22

Legacies of Communism: Comparative

Remarks
ja n c . b eh rends

There are many legacies of communism. The communist movement, com-

munist power in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and throughout the
world, changed over time and had numerous regional variants. Many obser-
vers would also agree that there is something distinctly postcommunist or
post-Soviet about the societies that emerged after the collapse of the party-
states in Europe in 1989–91. Communist power has left a specific footprint on
Eurasian politics and societies that can be examined.
Still, this is not the whole picture. While communist regimes have col-
lapsed throughout Eurasia, they continue to exist in other parts of the world.
More than a quarter of a century after the disintegration of the Soviet empire,
communist rule survives in China, Vietnam and Cuba as well as in North
Korea. In China alone 70 million people are members of the Chinese
Communist Party. There communist power is as much a Maoist legacy as
it is a current reality. At the same time, however, the international commu-
nist movement – for much of the twentieth century and well into the 1980s
a potent political actor – has been confined to history.1 In most Western
countries as well as in the developing world, communist parties have become
marginal, while successor organizations of most of the former party-states
can no longer be considered communist. Even in Russia itself the successor
to the once-mighty party is just another pawn in the Kremlin’s political
game. In Eastern Europe former communist parties have adopted various
nationalist or populist political positions. Thus, a century after the October

1 See e.g. Michel Dreyfus (ed.), Le siècle des communismes (Paris: Seuil, 2004);
Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007); David Priestland, The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the
Modern World (London: Penguin Books, 2009); Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of
Communism (London: Random House, 2010); Silvio Pons, The Global Revolution:
A History of International Communism 1917–1991, trans. Allan Cameron (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

Revolution the legacies of the communist movement and of communist

power vary greatly and are often contradictory. What can we focus upon?
In the years following the collapse of communist power in Europe
a dominant narrative was established: The “peaceful revolution” in Eastern
and Central Europe and the mostly nonviolent Soviet collapse were celebrated
as the civil end to a violent century. Francis Fukuyama famously declared the
“end of history” which was achieved through a “worldwide liberal
revolution.”2 According to this narrative, the West had regained the optimism
lost in 1914 and was bound to triumph on a world-historical scale after 1989.
Others just claimed that Europe had learned the lessons of the twentieth
century and had become a community of civil states.3 Peaceful change
remained the key focal point.4 On close inspection, however, these interpreta-
tions were questionable from the beginning. Neither the rise of communist
China after 1989 or Putin’s Russia, nor the wars in the former Yugoslavia, fit the
interpretation. Yet it took the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014 to discredit
this interpretation and to acknowledge that the temptations of authoritarian-
ism, geopolitics and the perils of war are still present in Europe – especially but
not exclusively in the post-Soviet space.5 The looming question is how recent
developments are tied to the communist past.
While communist power after 1917 changed over time and varied depend-
ing on locality its aftermath is equally hard to assess. The nature of the
historical legacy itself remains contentious. There is not one comprehensive
methodology that can be followed to explore the historical consequences of
communist rule. We rather need to ask “why . . . certain institutional forms,
ways of thinking, and modes of behavior appear to have persisted . . . while
others have fallen by the wayside.”6 This chapter examines the political
consequences of communism for both postcommunist societies and those
in which communist parties still rule. It explores differences between the
former USSR, Eastern Europe and China and takes into account factors such

2 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin Books, 1992).
3 See James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern
Europe (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 147–221.
4 Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001); Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
5 Andrew Wilson, Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2014); Jan C. Behrends (ed.), The Return to War and Violence: Case Studies on the
USSR, Russia, and Yugoslavia, 1979–2014 (London: Routledge, 2017).
6 Stephen Kotkin and Mark R. Beissinger, “The Historical Legacies of Communism:
An Empirical Agenda,” in Mark R. Beissinger and Stephen Kotkin (eds.), Historical
Legacies of Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 3.

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

as the length of communist rule and the aftermath of cataclysmic events such
as collectivization, state terror, forced labor and national uprisings. I will
further argue for a distinction between the long-term effects of Stalinism and
the consequences of late socialism. Finally, I would like to point out that the
years immediately following the collapse of communist power appear to
have been crucial for shaping its legacy. Thus, legacies of communism
themselves are fluid and constantly (re)made. They date back to the time
after the revolution that brought down communist party rule in many
countries, they include the era of late socialism and they were shaped
decisively in the 1990s.

Societies Transformed and the Party-State:

The Legacy of Revolution and Stalinism
The most lasting legacy of communist rule is the Leninist party-state. Instead
of withering away – as Karl Marx had predicted – the modern state was
transformed by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The “dictatorship of the
proletariat” turned out to be the rule of a hierarchically structured party that
dominated the state and declared war not merely on the remnants of the old
regime but on independent society as such.7 The communist party controlled
both the army and the secret police – the main enforcers of state power. From
the beginning of communist power in late 1917 the unrestrained use of
violence, the desire to control economic activity, to subjugate civil society
and to control public and private spaces became trademarks of this type of
statehood. The party-state formed the basis for the social transformations
that communist parties aspired to.
While the councils (“soviets”) had been momentous as representatives of
soldiers and workers during the Russian Revolution, they were quickly
limited to a decorative role. The party was at the core of this modern type
of dictatorship. The Bolsheviks had shown that a small yet determined group
from the margins of the political spectrum could take over a state and defend
its hold on power for an indefinite time. A new type of regime was formed; its
state machine as well as the federal structure of the USSR adopted in 1922
were an influential paradigm and impressed friends and enemies in Europe
and beyond.8 In 2016, this Leninist party-state model is still ruling in China,

7 Steven G. Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World. From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to
Bolshevism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 299–332.
8 Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism, 103–14; Gerd Koenen, Utopie der Säuberung. Was
war der Kommunismus? (Berlin: Fest, 1998), 95–110.

