To skip this introduction and go directly to read Adam Puchejda’s interview of Zygmunt Bauman, click here.

As ominous neo-fascist clouds threaten Poland, there are also those who seek alternatives. While their intellectual voices are more clearly heard than their political actions are seen, their voices matter. Two political-cultural reviews have been outstanding Krytyka Polityczna and Kultura Liberalna. The most recent issue of the latter explores the theme of the fate of the left in contemporary politics. It is part of an ongoing exchange between French and Polish public intellectuals. Appearing in the issue are contributions by Zygmunt Bauman, Marcel Gauchet, Michael Kazin and Krzysztof Pomian. The complete issue in English can be found here.

The first piece in the symposium is of special interest to Deliberately Considered readers: an in depth interview by Adam Puchejda of Zygmunt Bauman on the future of the left. Here Bauman’s position can be heard, the one that the neo-fascists attempted to silence, as I earlier reported and analyzed.

To read Adam Puchejda’s interview of Zygmunt Bauman, click here.

Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Moscow Carnegie Center and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on Russian politics, democratic opposition and on why Putin may be better than Medvedev

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Lukasz Pawlowski: Why haven’t the mass protests prevented Mr. Putin from winning the presidential election for the third time?

Lilia Shevtsova: Because the protest tide was weak, it wasn’t a real tsunami. The December movement had no structured leadership and no concrete agenda. It wasn’t strong enough to force political leaders in the Kremlin even to think about some serious change at the moment. Nonetheless, it shocked them and proved the society has awakened although luckily for the Kremlin it is not that frightening yet.

In Russia there are numerous parties and non-governmental organizations working against the regime for democratization. There have been there for many years and now when they got a marvelous opportunity to achieve at least some of their goals they missed it. They have been working long to get Russian society out in the streets and when they finally managed to do that they seemed completely surprised.

Everybody was surprised, maybe with exception of some people, who – just like myself – have been telling themselves every year, every month: “it will come, it will come, the bubble will burst”. But even we were not sure, when it will happen. The number of people that took to the streets was some kind of revelation. Even sociological instruments failed to reveal, what was happening beneath the surface of the society. The most respectable survey institution, Levada Center – the best in Russia, and maybe even in Europe – before the parliamentary elections in December estimated that the Kremlin party, United Russia, will get about 55% of the votes, while in the end it got officially only 45% and in reality less than 35% of the vote. So yes, for many people in the society, even in the opposition the events that followed parliamentary elections were unexpected.

But why has the opposition failed in their hour of trial, despite the fact, that we have so many movements, groups and parties? Why have they failed to get together, to find a common platform and deliver some message to the society?

There are several reasons. Firstly, the opposition is incredibly fragmented and the fragmentation has been much supported by the authorities, because it works to their advantage. Secondly too many oppositionists come from the 1990’s and therefore lack credibility in Russian society. The Russians are tired of that period and do not want it to come back. Thirdly, it was not that the political movements were not prepared for any kind of breakthrough. They were prepared for a long period of legal struggle, but they were not ready for people taking to the streets. This latter situation calls for totally different tactics, political ones.

Are you saying that the Russian opposition is not a political movement?

A lot of demands made by Russian December movement are still moral and ethical. They are calls for human dignity, for mutual respect. This is in fact chiefly a normative agenda not a profound political agenda. So, this movement has to be politicized and the people who organize and work for it, need to understand that politization requires constant and often mundane work. The opposition cannot succeed just by organizing carnivals or happenings. It cannot be a hipster movement or a flashmob. It also cannot have too much faith in the Internet and social media. These are only tools, they can bring people out to the streets but they can also atomize them. Invited through Facebook or Twitter many people came, but then when standing on the Sacharov Prospect they saw many different people around them and began to ask themselves “What really unites us?” Some of them were there solely against Putin and if he left the Kremlin they would be satisfied, some of them would like to raise their status within the system, without changing it and making revolutions, finally some of them would like to change the system itself. It is the role of the political opposition to find a platform for unification and consolidation of those various groups. In my view the movement cannot be based solely on the rejection of the previous regime but needs a constructive element in it, a project of constitutional and political reform. We need to realize that we are not fighting Putin personally. The major problem is not the particular personality at the Kremlin, but the rules of the game – the personalized power and its close connections with big industry.

Will the opposition eventually succeed?

I’m pretty sure that this movement will continue. The first tide has subsided, but there will be second, third, fourth tide, although I’m not certain what will be the result of those tides. What will be the intervals between them? Will they succeed in Moscow and St. Petersburg in uniting people on the basis of broad liberal and democratic values, not only dignity, but rule of law and political competition?

