Has life been better for ex-Soviet bloc after fall of Berlin Wall?

People expected the transformation to be followed by political democracy and economic progress. But that has not been the case. During the past 20 years, some of the Soviet bloc countries turned "left" and some turned "right"; some moved forward while some shrank. No matter what, most of them have suffered economic backslide and social turbulence to a certain extent.

Economically, as is well known, the Soviet bloc's reform has faced massive difficulties to get on the right track. Most of them experienced negative growth in the beginning of the social transformation. It took them quite a long time to break through the bottleneck. For example, the GDP per capita in purchasing power of Georgia and Ukraine did not even reach the level of 1991 until 2005. The gap between countries has also widened, with the GDP per capita in purchasing power in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia reaching US$20,000 (Bt681,000) while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had $2000.

Politically, the degree of democracy differs from country to country. According to a ranking by The Economist in 2008, Czech Republic and Slovenia are top-ranked countries and considered as fully democratic. While the countries in Central Asia are ranked lower (the situation of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is even worse than that of Burma), Russia ranks as last but one country, among the mixed governments.

Apart from the level of economic development and cultural identity, the influence of EU could be one of the major reasons for these disparities. Central and Eastern Europe would really like to join the EU, for the sake of economic development. The precondition to be a member of the EU is to have democracy and an open market. Eastern Europe therefore has made a lot of efforts to get democratised. Eight of them finally managed to be EU members in 2004. Since EU is not open to Asia, Central Asian countries hence lack the motivation to make such political changes.

Because of the revolution, the destiny of communism has changed, at least for the Soviet bloc. Yet the collapse of the communist regime does not necessarily mean the collapse of communist parties. Most of the communist parties of the Soviet bloc are still active on the political stage. Some of them merely changed their names. For example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) is the second biggest party in Russia and still significant on the current political scene. The Bulgarian Socialist Party, which is the successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party, continues to be important in the country. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Monrovia of Czech, which remains the third biggest party in the Czech Republic, is the only former ruling party in post-communist Eastern Europe not to drop the communist title from its name, although it changed its party programme to suit laws adopted after 1989. The list goes on.

Except the economic negative growth and political unrest, democratic transition has not brought the expected civil wars or bloody conflicts within. People always never fail to reach a conclusion regarding the ideological confrontation between socialism and capitalism as who won - though there is a slight possibility that it is not a matter of ideology. However, it is too soon to judge the 1989 revolution. In fact, it is not that easy to judge history. It also takes China - currently the biggest socialist power - into account.

There is a half-joking saying on the Internet:

1949 - Socialism saves China (the communists come to power)

1979 - Capitalism saves China (with the open and reform policy of Deng Xiaoping)

1989 - China saves socialism (by remaining a communist system)

2009 - China saves capitalism (the global recession)

Well, whether it makes sense, time will tell.