It's a very good day today... i got another 85% for my European Studies essay... and i'm so happy cos' I know ES Dept. gives HDs very, very sparingly... What my tutor wrote also made me happy:
"Will, this essay is outstanding in every way. It is beautifully written, thoroughly researched and flawlessly documented, highly intelligent and convincingly argued. Congratulations on an excellent piece of work, well deserving of a HD!
Thanks for your positive participation in the unit and I hope we'll see you again in European Studies at second and third year level."
Noted the amount of praise that was heaped on me? =P
I don't mean to be an arrogrant ass, but I've never been more certain of my intellectual capacities haha.
T4, after 45% of European Studies calculated,
a) 100% for library assignment, = 5 / 5
b) 76% for critical analysis assignment = 11.4 / 15
c) 85% for major essay = 21.25 / 25
total = 37.65 / 45 which converts into 83.67% - quite safe in HD zone.
Also really happy for mabz... cos' her (I can write it here, can I? =P) application to UBC has been approved... yeap, so she'll be in Vancover from let's see... August to the end of the year. Calls for a celebration indeed haha =)
You'd have to read this... it's pretty contemporary, because it's based on a comparison between Kolya (a Czech film made in 1996), and Goodbye Lenin! (I'm sure you've heard of that... German film, made in 2003)
Question 1
· How do films such as The Promise, Kolya and Goodbye Lenin! help us to understand the unique character and recent historical experience of the countries of Central Europe? Discuss on the basis of two films.
Resurrected territory, entrenched traditions: Central Europe as place and identity
Central Europe as a family of small nations has its own vision of the world, a vision based on a deep distrust of history.
- Milan Kundera[1]
The legalisation and subsequent victory of the Solidarity trade union in Polish general elections during the summer of 1989 precipitated similar “revolutions” across Soviet-dominated “Eastern” Europe, ultimately resulting in the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. While Fukuyama has heralded these events as “the end of history”, suggesting the unqualified triumph of “Western” democracy and capitalism, other theorists like M.G. Roskin have noted the unique character of this nascent region which has come to be known as “Central Europe”, and hence has referred to this area as “World 1.5”, [2] which implies a transcendence of the Cold War dichotomy between the “First World” and the “Second World”. The term “Central Europe” has permeated political parlance since then, and it has generally been understood to encompass the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. [3] However, the essay will postulate that the idea of “in-betweenness”, [4] which in itself constitutes a distinct identity, has persisted in Central Europe for centuries, and that the communist experience has served to strengthen their collective identity. This will be attempted through an examination of two films: Kolya [5] and Goodbye Lenin! [6]. It is to be noted that while the latter film highlights the experience of an area (the former German Democratic Republic (GDR)) that is not included in the above definition of Central Europe, its communist past aligns it closer to the region as compared to Western Europe, and this highlights the problem of seeing geographical location as indicative of collective experiences in Europe. [7]
Firstly, one could adopt a paradigm of domination and subjugation to understand Central European history; this region was carved up between the multi-national Habsburg, Ottoman and Prussian empires from the 16th century onwards. [8] While the conclusion of World War One saw the sovereignty of modern Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, nationhood was rapidly interrupted by Nazism and the Soviet regime. This extended period of repression has led to a constant sense of fatalism among individuals, that individual agency is overwhelmed by the forces of history. [9] For example, in Goodbye Lenin!, Christiane realises that it is virtually impossible to emigrate to West Germany with her two children, and therefore chooses to “marry the socialist fatherland”. The coercive nature of communist rule also meant that people had to take on dual identities to circumvent its vagaries and to voice their opposition; [10] for instance, Louka outwardly conforms to the communist state by displaying Soviet flags on his window, but is clearly against the regime by labelling the Russians as “expansionists”. This form of contextual identities has its origins in the Byzantine era, where the fusion of church and secular power meant that there was little emphasis on concordance of external behaviour and internal thought, but rather the church existed only to legitimise the monarch. [11] Therefore, Central Europe’s legacy of foreign domination has engendered its own strategies of tacit resistance, as well as general attitudes of helplessness among the people.
