Communism
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13 January 2012PresseuropPolska The Times, Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita
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10 January 20128Financial Times London
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Germany
Still living in Lenin Street
4 January 20124Gazeta Wyborcza Warsaw -
27 December 2011Lidové noviny Prague
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7 November 20113PresseuropSME
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1991-2011
A Baltic triumph
19 August 2011IQ The Economist Vilnius -
Romania
The totalitarian tourist trail
18 August 2011PresseuropRomânia libera -
Bulgaria
The superheroes of Soviet Sofia
8 July 20111Dnevnik Sofia -
10 February 20113Lidové noviny Prague
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Eastern Europe
Transniestria looks to Russia, not EU
27 January 2011EUobserver.com Brussels -
Bulgaria
Sofia diplomats outed as ex-spies
16 December 2010PresseuropDnevnik -
Hungary
Ghosts of the communist past
2 December 2010Presseurop -
Democracy
Press targets Sarkozy for snooping
4 November 2010PresseuropPresseurop -
30 August 2010Presseurop
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CZECH REPUBLIC
Anti-communists rehabilitated
5 August 2010PresseuropMladá Fronta DNES -
Exhibition
From east to west, art remains political
18 June 2010Dilema Veche Bucharest -
POLAND
Jail for a Che teeshirt?
14 June 20101PresseuropRzeczpospolita -
Romania
Court throws out lustration law
8 June 2010PresseuropGandul -
20 May 2010PresseuropGandul
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Czech Republic
Neo-Nazi ban could scuttle communists
18 February 2010PresseuropLidové noviny -
Eastern Europe
The scourge of Ceausescu
17 December 20092Jurnalul Naţional Bucharest -
Germany
After the Wall
9 November 2009Presseurop -
Berlin Wall
Lest we forget Poland...
9 November 20092Polska The Times Warsaw -
6 November 2009Cicero Berlin
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Poland-Czech Republic
Smells like '89 spirit
2 November 2009Respekt Prague -
Catholic Church
Vatican says Marx is good dope
22 October 2009PresseuropThe Times -
15 October 20091PresseuropAdevărul
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Autumn 1989
The Wall fell in Leipzig
9 October 2009Die Zeit Hamburg -
21 August 2009Revista 22 Bucharest
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Anniversary
The picnic that raised the Iron Curtain
19 August 2009Presseurop -
Croatia
The island of Marshall Tito
3 August 2009Trouw Amsterdam -
Czech Republic
Communists say sorry for scraps of power
27 July 2009PresseuropHospodářské noviny -
Ideas
Homage to three wise men
23 July 2009PresseuropThe Guardian -
Obituary
So farewell then Leszek Kolakowski
20 July 2009PresseuropGazeta Wyborcza -
16 July 2009PresseuropDiário de Notícias
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Post-89 societies
In the shadow of the archives
9 July 20091Respekt Prague -
26 June 20091Cafebabel.com Paris
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Poland
It was 20 years ago today...
4 June 20091Presseurop
As the financial crisis continues to ravage the West, the dominant ideology of all triumphant free-market liberalism is collapsing. But what new political trends are emerging, and which will succeed? asks Gideon Rachman. 
Twenty-one years after German reunification, many streets and squares of the former GDR are still named communist grandees. For a number of former dissidents and a journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza, it’s a puzzling phenomonen. 
They published Václav Havel and all those Czechoslovak writers banned by the communist regime. Forty years ago, Zdena and Josef Škvorecký created in Toronto one of the most important publishing houses of the Eastern European resistance. 
In August 1991, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia declared their independence from a collapsing USSR. Despite a few hiccups along the way, twenty years on they have definitively turned the page on Communism and come back to their roots in Europe. 
In mid-June, anonymous artists repainted the Soviet soldiers on a war monument in Sofia as comic-book superheroes. Beyond merely irritating the authorities with the farce, the gesture raises the question of the relationship between power, art and history. 
