How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe
自由主义如何在东欧沦为“失败的神”？
原文： The Guardian https://tinyurl.com/yxrw7b53
译文：察网http://www.cwzg.cn/theory/201912/53600.html
作者：Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes
After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central
and eastern Europe were never fully realised – and now we are seeing the
backlash.
共产主义政权垮台之后，西方自由主义承诺的彻底改变中东欧的前景从未真正实现，现在
我们终于见证了人们对自由主义的强烈抵制。
In the spring of 1990, John Feffer, a 26-year-old American, spent several
months criss-crossing eastern Europe in hope of unlocking the mystery of its
post-communist future and writing a book about the historical transformation
unfolding before his eyes. He was no expert, so instead of testing theories,
he buttonholed as many people from as many walks of life as possible. The
contradictions he encountered were fascinating and puzzling. East Europeans
were optimistic but apprehensive. Many of those he interviewed at the time
expected to be living like Viennese or Londoners within five years, 10 years
at the most. But these hopes were mingled with anxiety and foreboding. As
Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss observed: “People realised suddenly
that in the coming years, it would be decided who would be rich and who would
be poor; who would have power and who would not; who would be marginalised
and who would be at the centre. And who would be able to found dynasties and
whose children would suffer.”
1990年的春天，一位名叫26岁的美国人约翰‧费弗（John Feffer）花了几个月时间来回
穿梭于东欧各国之间，试图揭开后共产主义时代的秘密，并把他亲眼所见的这一历史转变
记录在他的书中。他并不是一位专家，所以他没有采取理论研究的方法，而是在他步履所
及之处尽可能多地拦下行人并采访他们。人们表达出的相互矛盾的态度既令人好奇又令人
困惑。东欧人对时局表示乐观但又不无疑虑，许多采访对象表示期待在5年，最多10年之
后过上像维也纳人或伦敦人一样的生活。但这种希望混杂着焦虑与不祥的预感。正如匈牙
利社会学家埃里梅‧汉基斯所言：“人们突然发觉，几年之后，贫富阶层分化就将形成，
权力格局就将尘埃落定，边缘与中心的界限就将变得明晰，权势与弱势的命运就将从此注
定。”
Feffer eventually published his book, but did not return to the countries
that had briefly captured his imagination. Then, 25 years later, he decided
to revisit the region and to seek out those with whom he had spoken in 1990.
This time round, eastern Europe was richer but roiled by resentment. The
capitalist future had arrived, but its benefits and burdens were unevenly,
even crassly distributed. After reminding us that “For the World War II
generation in eastern Europe, communism was the ‘god that failed’”, Feffer
writes that “For the current generation in the region, liberalism is the god
that failed.”
费弗后来出版了他的书，但他没有再回到过那些曾经占据他想像空间的国家。25年之后，
他决定重返那些国家并寻找那些他在1990年曾与之进行过对话的人。现在的东欧变得更富
裕了，却充满了愤恨情绪。资本主义的未来确已到来，但其收益与代价却不对等，甚至存
在严重的偏离。他提醒我们，“对东欧国家经历过二战的那一代人而言，共产主义是一尊
‘失败的神’”，他继续写道，“对东欧的当代人而言，失败的神则变成了自由主义。”
The striving of ex-communist countries to emulate the west after 1989 has
been given an assortment of names – Americanisation, Europeanisation,
democratisation, liberalisation, enlargement, integration, harmonisation,
globalisation and so forth – but it has always signified modernisation by
imitation and integration by assimilation. After the communist collapse,
according to today’s central European populists, liberal democracy became a
new, inescapable orthodoxy. Their constant lament is that imitating the
values, attitudes, institutions and practices of the west became imperative
and obligatory.
这些前共产主义国家在1989年之后赶超西方的理想被赋予了一系列名字：美国化、欧洲化
、民主化、自由化、扩大化、一体化、和谐化、全球化等等。但这些词汇总是透露出两层
意思：通过模仿实现现代化，以及通过同化实现一体化。在共产主义政权垮台之后，用今
天的中欧民粹主义理论家的话来说，自由民主变成了一种全新的、不可回避的正统。他们
总是在呼号模仿西方的价值观、立场、制度与实践是必不可少的。
Across central and eastern Europe, many of the democracies that emerged at
the end of the cold war have been transformed into conspiracy-minded
majoritarian regimes. In them, political opposition is demonised,
non-government media, civil society and independent courts are denuded of
their influence and sovereignty is defined by the leadership’s determination
to resist pressure to conform to western ideals of political pluralism,
government transparency and tolerance for strangers, dissidents and
minorities.
