Bulletin #13

December 1993 - Vol. 4/No.2
Issue Number 13
Elzbieta Matynia: Director and Editor
Sharon Cooley: Program Associate
Philip Pezeshki: Executive Editor
Justyna Duriasz: Staff Associate
Published quarterly by the East and Central Europe Program.
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & the Ford Foundation.

Table of Contents

Announcing the Committee on the Study of Democracy
Democratization, Markets, and McWorld..........Benjamin Barber
The Second Russian Putsch: Scene I...................Alexei Voskressenski
Democracy Seminars - New York, Estonia, Slovakia, The Czech Republic
Collaborative Courses - Report from Warsaw
Journals for the Region
Notes

Announcing: Committee on the Study of Democracy

The creation of this Committee will greatly strengthen the New School's current program of exchanges and conferences involving East and Central Europe, broaden the forum for visiting faculty, and encourage comparative and collaborative research and discussion on leading problems of modern democratic societies. It will be coordinated with all the varied activities of the East and Central Europe Program, including the Democracy Seminars, the summer school in Cracow, and the joint research projects involving international scholarly collaboration.

The Committee on the Study of Democracy will work closely with the Graduate Faculty's Janey Program in Latin America, as well as expand the New School's already established "area studies" of Eastern Europe and Latin America into more open-ended projects involving East, West, North, and South. In the tradition of the Graduate Faculty, therefore, this Committee will be interdisciplinary and interregional and, as do other GF Committees, will qualify students for doctoral work in the social sciences.

Students will initially work toward an M.A. degree in either Sociology or Political Science, taking a normal program of 36 credits, half in the new Committee and half in either Sociology or Political Science. The Committee is also already developing a new M.A. in Political Sociology program that will draw upon existing faculty and curricula to address key socio-political issues of democracy and democratization in a newly integrated program of study. The central themes will include the foundations of democracy and rights; processes of democratization, including the collapse of dictatorships, liberalization, reform, revolutions, and negotiated transitions; democratic decision making; modes of democratic political action and citizenship; and other forms of participation in pluralistic societies. Courses will begin in the 1994-95 Fall semester.

For more information, please contact Andrew Arato c/o the East and Central Europe Program at (phone/FAX) 212/229-5894. - E.M.

Democratization, Markets and McWorld
Benjamin Barber

In my forthcoming book, Jihad Versus McWorld, I will examine at length the forces of retribalization that are tearing nation-states to pieces. But here I will pass over them, for in Eastern Europe they are all too well known. Rather, I will focus on markets and pop culture, which have often been seen as allies of progress and partners to democratization. For I believe that these forces are not only devastating nation-states-rendering them as permeable from the outside as retribalization is rendering them fractured from the inside-but making nations marginal, even irrelevant, to the shaping of the new global order. By the same token, multinational corporations, new information/entertainment subsectors of the global service industry, and virtual businesses and the virtual markets they are precipitating are becoming chief players in ways, however, that do not necessarily support democracy.

Oddly enough, when Americans urge democracy on others, they ignore their own greatest democratic virtues, which focus on community self-government, municipal autonomy, education as a function of states and localities, community service, civic learning, voluntary associations, church organizations, and other mediating institutions rather than on formal laws and political organization at the national level. As John Dewey observes, democracy is not a form of government but a way of life. Yet in pursuing democracy elsewhere in the world, American officials remain obsessed with formal political institutions. Though we know well enough that old democracies like ours grow from the bottom up, depending on deeply ingrained democratic habits forged over decades by persistent civic engagement, we try to create democracy elsewhere top down by exporting our own political institutions. The political building is set in place before a foundation is sunk below it. But political institutions are unlikely to prosper in the absence of accountability, responsibility and judiciousness in the citizen body. And for that to happen, there must be a citizen body. Whatever else constitutions and courts propose and executives and legislators succeed in doing, they cannot create a citizenry. Democratization must then first of all mean the forging of citizens: THEY will construct and sustain appropriate institutions, which may or may not resemble our own.

Of course, the political biases of Western democratizers are to be preferred to the market determinism that is their rival-or, more often today, their friendly cosponsor. It has become customary simply to assume that to speak of democracy is to denote free markets and that to cultivate markets is to foster democracy. The demise of state socialism has left capitalism's zealots free to identify themselves not only as victors in the Cold War but as the true champions of a democracy that markets alone make possible. Thus they have managed to parlay the already controversial claim that markets are free into the even more controversial claim that market freedom means democracy.

