Not by Politics Alone: Unwrapping the Revolution of 1989

Abstract

Abstract The collapse of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe and their replacement by democratic governments in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Czechoslovakia dramatically changed the face of the twentieth century. Moreover, the Revolution of 1989 was the work of courageous men and women who self-consciously identified their cause with the larger cause of human freedom: by which they meant the political values whose protection had been understood, since 1945, to have been the special charge of the countries called “the West.” And yet in the United States, and more generally throughout western political, media, and academic circles, there has been a curious lack of agreement on the sources of the Revolution of 1989: the combination and correlation of forces that led (nonviolently no less) to what had long seemed so difficult as to be virtually impossible—the disintegration of Stalin’s post–World War II empire, and the return of what used to be called “captive nations” to the house of Europe. Indeed, and judging from the timorous reactions of many in its political elite, the West has barely begun to grasp the very good news that the Revolution of 1989 happened. But it has not even begun to grapple seriously with the questions of why the revolution happened, when it did, and how it did.