Economic crisis, rampant inflation and the effects of the war and the the influx of refugees are adding to the economic and political strains in Central and Eastern Europe caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and increasing instability in many countries.
Throughout the region, inflation is roughly twice as high as in western Europe, running at around 20% or higher in many countries at the beginning of the year. Food and energy prices have been rising even faster. In January, food prices across the European Union rose by an average of 18.4% compared to a year ago. However, Hungary was the record holder of food price hikes (48.2%), followed by Lithuania (32%) and then Slovakia (28.6%).
While social tensions are rising due to the cost of living crisis, government budgets are also coming under pressure, with fewer funds for extra social protection for the most vulnerable or for wage increases for the public sector.
High interest rates — aimed at fighting inflation — are increasing the costs for borrowers, putting further stress on living standards.
Similarly, the increased borrowing costs for the state increases the risk of a public debt spiral. The region has already seen a massive increase in public debt due to fiscal stimulus policies during the COVID-19 crisis. The increased militarism in the region in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is an additional burden on public finances, with defence budgets doubling, something that working people will ultimately have to pay for.
Beginnings of a fightback
Despite the weakness of the organised working class — the lack of a fighting leadership in the trade unions and absence of working-class parties prepared to give a political lead, in many countries of the region workers are already beginning to fight back. The first strikes for many years broke out in the Czech Republic in January — in a tyre factory and among delivery workers. In Poland too, couriers and delivery workers — extremely exploited, precarious workers who were on the frontline during the pandemic — have attempted to organise and take industrial action in the recent period.
Also in the Czech Republic, around 2,000 workers took to the streets of Prague and marched past the cabinet office on 29 March in protest at a proposed rise in the retirement age. The Czech government wants to raise the age from 65 to 68, saying it must rein in spending due to a huge hole in its budget.
The way of calculating pensions has already been altered, severely affecting the position of Czech pensioners. Previously they were index-linked, guaranteeing that they would at least keep up with the high rate of inflation, which in February was at 16.6 percent. But the government has now limited the rise to just 2.3 percent. However, so far, the trade unions have failed to organise a mass mobilisation of all workers in defence of pensions. In order to stop or reverse the attacks, the unions need to prepare and mobilise for a series of one-day general strikes.
Teachers’ strikes
The tragic condition of the education sector in the CEE region has pushed teachers into struggle in many countries. Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland have seen teachers strikes in recent years, while an important teachers strike swept Hungary at the beginning of this year, enjoying significant social support and solidarity among pupils and parents.
Latvian teachers on strike
In Latvia a 3-day national teachers’ strike took place in April this year involving 26,000 teachers over the government’s broken promises on pay and workload. It ended after the government once more accepted the union’s demands, but with no calculations on the allocation of funding. Mistrust remains as to whether the government will once again break its promises, leaving the possibility of another strike in the new school year.
Romania has seen a huge strike movement, which started towards the end of 2022 and included strikes of sanitation workers against low pay, forestry workers protesting against privatisation of the forests, protests of railway workers in defence of the special hospitals for railway workers as well as health workers and teachers demanding pay rises.
In March over 10,000 education education workers protested in Bucharest over pay, with pickets also organised in other cities. Then on 22 May, 150,000 teachers and 70,000 auxiliary staff started a national strike which resulted in a 25% pay rise in June. Despite the watering down of demands by the trade union leadership, this is an important example that shows that militant working-class action can get results.
Kazakh protests
At the beginning of 2022, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, protests broke out in Kazakhstan over price rises and against the government and the former president, Nazarbajev. Although the rebellion was pacified by the army and the presence of Russian “peacekeeping forces”, with hundreds of victims, it ended with President Tokayev forced to make concessions and remove Nazarbayev and his family from positions of power.
But despite the crackdown, we now see a renewal of struggle of the Kazakh working class. On 11 April this year, police dispersed dozens of demonstrators who had come to the Kazakh capital from the oil-rich western region demanding wage rises. Outrage over this attack on the protesters quickly spread in Mangystau, the province where the protesters had come from. Workers at several oil companies declared a strike. Assemblies were held in the cities of the region calling for the release of the picketers detained in Astana.
Far-right and pro-Russian sympathies
Despite signs of a recovery in the class struggle in the region, generally the labour and trade union movement remains weak compared to Western Europe. Consciousness is confused and contradictory — a legacy of decades of Stalinist rule — allowing anti-working class forces to fill the vacuum where working-class organisations and the left are unable or unwilling to challenge neoliberalism.
In several countries we see the growth of nationalism, the far-right and pro-Russian sympathies and political forces aiming to capitalise on the dissatisfaction against the hardships that are blamed on the war.
In Moldova, the country’s GDP shrank by 5.9% year-on-year in 2022 and inflation was running at 29% at the beginning of the year. Gas prices rose by 400% last year, provoking anti-government protests involving tens of thousands last autumn led by the pro-Russia right-wing opposition party SOR.
At same time, national tensions are rising in the Gagauzia region of Moldova and in the breakaway republic of Transnistria, where 1,600 Russian troops are stationed.
