From the Rubble

About this time exactly 21 years ago, the confusion of a senior Politburo official in the DDR led to the iconic images of thousands streaming across the Berlin Wall in the middle of the night, overwhelming the border guards, and entering the West for the first time. Indeed, the sudden opening of the Wall led rapidly to the end of the division between the East and the West and acted as the tipping point needed to topple communism in Europe; but cracks appeared long before the divided city became whole.

Poland was the first, holding democratic elections in June 1989 and resulting in the victory, after a 10-year struggle, of the Solidarity trade union; the world held its breath, fearing that the USSR might intervene, in an echo of the Hungarian Revolution or Prague Spring. But the Soviet tanks remained motionless, and restrictions were gradually eased in the neighboring countries. Observing the 1989 European revolutions firsthand, English writer Timothy Garton Ash suggested that, "In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks; perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take 10 days!" He wasn't too far off with his estimate. Additionally, the states of the USSR and South Eastern Europe followed suit within a few years as the map of Europe changed dramatically. Old states disappeared and new states were born as the old Iron Curtain, which had divided the world for more than 40 years, gradually fell to pieces.

All in all, the dusk of the 20th century was a time of dying regimes and transitions. The dawn of the new millennium revealed a map of the world radically different than that of 100, 50, or even 10 years before. With a few exceptions, the communist "second world" was no more. But what has happened after these revolutions? Far from being the "end of history", the years since 1989 have been decades of transitions for these states and indeed for the whole world as politics and policies adjusted to the void left by the old bipolar system. Though the accession to the EU in 2004 and 2007 marked a convenient end to the politically defined transition, policies, laws, and even public mindsets continue to adjust in a gradual process lasting longer than 15 years. The 21st century is a time of continued transition.

21 years and counting after most of the democratic revolutions in Europe, this blog will serve as a public project to document my personal observations regarding continuing process of transition. Based in Poland, I will specifically focus on 1) the public's perception of the communist era, 2) firsthand accounts of the political transition of the past two decades, and 3) examining the current situation today. Through short essays, photos, and discussions, I hope to show that far from ending, the transitions in the 21st century are the beginning of a new history in Europe.

Günter Schabowski announcing to the live East German press conference that the new border regulations were, as far as he knew, effective "sofort" (immediately).