Limited Post-Socialism, Meaningful Analysis: Post-Socialism as a Qualifying Term

1 Limited Post-Socialism, Meaningful Analysis: Post-Socialism as a Qualifying Term Tauri Tuvikene School of Humanities Tallinn University Narva mnt 25, 10125 Tallinn, Estonia [email protected] Abstract Many scholars from former socialist Europe have questioned the relevance of post-socialism. Some have even wished to abandon it entirely. Should the notion of “post-socialism” be kept alive if, for some, it hardly holds any relevance for their research and for others, it is an undesired term as the desire is to disband “the Soviet past”? What is the value and potential of thinking from the point of view of post-socialism in urban studies or urban-focused geography? In this Commentary, I present some arguments supporting the conceptual use of post-socialism and highlight elements where it retains continuing value. Keywords: Postsocialism; comparative urbanism; mobilities; transport Many scholars from the former Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union have questioned the relevance of post-socialism and even considered abandoning the term entirely. Should the notion of “post-socialism” be kept alive if, for some, it holds little relevance for their research? At the same time, others, particularly those for whom it should be a principal term based on their subject matter, view it as an undesired term due to a wish to disband “the Soviet past”. What is the value and potential of adopting a post-socialist perspective in urban studies or urban-focused geography? Similar debates, of course, occur across various disciplines, particularly anthropology (see a recent scrutiny of the term, e.g., by Ringel 2022), allowing for parallels to be drawn. Over the last decade, my position on “post-socialism” has been two-fold, with positions at first sight contradictory (Hirt et al. 2016; Tuvikene 2016). Namely, I have argued against “postsocialism,” particularly against using this notion as an overarching, encompassing, and even totalizing term under which all aspects of some cities and societies in some parts of the world are put. However, and even more forcefully, I have stressed the conceptual value of still 2 maintaining the usage of post-socialism to make sense of specific aspects. Thus, I am both a critic and a defender of post-socialism; my position depends on how the term is used. Namely, I argue for the limited use of post-socialism as a qualifying term only when it makes sense (see the earlier elaborated argument in full in Tuvikene 2016). In this Commentary, I elaborate on some arguments supporting the conceptual use of post-socialism where it has continuing value. I take one case here—in the form of a vignette—which emanates from my research in Tallinn, Estonia, concerning different topics related to transport and mobilities. The topic selected for the vignette is undoubtedly not the only one where post-socialism has relevance, nor is it perhaps even the most striking concerning such relations. Namely, other infrastructures, such as the Soviet apartment districts—mikrorayons—were remarkable urban forms for their extensive usage and persistence as such spatial forms of urbanization remained in place after the Soviet system fell. They are marked by various material continuities and also novel challenges, for instance, to their usually centralized heating infrastructures and limited parking infrastructures for the conditions of post-1991 rapid motorization (Tuvikene 2019). “Postsocialism,” as the term is understood in this Commentary, is strongly visible in those areas. Yet, the motorization example is significant not only for how the rising number of cars affects urban livelihoods and environment, but also reveals connections across periods: contemporary developments mark significant shifts but also interesting continuities with phenomena from the Soviet years. Finally, to conclude the Commentary, I discuss some potential limits of attending to post-socialism, scrutinizing the danger of becoming one with a limited mindset for whom “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” known as Maslow’s hammer. Continuing the use of “post-socialism” as a concept Post-socialism as a concept primarily revolves around continuities where some aspects of Soviet times remain significant. For instance, the Soviet system could have been the initiator of practices and material infrastructures. However, influences from the Soviet era could also amplify certain perceptions or discourses. Over the years, I have observed quite a few of these elements, even if they are relatively complex to identify. For example, until recently, the European map distinguishing countries that had legalized same-sex partnerships or marriages from those that had not was marked by a line through Europe that closely followed the Iron Curtain. Other similar “lines” include the rate at which car ownership has risen over the last decades (Tuvikene, Rehema, and Antov 2020, Figure 1.5.1) or the political divisions regarding the response to the war in Ukraine, which, of course, contain some crucial divergences (namely, Hungary and Slovakia). Additional borders, such as those in northeastern Europe, are 3 emerging, as Northern and Eastern Europe's concerns and geopolitical questions of European defence find common ground. However, legacies are not static; they are put into new relations. Legacies “can be reinvented, repurposed, and redeployed to serve new interests and functions” (Kinossian 2022, 1243). The new relations they enter into might seem so powerful and visible that they shift analytical attention to them rather than to past processes. Nevertheless, acknowledging how the past is actively reinterpreted and remade does not diminish the importance of emphasizing past influences: what is reinvented, repurposed, or redeployed is still shaped by what existed before. In some contexts, the usefulness of “post-socialism” as a concept is precisely its ability to remind us of the importance of the past, which is easily forgotten in public narratives. Things appear new, but it is often overlooked that they have