The parallel between the popular unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 is an uneasy one. How can the foundations for democracy in the Arab world be compared with those of Eastern Europe? 
The 350,000-or-so people living in the separatist Transniestria region want to integrate with Russia despite a new wave of euro-optimism on the other side of its unofficial border with Moldova. But their views are shaped by decades of repression. 
Paul Lendvai, a doyen of Hungarian political journalism, stands accused of collaborating with the former Communist regime. And this revelation comes at a time of mounting political tension. 
Solidarity – a movement supported by almost 10 million members in 1981, and with less than 600,000 members today – will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1980 “August Agreements” that led to the creation of the first independent labour representation in the Soviet-dominated bloc. The anniversary has sparked a heated debate in the Polish press. 
In Paris the "Les Promesses du Passé" (Promises of the past) exhibition examines the development of artistic creation and the continuing ambition to change the world in a Europe marked by the Iron Curtain and the East-West divide. 
For people living in the Eastern Bloc during the communist era, Radio Free Europe was one of the few alternative sources for news from the rest of the world. On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 revolution, Romania prepares to pay homage to the station that vehemently criticised the Ceausescu regime. 
Today, on 9 November, a reunified Germany and a peaceful Europe will celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event hailed by the European press, which nonetheless notes that the end of the Cold War has yet to bring all of the expected benefits to the Old Continent. 
Almost everyone remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall as the moment that marked the end of communism in Europe, but five months earlier, the first free elections in Poland had already paved the way for change. Journalist Jacek Stawiski complains that our sense of history has been skewed by a fondness for dramatic images.
Eastern Germans have too been too busy adapting to a new society to settle their accounts with the former German Democratic Republic. And upholding the myth of reunification will only serve to stifle any real debate, comments the writer Thomas Brussig. 
In October 1989, underground artists from Poland and Czechoslovakia gathered in Wrocław for an independent cultural festival. Twenty years later, a commemorative event held in the Polish city and in Prague aims to rekindle the spirit of solidarity and cultural resistance to the communist regime. 
The Berlin Wall is the symbol of both divided and reunified Germany. But 20 years ago, on 9 October, the first mass demonstrations against the East German regime took place in Leipzig. Had it not been for Leipzig, the Wall would never have come down, writes Die Zeit.
The 23rd August is "European Day of Rememberance for the Victims of Nazism and Stalinism", to condemn totalitarianism. A noble cause perhaps, but one which has provoked controversy in Russia, where Stalin is still a national hero. They point out that Russia in fact saved many lives threatened by Nazism. Yet the Russians remain cagey about their Soviet Union archives, a stumbling block for ex-Soviet states to really understand their totalitarian pasts. 
On 19 August 1989, several thousand people arranged to get together near the Hungarian town of Sopron, along the Austrian border, for a pan-European picnic. The event was organised by Hungary’s democratic opposition parties and Otto von Habsburg’s pan-European movement, and was sanctioned by the Hungarian authorities, who actually opened the border for three hours for the occasion. The picnic proved a turning point in history that eventually led to the raising of the Iron Curtain. 
A Croatian island that was home to a sinister Titoist re-education camp for 40 years will shortly be provided with a memorial and documentation centre. For former detainees, acknowledgement of the horror they endured remains an ongoing combat, reports Dutch daily Trouw. 
In the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, information from communist era secret police archives continues to spark controversy. Should public figures be investigated? Or is it time to forget? Different attitudes in individual countries were determined during the transition to democracy. 
Born in what was still known as the "Eastern bloc", three young women now in their twenties have embraced whole-heartedly their societies' conversion to capitalism. Café Babel meets up with Europe new "Working girls." 
As Poland celebrates 20 years of political independence, feelings are mixed. While Gazeta Wyborcza raises a glass to a free Poland, “shared by all”, Pawel Lisicki, in Rzeczpospolita laments “a time of ‘amnesia and a weakening of the sense of civic duty.”