1965–
Bulgarian political thinker who argued that the post-1989 imperative to imitate the West bred illiberal backlash in Eastern Europe
The rise of authoritarian chauvinism in Central and Eastern Europe has its roots not in political theory, but in political psychology: a deep-seated disgust at the post-1989 'imitation imperative.'
Bulgarian political scientist and chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia. He characterized post-1989 Eastern European politics as an 'Age of Imitation,' arguing that the post-Cold War imperative to Westernize bred nationalist resentment and an illiberal turn rather than liberal convergence. In The Light That Failed (2019), co-authored with Stephen Holmes, he developed this thesis through political psychology, tracing the roots of Eastern European populism not to ideology but to cultural humiliation at being forced to copy a morally superior foreign model. A founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a New York Times contributor, Krastev has shaped the debate on the thirty-year legacy of 1989 with an analytical framework that recasts illiberalism as a backlash against the 'imitation imperative.'
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1965Born in Lukovit, Bulgaria
- 1990년대Founded and chaired the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia
- 2004–2006Executive Director, International Commission on the Balkans
- 2005–2011Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy Bulgaria
- 2007Founding board member, European Council on Foreign Relations
- 2013In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders? (TED Books)
- 2019The Light That Failed: A Reckoning with Stephen Holmes; won the Lionel Gelber Prize
- 2020Jean Améry Prize for European Essays; published Is It Tomorrow Yet?
Related historical events
Formation and institution-building after 1989
Ivan Krastev was born on 1 January 1965 in Lukovit, Bulgaria. His father, Yoto Krastev, was a journalist who later became a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and head of its mass media department; his mother, Latinka Krasteva, taught Bulgarian language and literature. Krastev completed his secondary education at the 114th English-language high school in Sofia and graduated in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at Sofia University. In 1991 he spent a year at St Antony's College, Oxford, on an Open Society scholarship.
From this period onward Krastev built the institutional footing for the study of democratization and civil society in Eastern Europe, serving as chairman of the board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and as a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. He was a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the ERSTE Foundation, and he sat on the international editorial boards of journals including the Journal of Democracy and Transit - Europäische Revue. From 2004 to 2006 he was executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans chaired by the former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato, and from 2005 to 2011 he was editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy. In 2008 Foreign Policy ranked him 85th on its list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.
This career illustrates one path by which a post-1989 Eastern European intellectual entered international debate: using Western funding and academic exchange as a base, he founded and led a domestic research institution and established himself as both a researcher and a commentator on Balkan questions and on anticorruption and democratization agendas. His later analysis of an "Age of Imitation" rests on this institutional foundation and on his early experience of democratization.