The cultural weapon

used by the Slovakian establishment. This kind of policies will function as long as there will be individuals to answer the nationalistic messages. And you have this potential target-group because for decades, nationalism was in this part of Europe the answer to structural disfunctions, incapacity to understand the functioning of economic markets and the late modernisation. It is a vicious circle and it is how the members of the societies from this region are considering appropriate to win and request symbolic and electoral support.

The misleading names of post-communist parties

For example: the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

It was created in 1989.
Among its "aims":
- Capital punishment for those convicted of terrorism, premeditated murder, and other serious crimes;
- The abolition of "non-traditional" and "fanatic" religious sects in Russia;
- Control of all agricultural land by the state

Mentioned just a couple of example, prooving the full contradition between the name and the practical objectives. The leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is currently mentioning the need to reinforce the "Russian power', "accusing" its political opponents of being "Jews".

Once again, in order to open the ways of understanding the post-communist world, it is necessary a very careful lecture and decyphering work of words, expressions and attitudes.

Triumph and tragedy mark 60 years of German sport

DPA May 18

Hamburg - Radio reporter Herbert Zimmermann's emotional match commentary in the closing seconds reverberates down the years. "The Hungarians are given a throw-in. It's taken - comes to Bozsik - it's over! Aus! Aus! Aus! Das Spiel ist aus! (The game is over!) Germany are world champions...!"The few black and white clips of the 3-2 win over Hungary in football's 1954 World Cup final are testimony not only to another age - when radio rather than television was the medium to galvanize the masses - but to a defining moment in German sporting history. The win in Switzerland became known as "the miracle of Berne," returning pride to a people humiliated and devastated by World War II. Players such as captain Fritz Walter entered Germany's footballing hall of fame. Others were to follow, notably Franz Beckenbauer who led the then-West Germany as captain in 1974 and coach in 1990 to two more world titles. The latter, shortly before German unification, prompted "The Kaiser" to predict Germany would "probably be unbeatable for years" - rashly as he was later to admit. East plus West did not make Germany twice as strong, as the nation was also to learn at the Olympics when the medal tallies soon dwindled and sport had to deal with the legacy of systematic doping. Beckenbauer, however, could claim another major triumph when the nation hosted the 2006 World Cup - 32 years after the tournament took place on West German soil in a nation then divided by the Cold War. With Beckenbauer as organizing committee chief, the event proved to be a catalyst for an outpouring of patriotism and flag-waving. Since the war, many Germans had felt uncomfortable with overt displays of nationalism, but here was a clear sign that people could now demonstrate uninhibited feelings of national pride without shame. Or, as Britain's Times newspaper saw it after witnessing hundreds of thousands at a street party off Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, Germany had become "a normal nation" once more. "Not since the Third Reich has there been such a public outpouring of national pride, though this bears no comparison to the stage management of the Nazis," the paper wrote. As with 1954's "miracle", a World Cup had offered the country a chance to take another look at itself - and it liked what it saw. "The Germans are identifying themselves with their country and its national colours. I think that's great. And I think it's great that I'm not the only one with a flag on my car," President Horst Koehler said during the tournament. If the 2006 World Cup was a high point, the 1972 Munich Olympics - also an opportunity to present the friendly and welcoming face of Germany - marked an abject low in the history of the Games. Munich was the second summer Games to be held on German soil since the Nazi-tainted 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes as a result of a Palestinian terrorist attack remains a lasting stain. Members of the Black September group had seized the athletes inside the Olympic village, immediately killing two of them. In a failed rescue attempt at a military airport the remaining Israelis, a German policeman and five of eight terrorists were killed. The Olympic events were briefly suspended but Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, controversially decided that "the Games must go on. "Although terrorism was a new dimension, sport had always been used and abused for political prestige, none more so than in communist East Germany, which became a formidable power in Olympic sport. East also famously triumphed over West on the football field at the 1974 World Cup - a result which did not stop West Germany going on to beat the Netherlands in the final in Munich. There have been many other great sporting moments and sporting heroes. Steffi Graf and Boris Becker triggered a tennis boom in the latter 1980s and 1990s. Michael Schumacher did much the same for the popularity of Formula One motor-racing, while East Germany's figure skating queen Katarina Witt was popular on both sides of the divide. Although rivals before unification, both German teams in fact took part in the Olympics as a united team under one flag between 1956 and 1964. But according to historian Uta Balbier, the East German leadership had soon realized it could circumvent diplomatic isolation by promoting cultural relations. "Sport was the ideal vehicle for this," said Balbier, author of The Cold War on the Cinder Track - German-German Sport from 1950 - 1972. A Political History, in an interview with the Goethe Institute. The state could prove how good it was by the number of medals it won and take pride in the hoisting of its flag and the playing of the anthem at victory ceremonies, she said. East Germany won 409 medals (West Germany: 204) at summer Olympics from 1968 to 1988, despite a boycott in 1984. But it was tarnished glory. Germany is still coping with the aftermath of its state-sponsored doping programme and the exploitation of many innocent young athletes.

