VLADIMIR TISMANEANU
675
parties, inspired by liberal values and their counterparts who look for in–
spiration in the exaltation of collective nouns such as
fatherland, nation,
ancestors,
or even
blood community.
The conflict is less between communists
and anticommunists than between collectivism and liberalism. The latter
is pro-Western, tolerant, interested in dialogue, and supportive of rapid
marketization. The former is atavistic, resentful, xenophobic, militaristic,
and exclusive. Not only has Ralf Dahrendorf mentioned the risk of
derailment into new forms of dictatorship, including Fascist ones, but
also Adam Michnik, who wrote:
Nationalism is reborn, and with it national conflicts, xenophobia and
the nightmare of anti-Semitism. The conspiracy theory of history
makes its return.... Countries with a weak democratic tradition,
which are in the midst of regaining their national identity, are reha–
bilitating their national history. They have rehabilitated that which in
the communist period was banned, everything which was supposed to
have been removed from the pages of national history and from the
collective memory. Today the rehabilitation goes on even when it
is
least deserved, when there are the most disgraceful crimes on its
conscience, including collaboration with the Nazis. Consider the
conflict over the future in postcommunist states. This conflict, in
which one finds the same terms with which we are £lmiliar from de–
bates in the West, is in £lct quite different. Its origins lie not in a
conflict between left and right, even if there are forces on the political
scene which use these terms to denote their direction. Nor is it a
conflict between conservatism and liberalism, any more than it
is
one
between radicalism and moderation. It is a conflict over the form the
new country is to be given: whether it is to imitate European models,
or whether it is to follow
its
own road by elaborating a radically
different kind of model.
Think of the exclusivity displayed by the Romanian fundamentalists,
often linked to the ruling formation in that country (the National Sal–
vation Front) and the appearance of such phenomena as the "Party X,"
under the eccentric Peruvian-Canadian emigre Stanislaw Tyminski in
Poland. Their only ideological ingredient is an ill-defined sense of
historical malaise, a refusal of the consequences of modernity and a cele–
bration of the presumably pristine values of the pre-industrial, agrarian
life. All of those who advocate integration in democratic Europe are the
targets for smear campaigns and are stigmatized as agents of a universal
Zionist-plutocratic-Masonic conspiracy.
One should not exaggerate, however, the dark colors in this picture
and the difficulties of the ongoing evolution from totalitarianism to a
different political order based on the rule oflaw. Compared to 1987, we
