20 Years

Somerville, Mass - Twenty years ago this month, I sat through Professor Dick's Russian class, as he made jokes about the Russian tendancy to use the negative when making requests (something like "You're not getting off the metro here, are you?" instead of "Excuse me, I'm getting off". Or "You wouldn't be able to help me?" instead of "Help!").

"The Russians are so polite," Professor Dick said mockingly, and everyone laughed.

I'm sure Professor Dick was a good teacher, but I didn't think he was funny. Nobody is funny at 8:15 in the morning.

Aside from the cases and the conjugations and the other torture that Professor Dick inflicted on us, I remember his utter amazement as he read us the headlines from the Washington Post each morning. "Are you following this? Are you reading your newspaper? I hope you are reading the newspapers, because this is absolutely astounding, what's taking place over there."

Of course, I was not reading the newspaper. (I was reading hundreds of pages of European history and microeconomics and "The Problem of God", but I was not reading the newspaper.) In retrospect, it's a good thing that Professor Dick brought to our attention the events unfolding in Eastern Europe; otherwise, I might have been completely oblivious.

So here we are, 20 years later. Who would have guessed that these events would so shape my life?

This year, I was back in Eastern Europe. Indeed, I was in Krakow on June 4, the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking Polish election -- the first that allowed participation by an opposition party (and in fact resulted in a landslide victory for Solidarity). It was arguably the first tile in the domino effect that would take place in Eastern Europe throughout that fall.

Twenty years later, there were some parades and some protests in Krakow; but there was no denying that this day was a day to be remembered.

November 9 was the anniversary of the unexpected opening of the Berlin Wall - the first time that residents of East Berlin were able to travel freely to West Berlin. Borders all along the East-West German border would be flung open throughout the following week.

To commemorate this historic event, the Goethe Institute here in Boston is hosting an excellent exhibit. "Moments in Time 1989/1990" traces the events of those years - mostly using photographs taken by regular people, amateur photographers from both East and West Germany, who were experiencing the events as they unfolded. The photos and accompanying descriptions express surprise, wonder, curiosity, confusion, exaltation and - more than anything else - bewilderment about what might happen in the future.

As indicated by the exhibit's title, it covers not only the events of November, but also the following months, which saw the dismantling of the wall and the reunification of Germany (which seemed to catch everyone by surprise). The exhibit will be in Boston until mid-December, and it is highly recommended, especially for people (like me) who did not make it to Berlin before the wall came down. Alternatively, you can visit the expanded online exhibit.

This week (November 17-20) marks the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. It started with a peaceful student protest in Prague, and ended - just over a month later - with the election of playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel as President.

December saw demonstrations in the Romanian town of Timişoara. Unlike in other countries, the Romanian police fired on demonstrators. Angry citizens responded to the violence with mass protests, and by the end of the month, the crazy communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife had been sentenced to death. (This pseudo revolution and other wacky Romanian historical events are the subject of the Communist Dracula Pageant, which was performed by the American Repertory Theatre last year.)

The communist regime in Bulgaria voluntarily stepped down in February 1990 (you would too, if you had seen what had happened to the Ceauşescus). And that was pretty much the end of the Iron Curtain.

Eastern Europe is obviously a different place than it was 20 years ago. I learned all about it, when I worked on the anniversary edition of the big Lonely Planet guidebook that covers the entire region (now 20 independent nations - read an excerpt here). And while all of these countries are moving closer to their western counterparts, they are still colored by their communist past. And that is part of their charm.