The long period of imperial rule also fermented ethnic nationalism in Central Europe; there was an emphasis on ethnicity, the myth of common ancestry, and language to demarcate identity. [12] The empires were seen to be contrived and alien, and as long as the empire was identified as a state (the basis for civic nationalism), it meant that communities were more inclined to turn towards ius sanguinis, which always had the advantage in moulding successive generations, [13] to articulate people’s sense of self. Ethnic nationalism presents itself as innate and essential, and this can be seen in Kolya, where music, language and the national flag are pervasive symbols of Czechoslovakian identity; this is in contrast to civic nationalism, where the focus is on institutions. Also, the overarching theme in Goodbye Lenin! is that the Soviet empire is constructed (as seen by Alex’s attempt to recreate the GDR for Christiane), and this is in opposition to his comment that “soccer united our still-divided nation”, an activity that invokes passion rather than “rationalism”. Schöpflin has commented that “total history” does not exist, that is, one tends to interpret events in a manner that is advantageous to him / her. [14] Therefore, juxtaposing the “one and indivisible” element of ethnic nationalism and considering the fact that Central Europe (and the Balkans) is a cauldron of different ethnicities and religions, one could understand why the legacy of vacillating empire positions has resulted in the ethnic strife of the 1990s.
Milosz has done a comparative analysis of Central European literature and concluded the region’s intellectuals have an acute sense of history and time, as the introductory quote suggests. [15] Western literature tends to exist in a vacuum, whereas dissident literature from the region always has a veiled reference to historical events and the way it has shaped characters, regardless of its genre on the surface. [16] This can be seen in Ismail Kadare’s (an Albanian intellectual) The Palace of Dreams, where the opaque and arbitrary workings of the palace is an allegory of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime. [17] This implies that intellectuals play a unique role in Central European history, of which the reasons can be located in both “Eastern” and “Western” traditions. While Western Catholicism and its promulgation of universities (which was to become increasingly independent of the Church) was embraced by the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, [18] this development was tempered by the centralising effect of the Muscovite state. Accordingly, this meant that there was the absence of a bourgeois class, and a relatively independent but stifled intelligentsia. [19] This culture of “limited liberalism” continued in the Soviet era, where intellectuals were encouraged to distribute literary works of national cultures, while simultaneously being censured in terms of political leanings. [20] This was antagonistic to Central European intellectuals, who were accustomed to a climate that stressed authenticity and national (as opposed to ideological) loyalty. [21] Hence, the intellectuals were the vanguard of revolutionary change in 1989; the playwright Vaclav Havel became Czechoslovakia’s president, and they also stimulated opposition through their publication of samizdat journals. This unique position of intellectuals can be gleamed in Kolya, where it was the university students in Prague who galvanised the mass demonstrations through Radio Free Europe.
One of the key shared experiences of Central European countries was its subjection to communist rule after World War Two. While the communists were initially favourably received by the locals due to their role in resisting the fascists during the war, this impression quickly eroded due to the nature of Stalinist rule; such as forced collectivisation and the ubiquitous terror wrought by the secret police. [22] Expressions of mass dissent were also not tolerated, as seen in the 1956 Hungarian revolution and the crushing of the 1968 “Prague Spring”. The brutality of the police is established in Goodbye Lenin!, when they quashed a seemingly peaceful demonstration against the presence of the Berlin Wall and their penetration into the family (a private sphere of life), when Louka has to report to the authorities what transpired between him and his brother when he visited him in the West (in Kolya).