A lot depends on whether the opposition succeeds to reach people living outside the two major cities, in provincial Russia. There are up to 45-48 million people living in the former Soviet industrial cities. They are also dissatisfied with the regime, but their protests may be provoked by another set of reasons. People who took to the streets in Moscow were moved by moral, ethical and to some extent political demands. The people in the post-soviet industrial Russia can be moved by social and economical woes. The problem though is that they might long to solve their problems by looking for a new “savior,” i.e. the leader who will promise that he can deal with all their miseries in the same way as Yeltsin and Putin had promised before. Such person would only take Putin’s place while keeping all the pathologies of the Russian political matrix. The major question is therefore how to combine all those social tides, how to find some common denominator and how, at the same time, to reach people with ethical, political and socio-economic demands, how not to leave the “second “ Russia behind.

Would it be easier for the protesters if Dmitri Medvedev continued as a president? His attitude towards the opposition seemed to have been a little more open than Putin’s.

Somehow paradoxically I believe that the return of Putin is better for the opposition. Medvedev’s second term would prolong hopes that he could make a difference, that he could finally become a reformer and modernizer we long for. The return of Putin gives us much clearer picture and it is better to have certainty than delude oneself that change may come from the Kremlin. During the last four years Medvedev has proved that he’s “Mr. Nobody.” He never delivered anything he promised, and he already looks in retrospective like Brezhnev who also increased the disparity between declarations on the one hand and deeds on the other. In this way Brezhnev in fact helped the society to understand the rotten nature of the Soviet system. So maybe the fact that Medvedev had promised too much and never delivered will eventually be his only positive legacy that will push the educated Russians to believe that no change can come from the top.

And what will happen to Medvedev now?

Who cares! Apparently because he was promised the post of the prime minister, he will become the prime minister but nobody will ever take any notice of him, because nobody respects him.

But he has been the president for four years. You cannot forget about this. How will the authorities officially refer to his time in power? You have to explain to the people why Putin has come back. Is it because Medvedev was such a bad president that Putin had to intervene?

They are not going to talk about that this way. The period will enter the Russian history as a period of a Putin-Medvedev tandem, which in fact has achieved some goals. Firstly it created a possibility for Putin’s return to the Kremlin. Secondly it has achieved another goal, very important, of seducing the West, chiefly the United States, which believed a reset in relations with Russia is possible. You know there were many people who thought that Medvedev was a new page in Russian history. So from this point of view that tandem has fulfilled some positive goals for the regime. It helped it to survive. But now, when we are approaching the end of this tandem regime, we see that it also had some drawbacks. It undermined the presidential power and started to desacralize it. Medvedev contributed a lot to desacralization of the Russian Presidency.

Especially after the overheard conversation with Barack Obama when Medvedev said he would repeat everything to Putin, we all realized he is simply a kind of liaison officer with no decisive powers. Looking from this perspective, how do you think the return of the old/new president is going to affect Russian foreign policy?

The paradigm of Russian foreign policy will not change because the system remains the same. The foreign policy is determined by the domestic agenda. So if the leader is the same, if the system is the same, if the regime is the same, how could the foreign policy become radically different? Thus Putin will continue with the same foreign policy paradigm, which is based on two pillars. The first is pragmatism. Putin understands that Russia depends on its exports to the West and the well-being of the Russian ‘rentier class’ depends on the oil prices and gas production. What is more the elite is personally integrated into the West. Their kids are in schools in London. They have accounts in western banks. They live in the West and would like to have free access to it. Therefore, Russia cannot become a totally closed country. On the other hand, we need to remember that the Russian society has moved, and Putin needs some means to control it. He will be trying to get them by launching anti-western campaigns, by constantly searching for an external-internal enemy and by being anti-American. Thus in the end, he will have to walk a very thin line, proving at the international level that he is a pragmatist who can be dealt with, while at the same time provoking anti-Western feelings inside the country. Until recently, he has been pretty successful in riding two horses in opposite directions, but my hunch is that in the nearest future it will become too complicated for him. There will be much more anti-Americanism, anti-Western feelings, and much more aggressiveness and assertiveness in the Russian foreign policy because – having no means to solve domestic problems with domestic resources – Putin will be accusing the alleged enemies to distract the attention of the public from other issues. So the foreign policy will be much more, I would say, assertive than before.

