Trotsky on the Train South, 1912: "An Austro-Hungaro-Balkan International!"

Bulgarian soldiers dig trenches in the First Balkan War, 1912

Although the railway line from Budapest to Belgrade proceeds mainly in a southerly direction, from the cultural standpoint one moves eastward... On the station platforms and in the third-class carriages the multilingual, motley, culturally-confused East is displayed before you in kaleidoscopic fashion. Two Bulgarian students, a Serbian student and a Hungarian teacher talk together in an incredible language made up of Bulgarian, German, Serbian and French words... A Bulgarian worker, back from America after four years' absence, shares with a Slovak worker his observations about life across the Atlantic: half familiar words, gestures of explanation, misunderstandings, and the indulgent smiles of persons who are used to grasping only half of what the other one is saying. An Austro-Hungaro-Balkan International!¹

- Leon Trotsky, Correspondences from the Balkan Wars, 1912

As war broke out between the Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire in 1912 Leon Trotsky took his seat on a train from Vienna to Belgrade. This latest military by-product of the concert of European Powers was to shock public opinion in the west with both its speed and its ferocity. Diplomatic efforts on the part of the European powers had the familiar effect of spurring nationalist tensions where they meant to dampen them. Trotsky was in the vanguard of condemnation of atrocities committed by various armies as they criss-crossed each other's territories - though especially of the Bulgarian, closely aligned with Tsarism to its north. His journalism (for leading Kiev daily Kievskaya Mysl) on the Balkan Wars, remarkable for its literary panache, is also an exercise in grand strategy. He is at once scathing of and sympathetic towards 'impulsive', 'underdeveloped' Balkan societies. For Maria Todorova, the influential author of Imagining the Balkans, Trotsky evinces - most surprisingly - textbook liberalism, his "blanket pontification" expressed in a "rhetoric almost as if lifted from present-day liberal think-tanks." But uniting liberal opinion against Tsarism would have been in this itinerant revolutionary's broader political interest. 

Trotsky

Nevertheless, as a 'good European' Trotsky undoubtedly shared the distaste of the European intelligentsia for such vulgar nationalist blood-letting. For a Marxist, too, such fiddly conflicts among malcontent "dwarf states" would have seemed a nuisance. One can't help but wonder - a little childishly - if Trotsky booked himself a First, Second or Third class ticket on that train. And what must those he surveyed - the "rabble" of gypsies and ashen-faced wives, skin darkening as the train ploughed south through the Danubian basin - have thought of this rather uptight, priggish Russian gentleman? 

In his own words, Trotsky was quite appalled by the situation he discovered in Serbia:

"I went to the war in the Balkans thinking of it as not merely probable but inevitable... when I learned that some men whom I knew well - politicians, editors, university teachers - were already under arms, at the frontier, in the front line, that they would be among the first to kill and be killed - then the war, the abstraction about which I had been speculating so easily in my thoughts and in my articles, seemed to me something unlikely and impossible." (64) 

Yet the First World War, again the progeny of Great Power manoeuvres in the Balkans, was just two and half years away. The formation of the Red Army, which Trotsky led in civil war, three more after that. In that conflict so many assertions of western moral superiority to, and sympathy with, the Balkans would quickly be revealed for the nonsense they were. Yet Trotsky was right on one account: "No way forward but federation" (68) was his conclusion apropos the Balkans. History was to vindicate him twice (cunningly though: first as farce; then as tragedy). What prospect, then, of a third?

(The above is partially excerpted from a forthcoming long-form essay on EU integration of the Balkans) 

1Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912-13, 58

11 Places You Definitely Should Go in Eastern Europe (And One More You Shouldn't)

Arty silliness at Meet Factory, Prague

As a rule I don't really like travelling. It makes me nervous and irritable. In a world of interconnections, which it's your perilous job to hop between, there's far too much scope for accident, error, breakdown, and general chaos. If anyone has ever been on holiday without a) getting lost and giving in to drink or b) getting lost and having an argument then let me know. But please don't insist that it's all 'part of the experience' because, basically, I'm scared of experiences. If you want to learn about a place you're far better off plucking something from the torrent of publishing that undoubtedly already exists on the subject and actually reading about it. However, there are places which - stumbled upon usually by accident - press themselves upon you in ways books alone can't. Were that not the case, this blog (and countless others like it) wouldn't exist. Here, then, is my grudging tribute to those.

