The Human Geography of East Central Europe

David Turnock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134827992
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The Human Geography of East Central Europe examines the geography of the transition economies that were not formerly part of the Soviet Union: Albania, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia and East Germany. There is a thematic treatment beginning with the landscape and historical background, which moves on to the social and economic geography (industry, agriculture and infrastructure) and to issues concerning regional development and environmental protection.

1 Introduction
The political and economic context

Historical overview

The foreword to this book has suggested how the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO is a logical sequel to the aberration of communism. Yet the accession states have historically comprised a backward area–part of Western Europe’s periphery–which the communist system was, in some respects, intended to reinvigorate through the creation of a world region where the spatial logic of capitalism would be overridden by central planning and artificial pricing in the interest of regional equality. It will be shown how this socialist dream was tarnished by Soviet self-interest and a failure to adjust as the population born after the Second World War inevitably came to form the majority. But if the West is to succeed with its recipe for redistribution moderated by the EU it is worth remembering that the politics of the shatter zone–the region’s historic status–are still within living memory. While medieval feudal states emerged on the basis of prehistoric tribal organisation and Dark Age migrations, these did not fairly reflect ethnicity (given the enormous variations in identity and organisation) and they were in any case swamped by imperialism of the Ottoman, Russian, Habsburg and Prussian empires. Independent East Central Europe (ECE) disappeared, apart from a few limited instances where imperial power was exerted indirectly through suzerainty. Instead there was colonialism with much instability and ethnic diversity where imperial frontiers were in a state of flux. As East (1961: 14) explains, the individuality of the shatter zone derives from the existence of many national groups as well as ‘the persistence there of politico-territorial organisations essentially multinational and imperialist in character’. However, it is worth adding that German influence was particularly strong in terms of settlement, culture and trade: traditional links that underpinned the notion of Central Europe or ‘Mitteleuropa’ as an informal German commonwealth.

Modern nation states emerged in the region in the nineteenth century, first in the Balkans through the decay of the Ottoman Empire at a time of particular rivalry among the great powers. Independent Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia were joined by Albania in 1912. The process was extended to the Habsburg Empire–and to parts of the German and Russian empires–after the First World War. However, there was no unity of purpose among the new states because of territorial disputes, often grounded in the fate of ethnic minorities stranded by the demise of imperialism and economic competition among a tier of primary producers. With the shatter zone divided against itself, there was no effective buffer between Germany and USSR, though the region could command some support through its function as a ‘cordon sani taire’ against Bolshevism–albeit for a short period dominated by insecurity and depression. The situation was much discussed by geographers at the time including L.W. Lyde (1926: 394) who wrote of a ‘belt of continual political instability’ comprising the isthmus between the Danube and Volga and between the Black and Baltic Seas (‘Phoenicia and Amberland’), with cultural diversity and states too ‘incoherent and impotent to win self-government sooner’. H.G. Wanklyn then examined Europe’s ‘eastern marchlands’ in 1941, with somewhat greater sensitivity. But the Second World War saw the shatter zone partitioned between Germany and Russia under the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact only for Germany to invade the USSR in 1941 and then for the Red Army to advance towards Berlin in 1944–5, buoyed by Western aid and an allied agreement to maintain a united front until Germany’s unconditional surrender was assured.

Communism and the transition

Allied victory effectively gave the Soviet Union a free hand over the region, a situation which Stalin naturally exploited to the full. The Western Allies’ dependence on Soviet manpower and the informal horse-trading of the Churchill–Stalin ‘percentages agreement’ are important factors in understanding why Western guarantees (e.g. for Poland) could not be sustained when the war ended. We do not know if Stalin worked to a secret agenda during the war or if his actions post-1945 were opportunistic. It was understandable that he would wish to extend the Soviet sphere beyond ‘socialism in one country’ to capture resources for a dynamic world region carved out of capitalism’s periphery and dedicated to the defence and security of the Russian state. Stalin was even looking to extend his influence in Greece, Italy and West Germany until the NATO defensive shield established the ‘Iron Curtain’ as the world’s most heavily fortified frontier and one which seemed to deny any logic to a ‘Middle Tier’ between Russia and the West. Austria was reunified in 1955 and the Western position in Berlin was eventually guaranteed, but the Soviets were able to establish their occupation zone in Germany as a separate state and to impose their system of communist party monopoly and central planning in virtually all territories occupied by the Red Army. Sophisticated NATO weaponry was balanced by Warsaw Pact superiority in tanks and infantry while in the 1980s US Pershing II and cruise missiles deployed in Western Europe brought a response through the deployment of nuclear weapons in Czechoslovakia in 1983.