在中欧和东欧，许多建立于冷战末期的民主政体已经蜕变为一种阴谋化的多数主义政权。
在这种政权体系之下，政治对立被妖魔化了，非政府的媒体、公民社会和独立法院都失去
了各自的影响力，主权的定义也变成了领导层抵制压力的决心，这些压力来自于对西方理
念的遵循——政府多元主义，透明政府，以及对外国人、异见者和少数群体的包容。
No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian
anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second
decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical
status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role.
This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an
authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what
best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies
today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an
independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary
nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across
much of the world.
没有任何一种单一因素可以解释，为何在21世纪的第二个十年里如此众多不同地区的国家
会出现威权主义反自由主义浪潮。但人们对自由民主主义神圣地位以及政治上的全面模仿
的厌恶与反感是一个重要因素。替代方案的缺失最有力地解释了如今反西方情绪席卷后共
产主义社会的原因，而非从过去的威权主义中开始的全面转型，也非历史上根深蒂固的对
自由主义的仇视。“别无他法”这一论断所传递出的自负是当今起源于中东欧的民粹主义
排外情绪和反动本土主义浪潮的重要推手，现在这种浪潮正在横扫全世界。
When the cold war ended, racing to join the west was the shared mission of
central and eastern Europeans. Indeed, becoming indistinguishably western was
arguably the principal aim of the revolutions of 1989. The enthusiastic
copying of western models, accompanied as it was by the evacuation of Soviet
troops from the region, was initially experienced as liberation. But after
two troubled decades, the downsides of this politics of imitation became too
obvious to deny. As resentment seethed, illiberal politicians rose in
popularity and, in Hungary and Poland, acceded to power.
冷战结束时，争相加入西方是中东欧国家的共同使命。事实上，变得与西方难以分辨正是
1989年革命的首要目标。伴随着苏联军队撤出中东欧，对西方模式的热切照搬起初看起来
像是解放。但在经历了动荡的三十年后，这种模仿式政治的弊端暴露无遗。愤怒之火熊熊
燃烧，非自由主义政客开始获得民众支持，在匈牙利和波兰，他们甚至已经开始掌权。
In the first years after 1989, liberalism was generally associated with the
ideals of individual opportunity, freedom to move and to travel, unpunished
dissent, access to justice and government responsiveness to public demands.
By 2010, the central and eastern European versions of liberalism had been
indelibly tainted by two decades of rising social inequality, pervasive
corruption and the morally arbitrary redistribution of public property into
the hands of small number of people. The economic crisis of 2008 had bred a
deep distrust of business elites and the casino capitalism that, writ large,
almost destroyed the world financial order.
1989年之后最初的几年里，自由主义就是个人机遇、迁徙和旅行自由、不受惩罚的异见、
获得公正以及政府对公共需求的责任的同义词。但在2010年时，20多年来不平等日益加剧
，腐败深入社会机体，公共财富被少数人肆意侵吞，中东欧地区自由主义的愿景已黯淡无
光。2008年经济危机更是加深了人们对商务精英和几乎摧毁世界金融秩序的赌场资本主义
的不信任感。
Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The
financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of
western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style
capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for
the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew
what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why
2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect.
自由主义在该地区的名声从此一落千丈。金融危机恶化了局势，一群西方训练出来的、仍
在继续模仿美式资本主义的经济学家还在把局面变得更糟。西方政治经济模式是人类未来
的这种自信，是建立在西方精英们理解自己行为的基础上的。突然之间他们显然开始无法
理解自己的行为了。所以2008年经济危机不仅对经济造成了重大影响，还对意识形态产生
了惊人的影响。
Another reason why central and eastern populists have got away with
exaggerating the dark sides of European liberalism is that the passage of
time has erased from the collective memory the even darker sides of European
illiberalism. Meanwhile, the ruling illiberal parties in central and eastern
Europe, such as the Civic Alliance (Fidesz) in Hungary and Law and Justice
party (PiS) in Poland, seek to discredit liberal principles and institutions
in order to deflect from legitimate charges of corruption and abuse of power.
