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Communist regimes, legitimacy and the transition to democracy in Eastern

Europe
Monica Ciobanua
a
Sociology, Plattsburgh State University of New York, Plattsburgh, USA

Online publication date: 14 December 2009

To cite this Article Ciobanu, Monica(2010) 'Communist regimes, legitimacy and the transition to democracy in Eastern
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 Nationalities Papers
Vol. 38, No. 1, January 2010, 3 –21

SPECIAL SECTION: LEGITIMACY AND THE LEGACY OF 1989

Communist regimes, legitimacy and the transition to democracy
in Eastern Europe
Monica Ciobanu

Sociology, Plattsburgh State University of New York, Plattsburgh, USA

(Received 1 July 2009; final version received 30 September 2009)

The purpose of this article is to clarify the relationship between forms of political
legitimacy employed by communist regimes in East and Central Europe and
subsequent models of revolutionary change in 1989. The conceptual basis of the
analysis lies in Max Weber’s theoretical framework of legitimacy. The four cases
selected for comparison are Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The attempts of
de-Stalinization and reformation of these party-state regimes through the introduction
of paternalistic and also more goal-oriented measures could not prevent their
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disintegration in the 1980s and their subsequent collapse in 1989. But, I argue, it was
the withdrawal of ideological support by elites that ultimately brought communism to
an end. The differences in revolutionary scenarios and transitions to democracy in the
four cases indicate the importance of a shift in both rulers and masses towards interest
in dialogue and compromise. Hungary and Poland represent the clearest scenarios in
which communist parties acted as agents of regime change in a rational-legal
direction. The Bulgarian case stands as an intermediary case between these two and
Romania. Finally, Romania represents an extreme case of violent revolution and the
overthrow of a traditionalist and sultanistic regime and illustrates the difficulties
following a complete collapse of political authority.
Keywords: communism; legitimacy; transition to democracy

Analysts of late communist regimes in East and Central Europe in the 1980s who utilize a
conceptual framework derived from Max Weber’s classical theory of legitimacy generally
note the extraordinary endurance of these regimes. They also attempt to explain how such
longevity and stability was maintained in the face of an evident erosion of Marxist ideology
and disintegrating popular support in the working class. The most common explanations are
the following: the particular means employed by leading communist parties in the region to
ensure mass compliance, including a mixture of coercion and material incentives; the intro-
duction of some measures of economic and cultural liberalization; the coexistence between a
ritualistic exercise of power and a depoliticized society; the lack of credible alternatives in the
context of Soviet hegemony; or, as in some cases, the use of a nationalist-communist ideology
as justification for repressive totalitarian practices (Rigby and Feher; Arato; Feher, Heller,
and Markus; Lewis; Bromke). These interpretations emphasize that communist regimes typi-
cally claim their right to rule through a combination of traditional and rational-legal forms of
institutional practice and normative claims. Although these analysts signaled an ongoing dis-
integration of socialist systems, in general they were reluctant to predict imminent collapse.


Email: monica.ciobanu@plattsburgh.edu

ISSN 0090-5992 print/ISSN 1465-3923 online

# 2010 Association for the Study of Nationalities
DOI: 10.1080/00905990903394490
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 4 M. Ciobanu

Finally, when the annus mirabilis of 1989 accomplished a mostly smooth and peaceful end to
the one-party states of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, the social science
paradigm of regime legitimacy was revisited. The discussion of the relationship between
serious problems of legitimacy and the collapse of communist states was reformulated in
terms of elites’ loss of confidence and their withdrawal of support for the regime (Pakulski;
DiPalma; Chirot; Holmes; Szelenyi and Szelenyi). The absence of any measurable threat of
Soviet interventionism facilitated by the policies of political and economic liberalization
introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union was also acknowledged by these
authors as a crucial factor conducive to the democratic transition.
This dilemma of interpretation illustrates an old ambiguity in the conceptual and his-
torical analysis of the dissolution of a predominant form of legitimacy, and its subsequent
transformation, which originated in Weber’s theory of power and domination. According
to Weber, each system of domination attempts to establish a belief in its legitimacy for
which a certain type of obedience is claimed and a specific kind of administrative appar-
atus is developed in order to guarantee this legitimacy. The three pure types of authority on
which legitimate domination bases its claims are legal, traditional and charismatic. Legal
authority is based on rational grounds in the specific sense that members of society do not
obey an individual or individuals exerting authority but rather they and their leaders adhere
to impersonal principles of legality embodied in the office. The bureaucratic staff charged
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with administering this impersonal order is recruited on the basis of requisite skills and
qualifications. In contrast, in traditional forms of authority obedience is seen as a matter
of personal loyalty to the chief who is bound by specific traditions of rule or governance.
Recruitment or selection of an administrative staff is based on the ruler’s discretion and on
received traditional practice. The third type of authority, charismatic, is characterized by
the existence of a leader, who, through virtue of his perceived exceptional or heroic qual-
ities, claims and gains obedience from his disciples (Weber 212 – 54).
Weber’s theoretical analysis of the three types of political legitimacy only partially
addressed questions of legitimation crisis and system disintegration. Following the Weberian
argument, the same students of communist politics and society also emphasized that the right
to use coercive force, to which any political authority is legally entitled, is not a sufficient con-
dition for ensuring compliance with the dictates of the regime. All political regimes regardless
of their nature – democratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian – seek to manipulate a set of values,
which they claim are shared by a majority of the members of society. Although Weber exam-
ined the “routinization of charisma” in either a traditional or democratic direction, he did not
pursue a deeper discussion of the collapse of various forms of traditional legitimacy such as
patrimonialism, paternalism and sultanism. He also implied that the most stable type of pol-
itical system, i.e. least prone to collapse, rests on rational-legal foundations.
However, since there is concrete historical evidence that some political regimes
managed to remain in power without enjoying real popular consent to any system of
beliefs employed, it is obvious that none of the three types of legitimacy described by
Weber easily fits a situation of what was essentially passive compliance or negative legiti-
macy. This is actually a quite different type of legitimacy – whether traditional, sultanis-
tic, or rational-legal regimes – that represents merely passive acceptance of authority by
citizens or subjects. The circumstances of this acceptance can vary with the administrative
staff’s interest in maintaining its privileges, the degree of coercion, lack of alternatives, or
pure conformism (Bensman 21).
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between forms of political legiti-
macy employed by the former communist regimes in East and Central Europe and the sub-
sequent models of revolutionary change in 1989. This undertaking has a twofold scope and
 Nationalities Papers 5

