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lustration | John Feffer
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The Moral Revolution

Posted by on Feb 7, 2015 in Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Uncategorized |
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0 comments Some of the most powerful critiques of the Communist governments in East-Central Europe were moral. Vaclav Havel, for instance, argued that the regimes, with their propaganda and inequalities and corruption, were built on a foundation of lies. He proposed the alternative of “living in truth,” which in its rejection of collaborating with a system of lies was at its essence a moral act. It...
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The Politics of Youth

Posted by on Jan 14, 2015 in Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Uncategorized |
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2 comments A generational shift is slowly taking place in the politics of East-Central Europe as the figures responsible for the changes in 1989 are giving way to a younger group of politicians who were not old enough to be politically active at that time. This younger generation of politicians takes membership in the European Union for granted. They have very little invested in the original disagreements...
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The Church as Opposition

Posted by on Nov 21, 2014 in Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Uncategorized |
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0 comments Before the Solidarity trade union emerged in 1980, Poland’s primary non-state institution – and often anti-state institution — was the Church. Catholic intellectuals created discussion clubs and published periodicals. Churches were relatively safe places to voice dissent. John Paul II, originally Karol Wojtyla, became the first Polish Pope in 1978 and inspired many in his home country...
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The Disappearance of the Political Middle

Posted by on Apr 28, 2014 in Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Uncategorized |
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4 comments Hungary has long been divided between its liberal and cosmopolitan capital and the more conservative countryside. During the Communist era, a small democratic opposition emerged that eventually, by the end of the 1980s, split into two political forces: the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz) and the more nationalist Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). In the first free elections in Hungary...
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The Commission

Posted by on Feb 15, 2014 in Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Uncategorized |
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0 comments The Romanian revolution in December 1989 was simultaneously the most violent of the transformations of 1989 and the most ambiguous. It was not a simple divide between regime and anti-regime protesters. There was no broad based movement like Solidarity to form the basis of a government to replace the Romanian Communist Party. The Group for Social Dialogue, a collection of dissident intellectuals,...
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