A decade after Solidarity in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia helped to inaugurate a new European era, bureaucracy is about to catch up with history. In April, exactly ten years after the legalisation of the Solidarity trade union in Poland, Nato will expand to the east. Last November, the EU began negotiations which will bring about its own enlargement. Poles and Czechs, included in both enlargements, will tell you that they were in Europe all along. And there could be nothing more European than the mutual indifference-cum-hostility with which the two countries regard each other. A consideration of this Polish-Czech tension provides a perspective on the historical memories and political styles which have emerged in the new democracies since 1989.
Golden Prague, Grey Warsaw
Prague is perhaps Europe’s most beautiful capital; tourists marvel that so much gothic, renaissance, baroque, art nouveau and art deco beauty has escaped the ravages of this century. Warsaw is perhaps Europe’s ugliest capital; its enormous city blocks and non-functional functionalist buildings appeal only to eccentrics. A general rule is that anything added to Prague diminishes the city; anything added to Warsaw enhances it. Where central Prague’s delicate beauty is violated by every neon sign, the skyscrapers which now fill Warsaw’s open spaces seem to heal a wound and confirm a bounding progress towards recovery.
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