The year 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolutions and the de facto start of comprehensive reforms in Central Europe and in the region as a whole. The change of social systems and the entry of the former Eastern European countries to the common European market had its impact on the global balance of power resulting in a shift to the unipolarity with its predominantly transatlantic values. Today, however, we may observe the emerging trend both towards a political vector change in the mentioned countries and a new, more balanced international order due to which Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks and Czechs, a century later upon formation of political Central Europe, are finally willing to play a more prominent role than they did before. It is not about the role of a buffer or barrier assigned to them by the powers upon the world wars, but the role that was historically played by this region before the world wars and revolutions. This phenomenon is interesting not only in terms of discovering the region specifics, the prospects for building new socio-economic and integration models, but may also be relevant for a comparative analysis and insight into the political and economic evolution in Russia.
Russia and Central Europe have had a period of social transformations, almost similar in duration, which goes back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, the countries differed in their goals and forms of transformations occurring in the early 1990s, although at the moment we are to address highly similar problems again. These countries are at different stages of their transformation process; however, they are rather similar in terms of the objectives to determine the future path to political, socio-economic, cultural and ideological development. The sense of incompleteness of the initiated transformations is prevalent both in Central Europe and in Russia. At the same time, there are doubts regarding the Western model of social policy. This process involves not only national development, but also regional interaction and international affairs, which matrix was destroyed 30 years ago, while the new one has not been created yet. Therefore, the Central European countries’ experience can be of value both to analyse their internal reforms and models of regional interaction, as well as to build a new type of international relations in a bilateral, allied and global manner.
Aesthetics of Sustainability: A Transdisciplinary Sensibility for Transformative Practices