The EconomistNovember 2nd 2019 Europe 47N
o empire inhistory has disintegrated
as quickly or as bloodlessly as the Sovi-
et one, in the remarkable year that saw the
fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. A
period of carnage in Romania the following
month was the only grisly counter-exam-
ple. Yugoslavia, never a part of that empire,
followed a tragically different path; but for
the rest of central and eastern Europe,
though clearly imperfect, the past 30 years
have been a time of marvels.
Standards of living for most of the re-
gion’s peoples have vastly improved, and
most of them know it. New polling by the
Pew Research Centre shows that 81% of
Poles, 78% of Czechs and 55% of Hungar-
ians agree that this is the case. Only Bulgar-
ians on balance take a gloomy view, with
just 32% of them thinking that their stan-
dard of living has improved since 1989. De-
velopment has been patchy, but for every
depopulating and ageing rustbelt in east-
ern Europe there is a booming industrial
region, a tech cluster or a services centre
desperate for more workers.
Majorities in every country, mostly very
big ones, approve of the multiparty sys-
tems and market economies that have de-
livered this, as well as their integration into
Western institutions—the eu(from 2004)
and nato(from 1999). Free to travel and
work anywhere in the eu, millions have
done just that. Many who stayed behind,
though, feel left behind. Aniko Takacs,
aged 25, who works at a petrol station on
the Hungarian side of the border with Aus-
tria, earns €500 ($550) a month. Her sister,
who does the same job for the same com-
pany in Austria, earns €1,500. Countries
with low fertility rates and little immigra-
tion are facing steep population declines.
People leave not only because wages are
higher in western Europe but also because
public services are better and corruption
rare. So many eastern European doctors
and nurses have emigrated that access to
good health care has deteriorated in some
places, especially outside big cities.
After three decades of democracy, cyni-
cism about politicians is as widespread as
it is in western Europe. In Slovakia 63% of
people think most elected officials do not
care what they think, a Pew poll finds; in
Hungary, 71% and in Bulgaria, 78%. By way
of comparison, the figures in France and
Britain are 76% and 70%, respectively.
In western Europe and America such
anger at the ruling class has translated intovotes for nationalists, populists, Brexit and
Donald Trump. In Hungary and Poland
those who feel left behind tend to blame
liberalism and the West. Zsuzsanna Szele-
nyi, who was an anti-communist activist in
Hungary in 1989, says that many of her
compatriots were disappointed after the
fall of communism because they expected
their country “to become like Austria over-
night”. It did not, of course, but gdpper per-
son, not to mention life expectancy, has
risen sharply across the region.
Some people have done much better
than others, and not all of them by fair
means. Communist officials and securo-
crats who rebranded themselves as demo-
crats had the education and connections to
retain power, make money and profit from
insider-dominated privatisations. The first
president of post-communist Czechoslo-
vakia in 1989 was Vaclav Havel, a dissident
playwright. Today the prime minister of
the Czech Republic is Andrej Babis, the sec-
ond-richest man in the country and a for-
mer intelligence service collaborator.
The success of former communists has
rankled. In some countries, populists have
exploited this mood. Ardent supporters of
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party did
not celebrate the 30th anniversary this year
of the country’s first semi-free elections,
which followed the demise of the Kremlin-
backed communist dictatorship. The way
they see it is that in 1989 “the pinkos struck
a deal with the reds to keep the reds in pow-
er at the expense of the Polish people. Po-land only became genuinely independent
in 2015 when they were voted out and the
true patriots [ie, Law and Justice] were vot-
ed in,” sighs Konstanty Gebert, a former
anti-communist activist. This is an odd
way to describe Poland’s rise to prosperity
under a series of post-communist demo-
cratic governments.
In Hungary Viktor Orban, a revolution-
ary anti-communist turned populist prime
minister, uses anti-Western rhetoric to win
support. He talks of defending the com-
mon man, downtrodden by the arrogant
liberal elite. Members of this elite imitate
the West, which in turn looks down on
eastern Europeans as country bumpkins,
he suggests. The end of communism was a
liberation, he says, but Hungary also needs
a revival of nationalist and Christian val-
ues, which he says he is delivering. He re-
jects liberal notions of human rights, toler-
ance and consensus.Different places, different values
Eastern Europe remains far less liberal
than the west. Tolerance towards gay peo-
ple is uneven, and has diminished since
2002 in several countries, polls suggest.
The end of communism unleashed hostil-
ity to the region’s large Roma minority,
who remain almost completely unrepre-
sented politically. Hungary’s regime has
undermined the institutions that are sup-
posed to check it, such as the courts and the
media. Poland’s ruling party has tried to
nobble the courts and the civil service.
Despite such setbacks, progress has
been striking since communism ended.
Eastern Europeans have never been as free
or as rich as they are today. Some of the el-
derly grumble that life was more secure in
the old days, but their memories may be
tinged with regret that they are no longer as
young as they were then. Historians will
describe the communist era in Eastern Eu-
rope as four decades of servitude. 7Central and eastern Europeans are mostly happy with their progress since 1989Eastern EuropeThirty years of freedom, warts and all
One of several velvet revolutions