Abstract
Twenty years after the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the region seems to have lost its sheen of moral appeal. What has happened to the dissidents, the heroes, the ethical lessons? Yet the Eastern Europe of today has become, in new and surprising ways, the test case of three of the largest questions of political morality in the early twentieth century: free elections, energy independence, and the divisiveness of national memory.
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References
1.
This article updates remarks made in the panel "What Remains of Eastern Europe in the Postcommunist World?" at the Conditions for International Solidarity conference, held by the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, 11 November 2007.
2.
Of course the Polish parliamentary elections of 1989 were largely unfree in that Solidarity could contest only a certain percentage of the mandates. However, the fact that the votes were counted accurately meant that Solidarity’s victory in the free portion of the elections was absolutely clear. This prepared the way for the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
3.
See, e.g., "Germany, France Stress Concern for Russian Views on NATO Enlargement," RFE/RL Newsline 12, no. 46 (March 2008): pt. 1, 7.
4.
This was not always the case. See, e.g., Alison Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
5.
The distinction of course is a (somewhat unfaithful) adaptation of Isaiah Berlin’s in "Two Concepts of Liberty," in The Proper Study of Mankind, ed., Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (London: Chatto and Windhus, 1997), 191-242.