Leaders of Europe’s ex-communist nations held a summit yesterday on the lessons their two decades of reform can offer the Arab Spring, naming Belarus as an example of transition gone wrong.
The gathering of more than a dozen heads of state was to be joined later by US President Barack Obama, who has said the track record of countries once cloaked behind the Iron Curtain could be instructive for Arab nations.
Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said the key question was: “How can we support democratic transformation in our region and beyond it, in the neighbourhood of the European Union both to the east and to the south?”
Europe’s communist regimes crumbled in 1989-1991, paving the way for democracy and free market reforms in most cases.
Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said such transitions need careful stewardship.
“Changing policy alone is not enough to win a victory over authoritarian or totalitarian regimes and achieve democracy. We have seen this right here in Europe,” the President was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.
It said he singled out Belarus, run by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, where a regime crackdown including Thursday’s sentencing of opposition leaders has sparked resounding Western condemnation.
“If we observe the protest against the stagnated and authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East and remember our own and our neighbours’ contemporary history, the successful post-communist countries should feel obliged to help to build up these countries if asked,”Mr Ilves said.
In 1989, Poland was the first country in the Soviet bloc to shed communism, in a bloodless transition negotiated between the regime and the Solidarity opposition, led by Lech Walesa.
That sparked a domino effect, and the bloc crumbled completely by the end of 1991.
“Of course there are some differences between our case and the Arab Spring case. But the common thing is the excitement about developing democracy,” said Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers, who cut his teeth in the peaceful opposition to Soviet rule.