Natalia Laas: Dear Professor, it may be a good idea to start with some introductory words. How did you become a political scientist and a scholar who is interested in Eastern Europe?
Dieter Segert: There are two reasons for it in my biography. The first is that at the end of the GDR I was looking for the reform of state socialism. We tried to develop several research projects. One of them was the comparison of various social forms, politics, and law in different state socialist societies. It was very interesting for me. After the unification of Germany I could fulfill my dream from the 1980s in the GDR that we are developing our own political science. It was no political science at all in the GDR by ideological reasons. Only after the autumn of 1989 I had the opportunity to establish, together with other colleagues, a society for political science in the GDR. So, I am a political scientist, but I am very interested in history. In fact, I studied philosophy in Berlin at Humboldt University and in Moscow at the MGU (Moscow State University) in the 1970s.
Natalia Laas: So, it was before the collapse of the Soviet Union. What was your impression about the USSR?
Dieter Segert: For me, as a young man from the GDR, it was a very impressive to understand how different is Soviet society from the picture we knew officially from propaganda. I learnt a lot about Russian society, the GDR society and comparison between them. I learnt Russian at that time. After 1985 it was very interesting to read Russian newspapers, and I did it often at that time. We tried to develop politics that was similar to Perestroika in the GDR. It was not successfully, but it is not the main point in this regard. So, that is how I started.
I started with the interest in changes of East European societies, and I could establish – as I already said – the academic discipline of Political Science in GDR only in the last year before the unification of the two Germanies, but we were not able to develop further our own academic discipline by ourselves. There was a process of reorganization of universities in East Germany after unification.
Later, I wrote a book about that[1], and one of the main stories in it was about the reconstruction of the Humboldt University. This book is more a piece of a historical analyses combined with a biographical point of view. So, my interest has emerged about the transformation of East European societies. These processes are in the topic of my professorship at the University of Vienna since 2005.
Natalia Laas: If we started speaking about comparison of the academic communities could you distinguish any differences between today’s German and Austrian academia?
Dieter Segert: That is a very complex question. Austria found its own understanding of its identity in the 1970s and later. So, it is Austrian German identity, I would say. For me as an East German, it is interesting to see the tensions between the Germans and the Austrians (the part of the Germans is taken by the West Germans, and I feel to be a little bit neutral observer of these tensions). There were many historical relations between the Austrian scholars and the GDR-universities before 1989. So, for me it was more pleasant experience because in Germany that I left in 2005 there was still a lot of tensions and even discrimination of certain groups of the former East Germans. My biography is a part of these certain groups. I came to Austria and felt very pleasant by a neutral atmosphere of discussions and the more positive relationships to East German experience.
Natalia Laas: Before the interview, I looked through the activities at the University of Vienna concerning Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine and was positively surprised that you have quite well-developed institutions like the Department of Slavonic Studies, the Institute for the History of Eastern Europe (Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte) at the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies and so on. Could you say a little bit more about them?
Dieter Segert: This is another point why I feel very comfortable in Vienna. Vienna as a city has very close relations to East and South European countries. It came from the history of Habsburgs. In Vienna, there was a first professorship of the Slavic studies in 1847. The second professorship of the History of Eastern Europe was established at the beginning of the 20th century. The first such a professorship was in Berlin, and the second was in Vienna. I mean a professorship for Eastern Europe outside of it.
We developed together all these disciplines and the research platform which is called Wiener Osteuropaforum (http://www.osteuropaforum.at/). It was established in 2009 as an interdisciplinary research platform of the University of Vienna to enable over 100 scholars from six faculties and eleven disciplines to share their expertise on the countries of Eastern, East Central and South Europe.
I am a deputy spokesman of this forum. The spokesman is Prof. Oliver Schmitt, a historian. We have a great cooperation with doctoral students who already visit this research platform. In the last years, we are developing a curriculum for a common Master Degree program on so called interdisciplinary East European studies that combines a part of history, a part of social sciences, and a part of literature and culture. We are going to install it now. Hopefully, we can do it.
Natalia Laas: It sounds great. How about any academic journals on Eastern Europe?
Dieter Segert: There is no academic journal on Eastern Europe at the university at the moment.