Market economies have flourished in many reactionary states from Chile to South Korea, and Panama to Singapore. Indeed, the state with one of the world's most undemocratic governments-the People's Republic of China-possesses one of the world's fastest growing economies. Capitalism requires consumers with access to markets and a stable political climate in order to succeed: such conditions may or may not be fostered by democracy, which can be disorderly and even anarchic, especially in its early stages, and which often pursues public goods at odds with private market imperatives-e.g., environmentalism or full employment. The right to choose between dozens of VCR or automobile brands does not necessarily feel like freedom to workers whose monthly salaries can hardly keep up with the rising price of bread, let alone to women and men with no jobs at all and without the social safety nets that once held them fast. Capitalists may be democrats but capitalism doesn't need or entail democracy. And it certainly does not need the nation-state.

Indeed, there is no activity more intrinsically globalizing than trade, no ideology less interested in nations than capitalism, no challenge to frontiers more audacious than the market. By many measures, corporations are today more central players in global affairs than nations. We call them multinational but they are more accurately understood as transnational or post-national or even anti-national. For they abjure the very idea of nations or any other parochialism that limits them in time or space.

McDonalds serves twenty million customers around the world every day, drawing more daily customers than there are people in Greece, Ireland and Switzerland together. General Motors (still the world's largest company despite its recent uneven sales history) employs more people than live in a number of the world's smaller nations. With 2.4 billion dollars worth of pizzas sold in 1991, the privately-owned Domino's earned enough revenues to fund the collective government expenditures of Senegal, Uganda, Bolivia and Sri Lanka. "On planet Reebok," reports the popular television ad campaign, "there are no boundaries."

A popular protectionist sticker appearing across the nation on American automobile bumpers reads, "Real Americans Buy American". The trouble is, it is hard to know which car is really more "American": the Chevy built in Mexico from primarily imported non-American parts and then re-imported into the United States; the Ford built in Germany by Turkish workers for the Nigerian market; or the Toyota Camry designed at Toyota's Newport Beach, California, Calty Design Research Center by American Peter J. Hill, assembled from primarily American-made parts at the Georgetown, Kentucky, Toyota Plant by American workers, and test-driven at Toyota's 12,000 acre Arizona proving ground. The result is a paradox of a car: for it to remain truly Japanese, the whole must somehow become more than its American parts.

What then does it mean to "buy American" in a world where corporations no longer have distinctive national identities, where parts are acquired from scores of different countries and markets are truly global? Putting identity labels on products is not quite the same as establishing ethnic identities for people. Ethnic cleansing is apparently more feasible for people than for products.

As manufacturing is internationalized, and traditional industrial powers cede dominion to new markets with cheaper labor, the industrial sector is itself being transformed in ways even more important than internationalization-ways that impact on democracy in wholly negative ways. Making and selling goods is still the dominant form of economic activity, but the goods are increasingly associated with or defined by symbolic interactions that belong to the service sector in its postmodern virtual economy manifestations. The move from heavy, defense-related industrial production to consumer goods that has been a continuing feature of economic development has now moved into another phase in which hard consumer goods are increasingly becoming associated with soft technologies rooted in information, entertainment and life style, and in which products are emerging that blur the line between goods and services. The ancient capitalist economy in which products are manufactured and sold for profit to meet the demand of consumers is gradually yielding to a postmodern capitalist economy in which needs are manufactured to meet the supply of producers who make their products marketable through promotion, spin, packaging and advertising. Whereas the old economy, mirroring hard power, dealt in hard goods aimed at the body, the new economy, mirroring soft power and featuring the virtual corporation, depends on soft services aimed at the mind and spirit (or at their undoing). The goods sector does not so much yield to as find itself captured by the new service sector, defined by information and communication, whose object is nothing less than the human soul.

It is worth noting that in the selling of America as a means to selling American goods, advertising has itself become big business on a global scale. The twenty-five largest companies alone (of which fifteen are American) have a total annual sales of nearly seventeen billion dollars. Global advertising expenditures have climbed a third faster than the world economy and three times faster than world population, rising sevenfold from 1950 to 1990 from a modest 39 billion dollars to 256 billion dollars.