implications. First, at an empirical level it attempts to illustrate the similarities and differences
between communist regimes and distinctive revolutionary paths in Bulgaria, Hungary,
Poland and Romania. Secondly, at a theoretical level it explores the complex question of
legitimate order in communism within the Weberian framework. In particular, it examines
the relevance of the concept of passive or negative legitimacy, as introduced by several con-
temporary theorists, for understanding issues of order under communism. In all four cases
communist political authorities failed in establishing rational-legal forms of legitimacy
based on formal rational bureaucratic administration – despite proclaimed goals of modern-
ization and industrialization – with the result that differences in the character and compo-
sition of political elites and bureaucratic personnel influenced significantly the role played
by communist party leaderships in 1989. In the cases of Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, exist-
ing political authorities showed some willingness to compromise with anti-communist forces
and representatives. In contrast, Ceausescu’s communist regime violently opposed any
substantive change, as a direct consequence of which the Romanian revolution represented
a violent rupture with the past. The analysis of these four cases may provide some tentative
answers to the questions of legitimation crisis and loss of power by political authorities. They
provide empirical evidence of different degrees of traditional forms of legitimacy from the
most extreme (Romania) to an intermediate type (Bulgaria) and to least extreme forms in
Hungary and Poland that had earlier begun to exhibit rational-legal elements.
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Without minimizing the important role that the policies of liberalization pursued by
Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union played in the collapse of communist regimes in
Eastern Europe, the four cases presented reflect significant differences between them
and pose important questions regarding issues of power, authority, legitimate/valid
order and illegitimacy. As Weber pointed out, “the legitimacy of a system of domination
may be treated sociologically only as the probability that to a relevant degree the appro-
priate attitudes will exist, and the corresponding practical conduct ensue” and only as long
as the administrative apparatus is in a position to carry out authoritative commands (Weber
214). However, it is not at all clear how much opposition hidden beneath passive compli-
ance, together with any lack of genuine support for the regime among upper echelon
bureaucratic personnel, is necessary for the breakdown of a political order. Moreover, if
revolution occurs, how ultimately important is the revolutionary path taken for the event-
ual establishment of a stable rational-legal system leading towards some semblance of
liberal democracy? The aim of the proposed analysis is to provide some answers to
these questions. Although the two main arguments developed by several scholars referred
to above are integrated into this analysis – the elites’ loss of confidence and Gorbachev’s
reforms – a third explanatory variable can be added in analyzing the 1989 anti-communist
revolutions. It refers to the importance of events or incidents that clearly reveal the
regimes’ loss of their constructed narratives, or in Weberian terms, their systems of beliefs.
A brief overview of communist developments in the four countries covering the post-
1956 period of de-Stalinization initiated by Khrushchev and their last decade of the 1980s
characterized by ongoing crisis lays out the conceptual and historical basis of this analysis.
This is followed by a discussion of the similarities and differences of the revolutionary
changes that occurred in 1989 in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania and their impli-
cations for legitimacy and an emerging democratization process.

The de-Stalinization of communist regimes and the search for legitimacy

After World War II the basic problem that all communist regimes in Eastern Europe
except Yugoslavia had to confront was their status as satellites of the Soviet Union.
 6 M. Ciobanu

Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania became communist as a result of Soviet military
intervention. Moreover, prior to the communist takeover in the 1940s, Poland and
Romania had always experienced a problematic relationship with the Soviet Union as a
result of its aggressively expansionist territorial policy. Communist parties in both
countries thus faced serious credibility issues. In 1938 the Comintern dissolved the
Polish Communist Party (KPP) and executed many of its leaders. The party was estab-
lished in 1941 as the Polish Worker’s Party (PPR) (Kemp-Welch 17– 18). The Romanian
Communist Party (RCP), founded in 1921, played a relatively insignificant role in the
national political arena during the interwar period, but shortly after its creation the auth-
orities banned the RCP as anti-national and subversive of the sovereignty and integrity of
the Romanian state.1 Unlike Poland and Romania, Bulgaria’s relationship with the Soviet
Union before World War II was more positive and marked by historical and cultural affi-
nities based on a common Slavic heritage. Soviet intervention and the repression of other
political forces, however, also played a substantial role in the communization of Bulgaria
(Bell 75– 96).
In the countries under consideration, the early post-war stage of communism was very
much based on imitation and importation of the Soviet model of domination: Stalinist
repression characterized by massive deportations, labor camps, and executions both of
class enemies and of deviationist elements within the parties. As Agnes Heller points
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out, during this stage of fairly direct Soviet rule any preoccupation with legitimacy was
limited to the Leninist ideology of class struggle and ignored issues of legality and ration-
ality (Heller 141). Later, a corrupted version of charismatic legitimation gradually formed
around Stalin’s cult of personality. This personality cult was followed to a lesser extent by
Vulko Chervenkov in Bulgaria, Matyas Rakosi in Hungary and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
in Romania. In addition, these three communist leaders pursued a Stalinist policy of for-
cible collectivization of agriculture and intensive industrialization. In contrast, Wladyslaw
Gomulka in Poland openly rejected collectivization and began parsing a nationalist rheto-
ric. Gomulka’s stance towards the Soviet Union initiated a polycentric trend, i.e. a strategy
of choosing policies that would offer some popular support, relative independence from
Moscow, yet that were still acceptable to the Soviet Union.2 Eventually, polycentrism
was embraced at various times and in some degree by other communist leaders in the
socialist camp.
After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev, in his famous secret speech in 1956, attacked
the personality cult that had developed in Stalin’s closed patrimonial system. Khrushchev
very much wanted to move the Soviet Union away from a leadership cult towards a more
rational goal-oriented form of legitimacy based on the modernization of the Soviet system
into an industrialized, more productive and also more consumption-oriented society.3
Under de-Stalinization as initiated by Khrushchev, East European satellite regimes
began a process of partial revision of communist ideology in an effort to make it more con-
sistent with national historical and cultural traditions. This shift was also urgently needed
as the socio-economic policies of the late 1940s and early 1950s had failed to produce any
increase in popular support for communism. They had in fact led to an increase in popular
dissatisfaction that had taken open forms of social protest (as in the case of the 1956 strikes
in Poznan in Poland and the worker uprising in East Germany in 1953). The more common
political response was the marginalization and sometimes elimination of Soviet factions
within the East European parties, party takeovers by nationalist elements and the
emulation of the new Soviet example of “collective leadership.” This last was the case
in Bulgaria where at the sixth congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1954
Vulko Chervenkov stepped down as secretary general. Two years later the Khrushchevian
 Nationalities Papers 7

