PERPETUAL MOTION? Transformation and Transition in Central and Eastern Europe & Russia Edited by TUL’SI BHAMBRY, CLARE GRIFFIN, TITUS HJELM, CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON AND OLGA G. VORONINA Papers from the 9th International Postgraduate Conference held at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL 2011 PERPETUAL MOTION? TRANSFORMATION AND TRANSITION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA EDITED BY TUL’SI BHAMBRY, CLARE GRIFFIN, TITUS HJELM, CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON AND OLGA G. VORONINA Studies in Russia and Eastern Europe No. 8 ISBN: 978-0-903425-85-8 Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Tul’si Bhambry, Clare Griffin, Titus Hjelm, Christopher Nicholson and Olga G. Voronina 2011. Individual chapters © contributors 2011 All rights reserved. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents List of Tables and Figures iv Acknowledgements v Introduction vi Minorities and Human Rights 1. Categorisation and Instruction: IOM’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking in the Russian Federation 2 Susanne Schatral 2. Ethno-business - the Manipulation of Minority Rights in Romania and Hungary 16 Andreea Carstocea Spaces, Regions, Borders 3. Working the Field: Rural Experts and the ‘Agrarian Question’ in the Romanian Principalities 1864-1914 30 Raluca Muşat 4. The Role of the ‘Agrarian overpopulation’ in German Spatial and Economic Planning for South-East Europe before and during the Second World War 43 Ian Innerhofer 5. Europeanisation and The Built Environment: The Re-scaling of the Border City Goerlitz-Zgorzelec 57 Siarhei Liubimau 6. Language Contacts on the Russian-Chinese Border: the ‘Second Birth’ of Russian-Chinese Trade Pidgin 72 Kapitolina Fedorova Cultures of Politics and Business 7. Вперёд! Exploring the Dialectic between Continuity and Transformation in the Development of the pro-Regime Russian Youth Organisation Nashi 86 Maya Atwal 8. Russian Perceptions of Belarusian and Ukrainian Political Sovereignty, 2004-2008 100 Rasmus Nilsson 9. The Games of the Velvet Revolution: An Integrative Approach to the Transition in Czechoslovakia 1989 115 Vit Simral 10. Productive Informality and Economic Ties in Emerging Economies: The Case of Cluj Business Networks 134 Norbert Petrovici and Anca Simionca Notes on Contributors 145 iii List of Tables and Figures Figure 4.1 Europe’s Population 51 Figure 5.1. Goerlitz 67 Figure 5.2. The Neisse Suburb in Zgorzelec 67 Figure 7.1 Seliger 2008 86 Figure 9.1. Transition Preference Orders of Strategic Groups 115 Figure 9.2. The 3-D Funnel of Causality 117 Figure 9.3. Game 1 ‘Unsuccessful Liberalisation’ 123 Figure 9.4. Mass Movement 126 Figure 9.5. Game 2 ‘Successful Democratisation’ 127 Figure 9.6. Sub-game ‘The Continuists’ Switch’ 129 Figure 9.7. Game 3 ‘Čalfa’s Dilemma’ 129 Figure 9.8. Strongly Stable Equilibrium & Force-vulnerable Equilibrium 130 Figure 9.9: Game Overview 131 Figure 10.1. Main components of the Brasov and Timisoara business networks 138 Figure 10.2. Property networks of individuals in Cluj 2007 (extended main component) 139 Table 10.1. Descriptive statistics for the business networks from Cluj, Timisoara and Brasov 137 iv Acknowledgements This volume was produced as a result of the postgraduate conference held at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in 2009. As this is one in a series of conferences, we benefited from the advice of previous organisers, in particular Jana Nahodilova, Daniel Brett, Barbara Madaj and Rasmus Nilsson. The 2009 conference was organised by Tul’si Bhambry, Raoul Carstocea, JJ Gurga, George Greskovits, Clare Griffin, Simon Pawley, Alexander Mondorf, Ilona Mostipan, Trey Stuvek, Anna Toropova and Olga G. Voronina. We would like to thank all the conference volunteers and panel chairs who gave up their time. Thanks also go to Bojan Aleksov, Chris Gerry, Mima Rajic and Katarzyna Zechenter. The conference was funded by generous donations from the UCL-SSEES Director’s Office, UCL Graduate School, SSEES Centre for Russian Studies, SSEES Centre for the Study of Economic and Social Change, and the Royal Historical Society. The Austrian Cultural Forum, the Romanian Cultural Institute, and London Travel Centres made donations in kind. Many people provided support and guidance in the creation of this volume. We would like to thank our contributors and peer reviewers, as well as our dedicated proof-reader, Eleanor Janega, and our cover designer, Ilona Mostipan. Special thanks also go to Christine Fernandes, Esther Williams, and to Robin Aizlewood, Director of SSEES. The Editors v Introduction Perpetual Motion? Tul’si Bhambry, Clare Griffin, Titus Hjelm, Christopher Nicholson and Olga G. Voronina Given