To justify dismantling the independent press and judiciary, they claim that
they are defending the nation against “foreign-hearted” enemies.
中东欧民粹主义理论家们不再夸大欧洲自由主义黑暗面的另一个原因，是时间已经抹平了
人民对于欧洲非自由主义更加黑暗的一面的集体记忆。同时，中东欧地区掌权的非自由主
义政党，例如匈牙利的公民联盟（Civic Alliance, Fidesz）和波兰的法律与正义党（
PiS）试图用抹黑自由主义理念和制度的方式来把人民的注意力从腐败和权力滥用面临的
指控上转移开。为了给他们打压独立媒体和独立司法的行为找借口，他们辩称这样做是为
了保护国家免受“具有异心”的敌人的攻击。
Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in
the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for
national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex.
But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle
to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the
“transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by
visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities.
These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a
reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by
ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU
enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of
national traditions and national identity.
但是仅仅关注这一地区非自由主义政府的腐败与龌龊还不足以理解民众支持民族民粹主义
政党上台的原因。民粹主义的渊源无疑十分复杂。但其中的部分原因是这些国家努力地想
照搬一种更加优越的模式，却最多只是拙劣的抄袭，最终引发了人民的羞辱感。他们对后
共产主义时代的“民主转型”的不满也由一群不了解当地情况的外国“评价人”所引发。
这些因素共同促成了该地区本土文化保护主义（也称作本土主义）的形成，他们要复兴被
弊病百出的西式文化所窒息的“纯正的”民族传统。与欧盟东扩相关的后民族主义时代的
自由主义，给了雄心勃勃的民粹主义者机会，宣称他们对民族传统和民族身份的排他性的
占有。
This was the mainspring of the anti-liberal revolt in the region. But a
subsidiary factor was the unargued assumption that, after 1989, there were no
alternatives to liberal political and economic models. This presumption
spawned a contrarian desire to prove that there were, indeed, such
alternatives. Take Germany’s far-right populist party, Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD). As its name suggests, it was launched in response to
Angela Merkel’s offhand claim that her monetary policy was “alternativlos”
(“without alternative”). By describing the government’s proposal as the
only available option, she provoked an intense and implacable search for
alternatives. A similar backlash, provoked by the assumed normality of
post-nationalism, gave birth, in formerly communist countries, to an
anti-liberal, anti-globalist, anti-migrant and anti-EU revolt, exploited and
manipulated by populist demagogues who know how to demonise “inner enemies”
to mobilise public support.
这就是中东欧地区反自由主义运动的主要起因。但还有一个次要原因是1989年之后自由主
义政治经济模式不存在替代品这一言之凿凿的论断。这种论断激发了证明替代模式存在的
反叛性情绪。以德国极右翼政党德国选择党（AfD）为例。正如其名所示，该党是为了回
应安哥拉‧默克尔漫不经心的所谓她的货币政策是“别无选择”的说法。她将政府的议案
描述为唯一可行的做法激起了一股强烈的、坚决的寻找替代方案的情绪。相似的是，宣称
后民族主义是普世的论断在前共产主义国家同样引发了反自由化、反全球化、反移民和反
欧盟运动，这些运动又被深谙妖魔化“内部敌人”，以俘获民众支持之道的民粹主义政客
所利用和操控了。
According to George Orwell, “All revolutions are failures, but they are not
all the same failure.” So, what kind of failure was the revolution of 1989,
given that its aim was western-style normality? To what extent was the
liberal revolution of 1989 responsible for the illiberal counter-revolution
unleashed two decades later?
乔治‧奥威尔曾说：“所有革命都是失败的，但失败的种类不同”。那么1989年以西式普
世主义为目标的革命属于哪种失败？1989年革命又在多大程度上要为三十年后非自由主义
反革命运动负责？
The “velvet revolutions” that took place across central and eastern Europe
in 1989 were largely unmarred by the human suffering that is usually part of
root-and-branch political upheaval. Never before had so many deeply
entrenched regimes been simultaneously overthrown and replaced using
basically peaceable means. The left praised these velvet revolutions as
expressions of popular power. The right extolled them as both a triumph of
the free market over the command economy and the well-deserved victory of
free government over totalitarian dictatorship. American and pro-American
liberals, for their part, were proud to associate liberalism, routinely
ridiculed by leftist critics as an ideology geared towards maintaining the
status quo, with the romance of emancipating change. And, of course, these
largely nonviolent changes of regime in the east were vested with
world-historical significance since they marked the end of the cold war.
