Decommunization

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University Square, Bucharest, Romania: "Zone free from neocommunism"
University Square, Bucharest, Romania: "Zone free from neocommunism"

Decommunization is a process of overcoming the legacies of the communist state establishments, culture, and psychology in the post-Communist states. It is sometimes referred to as political cleansing.[1]

The term is most commonly applied to the former countries of the Eastern Bloc and the post-Soviet states to describe a number of legal and social during their periods of postcommunism.

While sharing common traits the processes of decommunization have run differently in different states.

Contents

[edit] Acts of decommunization

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[edit] Decrease of decommunization

Stephen Holmes of the University of Chicago in 1996 argued that after a period active decommunization, it was met with a near-universal failure. After the introduction of lustration, demand for scapegoats has become relatively low and former communists have been elected for high governmental and other administrative positions. Holmes notes that the only real exception was former East Germany, where thousands of former STASI informers have been fired from public positions. [2]

Holmes suggests the following reasons for the burn-off of the decommunization:[2]

  • Sense of collective complicity: after 45-70 years of state communism nearly every family has members associated with the state. After the initial desire "to root out the reds" came a realization that massive retroactive punishment is wrong, and putting the guilt of many onto several singled out scapegoats is hardly a justice.
  • The urgency of the current economical problems of postcommunism makes the crimes of the communist past "old news" for common citizens.
  • Realization that decommunization has actually become a power game of elites.
  • Realization of the difficulty of dislodging the social elite. It would require a totalitarian state to disenfranchise the "enemies of the people" quickly and efficiently, and a desire for normalcy overcomes the desire for punitive justice.
  • Realization that very few people with perfectly clean slate are available to fill the positions that require significant expertise. People begin remembering that Lenin's idea that "every cookwoman may govern the state"[citation needed] failed.

[edit] Return of former Communists to power

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Former communists regained power in nearly all post-Soviet states, most of them denouncing their Communist past. The same had happened in some East European states as well.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jennifer A. Yoder (1999) "From East Germans to Germans?: The New Postcommunist Elites", ISBN 0822323729,, pp.95-97
  2. ^ a b Michael Mandelbaum (Ed., 1996) "Post-Communism: Four Perspectives", Council on Foreign RelationsISBN 0876091869
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