In 2006, a visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England accidentally became an artwork. Let’s call him Dude Descending a Staircase in honor of that merry prankster Marcel Duchamp. This particular visitor tripped over his feet as he was going down the museum stairs. As he fell, he knocked into three large Qing Dynasty vases that… Continue reading Iraq: Revisiting the Pottery Barn Rule
Romania is near the bottom of all social indicators in Europe. If you live in Denmark, you have approximately a one in seven chance of growing up in poverty – or what Brussels calls AROPE (at risk of poverty or social exclusion). But if you live in Romania, at the other end of the EU… Continue reading Romania’s Fraying Social Safety Net
Much of East-Central Europe was once ruled by monarchs. From the 16th century until the end of World War I, the Habsburgs presided over a territory that extended from parts of present-day Poland in the north to the Croatian coastline in the south. At the time, the subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire viewed it as… Continue reading Monarchy as Metaphor
The various Communist parties in East-Central Europe experienced several waves of transformation – or attempted transformation – between 1945 and 1989. A “thaw” would come, and reformers took over, followed by a crackdown and the return of the hardliners. Often the Soviet Union was a prime mover behind the crackdown, either directly in the case… Continue reading Reforming the Party
The Czech playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel popularized the notion of “living in truth.” He was dismayed at the degree to which lies had permeated Czechoslovak society under Communism. It wasn’t only government and Party officials who lied about history, the economy, the state of human rights, the opposition Charter 77 movement, and so on.… Continue reading The Czech Culture of Corruption
I passed through an enormous tori, the traditional gate in front of Shinto shrines. In the courtyard, white-clad Shinto priests walked quietly back and forth. A flock of white doves, specially bred on the site, pecked at the ground and then took wing at the prodding of a photographer. I visited the strolling garden and… Continue reading The Sun Also Rises
Yugoslavia fell apart in stages, and violence accompanied each of these stages. The first war was brief, a ten-day standoff between the Yugoslav Army and Slovenian forces in the summer of 1991, and there were few casualties. The Milosevic government in Serbia was not happy with Slovenia’s secession, but the Serbian population there was miniscule… Continue reading Addressing War Crimes
The Communist governments and the oppositions shared at least one feature in common: they were overwhelmingly male. The leaders of the countries and the members of the Politburos were mostly men. And the dissidents that received all the coverage in the West – Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Victor Orban – were also men. There were… Continue reading Engendering Change
The fall of Communism in East-Central Europe was as much a series of miscalculations on the part of the authorities as it was a burst of revolutionary organizing from below. In Poland, the Communist Party calculated that it would win in the first semi-free elections on June 4, 1989 and instead it lost nearly every… Continue reading Behind the Velvet Revolution
The beginning of a new year is when optimism courses through the blood. Even in the foreign policy realm of dreary realism and apocalyptic musings, January is when pundits and policymakers entertain temporarily vaulted hopes that wars can be stopped, deals negotiated, reputations salvaged, and the planet saved. This year, though it marks the 100th anniversary… Continue reading Reasons to be Cheerful