Janine Wedel - Collision and Collusion - The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe

The fall of communism had brought an “open historical situation”—a period of immense structural change, in which a new universe of possibilities suddenly comes into being—as historian Karl Wittfogel has termed it.46 Such open moments encourage a free-for-all environment in which unclaimed resources and untapped opportunities are pursued. In the new East, those who were the most energetic, savvy, and, in some cases, unscrupulous were the most successful. Many others felt left behind as they watched their friends take advantage of opportunities. As an acquaintance expressed in 1995: “I feel that I’m on the dock and everyone else has taken off.”

With much of the state bureaucracy still entrenched, but disoriented, and with many social institutions in disarray or being dismantled, certain elites were well placed to get whatever they wanted—from business monopolies to great advantages in privatization. Opportunities were sometimes fleeting: They opened up for weeks or months, only to close as someone cornered them, laws or other circumstances changed, or better opportunities came along. The ambitions and activities of the players were not curbed by rules and regulations, which often were nonexistent, unknown, unenforced, or simply ignored. Many prominent Central and Eastern Europeans—and equally as many of their less prominent brethren—could not be pegged simply as lawyers, businessmen, scholars, or consultants. They had their fingers in a kitchenful of pies and were adept at cultivating international contacts. Unlike in some Western countries, where control of much more of the political economy was settled and where professional differentiation and conflict-of-interest practices were highly developed, in the new East, those who legislated and implemented law were often those who regulated change and were responsible for monitoring abuse.

As discussed in chapter 2, some Polish government officials operated consulting firms that did business with their own ministries. For example, the deputy minister of privatization in the first two postcommunist governments (those of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Jan Krzysztof Bielecki), who was responsible for joint ventures, at the same time owned a consulting firm that specialized in such ventures. According to sociologist Antoni Kamiński, “[a] distinctive mark of the post-Solidarity elite’s rule was considerable tolerance of conflicts of interest.”47 And in a 1991 Polish banking scandal, speculators working with several state-owned Polish banks made off with hundreds of millions of dollars.48

Groups could wield extensive influence because of the contexts in which they were operating: where, to varying degrees, the rule of law was weakly established, “the rules were what you made them,” and interpretation and enforcement of the law was subject to much manipulation. The differences in legal context in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe were not sufficiently appreciated by donors, and that lack of appreciation reduced the effectiveness of Western aid. Aid agencies involved in these environments also could fall victim to such practices.

Also underappreciated by donors was the communist upbringing of Eastern partners. Donors failed to understand that, in some Central European nations, especially those that donors considered aid priorities, a limited “civil society” had existed long before the fall of communism.49 Central European dissidents had been only partly right about the absence of a civil society, as anthropologist Chris Hann has noted:

I was, and remain, very sceptical of the way “society” was invoked by some “dissident” intellectuals and by various commentators outside the region to imply that Eastern European populations were united in their opposition to socialist governments. In this discourse, civil society is a slogan, reified as a collective, homogenised agent, combating a demonic state.50

Many Central European scholars and dissidents had seen a wide gap between “state” and “society.”51 Polish sociologist Stefan Nowak developed this argument in his theory of the “social vacuum.” Nowak’s theory conceived of postwar Poland as an “atomized” society, its mediating institutions destroyed by war and imposed revolution. Family endured in harsh dichotomy to the state; an overgrown public sphere pressed heavily against the private. People collided with rigid institutions. Nowak evoked this vision in a single dictum: “The lowest level is the family, and perhaps the social circle. The highest is the nation … and in the middle is a social vacuum.”52

However, Nowak and his followers overlooked the degree to which their societies had evolved alternative institutions; this fact fit neither Western nor Eastern models. If Nowak were correct and there was no middle ground, it is difficult to imagine how bureaucratic systems, totally divorced from the community they allegedly served, could function at all, as clearly they did. In Central and Eastern European societies, many of the most vital institutions were intentionally nonpublic and insubstantial. The Nowak model overlooked the labyrinth of channels through which deals and exchanges were made, both between people as “themselves”—private individuals—and as representatives of economic, political, and social institutions. This complex system of informal relationships, involving personalized patron-client contacts and lateral networks, pervaded the official economy and bureaucracy and connected them to the social circle. Although not explicitly institutional, these relationships exhibited clear patterns.53

Under communism, the sudden and massive social changes throughout the region, notably the huge urbanization of the peasantry, contributed to the erosion of social norms. People became adept at operating in a twilight world of nods and winks, in which what counted was not formalized agreement but dependable complicity. Where organizing outside of state bodies was banned, people who dared to undertake such activities did so as part of a close-knit circle of some kind, in which enduring relationships, frequent contact, and the ability to verify reputation made trust a critical component.54 In the Polish case, this was the social circle, or środowisko (among intelligentsia often called salons ), a trusted group of friends forged through family and social background. Members of the same parlor mixed socializing with politicking. Anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain has described such groups as “cliques,” made up of dense55 and multiplex56 networks whose members have a common identity.57 (Clique in this social anthropological meaning should not be confused with the Polish or Russian klika, which has very pejorative meaning.) Boissevain has noted that the clique has both an objective existence, in that “it forms a cluster of persons all of whom are linked to each other,” and a subjective one, “for members as well as nonmembers are conscious of its common identity.” Members of these publicly informal but internally rigorous elite circles worked together for years and developed intricate, efficient, and undeclared networks to get things done in the face of dangers and difficulties that intensify bonds. Civil society in the 1990s would, by definition, arise from—or at least against the backdrop of—those well-established relationships and organizational capacities.

FROM COMMUNISM TO CIVIL SOCIETY?

In the late 1980s, as Central and Eastern European states weakened and exerted less control over organizations independent of them, there was an outburst of activities that challenged the state and its restrictions—especially in Poland and Hungary, the nations most tolerant of such activities. Although little organizing outside the state was officially permitted, even before the political revolutions of fall 1989, starting an organization or business had become a ticket to success in Poland.58 As communism began to loosen its reins, some noncommunist elites began to create voluntary associations that were illegal, but sometimes tolerated, for purposes ranging from improved housing and environment to halting the construction of nuclear power plants.