November 25th, 2025
I did not go to my Women’s history class on the 24th, I cannot remember why but everything that was covered today was covered in the next class so I did not miss anything. So let’s have fun with my socialism class.
My professor begins the class by showing an image of the European Solidarity Centre in Poland. She says it is symbolic. It commemorates the Solidarity movement in Poland. It is very rusty and symbolizes (unintentionally, I believe) the uneasiness between the EU and newly accepted members. Another image she showed was that of the rainbow installation. It was burned down 6 times by nationalists. They claimed that perverts were harming tradition in Poland. Polish priests were pried about “gender ideology” and whatnot from the EU. This lecture is about why it took so long for Eastern European states to join the EU, the newer is because the EU had no idea what it was doing when it was first created.
In 1989 PHARE (Polish and Hungarian Assistance for the Reconstruction of Europe) was created; aid was later offered to other countries. Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all signed an association agreement in 1991. These agreements were vague and no timeframe for joining the EU was given. The EU did not exist yet and the cost to join was very high. In 1991 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development emerged and created loans for economic reforms. There was a fear that these loans would swallow up countries. IMF loans were available and Eastern Europe was disappointed with the western camp. The bank required payback quickly with high interest, so what was the point of this bank? Well headquarters were held in London and I guess huge sums of money was spent on lavish dinners. Higher loans were given to Eastern European countries. The EU was created in 1992.
NATO membership was seen as the second best one to get as costs were very low and there were simple requirements for joining. NATO was also very eager to have the Eastern European states in its ranks. In 1994 Bill Clinton’s administration announced the “Partnership for Peace” program. Russia and other Eastern European countries were invited. America was the only superpower in the world now, it won the Cold War, they were the World Police. NATO’s goal after the CW is to enlarge. My professor talked about how there are Canadian soldiers (or were) in Latvia. The USA is involved in double-speak: they announce the Partnership for Peace, Yeltsin wants to join NATO but this Peace will ensure that NATP will fade away in time so there’s no need to join.
After 1996, documents for including Poland, Hungary, and Czechia were prepared. Russia continued to lobby for membership but was consistently denied. NATO saw Russia as a threat. NATO was built on US presence in Europe, US troops were the reason why post-war economies thrived. They were scared that Russian troops would outnumber Americans in Europe. Poland, Hungary, and Czechia all officially joined in 1999. The summer of 1999 saw the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia. This proved that all that talk of friendship and democratization with Russia was a lie. Yeltsin sees the failures of cooperation with the west. Later, Putin would ask Clinton if he is against Russia in NATO, Clinton’s advisors look away and Bill answered that he “personally” is not against it, this exchange happened in 2000. In 2002 Putin meets with the General Secretary of NATO, Robertson, and is told about the lineup process for joining NATO. Putin apparently went white. Hostility to the west is building as humiliation for Russia piles on. There is this narrative of “evil Putin” but he tried so hard to join the west.
We were then shown an except from George F. Kennan, he was the architect of the Cold War:
“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
Kennan was old at the time and was not in the admin anymore, thus he was not listened to and NATO continued to expand.
EU criteria was announced in 1993. To be a member you have to have stable democratic institutions; respect for the rule of law, human rights, rights of minorities; functioning market economy; and the ability to accept all the obligation involved in political, economic, and monetary union. Eastern Europe was suspicious of these requirements, they thought there would be issues.
2004 saw the enlargement of the EU with 10 new countries. Germany was used as the example. East Germans were accepted as second rate citizens, they were treated as slackers. There was a lot of hostility during the German Unity celebrations. Transition period was up to seven years. New member states’ citizens couldn’t have jobs in the west. There was this fear of Eastern plumbers working for lower wages. The British isles wanted acceptance but the rest of the EU said no. Labour shortages meant the seven year rule not being followed initially. Eastern European farmers did not get the same subsidies and access to markets as western farmers. Agriculture had support from the government, but the east did not receive this. They were told it was too complicated due to old EU building since the 40s.
EU inspectors were needed for certification of dairies, gardens, slaughterhouses, etc. these inspectors flooded the east and soon after they were flooded with cheap goods from the west that destroyed local farmers. Special connects were made with the US. Soon after the war with Iraq, Eastern Europe wanted clout so they were turned into the conduit of US influence. This resulted in tension emerging between Western and Eastern Europe over policies especially regards ping Russia. The success of the German economy was due to Russian oil. Some observers said the Baltics and Central Europe were using the rhetoric of a “Russian threat” to acquire US support and to have more influence in the EU.
The results of Eastern enlargement: increased life expectancy and improvement of living standards; ability to travel, study, and work int he west. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council (2014-2019) showed the influence of the East in the EU. Economies of post-communist countries are not doing well. The population of Estonia in 1990 was 1.56 million, in 2025 it is 1.366 million; the population of Latvia went from 2.663 to 1.850 million; Lithuania had a population of 3.697 million, but is now 2.8 million. People leave to earn money, young people on scholarships do not come back. This is a catastrophe.