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. As a blueprint it certainly impacted also on

noncommunist dictatorships around the globe.
The Leninist state placed a small group of leaders at the center of political
power. Party and state had a militarized structure and were organized around
chains of command, with the party leader taking the role of commander-in-
chief. Lenin and Stalin created this system during the Russian Civil War.9
In reality, however, the functioning of the party apparatus was more com-
plicated than its hierarchical structure. While on paper the party had
a formalized structure, internal party politics were highly informal. They
could be broken down into personal and regional networks of strongmen
that controlled segments of the party-state as well as economic resources.
Within these webs of patron–client relationships personal trust and
loyalty outweighed institutional frameworks and ideological differences.10
To outsiders the internal dealings of the party-state remained opaque. This
lack of transparency contributed to the widespread perception that
power and society were strictly separated spheres – “us” and “them” –
a characteristic divide for dictatorships in general and communist rule in
particular. Those who held power were sometimes respected but more
often feared. This fear of the party-state and its security services led to
widespread distrust of the state and its intentions, especially during the
founding phase of communist state, but to a lesser degree also after revolu-
tionary radicalism waned.
During Stalinism and the great terror, fear also structured relationships
within the party-state. Even in the higher echelons of power nobody could
feel immune from arrest and persecution. Although mass reprisals would
finally stop after the deaths of Stalin and Mao, the aftermath of these
cataclysmic events continues to be felt. The party-state’s terror did not just
destroy careers, families and lives; for decades to come it shaped society and
served as a reminder of the arbitrary power of the state. Those living under
communist rule in the USSR and China had experienced how totalitarian
ambition translated into mass violence. The losses and the insecurity experi-
enced continue to shape politics and societies.11 Few families remained
untouched by decades of upheaval, and most had to keep silent about their

9 See Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Press,
2014), 227–660.
10 For a longue durée perspective, see J. Arch Getty, Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars,
and the Persistence of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
11 Polly Jones, Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union,
1953–1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Andrew G. Walder, China Under
Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 315–44.

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

losses for decades. Millions fell victim to the repeated attempts to cleanse
society, and even in Eastern Europe, where repression was experienced
on a lesser scale, it had a lasting impact on society. Those who had perished
could not publicly remember, and those who survived remained scarred for
life.
The destruction of the traditional ruling classes under Stalinist rule – the
nobility as well as the clergy and parts of the intelligentsia – could not be
reversed. New social and ethnic groups advanced under communist power.
To a somewhat lesser degree this was also true for East European countries.
Thousands of the old elites fled, only a few surviving in niches, while even
fewer returned from exile after 1989–91. None of the postcommunist states
reintroduced the monarchy as a national symbol, and few gave returnees
from exile a prolonged chance in politics. Precommunist structures and
traditions were often hard or impossible to resurrect. Here, again, the
duration of communist rule and the proximity to the West seem to make
a difference. While East Europeans of the 1990s could still imagine a political
life before communism, this was much harder in the former USSR. There
were, for example, no remnants of Russian liberalism to return to. Seventy
years of party rule and isolation had wiped out any experience with pluralistic
systems. This proved to be an important distinction between Eastern Europe
and Russia – with Ukraine being a borderland between these two areas.
The change of elites during the decades after the revolution was accom-
panied by rapid social transformation triggered through policies such as
collective agriculture or industrialization. Peasants became city-dwellers,
but they brought rural culture to the towns. Migration became a mass
experience in a “quicksand-society” (Moshe Lewin) where neither policies
nor personnel seemed to last. Cities grew, were rebuilt and transformed
according to Stalinist aesthetics.12 What the populations witnessed was
not the emergence of a rational and planned new order. Rather, from the
beginning communist policies were often improvised and determined by
situational contingencies.13 This nature of communist power contributed
to a sense of uncertainty that tainted social life. The population learned
how to live through extraordinary times; they adapted to new, mostly
unwritten rules, learned when to speak up and when to remain silent, what

12 See, e.g., David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Change and Identities in Moscow,
1929–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
13 For a panorama of the Soviet case, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary
Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

to remember and what to forget instead – and passed this knowledge on to

their children. Thus, the mores and values of societies under communist rule
were shaped. A characteristic political and social fabric emerged. And it
persisted even after the death of the revolutionary leaders. Thus, the revolu-
tion and its radical phase did not merely leave a mark on history; its impact on
societies, their structures and their values continues to be felt beyond the
lifetimes of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

The New Normal: Late Socialism’s Continued

Legacy
Communist rule changed profoundly after the death of Stalin. The process of
de-Stalinization had several consequences. First and foremost it meant the
end of mass violence and terror by communist states in Europe and in the
USSR. China and other Asian countries, however, resisted the new path
taken by Moscow. The result was that after 1956 the communist world
witnessed unprecedented pluralism. Stalinism – especially in a Maoist
guise – continued to be an option, but myriad other national roads to
socialism opened up as well. The end of terror and mass mobilization in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe meant that another type of commun-
ism could be created, one that was no longer the product of notions of
civil war.
Those who survived the camps and internal exile were gradually released
during the 1950s and readmitted into society. The momentous consequences
of this process for (post-)Soviet societies are still poorly understood. We now
know that the history of forced labor did not end with the liberation of
millions of prisoners. The liberated prisoners brought legacies of their
violent experiences back into the mainstream of society.14 Many of those
who returned had trouble adjusting to everyday life in the USSR and
continued to live according to the rules and the criminal culture of the
camps. While mass violence by the party-state ended, low-scale criminal
violence permeated society. A new culture of criminal gangs emerged
whose roots can be traced back to bonds forged and values adopted in the
Gulag.15 The aftermath of the Gulag is not only memories of what man

14 Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform
After Stalin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).
15 Svetlana Stephenson, Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2015).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

endured in the camps;16 rather, the camps left a concrete mark on society by
criminalizing it.
The initial revolutions did not live up to their promises and hardly
eased social problems in the USSR and China. They merely created islands
of authoritarian modernity in still predominantly agrarian societies. Only
under Stalin’s and Mao’s successors did living standards rise and everyday life
become more predictable. Late socialism began to deliver results in crucial
areas such as housing policy as well as in consumption. More tranquility and
security were to be coupled with more prosperity even for some of those not
in the nomenklatura. Yet in the countryside and in neglected areas poverty
continued to be the norm. These economic and social realities of the 1960s
and 1970s are still relevant today because they reshaped the population’s
relationship with and expectations of the state. The late socialist order came
to be seen as a provider of work, education, housing and limited consump-
tion. The population began to judge leaders by what they could deliver.
The party-state’s legitimacy became tied to consumption and social welfare.
More than before, economic hardship and social crises became threats to
the regimes. Soviet and East European societies – while still plagued by
shortages – became accustomed to the provisions of a welfare state with
free social services.17 This experience first put a strain on communist power
and then limited the possibilities of postcommunist governments. After the
end of communist power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe a rollback
of the welfare state was not acceptable. Rather, the free public services and
a safety net for the poor and the elderly were certainly seen as accomplish-
ments of socialism worth defending.
From the times of Stalin and Mao the building of heavy industry had been
at the core of the communist modernization project. Gigantic steel works
stood famously for economic achievement. The lack of competitiveness vis-
à-vis the West, aging machinery and a largely superfluous array of enormous
enterprises formed a legacy of Stalinism that shaped late socialism.18 After
the regime’s collapse, these state-owned plants were often doomed, yet in
countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Poland steel works, shipyards and the
defense industry also represented much of the national wealth. In many cases

