遐想的國家。25年後，他決定重訪東歐，尋找那些在1990年與他交談過的人。這一次，東歐更加富裕，但卻充滿了怨恨。資本主義的未來已經到來，但它的利益和負擔分配不均，甚至粗暴。在提醒我們“對於東歐二戰那一代人來說，共產主義是‘失敗的神’”之後，費弗寫道：“對於該地區的當代人來說，自由主義是失敗的神。”
1989年後，前共產主義國家效仿西方的努力被賦予了各種各樣的名稱——美國化、歐洲化、民主化、自由化、擴大化、一體化、協調化、全球化等等——但它始終意味著通過模仿實現現代化，通過同化實現融合。在當今中歐民粹主義者看來，共產主義垮台後，自由民主成為一種新的、不可避免的正統觀念。他們不斷哀歎，效仿西方的價值觀、態度、製度和實踐變得勢在必行，義不容辭。
在中東歐，許多冷戰結束後出現的民主國家已經轉變為具有陰謀論傾向的多數主義政權。在這些國家中，政治反對派被妖魔化，非政府媒體、公民社會和獨立法院的影響力被剝奪，主權被定義為領導層抵製壓力以遵循西方政治多元化、政府透明以及對陌生人、異見人士和少數群體的包容性理念的決心。
沒有任何單一因素能夠解釋21世紀第二個十年在如此多不同國家同時出現的威權反自由主義。然而，對自由民主的權威地位以及普遍的模仿政治的不滿發揮了決定性作用。這種缺乏替代方案，而不是威權主義曆史的引力或曆史上根深蒂固的對自由主義的敵意，才是當今後共產主義社會主導的反西方精神的最佳解釋。 “別無他法”的狂妄自大，為始於中歐和東歐、如今席卷全球的民粹主義仇外主義和反動本土主義浪潮提供了獨立的動機。
冷戰結束後，競相加入西方是中歐和東歐人的共同使命。事實上，變得與西方毫無二致可以說是1989年革命的主要目標。對西方模式的熱情模仿，以及隨之而來的蘇聯軍隊從該地區撤離，最初被認為是一種解放。但在經曆了二十年動蕩之後，這種模仿政治的弊端變得顯而易見，不容否認。隨著怨恨情緒的激化，非自由主義政客的支持率上升，並在匈牙利和波蘭掌權。
1989年之後的最初幾年，自由主義通常與個人機會、遷徙和旅行自由、不受懲罰的異見、獲得司法公正以及政府響應公眾訴求等理念聯係在一起。到了2010年，中東歐版本的自由主義已被二十年來日益加劇的社會不平等、普遍存在的腐敗以及將公共財產隨意重新分配給少數人而不可磨滅地玷汙。2008年的經濟危機滋生了人們對商業精英和賭場資本主義的深深不信任，更確切地說，這種不信任幾乎摧毀了世界金融秩序。
自由主義在該地區聲譽自2008年以來一直未曾恢複。金融危機極大地削弱了少數受過西方教育的經濟學家繼續模仿美式資本主義的論據。人們曾堅信西方政治經濟是人類未來的典範，這與西方精英知道自己在做什麽息息相關。突然之間，他們顯然一無所知。這就是為什麽2008年危機不僅在經濟上，而且在意識形態上也產生了如此巨大的衝擊。
中東歐民粹主義者得以肆意誇大歐洲自由主義陰暗麵的另一個原因是，時間的流逝已經從集體記憶中抹去了歐洲非自由主義更陰暗的一麵。與此同時，中東歐執政的非自由主義政黨，例如匈牙利的公民聯盟（Fidesz）和波蘭的法律與公正黨（PiS），試圖詆毀自由主義原則和製度，以轉移人們對腐敗和濫用權力的合法指控。為了給瓦解獨立新聞和司法機構的行為正名，他們聲稱這是在保衛國家，抵禦“心懷異見”的敵人。
今年3月，在德國杜塞爾多夫舉行的遊行中，一輛彩車上印有波蘭執政黨法律與公正黨領袖雅羅斯瓦夫·卡欽斯基戰勝“自由波蘭”的肖像。今年3月，在德國杜塞爾多夫舉行的遊行中，一輛彩車上印有波蘭執政黨法律與公正黨領袖雅羅斯瓦夫·卡欽斯基戰勝“自由波蘭”的肖像。圖片：Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
然而，關注該地區非自由主義政府的腐敗和狡猾，無助於我們理解民眾對民族民粹主義政黨的支持來源。民粹主義的起源無疑是複雜的。但其部分原因在於，在艱苦奮鬥的過程中，他們飽受屈辱，而這充其量也不過是優秀模式的低劣翻版。後共產主義時代，對“民主轉型”的不滿情緒，也因到訪的外國“評估員”而加劇，他們對當地現實知之甚少。這些經曆共同導致了該地區本土主義的反動，即對“正宗”民族傳統的重新主張，而這些傳統據稱被不合時宜的西方模式所扼殺。與歐盟擴大相關的後民族自由主義，使得雄心勃勃的民粹主義者得以宣稱對民族傳統和民族認同擁有排他性。
這是該地區反自由主義運動的主要動力。但另一個次要因素是，人們普遍認為，1989年之後，除了自由主義的政治和經濟模式之外，別無其他選擇。這種假設催生了一種逆向思維，試圖證明確實存在這樣的替代方案。以德國極右翼民粹主義政黨德國選擇黨（AfD）為例。顧名思義，該倡議的發起是為了回應安格拉·默克爾（Angela Merkel）隨口宣稱其貨幣政策“別無選擇”（alternativlos）。默克爾將政府的方案描述為唯一可行的選擇，從而引發了一場強烈而堅定的替代方案探索。類似的反彈，由後民族主義的常態化所引發，在前共產主義國家催生了一場反自由主義、反全球化、反移民和反歐盟的反抗，而民粹主義煽動家們則利用和操縱了這場反抗，他們深諳如何妖魔化“內部敵人”來動員公眾支持。
