On Sunday October 13th, the Moscow neighborhood of West Biryulevo became the site of a large anti-migrant riot. The riot ended with four hundred people detained by police, several over-turned and torched cars, and the looting and destruction of a small shopping center. It began as a meeting of residents with police to demand action in the murder investigation of Yegor Sherbakov. Sherbakov, a twenty-five year old local resident, was stabbed to death on Thursday night while walking home with his girlfriend.

People in the neighborhood speculated that the assailant might have worked at one of the many local outdoor fruit and vegetable stands or he might have been a taxi cab driver. The one thing that everyone is sure of is that the assailant was a foreigner, one of many migrant workers, or gastarbeiters, that are now living in Russia.

This riot is the most recent in a series of incidents evincing a growing tension surrounding migration from the “near abroad,” a term used in Russian to describe the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. It comes two months after officials in Moscow set up pre-deportation detention camps for migrant workers detained en masse after a police officer was injured by the relatives of a migrant worker while trying to make an arrest at an outdoor market. Recent sweeps for migrant workers in Sochi prompted Human Rights Watch to demand that the International Olympic Committee make a statement condemning the detention and deportation of migrant workers in an Olympic host city.

It is difficult to ascertain the real number of migrants in Russia today, but estimates vary from between five and twelve million. Most migrants are employed as unskilled laborers on construction sites, as janitors, mini-bus drivers, or operate small commercial stands selling fruits and vegetables. They are extremely vulnerable to abuse by their employers, who withhold pay or confiscate passports, and by the police, who regularly conduct “document checks” and demand bribes.

While rising food prices, unemployment, or corruption are perceived to be the chief problems facing Russia, migration is steadily becoming an increasingly salient topic of public discussion. Research carried out by the Levada Center shows that there has been a considerable increase in the number of people that view migration as the paramount social problem: while only 7% of people cited ‘influx of migrants’ as the social problem that worried them most in 2007, by 2013 that figure had gone up to 27%. Politicians and the media fuel public animosity toward migrants. Television channels regularly devote attention, in the form of hour-long specials, to horrific incidents of violence allegedly perpetrated by migrant workers. Opposition and regime politicians, who usually agree on very little, are united in their negative opinion of migrant workers. In the recent Moscow mayoral election, both Sergei Sobyanin, the incumbent pro-Kremlin mayor and Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger and opposition candidate, took an equally hard stance against migrants from the Caucasus and central Asia. Sobyanin campaigned on a promise to keep the Russian capital Russian and Navalny told people gathered at one of his neighborhood campaign rallies that migrant workers were responsible for the growing number of drug-users in Moscow.

With a rapidly aging working population and declining birth rates, Russia is facing a very serious demography crisis. As a result, migrant workers serve an increasingly important and increasingly visible role in the economy. In theory, the Russian government has recognized this. Last summer, President Putin endorsed the State Migration Policy Concept, a policy paper that described migration as a public good and recommended programs to help migrants more easily integrate into Russian society. In practice, however, Russian laws on the issue are complicated and indirectly discourage legal migration. Entry into the country for citizens of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States is relatively easy because of the visa-free regime. People from former Soviet republics can enter and leave Russia using their “internal passports,” a relic leftover from the Communist-era that controlled the internal movement of citizens. People entering the country this way have up to ninety days to register with local migration officials. Most do not register.

Since 2007, the government has generated a quota for the number of migrant workers that are allowed to be legally employed in Russia. While demand for labor is high, the quota is relatively low, and has been steadily reduced over the last four years , pushing more and more people into illegal employment and away from registration. Migrant workers are also subject to a higher income tax than Russian citizens, 30% instead of 13%, incentivizing them to agree to lower wages under the table rather than a higher taxable salary. The cumulative effect of this system is a large, undocumented, voiceless, and vulnerable population that has no access to social services or legal recourse to deal with employers. Rather than addressing these issues, the Russian government has focused on excluding migrants from working in certain sectors of the economy, like retail, and putting up further barriers to legal work in the form of exams on Russian language and history. In the meantime, the number of illegal migrant workers, as well as public discontent, is growing and tragic incidents like the murder of Sherbakov provide an opportunity for nationalistic groups to harness widespread casual racism into mass violent action.

Prisoners and suspects

Two years have passed since the unexpected appearance of a protest movement in Russia. Today the movement has declined. White ribbons, a symbol of the democratic movement, are out of fashion. And most of 28 participants of the peaceful oppositional meeting of the 6th of May 2012 that were arrested during the authorized demonstration in Moscow are still in prison. Ordinary people and activists have been accused in riots and violence against police during anti-Putin meeting. The meeting was much more peaceful in comparison with protests in Greece or Turkey. Experts from the President’s Council in Human Rights have even declare the guilt of officials in several cases of violence at the demonstration. But the prisoners remain in jail and a mechanism of repressions is turning around. “The Investigative Committee—a structure accountable only to president Putin—has constructed the case as a wide-ranging conspiracy stretching from rank-and-file street protestors to established politicians.”

In May 2012, many provincial activists have organized discussion camps for all interested in politics. Well-known politicians with rank-and-file activists participated. Homes of ordinary provincial activists were checked a year after. Police was searching proofs of preparation for overthrow of the state regime during the 6^th May demonstration in Moscow. However many of the pursued activists were far away from Moscow on the 6^th of May 2012. Nevertheless, even interest in politics was criminalized. It would be frightening, if it weren’t so absurd. Most of those activists are young, moderate and not very experienced. Police came to their homes in early morning, frightened them and their parents, took some agitation materials from authorized demonstrations and… did nothing after this. Activists just have got their taste of fear, and the Investigative Committee continued to search for clues of anti-Russian global conspiracy among trade-union activists in Yekaterinburg, and participants of political discussion camps in Chelyabinsk and Perm. Provincial activists witnessed this, but were not arrested. However 28 ‘prisoners of the 6th May’ are still absurdly accused of rioting, and many are in prison. Activists insist the prisoners could be free if people came out to streets and challenged government. The fact that the most popular oppositional leader, Alexey Navalny, was unexpectedly (and as experts suggested, temporary) released from custody after demonstrations in his support, verifies this wide-spread opinion. But people still haven’t free “prisoners of the 6^th of May,” possibly because the uprising needs wider aims for action.