Communist Party states’ conscious efforts to transform the very meanings of these fundamental terms [state, nation, citizenship, property, democracy, identity] […] this region provides us with fundamentally different bases for engaging both the phenomena associated with globalization and the literature about it (Verdery 1998, 291). With the former Soviet stranglehold on Eastern Europe lifted, people within the former Soviet satellites were now competitors for a share of the world accumulation of surplus. Rather than contributing to order and stability, Eastern Europe, like numerous other regions, saw a resurgence of ethnic and religious hatreds once held in check, leading to widespread uncertainty and instability when contrasted with the 1945-89 order (Reifer and Sudler 1996, 34). An interest in ‘transformation’ and ‘transition’ has marked Western scholarship on the subject of modern Russia and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. However, discussions that present the region in a state of flux must not fail to consider that notions of ‘transformation’ and ‘transition’ are necessarily predicated on the existence of their antithesis. No movement, no change, can be defined without reference to a point of former, or theoretical, stability. The contributors to this volume share the premise that both poles – stability and transformation – are open to be reassessed. By focussing on specific situations in their local contexts, the authors challenge the assumption that transformations and adaptations in the region could be imagined in terms of ‘perpetual motion’, implying either random change or repetitive patterns. In Russia and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, just as in any other region, transformations engage notions of permanence and flexibility. The changes discussed in this volume comprise evolving discourses, the reorganising of social structures, and the negotiating of emerging political problems. All these transformations engage the human capacity to react to change. The question remains of how to conceptualise the different reactions in a way that helps us determine how a situation of change expresses human creativity, and to what extent any adaptation to change is socially progressive. We, the editors of this volume, share with the authors a keen interest in the conceptualisation of Central and Eastern Europe. Space, as our contributors discuss, is not only geographical and physical, but fundamentally cultural. The construction of regions in the minds of Europeans is something that historians have devoted attention to in the last few decades. Larry Wolff shows how the Western educated elite began to define ‘Eastern Europe’ in the eighteenth century (Wolff 1994). He argues that the region is not so much an existing geographical entity as an intellectual invention of a cultural zone constructed during the Enlightenment through travel diaries and maps, imaginary travelogues, and armchair philosophising. Similarly, our volume presents Eastern Europe not merely as a place, but also as a process. Our aim, however, is to show that this process continues to evolve, and that rather than undergoing change passively, the region articulates its own voices, establishing intellectual boundaries and reinventing tradition. vi The wake of the revolutions of 1989 saw a notable surge in international scholarship on experiences of transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Today there is a critical need not only to assess the two decades of post-soviet development in the region, but also to create spaces of exchange between scholars representing different disciplines and a variety of institutional, national, and linguistic backgrounds. It was the aim of the organisers of the 9th International Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe to provide such a space at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, in February 2009. The three-day conference aimed to provide a congenial atmosphere in which young scholars not only presented their research in formal panels, but where they could also discuss their work informally during the evening receptions. Thanks to generous support from our sponsors, more than 100 young scholars from twenty-five countries across Europe and North America contributed to this lively and productive exchange of ideas and perspectives. We are pleased to share some of the wide range of research presented at the conference. Presenting in print those papers that were most inventive in their discussion of ‘transformation’ in the region, this volume foregrounds the interests and perspectives of the first truly post-soviet generation of researchers on Central and Eastern Europe. We hope to reach a wider international audience, both