Habersack, Sabine - Puşcaş, Vasile - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Democraţia in Europa centrală şi de Sud-Est - Aspiraţie şi realitate (Secolele XIX-XX) (Satu Mare, 2001)
Ivan Vovkanych: Democracy and Totalitarianism in East European Countries: Transition Periods int he History of the 20th century
Democracy and Totalitarianism negative effect on its development throughout its history. Unfortunately, modern Russian historiography oftentimes demonstrates paradoxical approaches to the past; for example, referring to the sound negative reaction of East European nations on expansionist actions and dictatorship of post-war Stalinist Moscow, which are treated as ‘Russophobic’.2 Late 1940s was characterized by the expansion of Stalinist USSR’s influence on Eastern Europe and the establishment of pro-Soviet communist regimes in the countries of the region. In this historic phenomenon within a minimal period of time - between 1944 and 1949 - East European countries went through the liberation from fascist occupation or pro-fascist regimes through radical destruction of war-time authoritarian systems and dictatorships to the revival of main elements of bourgeois democracy, and thereafter, paradoxically, through the collapse of democratic system and civic society to the establishment of communist totalitarian dictatorships. Thus, the nations of Eastern Europe were making an ‘exclusive circle’ leading from one dictatorship to another, as modem Slovak researchers point out.3 The transition period is characterized by extremely fast cardinal change of the whole system of social relations and the rejection of any versions of social development other than communist, following the Stalinist Soviet pattern of socialism. It took Eastern Europe just a few years to eliminate civil rights, competitive party system, parliamentary democracy, and political and ideological pluralism, as well as to break the institute of private ownership. This historic break is worth analyzing on a larger scale - in the East of the continent for almost half a century the European civilization had collapsed, and a deadlock Euro-Asian egalitarian terrorist pattern of social organization and Eastern despotism was imposed. The transition period in Eastern Europe after World War II was traditionally called “people’s democratic revolutions” or “people’s democracies” by communist historiographers. The processes of late 40s. which took place in the region, were treated by Marxists as “regularly” leading to socialist revolutions. In our opinion, only anti-fascist revolutions 2 Novopasen I. S., Ob antesovetezm i rusofobe v poslevoenoi Vostocinoi Ebrope: k postanovke probleme, in Slavianovedenie, 1998, nr. 1, p. 3-10. Od diktature c diktature, Slovensko v rokoch 1945-1953. ed. M. Baranovsk, Bratislava, 1995, p. 6. 133