Can we call all this repression? Even if we can, it’s very strange.

Strange protests

Strange repression came after strange protests. The first post-election demonstration on 5 December in Moscow 2011 began unexpectedly, both for authorities and opposition. Most oppositional leaders called on the democratic public to boycott the unfair and uncontested election. But among the democratically-oriented public, there was a demand for political activity. The word “citizen” had new connotations: ordinary urban residents without any activist experience considered agitation and coming to demonstrations for fair elections their civic duty. It was the most significant outburst of political activity since Perestroika. Public interest in politics was inspired after years of de-politicization and apathy. The first days of demonstrations even authorities were confused by unforeseen protests. Television reports from demonstrations were without comments, quite a-typical for dependent Russian television. However, after a few days, the authorities had formed an official opinion and strategy on the demonstrations.

Later demonstrations were authorized and passed without clashes with police. In Moscow, the demonstrations were localized in Bolotnaya square (“Bolotnaya” is a Russian word for “swampy”), which became a symbol of political loss among radical politicians and activists. The later demonstrations looked like a holiday or carnival. In interviews of the protestors, the most wide-spread expectation was “they (authorities) will know we (protesting people) are numerous.” This expectation resembles slogan from Occupy movement: “We are 99%.” Although demands for new fair elections of the president and parliament were concrete, it was obviously impracticable for authorities. Oppositional leaders were criticized for their hesitancy and uncertain strategy, but doubtfulness characterized even people’s demands and expectations. The protest movement has now declined, and even new activists, who took part in protests, say that the demonstrations were irrational. Actually, demands and argumentation of protesters were rational, but their belief in changes appears to have been irrational today.

Real protests; Real Results

However the processes of politicization have begun. It can be described as a wide and amorphous popular demand to influence to policy and politics. In different places, it takes different forms. Together with democratic protest movement, that are visible for media, different forms of local self-organization have arisen. Most of them are not well-known, but very significant for overcoming soviet practices of authoritarian policy and for forming viable communities. One of the most successful cases of self-organization is ecological movement against copper-nickel mining in agricultural region near river Khoper. This successful movement manifested not only in mass demonstrations, with sophisticated democratic system of coordination, but also in effective direct action. The incapacity for direct action was one of the significant features of the all-Russian protest movement in Moscow and many other Russian cities. Nevertheless, after anti-nickel demonstration on 22^nd June in small town Novokhopersk, people have destroyed drilling equipment that was set up illegally (video). The protesters’ anger led to an official investigation of legitimacy installation of drilling equipment. Activists caught by police, charged for rioting, were released in 3 days.

Apparently real mass popular protests yield real results, disarming the authorities.

In May 2013 one of Italy’s leading newspapers, La Repubblica, published an article entitled “Nimby effect on renewable energy – Italy allergic to biomass electrical generation.” Living in an agricultural area where green energy subsidies have boosted the production of biomass power stations over the past few years, I couldn’t help laughing at a similar condemnation of protests against the economical power games that lie behind green economy policies, and in which I have gotten increasingly involved over the past year. Yes, many of the people involved in the numerous bottom-up committees are worried about what is going on in their back yard, but perhaps that’s also because local politics have no interest whatsoever in defending those back yards. Moreover, a sound collaboration among various committees and associations that operate both locally and on a regional and national level prove that this is more than a group of residents concerned about their neighborhood. So it’s not all that simple. Hiding behind the ever so popular green economy business, in these times of crisis, it is easy to put off any criticism of biomass electrical generation as plain nimbyism. Yet the threat is real.

Other than the discomfort for residents, i.e. the stench and the frequency of heavy vehicles passing continuously (and often without considering speed limits) on the narrow country side roads to transport corn, grain and grass to the power plants, there are a number of very serious risks, problems and ethical issues involved.

Health: experts have demonstrated that these plants produce noxious gas that may cause cancer and birth defects. Medics, university professors and scientists have sound the alarm on more than one occasion, participating in counter-informative events and protest demonstrations, but local governors – with some minor exceptions – and media have remained indifferent to their criticism.

Profit: the presence of a relatively high number of power plants in small areas, producing energy not for the purpose of disposing biological waste in return for energy but for the sole purpose of gaining subsidies, is highly problematic. For one, what to do with all the energy that is being produced? With the companies being privately owned, the energy is not being invested in the community. It is sold at a much higher rate than “ordinary” energy, whereas the subsidies are at the citizen’s expense.

Farmland: to be able to feed the anaerobic digesters of such an excessive number of power plants, farmers are being “encouraged” to one-crop farming, which is eventually harmful for the farmland. In fact, for a few years now a large part of the farmland in my area is used to grow corn, which is harvested when it is still green and grinded. A potential disaster for the local food industry!

Ethics: this also brings along the ethical problem of harvesting crops not to feed people but simply to burn them, without using the energy that is being produced.

So these are the main problems in a nutshell. Anyone who has been attending meetings and protests over the past few years knows this. Yet, local governors ignore the problems or downplay them. They treat citizens as nimbies, or pretend not to have any say in the matter, which is untrue. Currently we are collectively struggling against a project to build a renewable energy park with no less than four power plants, only a few miles from my town, adding to the existing four to five power plants already in function
or under construction, not to mention a landfill and an incinerator nearby. Is one power plant not more than enough? But the mayor of San Pietro in Casale, a town nearby which is granting one authorization to build power plants after another, yet always on the border with adjacent communes, is indifferent to the citizens’ concerns. Undoubtedly he has business interests in green economy, and the anaerobic digesters are only a part of his master plan. Thus, he has completed the construction of a long-awaited swimming pool, in an attempt also to boost his popularity, no doubt. In doing so he has had over 40 poplar trees nearby the swimming pool and adjacent sport centre cut down: they were accused of casting shadows on the solar panels located on the roof of the sport centre. Is this, then, green economy?