Ghetto Memorial, Krakow, Poland

11. The Jewish Museum, Krakow

http://www.en.galiciajewishmuseum.org/

Going to Auschwitz is basically a decent thing to do, though there are respectful and less respectful ways of going about it. Pulling v-signs and posing for snaps in front of the firing wall is not one of them. I walked around growing increasingly gloomy as tourists snapped endlessly at exhibits of piled human hair and emptied Zyklon B canisters. Like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, Auschwitz has become part of a tourist rat run, inevitably emptied of meaning by the commodification that comes with it. What needed reiterating was the fact of its being the actual place where well over a million lives were violently ended. Sadder, and more sobering, is the Galician Jewish Museum in Krakow. It stands on a little side street on the edge of Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. Inside Krakow's tiny remaining Jewish community puts on talks promoting Jewish-Central European relations and exhibits artists with a Jewish connection. The permanent exhibition contains photos of relics of Galician Jewish life: hand-carved animal engravings unique to the region, many still to be found nestling in the Polish countryside. It is a reminder of the specificity of the lives lost, and a refutation of the effect of the endless recycling of statistics, which, appalling though they are, tend themselves to dehumanize. Visit while reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands for a particularly brutal juxtaposition.

Read: Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder

Belgrade-Sarajevo in the snow

10. Take a Train from Belgrade to Sarajevo and back again

Not an experience I actually relished. On the way there we forgot to buy water for this nine hour journey, winding up with a block of jelly-like cheese, some bread and two beers. On the way back my only company was a pair of quiet Bosnian students on their way from Sarajevo to their home in Doboj. Needless to say, they were a little confused by the purpose of my journey to Belgrade. 'From there I'm flying back to Warsaw,' I explained. It must have seemed terribly convoluted, and indeed it was. The train barrels through largely unremarkable landscape, leaving Bosnia and entering western Serbia via the empty Krajina plains of eastern Croatia. Yet travelling by train gives you the opportunity to see into people's lives, the tracks cutting behind the backs of villages, their gardens and homes laid out for the eyes of curious observers. The still pertinent landmine warnings that dot hilly and wooded areas are made all the more shocking by the fact kids on bikes play freely around them. Abandoned houses sit alone in the snow. Occasionally, in the north, Serbian flags can be seen hanging down over the tops of garden fences. The terrifying experience of stern Croatian border-guards disappearing with my passport aside, it was at least an eye-opener. Closed until 2010, they still only run one train a day on the line between Belgrade and Sarajevo, and given the status of Balkan diplomacy it might not last long. A monument to Yugoslav nation-building and the terrible ethnic breakdown that ensued in the 1990s, its renewed existence is in itself a marvel. See the New York Times' photos of the journey here. While you're at it you could do worse than reading Trotsky's collected Balkan War journalism, especially his accounts of the chaos and exuberance of train travel in the Balkans. For an account of what exactly continues to divide the region, the anarchist activist for Balkan federation, Andre Grubacic, writes journalism that is fiery, informative, and necessary.

Read: Trotsky's Balkan War journalism; Andre Grubacic's Don't Mourn, Balkanize!

Some serious wall, Berlin

9. Hohenschoenhausen Stasi Prison, Berlin

http://en.stiftung-hsh.de/

Once the DDR security police's biggest prison, the fleeing former occupants had no time to ditch its shocking contents. What was discovered was as alarming to outside observers as it was already suspected by DDR citizens. Torture, standing-cells, interrogations rooms, and cosy, well-equipped offices helped sustain what was - at the time - the most high-tech surveillance state that ever existed. Eric Hobsbawm once said that the DDR had to be considered, even by the western Left, a "going concern" - i.e. a real possibility for change in the capitalist world, one worthy of supporting - despite it being a "nasty little place". That ambiguity can be debated, and the presentation of the museum today laudably encourages it. Members of the public are shown around either by students of the regime or former inmates. Ideological arguments over the state's legacy are encouraged. As our party was told, former Stasi men keep showing up in the tour groups, stepping forward to have a pop at those they once interred there. All of which adds an air of the surreal to proceedings. This is actually what prevents the complex from turning into a mere museum piece: its importance is still contested. Anna Applebaum's book Iron Curtain ably demonstrates how, throughout postwar eastern Europe, it was the security forces which the communists took hold of first, whilst still ruling in relatively democratic government coalitions. Without the Soviet-backed security police, communist power could not have been consolidated. That those secret services later became so pervasive and so powerful should come as no surprise.