1989年发生在中东欧的“天鹅绒革命”中并未发生激烈政治动荡中通常伴随的流血受伤事
件。之前从未有过根深蒂固的体制被以基本平和的手段推翻和替代的历史。左翼赞扬天鹅
绒革命是“人民力量的展现”，右翼则歌颂其为自由市场对计画经济的胜利以及自由政府
对极权主义独裁的胜利。美国和亲美的自由派自豪地将自由主义和追求变革联系起来，而
自由主义一词过去都被左翼批评为维持现状的意识形态。自然而然地，这些发生在东欧的
、很大程度上是非暴力的政权更迭以其标志着冷战结束而被赋予了改变世界历史的意义。
The non-violent nature of the revolutions of 1989 was not their only unique
feature. Given the prominent public role played at the time by creative
thinkers and savvy political activists such as Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia
and Adam Michnik in Poland, the events of 1989 are sometimes rem embered as
revolutions of the intellectuals. But what ensured that these revolutions
would remain “velvet” was a background hostility to utopias and political
experiments. Far from craving anything ingeniously new, the leading figures
in these revolutions aimed at overturning one system only in order to copy
another.
1989年革命的非暴力属性并非其唯一的独特性。像捷克斯洛伐克的维克拉夫‧哈维尔（
Vaclav Havel）、波兰的亚当‧米基尼克（Adam Michnik）这样有创见、有智慧的思想家
和政治活动家在1989年革命中扮演了重要的公共角色，因此这场革命有时也被称为智者的
革命。但是确保这场革命保持“天鹅绒”的却是从根本上敌视乌托邦和政治试验的环境。
这场革命的领导人物并不渴望什么全新的事物，他们的目标只是推翻现有体制然后去抄袭
另一种体制。
Germany’s foremost philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, warmly welcomed “the lack
of ideas that are either innovative or oriented towards the future” after
1989, since for him the central and eastern European revolutions were “
rectifying revolutions” or “catch-up revolutions”. Their goal was to
enable central and eastern European societies to gain what the western
Europeans already possessed.
德国最著名的哲学家尤尔根‧哈贝马斯（Jürgen Habermas），热切称赞1989年之后“缺
乏创新或面向未来的思想”的状况，因为对他而言中东欧革命是“修正式的革命”或“追
赶式的革命”。他们的目标是让中东欧社会获得西欧人已经拥有的东西。
Nor were central and eastern Europeans themselves, in 1989, dreaming of some
perfect world that had never existed. They were longing instead for a “
normal life” in a “normal country”. In the late 70s, when the German poet
Hans Magnus Enzensberger visited Hungary and spoke with some of the
best-known critics of the communist regime, what they told him was: “We are
not dissidents. We represent normality.” Michnik’s post-communist slogan
was “Liberty, Fraternity, Normality”. After decades of pretending to expect
a radiant future, the main goal of the dissidents was to live in the present
and to enjoy the pleasures of everyday life.
1989年，中东欧人民都没有幻想过什么从未存在过的完美世界。他们只是渴望在一个“正
常国家”过上“正常生活”。在70年代末，德国诗人汉斯‧马格努斯‧恩岑斯贝格尔（
Hans Magnus Enzensberger）曾访问匈牙利并与几位最知名的抨击共产主义的批评家进行
交谈，他们告诉他：“我们不是异见者，我们代表正常状态。”米基尼克的后共产主语宣
传口号是“自由、博爱、常态”。这些异见者一直在假装追求一个激进的未来，二十多年
后，他们的主要目标却是活在当下、及时行乐。
Central European elites saw imitation of the west as a well-travelled pathway
to normality in this sense. But, encouraged by hopes of joining the EU, the
reformers underestimated the local impediments to liberalisation and
democratisation and overestimated the feasibility of importing fully
worked-out western models. The wave of anti-liberalism sweeping over central
Europe today reflects widespread popular resentment at the perceived slights
to national and personal dignity that this palpably sincere
reform-by-imitation project entailed.