Scarcely a decade has passed since the momentous events of 1989 and it is worth reflecting on the circumstances. We now know that the Soviet Union was not sustainable but Mikhail Gorbachev showed extraordinary courage in working for change and establishing a regime that prepared for the open dissent and political mobilisation that became evident in the late 1980s. He ‘had a knack for sizing up problems quickly and was ready to consult to attempt novel solutions’ (Keep 1997: 278) and when it was evident that the Soviets could not match Western technological skills (especially electronics), Gorbachev advocated ‘glasnost’ (frankness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) to overcome Western sanctions linked with the Helsinki human rights agenda and mobilise the Soviet people for improved economic performance, though he believed ‘over-confidently that the party had much stronger public support than was the case’ (ibid.: 276). But there had to be a group of people to spearhead reform: Stalin had destroyed civil society and hence Khrushchev’s reforms failed to progress. Moves towards political pluralism were previously blocked by the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia which led to the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ of limited sovereignty which validated collective action against threats to the status quo. However, in the 1980s the Soviet leader had the advantage of a new cohort in the nomenklatura ‘better educated, more specialized and identified with particular interests rather than the overarching project of communist construction’ (ibid.: 277–8). He was able to change the rules of the game by dismantling the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1985, giving the green light (probably late in 1988) for the accommodation with the Polish ‘Solidarity’ Movement negotiated the following year and finally in refusing to support a crack-down in East Germany shortly before the Berlin Wall collapsed.

Radical change began in Poland in 1987, in connection with the need for consensus over economic reform which brought widespread strikes in 1988. This led to the toleration of opposition parties after ‘roundtable’ discussions; an important criterion for progress towards pluralism. This stage was reached in Poland in 1988, followed by Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia in 1989; and Albania, Bulgaria and Romania in 1990. Free elections mark the second phase: in 1989 elections in Poland allowed the opposition parties to contest most parlimentary seats while the communists remained in power (in deference to Soviet sensitivities) but in most other cases governments were broadened in advance of comprehensive parlimentary elections. It was hoped that communist regimes could become truly legitimate through reform but they were greeted by rising expectations which precipitated the 1989 revolutions and took the ECECs out of the Soviet camp, ultimately destroying Gorbachev’s own credibility and the Soviet Union that he sought to maintain. Comecon failed to survive the trade shocks associated with political change and was dissolved in 1991 when the remaining members agreed to trade in convertible currencies, while the Warsaw Pact was wound up in the same year and Soviet troops left the region (including East Germany) by the end of 1994. Social divisions were much reduced in comparison with the nineteenth century and idealists who were thinking of better ways of building socialism were effectively marginalised by a silent majority that saw a better future with the EU which practically all states now seem keen to join. Social change has arisen through the creation of a more urban, more educated and more ‘aware’ population prepared to question the legitimacy of Marxist-Leninism as a range of economic, cultural and environmental issues came to the fore. In East Germany, those who wanted to improve the socialist experiment in the context of an ecological–pacifist utopia were dismayed to find that the majority wanted to enjoy the benefits of West Germany’s welfare capitalism. And similar preferences came to the fore elsewhere except in parts of the Balkans where the nationalist agenda took precedence for a time.

Changes in the states system

There were significant changes in the political geography of states. While unification in Germany was initially regarded as a long-term process, an immediate solution soon appeared the only option in a situation where the East German population was deserting in droves. The process was also expedited by the postwar occupation powers (including the Soviet Union, on the eve of disintegration) and by the readiness of the German nation as a whole to accept the Oder–Neisse boundary as the centrepiece of the two German–Polish treaties 1990–1. There was also reconciliation with the Czech Republic in 1997 over the Nazi occupation and the subsequent expulsion of the German population from the so-called Sudetenland. But other potential unions have proved more elusive and the momentum that developed in Chişinău to take Moldova into Romania was soon blocked by the implacable opposition of the minorities that still maintain Transnistria as a separate entity through a Cyprus-style partition of a former Soviet Socialist Republic. The possibility of a link between Poland and Lithuania has also been a matter for speculation in view of the commonwealth which existed in medieval times. However, the possibility has not been seriously explored and seems highly unlikely in view of the tension between the two states after the First World War when the Vilnius area was disputed. However, the countries could move closer together in the context of some wider association perhaps involving the Baltic states as a whole.