Read: Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, Anne Applebaum; Stasiland, Anna Funder

Advertisement for Wade Goddard's collection Enclave

8. War Photo Ltd. Gallery, Dubrovnik, Croatia

http://www.warphotoltd.com/

I visited while this anomalously reflective gallery was displaying Wade Goddard's series of photos taken in Mostar during the Croat siege of the Herzegovinan capital. The permanent exhibition is equally striking, though perhaps overly broad, and suffers from an attempt to exclude Serbs from the halo of victimhood. As a demonstration of the politicisation of mass killing and ethnic crime that still goes on in the former Yugoslavia it is chilling, cutting straight through Croatia's EU-backed, tourism-driven success. The peace that holds in the Balkans is pegged largely to the project of EU integration, yet no broader inter-ethnic settlement has been reached outside of the narrow focus of all parties on cooperation with the west. What this means for the people of the former Yugoslavia is a whole series of unanswered, though highly contested, political questions. The gallery preserves and re-presents those questions for international holiday-makers who appear otherwise uninterested. Visit it while reading Susan Woodward's excellent study of the collapse of Yugoslavia, which asks important questions about the role of apparently diplomatic, peace-brokering international institutions in the country's breakdown and, by no means a necessary result of that collapse, the outbreak of inter-ethnic war.

Read: Balkan Tragedy, Susan Woodward

Arty silliness at Prague's Meet Factory

7. Meet Factory, gallery and club, Smichov, Prague

http://www.meetfactory.cz/cs

This monument to artistic silliness is barmy in all the right ways. Established by Czech 'bad boy' artist David Cerny (he of the massive floating middle finger), it's got just the right mix of pretentious exclusivity and rough-edged grottiness to make it by turns hilarious and provocative A very good exhibition of the art of dissent - focusing on Pussy Riot, but including all sorts of witty and vulgar outrage - combined with a man in an excellent onesie cutting people's hair as others thoughtfully looked on. As it got later, the club got going, a suitably eccentric indie-jazz outfit complete with yelping vocalist keeping everyone happy. There was even some pretty awesome burlesque. How's that for civil society? Prague how it's meant to be then: full of wanky would-be poets doing odd things in shuttered factories. Rarely does a place live up to its own myth; this is one of those times.  

Read: A play by Vaclav Havel while sporting a neckerchief and goatee

Spot the accordionist: Kino Bosna

6. Kino Bosna, Sarajevo, Bosnia

Kino Bosna is, as its name suggests, a former cinema in the heart of Sarajevo. The stage and plush seating are all still there, along with at least some of the fancy drapery, now grubby and threadbare from beer and revelry. Even in the middle of February, when we went, it was stiflingly crowded, people spilling out onto the street. It has just enough old worldiness about it to feel grand, though it's rough-edged enough to be exciting. Despite its obvious 'coolness' it felt peculiarly representative of Sarajevo itself: a clash of Habsburg administrative, moderninsing grandeur with more raucous Balkan folk culture (somewhat inevitably the house band patrols the aisles, provoking singalongs and collecting change). Don't take the book with you, but you could do worse than read Misha Glenny's panoramic historical survey The Balkans:1804-2012 for a sense of the clash and collaboration of cultures both local and foreign which produced Sarajevo's sense of colour and excitement.

Read: The Balkans: 1804-2012, Misha Glenny

Memorial to the Gdansk Shipworkers, Gdansk, Poland

5. The Roads to Freedom exhibition, Gdansk, Poland

Your ticket comes in the form of a meat ration coupon! There are dummies in ill fitting grey uniforms and bad wigs! There's a mock up of a state-run corner shop, its shelves characteristically stripped! After this opening triple salvo things trail off a bit, with fairly familiar anti-communist tropes cropping up. The emotional and practical alliance forged between the battle-ready new Pope (an unquestionable hero in Poland, despite his deep conservatism) and the hardy, no-nonsense Gdansk shipworkers has been well-told. Norman Davies' second volume of Polish history really comes to life at this point. I read Victor Sebestyen's Revolution 1989 but I'm sure there are plenty of good accounts out there. The photo exhibitions and arrayed tools of police repression are pretty standard fare in this part of the world. Yet as a memorial to the first mass workers' opposition to emerge in the eastern bloc in thirty years, the exhibition has an irresistible story of moral purpose, and eventual victory, to tell.

Read: God's Playground: A History of Poland Vol.II, Norman Davies; Revolution 1989, Victor Sebestyen

After sunset, Prague gets creepy

4. Prague's Hidden Old Town

Prague's Old Town is deservedly famous, all the more so for escaping the 20th century relatively unscathed (save a bit of Nazi arson during the Prague Uprising). But owing to its major sights lying on a single route (the so-called Golden Mile) it gets horribly congested, and is overwhelmed by cheap souvenir shops and terrible pubs. Though quieter and less ornate than the rat run between Na Prikope and Charles Bridge, the route down to the river from Betlemske Namesti offers relief from crowds and an experience of what Prague might have been like in the 1960s, if not the 1860s. Starting at Betlemske kaple (Bethlehem chapel) - the first in the Bohemian Crown Lands to conduct services in Czech - wander its largely deserted residential back streets, where shop fronts retain an air of care-worn dilapidation and the staff are no more welcoming. At night its deep shadows, the dim glow of street lamps, and only occasional pedestrians, give it a real air of creepiness. This is the Prague of which Angelo Maria Ripellino wrote in the 1960s - a Prague whose seedy, narcotic energy was buried in underground taverns, only occasionally spilling out into the foggy night air. This Prague has been largely vanquished from the Prada shops of Josefov. Once home to brothels and radical religious reform movements alike, this historically poor quarter of the Old Town can still evoke the piled up history of Prague's nefarious underworld.

