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This chapter examines three East European states: Slovenia, a small country that has enjoyed a smooth transition to democracy and market economy; Russia, the world's largest state, which has failed to establish democratic rule; and Romania, a medium-sized Balkan country that, following some early stumbling, found its way into NATO and the European Union. The three postcommunist states suggest very different experiences of building democratic armies. No postcommunist country had fewer major problems in establishing democratic civil–military relations than Slovenia, even though it had to create a new army on the rather flimsy foundations of the Territorial Defense Force. Meanwhile, the specific shortcomings of Russian military politics reflect the power relations that have doomed Russia's democratization prospects. Romania's postcommunist record of building civil–military relations falls between the two others in terms of democratic performance, though it is much closer to Slovenia than to Russia.

This chapter presents an overview of the wide variation in the politics of homosexuality and the trajectories of LGBT activism in postcommunist Europe since 1989. Against the conventional wisdom that this region is noteworthy precisely for its lack of progress regarding sexuality, this chapter’s historical-comparative perspective reveals examples of surprisingly well-organized and politically mobilized social movements advocating LGBT rights, often in those countries associated with resurgent traditionalism and backlash against transnational rights norms. This variation is puzzling in terms of the predominant “grand narratives” of post-1989 political development, namely, that of weak civil society and that of transnational diffusion and Europeanization through accession to the European Union. A comparative analytical framework is presented to explain how and under what conditions transnational pressures may boost the organizational development of LGBT-rights activism in postcommunist societies.

Chapter 2 presents the results of intersubjective and autoethnographic research with Albanian (and Romanian) male sex workers in Italy and Greece in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It analyzes the discourses and practices through which young migrant men both reproduced and challenged the heteronormative and homophobic way in which the relation between masculinities and sexual conduct was negotiated at home. By selfrepresenting as straight and ‘only active’ young men who are ‘fucking queers’ in order to respond to ‘economic necessity’ young Albanian and Romanian migrants abide, publicly, by heteronormative canons of masculinity while engaging in sex work with other men and affording more affluent and individualized lifestyles. The chapter shows how the author used irony and flirting as strategic intersubjective, relational, and affective strategies to challenge normative selfrepresentations. It also shows that young people’s engagement in migration and sex work resulted from the agencing decisions they made in relation to moral orientations – socio-cultural alignments of models of personhood, mobilities and objects – that emerged in relation to a macro-historical event: the further commodification and individualization in late-modern, neoliberal and postindustrial times of the traditions, institutions, livelihoods, and authorities that had already been fluidified by modernisation.

Drawing on original and unique research material—interviews with thirty-three male third-party agents from Albania and Romania—chapter 8 questions the usefulness of profiling male agents as “traffickers” to understand their diverse life and work experiences in the sex industry. The experiences of agents who managed sex work through violence (and ended up in jail) in early postcommunist Albania are compared with the more consensual and fluid management techniques adopted by Albanian and Romanian agents in later postcommunist times. The chapter shows that the sex-gendered subjectivities, interpersonal relations, and roles that agents embody reflect ambivalences and contradictions mirroring those faced by the women they manage. These shared ambivalences and contradictions are embedded in the deep socioeconomic and geopolitical transformations taking place in the societies of origin and destination of migrants working in the sex industry. The chapter also discusses the implications of these intersubjective dynamics and socioeconomic transformations for antitrafficking interventions, which should acknowledge that migrant and nonmigrant sex workers, including minors and people working under the management of third-party agents, can and do consent to work in the sex industry in order to fulfill their mobile orientations.

This chapter considers post-socialist or postcommunist transformations as a subtype and historical wave of imitative societal transformations, i.e., system changes taking the form of disruptive, accelerated, and politically steered modernization projects which follow successful models of society in the framework of global hegemonies. Focusing on an international comparative overview of post-socialist change in the Second World system, i.e., the countries and union republics within the Soviet Empire, the chapter begins with a discussion of dynamics and factors of state socialism’s decline. Subsequently, it problematizes key dimensions, actors, and dilemmatic processes of the transitional phase in the narrow sense, concentrating on the political and economic spheres. Finally, the chapter deals with the long-term period of structuration and its ambivalent character, which includes a discussion of varieties and innovative aspects of postcommunism as well as post-transformative challenges.

The book’s concluding chapter reexamines patterns of postsocialist development in light of historical opportunities and constraints and patterns of domestic political forces. It recaps the book’s key claim on the importance of organizational capacities these economies built during the reform period of the 1970s in opening the path for the region’s integration into the capitalist world economy after 1989. The chapter summarizes comparative paths of transformation by highlighting temporal sequences and intervening causal mechanisms during critical junctures in determining institutional developments in the region.