Nowadays, however, an ambitious company cannot simply capture global consumer markets by clever advertising: it must also be prepared to create global markets by careful planning and social control. The new technologies are more powerful than the old, and Coca-colonialism is now manufacturing its own soft-drink ideology. McWorld's innovative virtual industries generate virtual-need factories (advertising agencies, corporate public relations and communications divisions, business foundations) where emotions are identified and manipulated with images that forge new wants. It is perhaps unfair to hold corporate companies chasing maximized sales, bottom-line profits and share-holder satisfaction to an American national interest, let alone some vision of global diversity or world democracy. Yet their strictly economic ambitions turn out to be anything but strictly neutral. For multinational companies can maximize production and consumption figures only by intervening actively in the very social, cultural and political domains about which they affect agnosticism.

Consumer sales depend on the habits and behaviors of consumers, and those who manipulate consumer markets cannot but address behavior and attitude. Mediterranean traditions of long lunches and eating lunch at home with one's children obstruct the development of fast-food franchises; families and the patterns and rituals that sustain them are undermined-whether intentionally or not hardly matters. Highly developed public transportation systems lessen the opportunities for automobile sales and depress steel, rubber and petroleum production. Agricultural life styles (rise at daylight, work all day, to bed at dusk) are inhospitable to television watching. People uninterested in sports buy fewer athletic shoes. The moral logic of austerity contradicts the economic logic of consumption. Can responsible corporate managers then afford to be anything other than immoral advocates of sybaritisms and irresponsible citizens in these new, mostly less-developed worlds of opportunity? Are they not bound as good business-people to emerge from the cocoon of the free market and try to influence cultural and life-style habits, some of which may be political as well?

Elaborating on Marx's (off-hand) assumption about the political idiocy of rural life, Edward Banfield associated the agrarian life-style with a morally backward set of political attitudes. Whether he was right or not about agriculture, it seems likely that life-styles are increasingly relevant to the post-modern political economy. A leisure society may afford more time for politics than a work society; suburban life-styles diminish public and common space of the kind found in town and cities; 24-hour global markets linked by electronic telecommunications and global business communities linked by international flights interfere with schedules and routines rooted in traditional diurnal clocks. Markets demand freedom from public sector regulation and interference, but increasingly they are themselves engaged in activities that impinge directly on civic culture and public goods. Political agnostics, they nonetheless borrow and do strange things to political terms. The really pertinent modern question may not be whether America's foreign policy is compatible with the quest for democracy, but whether global business and free markets are compatible with either American foreign policy or the quest for democracy.

Professor Barber, who is a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Faculty this Fall, is the Director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy at Rutgers University. His paper, which is not for quotation, sparked a lively discussion at the October 28, meeting of the New York Democracy Seminar.

The Second Russian Putsch: Scene I
Alexei Voskressenski

While the Yeltsin Government and the President himself-as the victors in the recent round of political struggle in Russia-proclaimed a new stage of reforms, many questions were raised. Why hadn't the Government and the President tried to reach a compromise in order to avoid the bloody events altogether? Did they delay their actions because they felt strong, because they felt weak, or because they were indecisive? Or did they want the extremist forces in the opposition to initiate the revolt, thereby compromising themselves and supplying the Government with the political victory of suppressing the putsch? After announcing the state of emergency, the President banned all meetings and demonstrations, which was a clear signal that he would use the army and other special forces.

Why, then, several hours later, did Deputy Prime Minister Gaidar ask prodemocratically-minded people to go to the center of Moscow to show their support of the Government? Was it because the army and the bureaucracy were still waiting? And if he supported the President, where was the Prime Minister himself at the time? As during the first putsch of August 1991, I was among those prodemocratic people on the streets of Moscow that night; the whole night, unarmed and unorganized people were on the streets thinking they were needed for the preservation of democracy in Russia. The militia disappeared, awaiting the winner, and the army didn't appear until the next morning. Where were the army and the special forces that had officially declared themselves loyal to the President? And how many people actually died in the events, since the official figures are definitely not reliable?

The President and the Government used the victory to their utmost benefit. Though it was not done very skillfully, it was done for the good of Russia because what Russia needs now, first and foremost, is political stability. But since there is now no pro-Communist Parliament to blame for hindering the reforms, how successful will the new authoritarian regime be in resolving new social conflicts? The recent authoritarian measures did not eliminate the opposition, but instead forced the left-wing forces and the nationalist opposition to regroup their themselves. Moreover, all the newly-introduced measures bred new, more skillful and more powerful opposition to the President.