Read: Magic Prague, Angelo Maria Ripellino

Ready for action: Cesky Krumlov

3. Go Rafting in Cesky Krumlov

If a mode of transport doesn't involve the sole use of my legs, it'll probably get me a bit worried. As with my near-death kayaking experience in Dubrovnik, rafting on a drizzly day in Cesky Krumlov was not a prospect that filled me with joy. As it turned out the whole thing unfolded quite calmly, the Baroque and Gothic spires of the town rising up over the tops of tousled, ramshackle houses as we bobbed leisurely past. The gentle pace left ample time to peak into the holiday homes stacked up on the river bank. Egon Schiele's studies of the town give it a romantic, tumble-down quality, though the poetic effect is muddied by heavy, tea-bag-stain browns. This dubious compliment was not appreciated and, like some dodgy medieval necromancer, the locals eventually ran him out. On this soggy spring day, dirty water trickling down off everything, he's vindicated. A deep sense of weariness weighed down on the clouded town, a thin mist rolling off the river and clogging up the narrow streets. The only change of pace came as we slid down weirs, which are basically man-made rapids used to trouble novice rafters. After each one we collided with the river bank and ended up drifting, backwards, upstream. Not an entirely graceful affair after all, then. Bideleux and Jeffries' A History of Eastern Europe paints a vast picture of precisely the sort of dynasty - Habsburg, Eggenburg, Shcwarzneburg - who governed towns like Krumlov throughout the region. Its splendour is largely down to those vanished masters.

Read: A History of Eastern Europe, Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries

Exhibits at the Outdoor Museum, Tallinn

2. The Outdoor Museum, Tallinn, Estonia

http://www.visitestonia.com/en/north-estonia-open-air-museums

Perfectly preserved and restored, a vast collection of housing is tucked away in this mega-compound. All in various states of decay when they were brought in from the wild, all have been nursed back to health. What makes it special is the Estonian commitment to historical reenactment. The act never drops. I stumbled upon a remarkably well-acted domestic bust up between a couple in the midst of making lunch. The argument continued long after I awkwardly excused myself. Keep a store of enthusiasm for the staple folk dances that kick off in the courtyards of village meeting-halls. The boundary between reality and fiction collapses, as Estonians revel in a disjointed historical mash up, the epitome of Fredric Jameson's concept of the postmodern pastiche of historical forms.

Read: Anything by Fredric Jameson 

Budapest courtyard

1. Stay in an apartment in Budapest

Hostels are overpriced and usually full of awful people you'd otherwise go to great lengths to avoid meeting. The solution is to stay in a nice apartment that some arty couple have renovated before giving it to the world. It's comfortable, warm, and generally cheaper than other options. Plus, at the end you leave feeling like a real person, rather than a beer-soaked gap-year cartoon enthusing about how much you love traveling and 'experiencing new things'.

Read: Something cosy and familiar

And one place you definitely shouldn't go:

Olomouc Diocesan Museum

Museums in the Czech Republic are generally not much cop, but this is a sort of shit-museum-concentrate, a veritable puree of everything that's dull, overly precious and frankly intimidating about collecting and exhibiting old stuff. Firstly, the collection is made up of the cast offs of local bishops, so it's about as fun as a visit to a priest's living room. The staff are all over sixty and greet visitors with feeble smiles, hiding their deep suspicion and dislike behind an air of pushy enthusiasm. Whether it's boredom or distrust, they all feel compelled to tiptoe, silent and phantom-like, a few paces behind you. At one point the floor is deemed so remarkable that you're forced to wear slippers to walk on it. All this while being forced to inspect centuries of hoarded religious paraphernalia under their watchful eyes. 'What's this?' Siobhan asked, pointing at a display. 'Don't know, don't care,' I replied, which sounds petty, but by that point, exhausted from being shepherded from one boring assemblage of pottery to another, it was true. Joyless from start to finish. 

 

Vinohrady Synagogue

Postcard of Vinohrady Synagogue

In the self-styled literarni kavarna (literary cafe) Blatouch two young women play dress-up with the vintage clothes they are selling. To nondescript rinkydink piano they adorn themselves in faux-1920s pyjamas and beads. I walk through from the empty bar, catching sight of their hoard - displayed on hatstands in the backroom parlour - down the jumbled, wood panelled corridor. They laugh slightly as I ask if I can come through. They are surrounded by things - some rich and luxurious; some trashy or just torn - on all sides, strewn gorgeously over the vintage gramophones and kitschy Weimar chairs that make up the cafe's decor.

