Turbulenzen im Vakuum. Anmerkungen zur kulturellen Globalisierung in Osteuropa
Turbulence in the Vacuum. Notes on Cultural Globalization in Eastern Europe

Summary/Abstract: The westernizing globalization in Eastern Europe is only one (albeit spectacular) aspect of the general opening and internationalization of culture in the region after 1989. At first, however, the '89 revolutions caused a De-Sowjetization, a partial annihilation of semiglobal communist or Soviet Russian culture. This seemed to imply a rebirth of the oppressed national or ethnic cultures, that is, the very opposite of submission to global cultural homogenization. According to the optimistic expectations of the anti-communist opposition of 1989, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc would mean the end of Soviet culture with its universalist claim and its real rule over almost half the globe. At the same time, it was hoped that Russian high culture would survive, but above all that a mixed culture would emerge that would combine national (but not ethnic-nationalist) and truly global (i.e. liberal) components, as well as forms of high and mass culture, of course without the inhuman excesses of the latter. In short, Leninist censorship would disappear, but Tolstoy would stay; Bartók and the Beatles would coexist in peaceful coexistence; and while it may be difficult to find decent bookstores in Warsaw or Bucharest, even the less respectable would be more likely to have Walt Disney picture books or esoteric literature instead of hard porno or Nazi trash

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