The initial and most important inspiration for this book was the observation that both great modern revolutions (the French in 1789 and the Russian in 1917) ended with restorations – in 1815 and in 1989–1991 respectively. Revolutions are the subject matter of an enormous body of comparative historical and sociological work. Experts in this thriving field of research distinguish at least four generations of theoretical work (Goldstone 2001; Foran 1993). Theda Skocpol’s (1979) comparative analysis of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions is famous as one of the most cited works in the social sciences (Goodwin 1996). Although there is certainly no lack of historical work on British (1660–1688), French (1815–1830) and other (e.g., Spanish 1874–1931) restorations (Barton 2009: 190–210; Démier 2012; Harris 2005; Waresquiel 2015; Waresquiel and Yvert 2002), there have only been very few attempts at the comparative historical or sociological analysis of restorations (e.g., Kann 1968; Sellin 2014; Stepan 1986; Stråth 2016; Taagepera 1978a, 1978b, 1979).
Among the seminal works, the contribution of Austrian-American historian Robert Kann (1906–1981) is the most important. Kann (1968) provided a comparative historical study of selected restorations, starting with the first restoration of Israel after the return of Jews from Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BC and closing with the restoration of the German empire in 1871. I take from Kann the idea of restoration as the final component in a larger pattern of social change, featuring the sequence of original (A), intermediate (B) and restored (C) social systems, where the restored system affirms, constructs or claims continuity with the original (or ancient) system that was disrupted by the revolutionary transition from the original to an intermediate system.
Differently from Kann, I limit the scope of analysis to modern restorations that followed great modern revolutions. The main reason for this delimitation is that only in modern societies were revolutions counter-opposed to restorations and thus received a positive evaluative connotation. This opposition is absent in the socio-political vocabulary of traditional societies, which assumes the circularity of social and political change as well as the normativity of the ancient past (Koselleck 2004; Suvanto 1997). ‘In traditional societies, lived time was more circle than arrow, lived annals overwhelmingly repetitive, human nature enduringly the same. <…> Although Judaeo-Christianity posited a flow of time in which events happened only once, repetitive resurrection and re-enactment suffused religious faith’ (Lowenthal 1999: 466). Before the French Revolution of 1789, both ‘revolution’ and ‘restoration’ meant just a ‘change in direction’ (Koselleck 2004). Supporters of this kind of change presented or
The English ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, which some historians (Pincus 2009) describe as ‘the first modern revolution’, was no exception. From the perspective of the victorious revolutionaries themselves, the Glorious Revolution was just the restoration of England’s ancient constitutional order, broken by James II Stuart, who attempted to abolish constraints on his power by the Parliament and wished to transform England into an absolutist monarchy after the example of Louis XIV in France. ‘They regarded themselves not as revolutionaries demolishing the power of the crown, but as conservatives correcting revolutionary tendencies on the part of previous monarchs’ (Williams 1960: 3).
Sharp opposition between revolution as a positively valued dominant term and restoration as its subordinated complement, loaded with negative meaning, is one of the legacies of the French Revolution. ‘The modern idea of revolution goes back no further than 1789’ (Doyle 2002: 421). This was the idea that it was possible and right to overturn the existing social order by force on the grounds of abstract principles or a perfect future, rather than historical tradition or existing law. Therefore, the French Revolution did become and remains a classical or paradigmatic case of a modern revolution. This also happened with the Bourbon restoration (1815–1830).
Puzzled with this outcome of the French Revolution, opponents of the restored Bourbon monarchy looked for elucidation in the history of neighbouring England, considering the Stuart restoration (1660–1688) as the British precedent and equivalent of the Bourbon restoration (Bigand 2010; Cubitt 2007; Mellon 1958). Among liberal opponents of the Bourbon regime, such comparisons nourished the hopes that it would not last. Indeed, the victors of the French Revolution of July 1830, which established the July monarchy (1830–1848) under the Orléans branch of the House of Bourbon, perceived themselves as re-enacting the script that had been played out in England in 1688.
Although the 1848 revolution did expose the limits of this historical parallel, based on the modernising misperception of the Glorious Revolution of Britain, after the revolution of July 1830 the word ‘restoration’ received the connotation of a short-lived reactionary regime doomed to fail (Kondylis 1984). Since this time, the concept of restoration ‘denotes the questionable attempt to renew an obsolete reality in opposition to the spirit of the time. The history of the Bourbon restoration in France seems to confirm this judgment, since the restored dynasty remained in power for only sixteen years’ (Sellin 2014: 1). The legacy of the failure of the first modern restoration is an opposition between
Kann’s conflation of modern and pre-modern restorations may be one of the reasons why his ground-breaking research was not received and was not continued. Another reason is that he just did not live long enough to witness the breakdown of most communist regimes in 1989–1991, inaugurating another wave of modern restorations and greatly expanding the population of their cases. The effect of the second and third waves of democratisation, which Samuel Huntington (1991) convincingly analysed, was the same because many cases from the second and especially the third waves of democratisation were those of democracy restoration following the breakdown of the original democratic regime and the intermediate authoritarian or totalitarian regime (Stepan 1986). Importantly, both post-Kann enlargements of the restoration cases population intersected because some post-communist transitions to democracy (such as in Czechoslovakia and the Baltic countries) were also restorations of democracy.
The expansion of the population of cases of modern social restoration with new cases that Kann did not know of or neglected prompts a deconstruction of the received opposition of revolution as progressive and sustainable and restoration as reactionary, regressive and unsustainable social transformation. However, by limiting the population of modern restorations to the societal level or macro-restorations, I am following in his steps, although restorations unfold at all levels of social reality (mega-, macro-, meso- and micro).
Mega-restorations include the claimed, achieved or unintended resurrection of past patterns of the international division of labour, incorporating hegemony and dominance, and inter-state alliances in world systems. The failed attempt at restoring the international gold standard after World War I may serve as a well-known example (Eichengreen 1995). Restorations of empires (Taagepera 1978a; 1978b, 1979) and those of order and lasting peace in international systems are also considered mega-restorations (as an example, see Stråth 2016). Macro-restorations are represented by restorations of nations, states, economic systems, legal and political regimes and dynasties. The restorations of political parties, non-governmental organisations and business corporations may serve as examples of meso-restorations. Restorations of friendships, families, reputations or the resumption of interrupted careers are examples of micro-restorations.
However, I doubt that cumulative research on social restorations can start from attempts to encompass all these varieties of restoration into one theoretical framework. While expansion of the scope of the theory is a virtue, it
Post-communist restorations of capitalism and most restorations of democracy in Huntington’s Third wave of democratisation have already endured for more than three decades and (hopefully) are not doomed to fail. Whether this is indeed the case for specific restoration regimes cannot be established without analysing their economic and social (increase in human wellbeing) performance. This is the main assumption of this book. Surely those regimes that display weaker performance than intermediate or original regimes are expected to be destroyed by new revolutions, although their timing cannot be predicted from the values of economic or social performance indicators. Failing restoration regimes may survive if they receive assistance from powerful foreign sponsors. In the long run, rapid progress in the most performance successful restoration regimes may create new problems and challenges, making them vulnerable to revolutions of new and still unknown kinds.
However, cross-time comparison of the dynamics of the economic and social performance of restoration regimes provides reliable clues to assess their progressive or reactionary character. If economic growth and human development accelerates under the restored regime, it would be preposterous to describe it as reactionary. To illustrate: In 1972 Henry Kissinger asked the Prime Minister of Communist China Zhou Enlai what he thought about the success of the French Revolution – Enlai’s response was that it is too early to say. My thesis is that while it is still too early for the ultimate assessment of the success of capitalist restorations, enough time has passed for some preparatory work.
In this assessment, a distinction should be made between endurance success and performance success. The endurance success of a restored social system means that it endures longer than its predecessors (intermediate and original regimes). Performance success means that it increases human wellbeing more than its predecessors and is thus progressive in the absolute (increasing rather than decreasing wellbeing) and relative (accelerating the increase of wellbeing) sense. The time for making the ultimate judgement on the endurance success of post-communist restorations will arrive when restored post-communist states, economic or political regimes will outlast
The real problem is the availability of relevant data suitable for making cross-time comparisons. This applies not only to post-communist restorations of capitalism and Third-wave restorations of democracy, but also to the first cases of modern restorations after 1815. The failure of the restored Bourbon regime in the sense that it did endure less (1815–1830) than the post-revolutionary Napoleonic regime (1799–1814) or the entire intermediate period (1789–1814) does not exclude the possibility that it performed better economically and socially (and so was progressive) in comparison with the intermediate period. Whether this was the case or not can be established only by conducting empirical economic and social research.