16 For biographical accounts, see Paul Hollander (ed.), From the Gulag to the Killing Fields:
Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States (Wilmington,
DE: ISI Books, 2006).
17 János Kornai, Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishers, 1980).
18 See, e.g., Stephen Kotkin, Steeltown USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

the state was ready to shed its responsibility for heavy industry. Yet, the
privatization of socialist industries tended to be controversial and proble-
matic, not least as it put on the line the jobs of workers who could not easily
be integrated into other workplaces. The social consequences for a once-
favored, now-neglected working class posed a threat to social stability.
Already in the 1980s industrial towns had become depressing reminders of
the Stalinist past. The pride of Magnitogorsk or Nowa Huta was gone.
In these places one could observe despair and the atomization of society in
exemplary fashion. Nevertheless, where these plants and the mono-towns
built around them were not successfully privatized, they often continued to
rely on state subsidies – and continue to be a factor in postcommunist
economic life.
Despite the end of mass repression, societies under communist rule did not
simply liberalize after Stalin. They retained many distinct features that
stemmed from the Stalinist period but played out differently in the decades
after 1956. The workplace – whether a factory, institute or collective farm –
continued to be a central place that administered most provisions and social
services such as housing, child care and access to holiday resorts. Social
relations revolved around work: This held true in the USSR as well as in
Eastern Europe. In 1987 Finn Sivert Nielsen published a panorama of Soviet
life under late socialism.19 Nielsen observed that people lived their lives on
separate “islands.” He described how they could congregate and exchange
rare goods and commodities in a country where public spaces were regulated
and autonomous civic organizations could not be founded. The limited
opportunities of socialist subjects often led to frustration because of constant
shortages, inefficiencies and incongruities of the system. For much of the
population everyday life was about getting the best out of one’s connections,
building a private life at the dacha or escaping the distinct “greyness” of
reality through consumption of vodka – both at the workplace and after
hours.20 Today, late socialist habits continue to shape both private life and
public behavior.
The end of isolation and autarchy imposed by Stalinism and the early Cold
War meant a greater exposure to the West, its people, values, products and

19 Finn Sivert Nielsen, The Eye of the Whirlwind: Russian Identity and Soviet Nation-Building.
Quests for Meaning in a Soviet Metropolis (Oslo: Department of Social Anthropology,
1987).
20 Mark Lawrence Schrad, Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the
Russian State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 216–73; Alena V. Ledeneva,
Russia’s Economy of Favors: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

lifestyles. Certainly more porous borders shattered many myths of Stalin’s

propaganda. Western influence as well as black-market trading in all sorts
of Western things – ideas and commodities – emerged as a parallel world to
socialist economics.21 Yet in the official sphere scarcity remained a primary
factor. We may argue that these realities prepared at least part of the
population of Eastern Europe and the USSR for life after communism.
Personal initiative was rewarded in this parallel universe, and commercial
ties could be established.22 However, with the exception of Poland and
Hungary, much of this enterprise was officially illegal or happening in
a grey zone. Officials periodically suppressed these activities. Certainly
trade and small-scale enterprise continued to be seen as problematic by
many who hewed to the official value of equality. Acquiring additional assets
and living a prosperous life could thus be devalued or partially criminalized.
The party-state’s campaigns against illegal income and “speculation” con-
tributed to these views that continued to be held long after the end of party
rule.
Paradoxically, this increased openness toward the West coincided with
a growing nationalism, especially in Central and Eastern Europe but also in
many republics of the USSR. Countries which had been multiethnic societies
with strong minorities before World War II became less diverse as a result of
the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing during the last months of and immedi-
ately after the war. Despite Sovietization of the political system the party-
state’s propaganda after 1945 used strong national themes and even at times
copied slogans of the radical right from the interwar era.23 This could be seen
in the pan-Slavic propaganda of the 1940s as well as in the embrace of national
history and its heroes in countries such as Poland and Hungary.24 Nationalist
rhetoric was one way to reach out to a population deeply suspicious of the
USSR and of communism. It shaped the identity of generations growing up
under communist rule. Within the Soviet bloc, national stereotypes, far from

21 Friederike Kind-Kovács and Jessie Labov (eds.), Samizdat, Tamizdat and Beyond:
Transnational Media During and After Socialism (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).
22 For examples from Moscow, see Lois Fisher-Ruge, Nadezhda Means Hope: Views from
Inside the Soviet Union (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989).
23 Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja
władzy komunistycznej w Polsce (Warsaw: Trio, 2001); Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow:
The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism 1941–1953 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005); Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian
Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2000).
24 Jan C. Behrends, “Nation and Empire: Dilemmas of Legitimacy During Stalinism in
Poland (1941–1956),” Nationalities Papers 37, 4 (Jul. 2009), 443–66.

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

being diminished, continued to thrive. The official internationalism of the

bloc was often decorative and devoid of meaning. National sports teams and
national history became beacons of collective pride. Ethnic homogeneity and
social equality as well as a lack of migration contributed to a sense of a closed
community where “others” did not belong. Although officially nonexistent,
racism and xenophobia were widespread behind the Iron Curtain.
The growing exchange with the “Third World” exposed these tendencies
in socialist societies.25 There were often disputes with foreign visitors which
centered on the fight over rare resources as well as sexual relations. Exchange
students and foreign workers were often discriminated against. Decades of
nation-building under communist rule fostered the idea of ethnic commu-
nion; the imagined socialist nation was closed to migrants. Ethnic national-
ism and xenophobia are part of the communist heritage in Europe and in the
post-Soviet space.
In some respects, the legacy of late socialism in Eastern Europe and the
former USSR decisively differ. One important factor is the experience of war
and militarized violence. After decades of peace the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979 – a war that would shape Soviet as well as
post-Soviet societies in different ways. European Soviet allies did not partici-
pate in military action in the Hindu Kush. They continued to foster large
armed forces until 1989, when they quickly disarmed. Demilitarization was
part of the escape from communism. Central European countries prepared to
join NATO and depoliticized their armed forces while the former Soviet
army was merely downsized: It remained largely unreformed and closely tied
to those in power. Already during perestroika and on an even larger scale
under Russia’s first post-Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsin, the military fought on
the southern periphery. After 1991 the army viewed itself as a force of order
that was needed in troubled times. It took Yeltsin’s side during his confronta-
tion with the Supreme Soviet – Russia’s elected parliament – in October 1993,
and thereafter the armed forces became a pillar of his rule.
The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan marked the beginning of a series of
often extremely violent and unconventionally fought “wild wars,”26 mostly
in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Crucially, from 1994 onward the Russian

