Legacies of Surveillance in Post-Communist Societies: Estonia, Poland and Serbia

Extensive surveillance was one of the key characteristics of political control regimes in Central and Eastern Europe before 1989/90. Having endured such intrusive surveillance for a long time, one could assume that modern forms of surveillance would trigger memories of the past. In previous research projects, we indicated that this was, surprisingly, not necessarily the case. In many post-communist societies, surveillance technologies are being deployed without much reflection about potential misuse. To study this phenomenon more closely, the project Like Fish in Water: Surveillance in Post-Communist Societies commissioned field work in Estonia, Poland, and Serbia during Winter 2014-15. A representative and probabilistic sample of 1000 respondents from each country were interviewed face-to-face on matters of trust, surveillance, and topics more specific to the post-communist context. The survey covers a spectra of issues which related to surveillance – including aspects that are seldom considered in comparable studies. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a more qualified discussion on the legacies of communist regimes more generally, and of experiences of surveillance more specifically. The Like Fish in Water survey includes a range of issues specific to the post-communist context, which we explore in relation to the issue of trust. How does experience from being monitored by intelligence agencies during communism play out in forming an opinion on contemporary surveillance? How do corruption impact on trust and acceptance of various kinds of surveillance practices? How do ethnic minorities in post-communist societies differentiate from the majority populations in terms of trust and surveillance? These are context-specific questions that are addressed in the paper, which are also of general interest in the surveillance studies. Lastly, we briefly discuss some of the many methodological issues relevant in all cross-cultural survey research. Large surveys have specific validity concerns that cannot remain silent as the field of surveillance studies moves further into the quantitative field of study. Especially the question of translation is addressed, and we report on our experiences using the TRAPD/team translation approach in international surveys (Harkness, Villar, och Edwards 2010; Lyberg m.fl. 2012). Questions raised already by Zureik et al (2010) about the feasibility of comparative surveillance studies are discussed on the backdrop of the present survey as well as the FP7 projects. References: * Harkness, Janet A., Ana Villar, och Brad Edwards. 2010. ”Translation, Adaptation, and Design”. I Survey methods in multinational, multiregional, and multicultural contexts, redigerad av Janet A. Harkness, Michael Braun, Brad Edwards, Timothy P. Johnson, Lars E. Lyberg, Peter Ph. Mohler, Beth-Ellen Pennell, och Tony W. Smith, 117–40. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. * Lyberg, Lars E., Paul Biemer, Martin Collins, Edith D. De Leeuw, Cathryn Dippo, Norbert Schwarz, och Dennis Trewin. 2012. Survey Measurement and Process Quality. John Wiley & Sons. * Zureik, Elia, L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Emily Smith, David Lyon, och Yolande E. Chan, red. 2010. Surveillance, Privacy and the Globalization of Personal Information. Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press.