As I walk towards the parlour - catching a glimpse of a cheap bowler perched on a hatstand; a clutter of suitcases and piled clothes behind it - I am reminded of a photo taken not far from here, in 1939. Unintentionally recreating the oblique angle of Hitchcockian anxiety, a black and white camera points down from the upper gallery of a synagogue in the direction of the far left passage. Things belonging to lives now knocked violently off-kilter are stacked everywhere. Fur coats and expensive hats; old wardrobes and mirrors; stacks of dressing tables. All the material of full lives. The synagogue in question is Vinohradska Synagoga (Vinohrady Synagogue) and it no longer exists. It was bombed - one assumes accidentally - by the Allies in 1945.

The day after the first December snow I walk down to Sazavska Street where the synagogue used to stand. It's still too warm on the groud to settle so the snow forms a thin, icy paste on the cracked pavements. A few pubs - still to open; it's early Saturday afternoon - have swung open their doors to let the cold air filter through their dank passages. These rare stabs of colour and light contrast dramatically with the greys and sunken pastels of the buildings which house them. The roads are nearly empty. An old man with a single crutch carefully makes his way to the road's end, where he will turn left and walk to the potraviny on Francouska. I follow him at a distance and watch him pass by the big faded-yellow block of the modern Zahradni skola (basic school) that has replaced the synagogue. I walk back and forth in front of it for a minute or two as the snow starts drifting down again.

The only sign I can find of the old Vinohradska synagoga is a plaque fastened to the inner wall of the school's entrance:

Na tento misto stala od roku 1896

VINOHRADSKA SYNAGOGA

14 Unora byla bombardovanim

jezce poskozena v roce 1951 zborena

(From 1896 the Vinohrady Synagogue stood here

On the 14th February it was bombed

In the year1951 it was demolished)

After the war a few Jewish survivors returned to find a shell where the synagogue had stood. They recommended the site be turned into apartments for other survivors. The authorities refused and eventually built a totally new structure in the synagogue's place - a typical 50s school bearing a clunky mural of some proletarians tousling over the future. The plaque on the school's entrance shows the old synagogue in its twin-towered glory, though it's fissured down the middle. I like to imagine this last detail was a deliberate insertion by local Jews: a remark upon the unhealable wound inflicted, and the lack of possible redress. After the declaration that a school would be built there, the local Jews requested that the remaining bricks be used to help in the restoration of a synagogue in neighbouring Liben. The city authorities refused on the grounds that the bricks were state property and had to be disposed of appropriately.

The Jewish community of Vinohrady is often forgotten. The old Prague ghetto had, between 1893 and 1913, been demolished. The sinister flood plane that had housed such terrifying myths as the clay-based Golem was finally transformed into a glittering Parisian show-piece. Similarly, Vinohrady, previously a semi-established village, had evolved into an important suburban refuge for the city's wealthy. The city's districts were rationalised and incorporated into a much extended municipal body (this in line with the Habsburg drive towards economic modernisation). Vinohrady was central to this, its magnificent, tree-lined boulevards signalling a notable transformation in urban life and the emergence of a newly-minted, self-confident social class: the industrial and financial bourgeoisie. The swanky neo-Gothic apartment blocks were deliberate statements of wealth. They were also built to be self-consciously historical, a celebration of grandeur and a claim to significance. Traders were no longer to be scorned, but clearly perceived of themselves as the new social drivers of change. Throughout Vinohrady huge spires and squat domes stand atop apartment blocks. Cherubim leer down from archways. Gold-leaf entwines itself around the drooping lips of balconies. Neo-Gothic statuettes retreat into the alcoves of roomy frontages. 

Momentarily triumphant, the new bourgeoisie mistook technical improvements in its local conditions for the form of its world historical predominance. Prague Jewry found, in this sudden liberalisation of money and attitudes, a certain freedom. Vinohradska Synagoga was equivalent to the self-declaration of the Christian bourgeoisie - though fewer mobs gathered outside the latter. Indeed the synagogue took on totemic significance for native anti-semtism. Stereotyped as 'Agents of the Germans', Prague Jewry made its home in quiet Vinohrady. Mobs would descend occasionally, and long before 1939. In the event, the synagogue itself nearly survived the war. But architectural survival was always possible, if only in the form of a museum piece. It was the Jewish life of Prague that would fail to survive. In this sense Nazism and extreme nationalism had the ultimate triumph.         