The next round of struggle for power in Russia will be between the Government and the President. The economic situation in Russia is worsening; with production declining by 18% this year and with an inflation rate of 1000% per year, it will be very difficult to persuade people to continue to wait. The opposition will be able to persuade a considerable portion of Russian society that the country needs a suspension of civil rights for the sake of economic recovery. The opposition in Russia is not declaring itself to be against the reforms, but that it is instead in favor of slowing them down. The ongoing civil war on Russia's periphery and the recent three-day brush with civil war in Moscow, combined with the new authoritarian regime and its uncontrolled bureaucratic structures, are jeopardizing the very life of the fragile Russian democracy. Unfortunately, the second part of the revolt is likely to be more successful.

Alexei Voskressenski, an ECEP Associate who studied at the GF in 1991/92, is currently a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

DEMOCRACY SEMINARS

l A conference entitled, East and Central Europe: Reemergence of the Left?/ Collapse of the Right? took place December 3rd at the New School. The conference, co-sponsored by the ECEP and NYU's Center for European Studies, examined the emerging political trends in the region, most recently manifested in the outcome of the Polish election. Among the participants-most of them long-time collaborators of the East and Central Europe Program-were scholars from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the U.S. The program is detailed on Page 8 under "Notes".

The ECEP-organized conference was the result of activities conducted by the New York chapter of the Democracy Seminar (chaired by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb of the New School) and the Working Group on Political Parties and Party Systems (chaired by the New School's Andrew Arato and New York University's Jan Gross). The event was open to the larger academic community and to the interested public. A special, closed session for the "Working Group on Political Parties and Party Systems" was also held in the morning. The ECEP initiated its Working Groups project more than a year ago; the group on Political Parties and Party Systems is based in New York and has collaborators in several countries of the region. The participants of this Group closely examined the available electoral surveys and statistical data, constructed working hypotheses, and designed a joint research project that will result in a publication.

Jeffrey Goldfarb's introductory remarks included the following observations: "Apparently, a line has been crossed, and the major leftist party in Poland is a democratic one. The center right parties no longer can claim a democratic monopoly. Indeed, it seems that the real authoritarian extra-parliamentary challenge to democracy in Poland, that which discredited the left in the Communist era, now comes from the nationalist and religious right, which has been shut out of the parliament. Such is not the case, however, everywhere else in the region. For example, in Slovakia and in Serbia (most horribly), the ruling leftist parties are nationalist, authoritarian and decidedly anti-liberal.

It would seem that in some countries (as in Poland and perhaps elsewhere), the democratic legacies of the left are being revived, while in other countries, more unfortunate legacies are prevailing. We should naturally allow for the fact that such appearances may be deceiving. The same people who brought Poland martial law (the liberal faction of the Party) are now bringing it a democratic left. This must be a source of some concern. But the democratic concern should not be about leftism, as such. Rather, the issue is whether there is a commitment to democratic procedures coming from the left and from the right. The confusion between left and right provides for the possibility of addressing pressing social, political, cultural and economic problems-as well as facing further political disorientation and ineffective leadership-without the distortions of cold war ideologies."

l In other New York Democracy Seminar activity, Renata Salecl of the Faculty of Law, Ljubljana, Slovenia, presented a paper entitled, "Why do we identify with political discourse?" on October 6, which examined nationalism and ideology from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Estonia

In the first session of the Democracy Seminar in Tallinn this Fall, Tarmo Tuisk of the Republic of Estonia Academy of Sciences, who participated in the ECEP 1992 Cracow Summer Institute, addressed the issue of "Why Are Some Russian-Estonians Hostile to Russia?", on October 28. (As reported in the October issue of the Bulletin) the sociological polls show that the majority of Russians living in Estonia identify themselves as Estonian. The main reason for this attitude is, naturally, economic, as Estonia is currently-and promises to remain-economically healthier than Russia. On the other hand, Russians in Estonia also do not feel ethnically discriminated against, and have themselves shown little hostility toward the Estonian government.

The second session of the Tallinn Democracy Seminar took place on November 4. Aap Neljas, Member of Parliament and member of the Liberal-Democratic Party, spoke about the positions of the various Estonian political parties. He started with the argument that the traditional left-right approach is inappropriate in Estonia today, especially insofar as the left wing is almost defunct.