Flag on the Field

Soccer, the last acceptable form of nationalism.

Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 12:37 PM ET
Slate

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Once, and only once, have I attended a world class—not quite World Cup—soccer game: England was playing Germany in London in the semifinals of the European championships. I'd previously been to a Super Bowl and one or two Redskins' games, but nothing really prepared me for the decibel level of Wembley Stadium. Over and over again, the fans sang "Football's Coming Home," a weirdly catchy tune, with lyrics predicated on the mystical notion that football (soccer), a game the English invented, was finally "coming home"—and that the chronically weak English team would once again become great. They also chanted. The night I watched England play, they mostly chanted, "Here we go, here we go, here we go," but sometimes the chants are more original. During the England-Argentina World Cup match last week, for example, they chanted, "Where is your navy? At the bottom of the sea"—a not terribly subtle reference to the Falklands War. About once a year, a British anthropologist is trotted out to analyze the chants as a vestigial form of primitive cult religions.

Outside the stadium that day, soccer mania had gripped the nation—and it is a mistake to imagine that only the hooligans temporarily turn into chauvinistic nationalists on the day of an England match. Otherwise well-behaved friends of mine were genuinely outraged that I, a mere foreigner, had received a press ticket. Germany jokes, usually involving the Nazis, were all the rage. One was attributed to Mrs. Thatcher, who upon being told that Germany had defeated England (which they did, of course) had allegedly replied, "They may have beat us at our national game, but we beat them twice at their national game in the 20^th century."

And everyone laughed. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism—even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism—is acceptable in Britain. Which is odd, given that it isn't acceptable in other contexts, not in Britain and not anywhere in Western Europe, where most countries' political elites, at least, are ideologically dedicated to diluting their national identities into the broader European Union—as quickly as possible.

In Britain, even what Americans would consider to be ordinary patriotism is often suspect. When Tony Blair first entered the prime minister's residence in Downing Street, in 1997, he staged a little parade of well-wishers, all of whom were waving the British flag, the Union Jack. The British chattering classes howled their disapproval of this unsightly show of nationalism—one friend told me that the Union Jack always made him think of right-wing extremists—just as they had earlier howled their disapproval of the Blair campaign's brief (and quickly withdrawn) use of the traditional British bulldog. This summer's Jubilee, the 50^th anniversary celebration of the queen's reign, has been accompanied by some flag-waving—but some opposition, too. One Independent columnist wrote that her friends are "studiously ignoring the event," since national symbols such as the queen and the flag "bear uncomfortable overtones of racism and colonialism." Patriotism, she went on, is seen as "profoundly down-market, like doilies and bad diets."

