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ten - Social solidarity in post-socialist countries
- Edited by Marion Ellison, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Reinventing Social Solidarity across Europe
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 October 2011, pp 157-190
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
This chapter argues that recent socio-economic transitions have led to the erosion of social solidarity in post-socialist countries within Central and Eastern Europe. It is argued that the economic imperatives of capitalism have forced governments to abandon previous policy and welfare arrangements, and access to local labour markets, resulting in the attrition of legally granted social rights. This unexpected dissipation of social rights has led to dramatic changes in the demographic structure of the whole region, weakening social solidarity by fragmenting established social networks. Focusing on Central and Eastern European countries and placing special emphasis on the Yugoslav case of the so-called ‘third way’, the chapter argues that five types of accommodation to this kind of change can be distinguished. The first type is found in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary and is chiefly characterised by the extensive privatisation of key economic ‘stilts’. Within this type of accommodation, governments quickly abandoned their responsibility for social provision during the early 1990s and strategies for the development of social solidarity were slowly taken up nongovernmental organisations – usually other than churches. The second type of accommodation emerged in Poland where the Catholic church claimed exclusive ownership of perceptions of solidarity through the Concordat, an agreement between Poland and the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church (Concordat enacted on 25 April 1998). The third type of accommodation is exemplified by Romania and Bulgaria, where extensive black market activity, especially along the borders, dominated during most of the 1990s. The fourth and fifth types pertain to the former Soviet Union. The fourth area, the Baltic States, is somewhat similar to the so-called Visegrád group and is distinguished by an uneven pattern of settlement and large Russian minority with few social rights. Importantly the existence of this minority, forced to live in such conditions, represents the denial of transnational social solidarity, connecting also with Russian minorities stretching across the Baltic States and beyond, into Russia. Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia represent the fifth type of accommodation. Russia, as the Soviet core area, still plays an important role, exerting its power over the other three states through a systematic regional influence that is enabled by networks and economic dependency continuing from the former Soviet period.