Russia and the Left: From Statism to Civil Society Part II

The following is a partner piece, written to accompany and deepen the argument made in an essay recently published by New Left Project. That text is available here:

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/russia_and_the_left_from_statism_to_civil_society

Legacy of Statism

Though commentators turn their eyes to autocrats past, no period is so influential and yet so difficult to integrate into a general narrative as that of the Russian Federation's immediate predecessor, the Soviet Union. As Soviet life grows historically more distant, so it appears incommensurably simpler. One manifestation of this is nostalgia for the bygone era. Another, of western descent, is a feeling that the nationalist behemoth of the Putin era bears little relation to the progressive rationalism of, say, the Khrushchev years. Yet even this apparently straightforward rationalism is prone to misinterpretation.

The deformation of the USSR had both structural and voluntarist causes, both rooted in the initial phase of the post-revolutionary era (from roughly 1917 to, say, Trotsky's expulsion). On the voluntarist side can be put the philosophical and doctrinal composition of the Bolshevik Party, the rapid development of which, during 1917, led almost inexorably away from revolutionary principle and towards something like "pure practice" (or in other words, "what Lenin says goes"). Though extraordinarily strategically adaptable, Bolshevism became increasingly narrowly focused on securing the Party's interest within the Russian domestic sphere. Paradoxically, their political flexibility and skill came at the cost of theoretical myopia. On the other hand were the efforts of the Allied Powers to "strangle the Bolshevik baby in its crib" (according to Churchill), by the singular means of invasion. No matter that the Bolsheviks, in line with their declared opposition to the war, had already withdrawn.

At the structural level the Russian economy was deeply unsuited to the strain of social transformation needed to further the goals of the Revolution. Russia was broke from the War and deeply in need of modernisation anyway. Add to this a profound nationalist reaction and ever increasing global economic instability and you have the makings of a catastrophe.

This instability not only created the conditions for the October Revolution, but also drove its protagonists in the harshest of directions, distorting the project of socialist transformation from the outset. Bolshevik ideology always contained the seeds of grotesque distortions of socialist practice; the situation of the world economy, and of Russia in particular, after the end of the First World War practically guaranteed them. In the long run Churchill's desire was met. Shorn of the ability to experiment with new economic and social institutions by global instability, and finding it necessary to impose harsh labour controls in the face of continuing unrest, the Soviet Union became just another, particularly volatile reflection of tendencies within global capitalism.

A Fulcrum of Volatility

Take this description of the capitalist world economy in the 1980s:

...the technologies and operating procedures of most modern corporations; the forms of labour-market control defended by many labour movements; the instruments of macroeconomic control developed by bureaucrats and economists in the welfare states; and the rules of international monetary and trading systems established immediately after World War II - all must be modified, even discarded, if the chronic economic diseases of our times are to be cured.¹

If we except the reference to independent labour movement activities (and, initially perhaps, to global financial governance) it's quite possible to extend this description to the post-War USSR and the whole of the Socialist bloc. In many ways these were the most radical expressions of the meeting of administered capitalism (the Taylorist division of labour; 'scientific' managerialism; macroeconomic controls overseen by centralized bureaucracy, and so on) with welfare state redistributive government. It was this set of characteristics that eventually made the USSR so vulnerable when the post-War Golden Age came to an end and the new regime of "flexible specialisation" kicked in.

Following the oil shocks of the 1970s, which were themselves partly the result of the breakdown of the old monetary order of the Gold Standard through which the dollar bankrolled Europe and Japan and managed prices, western Europe cut its oil consumption by 40%. The USSR only managed cutbacks of 20%.² Continuing to rely on increasingly volatile markets where other, more adaptable economies could drive demand in different directions, the institutional rigidities built into the Bloc economies meant they amplified the contradictions of the world market. "By the early 1980s Eastern Europe was in an acute energy crisis. This in turn produced shortages of food and manufactured goods."³ The only exceptions were those, like Hungary, who plunged further into debt to sustain domestic consumption.

Incapable of political reform, and being prised open by the increasingly volatile global economy, the USSR and the rest of the Soviet bloc began to regionalise, fragment, and slowly to combust. Capital shrugged off its Post-War baggage, and was in the process of shrugging off 'really existing socialism'.

Realignments

The weekend that Gorbachev resigned as party leader, and plumes of smoke began rising from party archives across the country, I was at a conference about anti-corporate environmental strategies in Los Angeles... I didn't hear the Soviet Union or the collapse of communism mentioned once... The Soviet Union's disintegration, the end to what electrified it all three quarters of a century ago, didn't seize the imagination of those conference-goers and, suffocated by the ecstasies of the corporate press, they wanted to talk about anything else.

Alexander Cockburn, 'Radical as Reality'⁴

Socialism is a living creature which can live without coercion or distortion.

Communist Party official, 1989⁵

In Russia today around 100 billionaires own 30 per cent of all assets.