However, recent expansion of the cases of modern macro-restorations is only one of the two sources of inspiration for this book. After the post-communist restorations, the Bourbon restoration ceased to be the only paradigmatic case of modern restorations. Besides the restoration of international order, Post-Napoleonic restorations involved restoration of dynasties, retribution against wrongdoers (revolutionaries) and compensations to victims of the revolution (transitional and retrospective justice). Some post-communist restorations were much more encompassing, involving the restoration of nation states, a capitalist economic system and democracy. The Baltic restorations were precisely these kinds of multiple restorations, becoming paradigmatic cases of modern restorations of second wave, following revolutions which self-described themselves as “socialist”, taking example from the Russian 1917 revolution.
The resurrection of the Baltic States after such a long de facto extinction makes them true laboratories for exploring all sorts of conceptual and empirical issues in the historical sociological study of restorations. Therefore, my outline of the sociology of modern macro-restorations also serves as an attempt to explore the general or even universal significance of the historical experiences of the Baltic countries during the ‘short twentieth century’, enclosed between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Hobsbawm 1995). The most important feature of these experiences is that they were both products and victims of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the (only) two great modern revolutions. Their emergence as independent states was made possible by the dissolution of the Russian Empire in 1918. Peace treaties with Soviet Russia in 1920 inaugurated international recognition of the Baltic countries as independent states.
However, spawned by the Russian Revolution, they also became its victims when in 1939 the Soviet Union resumed its export that culminated in the
Inspired by the participant or insider observer experiences of post-communist Baltic restorations, my main thesis is that modern restorations are about making social systems safe and resilient to the recurrence of the revolutionary catastrophe that destroyed the original system. This means that the success of restoration is measured not based on similarities among the restored and original system. Restoration implies building an improved, less fragile version of the original system, where improvement means making it free of vulnerability to a new revolution. This improvement is indicated by the better economic and social performance of a restored social system in comparison with both the original and intermediate systems, a superior level of international safety and greater resilience to internally and externally generated shocks.
Forestalling the repetition of the revolution that destroyed the original system is of paramount concern to the restored system. ‘Never again’ is the motto of restored systems of social action (Stråth 2016; Koskenniemi and Stråth 2014). This means that the restorationalists are determined to make the past revolution the last one. Even if aiming to make the restored system perpetual is a utopian idea, protracted stability of the restored system is testimony that its proponents were successful to some extent. I claim that a realistic measure of restoration success is the capacity of restored system C to endure longer than intermediate system B and original system A. This endurance depends on the success of C in outperforming A or B economically and socially, which is evidence of the progressiveness of restoration. Importantly, in all these dimensions the success of restorations is measurable. The findings of these measurements are presented in the fourth Chapter of this book.
The first three Chapters contain theorisation of modern restorations, based on an extension of the comparison of two great modern revolutions (French and Russian) already conducted in comparative historical sociological research on modern revolutions (e.g., Brinton 1965 (1938); Moore 1966; Skocpol 1978) by comparing two great post-revolutionary empires (the Napoleonic and the Soviet) and their demise. All three comparisons (of great modern revolutions, of great post-revolutionary empires and of their breakdowns) are presented in the second Chapter of the book, which also compares three restorations of the international order: in Vienna (1815), Versailles (1919) and after the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989–1991. In these comparisons, I draw (taking a critical look) on the work of twentieth-century Finnish scholar Bo Stråth (2016).
This is an edited version of the general definition of revolution recently proposed by the leading expert in the comparative historical sociology of revolutions, Jack A. Goldstone (2014: 4). I deviate from Goldstone by limiting the scope of my definition to modern revolutions because in pre-modern times, there is no possibility of a meaningful differentiation between revolutions and restorations, as far as pre-modern revolutions were actually restorations, according to their subjective self-perception or ideology. I also expand Goldstone’s definition of modern revolution by including a reference to forcible overthrows of government and the ensuing systemic changes produced by foreign intervention, which would imply an imported revolution (cp. Senn 2007). I also distinguish between the local and global novelty of the ideas of social justice in the ideology of this kind of revolution. Global novelty means that the revolutionary ideology is new in world-historical time, while local novelty refers to its entry into the culture of peripheral countries by way of diffusion from other known areas of historical innovation in the world. This kind of entry or introduction may be accompanied by hybridisation with local cultural traditions (cp. Leonavičius et al. 2021).
There are two conditions that a revolution should satisfy to qualify as a great revolution. Firstly, it should profess new, universal ideas of social justice, which commit the revolutionaries to ensure they are exported. ‘Every genuine revolution tends to be ecumenical. For Frenchmen, as for their numerous sympathisers abroad, the liberation of France was merely the first installment of the universal triumph of liberty; an attitude which led easily to the conviction that it was the duty of the fatherland of revolution to liberate all peoples groaning under oppression and tyranny’ (Hobsbawm 1996 (1962): 65). This means that great revolutions are conceived as world revolutions and commit revolutionaries to challenge the established international order by means of revolutionary war. It is the secular equivalent of a holy war, which is considered a religious duty in the universalist, monotheistic religions.
I do not assume that new ideas of social justice can emerge only in large or strong states. If we believe Jacob Burckhardt (1985: 40–76), who claimed that cultural innovation is more probable in small states, the opposite may hold.
The central political idea of the French Revolution of 1789 (popular sovereignty) was grounded in the US Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the US Constitution, which came into force in 1789. Four years before the French Revolution (in 1785), a revolution did break out in the Netherlands with the Patriot faction, inspired by the idea of popular sovereignty, overthrowing stadtholder William V of the Orange dynasty. The Four-Year Sejm (Sejm Wielki or Sejm Czteroletni) of Poland-Lithuania convened in Warsaw seven months earlier (on 6 October 1788) than the Estates General convened in Paris (on 5 May 1789). The main achievement of the Four-Year Sejm was the adoption of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, while the French Constituent Assembly ended its work four months later, adopting on 3 September 1791 the first written constitution of France (Palmer 1959 (1964)).
However, both the Dutch and the Polish revolutions were suppressed by foreign interventionists, invited by the domestic opponents of revolution. The American Revolution did not become great, because the US was not challenged to engage in a revolutionary war. British loyalists were expelled during or after the War of Independence, and the new state was protected by its geography. The great powers were left busy suppressing the European revolutions, while the Americans themselves did not bother to export their revolution by armed force until 1945 or even 2003 (the Iraq War).
The second condition for a modern revolution to become a great revolution is its occurrence in a country that is robust enough to successfully conduct (at the very least, for some time) revolutionary wars, which implies the export of revolution. Ultimately, a revolution is made great by its expansion beyond the borders of its home country and major disruption of the established international order. Importantly (and well worth repeating), the success of this export is grounded not only in a superior military force. New ideas of social justice provide the state exporting its revolution with soft power, which ensures support for the imported revolution and collaboration among various segments of the local population.
However, the ultimate real outcome of great revolutions is not (as proclaimed and promised) universal emancipation, but the creation of an empire. Post-revolutionary empire-building in the name of universal emancipation disrupts the international order, until the post-revolutionary empire succumbs
It was only the French and the Russian revolutions that produced international dynamics of this kind. In particular, the Russian Revolution could not qualify as great if World War II would have been avoided, and it would have remained contained within a cordon sanitaire, erected after the failure of its first attempt at export in 1919–1920. Nor does the Chinese Communist revolution qualify as a great revolution. Firstly, it was not driven by new exportable ideas of universal emancipation. Instead, its main competing forces – the Nationalists (Gomindan) and the Communists – just promoted a local adaptation of the ‘ideas of 1789’ and the ‘ideas of 1917’ respectively. Secondly, Communist China did not export its revolution. Chinese intervention saved Korea’s Communists in the Korean War from defeat in 1950–1953, and China provided significant support to the Vietnamese Communists in the two victorious wars they fought (the 1946–1954 Independence War against France and the Vietnam Unification War in 1960–1975 against the US). However, both North Korea and Communist Vietnam skillfully manoeuvred between two great Communist powers (the Soviet Union and China), avoiding the status of satellite states.
