Volume 36, Number 10 · June 15, 1989
Revolution: The Springtime of Two Nations
By Timothy Garton Ash
In Poland and Hungary this has been a fantastic spring. As I travel through those countries, attending an opposition fete in Budapest, a triumphal mass in Gdansk, a Solidarity election meeting in a Silesian coal mine, I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. Walking around Budapest's equivalent of Oxford Circus I pass a stall openly selling samizdat publications. Casting an eye over the titles I suddenly notice my own name, on what turns out to be a slim volume of essays hastily translated from The New York Review. Next day I am signing copies for people attending the opposition fete. 'Incredible' and 'surreal' are the words that punctuate every conversation about politics, though not about economics, for which the leitmotifs are, rather, 'disastrous' and 'hopeless.'
Feature, 4173 words
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