喬治·奧威爾曾說過：“所有革命都是失敗的，但它們並非都是同一種失敗。” 那麽，鑒於1989年革命的目標是西方式的常態，它究竟是一場怎樣的失敗？1989年的自由主義革命在多大程度上導致了二十年後爆發的非自由主義反革命？
1989年席卷中東歐的“天鵝絨革命”在很大程度上並未像徹底的政治動亂那樣，給人類帶來苦難。此前從未有過如此多根深蒂固的政權被同時推翻，並以基本和平的方式被取代。左翼稱讚這些天鵝絨革命是人民力量的體現。右翼則將其頌揚為自由市場戰勝計劃經濟的勝利，以及自由政府戰勝極權獨裁的當之無愧的勝利。而美國和親美自由主義者則自豪地將自由主義與解放變革的浪漫主義聯係起來，而左翼批評家們經常嘲笑自由主義是一種旨在維持現狀的意識形態。當然，這些東歐地區基本上非暴力的政權更迭具有世界曆史意義，因為它們標誌著冷戰的結束。
1989年革命的非暴力性質並非其唯一獨特之處。鑒於當時富有創造力的思想家和精明的政治活動家（例如捷克斯洛伐克的瓦茨拉夫·哈維爾和波蘭的亞當·米奇尼克）在公眾中扮演的突出角色，1989年的事件有時會讓人想起
被稱為知識分子的革命。但確保這些革命保持“天鵝絨般”的，是其背後對烏托邦和政治實驗的敵意。這些革命的領軍人物非但無所求於任何獨創的新事物，反而隻想推翻一個體係，以便效仿另一個體係。
瓦茨拉夫·哈維爾於1989年在布拉格向人群發表演講。
瓦茨拉夫·哈維爾於1989年在布拉格向人群發表演講。圖片：美聯社
德國最重要的哲學家尤爾根·哈貝馬斯熱烈歡迎1989年後“缺乏創新或麵向未來的思想”，因為對他來說，中東歐革命是“矯正革命”或“追趕革命”。他們的目標是讓中東歐社會獲得西歐人已經擁有的東西。
1989年的中東歐人自己也並沒有夢想著一個從未存在過的完美世界。相反，他們渴望在一個“正常國家”過上“正常的生活”。70年代末，德國詩人漢斯·馬格努斯·恩岑斯貝格爾訪問匈牙利，與一些最著名的共產主義政權批評家交談時，他們告訴他：“我們不是異見者。我們代表正常。”米奇尼克的後共產主義口號是“自由、博愛、正常”。幾十年來，異見者一直假裝期待著光明的未來，但他們的主要目標是活在當下，享受日常生活的樂趣。
從這個意義上講，中歐精英們認為模仿西方是一條通往正常化的捷徑。然而，在加入歐盟的希望的鼓舞下，改革者們低估了自由化和民主化的本土障礙，高估了引進成熟的西方模式的可行性。如今席卷中歐的反自由主義浪潮，反映出民眾普遍的不滿，他們認為這項看似真誠的模仿式改革計劃，實際上卻損害了國家和個人的尊嚴。
在整個東歐和中歐，共產主義垮台帶來的欣喜，使人們期待著其他徹底的變革即將到來。一些人認為，隻要共產黨官員辭職，中歐和東歐人就能在一個截然不同、更自由、更繁榮，尤其是更西方的國家中醒來。當快速的西化進程未能如願以償時，另一種解決方案開始受到青睞。帶著家人前往西方成為了首選。
波蘭等國的異見人士曾將移民西方與叛國投降和開小差聯係在一起，但1989年之後，這種觀點已不再合理。一場以西化為主要目標的革命，無法對向西移民提出任何令人信服的反對理由。一個年輕的波蘭人或匈牙利人，既然明天就能在德國工作養家，何必等到自己的國家有一天變得像德國一樣呢？該地區的民主轉型本質上是一種大規模向西遷移的形式，因此，選擇隻有兩種：要麽早點單獨移民，要麽晚點集體移民。
革命常常迫使人們跨越國界。1789年法國大革命之後，以及1917年布爾什維克在俄國奪取政權之後，那些被革命擊敗的敵人離開了他們的國家。1989年之後，選擇逃離的卻是天鵝絨革命的勝利者，而不是失敗者。那些最渴望看到自己國家改變的人，也最渴望投身於自由公民的生活，因此他們率先前往西方學習、工作和生活。
很難想象，布爾什維克革命勝利後，托洛茨基會決定進入牛津大學深造。但未來的匈牙利總理維克托·歐爾班和其他許多人卻這麽做了。1989年的革命者們強烈渴望前往西方，以便近距離觀察他們希望在國內建立的那種正常社會在實踐中是如何運作的。
冷戰後，大量人口外流，尤其是因為許多年輕人用腳投票，帶來了深遠的經濟、政治和心理影響。當一名醫生離開自己的國家時，她帶走了國家為她投入的所有教育資源，也讓她的國家失去了她的才華和抱負。她最終寄回家的錢，根本無法彌補她失去在祖國生活中個人參與的機會。
年輕且受過良好教育的人才外流也嚴重地，甚至可能是致命地損害了自由黨在選舉中取得好成績的機會。年輕人的離開或許也解釋了為什麽在該地區的許多國家，我們發現歐盟資助的美麗遊樂場裏竟然沒有孩子玩耍。自由黨的現狀很能說明問題。
