Centralisation is destroying Slavic civilization
Picture: somewhere here was the legendary Vineta...
Centralisation is destroying Slavic civilization
People from the western civilization might not understand the "core" of the problems in the slavic-dominated Eastern Europe. They seem to have an approach of modern Western medicine- to deal with the consequences, and not to tackle the root of the problem.
We, Slavs, also have an ancient history of democracy. Ancient etnographers, historians and politicians often described these regions. Even on the Crimean Penisula, in ancient times, there existed democracy. In Sevastopol, there are ruins of "local Pompeii", the ancient polis called Chersonesos. One ancient inscription has been discovered, of c.300-280 BCE, in which the citizen was to swear: "I will not overthrow the democracy" (oude kataluso tan damokratian).
(source: Democracy Beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age, Eric W. Robinson, page 149)
The "root" of the problem of the CEEC-countries is not only the lack of democracy- by far the greatest problem is the lack of "jurisdictional competition". If we look at the ancient and medieval history of this region, we find that there existed a multitude of competing autonomous jurisdictions, but these local politeias have been annihilated one-by-one, to form larger entities, that could withstand wars and tensions, such as recent Crimean war or conflict.
Some managed to survive from ancient times until modern era, as the Duchy of Sagan (founded by legendary Saganna) or the Free City of Danzig. In Internet there is even a formal "parliament" of a group of people claiming to be sons and daughters of Danzigers, the pre-WWII inhabitants of this merchant republic. They claim that their deportation after 1945 was illegal, as they were not Germans, but Danzigers, they historically had nothing to do with III Reich, and their independent city state existed in the mouth of Vistula since about I century A.D., when Gothic king Berig founded the city- state Gothiscandia.
Nowadays Poland is a highly centralized unitary state and cities such as the former free merchant republic Danzig (modern Gdańsk) do not even have an autonomous status, as every single local community in Germany does.
The soviet policy of rewriting the past falsified Slavic history in the time of "friendly occupation", erasing memory of hundreds of free towns and chartered city states founded in the Middle Ages, that had their local small parliaments and local law, not to mention many autonomous regions with their history reaching to ancient era.
We no longer have competition of local states among each other, as the Slavic countries are increasingly centralized, to withstand "powerful enemies" such as contemporary authoritarian Russia.
Slavic- dominated countries between the West and Russia are treated as buffer zones- however, if You look into the "Democracy Index" prepared by the EIU, only one of these multiple countries succeeded to earn "full democracy" score, while other remained "flawed democracies" or outright authoritarian regimes, such as Belarus.
If this is the "buffer zone", it can end up exactly as Crimea. Economists use the slang expression "to cook the books" when they look at local statistical data. The systemic transformation was often left unfinished. The US could have turned Japan or Germany into proper democracies after WWII, but they failed to efficiently transform the "buffer zone" between Western Europe and Russia. In result, the old wars and tensions returned.
Citizens in the era of social networks are well aware of their "temporary status". They make fun about its politicians and their armed forces- I saw one Internet meme where one politician was pictured building the "ballistic missile defense shield" - out of scrapwood in his backyard. They would post photographs of a long bench filled with female ministers of defense of Western- European nations that they hoped to obtain help from, compared with North- Korea- styled Russian general acting as defense minister.
We, Slavs, have long oral and written history of democratic communities, ruled by "veche"- civic gatherings very similar to contemporary Swiss Landsgemeinde. These popular assemblies existed in pre-feudal and pagan times, before they were erased by expansion of feudal hierarchy and military centralism of medieval Western Europe. Such veche gathered only recently in Kiev- in rather hostile conditions.
Veche survived until late medieval times in the Kingdom of Poland, but it is in medieval Russia, in Novgorod, where the veche acquired the greatest prominence. Russia's Novgorod Republic was ruled by a system of veche, the highest legislature and judicial authority until 1478.
Its democratic system died in 1570 in an unbelievably cruel massacre of Novgorod by secret police, called oprichniki, under the brutal rule of Ivan the Terrible, the grounding father of modern Russia: multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres. He was the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russians, and he formed autocracy using secret police to subordinate all independent social classes. The remnant of democratic institutions, a feudal parliament called the zemsky sobor, gathered sporadically till 1684.
In modern times there was little or no proper democratic institutions similar to those that ceased to exist in medieval times. Veche- ancient democratic traditions of Slavs mentioned in numerous ancient and medieval sources, disappeared completely in nearly all Slavic territories, to return only recently in Ukraine and Bosnia- as a part of popular revolts.
In modern times, indirect democracy combined with disappearance of traditional quality mass-media created a vacuum, and often the only form of contact with local politicians is the social media.
In such highly- centralized multi-million countries as Poland or Ukraine, nearly all power is concentrated in capital cities, and politicians speak about the broken roof of some provincial local theatre in national parliaments. Very, very few of younger generations are interested in such dysfunctional form of representative politics.