25 Constantin Katsakioris, “The Soviet–South Encounter: Tensions in the Friendship with

Afro-Asian Partners, 1945–1965,” in Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (eds.), Cold
War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange Within the Soviet Bloc, 1940s–1960s
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 134–65.
26 The term is developed in Wolfgang Sofsky, Violence: Terrorism, Genocide, War (London:
Granta Books, 2003).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

armed forces were used internally to forcibly preserve the unity of the state.27
The conflict in Chechnya (1994–96, 1999–2008) was marked by illegitimate
violence on the side of the insurgents and the Russian army.28 The nature of
this war certainly put a burden on a Russia in transition and indeed on the
whole post-Soviet realm. Yet that it came to such massive abuse of civil
rights, war crimes29 and mass violence was not inevitable: It was the Russian
leadership in Moscow that chose the use of force over negotiation. In 1993
blood was shed in political battles.30 In itself, the battle for the parliament was
a defining moment. Further, both Boris Yeltsin in 1994 and Vladimir Putin in
1999 hoped that short victorious military campaigns would boost their
popularity and crush the forces of opposition and independence. The wars
in Afghanistan and Chechnya helped reverse the trend toward a more civil
order in Russia.
Yet, the experience of military violence not only meant loss, suffering and
death. It also triggered civic movements such as the Soldiers’ Mothers in
Russia.31 Moreover, when looking at the Russian protest movement of 2011
we may argue that the insistence on civility that characterized the demon-
strations also stemmed from the experience of violence – both communist
and postcommunist. Paradoxically, the continuity of violence has also bred
a wide civil consensus of nonviolence among parts of the population.32 Going
to war is not popular, and there were good reasons for hiding Russia’s
involvement and its losses first in Afghanistan, then in Chechnya and
Ukraine, from the public.
In the post-Soviet space, the experience of violence was not limited to the
military. On the everyday level, postcommunist states saw a rise in crime and
criminal violence after 1989–91. Often, this was linked to the weakness of the
state after the end of socialism. Still, this phenomenon is also tied to decades
of communist rule. The role of former Gulag inmates has already been
mentioned. Veterans of Afghanistan and other wars also joined organized

27 Mark Galeotti, Russia’s Wars in Chechnya, 1994–2009 (Oxford: Osprey, 2014).

28 Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
29 Emma Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010).
30 Vladimir Gel’man, Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 50–56.
31 Overall, the weakness of civil society should be considered a legacy of communist
power: Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
32 Mischa Gabowitsch, Protest in Putin’s Russia (London: Polity, 2016).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

crime.33 But late socialism itself is also part of the picture. Corrupt practices
and powerful organized crime existed already in the 1970s. Many criminal
organizations that thrived during the transition have roots dating back to late
socialism.34 The demoralization through decades of repression, the disorien-
tation of the 1990s and postcommunist fatigue certainly added to the often-
unbearable presence of organized crime in everyday life.35 After the fall of
communism, many from the security apparatus joined forces with criminal
gangs. There was widespread collusion between both sides that had already
begun during the old regime.36 Thus, postcommunist societies were often
influenced by criminal structures dating back to late socialism, which seized
the opportunities offered by unregulated capitalism and state failure.

The 1980s and 1990s: How Endgames and

Transitions Shaped Legacies of Communism
The growing difference between various forms of communist rule became
dramatically visible on 4 June 1989: While the tanks of the People’s Liberation
Army cleared Beijing’s Tiananmen Square of protesters, the Polish popula-
tion cast their vote in the first partially free election in Poland since World
War II.37 While the military in Beijing’s center destroyed the student-led
protest movement, Polish citizens overwhelmingly elected representatives of
the anti-communist opposition to the Sejm. The same Polish Communist
Party that not even a decade ago had silenced Solidarność with tanks, mass
arrests and the imposition of martial law would not prevent the formation
of a democratic government in Warsaw.38 In contrast to the rulers of late
socialist Poland, who had lost faith in their project as well as their backing
from Moscow, Chinese party chieftain Deng Xiaoping and many of his
lieutenants were members of China’s revolutionary generation: Deng pushed
for a violent response against some more moderate communists who had
greater sympathy for the demonstrators and were reluctant to kill their
fellow citizens.

33 Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 11–13.
34 Stephenson, Gangs of Russia, 16–23.
35 For a vivid account, see David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal
State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
36 Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs, 126–54.
37 Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011), 595–640.
38 Stephen Kotkin, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment
(New York: Modern Library, 2009), 100–31.

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

The summer of 1989 illustrates the different political options that commu-
nist regimes had at the time.39 The Chinese party chose to crack down in
order to continue authoritarian modernization. Simultaneously the Soviet
leadership, in disarray, desperately tried to reform its economy as well as the
political system, while Polish communists agreed to step down and become
one player in a contested political field. Although the party controlled the
army and police until the end in the Soviet and Polish cases, it abstained from
the use of force. During the autumn of 1989, communist Europe generally
followed the Polish path. After the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, the
disintegration gained momentum and the remaining regimes fell in quick
succession.40
Clearly, the decision taken by the Polish communists in the spring of 1989
was made possible by Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to modernize and
civilize the Soviet system from above. Gorbachev had ruled out the use of
the Soviet army to preserve communism in Eastern Europe.41 The Soviet
leader’s growing frustration with the stubbornly unreformed Soviet
Communist Party rank and file led him to introduce a partially competitive
election in the USSR in 1988. Gorbachev’s accelerated reforms – at once
undermining the CPSU’s authority and the federal structures of the USSR –
paved the way for the collapse of the European Soviet empire in 1989 and the
Soviet Union in 1991.42 Still, these processes took different shapes in the USSR
and in Eastern Europe, leading to diverging forms of political order through-
out the former Soviet bloc. While the collapse in Central Europe was mostly
peaceful, there was always the option to use force, as during the putsch
against Nicolae Ceauş escu in Romania or, much more dramatically, during
the Yugoslav Wars that took place throughout the 1990s.43 And there was the
possibility for communist elites to walk out of the communist party and grab
power for themselves.

