Lessons From Eastern Europe

“We were jumping from joy at home when we heard about the resignation,” she says. “It was joy for the Egyptian people; they deserve it!”

More than 20 years earlier, the same emotions of exhilaration overwhelmed Schneiderova when she heard that Todor Zhivkov, who headed the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria for 35 years, had resigned on November 10, 1989. Schneiderova, along with hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians, took to the streets.

“I had never seen demonstrations before that in my life. You could hear about them, but everything was kept hidden,” she recalls. “And then after the tenth, everyone was out on the streets. I was so excited, I was running in the streets, shouting slogans.”

Bulgaria was part of a wave of demonstrations that swept through Eastern Europe, toppling regimes and eventually dissolving the Soviet Union.Political change started in Poland with strikes and demonstrations organized by the labor union Solidarity, which resulted in the Communist Party scheduling partially free elections for June 1989. The wave of protests peaked on November 9 with the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany, which later became the symbol of 1989 freedom movements in the former Eastern bloc.

Observing the thousands of protesters that have flooded the streets in countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Schneiderova cannot help but see parallels with her own experience: “They are following in our steps.”

The demonstrations across the Arab world are following a chain-reaction pattern similar to those in Eastern Europe 20 years ago. January’s mass demonstrations in Tunisia have been followed by protests in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Libya. The “Arab Uprising” has also hit the Gulf: Yemen and Bahrain have been focal points of unrest on the peninsula, with smaller protests in Saudi Arabia and Oman.It has even managed to create ripples in Iran and recently Syria.

Ivan Ivekovic, once a diplomat for the former Yugoslavia and now a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, also sees similarities between the 1989 changes in Eastern Europe and this year’s protests in the MENA region.

“What is interesting in both [regions] is that the urban classes were the product of the systems against which they revolted,” Ivekovic says. “In Eastern Europe, this middle class was the product of the socialist system. The middle class in Egypt was the product of the system [created by] Arab socialism.”

Just as in the Middle East, Eastern European governments reacted differently to calls for liberalization. There were those who sat at the negotiation table with the opposition and conceded to political reform (Poland); those who ordered security forces to open fire on the protesters (Romania); those who tried to retain power by ousting their leader and rigging elections (Bulgaria); and those who chose civil war to stay in power (Yugoslavia).

Twenty years after the protests, results differ in Eastern Europe. Although protests in 1989 were all calling for democracy, not everyone achieved it.From a full democracy like the Czech Republic (ranking at number 16 out of 167 on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 Democracy Index) to the uninterrupted dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus (ranked number 130), currently there is a full spectrum of government types in Eastern Europe.

Some Eastern European countries were successful in establishing functional democratic governments while others failed, but all of them had to go through a period of painful transition. Stability and democracy did not come overnight.

“The euphoria continued for months until we started slowly realizing that it’s not going to be easy,” remembers Schneiderova. “The first elections passed by, nothing changed.”

In the first few years after 1989, inflation skyrocketed (as much as 334 percent in Bulgaria and 586 percent in Poland), destroying savings and sinking the standard of living of Eastern Europeans who were used to controlled prices and welfare state services.Exposed for the first time to competition and market economy rules, many industries failed, many factories closed and unemployment grew. Poverty, a disbanded security apparatus, corruption and a failing economy drove crime rates up and led to the creation of vast and powerful crime organizations with strongholds in Russia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

Facing deteriorating conditions at home, Schneiderova, like millions of other Eastern Europeans, decided to leave her country to try to make a living elsewhere.

According to Ivekovic, Arab countries will have to face a similar recovery period from the political unrest. “I am not an optimist in the [short term] because things can’t change overnight. It’s a long-time process,” he says. “It can’t come with the new government, with the new parliament, even if it’s elected democratically.”

While some Eastern European countries managed to rapidly recover from the shock of transition, others went through a second wave of pro-democracy protests. Bulgaria and Romania witnessed national protests in 1997–1998, as their economies collapsed under corrupt and incompetent leadership. Ukraine followed a similar path with its Orange Revolution in 2004.

Ivekovic foresees a similar process for the Arab countries, predicting: “There will be a second wave of Arab resurgence. There will be a general change and the crucial country is going to be Egypt.”

The political scientist is convinced that significant political change in the Arab world is inevitable but points out that there is a considerable danger facing Egypt and other countries in the region that have toppled their authoritarian regimes. “The biggest danger is the economic recession,” he says.

Economic misfortunes following the disbanding of the welfare state in Eastern Europe pushed a lot of people to forget the suffering under their former dictators and to start venerating the past. In Romania, a 2010 poll by the Center for Opinion Studies showed that 49 percent of the population considered life under communism to be better. In Macedonia, the Centre for Research and Policy Making found in 2010 that 60 percent think they had more freedom and better lifestyle during the communist era.

Under President Boris Yeltsin, who served two terms between 1991 and 1999, Russians enjoyed more political freedom but suffered heavily from the economic disintegration of the country. The economic security that his successor Vladimir Putin brought to Russia won him immense popularity with the Russians. Putin’s next step, however, was to rehabilitate the memory of Joseph Stalin and glorify Russia’s communist past.

“In Russia, in any fair vote, Putin will get the support of the majority. He gave hope to the Russians, which they had completely lost with Yeltsin,” says Ivekovic, adding that Egypt is potentially in danger of following Russia’s path.

For Schneiderova, building a democratic society is not an easy task. “Democracy is not what you always think. Some aspects of it can make you wish that you never desired it,” she says. Despite the challenges, however, she is adamant that democracy is the right path for Arab countries.

“It’s worth it because every society has to develop. Every dictatorship that continues for too long is impeding its development. The liberation of society and movement itself is much better than stagnation,” she says. “I hope they achieve democracy because I love Egypt. I sincerely wish it for them.”