But there is another interesting point on how East European studies were developed as interdisciplinary studies in an academic community in the last years after 1989–1991. There are different trends. In the first years, it seemed that East European studies finished as the state socialism crashed, and a conflict between the West and the East came to the end. These studies were regarded as a child of the Cold War. But in the last ten years, I would say, the interest in East European area studies started again. I hope we will develop in this direction.
In Europe, one of the very important and strong centers for East European studies is the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki. I have good colleagues there. The other strong centers are located in England on the basis on language studies, but nevertheless, broader topics are present as well. In Germany, especially in the southern corner of Germany, in Munich, there is a very strong network of scholars with interest in Eastern Europe.
I hope we will be an additional point of concentration in the next years in Vienna.
Natalia Laas: Are there any other universities in Austria with strong East European studies?
Dieter Segert: Yes, South European studies are very strong at the University of Graz, especially, in the field of Political Science, Law and History (The Centre for Southeast European Studies). There are several other scholars in other cities, for example, in Innsbruck. But generally, Vienna and Graz are the main centers.
Natalia Laas: How about Ukraine? How is it included in these fields?
Dieter Segert: I did research on Ukraine. It was a group of scholars who were studying the Orange Revolution. We produced a volume in Ukrainian, English, and German. Actually, my only publication on Ukraine is within this book which was published in 2009[2]. It was before we knew that the Orange Revolution has failed.
We are interrupted by a telephone ring.
Dieter Segert: Sorry for the interruption. It is because I am among a few people in Vienna that are willing to be interviewed by the Austrian television concerning the events in Ukraine.
Natalia Laas: Did you agree to be interviewed by this TV channel?
Dieter Segert: No, I didn’t. You know, it is a private television, which is quite important, but they may give me forty or fifty seconds within its ten-minute news. It is something frustrating because they are looking for only sentences they are needed, but I prefer to express myself and not to be chosen by others which sentences to show and which could not. I had an interview in the state television, which was much more serious because they gave me six minutes to express my position and that was really good. But it is not so often.
I am really concerned about the situation in your country.
Natalia Laas: What do you thing about it?
Dieter Segert: For me, the problem is that Ukraine has not found its real identity. I mean it is recently not yet a strong nation state. But there is a widespread understanding that the common state is necessary. The history of the common Ukrainian state is bound especially to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. And my understanding of the state’s identity is that you don’t need to have thousand years of common history and daily life together. It is clear that the development of Western Ukraine between 1920 and 1939 is different from the rest of Eastern Ukraine. The historical consciousness of people before that is even more differentiated. But nevertheless, there were decades of the common development. And in my opinion that is enough.
It is enough because nation is always constructed, nation is nothing but a narrative. I know it from my German history from the end of the GDR. It is a narrative. You can construct it in this way or that way. The problem with the Ukrainian narrative is that in the last ten years (the President Yushchenko was responsible for that) you had a kind of the politics of history that differentiated the Ukrainian people between the Western Ukraine and, roughly spoken, the Eastern part of the country. The key question is: Who are the heroes of the history? Are they Bandera and his fellow fighters or partisans or whoever? So, I mean that that was not really a good idea, and not necessary one. There should be a kind of reconciliation. That is the first topic. I think the Ukrainian state is strong enough, but it needs a lot of reconciliation.
Much more necessary is the amelioration of day-to-day life because the economic situation of the majority is very bad. After 1991, as it was in the other parts of Eastern Europe as well, the development of the economic trends was that one part of a society became very rich and the majority was in not so good situation. That was the case especially in the post-Soviet area. You had these trends that majority of population feels as a loser of economic transition. So, my second point is there is an urgent need in the renovation of economic life and a kind of public discussion about what is fair, what is just. I have an impression that “Maidan” was not only about a bad government in political terms, but about corruption and societal unjust relationships between the rich and the poor, if you want.
What concerns the situation now, the government is not really legitimate, in my understanding. Though, it has some legitimacy because it is on the basis of the parliament, but it was a very funny parliament. There was another majority after the elections of 2012 (the last parliamentary elections), and then during one night, the 22nd of February, there has emerged a new majority without elections. In the present, not a very strong majority is backing the government, even in this parliament. The last important decisions on the enforcement of the military actions against the separatists in the East had only a slightly majority: 238 votes or so in favor. But nevertheless, whatever is its legitimacy, there is a problem of a contract between two sides (president and opposition) that was not fulfilled. The recent government is no government of reconciliation that could claim to represent the whole country.