The problem is universal, though. A brief article in a British current affairs journal caught my eye during a recent trip to the UK: it speaks of both solar energy and green energy subsidies for biomass electrical generation threatening UK food production. Protests occur in other European countries as well as in the States and in Canada. Going against the grain of green economy is very difficult, because green economy is necessary. We cannot continue exploiting the earth without considering alternative sources of energy, especially in countries which have important natural resources, such as wind, water and sun. If only we could find a way of keeping out profiteers, greedy politicians and the mafia.

Ary was, crucially, a good man. In this post, Kenneth Prewitt, Michael Cohen and Riva Kastoryano join me in remembering a great scholar and gentleman. -Jeff

He started his career as an Africanist, whose work on the Ivory Coast stands as a classic in the field. Aristide Zolberg became famous as a stellar essayist, whose sharp creative insights could illuminate in elegant strokes great puzzles of the human condition, including perhaps most significantly his “Moments of Madness,” a deeply learned piece reflecting on the telling question he posed: “If politics is the art of the possible, what are we to make of the moments when human beings in modern societies believe that ‘all is possible’?” And then there is his great achievement: A Nation by Design, his magnum opus. It is both a crucial account of an under examined part of the American story, while it is rich with comparative insights, as Riva Kastoryano describes in her reflections. It is a classic for reasons that Ken Prewitt underscores.

Ary was a disciplined scholar, as Michael Cohen highlights, who crossed disciplines freely, a tough – minded empiricist with great imagination. He was also a man who experienced a great deal, both the good and the bad life offered in his times. A Holocaust survivor, whose memoirs of his childhood await publication, he was married to the great sociologist of memory and art, Vera Zolberg. (For my appreciation of my intellectual relationship with Vera click here)

Ary and Vera, co-conspirators, together for sixty years, they were a beautiful team, and as a team they contributed to family (their children Erica and Danny and many more), friends, colleagues and students, and the world of arts and sciences broadly. “The Zolbergs” hosted innumerable New School events, as well as informal dinners, in their beautiful SoHo loft, with impeccably prepared meals, setting the stage for intriguing conversation, featuring Ary, the great cook and storyteller.

We at The New School and a much broader academic and personal world are in mourning. Here are some thoughts of Kenneth Prewitt, Riva Kastoryano and Michael Cohen, Ary’s good friends and colleagues. More sustained discussion of Aristide Zolberg’s work will surely follow. A memorial event at The New School in September is now being planned.

Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia University

The mark of an unusual intellect is scholarship that is timely – it speaks to today’s issues – and timeless – it will be read a century and more from now. Ari Zolberg’s scholarship, and especially his magisterial A Nation By Design, is a case in point. This was his last major work, where perhaps one is less surprised to find a lifetime of scholarship put to such brilliant use. More surprising is that his earliest major book Creating Political Order, written nearly a half-century ago, has the same remarkable feature. It was must reading for any interested in the newly independent nations of West Africa, but it is still being read today – and not just for its value as political history. Each of these books, as was true of all his writings, has an air of immediacy. But each is theoretically rich in a manner that speaks across decades if not centuries.

This combination of immediate relevance and insights that cross time and place made Ari an exceptionally valued colleague and teacher, as hundreds can testify. I offer one personal example. Shortly after finishing my Ph.D., Ari was instrumental in my recruitment to the University of Chicago. In one simple and wise sentence he taught me what the life of the mind was about – “what matters is to do one piece of scholarship truly well, because if you can do it once you can do it again, and you will want to.”

Michael Cohen, The New School

Ary was intellectually tough. I had gone to Chicago to study with him because of his unique approach to understanding African politics and my desire to do fieldwork in the Ivory Coast, the site of his early work. I still remember receiving my first paper back from him. It looked like a war zone, every page filled with comments, questions, and suggestions written in bright red. I was stunned. At the bottom of the last page, he wrote, “pretty good paper.” I still have it, 47 years later.

I now know that he was preparing me for serious social science research. He demonstrated, by example, what it meant to “prepare,” to be aware of the intellectual commitment required before one went into the field. It was, as he once remarked, “just showing respect for the people you would be meeting. You should know who they are and where they came from.”

This was more than just advice about fieldwork, but also I came to understand, about him. People should know that he had traveled a long way himself – at that time from Belgium, to New York, to Chicago, to Abidjan, and the journey continued.

I am forever grateful for these lessons. Not easy, but profoundly helpful.

Riva Kastoryano, Sciences Po

I first met Ary in 1984 in a workshop in Paris, at Sciences Po. I had just finished my Ph.D. on migration and urban sociology and gotten a Lecturer position at Harvard, in Social Studies. We talked about migration studies in France and the United States, the questions it raised in the two countries, and the challenges. This discussion was very important for me, it was a very valuable initiation to (re)think my thesis with his arguments and in comparative perspective. He would say afterwards that “Migration studies were not a priority at Sciences Po. I kept telling them how important it is and very soon they will have to realize it.” He was right.

It was Ary who introduced a political approach to the study of migrations in France, in the early 1980. Until then, research, theses and books were mainly on the economic implications of migrations, taking migrants as a part of the labor force. We also had sociological studies on the process of migration itself, inspired mainly by the urban sociology of the Chicago School. Ary stimulated students to think of migrants as political actors… That was new! And he had a lot of echoes, influencing the orientation of many research projects in France.