The attitudes vary in other countries—unlike the Union Jack, the French tricolor flies from just about every public building in France—but the general rule of thumb holds true. Certainly there isn't anywhere in Germany you can go to shout, "Deutschland! Deutschland!" except a soccer stadium, for example. Perhaps as a result, feelings run so high in Germany following a soccer match that no incumbent German chancellor has ever lost an election in the wake of a major German victory. The re-election of Helmut Kohl in 1990 was widely attributed to Germany's victory in that year's World Cup. Perhaps it was all a coincidence, but the current German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is taking no chances. He has made a point of halting all his current, tight election campaigning for 90 minutes every time Germany plays a World Cup match.

In part, reverse snobbery explains this strange phenomenon. Soccer is the man-on-the-street's game in Europe, and the politicians, academics, and high-end journalists who would normally shun exhibitionist patriotism support their national teams as a means of proving they are really men-in-the street themselves. But it may also be that high national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot.

And the implications are broad-ranging. The somewhat strange fact that the British have four international teams (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) instead of one, for example, may well have contributed to the recent revival of Scottish and Welsh separatism. If the England team really did become successful, it might even create some serious English separatism, a previously unknown phenomenon. Certainly the rise in middle-class support for the England team has contributed to the revival of the English flag—a red cross on a white field—which now flies from fans' cars on the days of big matches, and sometimes gets painted on their faces.

But the significance of the American team's weakness has always been underrated, too. Particularly now that the Olympics have been spoiled by total American dominance, it is nice for everybody else that the United States always loses at the only game the rest of the world really cares about. Now that the United States has started to do a bit better, the future looks darker. Hearing the score of this morning's Mexico game—and the rumors that riots might start in Mexico City—I immediately worried: If the United States started to dominate soccer the way it dominates basketball, then anti-Americanism might really start to get ugly.

As it stands, the relationship between the United States and soccer is perfect. Americans—citizens of a modern state—have plenty of opportunities to show their patriotism, on inaugurations and at school assemblies and on the Fourth of July. They don't need to do it in soccer stadiums as well. Europeans, on the other hand—citizens of postmodern states—have fewer and fewer, and need those soccer highs badly as a result. Cheer for the American soccer players if you will—but keep your fingers crossed, and hope the U.S. team doesn't upset the balance by winning too many more matches.

Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.

Laszlo Lengyel: A third nationalist wave?

HVG

In countries that have experienced regime changes, an economic crisis could give birth to a third wave of nationalism. The middle classes could find themselves facing an existential threat. People who were winners until now will lose out. Modernisers, those who urge the country in the direction of Europe, people who work in high-tech professions and those who have taken out loans in Swiss franks - they could all lose their jobs, their savings and their networks of contacts.

In 1989, central and eastern Europe saw a series of reforms that, cumulatively, represented a true revolution. The ideals of national independence and sovereignty went hand in hand with the reforms that led to democracy, Europe and westernisation. But the nationalist revolutions also began in 1990 and 1991, and they were harbingers of the regime change that was to follow, as their protagonists demanded that ethnic groups secede from states and called for measures against minorities. This was the case with the pogrom in Targu Mures as it was in a rapidly disintegrating Yugoslavia and at the time of Czechoslovakia's velvet divorce, not to mention the Hungarian Istvan Csurka's ideology of an international conspiracy. This first wave of nationalism was targeted against the Russians, the Germans, the Jews, national minorities, Europe, America and the western world. Historical wounds and rage mixed with a newer aversion to privatisation and liberalisation. There was anger that western standards of living had not arrived, that there was unemployment, high inflation and a loss of security.

New histories were written: stories in which Hungarians, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Ukrainians had each suffered unique and terrible injustices. New states, symbols, anthems and uniforms were created. All this was drawn from a deep well of history, yet it was still new. Among the south Slavs, this new history was written in blood.

This first wave of nationalism died out in the mid-1990s. It was replaced by a kind of dual promise: on the one hand the promise of Europeanisation, of joining NATO and the European Union, and on the other, by the Left's promise that the security of the earlier Socialist period could be restored. Calm down, sit down and talk, leave the minorities alone, stop the Jew-baiting - otherwise you can't join the EU - this was the message of Clinton's America and Kohl's Germany. People chose European standards of living over national misery. Countries began a race to join Europe.