It gets worse. Cheap vacations and cheap women, there is a huge issue of sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. She told us that there was an issue with British travel agents planning “stag flights” to Prague which contributes to this problem. I do wonder if the “mail order bride” issue applies here. In 2004, unemployment in west Germany was 8.5% while in the east it was 19%. There was also a division between the young and old. Europe itself is undergoing huge changes in the 2000s. International firms have more influence. Privatization meant the government could not control the economy. In France, planning had to stop and millions of industrial jobs were lost. Unregulated sectors had more employment but low wages and were un-unionized.
Okay, now we get into Viktor Orban and his illiberal democracy. He won elections in 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022. He is very different from his liberal origins. Now since 2010 he’s a nationalist and traditionalist. He had a church wedding and even baptized his kids. He has a modest home compared to Putin’s palaces. Hungary has a strong executive and weak judiciary. There is no independence, prosecutor general offices are staffed with loyalists and supporters.
There is also systemic corruption. Orban said he was building illiberal democracy. Hungary is also the most prosperous economically. In 2020 a new generation of leaders was coming into power in the EU. Liberal democracies losing competition to China, an authoritarian regime is needed. Consistent leadership over always changing every few years. The 2015 refugee crisis was brought up, where refugees arrived from Greek islands. Contrary to EU policies, Orban build a wall on the Serbian border, he used the issue of immigration to get support. Nationalism and Xenophobia are also characteristics of Orban’s regime. He uses the clash of civilization rhetoric. A pro-fascist agenda is emphasized, this is not surprising for Eastern Europe as there is love for Nazi collaborators due to them fighting the “soviet menace.”
We ended class with George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. Soros has been a political philanthropist since the 70s. He established foundations to promote democracy in Eastern Europe. Many students got Soros scholarships, one of them was Orban. Soros invested around $400 million dollars in Hungary, but during the refugee crisis NGOs funded by Soros helped said refugees which was the pretext to the war on Soros. The Central European University was labeled an “agent of western liberals” due to being funded by Soros. Some said the anti-Soros ads in Budapest were anti-Semitic, Orban denied this. Why were anti-Soros measures so popular? That question will be answered next time. Spoiler alert, it was not, but thats fine.
I want you to notice one thing in all of this: as the history and the procedures of various states joining NATO and the EU are discussed, what is the one thing that is very conspicuously never addressed? What is the one thing that is being deliberately avoided being talked about in almost all mainstream discussions of the topic?
It’s the: Why? Why should European states even want to join the EU or NATO? Why is expansion treated as a self-evident inevitability?
In all of what you wrote it is implicitly assumed that all European states just want to join the EU and NATO. There is talk about “conditions” that have to be fulfilled to join, as if this was some favor that was being done to those countries. As if it was some kind of privilege to be part of this club. Why?
In reality it is not the states that join who benefit, as by joining lose their sovereignty, lose control over their own economy, over their own military affairs, even over their own legal system, but the organizations themselves who benefit the most by expanding their control.
There is this myth that joining the EU brings economic prosperity but what actually happens is that the richer EU countries benefit much more from gaining unrestricted access to poorer countries’ markets, control over their natural resources, cheap labor, etc. And of course the US benefits by only needing to control one organization instead of dozens of national governments.
All while neoliberal privatization measures are imposed, states are forced to adopt laws decided on not by their own elected representatives but by EU bureaucrats, and after joining the Eurozone governments even lose control over their currency and monetary policies. Members become colonies.
And NATO is even worse. It is billed as offering “protection” but it does the exact opposite. It turns neutral countries that were under no threat whatsoever into frontline states that become targets overnight in case of a potential war because they joined NATO. NATO expansion itself causes the “threat” it supposedly expanded to prevent.
It makes states less safe, not more, and all so that the money of the taxpayers of those countries can be funneled into the coffers of primarily American weapons manufacturers.
And the other question you need to ask yourself is: how did these myths about the supposed benefits of joining these organizations become so widespread? How were the populations of these countries fooled into thinking that this is something they should want, so much so that they are begging and competing with each other about who gets to be vassalized and give away their sovereignty first?
Why is it implicitly assumed that of course everyone should be a part of these now clearly failing institutions that are in effect an extension of US empire? Why is liberalism treated as not only inevitable (in the Francis Fukuyama “End of History” sense) but inherently good, and “illiberalism” as an aberration? Why is there no discussion of the role of CIA linked NGOs and US aligned media in pushing these ideas?
Which perfectly ties in to the final point:
Soros has been a political philanthropist since the 70s.
“Philanthropist” here is a euphemism for “ruthless capitalist who spends huge sums of money preparing color revolutions and ideologically subverting socialist states”, and then after successful regime change flooding those countries with NGOs and astroturfed media. There is a reason why China also kicked him out.
Any time you see the word “philanthropist” a red flag should immediately go up for you. “Philanthropy” is at best nothing more than reputation laundering for capitalists, if not a cover for subversive and criminal activities.
