Societies produce stereotypes (which are the height of artifice), and then consume them as commonplace (which is the height of naturalness). That is how bad faith can pass for good conscience.
—Eugen Weber, My France
… shared hatreds make for strange bedfellowships.
—Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
The over two decades that have passed since the collapse of Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe have proved that more than one possible future could be reasonably canvassed for the region. Even when many hastened to predict the worst, the likelihood of nightmarish scenarios, pace Jan Urban or G. M. Tamás, was somewhat dubious.1 Bellum omnium contra omnes, a state of wild and protracted anarchy, and the loss of recently acquired civic rights in favor of Stalino-Fascist simulations of cohesion and collective will are not in the offing in most post-Leninist states. The Milosevic- style expansionist chauvinism has not been emulated outside the borders of the former Yugoslavia, although similar outbursts of hatred and intolerance have accompanied the breakdown of the Soviet Union, especially in the Caucasus. Human rights have been trampled in Belarus under the plebiscitary regime headed by Alexander Lukashenko, but this remains rather an exceptional case among European post-Communist states. Pluralism seems to have settled solidly, and democratic procedures are now widely recognized, accepted, and practiced. The general landscape after Communism's demise, however, is one of disenchantment, dispirited political cultures, the rise of new collectivisms, marginalization of former heroes, and the return of the former Communists. Adam Michnik's term for this trend was “the velvet restoration.”2 I proposed the “velvet counterrevolution” to indicate the direction of this phenomenon, especially its strong anti-intellectual and illiberal tendencies.3 The conservative-populist turn in Hungarian politics under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 2009 has resulted in bitter controversies regarding perceived limitations to freedom of the press and ethnocentric approaches to the nature of national identity.
Central and Eastern European societies have evolved from authoritarian, extremely centralized, and bureaucratic Leninist regimes toward democratic forms of political and economic organization.4 To focus exclusively on their difficulties during the transition period is to miss the drama of social and political experimentation in that region. More than twenty years after 1989, what remains at stake is the validity of the liberal democratic paradigm in traditionally authoritarian societies (“What can they look back to?” historian Tony Judt once asked, correctly). In other words, it is important to identify the building blocks on which open societies can be established in order to function properly. We must assess the trajectory of the great transformations unleashed by the extraordinary events of 1989: Are the newly awakened societies propitious to pluralism, or does the upper hand belong to illiberal, antimodern forces? In 2002, Judt stated that, in the context of the European Union accession, for purposes of European moral reconstruction, “the crucial reference point for Europe now will be the years immediately preceding the events of 1989.”5 As we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of that year's revolutions, we have the possibility of contemplating the first two post-Communist decades' illusions, expectations, and balance sheet and of speculating on the years to come.