Is there anything the West can do to prevent this turn? Do you think that increasing the international support for democratization in Russia would be a good idea? On the one hand, it might help a lot of democratic and non-governmental organizations, on the other, however, it might provoke a fierce reaction of the authorities and help them present Russia as a besieged fortress.

It’s a very complicated question, and there is no unanimously accepted answer to it. I’m not sure that my opinion on that is popular even among other Russian liberals. I would say that the old model of democracy promotion that has been successful during the third tide of democratization is now outdated and has lost its effectiveness. At that time, the western foundations and governments were trying to help to promote democratic norms and rules of the game in transitional societies and in authoritarian societies as well. For instance, they tried to help those societies to build parties, to understand the importance of the parliament, democratic elections, free media etc. In my view, Russian society does not need this kind of assistance. Western money coming to Russia to support different initiatives and to support democratic cells within the society could be counter-productive, because – as you said – the authorities can always present the recipients of such assistance as a kind of fifth column and thus discredit domestic routes to democracy. True, we have different groups and organizations that have no financial means and survive using foreign funds. They are good people doing good job. They defend citizens against the authorities. They address the West when they notice human right abuses etc. If the West cuts its financial help, those groups will cease to exists, so some external support is definitely needed. Western governments should not do anything more though. It seems to me that Russian society already understands what democracy is, what party building is, what independent parliament is, what free media is. Thus we really need to rely upon our own sources and create our own movement.

In that case is there anything the West can do?

Certainly, it can do at least three things. First, it would help us if the West practices what it preaches. Hypocrisy diminishes the West a systemic alternative for Russia. Second, the western leaders when communicating with their Russian counterparts should remind them that Russia belongs to the Council of Europe, that it signed various declarations and promised to follow the rules of the game that are written in the declaration on human rights. Being a member of the Council of Europe means that Russian domestic decisions are not entirely up to Russian politicians, that the West can criticize Russia. Third, the West can significantly influence what is going on in Russia by influencing the Russian elite abroad. If western governments tried to persuade the representatives of the Russian political and business elite living and working in western countries that their possibilities in those countries depend on how they behave in Russia, it would be a great asset and assistance to democratization movements. Regretfully, western governments are ready to send money to the Russian society to support human rights activists, but they are not willing to do anything to influence members of the Russian political elite who live within their borders.

But you yourself are an analyst at a multinational foreign policy think-tank, independent, yet as it says on its official website “promoting active international engagement by the United States.” Does this affiliation somehow influence your work?

Yes, I work for the Carnegie Moscow center that is affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment, but I work with many other institutions: I am an associate of the Chatham House, member of the Davos World Economic Forum Global Councils Network (and the founding chair of the Global Council for Future of Russia), and even a key researcher for the Institute of Economy (the Russian Academy of Sciences). I expect all these institutions to give me total freedom of expression. My colleagues at Carnegie may have different views on Russia and the rest of the world. Some of them are defenders of the US-Russian reset. I am its tough critic. I’ve never experienced any pressure from those institutions, including Carnegie Endowment. The Moscow Carnegie Center has its own status and its own agenda. It is funded by many Western foundations (not only Carnegie), and it accepts funds only on the basis of having total independence in using these funds for the democratic agenda. The fact that our autonomy is respected allows us to be part of this network. It allows me to be critical of Obama administration (I was critical of Bush too) and its policy toward Russia. My personal agenda is the Russian transformation. This goal sometimes coincides with the western agenda and sometimes not.

Can a radical change in Russian political system come about only by a pressure exercised by a bottom-up movement or is at least a tacit consent of the elites needed as well? If so, which elites are likely to become tired of Putin – military, economic, political, maybe religious?

The last nearly 20 years have proven that real transformation of the Russian system can come only under pressure from the society, that is from the broad social and political movement. Just like the transformation of the communist systems that took place in the Eastern and Central Europe. Any top down changes within the Russian matrix can only either prolong its life or (ironically) start to undermine it. However, even in this latter case, we cannot guarantee a civilized and peaceful transformation, but rather a sudden collapse. That is why the organized social movement and some pressure from the bottom are needed.

Nonetheless a peaceful transformation will depend on whether the ruling elite gets fragmented, and pragmatic grouping emerge that will be interested in a pact with the anti-systemic opposition. Hopefully, this will happen. From my observations, the majority of experts working for the Kremlin understand that the system is not sustainable in the longer run. They are simply not ready to become heroes yet… They are not kamikaze. Despite that I hope such cooperation sooner or later will be established. Who will join the opposition? It is difficult to say – it depends on the degree of courage, understanding and… conformism too. Much depends also on when we will have the next tide of wrath and whether it will trigger some serious work on the political and ideological alternative. Because, you know, the worst scenario will be if the Russian system starts to unravel before the alternative is built.