The true agenda of both the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists was the restoration of the Chinese empire within its Qing dynasty (1644–1911) borders, which dissolved in the wake of the preceding 1911 revolution. China’s Communists have yet to realise this agenda because as of 2023, Taiwan still remains outside of their control and China acquiesced to the independence of Mongolia. In all the other countries (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos) that still remain under communist party governments, the original ‘ideas of 1917’ were exposed to hybridisation in so many different and intense ways, that they are only notionally communist. Therefore, I leave them outside of my analysis.
Researchers of revolutions are challenged to distinguish social revolutions from related, intersecting but nevertheless different phenomena: reforms, revolts, riots, rebellions, strikes, social movements and civil war. Questions of definition are discussed in great detail in classical works on the sociology of revolutions (Sorokin 1925; Brinton 1965 (1938); Moore 1966; Paige 1975; Eisenstadt 1978; Tilly 1978; Skocpol 1979). As a result, there is a modicum of established vocabulary in the research on revolutions, even if revolution itself
Authors writing about restorations use several terms that are related in their meaning: revival, reconstruction, reconstitution, resurrection, regeneration, renaissance, renewal, renovation, repair, restitution, reestablishment, etc. Are these terms synonymous or do they denote different phenomena? Answering this question, we find ourselves in a more difficult situation only because there has been no intense theoretical engagement with the idea of restoration.
Frankly, at this point I should start from scratch, drawing on the pioneering contributions of Kann (1968) and Stråth (2016). Therefore, the whole first Chapter of the book is dedicated to the explication of the very concept of restoration. This explication starts with a critical assessment of Kann’s work. Then I proceed on my own, introducing new distinctions to rectify the shortcomings in Kann’s outline. They are inspired by work in the fields of international public law studies, cultural heritage management and natural environment conservation, where ‘restoration’ is a regular term in the specialised vocabulary.
International law studies is the sole field in social studies boasting an advanced tradition in theorising the restoration of a particular type of social macro-system: sovereign states as units in the system of international relations. There is ongoing discussion on state continuity and identity in international law (see e.g., Craven 2007; Dunberry 2007; Dugard 2013; Koskenniemi 2011; Marek 1954; Müllerson 1994; O’Connel 1967), which helps to formulate the sociological problem of restoration more clearly, generalising the distinction between state succession and state continuation.
Successor states are new states, taking over the rights and obligations of predecessor states, which are outlined in international law. State succession takes place when two or more states merge into one state, when a state dissolves, or when one part separates and becomes a new state. The relationship between the nation states that emerged from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the former Yugoslavian republics of Yugoslavia (dissolved in 1991–1992) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are examples of state succession.
State continuation takes places when part of a dissolved state is internationally recognised as its diminished version. The relationship of the Russian Federation to the USSR is an example of the first situation. It also takes place when a state proclaims and defends its independence, and identifies with a formerly existing state that had been made de facto extinct by incorporation into another state. This is what contemporary international law conceives as state restoration. Unlike successor states, restored states are not considered as new states but as continuators of those that had existed prior, whose agency was merely suspended in the way a stroke or other injuries suspend the agency
However, there are contrasting cases when claims of state continuity are not recognised by the international state community. While the contemporary State of Israel may ground its claims to the entire territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, claiming continuity of the ancient Jewish state, the international state community does not recognise these claims. Most members of this community see it only as a new state, with its legal borders defined by Resolution 181 adopted on 29 November 1947 by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Next, the Baltic States are not the only former republics of the former Soviet Union (fSU) that dispute their status as new states succeeded the constituent units of the USSR. Among them, Georgia is the most persistent in claiming continuator state status of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which existed in 1918–1921 and was extinguished by Soviet aggression despite broad international recognition of its independence (Jones 2014). Importantly, it was also recognised by Soviet Russia, which signed a treaty with Georgia on 7 May 1920 in Moscow that was quite similar to the 1920s peace treaties with the Baltic States. However, contemporary Georgia is still not internationally recognised as a continuator of the 1918–1921 Democratic Republic of Georgia or its restoration.
In fact, even continuity of the contemporary and interwar Baltic States still remains disputed by the Russian Federation, whose legal scholars consider them as the successor states of Soviet Estonia, Soviet Latvia and Soviet Lithuania as union republics of the USSR (see e.g., Černičenko 1998). In this dispute, the contemporary Baltic countries may hold the upper hand because they can ground their claims in the body of international law, produced by diplomatic activities related to the founding and work of the League of Nations and then substantially enlarged by the United Nations (see Mälksoo 2003; Ziemele 2005).
With the outlawing of aggression and war as instruments of international politics (via the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928), contemporary international law grants immortality to even the most blatantly failed states, providing for all internationally recognised states temporary unlimited rights to restoration in the case of occupation or annexation. However, no such international law norms existed before World War I, when war was still a legitimate tool for the resolution of interstate conflicts, including the extinction of weaker
The value of legal scholarship on state succession and continuation for the sociology of restorations is limited also by its focus on the issues of the identity of states as the subjects of international relations and actors in international politics. A more encompassing conceptualisation of restoration should extend to the internal or domestic aspects of polities, accounting for the restorations of political regimes (e.g., democracy) and socio-economic systems (e.g., capitalism). Therefore, I looked for guidance on how to systematically consider restorations in places that may come across as unexpected to some readers. In actual fact (or as my arguments will show), they turned out to be extremely fruitful and illuminating.
Searches of the keyword ‘restoration(s)’ in Google Scholar, Clarivate Analytics and Scopus, display the largest numbers of publications in the twin fields of cultural heritage management and natural heritage management. Understandably, an outsider would struggle to master this literature. However, in these fields there is a kind of established or shared wisdom on what restoration is and what it is not. This wisdom is summarised in charters and primers, promulgated by national and international organisations (Society for Ecological Restoration (SER); The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and others) of experts in ecological and/or cultural heritage conservation after prolonged discussions. They provide institutionally codified definitions of restoration, delimiting it from kindred albeit different phenomena. Knowledge of these discussions may protect fledgling research on social restorations from pitfalls or help researchers understand the common basic dilemmas when thinking about restorations of all kinds.
The community of experts in cultural heritage management is divided into the conservationists, who only approve of the protection from further decay of surviving damaged cultural artefacts or their remains, and the restorationalists, who allow for their restoration, which means the removal of later additions or
According to the still dominant view, inscribed in the Venice Charter adopted in 1964 by the Second International Congress of Architects and Specialists of Historic Buildings in Venice, the authenticity of restoration depends on the share of original parts. ‘Approximately it can be stated that restored object should preserve no less than 60% authentics, so additions in the memorial object could make up to 40% or less’ (Glemža 2002: 118). If the restored artefact includes no original parts, it is only a reconstruction, copy, simulacre or a fake, despite the similarity of its appearance or structure to that of the original.
The Venice Charter view strongly resonates with Kann’s view that restoration of the original social system is not possible without the participation of survivors from the original social system. He even claimed that after the passing of one generation (thirty-five to forty years), restoration would no longer be possible. Kann’s claim is contradicted by the actual success of the Baltic restorations, as well as by some of his own case studies (see 1.1). In addition, the issue of restoration success should be separated from the duration of the intermediate system: the short duration of an intermediate system provides no guarantee of either the restored system’s endurance (longer duration) or for performance (progressiveness) success. By distinguishing between the two dimensions of restoration success, I am going beyond Kann’s contribution.
However, Kann’s basic insight is sound: with no survivors from original system A, system C, affirming its continuity with this system despite its break by intermediate system B, cannot qualify as an authentic restoration of A. Demographic continuity, which implies the presence of a sufficiently large share of survivors from A at the moment of restoration, is the most important feature of real restorations, distinguishing them from similar but nevertheless different processes of social change. For this reason, restoration of the State of Israel in 1948 was not a real or authentic restoration, but that of the Baltic States in 1990–1991 was because the populations of these countries still included many surviving citizens of the Baltic States that were made de facto extinct in 1940.
Now there are two problems to consider. One has to do with terminology: how should systems that claim continuity of a pre-revolutionary system but have no or too few survivors from it be designated? The other is substantive: what is the threshold value of the minimal share of survivors from A for C to
However, in the English language ‘reconstruction’ has no connotation of an orientation to the past. The act of demolishing a building in order to build a completely new structure without the slightest regard for historical fidelity to the antecedent buildings at the same place is as good a reconstruction as erecting an exact copy of the building that used to stand at this place.2 Therefore, I prefer the terminological distinction between two kinds of restoration, proposed and elaborated by Robert Elliot: token restorations and type restorations. The type–token distinction was classically formulated by the great American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, referring to the difference between naming a class (type) of objects and naming the individual instances (tokens) of that class (see e.g., Wetzel 2008). The sequence A A A is that of three tokens of same type (capital letter A). Token restoration ‘uses a past stage of an object as the model or template for shaping a later stage of that same object’ (Elliot 1997: 101). So this meaning of ‘token’ has nothing to do with the colloquial sense of ‘token’, connoting ‘superficial’ or even ‘fake’.
