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Wednesday, April 4, 2001
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End of 'old' regimes may not necessarily mark the beginning of a 'new' Europe By David B. Brown While there is nearly unanimous agreement on the past, there is far less on the future. Vaclav Havel, for one, sees a role for Czechs in an emerging, reinvigorated European family; Vaclav Klaus is less enthusiastic about the European project. Recent experience leads me to part company with Mr. Havel, whom I admire so much, and in this instance empathize more with Mr. Klaus, with whom I so seldom agree. Over the past five years I have lived in the post-communist countries of the Czech Republic, Hungary and currently, Latvia. Only in my current position am I working closely with Western Europeans, and it has proved fascinating. Without this experience I would have returned to the United States confident that I knew quite a lot about life under communism, since I count among my friends many people who spent the majority of their lives living under it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that much of what I had previously concluded was part and parcel of the communist legacy may just be part and parcel of the European legacy. I teach law at a post-graduate law institution. Two years old and meticulously planned, it is sponsored by the Swedish government and George Soros. It is housed in a sparkling, refurbished Art Nouveau building and I am quite confident that it will become a legal institution not just for Latvia and other Baltic nations, but on a par with the very best of the new institutions of Eastern Europe. But ... Imagine my surprise at my first faculty meeting, in which we went around the table "reporting" on our performance to date. Those who know something about the communist legacy will not be surprised to learn that all the faculty were busy being quite productive and the students were quite impressive this year and overall the outlook was quite good. Someone said something about coffee, and I thought, well, fine, now we can take a short break and then get down to the business of saying what's really on our minds. But I was told that the faculty meeting was over. Performance art I thought perhaps that this was just the European way of getting off to a nice congenial start, and subsequent meetings would have more substance. Surely after only two years of classes, there must be others eager to discuss their failures and successes in the classroom, their ideas about what has been particularly successful and what has not, what needs to be finely tuned and what has to be done away with entirely, ways in which we can make sure that we are being demanding without being unrealistic. But none of this was to be. Instead, the meetings continued in ways that I had thought were the sole province of communist operatives. They were a kind of performance art. Self-criticism was simply not a part of the performance. Rather than discussing shortcomings, everything was nearly always reported as bright and rosy. There was great emphasis put on academic independence -- but just what this was meant to convey I was never sure. Individual professors were accountable not to each other under peer review, but judged solely by administrators based for the most part on student evaluations that were transcribed into scientifically indisputable graphs and charts. I arrived in Prague five years ago with much enthusiasm for the European project. I was no expert on the euro or the European Union in general, but I admired the Europeans for wanting to move ahead. I admired them for wanting to combat perceived American hegemony. Recently, I have begun to question that admiration. While it is true that Americans prospered economically and were likely spurred on by their competition with the Soviet Union, there were costs. The Cold War was culturally and socially isolating. I wonder whether Europeans are willing to make the same kinds of sacrifices to compete with U.S. consumerism that Americans were asked to make to ward off Stalinism? That remains to be seen. But as the post-communist world evolves it is becoming increasingly clear that there is still no broad-based agreement on just what constitutes a "normal" European country. For that reason alone, it is an interesting time to be in this region. -- The writer is the former Chairman of the School of Legal Studies at Anglo-American College in Prague. He now teaches law in Riga. Britain still open for business By David Broucher 'That King fellow, he done do no harm' E-MALE Explaining Uncle Sma Postview editorial |
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