reformer Todor Zhivkov replaced him (Bell 112– 13). During what was a brief period of
de-Stalinization, the rehabilitation of communist leaders prosecuted during the Soviet
terror – such as the victims of the 1949 show trials in Hungary (Laszlo Rakk) and Bulgaria
(Traicho Kostov) – took place with the support of communist leaderships. The reinstate-
ment of Gomulka in the Polish Worker’s Party (PPR) and the abandonment of collectivi-
zation in 1956 represented important episodes in the history of the post-Stalinist thaw in
Poland. In Romania, polycentrism took less radical forms than in Hungary and Poland.
The Romanian Communist Party (RCP), for example, did not renounce the collectiviza-
tion of agriculture until 1962. After 1958, the ethnic Romanian faction of the RCP, led
by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the party secretary, did manage to ensure its dominance
over an exiled faction led by Anna Pauker. Pauker was resented both because of her
exile in Moscow and her Jewish background. In 1964, Gheorghiu-Dej issued a Declaration
of Independence that criticized Russia’s hegemony in the Soviet bloc as well as its military
capacity to threaten the territorial independence of Romania. But subsequent develop-
ments in Romania show that the RCP was never really interested in pursuing a genuine
process of de-Stalinization. The nationalist card was simply used skillfully to attract
greater popular consent among ordinary Romanians.
However, the limits of de-Stalinization were tested by the dramatic developments that
unfolded in Hungary in 1956 under Rakosi’s successor Imre Nagy. Nagy had come to
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power as a result of strong protests by elements of the intelligentsia and students. These
protests during October and early November 1956 developed into a genuine nationalist
and anti-communist revolutionary movement. But faced with the overt rebellion of one
of its satellites, the Soviet leadership showed little hesitation in employing overwhelming
military force and violently repressed the uprising. Nagy was executed and replaced by
Janos Kadar. These early revolutionary events and the Soviet reaction to them indefinitely
stalled all measures of relaxation introduced by communist parties in the region. It also
taught them to exercise restraint in their relationships with the center. For the next two
decades the leading role of the communist party and of the Soviet Union was always
asserted when particular actions that would serve to bring some degree of legality and
rationality to the system were pursued by satellite parties.
To understand the contradictions and paradoxes that resulted from different legitimation
strategies employed by the communist parties in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania,
which ultimately and in some cases ironically led to the disintegration and subsequent
collapse of these systems, some prior discussion of the nature of socialist states is useful.
In socialist societies, political authority embodied in the one-party state claimed a mon-
opoly of knowledge on the basis of universalist principles of Marxist – communist doctrine.
The constitutions of Soviet-style regimes proclaimed the leading role of communist parties
as sole representatives of the working class and the instrumental role of the socialist state as
the means to accomplish its objectives. Of these objectives one of the most important was
the protection of socialist or collective property. There was thus no separation between
party and state. The state apparatus became the sole owner of the nationalized or
“socialized” means of production. In consequence, managers of socialist enterprises
were representatives of the state. However, party and state bureaucracy by no means
approximated a Weberian type of rational and impersonal bureaucratic organization. The
selection and appointment of party bureaucrats was never based on Weberian universalistic
criteria of rationality, impersonality and competence. Janos Kornai shows how state and
party activities overlap and how the party had complete authority over appointments,
promotions and dismissals within the state apparatus down to the smallest local level
(Kornai 37– 39). Given that the rotation of senior officials between high positions within
 8 M. Ciobanu

the state bureaucracy, the legislative and executive branches of government, socialist enter-
prises, or even within the law enforcement and security apparatus was a common practice, a
select and substantial privileged cadre of personnel was inevitably created. This elite group
(the nomenklatura) enjoyed privileges and access to goods and services not available to
ordinary citizens. As long as the members of the nomenklatura continued to benefit from
their strategic location in the bureaucratic system and were willing to endorse and
support the leadership the indefinite duration of the regime was almost guaranteed.4
Given also that the ideological claim of equality among all citizens was contradicted by
the very existence of what essentially was a ruling class, the nomenklatura’s ideological
commitment or assent had to become essential to the persistence of the regime. At this
point we can address particular features of these elites in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and
Romania, their relationships to the Soviet center and to the upper echelons of their own
communist parties, and finally to anti-communist dissident movements.
In 1954, when Todor Zhivkov became first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist
Party (BCP), a cautious shift towards professionalizing the state apparatus was initiated.
Better educated and younger cadres were brought into the upper echelons of the party.
Included among them was Zhivkov’s daughter Lyudmila, an art historian who became a
major figure in the BCP before her early death in 1981. However, the influence of the
old guard continued to be maintained. The new Constitution, approved in 1971, recog-
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nized the original leading role of the BCP. An additional feature of the Bulgarian political
system was the presence on the political scene of the Bulgarian Agrarian National
Movement (BANU), a political party that had played a major role in the pre-World
War II political arena and was a crucial factor in the anti-fascist movement. BANU,
together with the BCP, the Communist Youth League, trade unions and women’s organ-
izations became integrated in the Fatherland Front (FF), which by 1984 encompassed
“87% of the working-age group and nearly half of the total population” (McIntyre 54).
BANU’s activity, however, was subordinated to the BCP and its executive power was
limited to “the ministries of justice, public health, communications and forestry” (Bell
130). But the BCP’s and Zhivkov’s main claim to legitimacy was the transformation of
an agrarian society into a modern industrialized one. Curiously, perhaps, the accomplish-
ment of this substantive-rational goal did not involve any break with Moscow. On the
contrary, the doctrine of “total integration with the Soviet Union” was acclaimed by the
communist leadership until the bitter end. To some extent, the BCP’s claims in respect
to modernization were accurate. Between 1945 and 1975 Bulgaria experienced a high
level of economic growth due to preferential economic and technical assistance provided
by the Soviet Union (McIntyre 69). Perhaps this relative relaxation of the system sustained
by paternalistic policies, together with the lack of nationalist anti-Russian sentiment,
explains the absence of a significant anti-communist opposition movement. But relative
popular consent to the regime weakened in the early 1980s when the public became dis-
enchanted with widespread elite corruption. At the same time, the Soviet leadership – then
engaged in the glasnost and perestroika reforms – turned a critical eye on the inflexible
and rigid leadership style practiced by the BCP.
In contrast to Bulgaria’s servile imitation of the Soviet model in the 1960s and 1970s,
the Hungarian case illustrates the extreme limit of socio-economic reformation within the
socialist system achieved by any of Moscow’s satellites. After the repression of the anti-
communist revolution in 1956, the mechanism for legitimating the communist system
adopted by Janos Kadar was to avoid a similar revolutionary explosion and ensure
passive consent. Kadar was quick to transform his role from oppressor of the revolution
into that of reformer. In the next two decades he mastered the art of turning one of the
 Nationalities Papers 9

