Eastern Europe’s Litmus Tests
By Carl Svahn
Eastern Europe has seen a reckoning over the last few years over the presence of populist and increasingly authoritarian governments, a trend that has only been amplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On September 30th, SMER-SSD (Direction-Slovak Social Democracy) won the majority of seats in the Slovakian parliamentary election on a platform based on halting aid to Ukraine, limiting sanctions against Russia, and getting the European Union on board with these initiatives. Just a few weeks later on October 15, Poland saw the United Right coalition– which includes the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party– fail to secure a majority within their own parliamentary elections amid a flurry of public protests, accusations of corruption within the party, and opposition to its abortion policies. With these two elections, it’s possible we will see both the continuing rise of these forces within eastern Europe, and the emergence of organized resistance to some of their more extreme views and implemented policies.
Prime Minister Robert Fico served as Slovakia’s leader twice before his recent election, from 2006-2010 and 2012-2018. He was forced to resign from power in 2018 following his party’s alleged ties to the murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative journalist, and his own alleged ties to the Italian crime organization ‘Ndrangheta. However, the charges against him were eventually dropped, and he would emerge as the leader of SMER-SSD’s campaign to win back the premiership and parliament following their loss in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
Fico’s new government is not an unfamiliar one to Slovakians, but is perhaps more determined than ever to see its goals achieved. His party, SMER-SSD, was founded in 1999 by Fico himself as an alternate “Third Way” center-left party, and would eventually gain enough support to create two coalition governments (2006-2010, 2016-2020) and even a single-party government from 2012-2016. Throughout his nearly two decades in power, SMER-SSD has been implicated in numerous corruption scandals and has been noted for its intensely anti-American and anti-Western stances, despite its membership in the EU and NATO. Remaining true to its Russophile tendencies, once the invasion of Ukraine was underway, the party began to openly call for an end to sanctions against Russia.
Poland’s government, despite similar Western-skeptic and anti-Europe views, has started to see greater public pushback. PiS has held power through the presidency and parliamentary majority since 2015 and through the 2019 parliamentary and 2020 presidential elections. Throughout this period, the party has shifted to the right and taken a firm stance against LGBTQ and abortion rights within Poland. Under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the party has made efforts to stifle the free press and judiciary to give the executive branch, which they control, even more power.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has been at the forefront of this era alongside Kaczynski. Duda has served as president of Poland since PiS’ 2015 electoral victory, previously serving as a lawyer, member of the Sejm, and member of the European Parliament. Though he has maintained an anti-Russian stance on foreign policy, Duda has aligned himself with Kacynski’s policies and growing authoritarian tendencies. In the last three years, Kacynski’s government has issued a near-total ban on abortion via the Constitutional Tribunal (Poland’s constitutional court) and worked on the “Lex Tusk” law that would establish a commission to investigate supposed Russian infiltration within Poland– a law that the EU claims may be used to silence PiS’ opposition.
Both elections, and their results, have provided a clear picture of what eastern Europe has been facing for the last ten years. With growing nationalist and far-right movements sweeping Europe as a whole since the mid-2010’s, the continuing success of said movements in the east has prompted two major concerns: the future of the EU’s ties to the region as well as Russia’s influence on the countries closest to it. While Slovakia has followed this rise with the return of Fico and his Russophile views, the setbacks for PiS in Poland despite their established hold on the country has demonstrated the growing pushback, particularly from younger people, against these movements and governments.
What lies ahead for Slovakia and Poland remains to be seen. Fico’s newly formed government has already halted military and financial aid to Ukraine and is promising to continue blocking their proposed entrance into NATO. Several key anti-corruption investigators have been dismissed and corruption charges will reportedly carry less harsh sentences in Slovakia in the future. Poland’s opposition parties (Civic Coalition, the Third Way, and the Left) have formed their coalition government and have promised to maintain Poland’s commitments to Ukraine and reform the country’s laws regarding women’s rights– though they still have to wait to officially take power until President Duda and Prime Minister Morawiecki acquiesce their unlikely bid to form their own new government. If the new coalition takes power, it will be led by Donald Tusk– leader of the Civic Coalition, former prime minister from 2007-2014, and president of the European Council from 2015-2019. However, even if Tusk’s government is formed, he will have to work with an actively hostile President in Duda to get his policies passed. Whatever the outcome, both countries’ elections have upended the established order within Slovakia and Poland, and the short-term future for both countries is sure to be contentious.
Carl Svahn is a senior at Tufts University studying Political Science and History.
Image: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico during the press conference
Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
This piece is a reproduction from its original issue in Hemispheres vol. 47, no. 1.
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