Dec 2, 2009

News

Bridging Time and Borders: 1989-2009

December 2009 Democracy News

In a fall memorable for the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, several meetings were held in the region to mark these pivotal events.  During a week-long trip to Poland and Ukraine, NED President Carl Gershman experienced firsthand how far these countries have come over the last two decades, witnessed the important contribution NED has made to building civil society there, and highlighted the crossborder partnerships that continue to foster reform in the region and further east.

On October 21, the College of Eastern Europe (KEW), a leading Polish NGO based in Wroclaw, Poland, held a meeting to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Festival of Independent Czechoslovak Culture, which was organized by the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation in November 1989, and held at Wroclaw University. This legendary festival marked the first crossborder project in the region supported by NED.

After a June 1989 breakthrough election, reforms in Poland were moving rapidly and Solidarity was determined to assist neighboring democrats. Despite arrests and detentions on the border, thousands of Czech and Slovak activists and citizens made it to Wroclaw to participate in a week of independent meetings and cultural events. The Velvet Revolution began two weeks after the festival and Vaclav Havel has declared that the festival was its “prologue.”

As Gershman noted in a public speech at the KEW meeting on October 22, the festival was, at $7,500, “dollar for dollar, the best grant NED has ever made.”  Moreover, the Festival had  demonstrated the potential of crossborder work, which not only builds solidarity and shares experiences but also requires the setting aside of historical grievances and a willingness for reconciliation.  

The city of Wroclaw prides itself on being an international center of reconciliation and tolerance, and is therefore a particularly appropriate location for promoting crossborder assistance. The city suffered greatly from the destruction, border changes and forced population transfers of World War II. After its native German inhabitants were expelled, much of the city’s population and many of its cultural holdings were transplanted from Lviv, which became part of the Soviet Union. On his trip, Gershman was able to visit a number of the city’s symbols reflecting this character, including the Ossolineum Institute, which holds the archive of the late Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a famous Polish activist and early advisor to NED.

The role that crossborder work and independent culture can play in promoting democracy were the main themes of Gershman’s meetings during his time in Wroclaw.  These included interviews with Polish Television and with the Polish foreign affairs journal The New Eastern Europe.

Gershman also met with a new generation of Poles, 150 students from a Wroclaw Lyceum specializing in foreign affairs and public diplomacy. The students, like many others with whom NED’s president spoke over the course of his trip, were concerned with the perceived US withdrawal from Central Europe and its distancing from supporting democracy and human rights. Responding to their questions, Gershman emphasized NED’s commitment to promoting democracy and crossborder cooperation in the post-Soviet space and its long-term partnership with Poland in pursuing these common values. These ideas were echoed in a speech given at the same time by Vice President Biden in Bucharest, which likewise emphasized the role that the former communist and new EU states can play in fostering democracy farther east. 

From Wroclaw, Gershman travelled to Warsaw, where he took part in a hearing of the Parliamentary Working Group Concerning Cooperation with NGOs in the Polish Senate. Together with representatives of a dozen Polish NGOs and long-term NED partners, the issue of creating an effective mechanism for supporting NGO crossborder work was discussed. The Polish senators acknowledged the importance of this work and NED’s contribution to developing civil society in Poland. The issue was raised again during a meeting at the Prime Minister’s office, where Gershman reiterated NED’s commitment to working in partnership with Polish NGOs on crossborder initiatives and its support for the government’s efforts to develop stable instruments for assisting these efforts. During the meeting, the Deputy Minister for Education and former head of the Education for Democracy Foundation, Krzysztof Stanowski, presented Gershman with a medal from the Ministry for contributions to the development of civic education in Poland.

While in Warsaw, Gershman presented NED’s Democracy Service Medal posthumously to the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, who was, in Gershman’s words, “the thinker who, more profoundly than any intellectual since George Orwell, explained the origins and deformities of communist totalitarianism and the threat it posed to human freedom.” The award was preceded by a well-attended academic symposium at Warsaw University in honor of the late democrat and friend of the Endowment, which was co-hosted by the Stefan Batory Foundation, a long-time NED partner, and included Dr. Kolakowski’s wife and daughter. The events mirrored a panel and presentation organized earlier in Washington by NED and the Polish Embassy to celebrate the life and contributions of this important figure. 

Gershman finally traveled to Lviv, Wroclaw’s sister city, in Ukraine, the site of NED’s first crossborder program to the east, also implemented by the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation. In Lviv, Gershman attended and addressed an international conference on crossborder issues, “For Our Freedom and Yours! For Our Common Future!” which was funded by NED and organized by the Lion Society, one of Ukraine’s oldest NGOs. The conference brought together over 250 activists from several post-communist states to discuss regional issues and cooperation.  Participants appreciated the opportunity to gather in such a broad group and reflected on the contributions that 20 years of NED-supported crossborder work has made to the region. The two-day event also made clear the important role the NED still has to play in the region and the continuing need for building and strengthening partnerships between civil society in Central Europe and countries to the east. Last year NED funded 43 such programs, totaling over $2 million.

The conference concluded by formulating recommendations for the Civil Society Forum, which was held in Brussels on November 16-17, 2009 and marked a new phase in crossborder work for the region, the EU’s Eastern Partnership program.  Gershman addressed about the importance of the Lviv conference and of the Eastern Partnership initiative, asserting that, “the strategic purpose of this conference is being challenged today by an alternative strategic concept emanating from Moscow, the purpose of which is to isolate the post-communist countries from the West and to subordinate them, economically and politically, to newly assertive Russian power.  But Russia, too, is not impervious to democratic enlargement, which will ultimately be its salvation as well.”