Of the twenty-nine formerly Communist countries to have emerged from the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe, ten have navigated well the difficult passages of transition since the collapse of communism. These “leaders” are all in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Baltic region; Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia in Central Europe; and Romania and Bulgaria in South Eastern Europe. They have done well compared to such “laggards” as Croatia or Russia, and especially well compared to such “losers” in the transition as Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan. Today, the “Central European Ten” are all members of both NATO and the European Union; they all hold free, periodic elections (and those who lose invariably step aside); and, with a few exceptions, their economies, sparked by private capital, both domestic and foreign, have been growing far faster than those of their Western neighbors in the European Union. Indeed, the changes made are so substantial that the basic achievements of pluralism and the free market are not going to be reversed. The Central European Ten will avoid the abyss of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russia and muddle through, while such energetic countries as Slovenia and Estonia will continue to progress and catch up with their Western neighbors in the European Union in the next decade or so. For the first time since the early 1990s, however, even the Central European Ten face growing and serious resistance to new and necessary political and economic reforms. • In Poland, the new Polish government led by twin brothers Lech Kaczynski, the president, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister, concentrates less on deepening democratic reforms than on discrediting its opponents. Elected in late 2005, the government has shown immense hostility toward all political forces that have guided Poland’s politics since 1989 and suspicion toward important parts of the outside world, notably Russia and Germany. • In the Czech Republic, the atmosphere of hopeful optimism that flourished under President Vaclav Havel has given way to a political standoff that has prevented the rise of a workable parliamentary majority, and more generally to skepticism toward politics, an attitude exemplified by the policies and personality of President Vaclav Klaus.