Meanwhile, unification in Germany has been balanced by the breakup of the two federations–Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia–which means that there are 12 ECECs apart from East Germany, which is not covered by most of the statistical tables in this book since only somewhat unrepresentative data for the whole country can be quoted in most instances (Table 1.1). Czechoslovakia split in 1993 following the transitional arrangements arising out of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989 (the federal system dating back ultimately to 1969). There was little controversy over this separation of the Czech Republic from Slovakia after the 1992 elections endorsed the platform of the nationalists in Slovakia (Pavlinek 1995). However, the division has become more complete than was envisaged with the abandonment of a common currency. In Yugoslavia too relations between a total of five successor states have been strained, although arguably this is more understandable because the changes took place unilaterally and to the dismay of Serbia and Serb minorities, especially in Bosnia & Hercegovina and Croatia. This provided the basis for civil war not simply to halt the breakup of the federation but to contest the process of disaggregation by rejecting the boundaries of the republics as sacrosanct and envisaging a Serb nation state enlarged by ethnically-cleansed territories in eastern and western Bosnia, Krajina and parts of Slavonia. Further fragmentation now seems inevitable in view of the UN protectorate over Kosovo which may well end in independence. However, the Serb concentration round Mitrovica could suggest a Cyprus solution while Kosovo’s separation in any form would make it difficult to resist a similar scenario for Bosnia & Hercegovina’s ‘Republika Srpska’.

Table 1.1 States of East Central Europe

At the same time, a prolonged crisis in Kosovo could also drive Montenegro further towards secession and also rouse the Muslims in Sandzak, where the local Party of Democratic Action under R. Lajiić provides a focus for discontent. Yugoslavia remained unstable in the aftermath of the Kosovo War with a split in public opinion between censure of the former nationalist president S. Milošević and a Western conspiracy theory garnished by criticism of the townspeople who couldn’t cope with the NATO pressure. Milošević’s removal from the scene provides a breathing space for moderates who will need Western support to demonstrate that joining Europe offers the best prospect. The scope 11 for consolidation seems remote although after further fragmentation in Yugoslavia, a limited federation to act as a counterweight to Serbia might conceivably interest Bosnia & Hercegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. And pressure on the Macedonian government by Albanians from Kosovo could be the start of a Greater Albania movement. Such a reordering of political forces 11 is an encouragement to those who would leave the Balkan peoples to get on 11 with their struggles and accept the revised territorial arrangements.

Although the events in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia indicate extreme forms of fragmentation they are not untypical of experiences around the world which show, paradoxically, how closer global interrelations seem to generate stronger local identities as each ‘member’ of the world community tries to create its own niche in the system of global competition. In the region of ECE, which has suddenly found itself free to operate unhindered on the world stage, the local now provides substance for the notion that there are countless transformations occurring under the umbrella of a broad transition from one-party states to plural societies and from state capitalism, fundamentally rooted in the strategic requirements of the FSU, to market capitalism. The former centrally-planned economies are seeking a place in the global economy geared to efficient and profitable production to meet consumer demand. Every area will reflect, in its own way, an ongoing restructuring which will reflect the starting position and the strategies being adopted on the route to a largely unknown destination. System substitution has unleashed a complex range of adjustments, occurring at local, regional and national levels, as the economic and social issues are balanced through the political process. And all of them are in some way embedded in the experiences of the past. Local culture is a significant force and will surely remain so.

The volatility of the local in the early phase of the transition points to the crucial importance of effective national government. While early post-communist regimes sought some attenuation of the state’s power to prevent any return to communist totalitarian power (a view which happened to coincide with neo-liberal thinking in Western Europe), effective regulation at the national level is now being emphasised as a corrective to the slide towards unbridled localism and illegality which reached extreme positions in the Yugoslav civil war and the chaos in Albania in 1997. Yet, stable national administration cannot be taken for granted: it depends on resources and institutions that were, in varying degrees, lacking at the onset of the transition and still remain in short supply. At one stage it seemed that transformation would see political life polarised on Latin American lines with economic policy veering to interventionism of the kind familiar to the Asian ‘tiger’ economies. ECE is a region of great importance for the socio-economic progress and political cohesion of the continent. It is very much in the interest of the West that there should be stability, especially in the present situation, in which independence for the region is reinforced by the Soviet Union’s collapse which leaves a Russian state that is incapable of controlling these shatterbelt territories.