39 For comparative perspectives, see Peter Nolan, China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall: Politics,
Economics and Planning in the Transition from Stalinism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1995);
Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet
Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
40 For an overview of the political process, see Mark Kramer, “The Demise of the Soviet
Bloc,” Journal of Modern History 83, 4 (Dec. 2011), 788–854.
41 Jan C. Behrends, “Oktroyierte Zivilisierung. Genese und Grenzen des sowjetischen
Gewaltverzichts 1989,” in Martin Sabrow (ed.), 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2012), 401–23.
42 On Eastern Europe, see e.g. Kotkin, Uncivil Society; on the Soviet collapse, see Kotkin,
Armageddon Averted; Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union
(New York: Basic Books, 2014).
43 For a comparative view, see Sabrow (ed.), 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt.

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

In retrospect, the disparities between 1989 in Eastern Europe and 1991 in

the Soviet Union are striking. While the revolutions in Eastern Europe were
characterized by growing dissent, social movements, dialogue and the advent
of political pluralism, the backroom deals of 1991 in the USSR had a much
different character.44 In the Soviet Union communist power was ended by
the August putsch and Yeltsin’s countercoup in the second half of that year.45
There was no all-union round table in 1991, but secret negotiations in the
Belarusan backwater Belavezha between representatives from Belarus,
Ukraine and Russia. While former functionaries such as Yeltsin, Leonid
Kravchuk and Nursultan Nazarbaev seized power and wealth in their
republics, dissidents-turned-politicians such as Václav Havel or Lech
Wałę sa aspired to a moral revolution in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Thus,
the drive for liberalization of the political order and for confronting the
communist past was much larger in Eastern Europe.
In this way, the endgames of communism determined its legacy. While the
nation-states of Eastern Europe set out to dismantle the pillars of the Leninist
state, former Soviet republics – with the notable exception of the Baltic
states – were more reluctant to embrace political change. In the 1990s
Eastern Europe set out to join NATO and the EU and had to fulfill strict
criteria in order to gain membership. In contrast, the post-Soviet states often
failed to reform key institutions of communist rule such as the army or the
secret services. Economic reform and liberal experiments by themselves,
however, could not pave the way to a more civil order.46 In both Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet republics, where Leninist power structures
were not dissolved after the fall of party rule, they turned out to be powerful
and long-lasting legacies of communism.
After 1989–91 the political culture of the party-state proved to be more
influential than its ideological foundations.47 Personal power continued to
outweigh institutional mandates throughout Eastern Europe, in the post-
Soviet space and in China. More often than not, politics was less about
concrete policies and agendas. Rather, it was dominated by national and

44 On 1989, see Philipp Ther, “1989: eine verhandelte Revolution, Version: 1.0,”
Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (11 Feb. 2010), docupedia.de/zg/1989?oldid=106114.
45 See Ignac Lozo, Avgustovskii putch 1991 goda. Kak eto bylo (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2014).
46 For an inside account of the early 1990s in Russia, see Petr Aven and Alfred Kokh,
Gaidar’s Revolution: The Inside Account of the Economic Transformation of Russia (London:
I. B. Tauris, 2015). For the economic and political transformation of Eastern Europe
including Ukraine, see Philipp Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine
Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014).
47 On political practices and their social consequences, see e.g. Catherine Verdery, What
Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

regional actors able to distribute resources among their supporters.48

Different political cultures certainly mattered here – the moral standards of
the former opposition in Central Europe, critical media and an emerging
public sphere could serve as a counterweight to these traditions. Still, the old
practices proved hard to surmount. A specific style of doing politics continued
to dominate in postcommunist countries: institutions – political parties,
parliaments, independent courts – proved hard to build. They remained
weak while those (male) networks once formed under communism turned
out to be durable as well as flexible. Personal networks and informal practices
inherited from socialism but also reinvented might actually have been even
more influential in post-Soviet economic practice than before and also pros-
pered in other realms of social life such as culture and sports.49
The precarious status of institutions resulted in a weak rule of law.50
The anticipated expansion of the realm of “liberty and property” did not
materialize because there were no courts able to guarantee either. Where
communist power had subdued the judiciary and turned it into a political
instrument, rebuilding it remained a challenge many states failed to meet.
This was also due to the strong standing of the procuracy and the (secret)
police under communist rule. The KGB and the East German Stasi – to name
the most infamous examples – carried much weight, and it took great efforts
to dismantle their structures and to investigate the many ways in which they
had penetrated society. Naturally, this proved to be easier in Germany where
the communist East voted to join the larger Federal Republic than in Russia
or other post-Soviet states where the structures of the KGB remained largely
unscathed and where Yeltsin was able to use the old structure to consolidate
his power.51
In the long run, the question of lustration and the buildup of alternative
security structures were crucial for the political system.52 Where the secret
police remained largely untouched they could shake off the traditional

48 The example of 1990s St. Petersburg is examined in Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy:
Who Owns Russia? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 36–162.
49 Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-
Soviet Politics and Business (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
50 See e.g. Brian D. Taylor, “From Police State to Police State? Legacies and Law
Enforcement in Russia,” in Beissinger and Kotkin (eds.), Historical Legacies of
Communism, 128–51.
51 On the KGB’s failed transition, see Amy Knight, Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s
Successors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
52 See e.g. Agnès Bensussan, Dorota Dakowska and Nicolas Beaupré (eds.), Die
Überlieferung der Diktaturen. Beiträge zum Umgang mit den Archiven der Geheimpolizeien
in Polen und Deutschland nach 1989 (Essen: Klartext, 2004).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

