Newsletter - Social Science in Eastern Europe 2000-2
Spain
The situation of research in the social sciences on Eastern Europe: A Spanish
overview[70]
In Spain, the landscape of the studies in the social sciences on Eastern
Europe is a desert with some isolated oases. The reasons for this situation are
very logical. Spain has not maintained regular contacts with Eastern Europe in
its near historical past: no commercial relationships, neither cultural contacts
nor strategic implications existed. There are not even significant colonies of
immigrant populations from Eastern Europe in Spain. The traditional interest of
Spanish academics on the social sciences was focused on South America and, in a
very minor scale, North Africa and Western Europe.
The last decade brought a new interest in those countries, due to the fall of
the Iron Curtain and the wars in Yugoslavia, especially when the Spanish Army
and NGOs were involved in some of the crises. But, unfortunately, the impact of
those events was too much disturbing for a society long time unconscious of the
Eastern half of the European continent. During the change from the eighties to
the nineties, the debate on the "Spanish pattern of transition" from
the dictatorship of Franco to democracy was very animated in our country. So,
the widespread discussion in the western countries about the political and
historical meaning of the collapse of the Soviet system, or the ethnic wars in
Yugoslavia mixed in Spain with the debate on papers of the leftist parties and
the nationalism in the Spanish autonomic regions. The result of this
intense politicisation was the proliferation of self-proclaimed experts in
Eastern Europe or Russian affairs in Eastern Europe or Russian matters, and a
frequent confusion among academic debates and passionate political opinions.
Ten years of political transition in Russia - not always easy to understand -
the calm and progressive admittance of Central Europe to the structures of the
European Community, and four bewildering wars in former Yugoslavia, all this
tempered many passions and brought a growing indifference again. The strikes of
NATO against Yugoslavia and the new protectorate in Kosovo have not contributed
to reactivate the lost interest. Therefore, the inexpert enthusiasts of the
first half of the nineties now work on new fashionable topics. Their defection
has crumbled ambitious but weak institutions, such as the Eastern European
Institute (Instituto de Europa Oriental -IEO-), which was founded at the
beginning of the nineties at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). The
IEO was closed down in 1996 and the same fate hit the magazine "Cuadernos
del Este" that had been fed more with translations than with the
intellectual production of Spanish academics.
Nowadays, no Spanish academic institution exists that is completely devoted
to studies on Eastern Europe. Only a handful of social science professors
continue with research in that field and train new scholars. These professors
are the last representatives of the "first generation" that emerged at
the beginning of the eighties. In our days, a small group of young professors,
graduates and scholarship holders are already the "second generation".
They come from three centers: Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, although there is
also some activity in Oviedo and Santiago de Compostela.
In Madrid, the Department of Political Sciences at the Universidad Nacional
de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) is the largest center for graduate work on
politics in Eastern and Central Europe. The programme on Eastern Europe and on
the former Soviet Union's political transitions[71]
provides eight courses coordinated by Prof. Carmen Gonzalez, who wrote a
doctoral thesis on the Hungarian transition at the beginning of the nineties[72] and is now leading two research groups on
national minorities in Eastern Europe. The first one, on the Hungarian
minorities in the countries neighbouring Hungary. The second, financed by the
Gutierrez Mellado Institute, is researching the political tools for the
management of conflicts among ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe and the former
USSR. The Gutierrez Mellado Institution is not devoted to Eastern European
topics, but at present it finances a number of research projects in this field[73].
Two other professors working as full-time staff members of the Department of
Politics in the UNED, and teaching Master of Philosophy or Doctor of Philosophy
programmes are: Jesús de Andres, a researcher on Russian transition, and
Ignacio Torreblanca, whose subject is the enlargement of the European Union
towards Eastern Europe[74].
The Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has lost the leadership in this
particular field of research since the closure of the Instituto de Europa
Oriental, but its Department of Applied Economics still has a great weight in
the analysis of post-socialist economies. In the UCM, the professors Fernando
Luengo[75] and Enrique Palazuelos[76] are two of the most remarkable names in the
"first generation" of Spanish specialists in Eastern Europe economics,
and the founders of the Instituto de Europa Oriental. They teach, respectively,
the subjects: "The external insert of the economies of Central and Oriental
Europe" and "The energy sector in the economy of the Russian
Federation"[77]. But not all professors
of the Complutense specialized in Eastern Europe are economists. Juan Carlos
Monedero is a political scientist, and he studies the former GDR; Mercedes
Herrero, a professor in Communication / Journalism, is a researcher specialized
in the political evolution of Poland from 1989 onwards.