Washington Times, 22/11/12

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after nearly forty years of energetic denunciations of Stalinism, the western contingent of the radical Left (or what remained of it barring defectors) fell somewhat quiet on the topic of communism. 'Goodbye to All That' was Eric Hobsbawm's dismissal. Two of America's most prominent Marxist economists, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, confessed their impatience with the old guard's persistent apologism. The feeling of shaking off old burdens - in this they resembled capitalism itself - was almost audible.

In the mid-80s Noam Chomsky insisted on a radical contradiction between the Soviet Union and socialism. The association of one with the other was a simple coup of propaganda (for both sides). Old Trots like Ernest Mandel permitted the description "deformed worker's state" and, a la the old man, insisted that backwards countries never could have produced socialism anyway.⁶ Susan Woodward suggested that, beneath the surface, communist and non-communist systems shared a common inheritance: they were attempted "rational approaches to the material world and its development."⁷

Even as some former dissidents have moved to the Left (realizing the rosiness of Europe's welfare states was only ever for the few and has been buckling of late), it is rare to find a satisfactory account of what 'really existing socialism' was and how it got that way. The Hungarian dissident and philosopher G.M.Tamas offers this description: "A system of state capitalism" in which "commodity production, wage labour, money and the separation of the producers from the means of production" still predominated. In other words, it was just another, more poorly designed capitalism.

On their 1990 visit to the Soviet Union Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin reported on the flourishing, for the first time since the early 1920s, of genuine soviet democracy. A civil society group called the Popular Front, having secured a 20% presence in the Soviets, was organising the restoration of churches in the industrial city of Yaroslavl. This loose compendium of social movements, a sort of hastily assembled Big Society thrusting itself into the socialist state apparatus, operated, as the authors say, entirely "in the spirit of Perestroika". While in Moscow laws overriding the Soviets and reducing the newly-acquired powers of the independent unions were being quietly passed, workers in the industrial hinterlands were creating a novel form of freedom. As the state turned towards the interests of capital, however, this novelty became increasingly restricted.

At the time of Panitch and Gindin's visit, Yeltsin had already been elected President of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. Gorbachev's, and by extension the Soviet Union's, days were numbered. The streak of liberalism introduced by Gorbachev's cadre of reformers was about to be overwhelmed by decentralizing, nationalist forces far beyond their control. In the absence of a state concerned with regulating the atmosphere in which worker's democratic freedoms were explored, the whole experiment was to be quickly stubbed out. The story of mass unemployment and impoverishment that followed is by now a familiar one. To conclude, then, with the reflections of female auto plant workers in Yaroslavl in 1990, on the recent pro-union changes, shortlived though they were, and the swelling optimism of the newly assertive worker's movement:

Woman I: Before the change, almost all decisions were made by the administration. Now there must be consultation with the trade union committee and the workers have a much greater say.

Woman 4: Control by [Government] Ministries is still there, and this limits managers' power and workers' collectives' power. So the enterprises must become free of the Ministries first of all, and then the workers' collective councils will really become strong. ⁸

1Piore and Sable, The Second Industrial Divide, 4-5

2Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 473-4

3Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 474

4Available in, Blackburn ed., After the Fall

5Quoted in Panitch and Gindin, 'Perestroika and the Proletariat', Socialist Register 27

6See: Mandel, Trotsky: A Study in the Dynamic of his Thought

7Woodward, 'Soviet Rehearsal in Yugoslavia?' in Socialist Register 27

8See: Panitch and Gindin, 'Perestroika and the Proletariat', in Socialist Register 27

Eight Things You Shouldn't Bother Doing in Eastern and Central Europe

Tourism in Europe: A World of Fun

"Come to Europe! It's full of history." What this really means is that Europe is full of old things supposed ipso facto to exude importance. This is analogous to an old person insisting on their right to teach history by virtue of being older than most people. Old stuff can, of course, be very interesting, but this happens only when it's hammered into meaningful shape by someone who knows something about it.

So with this in mind, here are eight thoroughly uninteresting places you shouldn't bother visiting in Eastern and Central Europe. Uninteresting not because of something lacking in themselves (not usually at least) but because no one has bothered to make them interesting.