在这个意义上，中欧的精英们将这种对西方的模仿视为通向正常化的捷径。但是，改革者
们被加入欧盟的愿景所蛊惑，他们低估了当地对自由化和民主化的抵制，也高估了输入相
当成熟的西方模式的可行性。这场完全的抄袭式改革充满了对国家和个人尊严的公然蔑视
，现在横扫中欧的反自由主义浪潮反映了人们对于这种现状的普遍反感。
In eastern and central Europe as a whole, euphoria at communism’s collapse
created the expectation that other radical improvements were in the offing.
Some thought it would suffice for communist officials to quit their posts in
order for central and eastern Europeans to wake up in different, freer, more
prosperous and, above all, more western countries. When rapid westernisation
did not magically materialise, an alternative solution began to gain favour.
Leaving with one’s family for the west became the preferred option.
在中东欧，对共产主义政权崩溃的赞美使得人们产生了一种其他彻底的进步也即将到来的
错觉。有些人认为让共产党官员下台就可以在一夜之间让中东欧人民生活在一个不同的、
更自由的、更繁荣的、更西化的国家。当西方化并未像魔法一般降临时，一种替代性方案
逐渐获得认可，那就是拖家带口向西方移民。
Where once dissidents in countries such as Poland had associated emigration
to the west with treasonous capitulation and desertion, after 1989 that view
no longer made any sense. A revolution that defined its principal goal as
westernisation could offer no persuasive objections to westward emigration.
Why should a young Pole or Hungarian wait for his country to become one day
like Germany, when he can start working and raising a family in Germany
tomorrow? Democratic transitions in the region were basically a form of en
masse removal to the west, and so the choice was only to emigrate early and
individually or later and collectively.
曾经在波兰这样的国家移民西方等同于叛国、屈服和离弃，1989年之后这种看法便失去了
意义。一场将其目标定义为西方化的革命不可能再阻止人民向西移民。一个在现在的德国
可以养家餬口的青年波兰人或匈牙利人，为什么要等待他们的国家有一天变得像德国一样
？中东欧地区的民主转型基本上是一场大规模向西迁徙，所能做的选择无非是早点移民还
是晚点移民，独自移民还是集体移民。
Revolutions often force people to cross borders. After the French Revolution
in 1789, and again in 1917 after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, the
defeated enemies of the revolutions were the ones who left their countries.
After 1989, the winners of the velvet revolutions, not the losers, were the
ones who chose to decamp. Those most impatient to see their own countries
changed were also the ones most eager to plunge into the life of a free
citizenry, and were therefore the first to go to study, work and live in the
west.
革命通常会驱使人们跨越国境。1789年法国大革命之后，以及1917年布尔什维克夺权后，
革命中的失败者都逃离了自己的国家。1989年天鹅绒革命之后，逃离的不是革命的失败者
，而是胜利者。那些急不可耐地期盼自己国家发生改变的人正是最渴望融入自由公民生活
的人，因此也是第一批赴西方工作、留学和定居的人。
It is impossible to imagine that, after the victory of the Bolshevik
Revolution, Trotsky would have decided to enrol at Oxford to study. But this
is what the future Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and many others did.
The revolutionaries of 1989 were strongly motivated to travel to the west in
order to observe up close how the kind of normal society they hoped to build
at home actually worked in practice.
我们几乎不可能想像在布尔什维克革命胜利之后托洛茨基会决定去牛津大学留学，可这就
是后来出任匈牙利外交部长的维克多‧欧尔班（Viktor Orban）以及其他许多人的选择。
1989年革命中的革命家们热切盼望去西方旅行，以便近距离观察他们渴望在自己国家建立
的正常社会到底是怎样实际运作的。
The massive flow of population out of the region in the post-cold war period,
especially because so many young people were the ones voting with their feet,
had profound economic, political and psychological consequences. When a
doctor leaves the country, she takes with her all the resources that the
state has invested in her education and deprives her country of her talent
and ambition. The money that she would eventually send back to her family
could not possibly compensate for the loss of her personal participation in
the life of her native land.
