CONSTRASTACION DE HIPÓTESIS

In contrast to Esprit,NLR hardly declares the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe to be the beginning of a new “Europe”. There are no articles celebrating a glorious return to Europe and no articles pointing out how Eastern and Western Europe have historically developed out of the same European intellectual, political and spiritual influences. The absence of such a historically defined “united Europe”, however, does not imply that the historical impact of 1989 is lost on NLR, quite the contrary. Yet the crises and convulsions taking place in Eastern Europe are not primarily seen as a new beginning forEurope, asEsprit

makes out, but rather as a crisis for socialism as a political project. In the September issue of 1989, Ralph Miliband proclaims in his article ‘Reflections on the Crisis of Communist Regimes’ that a “vast mutation” is going on throughout the Communist world, which undoubtedly constitutes one of the “great turning points in the history of the twentieth century.”33 He continues: “[w]e know what this immense historic process is taken to mean by the enemies of socialism everywhere: not only the approaching demise of Communist regimes and their replacement by capitalist ones, but the elimination of any kind of socialist alternative to capitalism” (p. 28).

The question of what form of international socialism might be salvaged in the wake of the events of 1989 becomes the main concern of NLR’scoverage, and this is true also of discussions of Europe. Mary Kaldor, a regular contributor toNLR, describes the relevance of 1989 for Europe in her article ‘After the Cold War’ as follows.

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Ralph Miliband, ‘Reflections on the Crisis of Communist Regimes’, NLR, 177 (1989), 27-36 (p. 27). Miliband was a founding member ofNLR and influential figure of the British New Left. He was born in Brussels, where his family – originally Polish Jews from Warsaw – had settled in 1924. The family fled at the beginning of the Second World War and moved to Britain. He died in 1994. His two sons, Ed and David Miliband, are members in Gordon Brown’s cabinet.

Indeed what is taking place, in the aftermath of 1989, is a political struggle for the future of Europe. Whether 1989 was a victory for the neo- liberal Right, […] or a victory for the new style social movements that came to prominence in the 1980s, whether East-Central Europe is to be annexed, economically, socially and culturally, by the West, or whether we can expect a new evolution of systems in both East and West – all this depends on politics, on our own contributions to the debates and campaigns of the 1990s.34

Kaldor’s article represents an attempt to foretell the future of the “East-West relationship” on the basis of an historical overview which begins with the end of World War II. Although this period is recounted as the imposition of a Stalinist system on Eastern-Central Europe, Kaldor does not portray this history as the division of a previously united continent and its ultimate reunification.

Equally, in a thematically similar article in the same issue by the eminent academic Fred Halliday, entitled ‘The Ends of the Cold War’, the historical background provided is an account of the history of Europe in relation to the political divisions and partitions after the two world wars of the twentieth century.35 He concedes that the question of Europe has been central during the decades of the Cold War. He writes: “throughout the four frozen decades that have passed, the core issue, the central terrain of rivalry, has been Europe, and the socio-political system prevailing there” (p. 6). Consequently, he argues, the question of how Europe will evolve does merit a certain level of attention. He is quick, however, to deflect any suspicions of Eurocentrism by adding that the real tragedies of the Cold War have occurred in the “Hot Wars” during that period especially in Asia, Africa and in Latin America (pp. 6-7). Europe is therefore just one of the many regions which will have to begin a process of reassessment and reorientation.NLR’sself-conscious reluctance to indulge in a view perceived as Eurocentric effectively prevents a deeper engagement with the question of how Europe might position itself in the wake of the political changes in Eastern Europe

34

Mary Kaldor, ‘After the Cold War’,NLR, 180 (1990), 25-41 (p. 26-27). Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance at the LSE and a frequentNLRcontributor. She is also a founding member of the END (European Nuclear Disarmament) movement.

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Where Esprit relies on the idea of an imagined shared history and common European values derived from the ideals of the French Revolution,

NLR restricts its account to postwar history and the ideological battles during the Cold War. The interpretation offered byEsprit is not even alluded to in NLR. Thus, while the notion of the return to a common European home is evident amongstEsprit’sFrench and foreign contributors, it does not feature at all in this British publication. This lack of engagement with the notion of “historically intertwined, newly reunited Europe” indicates already the very different mindsets and outlooks that are in play here, between which little exchanges or even acknowledgement of different positions is taking place. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when Mary Kaldor concludes her article with a plea for a renewed dialogue with what she calls “ournewfriends in the East” (p. 84). They are precisely “new” friends, not old, long-lost friends with whom we have been finally reunited, asEspritwould claim.