Chapter 1 addresses the postcommunist ‘remnant’ of Stalinism, which survived the demise of the USSR and has been undergoing rehabilitation under Putin. We trace the logics of the two ‘destalinizations’ in the Soviet Union (1956-1964, 1985-1991) and argue that it was the confluence of these two logics that enabled the revival of Stalinism in the postcommunist period. While in the Khruschev Thaw Stalinism was denounced as a personal deviation from and betrayal of ‘true’ Leninism and ascribed to pathological features of Stalin’s personality, in the Gorbachev period the denunciation of Stalinism gradually embraced Communist ideology in its entirety, which was judged terrorist and criminal. If the logics of the two processes are superimposed on one another, Stalin appears as a traitor to a criminal system that deserved to be betrayed and hence as a positive figure, the saviour of Russia from the excesses of Bolshevism. Emerging in the fringes of the political discourse in the 1990s, this image was embraced during the Putin presidency, though Stalinism was no longer understood in terms of the synthesis of communism and nationalism, but rather in terms of the effective constitution and management of a new social reality. In this chapter we also address the paradoxical orientation of Putinism to the Stalinist past, concluding that in today’s Russia Stalinism in its biopolitical sense has become a quasi-transcendental condition of political discourse as such.

While nationalism under communism had particular social functions, some (though not all) of which held subversive potentials, in a liberal democracy nationalism often attests to the needs of conservative factions that foreclose contestation, counter the conditions for free individual self-development, mobilize popular anxieties and perpetuate domination by constructing the national as an omnipotent apparatus that manages and reduces difference through assimilatory and disciplinary strategies. There is an anxiety expressed about theatre practice that motivates unwavering adherence to particular social formations and classifies community as a site of normative values and fetishized cultural identities. Opposing a nationalistic theatre as a nexus for community spirit that constructs democratically defined difference as a threat to or a violation of the rights of an originary ethnic, national population, I will propose and corroborate a political theatre that encourages dissensus, and which is constitutively disruptive and skeptical of communities that are not heterogeneous and coalitional. Providing an overview of significant developments in theatre practice in the postcommunist environment, the work of key directors, grapple with shifts in terminology relating to Polish politics, and attempt to define the parameters of a political theatre practice is highlighted.

This chapter examines how, at what stage, and why corrupt behavior occurs in public procurement in postcommunist countries. Specifically, it investigates the use of contacts and informal networks in public procurement. After a brief methodological introduction, the chapter provides an overview of informal practices in East Central and South Eastern Europe and discusses their relevance to public procurement. It presents survey data to demonstrate the perception of these practices among procurement officials and members of the business community, and concludes with an analysis of factors thought to affect informal practices in postcommunist public procurement. The chapter tests two hypotheses: that informal social relations in public procurement are (1) more widespread in “second wave” than in “first wave” EU member states; and (2) more widespread in the Czech Republic than Slovenia (among the “first wave” EU member states) and in Bulgaria than in Romania (“second wave” EU member states).

This volume takes a different approach to the study of postcommunism. Rather than beginning with established concepts drawn from democratization studies, it foregrounds the diversity of the historical experiences and current realities of people in the postcommunist region and the ways in which they are responding to political and economic changes. It examines the causal role ascribed to civil society in theories of democratization. It parses civil society around three themes: justice, mobilization, and hegemony. Justice captures both the reasons for valuing democracy over other forms of government and the normative justification for the use of collective resources toward particular ends at various levels of social organization. Mobilization encompasses the role of society in aggregating individual preferences and resources and demanding the enactment or preservation of a particular vision of justice. Hegemony brings attention to the operation of power and opportunities for resistance at multiple levels of society through the flow of material and symbolic resources. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter traces the genealogy of concepts employed in research on the postcommunist region to uncover the ideological commitments they import into analysis. It first considers some of the ways in which social justice has been understood in postsocialist studies, how this has been shaped by the ethos of Europe, and how social science contributes to the forms of governmentality emerging in postsocialist states. It then offers four methodological principles that help in thinking about postsocialist forms of social justice. These focus on the importance of contingent relations, hinterlands and contextual analysis, subtraction (or keeping things as simple as they need to be but not simpler) and emergence.

This chapter focuses on women's mobilizations in postcommunist societies. Women of various social backgrounds, ages, and sexual orientations have been mobilizing for diverse causes throughout the countries undergoing the transformation from communism to democracy. Some women are mobilizing specifically around the issue of gender equality, and recognition of gender in the social justice rhetoric of various groups is widespread. The chapter suggests that the complex and multidirectional mobilizations by women in the region challenge four hegemonies: (1) the nation-state; (2) patriarchal culture; (3) the neoliberal paradigm of economic reforms; and (4) the predominance of Western feminism. With attention to the particularities of the postcommunist context and the variety of transformative trajectories throughout the region, it examines how these hegemonies are being challenged and how counterhegemonies are produced. It further delineates possible new conceptualizations of women's mobilization that capture these fragmented, multilayered, and at times perplexing postcommunist experiences.

This chapter provides a wide-ranging survey of women's mobilizations in Romania. Collective action for women's and gender issues is evident in the activity of women's NGOs, women's organizations within political parties, campaigns to stop violence against women, and participation in women-related international projects, as well as women's festivals and LGBT festivals. Women and gender concerns are developed and pursued through women's and gender studies programs in university curricula, the publishing of feminist journals, and cultural activities to promote female artists and engage themes related to gender and sexuality. The launching of gender studies collections, literature for and by women, and the presence of women's professional organizations also advance the conceptualization of women's and gender issues and galvanize public energy toward addressing them. Such projects often create and awaken tensions and fresh normative impulses, but they nonetheless introduce new vocabularies that facilitate the assertion and affirmation of activist subjectivities.