In the new millennium, when it became clear to central Europeans that NATO and EU membership was a certainty, the promise lost its power, leading to anger about the efforts required to achieve the goal. A struggle began for the ownership and control of political and economic life and the media in these countries. Nationalists and liberals, modernisers and anti-modernisers, pro-Europeans and eurosceptics entered into a bloody conflict. All this coincided with the strong nationalist and Christian fundamentalist wave that hit America on 11 September 2001, which brought with it a desire to promote "colour" revolutions from Georgia to Ukraine.

A new, ethnic nationalist wave was launched, which peaked in Hungary in spring 2002, affecting the masses directly. Then, in March and April, hundreds of thousands donned national colours in mass demonstrations. The Right saw liberals and Bolshevik aliens wherever it looked, while the Left warned about the prospect of 20m Romanian workers arriving in Hungary. But then came social populism, which turned every Hungarian politician into a mini-Kadar. That's why Fidesz's referendum on dual citizenship failed in December 2004, at a time when Ukraine's Orange Revolution was elevating to feverish levels emotion in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania. This wave brought with it the Kaczynski twins in autumn 2005 and fed an increasingly extremist nationalist mood in the Baltic states. The Estonian-Russian dispute broke out in spring 2007, giving rise to an "ideology of defensive nationalism" aimed against Russia and Estonia's Russian minority.

Losers out of winners

But this trend seemed to correct itself. Poland's right-wing won the elections, Romania's extremists fell out of parliament, Hungary's extremists were marginalised. In Slovakia, Fico sews just enough nationalist salt as is required to maintain his coalition majority. The Georgian-Russian war failed to awaken any kind of mass opinion.

But maybe not. At a recent meeting of Slovak and Hungarian intellectuals, Peter Tolgyessy and Laszlo Szigeti from Slovakia both agreed that there had been a sustained trend of rising nationalism since the regime change. This was related to the illusions nursed by the various societies: they wanted a western lifestyle immediately, a prospect that seemed to be receding ever further. Politicians create nationalist, but the nationalist themselves create the Ficos, the Slotas and the Kaczynskis. Politicians just satisfy their voters' demands. The future is one of growing nationalism and xenophobia around the world, Szigeti added. He may be right.

My concern is the nationalist "third wave." This wave will emerge from the economic crisis. Now, it is the middle class that emerged after the regime change which is endangered. Brussels and Berlin have no answers to their cries for help. It's no longer the losers who are rioting - it's the people who until now have been winners. They are now the ones looking for scapegoats.

Disappointed forint nationalists, zloty nationalists, Czech crown nationalists who are eurosceptic but also claim to be western European are raising national flags in Gyor, Poznan and Mlada Boleslav. Bank employees and automotive engineers, property investors and respectable judges are developing a sympathy for their less sophisticated nationalist compatriots. They may begin to see Jews, Gypsies, Romanians, Slovaks, Europeans, Americans, and anybody who is no them, as the group responsible for their woes.

Voices of dissent: Ethnic reconciliation in Central and Eastern Europe (I)

The Hungarian-Slovakian relations rarely reached a normal, non-tensed level, after the fall of communism.

As a overall rule, the dialogue between Hungary and its neighbours started from the very beginning on a dissonant tone, right after József Antal's claim of representing 15 million of Hungarians - including all the ethnic Hungarian from Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia - repeated by all the heads of the governments in Budapest, whatever their political orientation, created serious rifts in the dialogue between Hungary and its neighbouring countries.