Token restoration involves continuity between earlier (past) and later stages of a given object and is concerned with its individuality and uniqueness. This kind of ‘restoration implies that some actual object, which has fallen into disrepair, or which has been damaged or degraded, although not destroyed, is brought back to a condition that is much closer to its original condition’ (Elliot 1997: 101). To provide an elementary example, if I write A on the board, erase it and write it again, I perform a type restoration of A. If instead of completely erasing A, I am just damaging it by erasing its ‘legs’ below the plank inside (and so transforming it into ∆), and then reattaching its two missing parts (to get A again), I perform a token restoration of A.
Token restoration is what experts in cultural heritage management call restoration as such, while type restoration is what they call reconstruction. ‘Type-restoring occurs where some particular object has been destroyed or so degraded that it cannot be token-restored. Type-restoring involves the
What then can be said about the threshold values separating cases of token restoration of macro-social systems from type restorations? Abiding by the assumption that the Baltic restorations are paradigmatic cases of modern restorations, I would like to suggest that these values can be gauged from the shares of survivors from the interwar independence period in the Baltic countries as of 1990–1991. Of special importance are values for Latvia, due to its most consistent and resolute implementation of restorationalist policies, including restoration of the 1922 Constitution and the 1937 Civil Code. Importantly, by 1940 Latvia was no longer a democratic state because this Constitution was suspended by the autogolpe coup of 15 May 1934, masterminded by the Prime Minister of Latvia Karlis Ulmanis. Thus, the post-communist restoration in this country involved not only restoration of the state’s independence and capitalism, but also of democracy with fifty-six years passing since its demise until 1990 – the year when the first free and competitive election took place.
In 1990, in the Latvian population had only 7.29 per cent of people who were at least 15 years old in 1934 (born in 1919 or earlier), 10.77 per cent who were at least 10 years old (born in 1924 or earlier), and 22.23 percent who were born in 1934 and earlier (according to the Human Mortality Database (2021); see also Table 3.2). These figures are not large, but based on them I would like to nevertheless claim that at least 7 per cent of survivors from the original system who were aged 15 years or older at the time of its revolutionary breakdown, at least 10 per cent of survivors who were at least 10 years old, and at least 20 per cent of survivors born before the breakdown are threshold values separating social systems where token restoration of the original system is socio-demographically possible from those where only type restoration can be attempted. These threshold values were performatively inscribed into the social ontology of post-communism by the near-unanimous recognition of the continuity of the restored Baltic States with their interwar namesakes and confirmed by the social and economic progress of the Baltic countries.
The socio-demographic possibility of token restoration does not mean that this kind of restoration is in fact attempted. An attempt at restoration includes symbolic and legal actions that aim to construct continuity between the actual and the ancient social system, despite the intermediate revolutionary rupture intended as a new beginning. These practices or ways of ‘implementing restoration’ include the restitution of property rights (or paying compensation) to the
Post-communist Slovakia and Croatia exhibited sufficient demographic continuity between the populations of the (nominally) independent states of Slovakia (1938–1945) and Croatia (1941–1945) and those of Slovakia and Croatia in 1989 and 1991, and token restoration was possible. However, unlike the situation in the Baltic States, the Slovaks and Croats established new states, denying continuity with their namesake states that existed in the World War II era. They were created as satellite states of Nazi Germany, so any affirmations of continuity would not have brought any advantages. Therefore, streets were not renamed and monuments were not constructed to commemorate Ante Pavelič (the head of fascist Croatia), Jozef Tiso (his Slovakian equivalent) or other important World War II Slovakian and Croatian nationalist activists, who were then decimated by Communists. Despite the socio-demographic possibility of token restoration of the pre-communist states, the new states of Croatia and Slovakia were established, which indicates type restoration.
The distinction between token and type restorations helps to illuminate the difference between the restoration of capitalism in Russia (and most other fSU republics), and in countries where socialist revolutions did take place after 1940. The difference is that in the latter countries, the transition to a market economy included the restitution of private property lost during the revolution or compensation for its loss. This is a distinguishing feature of the token restoration capitalist economic system because restitution of private property rights constructs institutional continuity between pre-communist and post-communist institutional orders.
With no restitution of property rights, the transition to capitalism via privatisation still can be described as a capitalist restoration, provided a capitalist economic system existed before the establishment of state socialism. However, this is only type restoration, which means that post-communist capitalist systems display a generic similarity to pre-communist capitalism, but there is no continuity of the economic system that existed in the same area many years ago. Token restoration of capitalism is practicable only if there is a sufficiently large share of survivors from the original systems and their direct heirs. After two or more generations have passed (which was the case in the republics of the fSU under Communist rule from 1917–1920), this was no longer the case by 1989–1991.
The token and type restorations distinction is applied in the third Chapter of the book, starting with a discussion of the five general dilemmas of social restorations, exemplified by both post-Napoleonic and post-communist restorations. However, while all post-Napoleonic restorations were token ones, in the post-communist countries restorations of capitalism diverge into two varieties. In most fSU republics, there was a type restoration of capitalism. In those post-communist countries where the Russian Revolution was exported after 1939, token restoration prevailed. Exceptions are Moldova, Albania and most republics of former Yugoslavia, where no property rights restitution to former owners was implemented as part of the market reforms during the first decade of post-communism. In the same part of the book, the token and type restoration distinction is also applied to post-communist state-making and political change, distinguishing token (the Baltic States) and type (Croatia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Transcaucasian republics) restorations of independent states, and token (Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia) and type (Lithuania, Poland) restorations of democracy.
Elliot did distinguish token restoration as a contribution to the ongoing discussion in natural heritage management, which closely corresponds to that between conservationists and restorationalists in the cultural heritage industry. Ecological conservationists are all for the conservation of still-surviving natural heritage (especially of its ‘wild’ parts), and reject the restoration of original ecosystems (forests, lakes, wetlands) devastated and degraded by human activities (deforestation, mining, pollution) as both undesirable and impossible.
Some of them argue that the very idea of human restoration of a natural ecosystem is an oxymoron because the concept of a natural ecosystem implies that it emerged without human intervention. Therefore, a restored ecological system can only be considered a human artefact, pretending to be a natural ecosystem. Thus, restorations can only be fakes, simulacres or ‘big lies’, as far
Restorationalists disagree, pointing to many cases of reputedly successful ecological restorations (e.g., the Everglades ecosystem in South Florida, in the U.S). The Society of Ecological Restoration (SER) is an international association of experts and activists of ecological restoration. For the purposes of my research, the most interesting area of the SER’s activities is the codification of the basic concepts and principles of ecological restoration. The first was The SER Primer on Ecological Restoration, published in 2002 and updated in 2004 as the SER International Primer on Ecological Restoration (SER 2004). They were commented or elaborated in Clewell et al. (2005) and Keenleyside et al. (2012). The most recent texts of this kind are the two editions (2016 and 2019) of the International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration (SER 2019), approved by the SER Science and Policy Committee and the SER Board of Directors. They reflect the state of the art in the field, where the most influential works include Allison and Murphy (2017), Van Andel and Aronson (2012), Clewell and Aronson (2013).
These codifications contain many instructive distinctions. Of paramount interest is the distinction between ecological rehabilitation and ecological restoration. Ecological rehabilitation is just the improvement of a degraded ecological system by increasing its species diversity, structural complexity and productivity. Rehabilitation may lead to the creation of an ecosystem (e.g., a lake), which is a different kind of system compared to the original (e.g., a forest), but which is nevertheless superior compared to the degraded ecosystem (e.g., an abandoned quarry that emerged after deforestation and mining until the fossilised resources were depleted).
Ecological restoration is a variety of rehabilitation that aims to recreate the original ecosystem (e.g., a forest after deforestation or fire). Of course, it would be preposterous to demand that the restored forest should include some surviving trees from the original forest or consist of direct descendants of plants that grew in the original forest (e.g., by collecting the seeds of individual trees before cutting them down and preserving them until after deforestation). In this sense, almost all ecological restorations are type restorations. According to SER manuals, rehabilitation culminates in restoration if the new forest has a similar composition of plant and animal species. If this is the case, the lack of continuity (except for location) with the original forest does not detract from the historical fidelity of ecological restoration.