在海外投票的選民中，政治表現最佳。例如，2014年，思想自由的德裔羅馬尼亞人克勞斯·約翰尼斯當選羅馬尼亞總統，因為30萬旅居海外的羅馬尼亞人以壓倒性優勢投了讚成票。在一個大多數年輕人渴望離開的國家，無論你過得多麽好，隻要你留下來，就會覺得自己是個失敗者。
移民和人口流失問題將我們引向了2015-16年席卷歐洲的難民危機。2015年8月24日，德國總理默克爾決定接納數十萬敘利亞難民進入德國。僅僅10天後，也就是9月4日，由捷克共和國、匈牙利、波蘭和斯洛伐克組成的維謝格拉德集團宣布，歐盟在歐洲範圍內分配難民的配額製度“不可接受”。中東歐各國政府並不認同默克爾的人道主義言論。 “我認為這完全是胡說八道，”維克托·歐爾班的首席智囊瑪麗亞·施密特評論道。
就在此時，中歐民粹主義者不僅宣布脫離布魯塞爾，而且更戲劇性地宣布脫離西方自由主義及其向世界開放的精神。中歐那些散布恐慌的民粹主義者將難民危機解讀為自由主義削弱了各國在充滿敵意的世界中自衛能力的確鑿證據。
2015年至2018年席卷中歐的人口恐慌如今正在有所消退。無論如何，我們仍然需要問一問，鑒於幾乎沒有移民抵達中東歐國家，為什麽這種恐慌會在這些國家找到如此政治上的易燃物。
從左至右：安格拉·默克爾、捷克總理安德烈·巴比什和匈牙利總理維克托·歐爾班。
從左至右：安格拉·默克爾、捷克總理安德烈·巴比斯和匈牙利總理維克托·歐爾班。圖片：Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty
正如前文所述，第一個原因是移民問題。人們對移民問題的擔憂源於一種擔憂，即那些被認為難以融入的外國人會進入該國，削弱民族認同感和國家凝聚力。而這種擔憂又源於人們對人口結構崩潰的擔憂，盡管這種擔憂在很大程度上是心照不宣的。1989年至2017年期間，拉脫維亞人口流失了27%，立陶宛流失了22.5%，保加利亞流失了近21%。羅馬尼亞在2007年加入歐盟後，有340萬人離開了該國，其中絕大多數不到40歲。人口老齡化、低出生率以及源源不斷的移民潮，可以說是中歐和東歐人口恐慌的根源。 2008-2009年金融危機爆發後，離開祖國前往西歐的中歐和東歐人數量，甚至超過了敘利亞戰爭導致的難民總數。
1989年後，東歐和中歐的大規模移民引發了人們對國家消失的擔憂，這有助於解釋該地區對2015-2016年難民危機的強烈敵意，盡管很少有難民遷往該地區的國家。我們甚至可以假設，在一個基本上沒有移民的地區，反移民政治正是一些心理學家所說的“流離失所”的一個例子——這是一種防禦機製，在這種情況下，人們的思維會無意識地抹去一個完全不可接受的威脅，並用一個仍然嚴重但可能更容易應對的威脅取而代之。對根本不存在的移民即將占領該國的恐慌，代表著用虛幻的危險（移民）取代了無法言喻的真實危險（人口減少和人口崩潰）。
因此，對多樣性和變革的恐懼，以及被西方重塑整個社會的烏托邦計劃所激起的恐懼，是東歐和中歐民粹主義的重要推手。大量人口湧出該地區所帶來的創傷，解釋了原本看似神秘的現象——即使在那些從後共產主義政治和經濟變革中獲益良多的國家，也存在著強烈的失落感。類似地，在整個歐洲，過去幾十年人口流失最嚴重的地區，往往最傾向於投票給極右翼政黨。
深陷人口崩潰恐懼的東歐各國政府，正在尋找理由，解釋為什麽不滿的公民，尤其是年輕人，應該猶豫是否要移居西歐。歐爾班有時聽起來像是想實施一項封閉的政策，對移民和移民都實施無情的否決權。但由於他無力采取任何此類行動，他隻能懇求匈牙利的年輕人不要離開。如何讓匈牙利年輕人相信，他們在西方找不到更好的家園，尤其是在歐爾班自身的政策正在摧毀大多數在國內過上有意義且富有創造力的生活的機會的情況下？
華沙的民粹主義者
布達佩斯似乎把西方的難民危機變成了東方的品牌宣傳機會。隻有西方失去吸引力，公民才會停止前往西方。貶低西方並宣稱其製度“不值得效仿”可以解釋為源於怨恨的虛構報複。但它也有一個附帶好處，那就是通過幫助阻止移民，服務於該地區的首要政策重點。民粹主義者抨擊西歐歡迎非洲人和中東人的方式。但他們真正的抱怨是，歐盟西方成員國自己也向中歐和東歐人敞開大門，這可能會剝奪該地區最有生產力的公民。
整個討論將我們引向當代非自由主義的一個核心思想。與許多當代理論家相反，民粹主義者的憤怒與其說是針對多元文化主義，不如說是針對個人主義和世界主義。這一點在政治上至關重要，因為一旦接受，就意味著民粹主義無法通過以個人主義和世界主義的名義放棄多元文化主義來對抗。對於東歐和中歐的非自由民主人士來說，歐洲白人基督教多數群體生存的最大威脅是西方社會無力捍衛自身。他們之所以無力捍衛自身，是因為盛行的個人主義和世界主義據稱蒙蔽了他們，使他們看不到所麵臨的威脅。