Ary’s views and writings on migrants’ political participation, on the one hand, and migration on a more macro level as border controls on the other, have had a great influence on the next generation. He studied refugees, immigrants and immigration from many various angles: border control, immigration policy, immigration and foreign policy, integration, ethnicity, citizenship of course, with a historical perspective. He questioned the responsibility of the international community, human rights and development policy, and wondered about the future, when he wrote in 1991 on “the future of international immigration.”

In an interview I conducted of him in 2007 in New York that has been published in CERI’s book series on “challenges of the globalization,” we talked about the changing understanding of borders and the new challenges of the globalization. “On the political level state borders still matter, but I think they will go through transformations in the XXIst century.” He was always using a comparative perspective: “the nature of borders has changed in the European Union, maybe we will get to the same situation in North America. It would be easy for the United States of America with Canada, but more difficult with Mexico.”

Comparisons – spontaneous and reflexive – have been the basis of his thoughts and writings. Even in his last book A Nation by Design is about immigration in the United States, it is impossible not to think of other contexts, and he himself questioned whether the American nation is not after all “a nation like others.” Comparisons led him to develop global visions before the age of globalization in social sciences: already in 1995 he writes about “global flows, global walls, global movements, global system.”

Historian, sociologist, political theorist, Ary thought discussed and wrote about all aspects related to the arrival, settlement, integration and assimilation of migrants. New challenges led him to question conventional approaches without rejecting them. He questioned the resistance around language (Spanish in the United States) and religion (Islam in Europe), as new perspectives to review the classical patterns with new lenses of multiculturalism, citizenship, dual citizenship and transnationalism emerged, always in different contexts. Ary Zolberg, the cosmopolitan, at the same time Africanist, Europeanist, Americanist. He didn’t have any choice but to compare within a global perspective.

His fame and work is not limited in Europe to France. Belgium – his native country of course, Austria, Germany, Netherlands; you will see Ary’s name in every prestigious institutions in these countries, and conferences, and in the tables of contents of influential journals and collective books.

I had the privilege to participate in many conferences with Ary in many different cities in Europe and the United States. Beyond very stimulating presentations and fascinating general discussions, it was a real pleasure to stroll with Ary in those cities, go to museum, bars, restaurants… He was a bon-vivant, full of energy, always discovering new places, new tastes… He always had many stories to tell.

When I visited Ary in the hospital in Paris after his stroke, I was scared. When I saw him recovering so wonderfully, I thought that he was as we say in French “the force of the nature” “the force of life”. And he was…. I repeated that when I last saw him a month ago in New York, with the idea of rejecting that he can reach an end. I will miss him for all of that.

“We must confront and defeat the ugly stain of separatism seeping through the Union flag. […] Better an imperfect union than a broken one. Better an imperfect union than a perfect divorce. […] Together, we are stronger. […]Together, we are safer. […]Together, we are richer. […] Stronger. Safer. Richer. Fairer… Together.”

The above sentences come from a speech delivered by now Prime Minister and then the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, in December 2007. Over the last six years, Mr. Cameron has stated his case repeatedly, in December 2012 and in April 2013. In all those speeches on the benefits of international cooperation, the PM referred to Scotland and its status within the United Kingdom. Rather unsurprisingly, he has never applied the same line of argument when discussing the United Kingdom’s position within the European Union.

Distorted image

Over the last four decades, numerous publications sought to explain the complexity of British relations with the uniting Continent. While many factors are undoubtedly at play, their influence eventually seems to depend on yet another one, namely, a distorted image Britain has, not so much of the European Union, but of itself. Let’s take just one example.

In the coming years, Britain’s position within the Union will be conditioned to a large extent on its economic performance. So far, the anti-EU campaign in Britain was presented as a crusade lead by energetic free marketers against an overblown European state – a millstone round the economy’s neck. This narrative will be more and more difficult to sustain should major continental economies come out of the crisis sooner and more vigorously than Britain: a very likely scenario, given the fact that, after three years in power, Mr. Cameron’s government is now in charge of a smaller economy than the one it inherited in 2010.

Yet, the course of British economy, and consequently, the country’s political leverage, may change significantly as soon as the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement with the United States is signed. The new opening between the EU and the U.S. might shift the balance of power within the Union, though which way will this rebalancing go depends largely on Britain. During the negotiations, London might either lead the whole process in the name of Europe or distance itself from the EU and act rather as a middleman between the two sides, thus trying to revive its “special relationship” with Washington. The latter strategy is more likely both to occur and to backfire. Middlemen always run the risk of being cut off, and should the free trade agreement be signed without Britain, it will be a living proof to Washington that it can do good business with Europe without any mediation.

Split personality

A true Euro-American partnership is possible only if the European Union acts as a whole. Britain, because of its relatively recent loss of a global superpower status, quite understandably still has difficulty coming to terms with the new reality. The result is a split personality, which leads British diplomats to strive for conflicting goals. One day they want to play along the U.S. in the global Premiership League, the other they urge Brussels to grant Britain the status of a second Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein – countries which on the world stage usually display much humbler ambitions.

The question is, therefore, whether Britain can give up on the already tattered “special relationship” with the U.S. as well as “special treatment” in the EU, and realize it can do much more as a fully dedicated EU member that its distant partner. It is all the more important because just as there are no indispensable people, there are no indispensible countries. In his annual expose, a few months ago, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs advocated a radically pro-European policy, claiming that the troubles in the South and British “insular aloofness” present a great opportunity for Poland – already the EU’s sixth largest economy – to get to the EU’s “most inner decision-making circle”.

What is Europe about?

The major argument for united Europe made at the time of its creation was that it guaranteed peace. When Britain joined it in 1973, it was mainly about prosperity versus economic malaise. Now it is said the case for Europe is about power versus irrelevance. Such classifications are more misleading than revealing – a united Europe should be about all these issues. Together European countries are “stronger, richer and safer” – just as the members of that other union established in 1707 the British are so familiar with.

