The Review - The Spectre of Eastern Europe

The Review - The Spectre of Eastern Europe: “In 1989?s Round Table bartering, the Communists knew what they were doing. The deal they then cut has given them personal advantage as well as a stranglehold on progress. In the first place, there could be only a token house-cleaning, affecting no more than a few figureheads. This fundamental failure to define right and wrong has made a mockery of the concept of the rule of law. More damaging still, the Communists contrived by these means to keep the levers of power in their own hands, retaining the enormous hidden funds that the Party had amassed by hook or crook, as well as keeping in place national networks of patronage. Sole and exclusive managers of state assets hitherto, they were able to exploit their position to become outright owners or plunderers of everything within reach. Asset-strippers and profiteers of the new democracy, they have also made a mockery of the concept of privitization. Far from ending on lampposts or even in courtrooms, these men continue to prove that crime pays. The few thrive at the expense of many. State-formation is merely wishful when government is too weak to prevent such gross abuse. President Stoyanov of Bulgaria spoke for the whole former Soviet bloc when he recently declared that corruption ‘is the major failure of the democratic process.’ “