1989 So hard to remember and so easy to forget (credit and apologies to Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart) Ken Roberts Un

1. 1989So hard to remember and so easy to forget(credit and apologies to Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart)Ken RobertsUniversity of Liverpool Aims Young people from 1989 to the present Youth research: achievements and …. Historical/biographical recollections Plan South Caucasus 2008 Chronology 1980s: academic expectations Eastern Europe in the early-1990s Expectations and outcomes in Eastern Europe, 1989/91 Research: achievements and… Youth 2009: children of the class of ‘89

2. South Caucasus, 2008 32-38 year olds, all aged 15-21 in 1991 What were you doing, what do you remember about 1991? The year did not ‘click’ Answers in terms of personal lives: finishing school, avoiding army service etc. The first post-communist cohorts, but they did not regard themselves as different from people who were older None recalled being part of historically significant events Many were not, but • All the countries were at war • Sustained demonstrations in Tbilisi and Yerevan • Fighting between political factions in Azerbaijan until HeydarAliyev takes control in 1993 History is always created in the present Biographies are reconstructed in the light of outcomes Differed over whether their lives had developed as they had hoped and planned Do we (sociologists) know what young people were doing/thinking/feeling in 1989/91? For those who experienced 1989/91, difficult to relate: • Experiences then to what happened in the 1990s, and current situations • Historical narratives to own biographies and countries’ situations

3. Chronology 1961. Berlin Wall built 98 (official) but estimates that over 200 are killed trying to cross 9 November 1989: Fall of the Wall 1980. Solidarity formed in Poland, martial law, leaders interned 1985. Gorbachev: reforming communism; glasnost, perestroika; communist parties must face competition; the Soviet army will not rescue unpopular regimes Round table discussions between Solidarity of Polish communists June 1989. Solidarity wins all but one elected seats in the Sejm August 23. Hungary opens border with Austria: the Trabant exodus (built between 1957 and 1991, waiting list 15 years, average road life 28 years) September 4. Street demonstration in Leipzig October. Hungary November-December: Civic Forum, Czechoslovakia December 25. Execution of Ceausescus, Romania June 1990. Free elections in Bulgaria December 26 1991. USSR disbanded March 1992. Albania, defeat of communists in elections January 1, 1993. Velvet divorce. Czech Republic and Slovakia

4. Chronology (continued) Yugoslavia June 1991. Slovenia and Croatia declare independence September 1991. Macedonia 1992. Bosnia and Herzegovina September 2000. Fall of Milosevic June 2006. Montenegro June 2006. Republic of Serbia February 2008. Kosovo Continuing the process of creating a Europe of nation states embarked on after World War I, but in the context of a European Union

5. 1980s: academic expectations Alain Touraine, Francois Dubet, Michel Wieviorka and Jan Strzelecki, Solidarity: Analysis of a Social Movement: Poland 1980-1981, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge , 1983. Communist societies could be changed by protest. Wage claim to total social movement, Martial law to destroy not Solidarity but communism itself. George Kolankiewicz and Paul G Lewis, Poland, Pinter, London, 1988. Describe a post-Solidarity Poland that will remain a bastion of socialism for the foreseeable future. The academic orthodoxy: the Second World; an alternative way of becoming and remaining a modern industrial society. Experts on communism faced an unexpected choice: become historians or students of post-communism Solidarity, 1989, expected the outcome of elections to be a partnership with the communists Self: Teaching Comparative Industrial Societies: West (Sweden a leader towards social democracy) and East (the Yugoslav variant, self-management). Taught orthodox view; dissenters were mostly embittered Russian emigrants. Youth research: Britain, Germany, Poland The case for studying young people: • Most directly affected • The future adult generation Inevitably add to knowledge

6. Expectations and outcomes in Eastern Europe in 1989/91 Solidarity: a trade union; wanted true socialism – workers control, Poland run by and for Poles Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had hero status simply through being anti-communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe and the disintegrating Soviet Union Economic collapse, crisis: the global market economy as the only solution, at a price – big bang, shock therapy

7. Eastern Europe in the early-1990s: an adventure Visas still required Communist system at airports and hotels Hyper-inflation, savings worthless, zloty millionaires Unemployment Doing ‘bizness’ Older people: embittered, angry Young people experience the changes differently. Not youth revolutions (the work of the ‘class of ’68’), but in 1989/91 many young people joined in enthusiastically Futures snatched away: so much more possible; down to the individual Pro-west (EU, NATO) (Conceal western association with research only in Donbass and Uzbekistan) Exit visas abolished No visas needed to enter EU from candidate countries Forget Russian, learn English Consumer cultures flood in But throughout the 1990s minorities of young people were continuing to say that the old system was better; even more widespread support for collectivist economic and social policies Path dependence: history always matters, but there are critical events • Privatisation of housing • Neo-liberal market reforms and the economic horror: the new economies may not need all potential members of the labour forces (China, India, Africa, Latin America) Continuities in youth transition processes and divisions among young people

8. Research: achievements and… 1989 preceded: BHPS, 1991 European Sociological Association, first conference, Vienna 1992 GostaEsping-Anderson (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton University Press, New Jersey. Large number of ad hoc projects (With hindsight): the value of pan-European sequential cohort panel surveys. This opportunity is still there Values: Pro-market? Pro-democracy? Identities: Europeans? Civic participation (Largest youth organisations, created by ‘parties of power’: Russia, Georgia) Young people as active agents Youth: a transitional life stage: too many snapshots, too little longitudinality Too little contextualisation Too few small N, in-depth comparative studies Failure to operationalise social class Data collection has still to catch-up with Eastern European realities Employment and unemployment Combinations of family and housing circumstances

9. Youth 2009: children of the class of ‘89 Differences widen, by country and by region Small countries adjacent to pre-2004 EU Capitals versus elsewhere Inward investment in manufacturing Economic wastelands Today’s youth One dominant aspiration: join the new middle classes Ideologically invisible (and often numerically diminished) working classes The route: higher education Exit: second or third best. Probably as pendulum migrant. Disadvantaged at destination Plan housing and family careers; gender divisions Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, ‘Global generations and the trap of methodological nationalism for a cosmopolitan turn in the sociology of youth and generation’, European Sociological Review, 25, 2009, 25-36. Expectation of global equality: if not happening in own countries, will move to find it. Frustration, anger, but no alternative vision Class of ’89’: Fall of Milosevic, 2000. Colour revolutions (regime change): Tbilisi (2003), Kiev (2004), Bishkek (2005). Evidence of disappointment, frustration, but in no case was mass participation sustained Privatism and investment in the personal: partly due to the absence of a historical narrative that connects the micro to the macro