weakest elements of his regime – its dependence on the Soviet Union – into one of advan-
tage: by minimizing it. His famous 1961 declaration “Whoever is not against us is with
us!” was an open invitation for reconciliation and compromise. From the early 1960s
Kadar introduced a degree of cultural liberalism and opened the economy towards the
West. Moreover, as a result of Hungary’s New Economic Mechanism of 1968, which
shifted economic strategy away from the extensive growth of large-scale industry
towards an intensive development of light industry and the production of consumer
goods, a secondary economy and a partial middle-class revival occurred. This loosening
of the state command economy, allowing occupational mobility and relaxation of controls
over personal income levels, also had some effect on the rationalization of the administra-
tive apparatus through an increased meritocratic recruitment of qualified personnel. At the
same time property rights were granted more specific implementation, including the right
of individuals to own small enterprises and shops (Linz and Stepan 297 – 99). Decreased
economic and political control by the communist party also resulted in the emergence
of a more pluralistic and less homogeneous society than in any other Eastern European
country. The idea that the existing Hungarian regime was the best possible under con-
ditions of Soviet rule became the basis for the emergence of a form of negative or
passive legitimacy during its later stages (Rigby and Feher; Feher, Heller, and Markus;
Lewis). But given that these new economic freedoms and privileges were granted and
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guaranteed within the framework of the party-state, the so-called new middle class was
dependent on the state and was primarily identified with the communist nomenklatura
as chief beneficiaries of the reforms. In respect to freedom of expression, the Hungarian
authorities offered rewards but also threats. After initially practicing fairly relaxed legal
censorship over group activities in the late 1970s – for example allowing the neo-
Marxist dissenters of the “Budapest school” to open a dialogue with the government –
once groups become too vocal the regime displayed no hesitation in repressing them.
Poland’s post-Stalinist experience was characterized by a strong nationalist orientation
promoted by Wladyslaw Gomulka until 1970 and by the development of a more extensive
societal pluralism. The latter was rooted in the influential role of the Catholic Church and
an agricultural sector that remained organized predominantly in privately owned farms.5
The Church played a crucial role throughout the communist period, first as a moderating
force in the face of potential intervention in 1956 and again in 1970, and later as a nego-
tiating force between the regime and the opposition movement in the 1980s. The tremen-
dous power of the Church in Poland is linked with the history of the Polish struggle for
national independence when Polish nationalism was almost completely identified with
Catholicism.6
Gomulka’s nationalist phase of Polish communism was followed in the next 10 years by a
period of massive foreign borrowing by his successor Edward Girek. This economic strategy,
used as a substitute for economic reform and as a means for raising the standard of living, did
not produce results. In fact its direct effect was to transform Poland by 1975 into the principal
Eastern European debtor to West European banks. As a direct consequence, the govern-
ment’s decision to increase food prices produced serious political and social tensions and
immediate protest by the industrial working class. In 1970 massive strikes were carried
out in the shipbuilding cities of the Baltic Coast. Although they were brutally repressed by
the authorities, these protests set the stage for a highly significant alliance between the
working class and the intellectuals formally accomplished in 1976 with the creation of
the Workers Defense Committee (KOR) (Laba). This alliance, which eventually led to the
defeat of the regime in 1989, gradually shifted in the direction of inducing evolutionary
change through organizing social movements from below (Bernhard). The unique feature
 10 M. Ciobanu

of the Polish opposition movement was that by 1980 it had become the mass movement of the
working class. At its peak, the Solidarity labor union could count approximately 10 million
members. In the face of such collective unrest, a military-led regime headed by an army
figure, General Jaruzelski, was installed in 1981. This generated a major crisis in the legiti-
macy of the communist party as it gradually withdrew as the leading political force in society.
To a great extent also it reflected the incapacity of the communist regime to cope with its own
deficits under conditions of long-term Soviet domination. It is relevant here that attempts to
challenge the dogmatism of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) (the new title was
introduced in 1948) from within – initiated by reformist elements – were repressed. The
intellectual opposition was also subject to repression.
In Romania, paradoxically, de-Stalinization measures and de-Sovietization of the
Romanian communist regime, introduced by Gheorghiu-Dej in 1958 and continued by
his successor Nicolae Ceausescu after 1967 until his overthrow in December 1989,
resulted in a complete regression to a closed, autarchic, repressive and inflexible Stalinism.
This state of affairs was not in any way a result of the process of re-legitimation of the
communist regime after the initial revolutionary Soviet-style terror and its immediate
post-Stalinist quasi-nativization followed by Ceausescu’s brief charismatic appeal in
1968. This ultimately became (in Weberian terms) routinized in the most extreme and
repressive version of a traditional type of legitimacy: sultanism.7
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Not unlike other leaders in the socialist camp, Ceausescu, after coming to power in
1967 following Dej’s death, introduced populist measures intended to improve the
standard of living. However, Ceausescu’s paternalism was short lived and limited.
Manipulation, a cult of personality, repression and nationalism became Ceausescu’s
most powerful tools of political domination, reaching its peak in the 1980s. The one
significant act that was to characterize the apogee of expressed consent by Romanians
to the regime and which successfully (if falsely) manufactured Ceausescu’s image as a
charismatic and courageous leader was his public speech in 1968. He condemned the inva-
sion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. However,
after a brief period of apparent liberalization that ended in 1971 Ceausescu shifted the
regime towards a fully totalitarian system. His tactic of establishing a personality cult
was doubly sustained by the expression of an extreme xenophobic nationalist rhetoric
that led to an ideological fusion of Ceausescu, the RCP and the nation.8 Any potential
opposition from either outside or within the party was eliminated by the absolute subordi-
nation of the secret police, the military and the upper apparatchik echelon of the RCP to
Ceausescu, his family members and a few obedient loyalists. This complete failure to
establish or support any semblance of political or societal pluralism created a general
and paralyzing state of fear and apathy among the population. It also left the country
politically isolated. By the early 1980s Romania, now virtually bankrupted by Ceausescu’s
disastrous economic policies, was thrust back into the Soviet sphere of influence.9
The four cases, although different in terms of the means utilized by their respective
communist parties to move beyond coercion and Soviet ideology, illustrate the limitations
of reforming the system within the monopoly of the party-state. In fact, the available
options for reducing the rigidity and dogmatism of Stalinism, by recourse to sultanism or
paternalism, were prone to shifting these regimes further away from the modernization
and the establishment of rational-legal administration. Sultanism, as it developed in
Romania, pushed the contradictions of socialism to its limits. Similarly, a quasi-
paternalistic Kadarism – then the most liberal type of socialism – was unable to
develop an impersonal administrative apparatus based solely on expert ability free of
ideological interference. That paternalism could become a successful strategy for ensuring
 Nationalities Papers 11

mass compliance in Hungary – and also to a certain extent in Bulgaria and briefly in
Romania – indicates that these regimes were accepted at least temporarily even if they
were not necessarily perceived as politically valid or legitimate by those subjected to
them. Through a paternalist “dictatorship over needs,” as described by Feher, the party-
state bureaucracy provided citizens with goods, services and other means of subsistence in
exchange for submission to political authority. The combination of paternalism and coercion
introduced a culture of passive compliance or negative legitimacy. The state became an
authoritarian association that regulated individual lives, choices, and fulfilled basic or essen-
tial needs. Ultimately, paternalism could not ensure the permanent dominance of socialist
regimes. Even in a socialist system that attempted to abolish private property, the new homo-
geneous social order could not escape the inevitability of a technical division of labor that
creates an occupational differentiation that inevitably divides society into status groups
and classes with unequal access to rewards, resources, power and prestige. This generally
stark differentiation of society represents, then, a powerful underlying source of tension
and indicates a potentially significant deficit of legitimacy affecting elites as much as
masses. The deficit became especially problematic when managerial and political elites
began to withdraw ideological support for their particular regimes in the mid- to late 1980s.
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Late communism, legitimation crisis and elite disintegration

