Nationalism, civil society, and the prospects for freedom in Eastern Europe

The events of 1989 in Eastern Europe represented an alliance between two dynamics: anti-Soviet and anti-communist. Once the "double rejective" task of the revolution was complete, these dynamics began to diverge as the space created for freedom filled with the competing demands of nationalism and civil society. Building freedom in Eastern Europe today is associated with overcoming the economic and social dislocation inherited from communism and developing the institutions and attitudes required for a civil society. But it is confronted above all by the attractions of a tribal nationalism which threaten the entire project of creating an open society.