On the eve of the U.S. Senate vote to extend NATO into Central Europe, the Polish Studies Center joined several IU units to host a conference on changes in the security alliances and economic affiliations of Central Europe and Russia since the fall of communism. The three-day gathering, held at the IMU Conference Center and in Indianapolis at the Capital Conference Center, featured over 25 presenters, including diplomats, business people, faculty and students, and several dozen people attended the sessions. (See story on p. 2.) Graduate students had the opportunity to meet scholars from around the country and talk with civic leaders from Central Europe, and several students also won research stipends to develop their papers, thanks to a provision within Title VI funding which partially underwrote the event.

While there were no outright "winners or losers" in the "NATO debate," most conference commentators saw the Treaty's enlargement (a decade after 1989) as an indication of complex changes and shifts in the power balance, rather than a simple righteous or triumphalist gesture (such as "payback for Yalta," or "baiting the Russian bear" heedlessly). This conference is one of several activities marking the decade following the fall of communism. For example, an exhibition of political posters from Central Europe will be held next year.

IU President Myles Brand opened the conference on April 5, noting that it was linked by theme and outreach mission to the Washington Forum on Central Europe that he convened in 1995. He also related our Alliances conference in its significance to an event which IU organized in Washington one week later, a conference on the 40th anniversary of Title VI legislation (the laws which mandated and funded area studies in universities across America, including IU's Russian and East European Institute, a cohort being the Polish Studies Center). As Polish Studies Director, Timothy Wiles noticed in Washington at the Title VI Conference in mid-April, speakers from all global areas frequently linked the establishment of Title VI in 1958 to the Cold War, to the Sputnik launch in the previous year, and to the need felt by the U.S. government to foster examination of globally-resonant thought systems (Marxism, participatory democracy, market capitalism) in all the world's regions, and to do this across a spectrum of American colleges and universities. Ironically, two main IU events in this vein at which President Brand officiated this year were the Alliances conference and last Fall's university address given by Mikhail Gorbachev, both of which stressed the need for an enlightened globalism. Following President Brand's remarks, a keynote speech was offered by diplomat Andrzej Jaroszynski, Minister Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington DC. He stressed the positive aspects of extending NATO to Central Europe, including security and stabilization.

Alliances, Business, and Culture --
Reconfiguring the Region

Polish Studies held its major event of the year on April 5-7, 1998, an interdisciplinary conference titled Central Europe and Russia: Alliances, Business, and Culture. Co-sponsors for the event were the Russian and East European Institute and the International Resource Center. The conference was organized by Center Director Timothy Wiles, with the help of Michael Katula, PSC research assistant. The planning team, responsible for various sessions on the program, included Owen Johnson (Journalism & History), David Ransel (History & Director, REEI), and Shawn Reynolds (Director, IRC).

While this conference included some usual features of our interdepartmental projects, such as co-sponsorship by REEI and strong involvement of a professional school (The Kelley School of Business, for a day-long session organized by Paul Marer, International Business), there were some "firsts" and substantial innovations at the conference, too. For one, we invited business representatives from the three most-developed Central European economies, and they spoke both in Bloomington and in Indianapolis at a business outreach session, held at the Capital Conference Center. This was our first partnership with the IU International Resources Center, a division of International Programs whose mission is to bring the university's international expertise to businesses and organizations in Indiana and the Midwest. The conference set out to bridge the academic and the applied dimensions, particularly the cultural and the practical aspects of doing business in the new market economies of Central Europe. While this idea is already a well-established, our conference had a "first" in the fact that four of the presenters at the business session were IU graduate students or recent graduates who have already held substantial employment in Central Europe in the 1990s, have conducted business-related research there, and all these alums made presentations about their findings. Our conference marked the first "alumni reunion" for this group, all of whom worked on programs associated with Polish Studies, REEI, and the Kelley School of Business.