后冷战时代中东欧地区大规模的人口流出，尤其是那些用脚投票的年轻人，产生了深远的
经济、政治和心理影响。当一位博士离开其祖国时，他就带走了他的祖国曾在其身上投入
的所有教育资源，也把他的才智和抱负带出了祖国。他最终向其家人汇回的钱远远不能弥
补他缺席其在祖国的个人参与所造成的损失。
The exodus of young and well-educated people has also seriously, perhaps
fatally, damaged the chances of liberal parties to do well in elections.
Youth exit may also explain why, in many countries across the region, we find
beautiful EU-funded playgrounds with no kids to play in them. It is telling
that liberal parties perform best among voters who cast their ballots abroad.
In 2014, for example, Klaus Iohannis, a liberal-minded ethnic German, was
elected president of Romania because the 300,000 Romanians living overseas
voted massively in his favour. In a country where the majority of young
people yearn to leave, the very fact that you have remained, regardless of
how well you are doing, makes you feel like a loser.
年轻人和受过良好教育人群的大规模迁出，或许严重地而致命性地削弱了自由主义政党在
选举中取得高票数的可能性。年轻人的离开也许可以解释为何在这一地区的许多国家我们
看不到有孩子在欧盟资助修建的操场上玩耍的场景。自由主义政党在国外投票者中表现良
好这一现实便是生动写照。例如在2014年，一位名叫克劳斯‧艾奥汉尼斯（Klaus
Iohannis）的持自由主义政见的德国人在30万名移居国外的罗马尼亚人的强烈支持下当选
为罗马尼亚总统。在一个多数年轻人渴望离开的国家，只要你留在本国不走，无论你做的
有多好，都让你感觉自己是个失败者。
The issues of emigration and population loss bring us to the refugee crisis
that struck Europe in 2015–16. On 24 August 2015, Merkel, the German
chancellor, decided to admit hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into
Germany. Only 10 days later, on 4 September, the Visegrad group – the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – declared that the EU’s quota
system for distributing refugees across Europe was “unacceptable”. Central
and east European governments were not buying Merkel’s humanitarian
rhetoric. “I think it is just bullshit,” commented Maria Schmidt, Viktor
Orban’s intellectual-in-chief.
移民与人口流失使我们想起2015-2016年困扰欧洲的难民问题。2015年8月24日，德国总理
默克尔决定接纳数万名叙利亚难民进入德国。仅仅10天之后的9月4日，捷克共和国、匈牙
利、波兰、斯洛伐克在维谢格拉德（Visegrad，匈牙利小镇）宣布欧盟在欧洲各国对难民
实施的配额制是“不可接受的”。中东欧国家的政府对默克尔的人道主义说辞并不买账。
“一派胡言”，维克多‧欧尔班（Viktor Orban）的首席智囊马里亚‧施密特（Maria
Schmidt）评论道。
This was the moment when central Europe’s populists issued their declaration
of independence not only from Brussels but also, more dramatically, from
western liberalism and its ethos of openness to the world. Central Europe’s
fearmongering populists interpreted the refugee crisis as conclusive evidence
that liberalism weakened the capacity of nations to defend themselves in a
hostile world.
中欧民粹主义者们宣布其不仅要脱离欧盟，甚至更要戏剧性地脱离西方自由主义及其向世
界开放的价值观。这些善于制造恐慌的中东欧民粹主义政客们宣称难民危机有力地证明了
自由主义动摇国家在动荡世界中的自卫能力。
The demographic panic that raged in central Europe from 2015 to 2018 is now
fading to a degree. We still need to ask in any case why it would find such
politically combustible material in central and eastern Europe, given that
virtually no immigrants actually arrived in these countries.
2015至2018年蔓延中欧的公众恐慌目前已消退了大半，但我们仍需要追问为何这种情绪能
在中东欧地区找到如此具有政治破坏性的落脚点，即使难民们并未实际踏足这些国家。
The first reason, as mentioned, is emigration. Anxiety about immigration is
fomented by a fear that supposedly unassimilable foreigners will enter the
country, dilute national identity and weaken national cohesion. This fear, in
turn, is fuelled by a largely unspoken preoccupation with demographic
collapse. In the period 1989–2017, Latvia haemorrhaged 27% of its
population, Lithuania 22.5%, and Bulgaria almost 21%. In Romania, 3.4 million
people, a vast majority of them younger than 40, left the country after it
joined the EU in 2007. The combination of an ageing population, low birth
rates and an unending stream of emigration is arguably the source of
demographic panic in central and eastern Europe. More central and eastern
Europeans left their countries for western Europe as a result of the 2008-9
financial crises than all the refugees that came there as the result of the
war in Syria.