After the mid-1970s the socialist economies began to underperform and fall increasingly
behind the living standards and level of technological development achieved in West
European capitalist countries. The economic reforms pursued by communist regimes,
even to the extent that (as in the Hungarian case) several introduced some form of
private property and allowed a degree of socio-occupational mobility, were nevertheless
limited in scope. By focusing on maintaining full employment and low prices for basic
foods, these reforms tended to reveal the inadequacies of the system instead of attempting
to develop it (Chirot 5 – 9). As early as 1982, however, it was clear that the de-politiciza-
tion of socialist economies and the partial abandonment of central planning, whether
involving minimal or more extensive rationalization of the managerial apparatus of
state enterprises, would lead to a serious weakening of the legitimacy of the state. This
in turn could negatively affect the leading position of the party (Arato 208– 10). Political
developments unfolding during the last decade of the communist regimes in Bulgaria,
Hungary, Poland and Romania in fact represent a clear indication of a loss of self-
confidence and sense of legitimacy among communist elites due precisely to the relative
decline of control and growing uncertainty in respect to the economy. The ongoing weak-
ening of regimes was also indicated by internal ideological differentiation and dispute
within communist parties in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, the critical analysis of the
socialist system in influential intellectual circles in Hungary and Poland, and in the
Polish case by the extraordinary ability of the Solidarity labor union to ally itself – if
only briefly – with the PZPR as its legitimate governing partner.10 The communist
regime in Romania, however, continued despite changes elsewhere to maintain a social
order based on fear and violent repression.
By focusing on the weakening of communist elites, the position can be taken that the loss
of popular or mass support for a regime – although potentially leading to a legitimation
crisis – does not necessarily result in its collapse. It is rather the inability of rulers them-
selves and their immediate supporters (the administrative staff) to believe in the
legitimacy of their authority that precipitates regime disintegration. Weber himself
acknowledged that the stability of a regime and its continuing domination is ensured by
 12 M. Ciobanu

the staff’s belief in the legitimacy of its leaders, whether or not out of real conviction. In the
case of the latter, self-interest and desire for material or non-material rewards is the driving
force. More recently, Rodney Barker developed this idea further by arguing the essential
significance of self-confidence by leadership in the activity of governing (Barker).
The de-legitimation of East European regimes was also affected by ongoing criticism
and subversive or dissident activities by segments of the intelligentsia. Through samizdat
writings and in official publications which escaped censorship, intellectual elites revealed
the ideological deceit. However, dissidents were less likely to experience the type of
violent repression that characterized the Stalinist period. This time the repercussions
were more subtle and, at least in Hungary and Poland, became more predictable. As
Szelenyi and Szelenyi put it, “as liberalization unfolded, the new elite began to court
the dissidents” (Szelenyi and Szelenyi 227).
That this was the case in former socialist countries is indicated by the behavior of the
managerial class and the nomenklatura. It frequently contradicted the idea of the party as
the leading actor in the socialist revolution. Socialist cadres not only adopted a Western
consumerist lifestyle using the privileges of position within the system, but perceived
the pursuit of economic reforms as an exclusive mean of accumulating personal wealth
and advantage for themselves (Szelenyi and Szelenyi 219). Corruption and misuse of
state resources inevitably became public knowledge as communist leaderships (to
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protect themselves) openly admitted and initiated legal action against perpetrators. As
Leslie Holmes emphasizes, corruption campaigns launched in Eastern Europe in the
1980s showed a crisis of legitimacy within the broad communist apparatus (Holmes).
Critical internal debates within parties regarding inappropriate behavior of members of
the political elites were much facilitated by the new liberalization process initiated by
Moscow after 1985. To address issues of economic and technological stagnation faced
by the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev – then the new leader of the party – launched
measures of liberalization under the programs of perestroika and glasnost. These policies
were aimed at reforming the system by narrowing the gap between Soviet technological
competencies and Western ones. But at the domestic ideological level the objective was
to minimize the influence of the old gerontocratic power structure that was dominant in
the Brezhnev years and to create a new vision of communism by promoting democracy
from below through mass popular participation. In contrast to democratic centralism, Gor-
bachev’s strategy was to encourage collective decision making in socialist enterprises and
open a dialogue between management and workers. In essence, the ultimate purpose of
perestroika was to dismantle the old Stalinist order and salvage socialism. However,
these new freedoms proved to be a double-edged sword when imported to Eastern
Europe. Adopted by some leaderships and combined with the pressure exerted by opposi-
tion movements they contributed to the final disintegration of socialism in 1989. More-
over, East Europeans perceived these reforms as clear signs of Moscow’s weakening
power and the imminent collapse of the system. As events began to unfold in the Soviet
Union and the threat of military intervention became more remote, the issue of legitimacy
became less relevant for East European elites. Paternalism, sultanism or nationalism could
no longer salvage their credibility and they had no choice but to address and acknowledge
the inadequacies of their rule.
It is also important to note that the high Soviet costs of economic subsidies allocated to
East European countries led Moscow to accept or, in some cases, to persuade their leader-
ships to initiate their own programs of economic liberalization. At the same time, given the
punitive economic burden of defense expenditures the Soviet leadership adopted a more
flexible approach towards its satellites that precluded military intervention. Coming
 Nationalities Papers 13

after 20 years of the “doctrine of limited sovereignty” initiated by Brezhnev in 1968, this
new non-military approach encouraged East European reformist elements to pursue
change in a much less restrained fashion.
In Bulgaria both the problem of economic performance and the crisis of the cadres’
governing apparatus were addressed at the 1983 party conference and then at the BCP’s
congress in 1986. Resulting changes in the higher echelon of the party illustrated the legiti-
macy problem faced by the ruling elite. The handling of the 1985 water crisis represents a
good example of the BCP’s weakening moral legitimacy. The increase in the price of
water became, remarkably, a pretext for developing internal dialogue and re-energizing
democratic socialism (McIntyre 64– 65). However, the ideological divisions within the
party were limited and narrowly confined to the activities of the intellectual and liberal-
minded group earlier promoted by Lyudmila Zhivkova, which after 1985 became “peres-
troika dissidents” (Kolarova and Dimitrov 179 – 80).11 Their primary focus was to chal-
lenge secretary Zhivkov’s authority and to destroy his loyalist faction represented by
the party’s gerontocracy. But opposition movements were still weak and remained
largely unknown to the public. Even after Zhivkov’s forced resignation by members of
the politburo in November 1989, the BCP under the brief leadership of the newly
elected Peter Mladenov ignored the opposition and attempted to legitimate itself under
cover of the legality of the National Assembly and through introducing constitutional
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amendments guaranteeing freedom of association. However, the communists ultimately