But our foremost first is found in the conference name: we were studying Central Europe and Russia, and most people referred to "Eastern Europe" only in the historical sense, or when mentioning REEI. Kidding aside, even though this conference grew to include a variety of subjects (regional business concerns, interrogation of how our disciplines now are studying the region's cultures, and in the primary position, issues of new alliances and affiliations), originally the conference was about Central Europe as a kind of interface between the West and Russia/the former U.S.S.R.. The conference originated in a metaphor of "bridges and boundaries" which was proposed by Owen Johnson as our working title, and this concept still undergirded our project in its final form.

The conference took place on the eve of the U.S. Senate Ratification vote on enlargement of the NATO treaty to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. This made the debate very timely but no fights broke out in the halls of the IMU Conference Center, thanks not to our notorious detachment as academics, but because so many of the speakers on both sides of the NATO debate conceded key points to their opponents. Some NATO proponents conceded that the enlargement will be very expensive, that it will have symbolic purpose as much as practical justification, and that certain potential enlargements, for example to the Baltic states, would certainly be provocative to the Russians. Some NATO opponents conceded that if the new post-1989 NATO will operate truly as a security organization for all of Europe, and not as a defensive organization rapidly moving eastward to Russia's borders, the organization may well help make peace grow on the continent, and not provoke hostility. A general consensus was that scholars and nationals at the conference whose main locus was Central Europe were generally in favor of NATO enlargement, with certain reservations, and that people whose main research locus was Russia tended to oppose enlargement at this time (several saying that they would rather see the region first join the European Union). In any case, the IU conference was timed perfectly to capture this historical turning-point: on April 30, 1998, the U.S. Senate voted 80-19 for NATO admission for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Enlarging Europe--Contexts Drawn
from History, Politics, Economics

The conference was evenly divided between scholarly participants and leaders from government and business, and indeed, some of the diplomats at this event have also held university lectureships. In this overview of the program, we will proceed by subject. The first session on Monday morning, April 6, was titled Enlarging EuropePerspectives from the Academy, and its charge was to examine the viewpoints of the main disciplines that have conducted area studies for this region--history, political science, and economics--to examine how they have mapped the concept of a Central Europe in the past, and how they see it developing in the coming decade.

The first talk was given by Keely Stauter-Halsted, History, Michigan State, on "Pluralism and Democracy in East Central Europe: An Historical Perspective." She brought forth several historical and cultural constraints on integrating East Central Europe into the West. Historically, these states have held to very narrow definitions of nation. National movements grew in the face of oppression and used their group identity to determine who could take part in the political process afterwards. The current challenge is to expand this "cultural enfranchisement" to include non-elites, minorities, women, and other citizens who were not fully part of the nation, to stabilize democracy in these countries (a prerequisite for NATO membership). Carol Skalnik Leff, Political Science, University of Illinois, spoke on "European Integration and the Institutional Re-Definition of Europe." While discussing institutional issues in the integration of Europe, she noted that East European states have done much to improve their public profile since 1989, most of it substantial change and not cosmetic, and she argued that an advantage of incorporating states into international institutions is that they will not fight each other, subsequently. Speaking from the perspective of economics, Vincent Fruchard of the University of Maryland addressed "The Next Enlargement Round: What can be Expected? An Analysis of the Logic of European Integration," a paper authored with Bartolmiej Kaminski. He noted that for these alliances, economics are subservient to politics, since it is apparent that past enlargements were accompanied by heavy political costs. For example, the southern enlargement of the EU and its economic costs angered many in France in recent decades. The real issue for enlargement into Eastern Europe is agricultural policy, a vexed issue for Poland and one that previously was too politically sensitive to debate throughout the EU. Fruchard also noted that the EU is in search of an identity for itself, and that this has been demonstrated through the recent deepening of the EU (namely, the Maastricht Treaty), rather than through widening the Union. These two issues will keep Eastern Europe out of the EU in the short run and possibly for a number of years.

