Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath

Rating:
Summary: Lessons of the First Post-Communist Decade
Review: Ten years after the revolutions of 1989 and the unexpected collapse of communist regimes in East-Central Europe, a conference was held at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary from 26 to 29 March 1999. The conference brought together scholars and critical intellectuals from both East and West, all of them interested in the meanings and legacies of the 1989 revolutions. The book Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath, edited by Sorin Antohi and Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Central European University Press resulted from the excellent papers presented at that conference which, it may be argued, was the conference dedicated to the revolutions of 1989 and the first decade that followed. The names of the authors present in the volume reveal not only the high level of the debates, but also the scholarly interest in the events that put an end to a divided Europe. The book is organized on four major sections/topics and a concluding chapter: (1) "Meanings of 1989: Present Significance of the Past," which contains studies and essays authored by Agnes Heller, Jacques Rupnik, Karol Soltan, Jeffrey C. Isaac, and Sorin Antohi; (2) "Winners and Losers in the Great Transformation," with contributions by Adam Michnik, Martin Palous, Valerie Bunce, and Vladimir Tismaneanu; (3) "Vulnerabilities of the New Democracies," with contributions by Katherine Verdery, Gail Kligman and Susan Gal, Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, Istvan Rev, Miklos Haraszti, and Ivan Vejvoda and (4) "The New Europe: Prospects for Cooperation and Conflict" with contributions by Karen Dawisha, Bartlomiej Kaminski, Ilya Prizel, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Irena Grudzinska Gross. The final section, "Past, Present, Future," is a concluding essay by Timothy Garton Ash. Considering the relative high number of contributions to the volume, a comprehensive analysis of each study/essay cannot be made. However, it is important to stress that the variety of the arguments, ideas, and demonstrations provided by the contributors reveals the theoretical richness and originality of the scholarship focusing on the 1989 revolutions. Those interested in the collapse of communism and the 1989 revolutions will find different approaches to the 1989 events and the subsequent transitions to a real democracy. Unfortunately, there is not a unique, valid explanation for what happened in East-Central Europe in 1989. As Garton Ash rhetorically put it, "Ten years on, what do we know?" His answer, "we know more about the consequences" contains the elements that make of 1989 a fascinating object of research. Although we now know a great deal about 1989, those events are still mysterious and captivating. The contributors to the present volume have succeeded in convincing us that the fascination of 1989 remains intact.