Jurisdictional competition does not exist within unitary Slavic nation- states, and local indirect democracy is more than dysfunctional. In many Slavic countries it is dominated by the same or similar elites as in Soviet- era times, sometimes mixed with those that managed to jump-in during the "change" of power.
Official statistical data claim there is no problem of mass migration, but local sources claim otherwise. In my home town nearly all my generation moved out, and local activist Robert Górski claims that official data from one local high school speak about 80-% migration rate.
There are towns with no younger population at all, such as nearby Lubsko, once comfortably located at a high-speed train line that connected Berlin with Upper Silesia, the high-speed line now dismantled. Such cities depopulated, lost both inhabitants as well as hospitals, factories etc., although official statistical data, that are based on historical administrative records, claim otherwise.
In one of such depopulated towns, Waldenburg (Walbrzych), local elections turned into a scandal due to large-scale electoral fraud, and needed to be repeated. Critics of indirect democracies in Slavic countries claim, that in order to change power, local elections need a very proper oversight, and people that were ruling over many years, can loose power only if elections are properly overseen to eliminate fraud.
Western Europe is interested in its own local problems, and recently also faces mass- immigrations from the predominantly Slavic European East. This is likely to increase. Lack of any significant intra-national jurisdictional competition, similar like the competition among the states in the US, is, in my opinion, the driving economical force behind the economic failure of the "quickly globalized" Central and Eastern Europe.
Economic crisis is also here, even if it is hidden from statistics prepared in circumstances similar to those of Greece before its crash- Eastern Europe is still in those times when statistical offices were directly subjugated to current governments. Such is the case of Poland.
Slavic democracy only very recently made one small step forward in the Ukraine. To have functioning and more persistent democracies, one needs to understand, that we need more "jurisdictional competition" within our national states, as it happens already within Switzerland or Germany. Slavic languages differ among each other, we cannot just simply move from one Slavic country to another.
Slavic democracies after the collapse of Soviet Union retained a lot of totalitarian centralism from Soviet system, and even their constitutions often only in its preambule grant power to the people, but further details differ completely from its opening sentences.
These failed democracies have become easy pray to various treasure-hunters such as Janukowycz and Ukrainan ex-chief prosecutor Pszonka, because their legal systems were not really democratic, and allowed for change of power only with the use of outright force.
Sadly, in ancient or medieval times many local Slavic politeias were much more cosmopolitan, and had much higher degree of foreigners, than nowadays. Harbour cities in Crimea, merchant republics of Baltic coast such as Danzig (Gdańsk), Ælveopolis- Augustæ Ælveonum (modern Elbląg/ Elbing) or Respublica Thorunensis (Toruń) flourished not only in maritime commerce, but also in science. Fahrenheit, Hevelius, Copernicus- to mention some thinkers from the Vistula estuary.
Local bishop from the 11th century, Adam of Bremen wrote of a town called Vineta on an island in the Oder estuary, according to him it was the largest of all towns in Europe, a kind of ancient equivalent of present-day Hong-Kong or Singapur.
According to the myth popular in the Oder estuary, the multi-national Vinetans bathed in wealth and debauch, practiced every deviation, lived in luxury houses, ate the most expensive meals, and were famous for eating also human flesh- not because of necessity, but because of depravity. The town mysteriously disappeared- old books claim that it happened in 830-ties.
I recalled this story to stress, that what Eastern and Central Europe needs, is some form of new economic order, that would awake the sleeping economic power of Slavic nations, that historically were able to establish favorable economic conditions. Competition among various jurisdictions within Slavic nation- states or nation- entities already existed, even within the Kingdom of Poland. Such a solution would prevent governments from colluding with each other at the expense of their citizens.
Charles Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Lord Acton, Max Weber - or modern, Nobel- prize winning economists: George Stigler, Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Edward Prescott, Edmund Phelps, Douglas North, Friedrich Hayek, Vernon Smith- they all noted this fact, as Daniel Mitchell observed [1]. That is why the European West become rich in modern times, while the European East did not.
I would be happy if one day- forgotten ideas of ancient Slavic democracy would return, so that people would not have to question themselves, why they have stayed for so long in rather unfavorable conditions of "Western Europe- Russia buffer zone" and its mostly malfunctioning democracies.
Short-lived or fresh Slavic democracies historically seem to be temporary and unstable, with its people largely disillusioned and completely uninterested in indirect democracies that they cannot control. Smaller politeias embedded within larger nation-states or multi-nation states were historically often so stable, that they managed to survive since antiquity or middle- ages until the era of Adolf Hitler or at least until 19. century. This could also be a lasting solution for Ukraine- in the case of Crimean ancient polis Chersonesos - acording to records, democracy survived till 9. century CE, roughly 1200 years after the inscription with the citizens' oath was carved.
Adam Fularz
Editor in chief of Merkuriusz Polski- news and views since January 3rd 1661 AD (www.merkuriusz.eu)
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