One of the EU and NATO full membership conditions was a proof of good bilateral relationships with the neighbours, but the reconciliation process took longer than expected. The identity survival and the political tools chosen for supporting it tensioned sometimes this relationships. The Hungarian status law an initiative of Orban Viktor's government but voted - even with some nuances - by all the Hungarians parties, increased the lack of trust and provoked diplomatic tensions, mainly with Romania and Slovakia, hosts of larger Hungarian communities. But, in the same time the evolutions in the two cases are different.

In Romania, the cross-border cooperation, the economic and military exchanges continued in the last 20 years at a very high level, despite the nationalist accents of the public discourse - available as well for members of the Hungarian party, RMDSZ/UDMR. One of the hardest nationalist, anti-Hungarian and anti-Semitic Romanian party, The Greater Romania Party/PRM was left out of the Parliament at the last parliamentary elections, November 30. Since 1996, RMDSZ/UDMR is part of the coalition government, having in this way all the opportunities to be part of the political negotiations, as well as to be part of the decision making process. The process is far to be accomplished as the request of the minority don't get the full agreement of the Romanian parties - the recreation of Bolyai university in Cluj, the full restitution of church properties confiscated by the communist regime, being among the constant claims of the Hungarian party. But, at least, a certain mechanism of discussion and negociation was created in order to prevent serious tensions. Since 2005, they are held periodically Hungarian-Romanian joint Governmental meetings, in Bucharest or in Budapest with an agenda going beyond the issues of minority rights.

A similar evolution was followed in Slovakia. But, since 2006, it was for the first time since Vladimír Meciar's nationalist regime of the 1990s, the Hungarian minority Party of the Hungarian Coalition (Strana madarskej koalície: SMK) was left out of the power-sharing coalition. In its place, the right-wing Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná strana: SNS) gained the unexpected favour of populist Socialist Prime Minister Robert Fico, along with Meciar's People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (Ludová strana - Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko: LS-HZDS), although Meciar himself plays a noticeably quieter role than SNS leader Jan Slota. Giving the popular support enjoyed by the ruling coalition and its nationalist discourse, it is hard to predict a change of tone, situation in which it is expected to have a radicalization of the Hungarian political party as well, echoing with a more and more active, visible and organized Hungarian far-right.

It is quite inappropriate to talk about models universally available in terms of ethnic reconciliation, mainly in a region where history is still playing a very important role. But, at least, it is possible to identify a couple of ingredients whose mixture could create the premises for a choice of the dialogue, instead of confrontation - of any kind. The permanent dialogue between representatives of the majority and those of the minority is one of the key. Nationalism ia an intellectually created concept, but it is available too for the reconciliation. Civil society representatives from both parts might constitute themselves in voices for dialogue. The Slovak intellectuals already sent a public message in this respect, and it is an important step forward, that must be continued, diversified and enforced, not only in crisis situation.

In Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama is stating that the efficient economic and social organizations are emerging from those societies which have wide and efficient trust networks, including in this category the social-society network.

In Central and Eastern Europe, it is exactly this trust who was destroyed, with long term consequences, by the communists regimes. In each of the countries of the former Eastern block, the communist operated differently - from the "goulash Capitalism" in Hungary, to the paranoid dictatorship in Ceausescu's Romania. But, at the level of the society, of people-from-people relations, it is exactly this trust who was extincted, through the repression system. You was educated - in school, or family or society as a whole - to do not trust anybody - because spy of a "foreign" anti-communist power, or a collaborator of the secret polices, or member of the minority groups. The rising stars of communism from yesterday were the today "capitalism's agents", so, who to trust? Not even your family members. And extreme nationalism was an efficient tool to create a wide support for the regime.

It is obvious that the general political, social and economic situation in the last 20 years tremendously changed in Central and Eastern Europe. But, the past/various sentimental interpretations of history are resurgent, in political crisis, in elections times or simply when a need for getting a stronger identity is required. It will continued to be so, but such discourses have to be counter by an open dialogue of the public intellectuals on dissenting topics. It will took longer than winning a political campaign for a four-years term in office, but it is a very basic test of the mission and role of intellectuals in these (still) post-communist societies.