Twenty years after the demolition of the Berlin Wall, where has all the euphoria gone?
The momentum of 1989’s singing revolutions and massive peaceful resistance to social injustice is at risk of being lost, even among the myriad of 20th anniversary celebrations across Central and Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia recently recalled the Baltic Way, when two million people joined hands in a human chain linking the capitals of the Soviet-occupied Baltic states in a demonstration of their resolve to regain freedom. Today, by contrast, energetic young people who are unhappy with the status quo do not go the streets to help build a better future. More often, they just go to the West to enjoy a better life. Where were you when the Iron Curtain, long assailed, at last began to cede? I was starting my Eastern European studies in Washington, DC, whose moral missiles had done much to weaken the walls of the Evil Empire. And we celebrated this dawn of a brand new day, the death pangs of a rotten old regime, the victory of liberty and human dignity over tyranny and oppres