He identified five useful criteria for characterizing the current platforms of Estonian political parties. These are: 1) their attitudes toward changing the existing system, 2) the real ideologies of the parties, 3) their economic programs, 4) their attitudes toward the nomen-clatura, and 5) their attitudes toward national problems. The situation of the Estonian party system can be characterized by the ring scale. None of the existing parties oppose the market economy, but differences of opinion do exist around the issue of to what extent the market should be regulated. Surprisingly, the ruling party Pro Patria, and the most extreme opposition force are aligned quite closely on this issue.

During the discussion several participants made attempts to predict future developments on Estonia's political landscape. It is quite probable that a new left-wing force may appear, if only because the niche is currently empty. Social tension is motivated less and less by the nationalist question and more and more by the polarization between rich and poor. Some Estonian parties have expressed opinions remarkably similar to those of the non-Estonian ones. Currently no centrist or coalition political force exists.

Until now political elections in Estonia have offered ballots for individuals only, although electoral law favors voting by party list; nevertheless, the recent local elections show a stronger preference for party lists than ever before. Independent newspapers have played a key role in improving the political awareness of the people.

It is quite obvious that some symptoms of the existence of civil society have never completely disappeared in Estonia. As the latest developments in East and Central Europe show, more civil society means better economic conditions. By our hypothetical estimations, Estonia is clearly behind Hungary and the Czech Republic from this point of view, but has more or less reached the standard of Poland.

At the conclusion of our discussion we came to the consensus that there are no outstanding remnants of totalitarianism in our society. We have a civil society, the party system is stabilizing, and there are no acute inter-ethnic tensions. At the same time, it is impossible to completely free the human soul from totalitarianism.

Peeter Muursepp, Tallinn

Slovakia

It seems theoretically clear how important it is for the success of democracy in the post-Communist societies to develop intermediary organizations between the government and the public; to encourage pluralism and civic participation through open public debate; to create fora for the presentation of ideas, concepts and information on different aspects of the reforms; to create what experts call "networks of counter-majoritarian institutions such as non-governmental policy institutions or private 'think-tanks'" (as it was recently expressed at the Joint Policy Forum of IREX and The Atlantic Council). On a more practical level, it is not always so easy to find the actors for such useful activities.

Slovakia's Democracy Seminar, co-sponsored by the Milan Simecka Foundation in Bratislava, confirms an evident hunger for public discussion. The topic of the June 3, session was "The Difficult Birth of Independent Media". Jan Urban, of the Institute for Independent Journalism in Prague, spoke of the obstacles to independence for the media; Zuzana Bubílková, currently of Czech TV and formerly a well-known commentator on both Slovak and Federal TV as well as the author of a recently-published book, Behind The Stage, presented her personal experiences as a moderator of the popular Sunday discussion program on the former Federal TV, "The Way The Week Was"; and Karol Jezík, editor of the liberal Slovak daily "SME", painted a picture of the problems of creating an independent daily with a "non-socialist orientation". The session was moderated by Peter Zajac, and was attended by participants of the meeting of Central Eastern European journalists organized by the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. More than one hundred people came to this meeting, and many of them actively participated in the lively discussion.

The September 24, meeting had as its topic "Democracy and Humor". Around 80 participants shared their feelings and views with speakers Stanislav Radic, humorist and satirist; Ján Strasser, author and journalist; Kornel Földvári, a literary critic and former Deputy Minister of Culture from 1990-1992; and Milan Markovic, the creator of the very popular satiric TV program, "An Evening With Milan Markovic". (Although Markovic is, according to the latest public opinion polls, one of the most popular personalities in Slovakia, his program, which features politicians and other public figures, has been strongly criticized by those offended by his witty remarks on current developments in Slovakia.) The session was devoted solely to issues of humor, irony and satire, and their correlations with the socio-political situation. We often invite humorists to our Democracy Seminar meetings, in the belief that the "fresh air" brought in by such "men of letters" breaks up our sometimes pseudoacademic seriousness and fossilized mindsets-be they collectivist or nationalist-and because of their ability to illuminate many otherwise rather complicated theoretical concepts and to reflect closemindedness, distortions, and prejudices back on ourselves.

"Human Values in the Next Century" was the subject of the October 26, meeting, with speakers who have been working intensively for the past two decades on environmental and ecological issues. Both Mikulás Huba, a former MP (1990-1992), one of the outstanding personalities in what was called "the environmental dissent" in Slovakia, and a researcher from the Institute of Geography in Bratislava, and Josef Vavrousek, a former Federal Minister of the Environment (1990-1992), and now at the Institute of Ecology in Prague, discussed the ecological crisis within the framework of sustainable development, making the some 70 people present aware not only of global environmental considerations but also of their personal choices. Vavrousek proposed improvements in democratic decision-making processes in the field of ecology; while some participants expressed their skepticism, others discussed the modest possibilities of education and law in dealing with various ecological threats.

