Recently, during the protests in Georgia against a Putin-inspired law to control media and international NGOs, we were surprised by the gesture of a woman who stood at the forefront of the demonstrations, waving a flag of the European Union in opposition to the autocratic measure, despite being strongly repressed by the authorities who were unable to fold the flag at any moment. This image went viral, and eventually, the controversial law was withdrawn. What lies behind the action of this woman, Nana Malashkhia, and why can it become a symbol of hope not only for Georgia, but for the entire democratic world?
In Europe, we have observed for quite some time, especially since the 1990s, even though the phenomenon had been brewing for some time, the rise of a type of political debate that surprises and confuses the traditional spectator. This debate resembles much of the political controversies that took place at the end of the 19th century, with the emergence of European nationalisms and the particular claims that it had led to, all of which led to the creation of European nation-states after the First World War. This debate is much less similar to the one that has taken place since the end of the First World War, and especially the Second World War, which was essentially focused on the conquest of public life by all citizens through the myth of social class, which opened a path through power structures, so that more or fewer citizens could have importance in decision-making, whether they were strictly political, economic, social, etc. The self-determination of peoples within the empire had led to, after internal struggles since the French Revolution, through the Napoleonic Wars to the struggle against Nazism, the self-determination of humanity, thanks to the myth of the class struggle, which acted as a catalyst for different political actors, from left to right, to structure themselves around it. However, for the past few decades, the supposed end of History signified by the fall of the USSR in 1991 has given way to a new type of debate, whose myth has become a form of self-determination of peoples, in its purely nihilistic and conspiratorial variant.
Within this new axis, it is possible, in a certain way, to question the institutional and economic systems in which we live, but these problems are put in the background. The summit of the debate is the struggle between enemy groups, ethnicities, or nations. These new controversies as central issues of public life cause three effects. The first effect is that they allow the possessor of political power who manages to claim the title of father or defender of a given people to be unquestionable and unchallenged, being able to grant themselves a false democratic legitimacy as an eternal winner of elections. The second effect is the submission of the people who allow themselves to be dragged into this type of intellectual dead end from both a political and economic point of view, with their only project being the fight against the supposed enemy of the moment. The third effect is that in the long term, all democratization structures that may have been built do not necessarily collapse, but they end up transforming into bureaucratic zombies at the service of the eternal majority, always legitimate because it is defending themselves. We will call balkanization this phenomenon, the substitution of the political debate around the class struggle by a political debate that revolves around ethnic, and religious questions, all in all, by a political debate that is centered, above all, on particular privileges, whether between nation-states, or within states. How did this wave of balkanization in Europe emerge? Are there future prospects for these countries where public debate has been completely replaced?
It is clear that the recent wave of balkanization is closely related to the collapse of the geopolitical bloc of the USSR, although it seems more reasonable to think that, in the face of a stagnant system without a future perspective, the phenomenon of balkanization was occurring well before the fall of the USSR, and that it was only waiting for it to manifest itself through a certain continuity of identity, not ideological, through Putin’s Russia or an attempt to return to the lost Arcadia of the pre-Soviet past, as is the case in Georgia. All of this, of course, without questioning the authoritarianism that perpetuates itself, and which in many cases continues to have the same leaders as before the fall of the USSR, whether they are political or economic, such as all the mafias that hold real power in Georgia. It is important to note that in Georgia, although successive governments have been deeply anti-Russian, the policies they apply end up resembling those of Russia since they share the same model of nationalist balkanized autocracy. A finished class struggle, which has nothing left to defend even if the situation of exploitation continues to persist, inevitably leads to seeking another enemy when this story becomes sterile. Therefore, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 proclaimed that “the abolition of the exploitation of man by man” had been achieved, and today its legacy is nothing more than an identity signifier for Putin to talk about in terms of bellicose irredentism. Where class struggle ceases to be controversy, where the class struggle ceases to be a struggle, the path to balkanization is opened, and the transformation of the struggle into a mere symbolic part of the identity that the anointed leader must protect.
On the other hand, the prime example of the balkanization phenomenon is obviously found in the Western Balkans. The experience suffered by the countries of the former Yugoslavia during the 90s, but also during the 80s, shows us how effective this phenomenon is when it comes to blocking democratic transitions, leading by inertia to authoritarianism and provoking in humans a wake-up of their worst instincts, up to the extremes of genocide and crimes against humanity. Yugoslavia, a country that was a small power, the leader of non-aligned countries, with a GDP higher than that of Spain in 1975 and a social model that, while not democratic in any way, seemed to work, collapses little by little, first ideologically starting in 1980 and finally through civil war in the 90s, with the best example of balkanization that could exist. Indeed, balkanization in former Yugoslavia was configured as a triple imposition on the Yugoslav people. First, an imposition of ethnic struggles by those who had always fought for the existence of states corresponding to each religion in the country, against the universalism that Yugoslavia sought, whether they were the ideological heirs of Croatian fascists or the ideological heirs of Serbian nationalism that had been hidden for decades. Secondly, there was the same imposition by the large communist parties of the member countries of the Federation, which little by little turned to the most visceral nationalism because they realized that with the nationalist mirage, it was easier to maintain their particular economic interests, forcing the population to suddenly hang Orthodox icons at home or wear an Islamic scarf. Thirdly and lastly, an imposition by Tito himself, all those who preceded him, and all those who followed him at the head of decadent Yugoslavia, because they did not know nor did not want to build a democratic Yugoslavia that had as its engine of contradiction the class struggle. Taking the state structure for granted, they assumed that the contradictions between classes were resolved and that they would remain in power forever, opening the way for the enraged and antidemocratic sentiment of nationalism. More than one Yugoslav can say “Yugoslavia was Tito’s dream and it was too beautiful to be true”. If it had been the dream of all Yugoslavs and not just the dream of one man or a small group of men, its fall would have been much harder. Inertia, however, leads to ceding democratic legitimacy to nationalist debate, to a balkanization that obviously ends up killing democracy.