With proper modifications, the distinction between rehabilitation and restoration can be applied in the study of post-communist social transformations.
Rehabilitations (both capitalist and democratic, or only capitalist – in the countries where authoritarian state socialism was succeeded by authoritarian capitalism) took place in all former communist countries. However, in some of them (the former Central Asian republics of the USSR) there was no capitalism before state socialism, and only in a few of the former communist countries were there democratic regimes at some time before the communist takeovers. As there were no attempts to revert from state socialism to feudalism or a tributary mode of production (Haldon 1993; Amin 2011),3 in these countries there were only capitalist or democratic social rehabilitations.
Differently from cultural artefacts (but similarly to social systems), which can only decay until their next restoration, ecosystems are complex dynamic systems that develop and evolve, going through stages (called ecological succession) that are characteristic for each specific type of ecological system, and leading to its mature state. The aim of ecological restoration is not to recreate the ecosystem as it had been just before its degradation, but only to return the degraded system to its historical trajectory of change. This aim is inscribed in one of the first definitions of ecological restoration: ‘restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory. Historic conditions are therefore [the] starting point for restoration design. The restored ecosystem will not necessarily recover its former state, since contemporary constraints and conditions may cause it to develop along an altered trajectory’ (SER 2004: 1).
In this context, the concepts of reference system, reference model and reference site, used in the SER 2019 manual, are of utmost interest. A ‘reference ecosystem’ is the designation of what Kann called the ‘original system’. A ‘reference model’ refers to the model ‘that indicates the expected condition that the restoration site would have been in had it not been degraded (with respect to flora, fauna and other biota, abiotic elements, functions, processes, and successional states). This condition is not the historic condition, but rather reflects background and predicted changes in environmental conditions’ (SER 2019: S37).
These concepts help to rebut the caricaturing of social restorations (e.g., Bauman 2017) as retrospective utopias (or ‘retrotopias’), longing for the ‘impossible return of the past’, and neglecting the irreversibility of socio-historical change and the dynamic world historical context. The point behind the distinction between ‘reference system’ and ‘reference model’ is that to succeed, ecological and social restoration projects must take into account the irreversible changes in the broader environment that took place between the collapse of the reference system and the onset of restoration, as well as changes in the environment that will take place during the realisation of a restoration project.
Therefore, the reference model (or model of a restored ecosystem) does not depict the historical or original system before its degradation, but the ecosystem that would have evolved out of the historical reference system, had it not degraded, but would have moved along its counterfactual normal trajectory. This means that the reference model should be grounded in explicit or implicit or retrospective scenarios (see Norkus 2016b; 2018b), describing alternative counterfactual pathways of development of the reference system had it not suffered damage
The concept of a reference site accounts for how the construction of a reference model can avoid becoming just an expression of fantasy and wishful thinking. This is ‘an extant intact site that has attributes and a successional phase similar to the restoration project site and that is used to inform the reference model. Ideally the reference model would include information from multiple reference sites’ (SER 2019: S37). In fact, it is not impossible to provide plausible counterfactual retrodiction for how a freshwater lake, which was damaged by thirty years of industrial pollution since the construction of a cellulose plant on its shores, would have looked like after thirty years had there been no pollution. The basis for this kind of counterfactual retrodiction provides us the knowledge on how similar lakes with no exposure to industrial pollution changed during a period of similar duration.
The relevance of these distinctions for theorising social macro-restorations should be apparent by now, helping us to understand the actual aims of the real proponents of most social macro-restorations. The aim of the most influential politicians in the restoration camp of France after 1815 (including King Louis XVIII) was not to take the country back to 1789, reversing all the changes that happened in 1789–1815, but rather to make France as similar as possible to what it would have been like by 1815, if revolution would have been
These beliefs were mainly informed by the observation of England (which provided asylum for Louis XVIII and many French ‘white émigrés’), which for them served as a ‘reference site’ for supposedly ‘normal’ or ‘historic’ development (Bigand 2010; Cubitt 2007; Mellon 1958). The acceptance of parliamentary representation in the 1814 Charter instead of reversal to absolute monarchy was based on the implicit concession that a similar institution should have emerged by 1814 if the course of the history of France would not be disturbed and (temporarily) derailed from its ‘historic’ trajectory by the crime or catastrophe of revolution. Differently from restorers of damaged buildings or artworks, the architects of social restorations design an improved version of damaged institutions.
In the Baltic restorations (the same applies to other post-communist restorations), the state of Baltic societies in 1940 or 1934 (there were divisions in the restorationalist camp regarding the exact status quo date) was the reference system in the minds of most participants of the independence restoration movement. However, very few (if any) proponents of the restoration of independence included all the specific features of the economic and political systems of the interwar period in the restoration reference model, or their vision of a desirable future. Had this been the case, the governments of the Baltic countries during the period of extraordinary transitional politics in 1989–1995 would have pursued re-agrarianisation and de-urbanisation policies and reduction of the welfare state to its pre-1940 scale. In fact, policies such as these were not even considered, because their knowledge (rather fragmentary, selective and idealising) of pre-1940 conditions was only one source for the reference model for restoration of independent states.
They accepted those parts that were perceived as generically modern (shared by both capitalist and state socialist modern societies), and rejected those which were perceived as alien impositions, which had to be replaced by local original survivals or by borrowing from reference sites. As a result, the land property rights regime, inherited from Soviet times, together with collective farms, were radically dismantled, with the restitution of property rights to previous owners as of June 1940 or their legitimate heirs. However, the restored states did not dismantle their inherited Soviet welfare state institutions (like the pension or education systems) but reformed them, adapting to capitalist market economy needs and conditions. The assumption was that similar
SER codifications provide an elaborate system of qualitative and quantitative criteria for the assessment of success of ecological restoration projects. The recent version (SER 2019) contains an elaborate scale, with its values ranging from minimal (18 points) to complete (90 points) success. Many indicators in this scale are very suggestive. One very important consideration is the removal of invasive species to make the biological species composition of the reference and restored systems as similar to each other as possible (SER 2004: 3–4). It resonates with the ideas of radical Baltic restorationalists, who insisted that restoration of independence should include decolonisation – the departure of Soviet-era emigrants, who were considered as ‘colonists’ in their homeland republics (e.g., Par Latvijas dekolonizāciju 2002). The restoration of capitalism leads to the re-emergence of socio-economic classes of capitalists and small entrepreneurs that had been extinguished by the socialist revolution, simplifying the social structure much like what happens during the degradation of ecosystems. The re-emergence of extinct classes increases the socio-economic heterogeneity or diversity of society, bringing it back to pre-revolutionary levels.
However, the importation of restoration success criteria from restoration ecology into the sociology of restorations would lead us astray. Conceptual frameworks for cultural and environmental heritage protection are marked by the assumption of the superior value of the original or reference system. In these frameworks, the intermediate system can only be conceived as decay. The restoration of capitalism is a variety of rehabilitation, which can draw on the survivals from its capitalist past (survivors infested with capitalist economic culture) and (in the case of token restorations) construct continuity with this past by the restitution of property rights. However, the use of this term as well as other conceptual templates from restoration ecology and cultural heritage management may expose my project to the reproach that it has an anti-revolutionary bias in general and an anti-socialist bias in particular. So, is it possible to learn to think about social restoration from the fields where restoration is a professional activity, without assuming their biases?
In the comparative historical and sociological study of revolutions, where they are predominantly idealised, there is an old and strong alternative tradition going back to Pitirim Sorokin (1925) and Crane Brinton (1965 (1938) who conceived social revolutions as social pathologies, followed by recovery or a
When answering these important questions, it should be pointed out that this book focuses on restorations that follow revolutions, which are victorious on their own terms. This means that revolutionaries win against the counter-revolutionaries. This makes them different from restorations that follow the victory of the counter-revolutionaries (the restoration after the fall of the short-lived Soviet Hungarian republics in 1919 may serve as an example). Fights between revolutionaries themselves come to an end with the establishment of a post-revolutionary dictatorship, which marks the end of the revolution proper. Restoration follows after post-revolutionary systems break down after a more or less protracted period of ‘new normalcy’, and are dismantled with the active participation of former revolutionaries (who are ‘criminals’ in the eyes of true counter-revolutionaries) or their heirs.