Martin Bútora, Bratislava

The Czech Republic

The Prague Democracy Seminar met on October 25, to discuss "Regionalism in European and International Policy". The meeting was moderated by Dr. Hnízdo; a synopsis will appear in a future issue of "Sociologické actuality". On November 24, Jan Jirák, of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the Prague Faculty of Social Sciences, spoke about"Media and Democracy".

Alena Miltova, Prague

COLLABORATIVE COURSES

The Warsaw Collaborative Course, "Issues in the Sociology of Democracy", which took place March-June 1993, was sponsored by the New School for Social Research of New York and the Graduate School for Social Research (GSSR), of Warsaw.

The main goal of this American-Polish seminar was to present contemporary problems of democracy from the sociological point of view. The theoretical issues were related to the current political situation in East and Central Europe after the collapse of communist regimes.

The project was coordinated by Professors Wlodzimierz Wesolowski and Wojciech Lamentowicz, of the GSSR. There were eight, 3-hour meetings last Spring, with their titles and instructors as follows:

"Introduction: Issues of Democracy" and "Democratic Theory", with Professor Wesolowski; "Alternative Democratic Designs", with Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller of The New School's Graduate Faculty; "Integrating Central Europe Into the European Community", with Professor Lamentowicza; "Gender, Family, Socialization and Democracy", with Ann Snitow of The New School; "Political Culture and Intellectuals", with Marcin Krol of the GSSR; and "Market, Social Policy and Democracy", with Witold Morawski.

Ten students enrolled in the course were from the Graduate School for Social Research and participated in all the discussions: Alkhatib Abdelhakim, Marek Cichocki, Tomasz Czajkowski, Aleksandra Dukaczewska, Ewa Kozminska, Tomasz Merta, Anna Osterczuk, Jozef Pinior, Maria Pokropek, and Jan Wendt. Several other students from the University of Warsaw also participated regularly in the seminar.

All of the participants are preparing their doctoral theses in political sociology at the GSSR and have attended parallel courses with Professors Krol, Andrzej Rychard, Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, Wesolowski and Lamentowicz. Most of the talks concerned the analysis of the transitions to democracy in East-Central Europe.

It is very important to continue the visits of American scholars to our School. Students found the American-Polish seminars very stimulating, providing a valuable opportunity to increase their knowledge and academic competence. Modern American theoretical sociology is not as well known in Poland as are the German and French sociol-ogies. Also, the issues around democracy and its legitimacy are still the most salient in the whole region of East-Central Europe.

Marek Cichocki, Warsaw

Journals for the Region

Begun in 1991 by Arien Mack, the Project can now offer more than 600 journals, and this number continues to increase. During the last year, over 20,000 copies of journals were sent in the social sciences, humanities, arts, law, medicine, business, cultural commentary, current events, natural sciences, environmental sciences, and technology to a network of over 200 libraries located in Albania, Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Republic of Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldavia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

Consistent with the aims of the Project to provide the widest spectrum of available scholarship, efforts are underway to establish Project branches in Western Europe; branches have already been begun in England and France. This initiative has made available some of the most important French journals and brought to us the rich scholarly resources of some of the most widely respected English publishers of academic journals.

As the economic conditions of the region are not likely to improve quickly, the need for projects like ours will remain for some time. With continuing generosity from publishers and growing participation of our colleagues in the region, we will increase the supply of such clearly-needed materials.

NOTES

IN NOVEMBER

× Miklos Haraszti, a Member of the Hungarian Parliament (SzDSz) Committee on Culture, Education, and the Media, spoke November 19, on Democratic Politics in Hungary: Deficiencies and Prospects. He is author of The Velvet Prison: Arists under State Socialism and A Worker in a Workers' State.

IN DECEMBER

× On December 3, the ECEP co-sponsored a conference at the New School with NYU's Center for European Studies entitled, East and Central Europe: Reemergence of the Left?/Collapse of the Right? The first session was chaired and introduced by Jeffrey C. Goldbarb, of the GF Sociology Dept. (his remarks are excerpted on Page 4 of this Bulletin). Justyna Duriasz, ECEP Fellow at the GF, and Barbara Heyns of New York University, presented electoral data. Miroslawa Grabowska of Warsaw University spoke about, Has the Left Reemerged? The Case of Poland. Andras Kovacs of ELTE University, Budapest, lectured on, Hungary: The Left and Its Constituency. Dobrin Kanev spoke about, Left versus Right in an Egalitarian Society: the Case of Bulgaria. David Plotke of the GF Political Science Department was the commentator for this session.