oversight by the party and even expand their power. Lustration itself was
often a painful process marred by political intrigue, denunciation and power
play. The debate about the content of secret police files poisoned public
discourse in many postcommunist states. Yet, ultimately lustration was the
way to liquidate hidden Stalinist structures and come to terms with the past.
Overall the communist secret police could be dismantled and its legacy over-
come, but it clearly took political will and struggle. The legacy of the commu-
nist police state therefore varied by country: On the one hand, there was the
German model of the Gauck-Behörde with its law-based access to secret files
and state-sponsored research on the Stasi; on the other hand, there was Russia,
where the secret police proved to be more influential in the postcommunist
state than the communist party and where KGB methods of fabricating
kompromat, or compromising material, became part of the political game.53
The size of the anti-communist opposition was also decisive. In most
countries it consisted only of a few hundred to a few thousand activists.
The main exception is Poland where a complete countersociety had emerged
since the 1970s, partially under the umbrella of the Catholic Church, partially
supported by an oppositional milieu that was able to build its own “under-
ground” institutions. From the 1970s onward Polish opposition activists could
develop alternatives to the party-state and its values and were ready to take
political responsibility. In Czechoslovakia the former opposition activist
Václav Havel was elected president, although he would remain somewhat
on the margins of a political field dominated by postcommunist practices.54
Still, a figure like Havel at the helm of the state provided guidance, legitimacy
and authority during the difficult 1990s. Havel and Wałę sa in Poland and
Vytautas Landsbergis in Lithuania certainly defined themselves and their
political agenda differently than Yeltsin or Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine. They
were state-builders, not just power brokers. Overall, it made a decisive differ-
ence whether a strong opposition including prominent public actors had
emerged during late socialism and whether these groups were willing to
enter the political arena or whether they stood on the sidelines as most of
the Russian intelligentsia did.
The first sociological studies of (post)communist societies claimed that
Homo sovieticus did exist – demoralization and lack of ambition among
citizens were seen as a result of decades of communism.55 Although Yuri

53 Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works, 58–90.

54 See Michael Žantovský, Havel: A Life (London: Atlantic Books, 2014).
55 Yuri Levada, Sovetskii prostoi chelovek. Opyt social’nogo portreta na rubezhe 90-kh
(Moscow: Mirovoi okean, 1991); Boris Dubin (ed.), Rossiia nulevykh: politicheskaia

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

Levada’s epic study of ordinary Soviet men certainly had its shortcomings, his
team’s research provided valuable insights into late socialist Soviet society.
Levada’s analysis allowed a glimpse into the frustration, anger and isolation
of the Soviet subject, the limited potential for initiative and change, the deep
imprint of paternalism and violence on people’s values that separated the
USSR even from many places in Eastern Europe. Initially, the social collapse
of the 1990s only strengthened these characteristics. Yet, the end of commun-
ism also opened ample opportunity for those able and willing to decide
their own fate. The negative picture of the 1990s – in Russia, by now a state-
sponsored view – tends to exclude any emancipatory tendencies from the
picture of this decade.

Different Shades of Authoritarian Rule: Varieties

of Postcommunist Regimes
The optimistic assumption of the early 1990s was that postcommunist
societies would – despite economic hardship and political quarrels – strive
to build democratic institutions, honor the principles of liberty and property,
and combine them with a reformed version of the European welfare state.
Yet any overview will show that a variety of dissimilar regimes emerged.
The aspirations of the elite, political traditions, the length of communist
rule and influences from the outside – e.g. from NATO and the EU – were
certainly among the decisive factors differentiating the outcomes.56
Integration into Western institutions such as the European Union was an
important incentive to break with the authoritarian traditions of communism
and build a law-based state. For Central and Eastern Europe as well as the
Baltic countries, such policies could be promoted as a “return to Europe.”
Still, post-1989 political leaders in Eastern Europe were walking a tightrope:
They had to be reformers and conservatives at the same time. While they
were expected to fundamentally change the economic system and produce
long-awaited prosperity, they were also expected to guarantee stability and
preserve those social benefits of late socialism that the population valued.
Needless to say, this was at best difficult. In those countries that opted for

kul’tura, istoricheskaia pamiat’, povsednevnaia zhizn’ (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011). For an

oral history perspective with similar results, see Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time:
The Last of the Soviets (London: Random House, 2015).
56 For a systematic comparison, see Timothy Frye, Building States and Markets After
Communism: The Perils of Polarized Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

democratic elections and a parliamentary system, the difficulties associated

with postcommunism often led to repeated changes in government.57
In Central Europe in the 1990s it was nearly impossible for any political
party to get reelected. Even in Poland frustrated voters voted the ousted
(post)communists back into power – something unthinkable in the immedi-
ate aftermath of 1989 when the representatives of the old regime were
discredited and resented.
What at the time was often perceived as instability in some countries
effectively paved the way to procedures that were more democratic.
As governments changed and power was peacefully transferred, institutions
could develop. This was the case in central Europe from Slovenia to Poland
and in the Baltic states. But even here the road to democracy was hardly
smooth. As early as the 1990s, states like Slovakia under Vladimír Meč iar
flirted with authoritarian rule. On the whole, though, the region’s transfor-
mation under neoliberal auspices brought initial pain but also midterm
economic success.58 The economy but also society and culture evolved
more rapidly in Poland with its spirit of reform than, for example, in post-
Soviet Ukraine where the influence of Soviet legacies initially remained
strong. However, twenty-five years later the states of Eastern and Central
Europe have still not fully caught up to their Western aspirations. Some –
such as Hungary under Viktor Orbán and the Poland of Jarosław Kaczyń ski –
are once again drifting toward an authoritarian order.59
Most post-Soviet states – with the notable exception of the Baltic coun-
tries – took a quite different road. After 1991, Central Asia and the Caucasus
suffered from weak statehood, lack of legitimacy and continued repression.
Here Gorbachev’s perestroika took a very different form than in the Slavic
republics. It resulted primarily in the rise to power of local party elites who
saw little reason to liberalize the political order. Their main purpose was to
stay in power, seek rent and eliminate the opposition. There was no (real or
imagined) pre-Soviet order to return to. In these regions the attempt to build
new institutions was at best half-hearted. In most instances local party chief-
tains continued as autocratic rulers of sovereign states. In the best case they
strove for some version of authoritarian modernization, as in Kazakhstan
under Nazarbaev, while in the worst case communist rule was transformed

57 See Padraic Kenney, The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989 (London: Zed
Books, 2006).
58 Ther, Die neue Ordnung, 86–121.
59 For a critical analysis of Viktor Orban’s Hungary, see Bálint Magyar, Post-Communist
Mafia-State: The Case of Hungary (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2016).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

