With change occurring at a dizzying pace in once totalitarian lands, it would seem that almost nothing is left that could surprise the world. But democracy continues to blossom in the most unexpected places. In Europe, few ever dreamed that the Berlin Wall would come down and even fewer imagined they would see a unified Germany in their lifetime. In America, no one imagined that the Congress would honor noncommunist leaders of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia at special joint sessions. Yet all this and more has come to pass in just the last 12 months.
What is the East European reaction? The following is a World & I forum, a glimpse of the Eastern European views - some serious, some humorous - of events and changes in that part of the world.
The participants are:
*Domany Andras, an economics and foreign policy editor for Hungarian Radio;
*Miklos Kovacs, a senior editor for Hungarian Radio;
*Malgorzata Flis, a free-lance graphic designer for Poland's independent publishers;
*Slawomir Gorecki, member of Solidarity;
*Zdobyslaw Milewski, a scholar at Jagiellonian University and staffer at the Parliament in Krakow;
*Maciej Strzembosz, a free-lance journalist, film critic, and screenwriter active in the Polish underground; and
*Martin Weiss, a translator, writer, and editor for Revolver Revue, an independent Czechoslovak magazine.
World & I Current Issues editor Laurie Burras moderated.
W&I: In your opinion, what is most enviable in the West? Is it democracy or is it something more practical, such as personal computers and VCRs?
Weiss: It is democratic tradition - plain, uninterrupted democratic tradition and political culture. This is enviable. I think it is clear and unnecessary to say.
Milewski: To me, the rule of law is enviable.
Andras: Enviable doesn't mean there are no problems or troubles in Western countries, but that there is the potential to resolve the troubles without deep crisis. This is important for me.
Strzembosz: I think the comprehensive system of freedom and responsibility is most enviable.
Kovacs: The democratic guarantees of free enterprise.
W & I: Am I to really take it that each of you only envies the theoretical and political -don't you envy the very material?
Gorecki: Material comes with accepted theory. A theory is imposed and the material things appear because of the theory imposed. Guess we are talking about spiritual things and the sense of togetherness and somehow we are still in a sense in the nineteenth century, or the twentieth century. We know who our neighbors are. We talk to them, we care about
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