Central and Eastern European Sociology in the Post-Communist Era (1)

Introduction: The History of Sociology in Central and Eastern Europe For a little more than a decade now, from the very beginning of the post-Communist era in Europe, we have been systematically investigating the transformations of sociology in Central and Eastern Europe. Our own approach has been a combination of the "emic" and "etic," insider's and outsider's observations. In the early 1990s, we began a research project on the history of sociology of the region from when the so-called "Khrushchev's thaw" started, 1956, to the beginnings of the post-1988 transformations. The results were published in the US (Keen and Mucha, eds., 1994), and in Poland (Mucha and Keen, eds., 1995). One of the "failures" of sociology of the region prior to the transformation is considered to be that it did not anticipate the collapse of the Communist system. One should bear in mind, however, the fact that political restrictions on the topics addressed and on the publication of findings were very strong (not everywhere and not always to the same extent). However, it is perhaps more interesting that the free Western political sciences and sociology did not anticipate this collapse. Two reservations seem to be necessary at this point. On the one hand, we are not dealing with comparisons between Western and Eastern European sociology, then and now, in this article. On the other hand, we are not of the opinion that sociology, and particularly macro-sociology is a "natural science" which could predict the future events. We know that only some trends can be extrapolated. What we mean by the "failure" to anticipate transformations is that the sociology of 1956-1989 was not able to recognize the tensions within the European Communist societies and their potential for radical social change. Many structural and often dramatic changes took place during this period. Some political units ceased to exist, i.e., the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, the "old" Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. New nation-states emerged out of ruins of old ones, and even now the nation-building processes are not necessarily completed in the region. The futures of Bosnia Hercegovina, the "new" Yugoslavia (with Montenegro's aspiration to build the sovereign state, Serbia's Kosovo's being practically a UN protectorate), of Albania, Macedonia, and even of the Ukraine (with her strong divide between the Russian-speaking eastern part and the Ukrainian speaking western part) are not clear. Other dramatic changes have occurred within individual Eastern and Central European nations. Rapid and often superficial political liberalization and democratization, economic transformation in the direction of an increasing role of market mechanisms and free competition, as well as their consequences such as very high unemployment, the growing visibility of poverty; rapid Westernization (and particularly Americanization) of the popular culture, and a reappearance of ethnic tensions and overt ethnic conflicts, are only a few examples of what has emerged. One should also recognize changes resulting from the world's transformations: cultural and economic globalization with its positive and negative aspects, the Internet and the communication "revolution," and most recently the war against terrorism with all its ramifications, including new answers to the old dilemma "security versus freedom" and redefinition of some ethnic groups' struggle for sovereignty. Sociology in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 In the year of 2000, we began a second project to investigate the achievements and failures of sociology in Central and Eastern Europe during the decade that has passed since the transformation (see; Mucha and Keen, eds., in print). In the new project, we asked our collaborators from sixteen countries of East-Central Europe to address the following questions: (1) was a "de-Communization" of sociology (for instance, liquidation of some sociological institutions identified with the "old system"; negative attitudes of the new sociological elites to the "old," Communist Party linked scholars; research problems which ceased to be central due to the systemic transformation; Marxism and its role as a theoretical-methodological orientation) an important issue in the internal politics of sociology? …