Besides the repressive nature of communist regimes in Central Europe, there was also a rupture between socialist ideals and reality, illuminated by Klapprath’s (in Goodbye Lenin!) comment that Christiane was “too idealistic”, and this caused “problems” in operating the school (an implicit comparison to the GDR). Although there was a marked shift to urbanisation and a corresponding decline in the peasant population, the envisaged classless proletariat society never emerged because new forms of stratification emerged, for example, the privileges enjoyed by the (party) bureaucrats. [23] Social inequality was intimately linked to politics as occupational status depended on one’s party commitment. [24] For instance, in Kolya, the policeman threatened to remove Louka from his position from the orchestra if he did not comply with his interrogation. This alienation and contempt for party officials is further strengthened when we see that Alex cynically remarks that “the old men are celebrating themselves” during the 40th anniversary of the GDR, but he is able to make the distinction between party and individuals through his relationship with Lara, a nurse from the Soviet Union.
However, this should not blind us to the fact that a systemic attitude of anti-Russianness was accentuated (and still continues to exist) during this period. There was a strong resistance to learn and speak the Russian language, for fear that it would signal the end of Central Europeans’ national consciousness, [25] and caricatures of Russians were portrayed in negative terms, from Louka’s mother referring to them as “locusts” and Alex’s impression of Russian women as “weighing a ton”, which was derived from his Russian teacher. This "deep distrust" of outsiders resulted in a virtually non-existent civic culture, the atomisation of society, and only assisted the awareness of ethnicity as an identity-giving factor, which reared its ugly head once the overarching stability of communist rule came to an end.
Shortages and inefficiency were also the norm during this period, [26] as the command economy focused on heavy industrialisation and neglected citizens’ standards of living, which led to the destruction of the environment, [27] vividly illustrated by the example of the Otter River in Kolya, a river with no otters because of acid rain. In addition, Christiane expresses her surprise that the family’s Trabant has arrived after “only” three years, a wait that would have been unacceptable by Western standards. Therefore, Central Europe’s experience with communism was characterised by forced conformity, increasing socio-economic malaise and the intensification of ethnic nationalism.
Lastly, the experiences of post-communism were also broadly similar across Central Europe and perhaps suggested that there were some benefits of communist rule. The transition to market capitalism exacerbated income differentials as the guarantee of a basic level of subsistence disappeared overnight, bringing about high unemployment and in the case of the GDR, a sense of being subservient to Western Germany. In Goodbye Lenin!, Alex feels cheated when he finds out that his GDR currency has become worthless and the “retired” teachers (in reality, being forcibly removed because of their necessary association with the old regime) exemplify the notion of powerlessness and dislocation under the new system.
One of the crucial problems of post-communism implied in Kolya with the two secret policemen participating in the Velvet Revolution is how to deal with communist atrocities. [28] Throughout Central Europe, countries have agonised on how to determine complicity when there were clearly those who followed orders to ensure their survival (cf. the legacy of dual identities). To completely deny the past by adopting a “collective amnesia”, as in Poland, can lead to questions of legitimacy as former party leaders continue to occupy key bureaucratic positions. [29] On the other hand, a comprehensive and thorough treatment of the past, for example in Germany, may yield outcomes that an individual would rather not know: former GDR citizens are allowed to access their Stasi files and are able to ascertain the identities of their informers. [30] In Czechoslovakia and Hungary, national commissions have turned into an “anti-Russian” uproar, and this is a legacy of ethnic singularity and communist rule, with deleterious consequences for national minorities like the gypsies and the Roma. [31] Given that the weight of history has traditionally haunted Central Europeans, the common challenge then is to devise methods in which the communist past can be acknowledged and perhaps dealt with, but yet to forge compromises that will allow the country to move on and face new challenges.
In conclusion, the essay has looked at how interactions between “East” and “West”, and the longstanding history of foreign domination has shaped Central European attitudes, concepts of nationalism and the unique role of intellectuals in society. The imposition of communist rule did not erode national identity in favour of socialist internationalism, but served to crystallise the former because of the difficulties and oppressiveness of the regime. Post-communism was another shared experience of the countries, with problems of confronting the past threatening to splinter society once again. The Central European states joined the European Union in 2004, a symbolic sign of “returning to Europe”, having being “kidnapped from Russia”. However, the tradition of being sceptical of outsiders would invariably continue, and distrust for Russians might well be replaced by a dislike for Brussels.