Those are the main problems in Ukraine, in my understanding: It is an unstable state with a lot of economic problems and only partly legitimized government. I remember about the responsibility of external actors as well, but it is not only Russia makes problematic decisions. The West does the same.
Natalia Laas: Why? What’s problem with the West?
Dieter Segert: It is not possible to integrate Ukraine against Russia into Europe. There is an initiative of Austrian government (that is very good in line of my understanding) to establish a neutrality of Ukraine. It speaks about common economic space, common for Ukraine, Europe, including Eastern Europe, and Russia because Ukraine has a lot of economic relations with Russia. It is not possible to cut them. And it will not help Ukraine. Maybe, it helps the Western enterprises, but not Ukrainian ones.
I don’t have the opinion that nation is constructed on the ethnic base. So, I am against the Russian kind of nationalism, but nevertheless, there are strong economic and cultural relations between the two countries. I can understand the difficult situation the Ukrainian government faces. But, for example, the decision to exclude Russian television channels was a bit difficult. Beside of propaganda, they translate a specific culture. The previous decision by the new government was to abrogate the law on minority languages. It was not decided to the end, but it was a bad symbolic decision. And now the government decides to liquidate the translation of the Russian channels. Is this government really thinking about the people who speak Russian and listen to channels in this language?
And the third bad decision was to insult the population in the Eastern part whatever the population means. Clearly, there is Russian influence, but it is not only the influence of the Russian state. By the way, in the East there are the same sings and means of weakening the state like it was in Western Ukraine before the 21st of February, I mean the occupation of administrative buildings. What is the difference between then and now? You can assess it as a sign of the weakness of the state. The trouble comes not only from the influence of a foreign state like Ukrainian government points. I don’t like its rhetoric.
Natalia Laas: The government’s logic is that in Western Ukraine people didn’t claim the separation of, lets say, Lviv from the rest of the country, but in Donetsk they do.
Dieter Segert: Yes, I know the government’s rhetoric, but it looks helpless.
Natalia Laas: What should the Ukrainian government do while being a subject to Russian aggression and intimidation?
Dieter Segert: The question is when the problem starts. That is one not very easy but very important question. In my understanding, the problem started much earlier, not only with the occupation of the Crimea. The problem started with this contract of the 21st of February. Yanukovych was gone, but the problem was not gone. The problem was that there are parts of the country that should be represented in the government too. This government is not fascist as the Russians say that is not a problem. The problem for me is that this government represents foremost folks from the Western Ukraine who want to be integrated into Europe, but it is not the whole population that is represented. And in a situation with no really legitimate government it is not a good idea to exclude one part of the country. There was one right move of the government about what I heart in the last weeks and about what I think that it is a right direction. I mean Yatsenyuk visited Donetsk. Nevertheless he spoke only to oligarchs.
The second problem is that the country is in process of the renovation of its constitution. That is still on the way but important.
The other need solution is a referendum concerning the federalization or decentralization of the state. It is one of the unsettled issues, which is very important for the state, of how much to decentralize a state. No government was able to decide it since 2004, but it is necessary to decide. In the present situation, it seems to be a kind of solution for the different understandings of identity whatever the reasons of this.
And there are two different economic situations in different parts of the country. In my interview for the Austrian television, which took part before the contract in Kiev was signed, it was around the 19th or 20th of February, I told that I am in favor of federalization. I don’t mean the possibility to split the country, but to shift the development similar to Spain or Germany, which are countries with certain degree of autonomy for their regions. That should be decided, so I am in favor of this referendum. But there is recently no law on a referendum in a part of the country.
The other need is to develop the constitutional process. By the way, again it is a question that was not decided by the Orange Revolution due to the struggle between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.
So, Ukraine has a lot of unsolved questions. Of cause, it is easy to be an observer and to give advices, but still I think Ukraine could become a stable state. It needs to reach consensus not only between oligarchs and political elite, but with society, and the second important step to do is economic renovation.
Natalia Laas: My next question will be about the Western, or even the global, political reactions towards the Ukrainian crisis. It seems for me that now in this newly-establishing world, every country should decide about its new place in the international relations. Russia seems to be creating its specific cultural space and civilization through the Eurasian ideology. Something that Samuel Huntington predicted. As a result of the Ukrainian crisis we have a multi-polar world clearly divided through cultural lines. The neutral position of China in voting for or against the Crimea’s referendum speaks for this. From this perspective, it is rather time for Ukraine to decide which center or culture it wants to join.