The afternoon session, discussing "The Collapse of the Right?", was chaired by Elzbieta Matynia of the GF. The first panelist was Tadeusz Szawiel of Warsaw University, who spoke about, Has the Right Collapsed? The Case of Poland. Andrew Arato of the GF Sociology Dept. gave a presentation on The Crisis of the Hungarian Right. Martin Butora, a sociologist at Trnava of Bratislava and Charles University in Prague, spoke about, Persisting Social Values versus Changing Profiles of Political Parties in Slovakia. Finally, Józef Pinior, ECEP Democracy Fellow from the GSSR in Warsaw, presented a paper entitled, The New Polish Party-the New Authoritarianism? An Analysis of the BBWR (The Non-Partisan Bloc for Supporting Reforms). Jan Gross of the Department of Politics at New York University was the commentator for this session.

× Dr. Dobrin Kanev lectured on The Current Social and Political Landscape in Bulgaria, on December 6.

× American Artists and Art Critics Journey to Contemporary Polish Art, a symposium with Piotr Rypson of the Warsaw Center of Contemporary Art, will be held December 15 at 8:00pm. For more information, call 675-1756.

Meetings

Meetings in the Fall were held with: Dorottya Büky, Member of the Hungarian Parliament (SzDSz) Committee on Culture, Education and Media; Prof. Jacek Wozniakowski, International Cultural Center, Cracow; Peter Benda, Pew Charitable Trusts; Dr. Hans-Peter Böhm, Technische Universität Dresden; Sonja Licht, Open Society Fund, Belgrade; Bruce K. Byers, Former Cultural Attaché, U.S. Embassy in Warsaw; Professor Erich Thies, Director of the Berlin State Science and Research Administration; Wladyslaw Brzeski, Deputy Mayor of Cracow; Eva Hoffman, author of Exit Into History: Journey Through the New Eastern Europe, New York; Dr. Jacek Kochanowicz, historian of modern economics, Warsaw University; Dr. Wlodzimierz Okrasa, Program Director, Social Science Research Council, New York; Jose Palau, Member of the Presidium of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly; Dr. Antal Örkény and Dr. György Csepeli, Institute of Sociology, ELTE University, Budapest; Terezia Grellova, Executive Director, Milan Simecka Foundation in Bratislava; Vera Dakova, Director, Women's Information & Training Centre in Sofia; and Shep Foreman, Paul Balaran and Joseph Schull, Ford Foundation.

Visiting Fellows

Professor Miroslav Kusy, a political philosopher from Slovakia, was a prominent personality of the 1968 Prague Spring. He was expelled from public and academic life, persecuted and imprisoned. As one of the original signatories of Charter 77, he became an active participant in the dissident movement which culminated in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Since '89, he has been elected to the Federal Parliament, has served as Rector of Comenius University in Bratislava, and has worked as the Chief of Staff for the office of the President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel.

Professor Kusy's current research interests are centered around the issues of human rights and social movements in East and Central Europe. Among his numerous publications are: Philosophy of Politics, 1967; The European Experience with Real Socialism (co-authored with Milan Simecka), 1984; Institutional Revolution, 1988; and Forbidden Papers, 1990. Currently Professor Kusy teaches at Comenius University (where he chairs the Political Science Department) and at Trnava University. He visited New York from November 16 through November 30, and gave a talk on November 22, on "Human Rights and Nationality Problems in Slovakia".

Dr. Dobrin Kanev is the Chair of the Department of Politics at the Free University of Burgas, and the program director of the Department of Politics at the newly-established semi-private New Bulgarian University in Sofia. Dr. Kanev is also Editor-in-Chief of the recently-launched quarterly journal of the Bulgarian Political Science Association, Political Studies. His publications include The German Social-Democratic Party: Programs and Discussions, "Political Stability and the Transition to Democracy" (Political Studies, Vol. 2/#1), and "Bulgaria in Transition" (Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politk, 1991, Vol 5). Dr. Kanev is one of our primary collaborators for Bulgarian activities. He visited the New School from November 25-December 10.