had no choice but to accept the opposition forces as partners in discussion.
Given the more relaxed nature of the socialist regime in Hungary, the legitimacy
deficit encountered by the party apparatus was dealt with in a more transparent and thus
more radical manner by both the party and opposition movements. Responding to the
well-known problem of corruption and economic fraud among public officials, in 1985
Janos Kadar introduced six regional fraud squads (Holmes 247– 48). But in the context
of the economic crisis and social discontent that escalated after the mid-1980s in
Hungary, Kadar’s image as a reformer could not even persuade the Hungarian Socialist
Worker’s Party to endorse his leadership. Actually, a unified official response to the
crisis was undermined by the existence within the party of distinctive factions that
embraced clear but divergent ideological and pragmatic orientations. Ultimately, reformist
factions defeated Kadar and the moderate Karoly Grosz succeeded to the leadership of the
party in 1988. It is significant also that the final demise of the regime was deeply affected
by the symbolism of the 1956 revolution. It was the commemoration of this event that
attracted street demonstrations, protests from civil society groups, and the refusal of
hardliners to acknowledge its revolutionary importance that determined the Central
Committee to take radical decisions in favor of reform at its meeting in February 1989.
These decisions related to the transformation of the communist party into a socialist
party and to the necessity of transition to a democratic regime through free elections
(Sajo 70 – 71). Such a clear-cut departure from the domination of the party-state and a
decisive move to a democratic form of political authority characterized by procedural
legitimacy (parliamentary elections) could have not been possible without collaboration
between reformist communists and opposition forces. It is important to note here that
by 1988, unlike Bulgaria, the groups that presided over the democratic transition in
Hungary were already well defined and functioning. Of particular importance were the
Christian-Nationalist Party (KDNP), the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the
liberal party of the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), and the Young Democrats
(FIDESZ). The existence of these already established political groups guaranteed that
the transition was controlled and carried out from above (Torok).
 14 M. Ciobanu

In Poland the inability of the party-state to cope with successive workers’ protests
(1970, 1976, 1980) clearly indicated its failure to represent itself as the vanguard of the
proletariat (Laba; Lipski et al.). The reformist elements within the party were silenced
by the hardcore nucleus. Moreover, the militarization of the regime through Jaruzelski’s
introduction of martial law in December 1981 revealed its lack of or claim to popular
support and its obviously authoritarian character. This strategy failed to gain any sem-
blance of compliance. The real result was that an underground Solidarity movement in
conjunction with intellectual dissident groups and the Catholic Church continued to chal-
lenge political authority. At the same time, an underground press of varied and diverse
forces succeeded in making its voice heard in the country.
Yet the economy deteriorated to the extent that Jaruzelski considered liberalization
reforms. Even a military government has to engage in attempting to ensure or, at least,
to claim that it has gained some popular acceptance. In 1987 the government organized
a referendum justifying an increase in the price of consumer goods. The government
lost its appeal (i.e. lost the referendum) with the result that in 1988 a series of strikes
orchestrated by Solidarity threatened to paralyze the country. The issue, intensified by a
long history of union resistance, contributed to the party’s loss of confidence in itself
and its claim to legitimacy, and consequently its capacity to control the means of
authority. In sharp and unusual contrast to the early 1980s, Moscow supported the
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reformers. The internal context – the prospect of an opposition boycott of parliamentary

elections scheduled for 1989 and the Church’s attempts to pressure Jaruzelski to engage in
negotiations with Solidarity – created enormous difficulties for the government
(Osiatynski 21– 26). In consequence, the regime had no choice but to initiate negotiations
with the opposition in February 1989. Thus, by trying to salvage any pretense of claimed
legitimacy the party renounced its monopoly of power. Poland was the first country in the
region to reject communism. The Polish example, and the crucial fact that Gorbachev
decided not to intervene, triggered a domino effect throughout Eastern Europe. By the
end of the year communist regimes in East and Central Europe collapsed one after
another.
Among the four countries under discussion, Romania in the 1980s came the closest to
resembling a totalitarian system characterized by the absence of societal pluralism, civil
society movements and reformist elements within the party apparatus. The very nature
of the socio-political and economic conditions generated by Ceausescu’s nationalist-
sultanist regime resulted in a closed, unintegrated and exhausted society. The claims to
legitimacy of the regime were manufactured artificially without any tangible basis in
reality. Ritual, fear and apathy were the grounds upon which legitimacy was constructed.
There was no group within or outside the party capable of designing an alternative
future. The opposition was sporadic and disorganized. A samizdat culture could not
develop since typewriters had to be registered with the police. Under these circumstances,
the main opposition actors (artists, writers) used an encoded language as a form of protest.
But, in general, humanist intellectuals chose to retreat into their own work and, unlike
dissidents in Hungary and Poland, avoid open critical debate.12 Given the continuous
deterioration of living standards the working class was equally alienated from the
regime. However, labor revolts were small in scale, confined to the locales from which
they emerged, and immediately suppressed.13
Any possibility of opposition from within the party was equally problematic because
of the appropriation and monopoly of political power and nationalistic rhetoric by Ceau-
sescu. Those members of the communist elite who dared to criticize Ceausescu’s cult of
personality were removed. But articulated opposition from within the party finally
 Nationalities Papers 15

occurred in November of 1989 when an open letter signed by six prominent communist
leaders was broadcast on Radio Free Europe.
These circumstances suggest that the only possible hope for change could come from
external developments in the Soviet Union and the reformist policies of economic and
political decentralization. But these developments and the increasing influence exerted
by reformist elements in other parties in Eastern Europe had the singular and perhaps
dispiriting effect of amplifying further the sense of isolation in the Romanian regime.
Yet it was ultimately the absolute denial and refusal of the ruling party to admit its complete
failure in all its claims to legitimate political authority that led to its paralysis and complete
collapse in December 1989. The mass meeting organized by Ceausescu in Bucharest on 21
December to express his astonished indignation at the popular protest then unfolding in the
city of Timisoara metamorphosed into a massive popular demonstration against the
dictator. This protest, which spread to and engulfed all the largest cities, led virtually
immediately to a power vacuum. Ceausescu and his wife were executed in a military
show trial on 24 December (Siani-Davies). In contrast to the other three cases of transition,
this was an entirely revolutionary scenario but it much more resembled Max Weber’s
description of opposition to a sultanistic regime as being “directed against the master”
rather than “directed against the system as such”. It was, in other words, “a traditionalist
revolution” (Weber 227). This helps to explain the continuing influence of key figures in
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the nomenklatura and elements of the repressive apparatus (Securitate) after 1989.

The transition to democracy: change and continuity among elites

As we have seen, the final days of the communist regimes in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland
revealed the simultaneity of the attempts of elites to cope with their loss of legitimacy and
the disintegration of the party-states by introducing various measures of legality designed
to avert collapse. The change in leadership within the Hungarian party and the legal rec-
ognition of political pluralism, Jaruzelski’s efforts in renouncing force in favor of popular
consultation by referendum that it was hoped would attract mass support for his economic
policies, or the forced resignation of the party leader in Bulgaria, indicate the nomenkla-
tura’s withdrawal of support for each of these three regimes. At the same time, a thorough-
going change of regime was clearly indicated by the lack of popular support for all of
them. However, it was the elites’ readiness to admit the failure of the system that facili-
tated a smooth transition to democracy and legitimized them anew as credible political
actors (rising like phoenixes from the ashes of their past failures) of the new regimes. It
can rightly be argued that communist elites ensured their continuing position of power
and influence at the expense of sacrificing the same system they claimed to represent
and support prior to 1989. Moreover, the three cases show a direct relationship between
the degree of reformation pursued by the upper echelons during the 1980s and the eventual
institutionalization of democracy in these countries. In contrast, the abrupt and violent col-
lapse of Ceausescu’s nationalist-sultanistic regime resulted in an uncertain, ambiguous
and far slower transformation from a totalitarian regime towards a democracy governed
by the rule of law.
Hungary and Poland represent the most clear-cut cases where the communist parties
acted as agents of regime change. In both countries the roundtables between the two
negotiating parties were relatively lengthy and organized around designing institutional
mechanisms for power sharing. Social and economic policies were discussed at the
same time. Because of the different type of popular support that the opposition mobilized,
a different level of compromise was achieved in their respective roundtables. But most
 16 M. Ciobanu