跨大西洋網絡
大西洋主義的終結：特朗普是否扼殺了贏得冷戰的意識形態？
非自由民主有望開闊公民的視野。如果說20世紀90年代的自由主義共識關乎個人的法律和憲法權利，那麽當今的反自由主義共識則是，受到威脅的白人基督教多數群體的權利正麵臨致命威脅。有人認為，為了保護這個四麵楚歌的多數派脆弱的主導地位，使其免受布魯塞爾和非洲陰險聯盟的威脅，歐洲人需要用自己強硬的身份政治或群體特殊主義取代自由主義者強加給他們的、水汪汪的個人主義和普遍主義。歐爾班和波蘭法律與公正黨領導人雅羅斯瓦夫·卡欽斯基正是用這種邏輯試圖煽動他們同胞內心的仇外民族主義。
中東歐民粹主義者對西方自由主義的終極報複，不僅僅是拒絕效仿西方，而是將其顛覆。歐爾班和卡欽斯基反複宣稱，我們才是真正的歐洲人，如果西方要自救，就必須效仿東方。正如歐爾班在2017年7月的一次演講中所說：“27年前，在中歐，我們相信歐洲是我們的未來；今天，我們感到我們就是歐洲的未來。”
本文摘自伊萬·克拉斯特夫和斯蒂芬·霍姆斯合著的《失敗的光芒：清算》，由艾倫·萊恩出版社於10月31日出版，可在guardianbookshop.com購買。
《失敗的光芒：清算》
作者：伊萬·克拉斯特夫，斯蒂芬·霍姆斯——2019年11月26日
*2020年萊昂內爾·蓋爾伯獎得主*
兩位傑出知識分子共同撰寫的裏程碑式著作，徹底改變了我們對自由主義危機的理解。
為什麽西方在贏得冷戰後會失去政治平衡？
20世紀90年代初，人們對自由民主向東傳播寄予厚望。然而，東歐國家的轉型引發了對自由主義本身的強烈批判，不僅在東歐，也波及西方腹地。
在這部精彩的政治心理學著作中，伊萬·克拉斯特夫和斯蒂芬·霍姆斯認為，所謂的曆史終結最終不過是模仿時代的開始。通過回顧過去三十年的曆史，他們表明，始於東歐的民粹主義仇外浪潮背後最強大的力量，源於對1989年後西方化潮流的不滿。
從這個角度來看，特朗普革命諷刺地實現了一個承諾：脫離共產主義統治的國家將會效仿美國。出人意料的是，特朗普卻將普京領導的俄羅斯和歐爾班領導的匈牙利提升為美國的榜樣。
《消失的光芒》由兩位跨越東西方鴻溝的傑出知識分子撰寫，是一本具有裏程碑意義的著作，揭示了我們模仿時代的非凡曆史。
How liberalism became 'the god that failed' in eastern Europe
After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central and eastern Europe were never fully realised – and now we are seeing the backlash.
In the spring of 1990, John Feffer, a 26-year-old American, spent several months criss-crossing eastern Europe in hope of unlocking the mystery of its post-communist future and writing a book about the historical transformation unfolding before his eyes. He was no expert, so instead of testing theories, he buttonholed as many people from as many walks of life as possible. The contradictions he encountered were fascinating and puzzling. East Europeans were optimistic but apprehensive. Many of those he interviewed at the time expected to be living like Viennese or Londoners within five years, 10 years at the most. But these hopes were mingled with anxiety and foreboding. As Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss observed: “People realised suddenly that in the coming years, it would be decided who would be rich and who would be poor; who would have power and who would not; who would be marginalised and who would be at the centre. And who would be able to found dynasties and whose children would suffer.”