如上所述，第一个原因便是移民。许多人害怕无法融入当地的外国人将会进入国土，削弱
民族身份，动摇国家团结，这种恐惧进一步发酵了他们对移民的焦虑。一种对人口锐减的
无名的担忧又反过来加剧了这种恐惧。1989年至2017年间，拉脱维亚的人口下降了27%，
立陶宛人口下降了22.5%，保加利亚人口则下降了21%。在罗马尼亚，站到40岁以下人口的
大多数的340万人年轻人在罗马尼亚2007年加入欧盟后离开了祖国。人口老龄化、低生育
率和源源不断的移民毫无疑问地引发了中东欧地区的人口恐慌。2008-2009年因金融危机
而离开中东欧国家的人数实际上多于因叙利亚战争而逃入该地区的难民数量。
The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening
fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction
across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few
refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even
hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without
immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a
defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a
wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but
conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to
overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger
(immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse)
that cannot speak its name.
1989年革命之后中东欧地区大规模的移民引发了国家将会消失的恐惧，这就很好地解释了
2015-2016年为何他们在并未有多少难民实际进入该地区时就对难民怀有如此深的敌意。
我们可以假设，该地区这种没有难民的反难民政治实际上是心理学家所称的一种心理现象
——替代。这是一种防御机制，在难民的语境下，人们在心里无意识地屏蔽掉了一个完全
不可接受的威胁并将其替代为一个依旧严重但更容易接受的威胁。对并不存在的难民将横
行国家的歇斯底里的情绪表明一种幻想的危险（难民）代替了真正的、不可言说的危险（
人口锐减）。
Fear of diversity and fear of change, inflamed by the utopian project of
remaking whole societies along western lines, are thus important contributors
to eastern and central European populism. The trauma of people pouring out of
the region explains what might otherwise seem mysterious – the strong sense
of loss even in countries that have benefited handsomely from post-communist
political and economic change. Across Europe, analogously, the areas that
have suffered the greatest haemorrhaging of population in the last decades
are the ones most inclined to vote for far-right parties.
对多样性和变化的恐惧，在以西方标准重塑社会的乌托邦工程的推动下，由此成为了中东
欧地区民粹主义的诱因。人口流出所带来的创痛解释了这些国家强烈的失落感，即使它们
曾经受益于后共产主义时代的政治经济剧变。相似地，最近三十年里饱受严重人口流失摧
残的欧洲国家，也是最偏向极右翼政党的国家。
Eastern European governments, haunted by the fear of demographic collapse,
are looking for reasons why their discontented citizens, especially their
youth, should hesitate to move to western Europe. Orban sometimes sounds as
if he would like to implement a closed-country policy with a ruthlessly
enforced veto on emigration as well as immigration. But since he has no way
of doing anything of the sort, he is reduced to pleading with young
Hungarians not to move away. How to convince young Hungarians that they will
not find a better homeland in the west, especially when Orban’s own policies
are destroying most chances for living rewarding and creative lives inside
the country?
被人口流失弄得焦头烂额的东欧国家政府在竭力寻找理由劝阻心怀不满的公民，特别是青
少年移民西欧。欧尔班有时候在暗示他可能会强行动用否决权来实施闭关锁国政策，从而
阻止人们迁出和迁入。但他并没有任何这样的权力，只得哀求匈牙利青年人不要出走。可
是要怎样才能劝说年轻人们去了西方也不会找到更好的国度呢？要知道他自己的政策可是
在摧毁民众在本国国内过上幸福生活的机会啊！
Populists in Warsaw and Budapest seem to have turned the refugee crisis in
the west into a branding opportunity for the east. Citizens will stop leaving
for the west only if the west loses its allure. Dispraising the west and
declaring its institutions “not worth imitating” can be explained as
imaginary revenge born of resentment. But it has the collateral benefit of
serving the region’s number one policy priority, by helping discourage
emigration. Populists rail against the way western Europe has welcomed
Africans and Middle Easterners. But their real complaint is that western
members of the EU have opened their doors invitingly to central and eastern
Europeans themselves, potentially depriving the region of its most productive
citizens.