This interview originally appeared in Kultura Liberalna no. 172 (17/2012), April 24, 2012, Olga Byrska, Jakub Dadlez and Konrad Kamiński providing assistance.

Who would have thought that twenty-two years after the fall of communism in Hungary that György Konrád, the respected writer and one of the most famous Central European dissidents, would have to sign yet another open letter defending fundamental rules of democracy in his home country? And that the letter would be a strong accusation addressed to that young man with soot black hair whose hard-shell speech in 1989, at the symbolic funeral of the martyrs of the ’56 revolution, electrified Budapest – one Viktor Orbán?

The New Year’s appeal of Hungarian intellectuals including former key figures of the opposition such as Konrád and Miklós Haraszti is a democratic alert not only for Hungary. It echoes the dissident appeals of the old days. It does not attack Orbán’s regime for its ideological content, but rather for its form. Liberal democracy is, first and foremost, a set of rules, written down so that the game remains fair for whoever might be sitting at the table. That was the essence of the democratic opposition’s struggle in Eastern Europe – to overthrow the red dictatorship, because it is a dictatorship.

On the other hand, the anti-Communist opposition, of which Orbán is a descendent, wanted to overthrow the red dictatorship because it was red. Following this logic, one can treat human rights in an instrumental fashion. One can perceive torture as justified or not – for example justified in the case of Pinochet, and vicious in the case of Castro. One can also believe that authoritarianism can be built in the name of a just cause. If you disagree with this judgment, you should listen carefully to what the Hungarian democratic dissidents have to say.

Their letter is above all a dry summary of the legislative and institutional changes pushed through by Orbán’s government. It is a rather terrifying read, as it illustrates how in the very heart of Europe, using a series of small, barely visible steps, it is possible to introduce and entrench in a democratic system a conservative autocracy. Orbán gave the old idea of a “salami tactics” – cutting the opposition down, slice by slice – a new meaning. Today the main opposition party is declared a “criminal organization.” It is still hard to believe that we are talking not about some banana republic, but about one of the pillars of the Visegrad Group.

Some fifteen years ago the word “Visegrad” still had some meaning. Thanks to people such as Václav Havel “Central Europe” became a trademark – a recognized label of quality, of which the Baltic or Balkan nations dreamed. These two notions, Visegrad and Central Europe, stood for stability and the success of “democracy’s third wave.” Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary were the A-students of the East European academy (Slovakia’s time came later). Is there still anything that those three have in common? Never since 1989 were their political scenes as different as they are today.

This is not to say that Poland (as well as Czech Republic and, perhaps especially, Slovakia) should not treat the developments in Hungary as a threat. The example of our “bratanki”(a traditional Polish nickname for the Hungarians, implying a strong historical bond, despite cultural and ethnic differences), moving ever farther away, plunging into the turbid waters of the region’s history (Orbán is not ashamed of the parallels with Admiral Miklós Horthy), shows how fragile the democracy of our nations still is. The constant talk of a growing threat of authoritarianism as well as – let us utter this word without hesitation – fascism, is quite disheartening.

As the authors of the open letter sadly note, and as was reviewed by Kultura Liberalna in yesterday’s post here, the authoritarian deviation in Hungary has already passed a critical point and is largely irreversible. Even if the coming elections would bring a victory of the opposition, FIDESZ and its project for Hungary is already firmly anchored. The question “What happens after Orbán?” is therefore mostly an inquiry about how to dismantle an autocracy through democratic methods, when that autocracy had already undermined the foundations of the republic.

At Kultura Liberalna we asked sardonically if it is not high time to kick Hungary out of the European Union. This is not a mere provocation. The Hungarian dissidents acknowledge that in its present shape their country would not meet the “Copenhagen criteria” and thus could not count on being accepted in the EU. If we were supposed to bring in moral strength and the experience of a struggle for democracy into Europe, then it could be a good idea to react sharply, when someone is wiping his shoes on liberal democracy, even if that someone is an old friend.

I am concerned. There is a significant threat to democracy in Hungary and few are paying attention in this country. A member state of the European Union may be transitioning from democracy, as Andras Bozoki warned here months ago, but there has been almost no reporting about the developments in the serious press in the U.S., let alone in the popular media, even though it’s a big story in Europe.