Feffer eventually published his book, but did not return to the countries that had briefly captured his imagination. Then, 25 years later, he decided to revisit the region and to seek out those with whom he had spoken in 1990. This time round, eastern Europe was richer but roiled by resentment. The capitalist future had arrived, but its benefits and burdens were unevenly, even crassly distributed. After reminding us that “For the World War II generation in eastern Europe, communism was the ‘god that failed’”, Feffer writes that “For the current generation in the region, liberalism is the god that failed.”
The striving of ex-communist countries to emulate the west after 1989 has been given an assortment of names – Americanisation, Europeanisation, democratisation, liberalisation, enlargement, integration, harmonisation, globalisation and so forth – but it has always signified modernisation by imitation and integration by assimilation. After the communist collapse, according to today’s central European populists, liberal democracy became a new, inescapable orthodoxy. Their constant lament is that imitating the values, attitudes, institutions and practices of the west became imperative and obligatory.
Across central and eastern Europe, many of the democracies that emerged at the end of the cold war have been transformed into conspiracy-minded majoritarian regimes. In them, political opposition is demonised, non-government media, civil society and independent courts are denuded of their influence and sovereignty is defined by the leadership’s determination to resist pressure to conform to western ideals of political pluralism, government transparency and tolerance for strangers, dissidents and minorities.