Several of the papers in the sessions on "Enlarging Europe" are being collected by the session moderator, Owen V. Johnson, for eventual publication. In addition to the first three talks which were organized by academic discipline, two papers were presented from regional perspectives, namely the Balkans and the Baltics which provide geographic and cultural boundaries for the so-called Visograd states. Maria Todorova, History, University of Florida, spoke on "Returning to Europe,' The Balkans and the Rhetoric of NATO Enlargement." In a critical and illuminating paper, she brought out the ways in which culture has become the chief criterion for determining which East European nations gain entry into NATO, particularly Central European nations that have claimed a special affinity of their value systems to the West, and have also felt a threat from Russia. But these rationales apply to all the countries lying "between Germany and Russia;" however, the Balkans are often left out of the debate. While the argument applies to several countries, Todorova focused on the case of Bulgaria, to show how the country has been marginalized by a discourse of "balkanization" of southeastern Europe, despite having performed better on some indexes than a few countries that are seen as "ready for membership in Europe." To conclude the session, Pauls Raudseps, an IU graduate student in history who worked for several years as managing editor of a leading Latvian newspaper, spoke on "The Baltic States in International Politics." Grounding his talk in a review of the Baltic countries' aspirations, security concerns, and ties with the rest of the world, Raudseps demonstrated that the Baltic states first wish to gain accession to the EU (and Estonia is one of five countries currently in line for consideration, with Romania and the Central European threesome), but also look ahead to NATO admission as a sign of their full return to Europe.

This conference was an anniversary occasion in two senses--it is one of several REEI-sponsored events marking the tenth year anniversary (in 1999) of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism; and it also follows up on an IU event held in Washington in 1995, the International Forum on Central and Eastern Europe (organized by President Myles Brand, with keynote speaker Zbigniew Brzezinski). But in an important way, the conference looked to the future as much as the past. As the program noted, our subject is "Central Europe and Russia in the 1990s and beyond. Since 1989, changes in defense alliances and a revolution in the market economy have reconfigured the relationships among Russia, the countries of East Central Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. A new Central Europe is emerging, along with a new Russia. The conference will focus on how we understand changing relationships in this region, and the shape they will take in the next decade, particularly in regard to strategic and economic alliances, the business world, and changes in culture."

A highlight of the conference was the April 6 evening session on Making Peace Grow in the Post Cold War Era, featuring talks by historians, political analysts, and present or former diplomats from Hungary and Poland. Paul Schroeder, a senior historian from the University of Illinois, addressed the session topic most directly by analyzing the cycles of European wars and brief peaceful interregnums over several centuries. He made the astute point that peace is not simply the absence of war, but a special configuration of forces and power-balances in which several countries' non-bellicose interests must be cultivated interactively. The present post-WWII peace, and especially the post-Cold War peace, is one of several rather unique and brief times in modern European history in which peace can be actively cultivated, with likelihood of good yields, but Schroeder cautioned against any gestures which would flaunt the Russians with more signs of their decline (since as a state, Russia has already conceded a great deal, more or less voluntarily, since 1989). While opposed to NATO enlargement, Schroeder was willing to agree that expansion of security in the region via instruments like alliances was a good thing. Several subsequent speakers tried to construe the enlargement as an increase in regional security, rather than an encroachment of a bloc hostile to Russia closer to her borders. (This seems to be one reason why it is semantically correct to say "NATO enlargement" these days, but never "expansion.")

Hungarian Ambassador to the United Nations Andre Erdos spoke next, in support of enlargement, and while he represents Hungary his points relate to several countries in East Central Europe. First there is the obvious factor of Russia's historical interest in the region. But moving beyond old hostilities on both sides, Erdos tried to make the case that Western allies have already made important concessions, or rather, overtures, to post-imperial Russia in terms of a positive role in regional politics. Erdos stressed the Partnership for Peace accords and the establishment in 1996 of a special consulting role for Russia at NATO before any new initiatives are taken. Erdos also mentioned some advantages for enlarging NATO which don't pertain to an east-west debate, such as dealing with regional and global migration, terrorism and conventional weapon and nuclear weapon proliferation, and the more general advantages for expanding democracy and prosperity.