into outright despotism as in the Turkmenistan of Türkmenbaş i, Saparmurat

Niyazov. Generally, the hybridity of these regimes may be noted. They
combine elements of the Soviet past with authoritarian features, autocratic
power and attributes of Western statehood. Some of the states, such as
Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, did attempt to reform themselves and flirted with
accountable government and democracy. Others remained stagnant and
repressive through a long post-Soviet winter.
The Slavic heartland of the Soviet Union is yet another case. Under the
leadership of Boris Yeltsin and with the decisive support of Ukraine, the
federal structures of the USSR were dismantled. This did not mean, however,
that the regime leaderships had concrete plans for the future. Rather, they
improvised, and the power struggles between the existing networks and
interests intensified. In Russia President Yeltsin exemplified that staying in
power was much dearer to him and his entourage than liberal reform or
nation-building.60 As noted above, it was an unprecedented move in 1993
to use the army’s tanks in the power struggle with the Supreme Soviet.
In retrospect, it was a decisive caesura: The storming of Moscow’s White
House and the invasion of renegade Chechnya in 1994 signaled the end of
liberal reform and the “civilizing from above” begun by Gorbachev.61 From
1993 onward, President Yeltsin allied himself to the army and the former KGB
as well as those oligarchs who had financed his reelection campaign.62 While
some reformers remained part of his team, his priorities had shifted. The new
constitution, written for Yeltsin and introduced in 1994, marked a return to
the country’s autocratic tradition. The parliament – the new Duma – was
awarded only limited influence, while the president’s office came to repre-
sent state power. The attempts to build a system of checks and balances were
scrapped. In retrospect it becomes clear how the politics of the 1990s served
to discredit notions of democracy and liberalism in the eyes of much of the
Russian population. For many, these concepts came to equal corruption,
lawlessness and a weak state.
Yeltsin’s political system meant more than the return to autocracy. After
his rigged reelection of 1996, a new type of political order emerged. Through
control of the mass media and political parties, “virtual politics” – the rule of
spin doctors and “political technology” – was established in Russia and later

60 On Yeltsin’s tenure, see Lilia Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia: Myth and Reality (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999).
61 Behrends, Oktroyierte Zivilisierung.
62 Anders Åslund, Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and
Democracy Failed (Washington, DC: Peterson, 2007).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

to a certain degree also in Ukraine.63 “Active measures” by those holding

power prevent genuine political contests because of constant interventions.
While democratic institutions remain formally in place, they are divested of
their meaning. A pluralistic and democratic facade with several parties,
a supreme court and a parliament was erected to hide the fact that major
decisions were taken exclusively in the Kremlin and increasingly by Yeltsin
and his associates, dubbed at the time his “family.” The spin doctors who
controlled the mass media went to great lengths to spread political narratives.
From 1996 onward, free and fair elections disappeared from the political
landscape of Russia. Rather, various political parties were launched by the
Kremlin to sabotage the political contest. In 1999, the “family” decided on
Vladimir Putin as the successor to the ailing Yeltsin.64 His election as
president in the beginning of 2000 affirmed a decision taken in the Kremlin.
A new authoritarian culture emerged that relied heavily on mass media.65
Their influence on the public, however, is often more sophisticated than in
the times of Soviet agitprop. In the background rent-seeking elites divided up
resources and enriched themselves.66 Open contests in politics are as despised
as in Soviet times. This political system of the late Yeltsin and early Putin
years was clearly influenced by Soviet traditions and political practices.
The strict control of mass media and the political process, informal networks
at the top and in the regions, and the strong position of the army and secret
police as well as contempt for competitive politics were all trademarks of the
Soviet system. Although the framework changed, the paternalism toward
society and the urge to control remained in place. “Virtual politics” with all its
machinations may well be considered the agitprop of the twenty-first
century.
With Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 the re-
Sovietization of political culture gained new momentum. Political repres-
sion against real or imagined oppositionists, restrictions on civil society
and censorship of the media increased. Moreover, for the first time since
the end of communism in Russia, political mobilization of society was
revived in the broad anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian campaigns that
accompanied Moscow’s aggression. Political traits of the Soviet era were

63 On the concept of virtual politics, see Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy
in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
64 Ben Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and out of Love with Vladimir Putin (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 7–168.
65 Ulrich Schmid, Technologien der Seele. Vom Verfestigen der Wahrheit in der russischen
Gegenwartskultur (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015).
66 For details, see Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy.

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

reinstated: e.g. mass festivals and parades, the leader cult, the cult of the
“Great Fatherland War” and show trials as well as mass organizations that
were founded with the purpose of supporting state policies.67 What
Russians dub sistema, the political order, bears many marks of the Soviet
past. The informal circle at the top is undoubtedly yet not exclusively
influenced by Soviet ideals.68 Clearly, the presidential administration is the
contemporary equivalent to the Central Committee of the CPSU – in both
form and function. Overall, Russia’s recent history exemplifies that many
traits of the Soviet system could be revived and that the elites once again
view them as tools to consolidate the authoritarian state. The imperial
tradition – in both Soviet and tsarist symbols – became the main tool with
which to legitimate postcommunist power.
The developments in Belarus and Ukraine indicate that there were
alternatives to Moscow’s post-Soviet path. Since 1994 Belarus under
Aleksandr Lukashenko has adopted an authoritarian model of statehood
that legitimizes itself by embracing Soviet-style paternalism. The elites have
promised to shield the population from the perils of change and imperti-
nence brought about by globalization. Minsk provides its population with
basic goods and services and has created a distinctly Brezhnevite atmos-
phere in the country.69 Those not content with this course are marginalized
or driven out of the country. Ukraine is the only major Soviet republic that
has seen the emergence of competitive politics – although the influence of
regional strongmen (“oligarchs”) has remained strong, and rent-seeking
continues to be a problem despite the uprisings of 2004 (“Orange
Revolution”) and 2014 (“Euromaidan”). Still, the question remains why
Ukraine has developed into a more pluralistic polity than other Soviet
republics and how strong local identities and an active civil society could
emerge. It remains to be seen if Ukrainian society will manage to overcome
its Soviet heritage in politics and government. As long as the country keeps
the presidential model, it will be prone to repeating the authoritarian
experience. Overall, the legacy of Soviet rule, clearly, did allow for different
paths after 1991. It is still an open question how historians can explain these
disparities.

67 On Putin, see Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Reign and Rise of Vladimir Putin
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
68 See for insights Mikhail Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin
(New York: Public Affairs, 2016).
69 Andrew Wilson, Belarus: The Last Dictatorship in Europe (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2011).

