Thirty years in search for identity in Central Europe

Abstract

Central Europe is also the New Europe, if we are to treat this region as including the new EU members since 2004. The countries of this region had different levels of economic and political liberties already in the times of socialism between WW II and 1989. The region had more suppression than liberties, yet those levels of suppression differed per country. Generalizations of the Communist “East” (a term that brutally blends Eastern Europe with Central) are misguiding and it is important to deconstruct those generalizations in order to show that even under socialism different countries had their different levels of political suppression for freedom of speech and economic suppression for the liberal market. These different levels expose different pre-1989 cases and, therefore, different premises as well as conditions for post-1989 transformations. Different memories and traumatic historical experiences are even more important when discussing the search for Central European identity. Difficulties in creating trans-national history, and continuous disagreements of to whom “truly” belongs this or that city and border region, cause inner tensions among the countries.