An important lesson from the first modern (and classical) restoration after the French Revolution is that the ‘hard core’ agenda of a revolution can be implemented not by revolutionary or post-revolutionary regimes, but during the restoration or by post-restorational regimes by historical actors who perceive themselves as bona fide counter-revolutionaries or reactionaries. There was neither a free market, nor representative government, nor protection of civil rights (rule of law) during the Jacobin dictatorship in 1793–1794. Neither the Thermidor regime, which was a self-perpetuating oligarchy of the regicides who survived the Jacobin terror, nor Napoleon’s post-revolutionary dictatorship were able to implement the ‘ideas of 1789’. Effective rule of law was implemented for the first time in French history under the restored Bourbons in 1815–1830. One of the most important ideas of 1789 was the idea of a nation state, which drove the revolutionary wars of the French republic to liberate neighbouring peoples from ‘monarchic despotism’. However, Italian and German nation states were created not by Italian and German versions of the French Jacobins but by conservative politicians Camilo Benso di Cavour and Otto von Bismarck, who realised the aims of the self-aggrandising dynastic power politics of the Sardinian Savoy and Prussian Hohenzollern dynasties.
Communist revolutions were launched in the belief that the continuance of capitalism could bring only absolute and relative impoverishment to the toiling masses (according to the teachings of Karl Marx in Das Kapital), except their members belonged to the ‘worker aristocracy’ in some of the strongest imperialist powers, prevailing in the fight over the world’s division into formal
The ultimate cause for the demise of Communism was the failure to deliver on the promise to accelerate economic progress and the social development of countries where Communist parties had established their rule. Measuring the performance of post-communist regimes by the same yardsticks that Communist regimes applied to themselves allows us to find out whether the allegedly doomed capitalist system, after its restoration, was able to perform better on these promises. The description of restoration as ‘rehabilitation’ refers only to their intent to improve economic growth and human development but leaves open the question of its success. Like ecological or architectural restorations, social restoration can fail. Whether this in fact happened in specific cases can only be established by conducting empirical research, and the main aim of my outline of the theory of social restorations is to generate new, interesting questions for this research.
Assessing the success of modern social restorations by measuring and comparing the contribution of modern revolutions and modern restorations towards the increase of human wellbeing, I will only take modern revolutions on their own terms. Both the ‘bourgeois’ revolutions, directly (by revolution export) and indirectly (by example) ignited by the Great French Revolution, and the ‘socialist’ revolutions, sparked by the Great Russian Revolution, were humanist revolutions according to their ideology. The protagonists of both revolutions aspired to emancipate all of humankind, including its emancipation from material destitution, which implied hunger and premature death (cp. Fogel 2004). Very differently, pre-modern social upheavals, retrospectively described as revolutions, did not make any such humanist promises.
The extent to which a socio-economic system can provide an environment (broadly conceived) propitious to the growth of the human organism, for its healthy development, so that that organism can reach its biological growth potential, is arguably a useful indicator of the humanistic nature of that system. This perspective emphasizes that human beings are sentient, and that there is a human right to health.
I believe that the use of quantitative measures of economic growth and human development for assessment of the success of rehabilitation and restorations perfectly neutralise the bias favouring the pre-revolutionary system, which may be imported by borrowing templates from cultural heritage management and restoration ecology or by adapting restoration success criteria used in these fields. The sole, recurrent normative concern common to the restoration of cultural artefacts, ecosystems and social systems is their resilience against new decay (for cultural artefacts), degradation (for ecosystems) or the recurrence of revolutions (for social macro-systems). What is special about modern restorations is that they ensure their durability by implementing the agenda of modern revolutions in a more efficient way than the regimes created by revolutions and original systems (ancient regimes), which undermined themselves through their under-performance.
CRES (Criterion of restoration endurance success): Restored social system (C) is completely endurance successful if it endured longer than orginal social system A and intermediate social system B. If restored system endured longer only than original system A or intermediate system B, it is only partially endurance successful.
In this formulation, the abstract term ‘social system’ is used to allow its application to different kinds of social systems, including economic systems, political regimes and states. Its general scope means it can also apply to configurations of international order, which are actually social mega-systems. It makes restoration endurance success relative to the duration of the original and
In comparison, the post-communist Baltic States will demonstrate the complete endurance success of their restorations only in 2040, when their existence as de facto independent states will have outlasted the intermediate period of 1940 to 1990 when their existence was only de jure. However, partial proof of this success has already been provided in 2012, when the restoration period outlasted that of interwar independence. The Bourbons reigned in France from 1589. The civil wars period (1648–1653), known as the Fronde (the French equivalent of the English Civil War of 1642–1651), was the last time before the 1789 revolution when their grip on the throne was in serious threat. Thus, if the Bourbons had still been reigning France in 2015, the Bourbon restoration could have been designated as completely endurance successful, with their restored reign (1815–2015) enduring longer than French absolutism (1653–1789) and longer than Bourbon rule before the revolution (1589–1789).
By 2040, the populations of the Baltic countries will still include many survivors from the intermediate socialist system. Due to increasing life expectancy and the aging of contemporary societies, it can be predicted that this share will be even larger in comparison with that of survivors from the capitalist system in 1990. This means that a token restoration of socialism will remain socio-demographically possible. Kann (1968: 92, 100, 403) claimed that the ultimate success of restoration is achieved only after the passing of two generations since its beginning. This is the time needed for survivors from the intermediate system to die out. Borrowing a term from the the theory of ecological succession (Clements 1936), I will designate this moment as the climax of restoration, and later society as climacteric.4
In a climacteric society, the share of survivors from the intermediate society falls below the ‘Latvian’ thresholds described above until individuals tainted by socialisation completely die out (so individuals who were younger than 5 or 10 can be exempted). Taking into consideration increasing life expectancy rates and progress in medicine, it may take up to some seventy or ninety years for restored Baltic capitalism and democracy to become (in around 2060–2080) climacteric.
Importantly, climax does not insure against new radical transformations. By 1989–1991, state socialism was climacteric in the Soviet Union. The concept of climax just indicates the point in time after which token restoration is no longer possible, while climacteric society cannot be described as a restored society anymore, becoming a social system sui generis (the restoration era comes to end). I will argue (see Section 1.2) that the concept of a climacteric society may help to resolve an open issue in international law: what is the maximum duration of the right of a de facto extinct state (as per a legal person in international law) to its de facto restoration, including the recognition of its legal continuity of the ancestor state?
When society reaches the climacteric stage, explaining actual difficulties and problems by resorting to ‘survivals of the past’ becomes awkward or unpersuasive, as all bearers of such survivals are dead. Until the climacteric stage is reached, the media in post-communist countries will continue to depict ‘social evils’ of all kinds (e.g., corruption, low work ethics or even the excessive consumption of alcohol) as ‘survivals of or throwbacks to the Communist past’. This is also how many scholars explain the under-performance of former Communist societies (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2018; Tucker 2015). Curiously, Soviet scholars explained the dark sides (usually identical) of socialist societies as legacies or survivals of the capitalist and sometimes also the feudal past (see Alymov 2012). However, if the perceived dysfunctionalities persist into the climacteric stage, the inability of a climacteric system to cope with these alleged ‘survivals of the past’ reveals its own internal weakness.
Threats to the stability of restored social systems can come from inside, deriving from the weakness of their economic bases (e.g., due to dependence on the export of a limited range of products) or outside (e.g., due to a geo-politically exposed location). Because of these threats, making an assessment of the success of their restoration based only on their wellbeing performance is incomplete. The situation of even very wealthy countries with high levels of human development may be precarious if they are not internationally secure. A high national level of wellbeing can also be fragile because of risks related to price fluctuations on the world market or technological change, which may promptly destroy the niches occupied by prospering countries in the international division of labour. Such threats are of particular salience in the case of
The Covid-19 crisis is the most recent example of shock. Other examples of shocks are wars, economic crises and natural catastrophes. The meaning of shock presumes the connotation of surprise. This does not mean that it is completely unexpected, although some shocks are of this kind (again, the Covid-19 pandemic is an example). Earthquakes come to be expected in seismic zones. Before the post-Napoleonic restoration era, wars between European great states were the norm, while recurring economic crises are part of the normalcy of capitalism. The surprise element of shock refers to the unpredictability of the timing and extent of the next occurrence of disturbance, which is expected to happen as type. Systems with weak resilience need a longer time to recover and may shift in to an alternative equilibrium, which implies systemic change.