(2040 words)
Bibliography
1. Becker, Wolfgang. Goodbye Lenin!. Germany, 2003.
2. Crawford, Keith. East Central European politics today. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
3. Finander, Caroline. European Studies 101 Lecture 12: What is Central Europe?. Perth: University of Western Australia, 2005.
4. Garton Ash, Timothy. “Trials, purges and history lessons: treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe”. In Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the presence of the past. Edited by Jan-Werner Müller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 265 – 282.
5. Kadare, Ismail. The Palace of Dreams. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998.
6. Lewis, Paul. Central Europe since 1945. Essex & New York: Longman, 1994.
7. Milosz, Czeslaw. “Central European attitudes”. In In Search of Central Europe. Edited by George Schöpflin & Nancy Wood. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. 116 – 124.
8. Schöpflin, George. “Central Europe: Definitions Old and New”. In In Search of Central Europe. Edited by George Schöpflin & Nancy Wood. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. 7 – 29.
9. Shaw, Denis. “’The chickens of Versailles’: the new Central and Eastern Europe”. In Modern Europe: Place, Culture & Identity. Edited by Brian Graham. London: Arnold, 1998. 121 – 142.
10. Smith, Anthony. “Supra- or Super-Nationalism?”. In Nations and Nationalism: A global event. London: Polity Press, 1995. 116 – 146.
11. Sverak, Zdenek. Kolya. Czech Republic, 1996.
[1] Quoted in Keith Crawford, East Central European politics today (Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 1996) 1.
[2] Quoted in Crawford, viii.
[3] Caroline Finander, European Studies 101 Lecture 12: What is Central Europe? (2005).
[4] Crawford, 3.
[5] Zdenek Sverak, Kolya (Czech Republic, 1996).
[6] Wolfgang Becker, Goodbye Lenin! (Germany, 2003).
[7] For example, identification with “East” and “West” during the Cold War was determined vis-à-vis membership in organisations. Therefore, Vienna belonged to the “West” through her association with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), even though it was situated further east than Prague. Crawford, vii.
[8] Denis Shaw, “’The chickens of Versailles’: the new Central and Eastern Europe”, in Modern Europe: Place, Culture and Identity, edited by Brian Graham (London: Arnold, 1998) 129.
[9] George Schöpflin, “Central Europe: Definitions Old and New”, in In Search of Central Europe, edited by George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) 24.
[10] Schöpflin, 13.
[11] Schöpflin, 13.
[12] Shaw, 136 – 137.
[13] Anthony Smith, “Supra- or Super-Nationalism?”, in Nations & Nationalism: a global event, (London: Polity Press, 1995) 38.
[14] Schöpflin, 9.
[15] Czeslaw Milosz, “Central European attitudes”, in In Search of Central Europe, edited by George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) 116 – 117.
[16] Milosz, 117.
[17] Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998).
[18] Shaw, 126.
[19] Crawford, 17.
[20] Paul Lewis, “Social Change and the Nature of Communist Society”, in Central Europe since 1945 (Essex & New York: Longman, 1994) 134 – 137.
[21] Lewis, 137.
[22] Crawford, 31 & 47.
[23] Lewis, 127.
[24] Lewis, 129.
[25] Schöpflin, 26.
[26] Lewis, 123.
[27] Shaw, 132.
[28] Timothy Garton Ash, “Trials, purges and history lessons: treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe”, in Memory and Power in Post-war Europe: Studies in the presence of the past, edited by Jan-Werner Müller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 265 – 282.
[29] Garton Ash, 274 – 275.
[30] Garton Ash, 278.
[31] Garton Ash, 277.