What therefore can Europe do to keep Britain in? Quite simply, the best solution seems to be to present the British with a mirror and ask them to take a closer look.

As an American, but one very familiar with Central and Eastern Europe, I believe that integrated Europe is extremely important for several reasons. First of all, it is important for maintaining peace and stability, and thus, for overcoming terrible legacies of the Second World War, so devastating to Europe and the rest of the world. Secondly, European Union plays a crucial role in creating economic opportunities for all of its members. The current crisis should not make us forget how prosperous Europe is and can still be. Thirdly, European integration might be a driving force behind a process of creating broader sense of political identity. Europeans have so many different cultures and nationalities and there is a need to bring them together, so that they have some shared sense of community. Any European project has to take this into account, but at the same time create means for people to cultivate their own national identity at the local level.

The process of European integration has gone through a number of changes since the early 1990s. Some of them were very encouraging, and some problematic. The first dramatic change occurred right after 1989, when the long-lasting Soviet domination over a large part of the continent collapsed and many nations suddenly had to reinvent their states, drawing upon their own democratic traditions. In Poland or Czechoslovakia, as it then was, i.e. countries with some history and strong feelings for democracy, this transformation proceeded quite smoothly. In other states it was less clear on what traditions new institutions should be built. In Hungary, where I now live, there have been strong democratic traditions, but also strong authoritarian traditions, dating back to the Habsburg era. The same is certainly true of Romania, Bulgaria and other countries in the Central and Eastern Europe. These were the initial challenges, later developing in the 1990s.

At that time there were two major steps, Eastern Europeans were eager to take in order to revive and develop their democratic traditions. The first one was the NATO accession. Joining the alliance which has been at the center of the Cold War, but which was really committed to the defense of democracy, was a very important moment for them. Being admitted to the group meant becoming a member of the democratic community. The EU accession – the second of the steps – was more complicated, but perhaps even more important. Undoubtedly it created more excitement among the public, also because of some practical advantages of participating in the common market and being able to travel within the Schengen zone.

Ten years after the accession, we clearly see that at least some expectations of the public have not been met. Why? Firstly, there was a structural problem from the very outset. European Union was designed largely as an economic project and it failed to create effective instruments of political participation for the public. Centralization of the European bureaucracy in Brussels and the development of a highly structured regulatory governance system created a growing frustration among the Central European societies, and indeed among other European peoples as well. A democracy deficit at the highest levels is one of the major problems EU needs to tackle in order to develop. It has been partially addressed by the growing political influence of the European Parliament, which has become a more active player in representing opinions of the European electorate. But I think there is still a lot to be done in order to give people a sense of participation. Otherwise, they will always turn for help only to their national governments, which can sometimes act against Brussels.

The second big factor undermining trust in the European project was obviously the economic meltdown. The way the euro crisis has been managed so far seems to prove that southern and eastern regions of the EU are treated as secondary areas by the central economies of Germany, the Benelux area and to a lesser extent France. Economic instability has also created some further tensions, since people affected by the crisis want to identify the causes of it and punish those, who are allegedly to blame, i.e. immigrants and ethnic minorities. As a result in many European countries xenophobic sentiments are on the rise. The anti-immigrant, anti-Roma perspective that you see in Europe today is very disturbing. These are pan-European phenomena, not specific to the Central and Eastern Europe. Naturally, different politicians in different countries are using these processes to foster their own interests. This is particularly true in Hungary, but in other countries as well.

Will these two factors undermine the whole process of European integration? We should do all we can to prevent it. European integration is of crucial importance for the reasons of peace, stability, economic prosperity and democratic rule across the whole continent. This is even more true today than ever. That is why I was pleased to see Croatia becoming a member, and I think it is of crucial importance to bring in other Balkan countries. Dynamic European integration, even if it has serious problems today, should continue and must not be reversed.

* John Shattuk is an American legal scholar and diplomat. He was the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 1993 to 1998, under President Bill Clinton. From 1998 to 2000 he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. Since 2009 he has been the President and Rector of Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. This article originally appeared in Kultura Liberalna.

In response to threats made by right-wing “patriot” hooligans to interrupt the grand ceremony, Zygmunt Bauman has recently rejected the honoris causa degree he was to be awarded by the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw. He said he did not want to cause any more trouble after his lecture had been interrupted in June by a crowd of young aggressive men, shouting out nationalist and xenophobic slogans. They are becoming a disturbingly familiar sight in large Polish cities. In their eyes, Bauman is not a famous scholar, but a Jewish Communist collaborator, a disgrace to the Polish nation. He is probably the biggest Polish name in the social sciences since Florian Znaniecki, and far more popular than are the hooligans. His books can be found in most trendy bookstores around the world. The university decided to grant him the degree against the “patriotic storm,” but given the swirling controversy, to cancel the customary lecture. The decision was cheered by some commentators, while others accused the institution of exploiting the scholar’s name for its own benefit.

Indeed, Bauman’s past as an officer of the Polish Communist army in the Stalinist period, a time remembered for painful repressions and murders of anti-Communist war heroes, raises questions. In fact, one of the major Polish universities initially wanted to grant Bauman an honorary degree in the mid-2000s, only to ax it when a number of scholars voiced their disapproval. The simple explanation is envy, but Bauman’s past is deeply troubling. His interview, conducted still in 2010, but published in the main Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza a week after the interrupted lecture, explained his involvement in Communist structures as a young man’s infatuation with ideology, but given his close ties to the apparatus of violence, the answers felt to many to be too easy.