CRR (Criterion of restoration resilience): A successfully restored social system is more resilient in comparison with the original system both in the sense of its capacity for rapid recovery after shocks and its lesser vulnerability to systemic change, shifting it into an alternative equilibrium.
Differently from CRR, which is applicable in the context of case studies, the CRES is quantitative and needs only elementary historical chronology data. Its application is complicated only by the disputed questions regarding the political and economic history of specific countries (in particular, concerning the timing of the rise of capitalism; see Section 3.3). However, it allows restoration success assessment only at specific points in time (at the moments when the restored system outlasts its predecessors). It is only formal or ‘thin’ because it does not consider the substantive features of the restored system, which may account for its durability. Substantive or ‘thick’ criteria should allow comparing the performance of the restored system with that of its antecedents. The quality of this performance accounts for the chances of the restored system to avoid a recurrence of revolution. The restored social system consolidates itself and wins legitimacy by displaying superior growth in human wellbeing compared to both the original and intermediate (post-revolutionary) systems.
In other words, to avoid the recurrence of a revolution, in the restored social system economic and social progress should accelerate (cp. Rosa 2013 (2005); Laurėnas 2017), this acceleration being an indicator of the progressiveness of restoration. The issue of progress is what separates social restorations from
The acceleration of progress is of paramount importance in the assessment of performance success of modern restorations because both modern revolutions promised progress. While the French Revolution promised progress simpliciter, the Russian Revolution and its exported clones promised the acceleration of progress and a more equal distribution of its fruits. The latter reason explains why its ideas had especially strong appeal among impatient intellectuals of under-developed countries, looking for recipes on how to accelerate the economic and social development of their countries that were progressing too slowly (according to their perceptions) in the framework of capitalist institutions or due to the perceived surviving elements of feudalism. A modern restored regime can succeed to endure longer than intermediate post-revolutionary and original systems only by displaying even more rapid growth.
Taking on from restoration ecology the idea that the success of restoration should be quantitatively measured, we face the problem that there are very few appropriate indicators with quantitative data readily available. The variables measured by these indicators should be valid measures of human wellbeing. In addition, the level of their measurement should allow for cross-time and cross-country comparisons. After much pondering, I selected the variables of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity (GDPpc at PPP), human body height and life expectancy at birth.
CREPS (Criterion of restoration economic performance success): Restored social system C is economically successful if growth of the output per capita in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.
The acceleration of economic growth in the restored system in comparison with its immediate antecedent is necessary just to prove its economic superiority. Acceleration in comparison with the original system is necessary to
CRHPS (Criterion of restoration health performance success): Restored social system C is health successful if the increase of life expectancy in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.
This measure is very important because it is reputed as a direct measure of human wellbeing in comparison with GDP (Deaton 2013; Case and Deaton 2020). GDP only allows a comparison of the productive capacity of societies. However, the relationship between production and human wellbeing is mediated by distribution, which may be more or less equal, and provides for governments ample possibilities to divert the use of output for aims that otherwise counteract growth in human wellbeing (e.g., military build-up).
CRSPS (Criterion of restoration somatic performance success): Restored social system C is somatically successful if the increase of mean human body height in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.
Using this indicator, I draw on the ideas and findings of a new research area in quantitative economic history, which has undergone intense development in recent decades (see Fogel 2004; Komlos 2009; Steckel 1995; 2013). Growth of the human body takes place during the first twenty years of human life. Thus, controlling for genomic differences, the use of this indicator allows tracking and comparing differences and changes in the biological standard of life of children and juveniles across different countries and periods.
The advantage of this indicator is that reliable data on its value exists for many countries. However, this applies only to the male population because the main source of this data are conscript measurements. Therefore, its application will be limited to males. This book offers the first attempt at systematic use of this promising indicator for the comparative exploration of the consequences of post-communist transformation on human wellbeing. Both for CRHPS and CRSPS, the reservation holds that substantive success of restoration can be only partial by C outperforming only B or A.
When assessing the performance success of post-socialist capitalism, the second retrospective and OOST cannot apply to countries with no pre-socialist experience of capitalism (the states of Central Asia are the most obvious cases). Without extension of the comparison of economic, health and somatic performance during the post-socialist and socialist periods by also comparing the post-socialist and pre-socialist periods, the first comparison (applying OIST) can only substantiate the assessment of the progressiveness of post-socialist rehabilitation. By adding the second cross-time comparison and OIST, assessment of the progressiveness of post-socialist rehabilitation becomes part of a more all-encompassing assessment of the success of post-socialist capitalist restoration.
In addition to the assessment of early success by using the OOST and OIST, I provide assessment of actual success, comparing the performance of restored capitalism during the complete period of post-communist restoration with the last three decades of state socialism (1960–1989; OIST). The publication of data takes due time. Basing my assessment of economic success on the Maddison Project Database (MPD), I had to stop at 2018, as this is the last year in its most recent release (MPD 2020), and the time series of height data in the NCDRisC (2020) closes with 2019. When looking at somatic success, there is the additional complication that it takes time for humans to grow up. So by now, only relatively few post-communist individuals who have grown up entirely under restored capitalism (born in 1990–2001) could be compared with the last individuals who grew up under socialism.
Performance success of the capitalist restoration in the Baltic and East European countries should continue to be monitored until 2040, when the duration of the restored capitalist system (1989–2040) will have outlasted that of the complete totalitarian era (1939–1989). Its starting point was the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which destroyed the cordon sanitaire encapsulating Stalinist socialism within Soviet borders according to the peace treaties of 1920–1921,
Besides the symbolism of this date, there are important substantive reasons for the ultimate application of the OIST when measuring the economic and social progressiveness of capitalist restoration by its outperformance of the whole totalitarian era instead of only the state socialist system in the strict sense. During the war, the operation of a market economy in Eastern Europe was suspended, subordinating it to all-encompassing state regulation. Although the Communists did not take power immediately after the war in all of the East European countries, state control over the economy was not abolished and became a prelude to the encompassing state socialist transformation of the economy after the Communist political takeover in 1947–1948.
As 1938 is the year with the best statistical data for the largest number of relevant countries, both periods are expanded by one year, comparing the periods 1938–1989 and 1989–2040. For application of the OOST to establish early (as of 2007–2008) and actual (as of 2018–2019) performance success of capitalist restoration, GDP growth, life expectancy and height increase rates during the early and actual restoration periods are compared with those in 1913–1938, which is another self-contained period in East European economic history. Ideally, at the time of the ultimate assessment of restoration performance success in 2040, a longer original period should be used. In purely chronological terms, this should be 1888–1938. However, it is difficult to say whether research in the quantitative economic and social history of Eastern Europe will advance far enough by 2040 to provide data necessary for a larger number of countries (at present, data is limited to Hungary, Poland and former Czechoslovakia).
For most fSU republics (except the Baltic countries), the time for assessment of the ultimate economic, health and somatic success of restoration will arrive after approximately thirty years, and will include a comparison of the 1929–1989 and 1989–2049 periods to apply the OIST. The reasons for selecting 1989 data for all Communist countries, despite the slight differences in the time of the actual collapse of the Communist regime in each, are explained in detail in the sections where the comparisons are provided. The choice of 1929 (instead of 1917) as the starting date is merely a reflection of the incongruence between the chronology of political and economic history, as after the first attempt to abolish capitalism in 1917–1920, the Russian Bolsheviks restored it themselves during the ‘new economic policy’ (NEP) era. According to the established chronology, the
CRES is general criterion of endurance success, while CREPS, CRHPS and CRSPS are general criteria of the performance success of restorations, thus (in Chapter 4) they are applied to both the post-Napoleonic and post-communist restorations. Applying performance success criteria to France as the homeland of the first great modern revolution, I compare the economic, health and somatic performance of this country during the Bourbon restoration (1815–1830) to the last fifteen years of Napoleon’s rule (OIST) and fifteen years (1774–1789) before the revolution OOST. In the neighbouring countries where the French Revolution was exported, the periods under comparison may be shorter.