many continuities, or what seems new could already have been present in one way or another before. Moreover, focusing on how legacies matter usually necessitates more intellectual effort in analysis than presentist perspectives. As time goes by, the connections become hidden and necessitate unveiling through careful analysis, tracing such temporal interlinkages. Some negative sentiments towards “post-socialism” seem to emanate from a feeling that the particular past remains too present, especially as it should be “increasingly distant” with every passing year (it is more than 34 years already from 1991 at the time of writing). Moreover, the association with such a past is felt as hugely problematic at moments when it is commemorated and hailed by some totalitarian regimes. Hence, a popular appeal to distance from the focus on Soviet histories in contemporary cities and to desire to abandon post-socialism as a conceptual register for analysis. However, a part of the argument here is a simple observation: history matters. That is no news to anyone with some relation to historical disciplines. Yet, the relevance of history highlights multiple pasts, not just the Soviet one. For a history-attentive observer of post-socialism, the question is only when Soviet history matters. Yet, one could also note longer lineages of historical connections (such as noting longer divisions of Europe, as Wolff (1994) does). There are also more complex relations than merely the emergence of phenomena under Soviet rule. Namely, Soviet history could also strengthen or have strengthened certain behaviors or merely slightly influenced some patterns or processes. Thus, to call something “post-socialist” is not only to observe that something is unique under the socialist regime and has persisted after 1991, but it also means that the influence of the socialist era is significant enough; and significant enough not to the city or society as a whole, but to the particular aspect named “post-socialist.” 4 Yet, perhaps such a take on “post-socialism” leads us to utilize a kind of “Maslow’s hammer," seeing post-socialism still existent because the concept is the hammer with which we treat phenomena as nails. Perhaps we do not recognize that post-socialism has become a “zombie category” in the sense that Ulrich Beck (2001) understands it, referring to concepts and categories kept alive artificially, even though their power to explain has disappeared. That is, as other scholars have also observed (eg., Chelcea and Druţǎ 2016), post-socialism as a concept is not only about continuities but also rests in anti-continuities wherein there is a desired move away from what used to be—or is thought to have been—the normality in the Soviet era. Namely, something can be entirely different from what it was before, yet it bears some inner continuities revealed through conceptual attention to how it came about. This observation bears resonance with Chelcea and Druţǎ's (2016) argumentation of “zombie socialism,” which, similarly to Ulrich Beck’s (2001) “zombie categories,” means at the same time “dead and alive.” However, unlike that, it is not focused on academic conceptual uses of terms but instead on the public sentiments, such as the acceptance of neoliberal policies in a desire to move away from the unwanted past, which, as the sentiment is, might return when the new policies are not accepted. The dead socialism is alive in the discourses of particular economic and political elites. The anti-continuities primarily concern individual freedoms, which, as the understanding goes, were limited in the Soviet conditions. At the same time, the changed socio-political system promised that individuals could discount many constraints of the state. The pursuit of individual freedom has been constructed into spatial forms (suburbs), use of mobilities (cars), legal documents (constitutions, property rights), and forms of governance (neoliberalism), all in many ways diverging from socialist practices, especially in their explicit dissonance with collectivist ideas. The explicit reference to the past, problematizing it, and drawing associations with it allows change advocates to push for shifts with arguments that nobody should want the past to return. Cars' increased usage in the 1990s, which occurred against the Soviet car culture, illustrates well how I suggest the deployment of post-socialism as both continuity and anti-continuity. Vignette: is motorization post-socialist? In much of the formerly socialist world, the dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a rapid uptake of automobility as an essential mode of transportation (Duijzings and Tuvikene 2023; Gogishvili 2024). Undoubtedly, car usage has not surged uniformly across the region, nor is the rapid increase in individual vehicles a novel occurrence in history; similar increases took 5 place in the 1920s USA, post-war Europe, and even in the 1970s Soviet Union when a new factory was established in Tolyatti/Togliatti. Thus, it is complicated, if not impossible, to claim that motorization is a post-socialist phenomenon. Yet, such a conclusion presents a limited story. I would argue that post-socialism still has much to reveal about this case—as it does about many others—but only when the notion itself is employed carefully and in a targeted manner applicable to certain aspects. The shift away from Soviet practices is widely associated with freedom. Indeed, the market from which those cars could be, and were, bought increased immensely, giving a sense of freedom linked to the opportunity of becoming a car owner. Post-socialism, then, marks the moment of new opportunities and related changes. By evoking post-socialism as a concept in this context, the importance of what existed before is highlighted in the analysis. As discussed above, it is impossible not to see at least some relation to the past, even if those roots may differ, and the past matters with varying intensity for different elements. Time, of course, influences the relevance of former processes. I emphasise here how the past matters and not just the extent, as even in the case of