At the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM), Department of Political
Sciences, professor Carlos Taibo, one of the outstanding academics in the
"first generation", is the author of a doctoral thesis on the Red Army[78] and director of the Program of Russian
Studies. This program was born ten years ago, but today it stagnates because of
lack of financing. Although initially an expert in the Soviet political system,
professor Taibo has also worked on transitions in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet republics. He has published a large amount of diffusion books, written
for the general public, some of them dedicated to the wars in former Yugoslavia
with more political conclusions that academic ones.
At the Universidad de Valencia, the Department of Constitutional Law
supported interdisciplinary contacts among Spanish experts in matters of Eastern
Europe. The first "Encuentro Español de Estudios sobre la Europa
Oriental" has taken place in November 1998, thus opening a window that
brought fresh air for the first time since the end of the Instituto de Europa
Oriental. A group of political scientists, jurists, historians and economists
from all generations worked together in an atmosphere of open cooperation. The
promoter of this experience was doctor Carlos Flores, professor of
Constitutional Law with wide experience in the study of the juridical structures
of Eastern Europe. His almost 50 publications have been focused mainly on the
comparative study of electoral processes, the formation of party systems and the
institution building processes in the new East European democracies[79].
The Research Unit Social Formations in Transition (Unidad de Investigacion
Formacions Socials en Transicio[80] -UIFST-),
at the University of Valencia attached to the Department of Applied Economics
also should be mentioned. UIFST is directed by professor Antonio Sanchez
Andres and has a very qualified staff of Valencian and Russian professors[81]. UIFST analyses the transformation processes
that began at the end of the eighties in the old economies with centralized
planning, although its main center of attention is the Soviet Union and the
present Russian Federation[82].
UIFST works in close collaboration with the Group for Analysis of
Economic Transition Economy (Grup d'Analisi de la Transicio Econòmica -GATE-)
based in Barcelona. Although GATE is not devoted explicitly to studies on
transitions in Eastern Europe, it has some veteran researchers of the first
generation, such as Benjamín Bastida, director of GATE, and Teresa Virgili.
They are both experts in the economic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Also, Xavier Martí works on the economic transition in Poland, whereas Carles
Batlle studies the Czechoslovakian case.
Worth mentioning in Barcelona is also the CIDOB Foundation[83] (Centro de Informacion y Documentacion de Barcelona). It
is a research, teaching and documentation centre on international relations and
development studies. It was registered in 1973 as a non-profit association. In
1979, it became a private foundation with a board consisting of several
institutions and individuals. The main geographical areas are Latin
America, the Mediterranean and the Arab World, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia,
Eastern Europe and the former USSR. The responsible person for research is Carmen
Claudín, a researcher who studied in Moscow. She is also the director for
studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. CIDOB has its own
documentation databases, hotline service and library. Among the seminars and
conferences that CIDOB offers every year, at least one is dedicated to issues of
the day in Eastern Europe or Russia.
Francisco Veiga[84], the
author of this contribution, also works in Barcelona. He is one of the very few
Spanish historians who are experts in Eastern Europe, he teaches two subjects at
the Department of Contemporary History of the Autonomous University of
Barcelona: "History of Eastern Europe, 1919-1945" and a doctorate
programme: "Of Yalta to Dayton and Rambouillet, 1944-1999: Guidelines for
the study of Eastern Europe in the second half of the XX. century". In
1987, he presented his doctoral thesis about fascism in Romania, published in
1989[85], and later on, he wrote two books on
the political and social crises in the Balkans between 1989 and 1999[86]. Two of these works have been published and
translated into Romanian and Bulgarian[87]. He
is a member of the Council of the CIDOB Foundation and collaborates as an expert
in Balkan politics with several Spanish and international media, such as
"El País" or the BBC (Spanish programmes). At present, professor
Veiga supervises several research works on issues related to the history or the
politics of Eastern Europe and the Balkans[88].
Together with the three core institutions mentioned above, it is also
necessary to name two minor centres: Galicia and Asturias. At the University of
Santiago of Compostela, professor Xose M. Núñez Seixas is a veteran
researcher of the Central European nationalities, and especially the Czech
national process. His thesis, presented in 1992 at the European University
Institute of Florence is entitled: "The problem of the nationalities in the
interwar Europe. The Congress of European Nationalities (1925-1938)". From
then on, professor Núñez Seixas has completed many research works of great
quality on nationalism and the derived nationalist doctrines resulting from the
Great War[89]. Another historian but professor
of political science at the same university is Raimundo Viejo, a significant
academic of the second generation who is now working on a doctoral thesis about
the German reunification.
The Department of Contemporary History at the Universidad de Oviedo (Asturias)
has become an organizing centre for conferences and courses on politics in
Eastern Europe. Thanks to their initiatives, every summer some groups of Spanish
experts can meet with other colleagues coming from Eastern Europe. Since 1990
and by professor's Jose Giron's initiative, the University of Oviedo has
organized at least six courses on political transition, economic evolution,
ethnic conflicts and wars in Yugoslavia, with the participation of professors
and Spanish experts in Eastern Europe. The same university publishes most part
of the conference proceedings and reports presented during the summer courses[90].