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

Some Conclusions
From a 21st-century perspective the Chinese Revolution might be viewed as
more monumental than the Russian October.70 In many ways it continues
to shape the present time. In contrast to postcommunist Russia, post-Mao
China has taken center stage in the global arena. By radically embracing
economic globalization, Chinese leaders have delivered the authoritarian
modernization communism failed to achieve in other parts of the world.71
Large parts of the population have left their traditional agrarian way of life,
moved to cities and have made their country the workshop of the world.
In metropolitan areas, consumption and lifestyles have often reached
Western levels. Economic exchange has opened the country to Asia and
the wider world. The rise of the Chinese model, however, carries a price:
The party-state remains repressive and does not offer its citizens political
rights. The communist party stands above the constitution. Nevertheless, it
has overseen three decades of economic growth as well as the consolidation
of China as a major international power rivaled only by the United States.
Thus, the whole idea of the collapse of communism may be viewed as
a European narrative. From Asia the story is more about the transformation
of the Chinese regime into a world power. In China the communist revolu-
tion of 1949 brought back the centralized state that had not existed for almost
a century. Therefore Chinese communism has to be assessed separately from
that in Europe and other parts of the world. Since the 1980s it has emerged as
an order sui generis that has emancipated itself from the Soviet model.
It remains to be seen whether China will indeed emerge as an authoritarian
challenge to the West.72
A quarter of a century after the fall of communism in Europe and the
former USSR, the picture remains mixed. Clearly decades of communist
power have left their footprint on these societies. In Europe we may distin-
guish between the results of Stalinist rule and the legacies of post-1956 late
socialism. While Stalinism reshaped societies violently, late socialist practices
and mentalities are influential. They include an authoritarian impulse, the

70 For a stimulating comparative historical perspective on Russia and China, see

Perry Anderson, “Two Revolutions: Rough Notes,” New Left Review 61 (Jan.–Feb.
2010), 59–96; Gerd Koenen, “Der Kommunismus in seinem Zeitalter. Versuch einer
historischen Verortung,” Osteuropa 63 (2013), 9–38.
71 Walder, China Under Mao.
72 See Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Christopher Walker (eds.), Authoritarianism
Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2016).

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

weakness of institutions and civil society, xenophobia, widespread demora-

lization and distrust, and rent-seeking elites as well as violent conflicts in the
post-Soviet space. On the more positive side, a craving for social justice and
economic equality, support for a welfare state and the ability of the populace
to deal with sometimes repressive, sometimes merely dysfunctional states
remain. These findings, however, should be taken as merely a starting point
from which to thoroughly scrutinize the often-enigmatic postcommunist
condition – a condition both similar and distinct in the various places that
share the experience of communist power.

Bibliographical Essay
Over the past decades the aftermath of communism in Europe has been
discussed widely. Initially, the historical optimism of such public intellectuals
as Timothy Garton Ash or Francis Fukuyama had a strong impact on the
perception of 1989–91. Right after the revolution a master narrative about
peaceful change and embrace of a liberal order was established that has long
prevailed among the Western public. This normative perspective was also
echoed in political science (“transition to democracy”) where yet another
wave of global democratization was studied. The term “third wave of
democratization” was coined by the otherwise more skeptical Samuel
P. Huntington and proved influential: see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third
Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1991). Transformation studies argued that urbanization,
education and the rise of a middle class favored the development of
a liberal order, that the United States as well as the European Union served
as models and that local “snowball effects” could be observed. For an over-
view, see e.g. Raj Kollmorgen, Wolfgang Merkel and Hans-Jürgen Wagener
(eds.), Handbuch Transformationsforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2015).
Implicitly, this approach suggested that new political and social systems
emerged after 1989–91 and that they could be approached without a deeper
understanding of the old regime. While individual studies may still be
valuable, the approach taken in the 1990s should today be historicized and
analyzed as a product of that particular time.
Few studies have explicitly tackled the difficult question of how revolu-
tionary upheaval and Stalinism still shape (post)communist societies today.
A possible exception is foreign policy, where a longue durée perspective has
a lengthy tradition. See e.g. Robert Legvold (ed.), Russian Foreign Policy in the
Twenty-First Century and the Shadow of the Past (New York: Columbia

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 Legacies of Communism: Comparative Remarks

University Press, 2007). A model for such a perspective is Miriam Dobson’s

study of Gulag returnees that explains how the release of millions from
the camps impacted on Russian society: Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag
Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform After Stalin (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2009). Only in hindsight do we come to understand the significance of
the spreading of violent and criminal culture from the camps into society.
Other such studies, however, are still lacking. Therefore we do not yet
understand the full political as well as cultural impact of decades of mass
violence on postcommunist societies. Psychological terms such as “trauma”
are merely descriptive and add little to our understanding of the historical
phenomenon.
The past decades have produced a number of books that have marked the
historicization of the transformation and that may be read as contributions
to the debate about legacies of communist power. Catherine Verdery was
among the first to connect the old order and the new regimes: See her What
Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996). Stephen Kotkin’s monographs about the post-Soviet space and Eastern
Europe serve as an introduction to the debate: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet
Collapse, 1970–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Uncivil Society:
1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (New York: Modern
Library, 2009). In cooperation with Mark Beissinger, Kotkin has also edited
a volume that was the first attempt to systematically explore the legacies of
communism in several countries: Mark R. Beissinger and Stephen Kotkin
(eds.), Historical Legacies of Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014). Vladimir Gel’man has written a comprehensive history of
postcommunist politics in Russia, Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet
Regime Changes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), while both
Padraic Kenney, The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989 (London:
Zed Books, 2006), and Philipp Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent.
Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), offer com-
parative introductions on the recent history of Eastern and Central Europe.
Exploring the legacy of Deng, Ezra F. Vogel provides a similar overview for
the Chinese case: Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). To understand the social
structure as well as the values that prevail in postcommunist societies the
sociology of Finn Sivert Nielsen, Yuri Levada and Boris Dubin as well as the
work of Svetlana Alexievich present milestones of research on the post-Soviet
space. See Finn Sivert Nielsen, The Eye of the Whirlwind: Russian Identity
and Soviet Nation-Building: Quests for Meaning in a Soviet Metropolis (Oslo:

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 j a n c. b e h r e n d s

Department of Social Anthropology, 1987); Yuri Levada, Sovetskii prostoi

chelovek. Opyt sotsial’nogo portreta na rubezhe 90-kh [Regular Soviet Man:
Social Experiences at the Beginning of the 1990s] (Moscow: Mirovoi
okean, 1991); Boris Dubin (ed.), Rossiia nulevykh. Politicheskaia kul’tura,
istoricheskaia pamiat’, povsednevnaia zhizn’ [Russia in the 2000s: Political
Culture, Historical Memory, Everyday Life] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011);
and Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (London:
Random House, 2015). In more recent years, interest in the study of post-
communism has been stimulated by the rise of China and by Russia’s
aggression against Ukraine as well as by the comparative study of authoritar-
ian regimes that characterize most postcommunist states: Larry Diamond,
Marc F. Plattner and Christopher Walker (eds.), Authoritarianism Goes Global:
The Challenge to Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).

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