an increasingly distant past, there is still a gradual process at play, with each step built upon previous moments. In this way, the Soviet past, along with the early responses to it in the 1990s (previously referred to as anti-continuities), are translated into existing practices. Therefore, there are certainly other histories, even more distant ones, that matter in contemporary times and that are often encapsulated in the vague term “culture.” Cultures must always be unpacked and deconstructed to clarify what part of the past matters and in what ways. However, the Soviet slice of the overall history plays a role that must be considered, as it may have also influenced elements with longer histories in these places. Freedom presents an intriguing concept in this regard when positioned in relation to the lengthy historical processes of societal regulations and how individuals have perceived those regulations. The Soviet system offered one specific model of state and society relations, which was critically interpreted in the 1990s. As explained above, the relationship to the past could either represent continuity or a turn away from it. Both continuity and departure could stem from conscious decisions or, alternatively, be the result of circumstances without much reflection or deliberate push from stakeholders. However, in both cases, the Soviet past maintains some relevance. Returning to the example of motorization, continuities such as the desire to own a car, which was very much present under socialist conditions, while it was simply impossible or at least complicated to realize, are at play. The post-socialist condition encountered such continuity in 6 desires with rapid changes, like the emergence of the free market, which made cars available for anyone with enough money. Various internal anti-continuities are also important. For instance, a desire to move away from the past dominated the early 1990s. In Estonia, this resulted in adopting a Constitution in the early days of the newly independent country, strongly favoring individual freedoms. Looking at later court decisions, the embedding of “freedom” into the Constitution also matters much later (Tuvikene 2015). Namely, the Constitution is a document from its time of creation, with limited edits over its 30 years of usage. It has been used to counter some regulations on cars, such as questioning the making of parking a paid-for activity. Arguments about protecting freedom of property use—embedded firmly in the document—are then utilized years later. In response to the tension suggested by Kinossian (2022) about how the past is reinvented, repurposed, or redeployed, legal processes effectively elucidate analyses that are attentive to both continuities and changes. Namely, they mark the relations to the existing documents, which are indeed interpreted in new ways and in relation to new circumstances. However, they are interpreted in ways that always consider what is written in the law and how it has been applied in previous situations. Post-socialism, I would say, operates in a similar manner: continuities are accompanied by evolving reinterpretations. Conclusions: avoiding post-socialism to become “Maslow’s hammer” Earlier, I introduced the danger of using post-socialism in restricted ways when applied to any aspect of cities in the so-called (post-)socialist world. Instead, it has been argued that researchers could be more inventive in utilizing various conceptual tools for interpreting regional phenomena and should avoid relying on post-socialism (e.g., Gentile 2018; Drozda 2024). While this represents a potential path forward, I still maintain that there are two concerns with such a position. Firstly, one needs to consider the origins of those conceptual tools. Utilizing neoliberalism or gentrification might be appealing, but these concepts come with their own baggage, still shaped by their origins in the Euro-American context. While gentrification, for instance, could serve as a tool that provides questions and potential lines of interpretation of urban transformations (Bernt 2016), the reasons for starting with the notion in the first place are not entirely clear. Namely, the analysis would inevitably indicate some similarities alongside crucial differences (Kubeš and Kovács 2020), but reliance on such notions suggests that analysts should find such similarities in processes or assume that there is something inevitable about how transformations work. Hence, the openness to potentially new narratives remains limited if one must start with established concepts (Mosselson 2017). Post-socialism might present similar dangers, but only when used in an uncritical and unreflexive manner. 7 Therefore, it is essential to use the term for particular phenomena, and not for everything. Secondly, there are still phenomena for which post-socialism is more or less relevant, even if one prefers not to use the notion. Thus, the point here is to keep post-socialism as a qualifying term that acts not as a shortcut for lazy analysis but as a means of slowing down research by prompting analysts to think carefully about historical processes and relations. Similar concerns could be raised about gentrification, actually leading to a point where one can ask why we even have such a concept in the first place if its meaning is so diverse. To reiterate the main point, the argument is that post-socialism is not all-encompassing (in some regions), and not everything (even if limited to some societies) should receive the adjective “post-socialist.” Nevertheless, in certain moments and for specific aspects, the usage of “post-socialism” is revealing and meaningful, similar to how the gentrification framework can highlight “urban pioneers” or the “value gap” as elements of urban transformation, allowing us to perceive the phenomenon we study more attentively. Thus, post-socialism should be restricted in its use to enhance its applicability. As Mosselson notes on gentrification, its relevance should not be dismissed, but one must acknowledge its existence among many processes. 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