1989 was as momentous a year in European history as 1789. Like the would-be reformers of the ancien regime, Gorbachev had sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Without the controlled border East Germany was not viable and on 3 October 1990 Germany was united again. In the Soviet Union the failure of perestroika and the success of glasnost undermined both the basis of communist power in the republics and also the dominance over them by Moscow. Fighting a rearguard action on both fronts Gorbachev was nearly toppled by a conservative coup in August 1991, which he survived only with his authority in shreds. At the end of 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist and was replaced by a loose Commonwealth of Independent States, each riven by economic crisis and political confusion.
The Cold War had ended with the collapse of one of the blocs and one of the protagonists. As the dust settled, two institutions of Cold-War western Europe remained more or less intact—NATO and the EC. NATO had lost its fundamental rationale with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and Allied forces in Germany were substantially reduced. But the alliance structure, especially America’s leadership role, clearly constituted one important pillar of stability for the future. Like NATO, the European Community was a deeply flawed institution, as the collapse of its Monetary System in 1992-3 reminded the world. But by 1993 the member states had fulfilled the Single European Act of 1985, designed to abolish all economic barriers between them, including those on the movement of labour and capital. And the spate of membership applications indicated that the Community was seen as the economic heart of Europe after the Cold War. The most advanced of the applicants —Austria, Finland, and Sweden—joined in
January 1995. The Twelve became Fifteen, comprising some 370 million people —roughly the same population as the United States and Japan combined. Former communist states pressed for admission or association, as did those from the Mediterranean and North Africa.
After 1989 it seemed meaningful once again to talk about Europe as a single entity. The polarized language of East and West had always been misleading. Turkey, for instance, was a member of NATO, yet this backward, largely Islamic country could hardly be considered western in the sense of France or Germany. As for eastern Europe, this had lumped together countries like Bulgaria (Slavic, predominantly Orthodox, with strong links to Russia) and Hungary (non-Slavic, mainly Catholic, self-defined ‘bastion of the West’ against Russians and Turks). Above all, central Europe had disappeared down the bipolar chasm, wrenching Hungary and the Czech lands away from their historic links with Germany and leaving Austria frozen in neutrality between East and West.
Yet the end of these historically artificial blocs did not signal unity. Economic backwardness and environmental pollution in the East would take years to overcome. The strain of reunification on Germany’s finances was enormous. Establishing civil society on the western model was also difficult in former police states with few democratic traditions. In the Balkans the communists remained strong and were often able to rebuild their power in modified form. In other words, Europe was still divided, albeit less brutally, by her history, and communism was one legacy that would be hard to throw off. As the Balkan case also suggested, older patterns became visible again, such as the divide between Catholic and Orthodox Europes—the latter being economically more backward—or even between Christian Europe and Balkan extremities such as Albania and Bosnia where the Ottoman, Islamic imprint had been much deeper.
Such distinctions were far from precise, but they served as indicators of what became known as the ‘rebirth of history’. Past movements, frozen by the Cold War, were now on the move again. This was most evident in the case of nationalism. The demand that separate nations should form separate states had proved one of the most potent battle-cries of nineteenth-century Europe. In the twentieth century its resonance was world-wide. Yet nationalism was a problematic concept. In only a few western European countries, notably France, was there congruence between state and nation. Eastern Europe after the demise of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires had been a patchwork of multinational states, with a dominant majority (such as the Czechs) presiding over more or less oppressed minorities. The Cold War had largely frozen these ethnic conflicts; after its thaw struggle resumed. At the end of 1992 Czechoslovakia managed to split in two peacefully. But Yugoslavia’s break-up proved appallingly bloody.
In Tito’s early years, the federal structure of Yugoslavia (six republics and two autonomous provinces) had been carefully modulated by the central communist party to hold the Serbs in check and to balance the other ethnic groups. But economic devolution and political liberalization had gradually weakened the authority of the centre. The 1974 constitution confirmed the result—what veteran Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas called eight little party states with eight small, competing economies. Thus, even before his death in 1980, Tito had helped undermine his own creation. His successors had little interest except in cultivating ethnic support within their own republics. The most egregious was Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader from 1987, and the nationalism fostered by him provoked a backlash from other ethnic groups. In this struggle, history was not so much reborn as reconstructed. In 1989 Serbs focused on Kosovo, site of their celebrated battle six hundred years before against the Turks, and now dominated by the Muslim Albanians. Similarly, Croat agitation aroused Serbian memories of the atrocities committed by the Croatian fascists, the Ustasi, against them in 1941-5. Thus, history became a convenient tool of ethnic politicians as the federation broke apart. The secession of Slovenia in 1991 proved relatively bloodless, since this was an ethnically distinct republic. By 1992 Croatia had also won independence, although leaving the Serbs with one-third of the territory. But in Bosnia — where Muslims formed 44 per cent of the population,
Serbs 31 per cent, and Croats 17 per cent—the declaration of independence in March 1992 resulted in a ruinous war from which the Muslims were the real losers as the other two groups carved up the territory.
Even in more coherent western Europe, nationalism remained strong. The European Community had been partly an attempt to control and channel German nationalism. Federalist sentiment, though widespread, was often an instrument of national policy, as in Gaullist France. Some countries, such as Britain and Denmark, had joined the Community largely for economic reasons and were not enthusiastic about the larger project of political integration. And, at work within most nation-states, were erosive regionalist tendencies. In Italy, which dated from the 1860s as a unified nation, the political structures of the state lacked authority. In Spain, the south still bears the imprint of its long Muslim occupation, while, in the north, Catalonia and particularly the Basque country have been allowed substantial political autonomy. Another apparently ancient nation-state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is also an uneasy historical accretion, with Northern Ireland struggling to bridge its sectarian divide and Scotland vocal in demands for devolution or even independence. Although renamed the European Union in November 1993, the Community remained fragmented, both among and within the member states. And its failure to intervene effectively in Yugoslavia, or even maintain a consistent policy, was a reminder of how far it was from constituting a security organization.
The political map of Europe after the Cold War was therefore complicated, even chaotic. It would take years to overcome the manifold legacies of communist rule in the East, ranging from democratic inexperience to environmental pollution. Although large supranational entities such as NATO and the EC offered some promise as forces of stability, internal arguments reduced their ability to confront the forces of nationalism and regionalism which threatened to fragment the continent, particularly in the Balkans and the old Soviet Union. In the Cold War, Europe’s division had been a source of stability as well as oppression; after 1989, unification brought confusion and not just liberation. To a degree unimaginable to Bismarck, Europe in the 1990s was more than a geographical expression. But, no less than in the days of Bonaparte or Hitler, European unity remained an idea and not a reality. And reality was the product of history.
World History