The question is, how do you judge outstanding scholars (or artists, or politicians, etc.) who have complicated pasts? According to popular Polish imagination, the nation’s famous figures should be flawless. They are to be “monuments more durable than bronze,” as Horace once described poets. The effect of such impossible standards is twofold: on the one hand, the person’s supporters hide information that could tarnish the perfect image. On the other, the opponents do everything to demonize the person. What is lost is the actual human being. A vivid example of how destructive this approach can be both for the idolized figure, and for people who conceal his less-than-perfect deeds, is the scandal that broke out in the Gazeta Wyborcza after a posthumous biography of Ryszard Kapuściński by a journalist from the daily revealed that some of Kapuściński’s documentaries were, in fact, fiction. The messenger was accused of slandering a dead hero.

Another question is how are people to remember a person brilliant in one particular field, but questionable in others? Given the popular Polish black-and-white approach, this is an intolerable conflict that has to be either ignored or erased, by turning the person either into a saint or a demon. Particularly the latter has been visible in the recent years, largely thanks the Institute of National Remembrance, founded in 1999. It is most famous for housing Communist archives and conducting biased investigations on Communist-era “secret collaborators,” which turned into witch-hunts against political dissidents, such as the symbol of “Solidarity,” Lech Wałęsa, critical of the right-wing PiS (Law and Justice) party. The institute’s investigations set the tone of public debate: “us” vs. “them,” and the atmosphere has not changed much in over a decade.

Bauman’s position in popular Polish imagination was unfavorable from the beginning: he was a Communist and he is Jewish, which are the two worst insults one can hear in Poland. What’s more, the fact that he is a world-famous scholar appears to be more trouble than reason to be proud, because only some believe he should be honored as an academic. It is far easier to claim that he should be condemned as a person. In the popular debate, the two aspects are impossible to separate, and refraining from judgment is beyond thinkable. Thus, while the dominant belief is that the Polish Hall of Fame should be filled with saint-like figures, instead it is a proverbial “Polish hell” of accusations thrown against the potential candidates.

If one looks at this particular conflict over moral purity from a pragmatic point of view, it is Poland, not Bauman, which loses on the international scale. But in the Polish imagination the nation’s assets are not based on sound judgment, but on superficial moralism. This delusional hypocrisy fosters extremisms based on groundless beliefs, making actual discussion increasingly difficult. In this sense, the case of Bauman is another vivid illustration of the growing impossibility of shaping nuanced opinions in key debates in Poland, a society divided into simplistic “us” and “them,” dissidents and Communists, patriots and traitors. And this is to be found not only at the extreme margin, but more tragically at the very center of public life, as the dishonoring of Zygmunt Bauman reveals.

On June 22^nd of this year, in the city of Wroclaw, a lecture by Zygmunt Bauman was aggressively disrupted by a group of neo-fascists. When I first read about this, I was concerned, but not overly so. The extreme right has a persistent, visible, but ultimately, marginal presence on the Polish political scene, I assured myself. As a video of the event reveals, there is the other, apparently more significant, Poland that invited and wanted to listen to the distinguished social theorist speak, and cheered when the motley crew of ultra-nationalists and soccer hooligans were escorted from the lecture hall. While xenophobia and neo-fascism are threats in Eastern and Central Europe, I was pretty confident that in Poland, they were being held at bay.

But, after a recent visit to Wroclaw, I realize that I may have been wrong. While there last month, I had the occasion to talk about the “Bauman Affair” with some friends and colleagues. A highlight was around a dinner, though not a kitchen table. I am now deeply concerned not only about the event itself, but also about the political and cultural direction of Poland.

We had a lovely dinner at Hana Cervinkova and Lotar Rasinki’s home. Among the other quests were my colleagues at The New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute, Elzbieta Matynia, Susan Yelavich, Dick Bernstein and Carol Bernstein, and Juliet Golden, a Wroclaw resident and superb observer of the material life of the city, and her husband, a distinguished craftsman, restorer of among other things of the Jewish cemetery in Wroclaw. The Wroclaw Solidarność hero, Władysław Frasyniuk, and his wife joined us, as did Sylvie Kauffmann, the former editor of Le Monde, who reported extensively around the old Soviet bloc in the 80s and 90s, and now returns as the wife of the French ambassador. The dinner followed a public discussion between him and her. Also joining us was Adam Chmielewski, who as the Chair of the Department of Social and Political Philosophy of the University of Wrocław, was one of the co-sponsors of the Bauman lecture.

All were concerned about the Bauman affair, and understood that at issue was not only the talk of a challenging professor. Adam and I had a particularly interesting exchange. I present my side of this discussion today (with which Chmielewski told me he broadly agreed). In our next posts, I will publish his two-part in depth analysis.

My concern is rather straightforward. It has less to do with the quality of the extreme right, reprehensible as it is, more to do with its relationship with the less extremist mainstream. While extremists are indeed at the margins of Polish public opinion, they are becoming more and more effective in making themselves visible to the general public and becoming more acceptable. Politicians are coming to accept the extremists’ definition of controversies and trying to take advantage of their impact, and the media, many public intellectuals and academics are following their framing of events, or at least not forcefully opposing these frames.

Thus, Bauman’s lecture was framed as a scandalous talk by a Stalinist, rather than as a presentation by a distinguished, highly creative social theorist. The disruption was considered as a problem of the legacies of communism and not as a problem concerning the fate of academic freedom in an open society.

Should a Stalinist speak became the question. The quality of Bauman’s work, the importance of his diagnoses of the problems of our times, was put aside. The debate became how the politics of a young man, of a Jewish communist, should be judged, and whether its purported influence needed to be controlled. The fact that Bauman was hounded out of Poland in the wake of an anti-Zionist wave (in that case purported anti-Zionism was really a thin guise for anti-Semitism) was not discussed. The problem of the attempt to silence a critical opinion was not the issue. Rather, the occasion of Bauman’s lecture and its disruption was used to call for the long delayed lustration, a cleansing of communist influence from Polish public life.

There was a smell of anti-Semitism in the air. It seemed that at issue is as well to rid Polish public life of Jewish influence. But perhaps that is my paranoia.