Speaking as a former official of the Polish Foreign Ministry and currently a professor of American Studies specializing in politics, Zbigniew Lewicki, Warsaw University, brought a sense of candid realism to the lengthy session by noting how little the Central European countries themselves had actually had to do with the decision to enlarge NATO (it was an American decision--although Lewicki also noted that Clinton had been greatly affected by appeals made in person by Wałesa and Havel just prior to his own decision to back enlargement). This may not be the best time to enlarge NATO, either for Poland or for the allies (or for Russia), but doing it is the better choice, at present, for moral/historical reasons, and to keep a creative dynamic going in European affairs, which is better than "setting back the clock of Europe" (Congress of Vienna), even if it has been done somewhat precipitously.

Many excellent audience questions and commentator contributions accompanied these talks, for example remarks offered by David Albright , IU Global Center, and prepared by Dina Spechler, Political Science, along with several others. Far from being a pro or contra issue, at the IU conference NATO enlargement turned into something almost like a literary symbol (think of Ahab's doubloon), which has many meanings in its own right and signifies something different to each observer. Let us hope that turning NATO enlargement from a zero-sum-game into an hermeneutical circle is yet one more condition for "growing peace in 21st Century Europe," to follow the spirit if not the letter of Professor Schroeder's presentation.

Studying culture and inquiring how academics currently do cultural work on the REE-region were the subjects of various presentations given on Monday afternoon, April 6. Several of the talks were given by IU graduate students whose work tends toward ethnography in a variety of fields, including history, anthropology, and even business. These included Michaela Pohl, History ("Interviewing in Russia before and after 1991," on using oral history techniques to study the culture of Kazakstan under and after the Soviet era); Katherine Metzo, Anthropology ("Cultural Revival and Culture Change: Current Trends in the Cultural Anthropology of the Former Soviet Union," on the emergence of anthropology as a legitimate discipline in Russia in this decade); and Wade Danis, Kelley School of Business ("The Integration of Managerial Values, Practices and Systems in Western-Hungarian Cooperative Business Ventures, with Implications for the Rest of Central and Eastern Europe," in which he gauged the willingness or inability of Central European managers to assimilate western approaches).

The session concluded with two fascinating first-person accounts of work in the new Russia. First, IU historian Alexander Rabinowitch regaled his listeners with the joys and woes of doing archival research in post-communist Russia, including work on the party leadership and in KGB archives. In the past, Alex has noted that he seemed to be the only archival researcher at the KGB who was not looking up the fate of a long lost relative. At least, today, he is not forbidden to access his own book, translated into Russian, from the stacks of leading Russian libraries. Alex was also instrumental in bringing one of the most amusing presenters to our conference, Jonathan Sanders, former director, CBS News Bureau, Moscow, who spoke on "The New Russian Revolution: A View from the Video Front." Sanders talked about the way in which video was changing the news, not just recording it, as a kind of popular witness and citizen intervention in the more open broadcast media post 1991. He also presented some very pointed satirical video compilations of his own making, featuring Gorby, Boris, and other Russian news makers of late in clips which showed the influence of Monty Python on the Cold War and on post-Cold War news gathering.

Doing Business in Central Europe

On Tuesday, April 7, the final day of the conference, all sessions addressed topics of business and culture. These included student ethnographies of the business class in Central Europe and talks by prominent business leaders from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. A final session held in Indianapolis brought the results of these discussions to an audience of state business leaders as well.

