Dashed Hopes

Twenty years ago, the Cold War came to a sudden and unpredicted end. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the post-1945 fracture of Europe between Stalinist tyranny and liberal capitalism, dissolved into chunks of masonry, widely sold, although less as souvenirs of brutal oppression and more as proof of capitalism’s triumph over communism. Previous rebellions in Hungary in 1956, in Poland and East Germany had been crushed in blood. A decade earlier, Poland’s General Wojciech Jaruzelski boasted that he had forestalled a Soviet invasion by crushing his country’s Solidarity movement and slaughtering a hundred of its supporters. But in February 1989, Solidarity-selected intellectuals sat around a table with communist officials, planning a partially free election. That summer, Poland had its first non-communist premier since 1947. By 1990, Jaruzelski was on trial for his life. In Hungary, a communist government let East German refugees cross its border to the West. If a fellow-government...