Earlier in the year Moldova’s pro-EU government resigned amid rumours of a Russian plot to overthrow the government. This resignation made way for a new hardline, more authoritarian but still pro-West government, while a large part of Moldovan society is sympathetic to Russia, particularly in Gagauzia.
Nationalist tensions are also flaring up in Kosovo, where the Serbian minority boycotted April’s municipal elections and clashed with Serbian riot police and Nato-led peacekeeping forces as ethnic Albanian mayors took over municipal buildings in areas where ethnic Serbians are in a majority. In response, Serbia put troops on standby near Kosovo’s border.
Meanwhile, Serbia is attempting a delicate balancing act in relation to the war in Ukraine. While President Vucic condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has refused to support Western sanctions. However, remembering the Nato airstrikes against Serbia, many Serbians are sympathetic to Russia and view the conflict in Ukraine primarily as Russia standing up against Nato.
Even in the EU countries of the region far-right and pro-Russian forces are capable of making gains. This was the case last October, when 70,000 protesters took to the streets of Prague against the government’s handling of soaring energy prices, against the country’s membership of NATO and against the European Union. Among their demands, the organisers called for a deal with Putin to end the war. The demo was organised by the far-right and the Communist Party, so the demands were nationalistic — for example the main slogan was “Czech Republic first!”.
In Slovakia too, there is sizeable support for Russia among the population. In 2020, before the war in Ukraine, a poll found that 78% of the public in the country believed they were traditional Slavic brothers with Russians and saw Russia as a key political and military force on the continent. “Peace marches” or protests calling for an immediate end to the war and arms deliveries have been held in Slovakia where protesters have chanted “Putin is our president, Putin is our hero!”
Elections will be held later this year, and we can expect pro-Russian sentiments to be expressed by the far-right as well as anti-LGBT rhetoric. In this situation, it is essential that a left-wing alternative for the working class should be presented.
In Poland too, due to the possibility of a hung parliament after this autumn’s general election and the growth in support for Konfederacja, there is a danger that the far-right may hold the balance of power, pushing a future PiS government even further to the right, with far-right or fascist elements in government.
Political stalemate in Bulgaria
Bulgaria has been stuck in a political stalemate, unable to form a stable government since before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In the last 2 years it has had 5 parliamentary elections.
GERB — Boyko Borissov’s party right-wing populist party — was in power from 2009–2021. In 2020 mass anti-corruption protests swept the country and a year later GERB lost its majority in the parliamentary elections. The result was a hung parliament and a period of political stalemate and weak, short-lived coalition governments.
In July last year GERB united with several small opposition parties, including the pro-Russian Revival party, and brought down the weak coalition government, re-starting the spiral of parliamentary elections. At the beginning of April this year the fifth parliamentary election also ended inconclusively. As in all the countries of the region, the missing factor in the equation is a working class party with a socialist programme which would offer a real solution to the problems in Bulgarian society.
Unexpected explosions of anger
Protests can also break out over issues that are impossible to predict, for example an unexpected government attack or legislation which society opposes. Recently Georgia was rocked by protests against the foreign agent law, which could be used to target not only NGOs, but also journalists and political activists. Following demonstrations of thousands of protesters, the government was forced to back down for now.
In April farmers’ protests broke out in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria against cheap Ukrainian grain flooding the market. Ukrainian grain exports were rerouted towards Central Europe following the Russian naval blockade last year. But instead of being re-exported, the grain remained in the region and was eventually sold cheaply due to lax controls. This caused a glut, bringing down prices and hurting local farmers.
This was a big problem for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, which is looking to win over rural voters ahead of parliamentary elections in October. An unnamed PiS official was quoted as saying: “Had we not introduced the ban now, it would have been all over for us in May.”
These local bans on Ukrainian grain strained relations with Ukraine, but despite initial criticism, ultimately the EU was forced to uphold the embargoes.
June this year also saw the largest anti-government demonstration in Poland since 1989, provoked by a new law which established a kangaroo court to convict politicians and activists suspected of having “Russian influences”. However, due to the weakness of the Polish left, the half-million protesters were mobilised by the liberal opposition party, Civic Platform.
Socialist feminism
Faced with a growing crisis, right-wing-populist regimes in the region are stepping up their attacks on women — in particular, on abortion and reproductive rights — as well as on the LGBTQ+ community. Their aim is to divide the working class and divert the social unrest which capitalism inevitably generates by using the tried and tested tool of xenophobia. This has already resulted in a rise in racist, homophobic and transphobic attacks throughout the region.
However, at the same time this is having a radicalising effect on a significant layer of youth, particularly young women, who are rejecting the ruling ideology of religious fundamentalism and medieval prejudice and superstition.
In Poland, the attacks on the already extremely restrictive abortion law provoked a mass movement in defence of abortion rights in 2016 and 2020. Although the liberal leadership sought to limit the movement to a defence of the status quo, the demands from women and youth on the demonstrations went much further to include the right to abortion on demand and a purge of the Catholic Church from all spheres of influence in the state.
The interest in the Rosa conference in Vienna from small groups and individuals in the region who have contacted us shows the potential for a socialist feminist programme and methods of struggle in this part of Europe. The key will be to win over the radicalising youth of the region to the ideas of genuine Marxism and orientate them to the awakening working class.
