The Downfall Of Communism In Eastern And

Central Europe Essay, Research Paper

The Downfall of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe

The shocking fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe

in the late eighties was remarkable for both its rapidity and its

scope. The specifics of communism’s demise varied among nations,

but similarities in both the causes and the effects of these

revolutions were quite similar. As well, all of the nations

involved shared the common goals of implementing democratic

systems of government and moving to market economies. In each of

these nations, the communist regimes in power were forced to

transfer that power to radically different institutions than they

were accustomed to. Democracy had been spreading throughout the

world for the preceding two decades, but with a very important

difference. While previous political transitions had seen

similar circumstances, the actual events in question had

generally occurred individually. In Europe, on the other hand,

the shift from communism was taking place in a different context

altogether. The peoples involved were not looking to affect a

narrow set of policy reforms; indeed, what was at stake was a

hyper-radical shift from the long-held communist ideology to a

western blueprint for governmental and economic policy

development. The problem inherent in this type of monumental

change is that, according to Ulrich K. Preuss, “In almost all the

East and Central European countries, the collapse of

authoritarian communist rule has released national, ethnic,

religious and cultural conflicts which can not be solved by

purely economic policies” (47). While tremendous changes are

evident in both the governmental and economic arenas in Europe,

these changes cannot be assumed to always be “mutually

reinforcing” (Preuss 47). Generally it has been theorized that

the most successful manner of addressing these many difficulties

is the drafting of a constitution. But what is clear is the

unsatisfactory ability of a constitution to remedy the problems

of nationalism and ethnic differences. Preuss notes that when

the constitutional state gained favor in North America,

it was founded on the principle of the unitary state; it was not

designed to address the lack of national identity which is found

throughout Europe – and which is counter to the concept of the

constitutional state (48). “Measured in terms of socioeconomic

modernization,” writes Helga A. Welsh, “Central and Eastern

European countries had reached a level that was considered

conducive to the emergence of pluralistic policies” (19). It

seemed that the sole reason the downfall of communism, as it

were, took so long was the veto power of the Soviet Union.

According to theories of modernization, the higher the levels of

socioeconomic achievement, the greater the pressure for open

competition and, ultimately, democracy. As such, the nations in

Eastern and Central Europe were seen as “anomalies in

socioeconomically highly-developed countries where particularly

intellectual power resources have become widespread” (Welsh 19).

Due to their longtime adherence to communist policies, these

nations faced great difficulty in making the transition to a

pluralist system as well as a market economy. According to

Preuss, these problems were threefold: The genuine economic

devastations wrought by the communist regimes, the transformation

of the social and economic classes of the command economy into

the social and economic lasses of a capitalist economy and,

finally, the creation of a constitutional structure for

political entities that lack the undisputed integrity of a nation

state (48).

With such problems as these to contend with in re-

engineering their entire economic and political systems, the

people of East Germany seemed to be in a particularly enviable

position. Economically, they were poised to unite with one of

the richest countries, having one of the strongest economies, in

the entire world. In the competition for foreign investment,

such an alliance gave the late German Democratic Republic a

seemingly insurmountable lead over other nations. In regards to

the political aspects of unification, it effectively left a

Germany with no national or ethnic minorities, as well as having

undisputed boundaries. As well, there was no need to create a

constitution (although many of the pitfalls of constitution-

building would have been easily-avoided due to the advantages

Germany had), because the leaders of the GDR had joined the

Federal Republic by accession and, accordingly, allowed its Basic

Law to be extended over their territory. For all the good that

seemed to be imminent as a result of unification, many problems

also arose regarding the political transformation that Germany

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