The phenomenon, whose starting point is the perfect example of the Yugoslav War and its previous escalation during the 1980s, has spread throughout Europe and has even reached countries where it seemed impossible for this type of idea to become hegemonic. Therefore, the successive victories of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who, little by little, through his position as the only leader defending the Hungarian people against the enemies of Hungary, end up leading to positions very close to those of the former fascists, who founded their political legitimacy on race opposed to the enemies of the race. However, Orbán has so undermined the institutions and managed to shift the debate around the pivot that keeps him as the only legitimate leader, that he doesn’t even need to stage coups to govern, but simply continues to win elections in a loop as the sole representative of the eternal Hungarian majority, understood in racial terms that transcend its own borders. This project culminates with the “iPad” Constitution of 2011, so-called because it was drafted on this device by different Hungarian parliamentarians who, in its preamble, begin by proclaiming a grotesque identity symbol: “We are proud that our Saint Stephen king built the Hungarian state on solid foundations and made our country part of Christian Europe a thousand years ago.” With this sentence, whatever the Constitution proclaims afterward, the intentions of the constituent are revealed: to preserve a supposed eternal Hungary, an impossible Arcadia, once again a mirage so that the constituted state ceases to worry about democratic issues.
Recently, we have witnessed a resurgence of this phenomenon in Italy, with the victory of Giorgia Meloni in the elections. Italy, a country that was repressed by the National Fascist Party and whose Constitution was written by representatives of all anti-fascist parties, is also now falling into a process of balkanization, with the rise to power of the party that is the heir to fascism. And, analyzing the example of Hungary and Italy, we can see how another manifestation of the phenomenon does not occur so much in internal struggles between ethnic groups present within the State, as could have happened in Yugoslavia, but in something else: hatred of foreigners, especially immigrants. It is interesting to see how Meloni and Orbán proclaim themselves defenders of Christian Europe against foreign invaders, as this allows them to form an indissoluble power bloc if all those who consider themselves members of Christian Europe must, as a moral imperative, fight against foreign invaders. Converting a people into an identity that denies political pluralism, such as the European Christian bloc or the expression used by Meloni “I am a mother, Italian, and Christian” in opposition to a homosexual couple, foreign, and Muslim, are tacit denials of democracy. As a perfectly deliberate result, they lead to the slow death of political ideas and the quiet tyranny of those who defend the particular interests of certain people who are supposed to be represented. Giorgia Meloni’s recent speech to the traditionally left-wing CGIL union is not surprising: to definitively put an end to the contradiction and the desire to access the State which provides the class struggle and substitute for it the only thing that legitimizes their permanence in power and would justify a corruption of the institutions: the instinct of identity protection.
In conclusion, is there a chance to reverse the situation? Can the struggle for democracy and the class struggle become the driving force of political societies that are entering processes of balkanization? For now, the situation seems complex, as the Western Balkans, for example, remain mired in a state of permanent transition, in which they are only slipping towards increasingly retrograde authoritarianism, or towards more internal wars, as in the case of the Serbian regime, which keeps the conflict over the recognition of Kosovo active because it is its only path to popular legitimacy, or the Bosnian regime, whose different actors threaten each other with civil war from time to time. The only hope we have is Europe, understood as a reinvention, an evolution, a deepening of the current European Union. This may seem naive, but in the second half of the 20th century, countries like Spain and Portugal, coming out of fiercely nationalist dictatorships, saw their democracies stabilized by the promise of prosperity represented by the EEC at the time.
Today, the situation is far more complicated, as Europe appears as a tired actor, with faults and disparities in many ways. But if the European Union can make one last big catalytic effort towards integration and democratization, it can gain momentum in which authoritarians will have little say. During the process, their legitimacy will be strengthened, as they will be seen as defenders of the nation against European homogenization, but if they are defeated, a Europe that recognizes itself as a state of citizens, rather than a state of ethnicities or particular nations, strong in its political action and pure in its institutional system, can become the only actor capable of preserving democracy and allowing power to reach all classes through contradiction. Citizens will stop seeing themselves as defenders of an eternal civilization that can only be built in authoritarian terms and will see themselves as conquerors of the state.
Nana Malashkhia, through her symbolic gesture and her despair in waving the European flag against authoritarianism in her country, makes us understand that it is a solidly constituted Europe that can give hope to citizens who want to live free and, moreover, be the owners of their lives.
Marcos Bartolome Terreros
Translated from French by Pavle Erić.
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Marcos Bartolomé Terreros is a spaniard, born in 2003. He studies the double degree in Spanish and French Law at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is interested in politics, literature and cinema.