The major opposition party, PiS (Law and Justice) seems to be supportive of the actions of the extreme right, while the ruling party, PO (Civic Platform), seems to be reluctant to too forcefully denounce the right. And intellectuals and professors, even those who privately find the attacks on academic freedom repugnant, are reluctant to speak up. PiS accepts the extremists definition of the situation. PO is reluctant to oppose it, as are many others.

Indeed, PiS seriously entertains wild conspiracy theories concerning the plane crash in Smolensk, in which Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, along with 94 others, including major public figures and civic leaders, were killed. The political paranoia that animates the extreme right is shared by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS leader, the former president’s identical twin brother, and former prime minister, who demonizes the current government as somehow implicated in “the assassination,” purportedly orchestrated by the Russians. Kaczynski has supported the “patriotic protests,” such as the one directed against Bauman, as Chmielewski reveals in his post.

My judgment: PiS seems to me to be quite extremist, though more polite than those who violently chanted against Bauman. Perhaps, Polish fascism with a human face? Probably too strong, but not by much.

Elsewhere, there is not much active direct support of neo-fascists, I trust even among many in PiS. Yet, indirect support and the absence of strong opposition is a serious problem. Thus, Chmielewski’s critique of PO in his post is especially important. He shows how the ruling party unintentionally has supported its far right critics through an apparently benign politics of bread and circuses, and how and why it is not forcefully counterattacking.

I have a playful unprofessional theory about extremism in contemporary politics. Somewhere around 20% of the citizens of just about all contemporary democracies support extreme anti-democratic, xenophobic and racist politics. If these people had their way, democracy would be fundamentally challenged. (Close to home I think of the Tea Party or at least the birthers and the clear Obama haters) The fate of democracy lies in what is done with this margin of the population. Encourage, tolerate or collaborate with this fringe, and a decent democratic politics is undermined or even lost. This is now happening in Hungary. It may happen in Poland.

A major party is in bed with the extremists. The ruling party is not forcefully opposing them. And there does not seem to be a broad civic response against this situation. It is the silence of the centrists, of the “moderates” that I find deafening. I believe, but I may be mistaken, that those on the left are speaking up, but I am not sure that they are being heard, isolated, as they are.

To end on an oblique note of deep concern: I think I see a kind of post-communist treason of intellectuals. It is particularly disturbing, and uncharacteristic of what I have long admired in Polish cultural life. While in Poland, I heard about the calculations of academics surrounding the Bauman affair. There is ambivalence about one of the most distinguished men of Polish letters, supporting him may be dangerous: to do so might compromise one’s career or lead to a weakening institutional support.  Suffice it to say that I admire and support my Polish friends who invited, listened and critically and deliberately considered Bauman’s talk, whether or not they agree with him (as by the way, I don’t on many issues of form and substance). I am disturbed by the problems my friends and colleagues face. There is a clear and present danger, and it is not the specter of communism.

I am on the road this month, now in Paris. For the previous three weeks, I have been teaching a course, “Social Movements, Publics and Politics,” at The New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. I also squeezed in, the weekend before last, work in Sofia, Bulgaria, consulting, along with Sandrine Kott, on a European Union research project “Regime and Society in Eastern Europe.” The research was from and on Bulgaria (Ivajlo Znepolski), Germany (Thomas Lindenberger), Hungary (Adam Takacs), and Poland (Dariusz Stola), studying “State and Society in Eastern Europe, 1956 – 1987.” While in Sofia, I had an opportunity to spend a few hours exploring the protests there, a chance to observe an exciting social movement confronting seemingly intractable problems. The protest, the research and the teaching were interestingly related: Here are some preliminary notes on the protest, as illuminated by my seminar and the reports of the European scholars.

I was at the protest on a Sunday, a slow day apparently. The protest routine: daily, people gather in front of the government building at 6:00 PM. There is a human ecology in the gathering. Friends meet each other at agreed upon places in the plaza and then march together to the Parliament building, attempting to disrupt the politics as usual. Informal groups with peer pressure keep the protests going. People come a number of days a week, visible to their friends and colleagues, as well as the nation and beyond: small group social interaction links with and fortifies the large social protest.

During the week, people gather in large numbers after work; on weekends, a smaller group gets together, perhaps a thousand or two on the Sunday I was there. Yet, it still was impressive, enthusiastic chanting and whistling, inventive placards, coupled with interesting discussions. I was there on the thirty seventh day of the demonstration, and it has continued (on day forty, there was violence). Through a few quick exchanges, I felt I had a sense of the general contours and direction of the movement.

The protesters are outraged by Parliamentary machinations, demanding the resignation of the present government, calling for new elections. They are trying to break a cycle of corruption, which has led to political and economic stagnation, and national impoverishment. Quite obvious to me: Bulgaria in 1989 had a much stronger economy than Poland. The reversal is now striking. Everywhere in Sofia, I could perceive the legacies of communism. Wroclaw more resembles Paris in comparison.

There are concerns that the present government is leaning towards Russia, away from Europe: thus along with the Bulgarian flag, the European Union flag is everywhere. There are hopes that if they keep the daily ritual going that in September, unions would join in. After the police broke up a protest blocking the Parliament building last Wednesday, there is hope that the European Union will somehow do something.

The protesters want to put an end to the national decline. Earlier in the year, there were anti-austerity protests, sparked by electricity price increases, leading to the resignation of the right of center government and elections in May that were quite inconclusive. Now, the socialist led governing coalition, including the socialists and the Turkish minority party (combining to have the support of 120 seats in the 240 seat parliament), cynically governs with the tacit support of a xenophobic nationalist party.

Cynicism provoked protest: the appointment of media mogul Delyan Peevski as head of the national security agency, the appointment of an oligarch to oversee, among other things, oligarchic corruption. Although he has resigned in response, the demonstrations continue, demanding new elections, seeking to form an electoral coalition of small parties who did not make it into parliament, hoping that somehow the distance between the political class and the broad public will be diminished.

