Sociocultural Transformations in the Communist and Post-Communist World

The continued popularity of Western, mainly American cultural exports internationally has given rise to “The West and the Rest” paradigm as a defining feature of cultural globalization. This volume explains “The West and the Rest” paradigm and follows its legacy with analysis of the development of the concepts of cultural globalization, cultural convergence, and their continued proliferation in authoritarian dictatorships, despite strong government censorship. It explains this trajectory in the context of technological innovations that have fueled the evolution of cross-border cultural messaging. This messaging continues to proliferate via largely illicit citizen-managed markets that keep developing ways to evade the censorship of central governments in the remnants of the Communist world. Its popularity with ordinary citizen keeps growing because of showing higher standards of living and well-being. Citizens embrace it as an escapist mechanism and this embrace is analyzed as an outcome of soft power. The dynamic is discussed on two fronts in this volume. One is with a focus on the technological innovations since the end of the Cold War that have increased the breadth, scope, and source of cross-cultural messaging. The other is with a focus on the evolution of the economic structure of the former Communist world. Wealth and digitization are congruent and therefore, a parallel lesion discussion is offered on the change of economic realities of the last decades of Communism and today. The change is the significant growth of wealth in the former Communist world.  Authoritarian governments are deploying it in their own soft power ways to promote their domestic and international clout and defy Western cultural and diplomatic pressures, including economic sanctions. This resilience is discussed with a focus on how Russia is withstanding the unprecedented economic sanctions imposed on it for its war on Ukraine. It does so with the help of its ideological allies, including North Korea and China, eager to support Russia in its defiance of Western values. The soft power of these autocratic power players is examined further in the context of the interplay between soft and sharp power. This interplay redefines formal and informal socio-cultural diplomacy. The book concludes with a detailed analysis of the change through a digital cosmopolitanism lens with a focus on user-generated technopolitical content.