Presentations by young researchers, all with IU affiliations, emphasized the comparative study of business cultures, western and Central European, and all of these young observers have spent time on the job in business settings in these new market economies. While some of the talks may have smacked a bit of "advising post-communist business managers how to deal better with their western investors," all the talks tried to show that each culture has its own values in terms of doing business, and both sides, or all sides, can and should need to learn from each other. While these ideas are well known, much of the research at this session pointed in new directions. One of the best ideas voiced by several of the speakers was to see the change in markets and mentalities in Central Europe as being a result of globalization, not just "Americanization" or domination of western capital investment: a general cultural shift is happening, and Central Europe is trying to get ahead of the wave here, so that romantic/oppositional notions of a "greedy western hegemony" making encroachments in the region may not have much explanatory value, or much persuasive appeal in Warsaw or Budapest.

Making presentations were Krzysztof Zielnicki, School of Management, Warsaw University, currently on the IU-WU academic exchange; Wade Danis and Arthur Sherwood, doctoral students at the Kelley School of Business and both veterans of teaching stints in entrepreneurship studies at the American Studies Center, Warsaw University (Danis has also worked in Hungarian enterprises and published on the subject); and as discussants, Christopher Meyer (M.A. from REEI, another former instructor in business at WU on our exchange, and employed in business consult-ancies in Poland, Russia and Central Asia, 1993-97--currently in the M.B.A. program, Northwestern University); and Robert Silber (M.A. from REEI, employed in Hungary, 1994-97--currently in the DePaul University School of Law). With Zielnicki and all four of the Americans being linked at one time with the Polish Studies Center, this session offered a really fitting alumni reunion for our program's talents in this field. Thanks also goes to the faculty member who has been a mentor to all five of them, Paul Marer, Professor of Management and International Business at the Kelley School of Business.

A high point of the conference was the final session, headlined by business people from all three countries about to enter NATO, and organized by Paul Marer. While the speakers mainly presented their countries and their own businesses, as a group they showed the business dynamism and creativity with human capital which are so indicative of this part of Europe today. Furthermore, their "demographics" pointed out some key innovations for the region. The Polish business manager Halina Worecka pointed to her gender and her employment in a technology area and said that it was a sign of new times that as a woman engineer she could rise to a top management position. Laszlo Steiner, although he made a mid-career move and came into a state-owned enterprise which was just in the process of privatizing, and helped make this change succeed and became the company's CEO, in fact started his career by founding a highly-successful private business of his own in Hungary (given the new possibilities to do this in the 1970s), and he made his mark through the private route, not the state route. And finally, to mention the speaker from the Czech Republic, a valued executive of The Chase Manhattan Bank in Prague for several years, working in country and in the languages for both the Czech and the Slovak Republics, suffice it to say that this individual is an American with two IU degrees, Roger Kodat. What better evidence of the opening-up and the internationalizing of the business sector in the new Central Europe.

To specify the individuals and their affiliations, talks were given on their countries' business climates and their own industries and business sectors by: Halina Worecka, Production Director and Member of Management, Zywiec Hospital Equipment, Poland; Laszlo Steiner, General Manager, United Technologies Automotive, Hungary; and Roger Kodat, Vice President, Prague Representative Office, The Chase Manhattan Bank, Country Manager for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (Roger is a graduate of REEI and the IU School of Business, and during his visit he spoke with Paul Marer's students about his career route.) We are very grateful to these firms, Zywiec Hospital Equipment and United Technologies Auto-motive, and to The Chase Manhattan Bank, for enabling their employees to attend the IU conference on Alliances, Business, and Culture this spring and to present some invigorating news from the Central European business scene. - article by Timothy Wiles

Student and Faculty News

Danusha Goska, Folklore, will publish a paper in New York Folklore this year on "Golem as Gentile, Golem as Sabra: an analysis of the manipulation of stereotypes of self and other in literary treatments of a legendary Jewish figure." Danusha presented this paper at the Polish Studies Center in February, 1998, and she will also present it in Kraków at the conference on "Ashkenaz: Theory and Nation" at the Jagiellonian University, for which she was the recipient of a Polish Studies Center student travel grant for partial support of conference expenses.