importantly the two series of negotiation set up the institutional and procedural framework
for a completely new type of political authority, i.e. a rational-legal form of democratic
regime in Weberian terms based on the rule of law.
In the Polish case, Solidarity accepted that 65% of parliamentary seats were to be given
to communists and that the pre-World War II office of presidency would control the mili-
tary and security apparatus as well as foreign affairs. In exchange, the communists agreed
to legalize Solidarity and to permit them to compete for the remaining 35% of the seats.
This compromise, which put the opposition in a relatively weak position, was the result of
uncertainty regarding any potential reaction from the Soviet Union. This was the price paid
by Poland for being the first country to initiate a break with communism. The roundtable
negotiations lasted for three months (6 February – 5 April 1989) and three sub-tables were
organized, the main objectives of which were ultimately to lead to the establishment of a
new democratic order (Osiatynski).
In Hungary, the two negotiating parties agreed upon freedom of political association,
free elections and a government responsible to the legislature. Two new institutions – the
Constitutional Court and the State Audit Office – were agreed upon as well. As in the
Polish case, in the negotiations at Ellenzeki Kerekasztal (EKA) the participating groups
began to design programs for reconstruction. The difference between the Polish and
Hungarian roundtables was that the latter did not involve broad participation for the
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mass of citizens (Sajo).

Despite these differences, both the Hungarian and Polish successors to the communist
parties – the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and the Polish Democratic Left Alliance
(SLD) – became committed to implementing liberal and economic reforms. Both in fact
presided over accession into the EU in 2004. The most positive legacy of the two round-
tables was a steady and stable democratic transition in both countries. It was facilitated by
a regular alternation in power between the two parties (the MSZP and SLD) and opposition
parties represented by liberal coalitions consisting of former anti-communist opposition
elements.14 This political stability facilitated the early introduction of formal state insti-
tutions with the responsibility for monitoring and overseeing government use of state
resources (Grzymala-Busse).
In Bulgaria, the initial steps undertaken by the BCP towards replacing the authority of
the party-state with a legal or democratic regime were more timid. Initially the transform-
ation within the party apparatus was constrained primarily by Gorbachev’s policies of
Soviet liberalization. After the forced resignation of Zhivkov a renewed BCP under the
leadership of Peter Mladenov attempted to secure and re-legitimate its leading political
role by conferring legal status on the National Assembly. However the resulting legaliza-
tion of the opposition led to the formation of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) – an
umbrella coalition of dissident groups – that in turn forced the BCP to accept them as part-
ners for discussion. In consequence, the Bulgarian roundtable was much narrower in
scope. Its main accomplishment was the passage of minimal constitutional amendments
necessary for the election of a constitutional assembly. This eventually became the
legislative body (Kolarova and Dimitrov). The direct consequence of this revolutionary
situation – characterized by a relatively unreformed party and a weak coalition that had
only emerged in 1989 – was a more uneven democratization process. As events following
the 1990 elections indicated, the circumstances of the roundtable never favored compro-
mise and the development of trust between the two parties. The first democratically
elected president, Mladenov – representing the former communist party now renamed
the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) – was forced to resign inside three months. He was
accused of urging the use of force against demonstrators in 1989. Mladenov was replaced
 Nationalities Papers 17

with the leader of the opposition (UDF), Zhelyu Zhelev, a former dissident philosopher.
However, tension continued to characterize the political climate in the next year and
various opposition groups even began to engage in anti-democratic actions. This was
the case of the “Dark Blues” – a faction within the UDF – that questioned the legitimacy
of the democratically elected majority (the BSP) to write the constitution (Linz and Stepan
341). Despite such uncertainties, Bulgaria continued along the path to democratization. A
clear shift in power occurred in 1997 when the UDF became the governing party.
In contrast to the three roundtables, which were focused on building a new legal order
on the basis of transformation, continuity, and negotiation between representatives of
former communist parties and the opposition, the revolutionary events that occurred in
December 1989 in Romania were dominated by a single-minded desire to destroy the
old regime.15 Ceausescu’s cult of personality was transformed very quickly into an anti-
cult that became the “master fiction” of the Romanian revolution. The masses in the
streets of Bucharest were quick to destroy the symbols of the old order. Yet their percep-
tion of revolutionary action was less an anti-regime movement than an attack on the leader
(the sultan) and his total identification with the communist state. Revolutionary action also
dictated that the right of the communist legislature to take binding decisions for the
country including that of bringing the Ceausescus to justice was rejected. Instead, a provi-
sional body, the National Salvation Front (NSF), took power. The leading agency of the
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NSF – the National Council of the National Salvation Front (NCNSF) – led by former
communist activist Ion Iliescu (who was associated with Gorbachev’s glasnost ideology),
consisted of a heterogeneous group. Among them there were former second-class commu-
nist apparatchiks, former dissidents and a variety of unknown persons who happened to be
involved in revolutionary events. In comparison to those groups that took part in the
roundtable negotiations in Hungary and Poland, those who were initially part of the
NCNSF had little coherent conception of a viable institutional or governing program.
After January 1990 the unity of the NCNSF fell apart. It was triggered by the NSF’s
decision to transform itself into a political party and to compete in the first elections set
for May 1990. NCNSF became dominated primarily by former communists. The newly
emerging opposition groups, former dissidents and students rejected the legitimacy
claims of the NSF and its right to compete in elections but were not well organized.
The failure of these various opposition elements and the absence of a coherent political
agenda left them unable to compete with the NSF. The NSF’s ability to rally popular
support due to its revolutionary credentials left its influence undiminished. Despite oppo-
sition attempt to delay the election date through rallies and demonstrations in Bucharest,
the elections took place in May as scheduled. The result was an overwhelming victory for
the NSF but unfortunately it was followed by more violence. The opposition contested the
results and protested until mid-June when the police brutally and finally broke up the
demonstration. It was in these conflict-ridden circumstances that the new Constitution
drafted by the NSF-dominated legislature was approved 18 months later in a national
referendum in December 1991. It was not until 1996, however, that opposition groups
became capable of forging a clear electoral alliance between liberal right-wing political
parties and groups under the umbrella organization of the Democratic Convention and
won power at the polls. This was the first alternation of government.16