Viewed from afar, the situation looks hopeless. The regime and society appear to be worlds apart, no matter which party is dominant. A rotation of leadership changes little. No election result would appear to have the potential to break Bulgaria’s downward spiral, supported by corruption, center, right and center. But looking closely, as was the common theme of my seminar and the EU research team, there is overlooked promise.

I was very impressed by the form of the protest. The demonstration has become a daily ritual for tens of thousands of citizens. They don’t all attend every day, nor do they bodily occupy a space, day and night (though there is a small occupation across from parliament). Rather they have made protest a regular aspect of Sofia’s everyday life. The regularity of the protests reminds me of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in their struggle against the Argentine Junta and its dirty war, although these protesters have no claim to martyred status. They meet daily rather than weekly. Everyday ordinary participation demonstrates democracy. Indeed it may help form democracy.

In my course and in my commentary with the European researchers on the topic of state and society in the good old bad days around the old Soviet bloc, I emphasized a key proposition of Hannah Arendt, my favorite political thinker. She maintains that in politics the means are an important part of the end. The way we do politics, the way we appear when we act politically, is an important consequential political fact. With this in mind, the creativity of the protesters, the way they are centered on the problem of politic cynicism and corruption, was very impressive. A young woman told me that in her judgment as the protests began she thought that a key sign of the seriousness of the protest would be if older people joined in. The presence of young and old together was quite striking. The fact that a medieval historian who clearly looked westward for his political inspiration and was liberal in the European sense of the term, underscored the importance of unions joining the protests, suggested to me a view of the common good that went beyond narrow orientation or interests. While the corruption is found across the political spectrum, this appears to be matched by protests that are across the social and political spectrums. A new alternative public is in formation.

The two key propositions of my Wroclaw course: the new “new social movements,” the movements of and after 2011, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and beyond, are distinctive in the way that they constitute diverse independent publics, and a key to their success is maintaining the diversity: something that tragically has not happened in the Arab world. In Bulgaria, there still is promise.

In the EU research project, an overall basic finding is that social changes, changes in the way people live and interact with each other, have a way of shaping even the most repressive regimes. Regime action has a way of creating social forces beyond their control (Stola). Expertise has a way of significantly limiting political – ideological mandates (Lindenberger), and philosophy and critical thinking are imperfectly controlled by ideology and political repression: cultural creativity has a way of persisting even under the most repressive conditions (Tokacs and Znepolski). While I lack the knowledge to know how this might lead to the next move in Bulgarian development, the social vitality, good humor and openness of the protesters, combined with their resolute democratic action, provide grounds for hope. The sort of creative political action I observed long ago on the Polish political scene (before, during and after Solidarność) is now observable in Bulgaria.

I recently read a fascinating and disturbing article in The New Yorker, by Jon Lee Anderson, on the rise and defeat of Islamists in Mali. I was struck by two particular descriptions of the Islamists’ behavior:

“In the central square, Idrissa had witnessed the beating of one of the jihadis’ own men, who had been accused by his comrades of raping a young girl. The spectators loudly criticized the jihadis for a double standard. “Everyone was angry because they didn’t kill him,” Idrissa said. Afterward, the jihadis had gone on the local radio station and warned that anyone who spoke badly about their men would be killed.”

The other:

“Then, on day two, the Islamists came,” he recalled. He had asked the leader what he wanted. Naming the northern towns of Mali, he had said, “Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal are Muslim towns, and we want to make Sharia in them. We are not asking. We are saying what we are doing, and we’re here to make Sharia.”

What I found so troubling was not only “the usual” Al Qaeda-related atrocities, but even more so the Islamist’s clearly voiced goal of destroying an existing social system through violence, devastation of cultural heritage (vandalizing local temples and libraries). This was tied together with the idea of creating a different social order based on sexual control, and the replacement of any traces of modern knowledge by radical interpretations of old religious texts. The irony is that these readings are just as contemporary as the lifestyle the Islamists try to erase.

In my opinion, these two quotes illustrate the power of violence combined with unquestionable certainty, able to undermine an entire civilization—its customs, morals, social order, and authorities. They fall apart in the presence of arrogant brutality. The people are too “civilized,” too cultured to defend themselves. The Islamists reject a civilization they claim is morally corrupt, and instead attempt to replace it with a modern essentialist take on an imagined Golden Age of religious purity.

The case of Islamists in Mali is an extremely vivid example of a contemporary violent essentialism we can witness in many different places and with changing force. There are the extreme right-wing nationalists and Christian religious fundamentalists in Europe and the US, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn activists in Greece, the Le Pen nationalists in France, the Tea Party in the US, as well as the Polish nationalist youth, with neo-Nazi and pagan ties, who recently tried to interrupt Zygmunt Bauman’s lecture at the University of Wrocław.

All these groups seem to play on a fantasy of a bygone era of a harmonious society formed solely by “us,” without outsiders or deviations from the unanimously accepted norms, “inventing” their traditions, as Eric Hobsbawm would have named it. The past is idealized into the present in a form deeply conservative but also modernly total, one in which men rule and women obey; the “we” are the masters, the “others” are the slaves. There is no space for sexual freedom or mental sickness. Foucault’s descriptions of these freedoms in the Middle Ages seem, on the contrary, extremely modern.

In this sense, the current fundamentalist movements are essentialized ideas of a glorious past, devoid of any ambiguity. They are definite, brutal and all-encompassing in a way only an extreme mixture of Enlightenment and Totalitarianism could lead to. They are belief systems based on a logic of the elimination of “otherness.”

The past to which they refer, never was. The refusal to acknowledge the ambiguous, heterogeneous, histories of cultures, religions, ethnicities, and civilizations, makes these movements arrogantly, violently contemporary.