Jennifer Day, Slavic Languages and Literatures, presented a paper on Tadeusz Rózewicz's monumental poem "Spadanie" ("Falling") at the Polish Studies Center in March. A number of Slavics faculty and students from several languages attended this talk and joined in the extensive explication of "Falling," a poem which has the size and scope of Eliot's "The Waste Land." Jennifer is also the recipient of a Fulbright grant for next year. Congratulations!

Slavics student Elizabeth Lee Roby will expand on her work on the cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski this summer with research in Poland, partially supported by a PSC student travel grant. Lee presented a paper on Kieslowski's films at the Polish Studies Center Student Workshop last academic year. This summer, her project on "Krzysztof Kieslowski's Cultural Context" will entail predissertation research and advanced language study, along with attendance at a 15-hour film course, work in cinema and film journal archives, and interviews with critics and people in the Polish film industry.

Slavics student Nikita Nankov gave a paper at the University of California-Irvine IALP Symposium on Slavic Images in May, on "Slavic Images Inside and Out: Stereotype and Reality' in Russian, Polish and Czech Cultural Settings." Nikita received a PSC student travel grant for partial support of conference expenses.

Piotr Banski, on the doctoral exchange from Warsaw University (Institute of English Studies), presented a paper in May at the Conference on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, sponsored by the Slavic Department, University of Washington in Seattle. Piotr received travel funding from both PSC and REEI for this project, a paper on "Approaches to Schizophrenic' Polish Person Agreement" which was co-authored with Professor Steven Franks (Slavics & Linguistics).

The second Warsaw University student on the doctoral exchange this year, Krzysztof Zielnicki (Institute of Management) took part in the "Alliances, Business and Culture" conference in April, where he spoke about differences in the business culture between Poland and western countries, and in May, he addressed an Executive Seminar at the Kelley School of Business on the mind set of managers in postcommunist countries. This paper will be published in the school's journal Business Horizons.

Michael Katula, Polish Studies Center Research Assistant, completed his Masters Degree at the Russian and East European Institute this spring with a concen-tration in Polish. His thesis explored the concept of the sublime as depicted in the fiction of Polish modernist writer Bruno Schulz. Michael will continue his studies at IU, concentrating in government and administration in Poland and emerging Central European democracies, as a doctoral student in the joint program of the Political Science Department and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

We are delighted to announce the birth of a son to Agnieszka and Piotr Banski. Jakub Banski was born on January 22, and Piotr, Agnieszka and Kuba have enjoyed health, happiness, and occasional opportunities to sleep ever since. Kuba will meet his grandparents this summer, after his parents conclude what has been their most productive semester ever. Wszystko najlepszego, Kubusiu! Chowaj sie zdrowo!

In April, Bozena Shallcross took part in a dialogue with Adam Zagajewski, held at Rutgers University, entitled "Two Monologues and a Talk: Transitions in Eastern Europe." She also represented the PSC at the International Milosz Festival held at the Clairemont University in California.

Zbigniew Lewicki
"Americanization in Poland since the Fall of Communism"
April 14, 1998

Zbigniew Lewicki is Professor of American Studies at Warsaw University and also former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Polish Foreign Ministry, 1991-94, where he was chief of staff for the Americas. His work has involved American literary history and political systems, and he visited IU this spring as the Warsaw University Distinguished Lecturer in Polish Studies, to speak at the Alliances, Business and Culture conference and also lecture at the PSC. His talk on Americanization in Poland put the process of cultural influence from America and the West into the context of the globalization of economies in recent decades, and he also contrasted the process with Soviet domination, to which it has been a reaction. Lewicki's talk was the keynote at a panel discussion organized around his topic, and he was joined at this session by several faculty who are involved in cultural studies and historical critiques of Americanization, including Purnima Bose (English), Nick Cullather (History), Raymond Hedin (English & American Studies; a participant in the IU faculty exchange with Warsaw University), and Timothy Wiles (English & Polish Studies).