The environmental issue in the East of Europe: top–down, bottom–up and outside–in

Abstract

The implosion of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened the closed frontier imposed by early Bolshevik policy and which was a key factor supporting the top–down nature of Communist rule. Behind it the market was abolished and the centrally determined plans were protected from world markets and other external influences. These states thus played no part in the development of globalisation, but their Communist parties fell from power just as globalisation was becoming a major factor in world affairs. The upshot was a marked asymmetry as Western influence entered the post-Communist space. The environmental issue was powerfully affected, as donor NGOs came to operate most congenially at intermediate level between government and grassroots groups. The outside–in operation of transnational NGOs thus replaced the incipient bottom–up activism in Eastern Europe from the Helsinki Agreements in 1975 onwards, and the ‘informals’ in the Soviet Union responding to Gorbachev's glasnost. This raises questions about the definition of participation and representation in a global age.

Keywords:

• post-Communism
• globalisation
• central command planning
• dissent
• glasnost
• transactional activism
• asymmetry