The second misunderstanding is the answer to the question of what made the fall of the Soviet system possible. The main reason for the USSR’s collapse is often understood to be perestroika and the goodwill of its initiator, Mikhail Gorbachev. It is true that most of the revolutions in 1989 were peaceful, but these years were actually only the final steps on the long road of the fight for freedom that had in fact lasted for decades. Freedom was not restored in Central and Eastern Europe without blood and fierce fighting, during which thousands of freedom fighters died. Perestroika, which led to collapse of the Soviet system, was not started because Gorbachev liked democracy and freedom; rather, the victory of Western civilisation in the Cold War pushed the Soviet Union into a corner from which it had no option other than to try to reform the system. The Central and Eastern European nations played an important role in this victory, fighting the war as brothers in arms on the side of the West. The battles of this war were fought on the streets of Berlin in 1953, Poznan and Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968, Gdansk in 1970 and 1980, and in the Baltic forests and swamps during the long partisan movement against the Soviet invaders. The Soviet system was weakened by civil resistance to Communism and by the will of the people wanting to live as free men and women. It would not have been possible for the Western world to win this war alone; the victory came through a common struggle.
This is a book about courage – about how fear was overcome step by step. How, in the beginning, there were always only small groups of brave people who risked everything and were often crushed by totalitarian regimes for doing so. Their courage nevertheless paved the way to continued resistance – and, in the end this resistance crushed the Evil Empire. This is also a story of solidarity: without the West’s success in the Cold War, the Soviet empire would not have been defeated.
The third misunderstanding lies in an underestimation of the achievements of Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy and a market economy. This transition is often associated with economic misery, social tensions, the rise of inequality and unemployment. Developments in Central and Eastern Europe and their achievements are compared with the current economic and social conditions in Western welfare states, rather than with the situation in transition countries at the fall of Communism. The magnitude of the failure of the Communist command economy and the social experiment is underestimated, with the collapse of the economy and social structures being linked instead to reforms introduced during the transition period that were considered ‘too liberal’. In fact, the misery had more to do with the chaos created by the collapse of Communism; the reforms were a response to this collapse. They did not cause it, rather, they were intended to lead Central and Eastern Europe out of crises.
This path was, of course, not an easy one. A number of mistakes were made, while the speed of development and the achievements of transition have varied significantly. Some countries have failed badly resulting in even more misery than they had experienced under Communist rule. In Central and Eastern Europe, the results have nevertheless been excellent. An important role in this success was played by the desire of Central and Eastern European countries to ‘return to Europe’ and by the willingness of Western Europe to accept the countries that had been cut off from it for 50 years. Nineteen eighty-nine opened the doors that had been slammed shut by the forces of a tragic history. It was the beginning of a homecoming.
This is a book about the power of freedom and democracy. The achievements of the transition of former Communist countries have often been underestimated and the success of the enlargement of the European Union, neglected. Hopefully, such an understanding will encourage Europe today to continue its enlargement, bringing greater stability to its borders.
The experience of the new Member States demonstrates clearly that freedom really works. This is the main reason why this book concentrates on telling the stories of the new EU Member States: Estonian, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the former East Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. This area is also known as Central and Eastern Europe. Developments in Russia, the Ukraine or the Balkans are also touched upon in order to put events into context. Separated from Europe by the Iron Curtain and subjected to the processes of Sovietisation, the captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe continued their fight for freedom and eventually won a decisive victory, liberating their countries from Communist dictatorship. Their journey back to Europe has not been easy, it demanded a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but ultimately this goal was achieved.
This book is dedicated to the road to freedom of the former captive nations of Europe and to all those who sacrificed their lives to make this dream come true.
The Baltic Sea has united Central and Northern Europe through history
On the other side of the curtain
The old New Europe
The first time that Emperor Charles IV entered the eastern capital of his empire, Prague, in 1355, he was so impressed by what he saw that he established a permanent court there. According to the Emperor, Prague had the ‘most beautiful women and the best beer in the world.’ Today, the experience of foreign visitors on their initial trips to the ‘new’ European countries is similar. Before their arrival, visitors expect to see onion-shaped domes, Russian matrjoshkas and orthodox icons. But to their surprise, they are greeted by Gothic castles, Renaissance palaces and baroque churches. Old cities such as Prague or Tallinn appear more ‘European’ than some of the capitals of Western Europe. This is no miracle – Prague is actually farther West than Vienna.
In order to understand the history of Europe, we must remember that Europe is a cultural rather than a geographical entity derived from common historical experience and a shared system of values. Countries in both Western and Eastern Europe have faced the same historical challenges: Christianity, feudalism and rivalry, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, the Enlightenment, the birth of the nation-state and democracy. Despite this shared historical legacy, national and cultural diversity run deep within Europe. Indeed, no area of the world of comparable size has so many fully developed national cultures and languages. Europe has never been a ‘melting pot of nations’ and has, in fact, resisted attempts throughout history to blur its separate ethnic identities.
Central and Eastern Europe, as we now know it, started to develop during the collapse of the Roman Empire when successive waves of migrating warrior peoples – the Vandals, Goths, Huns and Avars among others – made their way from the Eurasian steppes to the Atlantic. Over the next few centuries, parts of these tribes converted to Christianity and Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian and other states were created. The people of Central and Eastern Europe were divided not only in terms of language and culture but also by different forms of Christianity. Central Europe and the Baltics remained loyal to Western Christianity, while Eastern and South-Eastern Europe adopted Eastern Christianity.1
Soon after the beginning of their modern history, the Central and Eastern European nations served as a barrier by opposing onslaughts from the East. The history of Central and Eastern Europe is replete with battles against invading forces trying to march to the West. Estonian and Finnish tribes halted attempts by Kievan Rus to move farther west in the 11th and 12th centuries. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania played a major role in the fight against a Mongol-Tatar invasion. Finally, in the 16th century, Hungarians fought to the death against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the same role that was played by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ‘Rzeczpospolita’, in the 17th century. Jan Sobieski, one of the most outstanding kings of Poland, was forced to choose an enemy against which to marshal Polish forces. It would have been in the Polish national interest for him to choose to fight Poland’s main enemy, namely, the emergent Russia. However, fighting the Turks served European interests better and Sobieski made his choice for Europe. On 12 September 1683, he led his cavalry in a decisive attack against a powerful Ottoman army of 200,000 men during the siege of Vienna, achieving a crushing victory. The Ottoman retreat, which began that day in Vienna, continued in stages for the next 200 years.
Map 1
Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century