I did hear a report on National Public Radio the other day about the economic problems Hungary is having in its relationship with the European Union, but not about the disturbing political developments that a distinguished group of former dissidents criticized in their public letter, which we (along with many other sites) posted last week. There have been reports of mass demonstration in Budapest. But these provided little explanation and no follow up. It just fit into the year of the protestor story line.

I suppose that this may just be an indication that Europe is becoming a small corner of the new global order, not necessarily demanding close attention. Am I being Eurocentric in my conviction that this is an important story? Yet, very important issues are on the line, important for the Hungary and the region, but also of broader significance. The slow development of authoritarianism is a global theme with local variations, which need to be deliberately considered.

I have been informed by a circle of young Polish intellectuals working at the on line weekly, Kultura Liberalna.  They recently published a special issue posing the question: “Should Hungary be excluded from the European Union?” They provide different perspectives and insight. Here are some highlights. The complete pieces now can be read on the weekly’s site in English.

The European controversies started with changed media law, at the center of the anti-democratic developments. Dominika Bychawska–Siniarska in her piece, “Attempt on Democracy,” highlights the basic problem as seen from Poland:

“Freedom of speech is the fundamental element of democratic society. The post-communist states are particularly obliged to respect and fully implement that freedom. Enactment of a media act which raises severe objections as to the international standards of freedom of speech should be perceived as a regression in the democratic transformation in Hungary.”

Adam Bodnar recognized the shared experiences of Poles with Hungarians, observing that the path Hungary is now on resembles earlier developments in Poland:

“[Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán has achieved something that [the former Polish Prime Minister] Jaroslaw Kaczynski only dreamed about. Step by step he gained more and more control to finally fulfill the process of taking over power by liquidating the main opposition.”

He then gives an overview of the historical process and the contours of the consequences for democracy:

“In … the middle of Europe we have a country – a member of the European Union- which has stopped being democratic. There is a facade, one can demonstrate and use the internet, the opposition leaders are not yet retained or arrested, but there is no pluralism in the parliament, control institution‘s and jurisdiction‘s voice was taken away and the opposition is excluded from having any influence on the state. In a moment political trials might begin.”

And he issues a call for Polish action:

“Poland cannot promote democracy, rightful rule and human rights among the Eastern Partnership or Arabic countries, if it neglects a creation of an authoritarian system in a Eastern Europe country, which is mentally so close to us. Maybe gestures of solidarity will not change a lot, but one cannot remain indifferent, because if similar processes happened to us, we would also expect a reaction of other states, politicians, political parties and prominent foreign communities.”

In her contribution, “Viktor Orbán: Dismantling Democracy,” Magdalena M. Baran concluded:

“When we couple the pre-holiday legislation with the recent decisions limiting the freedom of the media, such as revoking the pro-opposition Klubrádió radio station’s license, or banning the index.hu website’s reporters from entering the parliament, it is hard not to observe that Hungarian democracy indeed is not faring too well. This is not the first time that Orbán’s political fireworks explode in the New Year sky. But clearly, Hungarians are no longer blinded by the shimmering stars, and instead are beginning to notice that this is no grand celebration ushering in the carnival season. Rather, they see that this is chaos –  that the ash settling over their country will be hard to clear, that the smoke left behind by the sparklers carries an unbearable stench, and that they have more to lose than to gain from allowing this irresponsible toying with fire to continue.”

Piotr Wciślik, in “Something Worse than a Dictatorship: Viktatorship,” warns that by centralizing power and making controlling checks and balances, while still permitting popular voting, the consequence of the anti-democratic turn may lead to a top down anarchy:

“Can one speak of a dictatorship? No, things are even worse. In principle, despite Orbán’s authoritarian style of governance, the constitutional guarantees of a democratic way of changing the government still persist. Nevertheless, even if Orbán goes, his departure can result in something worse than a dictatorship: a state of non-governability, a political impasse. Thus, paradoxically, and by way of unintended consequences, the tendency of the Regime of National Cooperation towards concentrating all power in a few hands, can lead to a sort of bizarre anarchy from above.”

Kacper Szulecki, an editor at Kultura Liberalna, published a piece that first appeared in the major Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. He understands the piece to be a part of a transnational debate on Orbán’s “conservative revolution,” ignited by the Hungarian dissident appeal, in which different liberal and critical media – including Kultura Liberalna, along with the Czech Denik Referendum and the Slovak Je to tak. In our next post, we will publish an expanded version of his text prepared for Deliberately Considered.

There is bad news coming from Central Europe. But the persistence of critique provides hope. It is good to know that critical Hungarians, along with their neighbors are paying close attention. So should we.