No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world.
When the cold war ended, racing to join the west was the shared mission of central and eastern Europeans. Indeed, becoming indistinguishably western was arguably the principal aim of the revolutions of 1989. The enthusiastic copying of western models, accompanied as it was by the evacuation of Soviet troops from the region, was initially experienced as liberation. But after two troubled decades, the downsides of this politics of imitation became too obvious to deny. As resentment seethed, illiberal politicians rose in popularity and, in Hungary and Poland, acceded to power.
In the first years after 1989, liberalism was generally associated with the ideals of individual opportunity, freedom to move and to travel, unpunished dissent, access to justice and government responsiveness to public demands. By 2010, the central and eastern European versions of liberalism had been indelibly tainted by two decades of rising social inequality, pervasive corruption and the morally arbitrary redistribution of public property into the hands of small number of people. The economic crisis of 2008 had bred a deep distrust of business elites and the casino capitalism that, writ large, almost destroyed the world financial order.
Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect.
Another reason why central and eastern populists have got away with exaggerating the dark sides of European liberalism is that the passage of time has erased from the collective memory the even darker sides of European illiberalism. Meanwhile, the ruling illiberal parties in central and eastern Europe, such as the Civic Alliance (Fidesz) in Hungary and Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland, seek to discredit liberal principles and institutions in order to deflect from legitimate charges of corruption and abuse of power. To justify dismantling the independent press and judiciary, they claim that they are defending the nation against “foreign-hearted” enemies.
An effigy of Jaros?aw Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, overpowering ‘the liberal Poland’, at a parade in Düsseldorf, Germany in March this year. Photograph: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity.
This was the mainspring of the anti-liberal revolt in the region. But a subsidiary factor was the unargued assumption that, after 1989, there were no alternatives to liberal political and economic models. This presumption spawned a contrarian desire to prove that there were, indeed, such alternatives. Take Germany’s far-right populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). As its name suggests, it was launched in response to Angela Merkel’s offhand claim that her monetary policy was “alternativlos” (“without alternative”). By describing the government’s proposal as the only available option, she provoked an intense and implacable search for alternatives. A similar backlash, provoked by the assumed normality of post-nationalism, gave birth, in formerly communist countries, to an anti-liberal, anti-globalist, anti-migrant and anti-EU revolt, exploited and manipulated by populist demagogues who know how to demonise “inner enemies” to mobilise public support.
According to George Orwell, “All revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure.” So, what kind of failure was the revolution of 1989, given that its aim was western-style normality? To what extent was the liberal revolution of 1989 responsible for the illiberal counter-revolution unleashed two decades later?
The “velvet revolutions” that took place across central and eastern Europe in 1989 were largely unmarred by the human suffering that is usually part of root-and-branch political upheaval. Never before had so many deeply entrenched regimes been simultaneously overthrown and replaced using basically peaceable means. The left praised these velvet revolutions as expressions of popular power. The right extolled them as both a triumph of the free market over the command economy and the well-deserved victory of free government over totalitarian dictatorship. American and pro-American liberals, for their part, were proud to associate liberalism, routinely ridiculed by leftist critics as an ideology geared towards maintaining the status quo, with the romance of emancipating change. And, of course, these largely nonviolent changes of regime in the east were vested with world-historical significance since they marked the end of the cold war.
The non-violent nature of the revolutions of 1989 was not their only unique feature. Given the prominent public role played at the time by creative thinkers and savvy political activists such as Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Adam Michnik in Poland, the events of 1989 are sometimes rem embered as revolutions of the intellectuals. But what ensured that these revolutions would remain “velvet” was a background hostility to utopias and political experiments. Far from craving anything ingeniously new, the leading figures in these revolutions aimed at overturning one system only in order to copy another.
Václav Havel addresses a crowd in Prague in 1989. Photograph: AP
Germany’s foremost philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, warmly welcomed “the lack of ideas that are either innovative or oriented towards the future” after 1989, since for him the central and eastern European revolutions were “rectifying revolutions” or “catch-up revolutions”. Their goal was to enable central and eastern European societies to gain what the western Europeans already possessed.
