Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe by Janusz BugajskiReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 576-577Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212215 .

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576 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

the institutionalization of trade union responsibilities' (p. I 9 I). In this connec- tion, the comment on Glasman written by Steven Lukes should not be over- looked by the reader.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Glasman's conclusion is that 'the dilemma facing all these [post-communist] countries is that there is no alternative to the market, but the market is no alternative. Socialism is no longer an ideology but a necessity in a market society. It takes many forms but always resists unregulated markets in labour, money and property' (p. 2I3).

To conclude, a trend towards market capitalism asserts itself in the world today. Nevertheless, government intervention in the economy continues to be very much alive, and calls for more regulation, more industrial policy, more trade policy, and more social policy have not ceased, as also evinced by the book under review.

However, the ongoing globalization of the economy constitutes an addi- tional constraint on what governments can do. This has an impact on, inter alia, the viability of the welfare state financed through taxation. Attempts to restrain welfare spending appeared in a number of Western countries already towards the end of the I970s and in the early I98os. In the future, individuals will have to rely less on state-provided welfare benefits and more on private provisions.

Everywhere, the economic changes currently taking place give rise to the need for learning and adaptation on the part of the population, the term 'adaptation' referring to both behaviour and attitudes. This applies even more so to post-communist societies, because they experience not just changes within the system, but of the system.

Ruislip J. L. PORKET

Bugajski, Janusz. Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe. Second Edition. Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, I995. Xiii + 265 PP. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Index. ?44.50; fI 3.50.

THE present work is an updated version of the original 1993 edition and is the unstated companion volume to Janusz Bugajski's invaluable Ethnic Politics in Eastern Europe (New York, and London, I 993 Whereas Ethnic Politics provides a comprehensive, country-by-country account of parties and programmes, the present work attempts a more regional overview, indicating nascent points of conflict and recent developments in the building of a transnational security regime. Bugajski is invariably thorough in his coverage, although it may be objected that the present work is 'factological' rather than analytical in its approach. Curiously, however, Bugajski pays no attention to the possibilities inherent in recent schemes for Euro-regions of cross-frontier co-operation.

The very nature of the present work means that it will tend to highlight areas of conflict and thus present a misleading picture of unrelieved tension. Bugajski warns, however, that Eastern Europe has diversified considerably since I989 and that at the present moment Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia 'could generally be designated as conflict-free states' (p. 244). To this list we should probably now add Hungary and, more controversially, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Bugajski is, however, alert to the tensions caused by

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REVIEWS 577

the recrudescence of popular nationalism and to the impact this may have on minority populations and on their demands. As he conclude>, 'Disputes involving questions of minority rights and political self-determihation will undoubtedly continue within and between states where economic decline and social disquiet is manipulated by nationalist forces or by sectors of the old power elite seeking new ideologies and motivational devices to maintain their political influence' (p. 244).

School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY University of London

Kun, Joseph C. Hungarian Foreign Policy: The Experience of a New Democracy. The Washington Papers, I6o. Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, and London, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, I993. Distributed by the European Group. xxi + i68 pp. Notes. Appendix. Index. [38.50; [15.95.

ALL vital considerations affecting the foreign policy of Hungary since the fall of the Communist 'Eastern Bloc' have pushed her liberal democratic leaders into unremitting efforts to effect absorption of their state into each and every 'Western' integration system. Even earlier, the Kadar regime sought allevia- tion from Soviet pressures in I982 by securing admission to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at the earliest possible opportunity. From the word go, the aim has been very clear to abolish the need to have what can be properly called a full set of 'exterior' plans. With defence covered by NATO and a trading zone guaranteed by the European Community; wider political strategies pontificated upon by UNO and macro- and micro- economics guidelined by the two greatest and already mentioned organiza- tions of such spheres; not to mention what at least at one time seemed to be the certainty of incipient European Federation and a common currency membership of this, that, and the other organization would, or would have appeared to, provide the perfect passport, whereby a reformed polity (renewed in sovereignty) could cross from the horrors of the past into the pre-hills of political and economic heaven. To belong to, and be with and under the protection of the great Anglo-Saxon-founded and led 'Freedom Camp' is so frequently the prime dream of small, liberal, and threatened states. But, of course, all this mutuality costs money mainly that of the various 'Camp' leaders.

That much the perceptive and assiduous reader can glean from Kun's text, but this is not truly a book of explanation. Its category is rather one of chronological narrative. Once we reach the onset of Eastern Bloc decline, the thoroughness of presentation improves dramatically, but the preceding sections, whisking us from Austria-Hungary on into the Bela Kun revolution, the Horthy regime, the first liberal democracy and the Communist seizure of power, are distinctly inadequate. Streamlined and shiny though they are, their messages are confused and incomplete. The motivation of the Communists as they strove to jump out of their skins, and the Conservative coalitionists as they also strove to jump out of their skins, and the Conservative coalitions as they exercised a legitimate power to which they were not accustomed, are

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