Although the enumeration of the institutions and Spanish researchers
dedicated to Eastern Europe have filled several pages, the situation is not
satisfactory. Spain is a country of 39 million inhabitants, member of the
European Union, with more than four big cities and 74 universities. Despite of
this, there is no single academic institution dedicated entirely to social
science studies on Eastern Europe. In fact, there prevail the isolated
researchers who, unfortunately, persist in being isolated from one another. Most
of them only trust in public financing, and private institutions and companies
that work in Eastern Europe don't usually trust them. As there is no money,
there are no important projects. There are no indicators that the situation will
improve and it will take a long time before we will again have an Institute of
Studies on Eastern Europe; and still more time, before Spanish researchers and
professors of the diverse social sciences will again work together.
[69] c/Villarroel, 197, 5deg. 4a, E-08036
Barcelona, Spain, Tel.: ++34-93-322 21 46, ++34-93-245 06 68, Fax: ++34-93-322
21 46, E-Mail: geb@retemail.es/, vevilla@teleline.es
[70] I have a debt of gratitude to Ruth
Ferrero and Roberto Rodriguez for their valuable help in the elaboration of this
report.
[71] http://www.uned.es/guias/g3cd/d151.htm.
[72] http://www.uned.es/_Hlt484210130, http://www.uned.es/
_Hlt484210130g_Hlt484210130
http://www.uned.es/
_Hlt484210130g_Hlt484210130uias/
g3cd/d151.htm.
[73] info@igm.uned.es.
[74] Some of the doctoral theses in course
of the UNED are those of Ruth Ferrero, on national minorities in Ukraine,
Slovakia and Romania and Pedro Chaves, on enlargement of the European Union to
Eastern Europe.
[75] http://www.ucm.es/info/eid/html/luengo.html.
[76] http://www.ucm.es/info/eid/html/palazuelos.html.
[77] Professor Pedro Gómez Serrano, the
only expert in Balkan Economy (former Yugoslavia and Albania) five years ago,
now he abandoned that research line.
[78] Published under the title: Las
fuerzas armadas en la crisis del sistema soviético (1993).
[79] He has been a Fulbright Scholar
(1993-94) and visiting professor (1994-95) at the University of California-San
Diego, as well as a guest researcher at the Universities of Veszprém and
Budapest (1992), Virginia and Triest (1996) and the Radio Free Europe/ Radio
Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute in Munich (1993). He has edited Las
nuevas instituciones políticas de la Europa Oriental (Madrid/Valencia,
1997), Derechos y libertades en las nuevas democracias de la Europa del Este
(Pamplona, 1998-9).
[80] http://www.uv.es/uifst.
[81] Professor José Maria March, co-author
with professor Antonio Sánchez Andrés of several books on the socio-economic
transition in Russia, some translated into Russian, is an outstanding scholar,
also remarkable are the professors Isabel Plà and Vicenta Fuster. Thanks to the
close relationship that the center keeps up with the Russian University of the
Friendship of the Peoples, the Russian professors Nikolay A. Shkolyar and
Gyennadiy I. Martyuschyev have worked in the staff of UIFST.
[82] Professor Raúl de Arriba researched
and published on the economic transition in Bulgaria.
[83] http://www.cidob.org/.
[84] http://blues.uab.es/historiamc/cvfveiga.htm.
[85] Francisco Veiga, La mística del
ultranacionalismo. Historia de la Guardia de Hierro. Rumania, 1919-1941.
Eds. de la universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 1989.
[86] Francesc Veiga, Els Balcans. La
desfeta d'un somni, 1945-1991, Universitat de Girona and Vic, Eumo, 1993 and
1994; Francisco Veiga, La trampa balcánica. Una crisis europeoa de
fin de siglo, Grijalbo, Barcelona, 1994.
[87] Francisco Veiga, Istoria Garzii de
Fier, 1919-1941. Mistica ultranationalismului, Ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti,
1993 and 1994
[88] Professor Roberto Rodriguez Milán, who
lives and works in Athens, works on a thesis on the Party New Democracy and the
contemporary Greek right. It is also necessary to highlight the researches of
Teodora Toleva on the relationships between Bulgaria and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
[89] Soon he will publish the book: Entre
Ginebra y Berlín. La cuestión de las minorías nacionales y la política
internacional en Europa, 1914-1939 (Madrid: Akal).
[90] Jose Giron (ed.): La transicion
democratica en el centro y este de Europa, 2 tomos, Ed. Universidad de
Oviedo, Oviedo, 1997. José Girón y Slobodan Pajoviæ (eds.): Los nuevos
Estados de la antigua Yugoslavia, Ed. Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, 1999.
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