Nor were central and eastern Europeans themselves, in 1989, dreaming of some perfect world that had never existed. They were longing instead for a “normal life” in a “normal country”. In the late 70s, when the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger visited Hungary and spoke with some of the best-known critics of the communist regime, what they told him was: “We are not dissidents. We represent normality.” Michnik’s post-communist slogan was “Liberty, Fraternity, Normality”. After decades of pretending to expect a radiant future, the main goal of the dissidents was to live in the present and to enjoy the pleasures of everyday life.
Central European elites saw imitation of the west as a well-travelled pathway to normality in this sense. But, encouraged by hopes of joining the EU, the reformers underestimated the local impediments to liberalisation and democratisation and overestimated the feasibility of importing fully worked-out western models. The wave of anti-liberalism sweeping over central Europe today reflects widespread popular resentment at the perceived slights to national and personal dignity that this palpably sincere reform-by-imitation project entailed.
In eastern and central Europe as a whole, euphoria at communism’s collapse created the expectation that other radical improvements were in the offing. Some thought it would suffice for communist officials to quit their posts in order for central and eastern Europeans to wake up in different, freer, more prosperous and, above all, more western countries. When rapid westernisation did not magically materialise, an alternative solution began to gain favour. Leaving with one’s family for the west became the preferred option.
Where once dissidents in countries such as Poland had associated emigration to the west with treasonous capitulation and desertion, after 1989 that view no longer made any sense. A revolution that defined its principal goal as westernisation could offer no persuasive objections to westward emigration. Why should a young Pole or Hungarian wait for his country to become one day like Germany, when he can start working and raising a family in Germany tomorrow? Democratic transitions in the region were basically a form of en masse removal to the west, and so the choice was only to emigrate early and individually or later and collectively.
Revolutions often force people to cross borders. After the French Revolution in 1789, and again in 1917 after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, the defeated enemies of the revolutions were the ones who left their countries. After 1989, the winners of the velvet revolutions, not the losers, were the ones who chose to decamp. Those most impatient to see their own countries changed were also the ones most eager to plunge into the life of a free citizenry, and were therefore the first to go to study, work and live in the west.
It is impossible to imagine that, after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky would have decided to enrol at Oxford to study. But this is what the future Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and many others did. The revolutionaries of 1989 were strongly motivated to travel to the west in order to observe up close how the kind of normal society they hoped to build at home actually worked in practice.
The massive flow of population out of the region in the post-cold war period, especially because so many young people were the ones voting with their feet, had profound economic, political and psychological consequences. When a doctor leaves the country, she takes with her all the resources that the state has invested in her education and deprives her country of her talent and ambition. The money that she would eventually send back to her family could not possibly compensate for the loss of her personal participation in the life of her native land.
The exodus of young and well-educated people has also seriously, perhaps fatally, damaged the chances of liberal parties to do well in elections. Youth exit may also explain why, in many countries across the region, we find beautiful EU-funded playgrounds with no kids to play in them. It is telling that liberal parties perform best among voters who cast their ballots abroad. In 2014, for example, Klaus Iohannis, a liberal-minded ethnic German, was elected president of Romania because the 300,000 Romanians living overseas voted massively in his favour. In a country where the majority of young people yearn to leave, the very fact that you have remained, regardless of how well you are doing, makes you feel like a loser.
The issues of emigration and population loss bring us to the refugee crisis that struck Europe in 2015–16. On 24 August 2015, Merkel, the German chancellor, decided to admit hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into Germany. Only 10 days later, on 4 September, the Visegrád group – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – declared that the EU’s quota system for distributing refugees across Europe was “unacceptable”. Central and east European governments were not buying Merkel’s humanitarian rhetoric. “I think it is just bullshit,” commented Mária Schmidt, Viktor Orbán’s intellectual-in-chief.
This was the moment when central Europe’s populists issued their declaration of independence not only from Brussels but also, more dramatically, from western liberalism and its ethos of openness to the world. Central Europe’s fearmongering populists interpreted the refugee crisis as conclusive evidence that liberalism weakened the capacity of nations to defend themselves in a hostile world.
The demographic panic that raged in central Europe from 2015 to 2018 is now fading to a degree. We still need to ask in any case why it would find such politically combustible material in central and eastern Europe, given that virtually no immigrants actually arrived in these countries.