Dieter Segert: No, I don’t share this. The concept of civilization or culture circles does not fit the regarded situation, and Ukraine does not face the only two-option alternative. By the way, I don’t agree with your position that China is a neutral observer. China is a representative of its own national interests, and its position is against the changes of borders because the issue of Taiwan. In Chinese cultural maps both Taiwan and Mongolia are parts of China, it is its own cultural space.
And I am not sure that Russia is really going towards Eurasia. Russia is a country with different developments and different trends. It is not so clear which way Russia will chose. In the last years, maybe since 2005, Russia developed more towards ethnic nationalism, but the question is whether today’s position of Putin is really an indicator of the Russian choice of the future. I would look at the situation as much more differentiated.
The other aspect is that Europe is not united. For example, Austria and Germany have very strong economic interests in Russia, and they are not interested in developing an extreme position because it is harmful for economy. But other countries (Sweden, Poland) have other interests. And is Ukraine really a united country with one common understanding of the future? Should Ukraine more and more search for the right direction and develop discussions in a democratic way about it?
I don’t know why the US is so eager to force the tensions with Russia. I am not sure about that. The US has much military forces outside of the US. Why are they against if Russia has the same tendency? It is one big power and another big power and they compete with each other. In the 1990s, Russia was weak, now it is not so weak. I am not a friend of great powers, neither of Russia nor of the US. It would be better for the world if there were no geopolitics. At the moment, Europe is not very strong and don’t have a united position. Europe is somehow a follower of the superpowers. I am not against strong relations between Ukraine and the EU, but the disintegration of the relations between Ukraine and Russia will not be in favor of the country. The disintegration of the Soviet Union with its common economy produced a lot of costs. The Ukrainian economy still did not reach the level of the end of the 1980s. For the GDP per capita it has only 70% of that level. And this is the point after 25 years of development. It is like after a lost war. It is not a good idea to cut economic relations with Russia. I would not play these geopolitical games.
Culture, language, the remembering of the past, all of these are constructions of the word and they depend on how we imagine our future. For me, the main question is which kind of society we want to construct. It clearly comes from my experience within state socialist societies. We need a democratic political life, but democracy is not only about elections. Democracy is society with political equality. We need a society in which majority of people is able to take part in decisions in politics because politics is the development of the political community. I am convinced that this kind of participatory democracy is possible. It is partly realized in some countries of the West.
For this kind of democracy we need a society in which people at least have time to think about politics. It means social solidarity between the people and not so much difference between the rich and the poor, a kind of a just society with strong social institutions, i.e. institutions of social solidarity, exchange, and reduction of social inequality. A market economy is good more or less for development of efficiency, but it produces simultaneously a lot of inequalities. In the last years, in the majority of countries, in the Western ones as well, the possibilities for the development of the participatory democracy became more complicated. The potential to behave and to decide is so different for different people. We need to develop the common political ground for all people. Maybe, it is a utopia, but it is my utopia.
Natalia Laas: Thank you very much!
April 16, 2014, Vienna
Commented by Natalia Laas
Dieter Segert (born in 1952) is a Professor of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna. He received his PhD at Moscow State University in 1978 and got his habilitation at Humboldt University in 1985. Professor Segert works on the transformation processes in Eastern Europe, on state socialism and its legacy, and on democracy theory. He is the author of several books, among others «Die Grenzen Osteuropas» («The Limitations of Eastern Europe. 1918, 1945, 1989 – Three Attempts to Catch on the West») (2002), «Das 41. Jahr.» («41. Year. An alternative history of the GDR») (2008), «Transformationen in Osteuropa im 20. Jahrhundert» («Transformations in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century») (2013).
1. Segert, Dieter. Das 41. Jahr. Eine andere Geschichte der DDR. – Wien: Boehlau Publisher, 2008.
2. Segert, Dieter. Political parties in Ukraine since the «Orange Revolution» // Ukraine on its way to Europe. Interim results of the Orange Revolution / Ed. by Juliane Besters-Dilger. – Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang 2009. – S. 45–59.
The Ukrainian translation of this book: Україна на шляху до Європи. Проміжні результати Помаранчевої революції / За ред. Ю. Бестерс-Дільґер; Пер. з англ. – К.: Вид. дім «Києво-Могилянська академія», 2009. – 383 с.