1. Prague Public Transport Museum

"Oddly pedestrian," was my (unfairly ignored) quip. A run through tram history is only ever going to command a niche audience, but I'm - potentially at least - among that number and was still left wanting. A dull shed of 120 years' worth of old trams, it's literally made for tram-spotters. Unfortunately the most recent 20 have been left off (because, I suppose, they're still being used). 1990 appears to have marked the point at which tram evolution sped up, so almost all the exhibits are very similar. The inspection of very minor differences this entails is what I imagine watching evolution in real time would be like: that is, a kind of cosmic paint-drying process.

http://www.dpp.cz/en/urban-mass-transit-museum/

2. Rynek Underground, Krakow

A big budget spectacular (holographs projected onto curtains of mist!) which fails to hide the fact you're really just walking around some old foundations. Unlike other entries in this post, it's essentially dull, not just dull in execution, and the show-off designers know it. Full of reams of incomprehensible statistics about column widths and periodical fires, no amount of interactivity can rescue it. The original investors wanted to open a subterranean mall, which would at least have served a penetrable function.

http://www.mhk.pl/

3. Bastion Tunnels Museum, Tallinn

A short film (confusingly fronted by a friendly cartoon worm) whizzes through all of Estonia's history, then a stentorian, glazed-eyed guide marches you below ground where you take a "train to the future" (essentially a Stannah stair-lift placed horizontally down a narrow, unadorned tunnel). The train was broken when we went, so we looked at it and then walked. At the end of the tunnel was a TV showing possible futures of Tallinn. Then we walked back, listening as the tour guide vented her frustrations at the city's homeless (selfish enough to take up residence in the tunnels in winter). Next we were shown some dressed up shop dummies in various states of medieval contortion and finally kicked into the mid-day sun, blinking dizzily.

http://linnamuuseum.ee/kok/en/

4. Museum of Czech History, The National Monument on Vitkov Hill, Prague

Vitkov is home to a glowering Jan Zizka, eyeing up the city below him from horseback. But the museum in the building behind him lacks any of his stern atmospherics. Another confusion of showy exhibits, garbled translations and lack of direction, there's some great stuff hidden in here. The problem is, with its jumping from one point in historical time to another, its lack of decent writing, and its strange pacing, it manages to make modern Czech history at once boring and dispiriting. Then it starts on about sports uniforms. Thoroughly unenlightening despite the spectacle.

http://www.nm.cz/Hlavni-strana/Visit-Us/National-Memorial-on-the-Vitkov-Hill.html

5. Funicular Railway, Budapest

Ok, it might seem churlish to get angry with transport (twice), but this is appallingly dull. You can't really see out of it, it doesn't go very high or fast, and it costs a lot of money. The fact you're riding something old adds nothing to the experience, and certainly the terrifying staff won't make things better. Save the money and go on Budapest's much more entertaining Metro Line 1 - the second oldest in the world, complete with little tiny trains and platforms that look like some Georgian nostalgist's living room. Excellent.

http://visitbudapest.travel/activities/fun-things-to-do/castle-hill-funicular/

6. Design Museum, Helsinki

By no stretch is this either eastern or central, but it is boring. Like everything else in Scandinavia it's very cool and not at all hateable. In fact, I really wanted to enjoy it. But there's just so much of it. This is a real case of quantity over quality. Eventually the comparative novelty of seeing different types of the same thing (scissors with square handles; scissors with round handles, and so on) wears off and you start to feel like you're just wandering around a warehouse.

http://www.designmuseum.fi/en/

7. The Biggest Church in Gdansk

Once the biggest Lutheran church in the world, it's spacious enough for 25,000 worshippers to fit in. Pews aside, there's not really much there, however. It's capacious and echoey, but with its white-washed walls it feels more like a badly painted waiting room than a site of God's magnificence. It's also completely open, meaning there's no point walking around it because you can see it all from the entrance. Where's the Mystery in that?

8. Prison Museum, Brno

Finally, Brno. Not a city known for its abundance of charm, this is the literal pinnacle of its mediocrity. In the heart of the hilltop castle Spilberk, this museum promises a re-creation of daily life in the underground warren of tunnels (again!) that once made up the local prison. Except here the typical badly posed shop dummies in silly wigs are decidedly thin on the ground. In their place is - well, nothing actually. An occasional plaque bearing a number guides your feet. Apart from that you are left in semi-darkness pondering blank grey walls and your own existential pointlessness. No info cards, no real clue as to what went on, no pictures, just the sound of your own foot-steps in the dimming twilight. 

http://www.spilberk.cz/old/eng/other/kasematy.html

And two honourable exceptions...

DDR Museum, Berlin

Good exhibits, proper lighting, a sense of historical place and time, and a prodding sense of humour, combine to genuinely illuminating effect. I left not only knowing more, but also entertained and a tiny bit baffled. Which is exactly how a tourist attraction should leave you.

http://www.ddr-museum.de/en

Rakvere Castle, Estonia

You'll almost certainly never go there (it's in a provincial Estonian town with all the tourist pull of Gillingham), but it is a very good day out. No convincing sense of history or research (budget limitations probably pertain here), but it does make the most of its limitations. People bound about on horses, there's a re-creation of a medieval red light district, and a haunted chamber in which a grizzly old man assaults you in bad German. Great fun.

http://www.rakverelinnus.ee/en