Since the end of the Cold War, political scientists and journalists have expended copious amounts of ink tracing the trajectories of the successors of the former ruling communist parties in east central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Their organizational and ideational transformations, as well as adaptive aptitudes, have become particularly intriguing in the context of their successful reappearance in the arena of democratic politics. At the same time, the widespread tendency has been to approach this problem through the juxtaposition of intrinsically similar cases, i.e., conducting separate analyses within the clusters of east central European countries, the Baltic States, and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
In this context, the book edited by Jane Leftwich Curry and Joan Barth Urban offers a valuable opportunity to study the former communist parties across a number of (rather dissimilar) cases through an extended period (from 1989/1991 to 2002). Their only (though major) commonality was the “shared communist legacy, [which] affected them in vital and often similar ways” (p. 245). This book has therefore a twofold goal: (i) to describe different development trajectories of these successor organizations, with a particular emphasis on their ability to adjust to the democratic “rules of the game,” and (ii) to propose an explanatory framework for the existence of profound differences between, on the one hand, east central European successor parties, and, on the other, Russian and Ukrainian ones. In this sense it is “a work of contemporary history rather than theory construction,” intended for professionals working in the area, university students, and political scientists” (p. 2).
The opening thesis is that whereas the successor parties in east central Europe (Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania) illustrate a radical break with the communist past, a dynamic social-democratic evolution, and a successful adjustment to the precepts of democracy, the parties in Russia and Ukraine have persistently related to their communist ideological legacy and developed into neo-Leninist, anti-Western, and anti-system political entities. The sixth successor party they analyze, the German PDS (the Party of Democratic Socialism), is regarded as an intermediate case displaying features characteristic of both types.
The study of each case is preceded by a short historical outline of the national practice of communism. The main emphasis is placed on the role of the leading party within the larger political context, its internal developments and relation to different forms of societal organization, and, finally, its reaction to the activities of the domestic opposition. Additionally, each case includes a thorough description of the dynamics and mode of transition to democracy in 1989-1991. These two elements provide an important contextualization for the study of the successor parties in the sense that the established national position and potency of the party and the type of transition constitute a part of the explanatory framework for their different postcommunist trajectories. The subsequent examination concentrates on the organizational, tactical, personal, and ideational transformations of the former communist parties, taking as a reference point the electoral sequences of their subsequent participation in government and in opposition.
In Curry and Urban’s book, the Democratic Left Alliance in Poland, the Hungarian Socialist Party, and the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (as allegedly the only Baltic re-tooled former communist party) exemplify an impressive transition from defeated tyrants into legitimate political actors. In this context, the authors emphasize the significance of the parties’ transformatory period until their first victorious elections (in 1993, 1994, and 1992, respectively). Being in opposition to the governing anti-communist coalitions motivated them to implement critical internal reforms, such as structural democratization (for instance, decentralization and outreach to the local electorate), programmatic restructuring (move towards social-democratic ideology, as well as commitment to market reform) and personnel reorganization (new recruitment to the leadership). Nevertheless, the authors do not recognize their increase in popularity as directly proportional to their transformations, but as at least partly a product of the failures of the anti-communist governments and the changing socio-economic situation. When coming to power and entering different alliances and party coalitions, the communist successors managed to overcome their earlier pariah status and were recognized as equal democratic players (with the exception of the Lithuanian party, which in 1992 did not manage to find a strong political partner). Finally, all the analyses emphasize the emerging pro-Western identity of the social democratic parties, which they present as “a regional variant of [post-1989] internationalism” (p. 251). Analogously, an important element of their identity transformation was the “affiliation with the historically anti-communist European social democratic movement, both as a matter of principle and as a way of distancing themselves from their own communists pasts” (p. 252).
On the opposite side of the spectrum are the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of Ukraine. Here the authors emphasize the longevity of the Soviet legacy in terms of their strong, static, and conservative Marxist profiles, which has also been combined with anti-Western and ethnocentric politics (a tendency arguably more visible in the Russian than the Ukrainian case). Such a striking ideological eclecticism brought about numerous intra-party cleavages (p. 176) and, for instance, in the Russian case amounted to the formation of two different “public and party ideologies” (pp. 177-181). In this context, both authors discuss thoroughly the issues of the parties’ “anti-system” attitudes, i.e., their political culture, which has proved to be incompatible with the framework of democratic politics. The main discussion centers on the issues of “political blockage,” or, in other words, the negative effect that anti-system entities can exert on the processes of democratization.
The remaining case, which the authors classify as intermediary between, on the one hand, the Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian social-democratic parties, and, on the other hand, the Russian and Ukrainian neo-Leninist groups, is the PDS (the successor of the former East German Socialist United Party). The political context of its development has been exceptional in the respect that in addition to the challenging postcommunist transformations, after German unification it rapidly needed to “accustom [itself] to being treated as a disgraced and irrelevant minority and to learn how to function in a highly competitive political arena [dominated by western German parties]” (p. 137). Its transformation has proceeded in the direction of social democracy with accentuated progressive views on the issues of war and pacifism, women’s rights, ecology, etc. The author points at its recent increase of popularity on the local and regional level (primarily among voters from the former GDR with radicalized socio-political opinions) and explains it in terms of the socio-economic transformation, the failings of its contending parties, the pragmatic attitudes of PDS leaders, and “regional resentments in eastern Germany” (p. 155).
The main advantage of Curry and Urban’s book is that it offers a comprehensive and very thorough description of the transformations of communist parties, which pays due respect to different components of these processes: organizational, material, ideational, and personal. In case of Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania (and to a certain extent Germany), the effect is a plausible picture of the actual evolution that these parties have undergone with an emphasis on the multiple causes of their successful democratic adaptation. In Russia and Ukraine, the analyses manage to conceptualize their eclectic ideational base in terms of neo-Leninist philosophy, assertive ethnocentrism, and anti-system attitudes. A very interesting aspect of the juxtaposition of these diverse cases is therefore the question about the relationship between the former communist parties’ trajectories and the dynamics of democratization. The issues of democratic transition and consolidation constitute a recurrent point of reference for the authors of this study and allow for a number of interesting questions in the conclusion, e.g., whether the post-9/11 turn toward national and ethnic discourses in electoral politics might predispose the nationalistic communist parties in Russia and Ukraine to become a within-system opposition.
In spite of the interesting perspective that the juxtaposition of such diverse cases provides, it also has several shortcomings. For instance, it seems better suited for capturing the differences and polarities, rather than existing analogies and parallels, between the analyzed parties. This is particularly visible in regard to the German successor party: the question remains whether picturing PDS as a “party in between,” or in a “middle ground” between, the successful Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian cases and the botched Russian and Ukrainian cases captures the unique character of PDS’s political context and intra-party developments. In addition, this type of analysis results in an incomplete picture of national party politics to the extent that it measures the parties up to their foreign counterparts, rather than includes the critical dialectical relation between them and the anti-communist parties.
Finally, the book manages to fulfill much better its descriptive objectives than the explanatory ones. With the provision of such broad introductions to the histories of communist parties and the modes of transition to democracy prior to each party analysis, the suggestion is that these contextualizations are needed to capture the dynamics of communist party trajectories. The reader is nevertheless left only with a vague impression that there is a connection between, for instance, a consensual and elitist mode of democratic transition and the successful adaptation of the former communist parties to the democratic regime, but no explanation of why and how this process takes place is provided.