Slavenka Drakulic - Cafe Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism

I wrote my book Caf Europa in 1996. Back then, I tried to illustrate the new Europe emerging after the entire communist bloc collapsedsuddenly and completely unexpectedly in 1989, a historical earthquake that left us Eastern Europeans in shock, followed by euphoria and childish expectations. Not a patient people, we expected too much too soon. Europe is not a mother who owes something to her long-neglected children; neither is she a princess one has to court [...] Most likely, Europe is what wecountries, peoples, individualsmake of it for ourselves, I wrote apropos these expectations.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse, I revisit caf Europa to glance inside to see how the former communist world looks now. What are the important marks of the time and could we have anticipated them? Traveling around, I wonder: Do I have any right to write us and group together all the former Eastern bloc countries, just when they insist on the differences between them? Are there in fact any of us left? And finally, is thirty years a long or a short time when it comes to profound changes in a society?

Let us stick to the metaphor of a caf. Like in any caf, the first thing you feel when you enter it is the atmosphere. Atmosphere is, of course, immaterial, only a feeling of the place. Thirty, twenty, even ten years ago you would have sensed excitement, hope, good vibrations in the air.

The caf or rather kavana, kavarna, kvhz, kawiarniaas this unique Central European institution is called in different languagesused to look a bit shabby, the lights were dimmed, many people smoked. But they had loud voices and smiling faces, the glasses clanged and you could tell that there was a kind of party going on.

Nowadays, as soon as you open the door, the first thing you would notice is that there is new furniture, modern appliances, a lot of light, the coffee is espresso now, and nobody reads old-fashioned newspapers any longer. The caf looks designed, more like a bar than an old-fashioned kavana. The people look smarter than before too, they are certainly better dressed, but there is less noise. Yet a trained eye can distinguish different groups and different tones, even polite disagreements. Many of the visitors, especially if they are older, complain about the corrupt elites, unfulfilled promises, loss of national identity and loss of job securityas well as the stripping away of illusions. This is how you can recognize that they are Eastern Europeans. Young ones are the same everywhere, they move around in order to get a job and worry mostly about money. The Westerners in the caf also had expectations: they believed that once the political and economic system had changed, the post-communist countries would develop fast and the gap within a reunited Europe would soon closewhen you look around, you can recognize them by the disappointment on their faces.

Sitting there awhile, you come to understand that what connects people in post-1989 Europe is common valueswhile what continues to divide them is different histories. Only time alone could ever bridge this gap and thirty years are but a blink.

If someone had told me fifty years ago that I would see communism collapse in my lifetime, I would have probably laughed, albeit bitterly. Living in Eastern Europe, though not in a country within the Soviet bloc but in the former Yugoslavia, my generation could imagine only more of the sameor worse. Back then, George Orwells anti-utopian novel 1984 was a book we admired because we recognized the Newspeak, control and censorship that he described. We had already surpassed his Animal Farm, in which we are all equal but some are more equal than others, as well as the reversal of such values as truth and peace. Seeing the student protests in Paris in May 1968 and the Soviet tanks rolling into Prague in August the same year could only reinforce the differences between political systems and our feeling of hopelessness. No change for the better was foreseen