Poland and Central Europe have prospered since the fall of communism in 1989. Today, however, Europe is faced with a great test. A leading Polish journalist and ex-dissident argues that cynisism and the lure of authoritarianism are the new threats to a European freedom secured only two decades ago.

What are the reasons behind what happened 20 years ago? The most banal answer to this question is that communism proved economically ineffective. But there are still communist countries today, despite their systems' inefficiencies: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and China. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with a purely economic answer to this question.

The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the explanations for the fall of communism differ...

...Communism fell, paradoxically, because the Soviet elite believed it could be reformed...

Part 2: The Working Class Who Toppled Communism Were the First Victims of the Transformation

Adam Michnik was a leading dissident in communist Poland and is editor in chief of the Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

(As a general comment: though I think he has the usual CEE liberal ideological blinders on, in-between there are lots of astute observations in the piece --- some in separate comments below.)


_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}