| Abstract: | In several of the central and eastern European nations, the fall of Communism has initiated a new round of political intolerance
that threatens to destroy the foundations of their fragile democratic regimes. Campaigns of lustration (political “cleansing”)
have imposed ideological tests for employment and political participation in the Balkan countries and in parts of the former
Soviet Union. The small, poor nation of Albania has been especially seriously impacted by this atmosphere of vengeacean against
ex-Communists and their families. Justified by the principles of destructive entitlement—reminiscent of ancient cultural rituals
of blood retribution—journalists have been arrested, members of the opposition have been imprisoned, and University programs
have been suspended. In response to Albania’s plight, and to a similar pattern of civil rights abuses in neighboring countries,
social scientists have begun to analyze the powerful role played by the “past-in-the-present” in current reconstruction efforts.
As Jurgen Habermas, Adam Michnik, Seymour Martins Lipset, and others have noted, a new “culture of forgiveness” may well be
a necessary condition for the development of stable and authentic democratic societies in the region.
Fatos Tarifa is currently at the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D.
in Political Science from the University of Tirana in 1985. He is director of the New Sociological Research Center (NSRC)
in Tirana, Albania, and is the author of several books and journal articles, including a 1991 bookIn Search of the Sociological Fact (published in Albanian). Jay Weinstein is a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He has travelled widely
in the Third World and in Central and Eastern Europe. Author of numerous books, journal articles, and chapters, he is currently
working on a volume entitledSocial and Cultural Change: Social Science for a Dynamic World (forthcoming in 1997 by Allyn & Bacon Publishers). |
