Martin M. Šimečka on the 20th anniversary of change in Eastern Europe

The Slovakian writer and journalist Martin M. Šimečka evaluates the developments in the 20 years following the change of political regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the literary and political monthly 2000: "Some people will remember the West's hopes following the Velvet Revolution that Central Europe would bring new ideas, values and badly needed insights to the Western world. ... Today this hope strikes us as pathetic; as it turns out Western perceptions of Central Europe were naive. Post-communist societies always lacked the confidence to believe they had anything significant to offer the West. Their job was to conform to the victors of the great ideological conflict as quickly as possible. ... Of course there were lively and sometimes emotional conflicts over how to go about this. Nevertheless the basic conditions of these debates were always set by the West and its system of values. ... It seems to me that the conflicts of the last 20 years indicate one thing: we are still not free. All of us who lived at least part of our adult lives under communism are marked by the past to such an extent that we will perhaps never be in a position to speak about it in the language of a normal, free world."

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