While we must still wait approximately twenty to thirty years until the assessment of the ultimate performance success of post-communist restoration will be possible, for countries with available anthropometric and demographic data on their performance in 1929, 1938 and 1989, the criteria of performance success allow defining the target values to be achieved by 2040–2050 to make the ultimate performance success of post-communist rehabilitations and restorations valid. Namely, restored capitalism will provide the ultimate proof of its economic success when annual growth rates during the 1989–2049 or 1989–2040 periods surpass those during the 1929–1989 or 1938–1989 periods (passing the ultimate OIST). To pass the ultimate OOST, growth rates in 1929–1989 or 1938–1989 should be higher than during the 1861–1913 or 1888–1938 periods. The same applies to health and somatic success. I believe that specification of these targets may help to satisfy the need for benchmarks in post-socialist societies in order to assess their current state and define orientation landmarks for future development.
I would claim that this exercise also has added theoretical value, stretching the concepts of economic, health and somatic progress to their limits. Mainstream economics still assumes that there are no limits to economic growth, thus there are no reasons to expect the acceleration of economic growth under restored capitalism. However, the increase of life expectancy and human height has a genetic ceiling, although all former attempts to specify these in numeric values were falsified by actual somatic and health progress (Oeppen and Vaupel 2002). An important finding arising from the application of the OOST to life expectancy and height increase data (see 4.3–4) is that in most East European countries, growth rates were highest in 1913–1938, which was marked by comparatively slow economic growth.
Generally, countries where the socialist period coincided with phases of health and demographic transitions, characterised by the rapid increase of
This is the rationale behind the supplementation of the tests based on the general criteria of economic and human development performance success (CREPS, CRHPS, CRSPS) by a further three special tests. While the general ones apply to all modern restorations, the special tests are more tightly anchored in world historical time and apply only to former communist countries.
AST (American standard test): Post-socialist restoration of capitalism is economically successful if at the end of the restoration period (2040–2050), the GDPpc of the formerly poor communist country is at least 55 per cent of the US value, and the GDPpc of the formerly communist middle-income country is at least 70 per cent of the US value.
The use of the US as a benchmark country is validated by the application of long-term comparisons in my project, encompassing the late nineteenth, the whole twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. While the economic fortunes of other advanced countries did change significantly during the twentieth century, the status of the US as a world economic champion has remained stable during the last century and will most probably remain so into the twenty-first century (OECD 2018). Substantively, the AST identifies the economic success of restoration with being able to escape the middle-income trap (MIT). The increase or decrease of the output per capita lag behind the US is a proper indicator to monitor the economic success of restoration continuously during its complete period. No decrease in the GDPpc lag behind the US indicates the economic failure of restoration, while a reduced lag means that the country is on the track to success, which in the case of ultimate success culminates in crossing the threshold separating middle-income and high-income countries.
JST (Japanese standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is health successful if during the restoration period (1989–2040 or 1989–2050), the life expectancy gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of Japan at the start of this period will decrease by its end.
Japan has been the established world champion in life expectancy among both males and females since the early 1980s, and will preserve this leading position until the end of the current century, according to UN DESA (2019) projections. There is no difference in the availability or quality of male and female life expectancy data. Therefore, the JST can be used on both male and female sub-populations and on the total population encompassing both sexes.
DST (Dutch standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is somatically successful if during the restoration period (1989–2040 or 1989–2050), the male mean height gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of the Netherlands at the start of period decreases.
In this criterion, the mean height of Dutch males is used as a benchmark because since 1985–1986, males from the Netherlands remain world height champions, rising to this position from being only 12th in the ranking in 1914 (Roser, Cameron, and Ritchie 2019).
The above general and special tests of economic and social performance success are explicated in detail in Chapter 4, intermittently with a discussion of the data and how the criteria can be applied to Post-Napoleonic restorations (in 4.1) and cases of post-socialist restorations (in 4.2–4). This application offers a mostly bright picture of the early and actual economic, health and somatic performance success of most capitalist rehabilitations and restorations. Overall, token restoration countries (or those with stronger memories of a capitalist market economy as of 1989) performed best. Among countries with no capitalist past, those richly endowed with exportable natural resources were more successful (in spite of the ‘resource curse’ theory). In all former communist countries, actual (as of 2018) health and somatic performance success was more conspicuous than actual economic performance success, as there were no cases of absolute health and somatic regression in 1989–2018/19.
However, there were countries (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine) with GDPpc below the 1989 level in 2018. Two (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) may be described as failed states. Their ability to achieve human development progress despite absolute economic regression may be explained by the Preston effect (Preston 1975), or by progress spillovers in the medical technologies field from more advanced to less developed countries. The exhaustion of the genomic potential for further health and somatic progress by 1989 in countries where demographic and epidemiological transitions were already rather advanced by 1938 can also help account for the failure of most restoration countries to pass the OOST for health and somatic performance, despite passing it for economic performance.
However, absolute and even relative actual health progressiveness of capitalist restoration still did not enable some health performance successful (according to CRHPS) post-socialist countries to reduce the lag behind Japan in male life expectancy. Generally, although the health performance of former socialist countries in 1989–2018 did improve in comparison with 1960–1989, for males (but not females) it remained below levels in twenty-four comparator capitalist countries that did avoid socialist revolutions. The somatic performance of post-socialist countries was better: by 2019, the top ten countries with the tallest 18–19 year-old-males in the world included seven former socialist countries.
According to CRES, democratic rehabilitation can be considered successful if the democratic regime endures longer than its authoritarian predecessors. Based on this criterion, in Section 3.3 I specify the years when new and old (restored) democracies will be entitled to celebrate their endurance success (see Table 3.2). However, while there were no breakdowns of capitalism by 2020, many post-communist democracies did break down or were reset or reloaded as part of the so-called ‘coloured revolutions’. According my argument, such resets prolong the waiting time until endurance success can be ascertained.
CRIOPS (Criterion of the rehabilitation of international order performance success): A rehabilitated or restored configuration of international order C is performance successful if it is more peaceful and secure for member states than intermediate configuration B or original configuration A.
The degree of performance success is measured by the number of interstate wars and intrastate violent conflicts that may endanger the international order by sending waves of refugees or by infraction of the identity of internationally recognised members. The identity of member states in the international state community can be impaired by secession and the emergence of new states, or by their extinction due to unification with other states. CRIOPS applies only to wars between minor states or their dissolution (e.g., the Belgian revolution in 1830, leading to the dissolution of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, or the unification of Moldova and Romania some time in the future).
Wars between major powers or their dissolution mean the breakdown of complete configuration, which is replaced by the next configuration featuring different major players. Applying CRES, the duration of general peace under subsequent configurations of international order is compared, while
The Conclusion provides final clarifications. My comparative historical sociological study should have destroyed the ‘black legend’ of restorations as periods of reaction and regress. This view does not even apply to all Post-Napoleonic restorations and is surely false with respect to post-communist restorations. Rather than arresting or reversing economic and social progress, successful restorations accelerate economic growth and human development. As a result, the core agenda of revolutions becomes realised under restorations and by restorers rather than by the revolutionaries themselves.
It is still too early to access the endurance success of post-communist restorations. Their actual performance success, as well as the continuing US hegemony in the world, allows making the prediction that there will be no socialist restorations in the world in 2020–2050. If they were to occur, the conceptual framework of social restoration grounded in the distinction between token and type restorations, and in that of endurance and performance success, would also be perfectly applicable. However, as of 2020, only the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) under Gennady Zyuganov continues to collect at least ten per cent of votes cast at national level elections. During earlier elections, there were more countries with electorally successful neo-communist parties, including the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, which won elections in 2001–2009 and had the Communist Vladimir Voronin at its president. Differently from 1919, when the Allies dispatched Romanian troops to suppress the Hungarian Soviet Republic, this time the EU, NATO and the US remained aloof. In fact, the Moldovan Communists simply did not attempt socialist restoration.
The incredibility of socialist restorations does not mean that the world is safe against a new great revolution. It will most probably be post-humanist, involving attempts at finding radical solutions to climate change problems and the destruction of the natural environment by consumerist capitalist societies. If such a revolution would take place (and to have an impact, it would have to happen in a great power, most probably the US), the lesson of my analysis is that its core agenda can be expected to be implemented by the subsequent restoration rather than by the revolution itself.
Many states such as these were made extinct during the so-called Italian and German unifications in 1859–1871.
The removal of the remains of the Berlin Palace (Stadtschloss), destroyed in 1945, construction of the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik) in 1973–1976 by the authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), its demolition after the reunification of Germany and reconstruction of the Berlin Palace in 2013–2020 is a perfect example of the latter sequence (Müller 2019).
With the possible exception of Afghanistan.
A climax community is composed of biological species best adapted to average conditions in that area and exists in a steady state or equilibrium.