Conclusions
Lastly, the original question regarding Max Weber’s account of domination and
legitimacy for understanding the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989 needs to
 18 M. Ciobanu

be addressed. In the first place, can opposition concealed beneath passive compliance,
together with lack of genuine support for the regime among upper echelon bureaucratic
personnel, result in regime disintegration and its subsequent replacement by a new
order? Secondly, on the basis of comparative analysis of the four countries examined
here, can we distinguish any factors that are favorable for the transformation of a tra-
ditional non-legalistic type of authority into what, following Weber, we can generally
call a rational-legal one?
The history of communist regimes in Eastern Europe teaches us several important
lessons regarding regime domination and collapse. One is the ability of regimes to
endure despite a clear absence of popular legitimacy. But this endurance does not
exclude the preoccupation of political authorities with manufacturing the appearance of
mass consent. The crucial aspect of this is that rulers must appear convinced of their
own claims to exercise power and authority over their citizens. When a regime is initially
externally imposed, as was essentially the case in the countries under review, it becomes
even more imperative for elites to present themselves as legitimate representatives of the
people. Communist parties in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania found quite early
that they needed to establish their appeal beyond the use of mere force or coercion,
Marxist-Leninist ideology or the acceptance and imitation of a Soviet political-economic
model. They combined more traditionalist systems of belief that included nationalism,
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patriotism, sultanism and paternalism, which resulted in ideological and quasi-historical

or mythical narratives of legitimate domination. In this way they achieved stable domina-
tion through passive compliance of the masses accompanied by blandishments and prom-
ises of progress. Combined with repressive tactics, the external threat of Soviet military
intervention was exploited by communist leaders to maintain effective control.
However, once the socialist party apparatus began to introduce reforms, clearly in contra-
diction of the regime’s system of beliefs, the potential and even immanent unraveling of
communism became more plausible. By undermining the fundamental principles of the
system, communist parties could no longer rely on those construed fictions that ensured
the passive acquiescence of the masses. This also allowed opposition forces to present dis-
senting views as plausible alternatives to socialism.
However, I would argue that ultimately it was the elites’ decision to engage the oppo-
sition forces in dialogue – although a decision motivated by necessity rather than volun-
tarily – and not so much the strength of the opposition itself that led to the collapse of the
regimes. Even a well-organized working-class opposition movement like Solidarity could
not accomplish a rapid and peaceful transformation without negotiating with the govern-
ing authority. After observing the power-sharing agreements between Jaruzelski and the
Solidarity movement in Poland, communist elites collectively and individually felt less
inhibited in attempting to salvage their power and influence by dismantling the foun-
dations of the party-state. This process of slow but real dismantlement seems to demon-
strate the dynamic and fluid nature of regime legitimacy and domination. At the same
time, a gradual and what seemed a protracted dissolution of all these regimes in the
1980s indicates their ability to stay in power through ritualism and inertia. But it was in
specific events that the inevitability of the collapse of communism was manifested and
triggered where overt disagreement and opposition surfaced. The absence of Soviet
military intervention during the roundtable negotiations in Poland was crucial in the
unfolding of revolutionary events that immediately followed in Hungary, Bulgaria and
elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In Romania it was Ceausescu’s inability to deliver a convin-
cing speech in front of a mass demonstration that showed how naked the sultan was. These
and other episodes played an instrumental role in the final dismantling of communist
 Nationalities Papers 19

authority. Ultimately, it was the regimes’ acknowledgement – whether in direct or indirect

ways – of the emptiness of its beliefs that allowed the very absence of popular legitimacy
to be openly expressed. Finally, the protagonists reached the conclusion that the end had
already arrived.
However, besides the elites, the importance of opposition groups as instrumental actors
of regime change was made clear during the subsequent process of democratic transform-
ation. The differences in revolutionary scenarios and transitions to democracy in the four
cases indicate the importance of a shift in both rulers and masses into rational actors inter-
ested in dialogue and compromise. The Hungarian and Polish cases clearly represent a
situation where divisions within the elites over their legitimacy and the desire of those
groups possessing a capacity to attract mass support and control societal mobilization
were favorable to a peaceful transition. In addition, an early and successful establishment
of new institutions led to more predictable outcomes in the democratization process. The
Bulgarian case stands as an intermediate case between these two and the Romanian
extreme case of violent revolution. Although divisions within the BCP facilitated a non-
violent regime transformation, the existence of a relatively immature opposition stalled
a more genuine transformation of former elites and inhibited the transition to democracy.
Finally, the extreme traditionalist and sultanistic regime in Romania indicates how serious
were the difficulties following a complete collapse of political authority and its unstable
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transition towards a rational-legal establishment of democratic norms and procedures.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for helping me clarify some of the
theoretical and empirical aspects of the article. Also, many thanks to my SUNY Platts-
burgh colleagues – Lauren Eastwood, Jessamyn Neuhaus, Connie Oxford and Connie
Shemo – for their useful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Notes
1. In 1924, at its third congress, the RCP expressed its approval of the return of Bessarabia (the
northern part of Romania that was acquired in 1917) to the Soviet Union. For the early
history of the RCP see King.
2. For an analysis of polycentrism – a term popular among Sovietologists in the 1980s – see
Bromke.
3. The shift in Soviet emphasis did not mean a move towards Western forms of legality character-
istic of rational bourgeois capitalism.
4. The crucial role of the ruling class in the act of legitimation was acknowledged by Weber
himself.
5. For Polish agriculture under socialism see Wedel.
6. For the role of the Catholic Church and its relationship with the communist regime in Poland see
Monticone.
7. By pointing out the unstable nature of charisma, Weber noted that there are two possible direc-
tions that a charismatic type of authority can follow in order to become stabilized: either a tra-
ditional or a rational-legal (democratic) orientation. Weber describes sultanism as an extreme
form of patrimonialism (a subtype of traditional authority) that “arises whenever traditional
domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely personal instru-
ments of the master” and “operates primarily on the basis of discretion.” (Weber 231–32).
8. For Ceausescu’s cult of personality see Fischer. The extreme brand of nationalism employed by
the communist regime in Romania was facilitated by the appeal among an important segment of
Romanian intellectuals for a right-wing ideology that promoted the idea of an exceptional
Romanian nation and culture (Verdery).
9. For a detailed and profound analysis of the RCP see Tismaneanu.
 20 M. Ciobanu

10. In 1980 Solidarity won legal recognition as an independent labor union in Poland and entered a
power-sharing arrangement with the communist government until December 1981 when
General Jaruzelski declared martial law. In 1989 Solidarity became the main player at the round-
table talks that initiated the democratic transition.
11. Lyudmila Zhivkova remains, however, a controversial figure in the history of Bulgarian com-
munism. See Atanasova.
12. For the Romanian intellectuals under Ceausescu’s regime see Verdery.
13. For the workers’ protests in communist Romania see Deletant.
14. For the positive role played by the former communist parties and in general by the party system
in the consolidation of democracy in Hungary and Poland see both Sokolewicz and Torok.
15. In respect of the 1989 roundtables in East and Central Europe Janos Kiss’s conceptual definition
of “negotiated transitions” is most useful. Negotiated transitions are obviously distinct from
revolutionary transitions and are more likely to occur when ruling classes are divided over
the issue of legitimacy and when both old elites and opposition groups are interested in compro-
mise (Kiss).
16. For the early stage of the democratic transition in Romania see Pasti.

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