波兰和匈牙利的民粹主义者们似乎将西方的难民危机看作是东方借机进行自我宣传的自会
。只有当西方失去其吸引力时公民们才会停止移民西方。批评西方并称其制度为“不值得
模仿”可以解释为是因愤恨而生的一种想像出来的复仇。但是这也给政府的头号政策目标
带来了附带的收益，那就是遏制移民。民粹主义者们怒斥西欧人对待非洲人和中东人的方
式，但他们真正的诉求，是让欧盟的西欧成员国们向他们自己这些中东欧人敞开大门，而
这有可能会将这一地区最有创造力的人群拒之门外。
This entire discussion brings us to a core idea of contemporary illiberalism.
Contrary to many contemporary theorists, populist rage is directed less at
multiculturalism than at individualism and cosmopolitanism. This is an
important point politically because, if accepted, it implies that populism
cannot be combatted by abandoning multiculturalism in the name of
individualism and cosmopolitanism. For the illiberal democrats of eastern and
central Europe, the gravest threat to the survival of the white Christian
majority in Europe is the incapacity of western societies to defend
themselves. They cannot defend themselves because the reigning individualism
and cosmopolitanism allegedly blinds them to the threats they face.
以上全部论述已逐渐接近当代非自由主义的核心主张。和许多当代理论家的见解不同，本
文主张民粹主义的愤怒主要不是指向文化多元主义的，而是更多地指向个人主义和普世主
义。这是一条重要的政治观点，如果接受它的话，那么这意味着打着个人主义和普世主义
的旗号来抛弃文化多元主义将起不到抑制民粹主义的作用。对中东欧的非自由主义民主党
人来说，对占据欧洲人主体的基督徒白人最严峻的威胁是西方社会无法有效保护自身。他
们无法保护自己是因为占据统治地位的个人主义和普世主义将他们的双眼蒙蔽了，让他们
看不见他们正面临的威胁。
Illiberal democracy promises to open citizens’ eyes. If the liberal
consensus of the 1990s was about individual legal and constitutional rights,
the anti-liberal consensus today is that the rights of the threatened white
Christian majority are in mortal danger. To protect this besieged majority’s
fragile dominance from the insidious alliance of Brussels and Africa, the
argument goes, Europeans need to replace the watery individualism and
universalism foisted on them by liberals with a muscular identity politics or
group particularism of their own. This is the logic with which Orban and the
leader of PiS in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, have tried to inflame the inner
xenophobic nationalism of their countrymen.
非自由主义民主制则主张开启民智。如果1990年自由主义的共识是个人的宪法和法律权利
，那么今日反自由主义的共识则是处于危险之中的基督徒白人主体正面临灭顶之灾。这些
政党主张，如果要将危如累卵的白人主体的统治从欧盟与非洲的卑鄙阴谋中解救出来，欧
洲人需要将自由主义强加给他们的羸弱的个人主义和普世主义，替换为强有力的身份政治
和他们自己的族群特殊论。这正是奥本和波兰法律与正义党（PiS）领袖加罗斯洛‧卡克
辛斯基（Jaroslaw Kaczynski）用来煽动国民的排外民族主义的逻辑。
The ultimate revenge of the central and eastern European populists against
western liberalism is not merely to reject the idea of imitating the west,
but to invert it. We are the real Europeans, Orban and Kaczynski repeatedly
claim, and if the west will save itself, it will have to imitate the east. As
Orban said in a speech in July 2017: “Twenty-seven years ago here in Central
Europe, we believed that Europe was our future; today we feel that we are the
future of Europe.”
中东欧民粹主义者对西方自由主义的终极报复并不仅仅是拒绝模仿西方，而是要把形势逆
转过来。欧尔班和卡克辛斯基反复强调，他们才是真正的欧洲人，如果西欧想拯救自己就
必须模仿东欧。正如欧尔班在2017年7月的一次演讲中所说：“在27年前的中欧，我们相
信欧洲是我们的未来，但现在我们认为我们才是欧洲的未来。”