International institutions

While international financial institutions like the IMF have great importance for the region, the ECECs are being drawn into a wide range of international organisations (Table 1.2). Global perspectives point first and foremost to membership of the EU and the NATO as a means of enhancing security and as the most promising way to securing some amelioration of peripherality and as a launching pad for wider economic activities. Except for Albania and the Yugoslav successor states (other than Slovenia) all the countries of the region have entered into Europe agreements. They are now negotiating for full EU membership and the ‘Luxembourg Group’ of ‘fast track’ countries (including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) may join soon after negotiations finish around the end of 2002. Meanwhile, the ‘Helsinki Group’, which includes Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, could experience some delay although Slovakia might catch up with the front-runners. It is possible, however, that the potential problems of institutional digestion (bearing in mind that the Baltic States, Cyprus, Malta and Turkey are also in the frame) might suggest a series of small waves drawing from both groups. But in any event this enlargement process–involving 80,000 pages of laws and regulations regarding the 30 ‘chapters’ of the acquis communautaire–will reinforce the restoration of traditional links by ECECs with Austria, Germany and Italy and further legitimise the concept of Central Europe as a region of cultural and ethnic diversity in which Germans (and to a lesser extent Italians) have played a key role in the spread of technology and the growth of industry and trade. F.W. Carter (1996) suggests that despite ethnic and environmental tensions there is an underlying tolerance and a willingness to cooperate which can be seen in the opening up of border regions. He thinks that the EU can still learn something from the Austro-Hungarian empire’s experiment with flexible federalism and its liberalism in respecting the rights of small language groups. However, tough EU border controls to regulate illegal entry, drugs and car theft will tend to separate the members from their eastern neighbours, even where there are Euroregions to facilitate cross-border links. This will be unfortunate if it interferes with the development of close economic and cultural relations between ECECs and Russia which could avoid mutual hostility and contribute to the region’s identity.

Table 1.2 Membership of international organisations

NATO is crucially important for securing democracy and for integration in a Europe to which ECECs were denied access in 1945. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became members in 1999, allowing ‘normal relationships’ between Germany and her eastern neighbours and easing residual fears that transformation could be endangered by internal unrest or an irredentist Russia. There is a desire for wider membership although public opinion has expressed some concern over nuclear weapons. Government elites are inclined to ignore these concerns in order to expedite entry into NATO and provide a residual deterrence against the danger of becoming the target of a Russian nuclear attack, notwithstanding issues of civil defence preparedness and security for nuclear materials. The present situation is unsatisfactory and, given the sensitive issue of Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries, it is important that NATO does not appear to support any Hungarian move towards greater assertiveness in the Danube Basin. At the same time, it is suggested that Romania should be a pivotal member like Poland. For Romania, with a very well-developed military infrastructure and a transport system offering fast deployment of troops in the region, is a very active partner of NATO programmes with financial contributions pledged to all activities from the beginning. It might be argued that NATO should expand while Russia is relatively weak, for it is difficult to imagine that Russia herself would be interested, given her global situation and great power pretensions (quite apart from anti-Russian sentiments in NATO). However, scant respect for Russian strategic interests could exacerbate tensions and encourage reintegration in the form of possible unions with Belarus and Kazakhstan and it has therefore been suggested that despite American assurances that ‘no European democracy will be excluded because of its position on the map’, the alliance will not extend into the tier of states from Latvia to Bulgaria. There may however be a sincere belief that after the inter-war experience Europe’s new democracies should not be consigned to a buffer zone and left to fend for themselves.

ECECs are keen to join the Council of Europe (CoE), described as a ‘gatekeeper’ responsible for checking the credentials of states seeking participation in the integration process and reference should also be made to the creation of a ‘Visegrad Group’ (Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland) in 1992 as a free trade organisation anticipating early EU accession. The group was extended to four countries in 1993 with the breakup of Czechoslovakia and it has successfully encouraged the other states in the region to project their reformist credentials. Renamed ‘Central European Free Trade Association’ (CEFTA), the club was joined by Slovenia in 1996, Romania in 1997 and Bulgaria in 1999. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe or OSCE (formerly CSCE) is concerned with economic cooperation as well as security, science and technology, environment and human rights. It monitors the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and monitors minority issues through a High Commissioner on National Minorities first appointed in 1992. Meanwhile, all ECECs except Yugoslavia are members of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) established in 1991 while appropriate groupings of ECECs combined with other European and Asian states to form the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Group and the Council of Baltic Sea States both of which date to 1992 and have a range of cultural, economic and environmental interests.

STABILITY IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE

However, a big question concerns coordination among the SEECs, especially in the light of wars in former Yugoslavia which have left several states out of the EU accession process. Criminalisation of government and dependence on fragile coalitions have increased the perception of instability, compared with the states in the north of the region (Table 1.3). A limited grouping has always been unsatisfactory because of a lack of economic complementarity and an overriding desire by the states involved to be part of a wider European grouping. An American concept for Eur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: The political and economic context
• 2 Aspects of social geography
• 3 Production: Industry and agriculture
• 4 Tertiary sector geographies: Transport, energy and tourism
• 5 Urban and rural settlement
• 6 Regions of East Central Europe
• 7 Conclusion
• References