From left; Angela Merkel, Czech prime minister Andrej Babis and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Photograph: Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty
The first reason, as mentioned, is emigration. Anxiety about immigration is fomented by a fear that supposedly unassimilable foreigners will enter the country, dilute national identity and weaken national cohesion. This fear, in turn, is fuelled by a largely unspoken preoccupation with demographic collapse. In the period 1989–2017, Latvia haemorrhaged 27% of its population, Lithuania 22.5%, and Bulgaria almost 21%. In Romania, 3.4 million people, a vast majority of them younger than 40, left the country after it joined the EU in 2007. The combination of an ageing population, low birth rates and an unending stream of emigration is arguably the source of demographic panic in central and eastern Europe. More central and eastern Europeans left their countries for western Europe as a result of the 2008-9 financial crises than all the refugees that came there as the result of the war in Syria.
The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) that cannot speak its name.
Fear of diversity and fear of change, inflamed by the utopian project of remaking whole societies along western lines, are thus important contributors to eastern and central European populism. The trauma of people pouring out of the region explains what might otherwise seem mysterious – the strong sense of loss even in countries that have benefited handsomely from post-communist political and economic change. Across Europe, analogously, the areas that have suffered the greatest haemorrhaging of population in the last decades are the ones most inclined to vote for far-right parties.
Eastern European governments, haunted by the fear of demographic collapse, are looking for reasons why their discontented citizens, especially their youth, should hesitate to move to western Europe. Orbán sometimes sounds as if he would like to implement a closed-country policy with a ruthlessly enforced veto on emigration as well as immigration. But since he has no way of doing anything of the sort, he is reduced to pleading with young Hungarians not to move away. How to convince young Hungarians that they will not find a better homeland in the west, especially when Orbán’s own policies are destroying most chances for living rewarding and creative lives inside the country?
Populists in Warsaw and Budapest seem to have turned the refugee crisis in the west into a branding opportunity for the east. Citizens will stop leaving for the west only if the west loses its allure. Dispraising the west and declaring its institutions “not worth imitating” can be explained as imaginary revenge born of resentment. But it has the collateral benefit of serving the region’s number one policy priority, by helping discourage emigration. Populists rail against the way western Europe has welcomed Africans and Middle Easterners. But their real complaint is that western members of the EU have opened their doors invitingly to central and eastern Europeans themselves, potentially depriving the region of its most productive citizens.
This entire discussion brings us to a core idea of contemporary illiberalism. Contrary to many contemporary theorists, populist rage is directed less at multiculturalism than at individualism and cosmopolitanism. This is an important point politically because, if accepted, it implies that populism cannot be combatted by abandoning multiculturalism in the name of individualism and cosmopolitanism. For the illiberal democrats of eastern and central Europe, the gravest threat to the survival of the white Christian majority in Europe is the incapacity of western societies to defend themselves. They cannot defend themselves because the reigning individualism and cosmopolitanism allegedly blinds them to the threats they face.
The end of Atlanticism: has Trump killed the ideology that won the cold war?
Illiberal democracy promises to open citizens’ eyes. If the liberal consensus of the 1990s was about individual legal and constitutional rights, the anti-liberal consensus today is that the rights of the threatened white Christian majority are in mortal danger. To protect this besieged majority’s fragile dominance from the insidious alliance of Brussels and Africa, the argument goes, Europeans need to replace the watery individualism and universalism foisted on them by liberals with a muscular identity politics or group particularism of their own. This is the logic with which Orbán and the leader of PiS in Poland, Jaros?aw Kaczyński, have tried to inflame the inner xenophobic nationalism of their countrymen.
The ultimate revenge of the central and eastern European populists against western liberalism is not merely to reject the idea of imitating the west, but to invert it. We are the real Europeans, Orbán and Kaczyński repeatedly claim, and if the west will save itself, it will have to imitate the east. As Orbán said in a speech in July 2017: “Twenty-seven years ago here in Central Europe, we believed that Europe was our future; today we feel that we are the future of Europe.”
This is an edited extract from The Light That Failed: A Reckoning by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, published by Allen Lane on 31 October and available at guardianbookshop.com
The Light that Failed: A Reckoning
*Winner of the 2020 Lionel Gelber Prize*
A landmark book that completely transforms our understanding of the crisis of liberalism, from two pre-eminent intellectuals
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance?
In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.
In this brilliant work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.
Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.
Written by two pre-eminent intellectuals bridging the East/West divide, The Light that Failed is a landmark book that sheds light on the extraordinary history of our Age of Imitation.
