89

The revolutions across eastern Europe in 1989 are increasingly interesting to me. Sunday's Observer dedicated its Review section to looking at the events that caused Communist regimes to tumble, one after another, in a matter of months, as well as their legacy.

Here are some thoughts that have occured to me whilst reading:

1) In an interview, the Czech writer Ivan Klima bemoans how "I sometimes go to discuss with students in Prague what happened and I often have to explain first what communism was; they have absolutely no idea". I wonder, isn't this a sort of victory? Whilst "never forget" is an admirable and necessary maxim, a certain amount of forgetting may be useful in forging new lives and countries. I remember reading something that Tom Stoppard may have said, something along the lines of "the greatest rebellion is indifference" and I tend to think that in not knowing much about their country's and families' Communist pasts, these students reveal, unintentionally perhaps, how completely those totalitarian governments were defeated.

2) Western Europe takes a lot forgranted. The kind of social democracy that Neal Ascherson describes as the desire of most "ordinary people" in 1989 - "freedom, a regulated market economy, and a strong welfare state" - is not a neutral state of affairs, it is brought about by actions, events and people. In Britain, this summer has seen the "expenses crisis", and in the context of the stakes that people in 1989 were fighting for, a scandal like this is a luxury. Despite all of Britain's problems, it is good to remember that to be able to debate bank funding and leadership challenges is not as common as we are lulled into thinking.

This is not to say that on the whole Britain's alright so we should stop worrying - "hey, at least it's not a dictatorship!" - but in fact the opposite. I am not "ordinary" in the sense that I don't desire a "regulated market economy" for instance. But it is to realise, and to understand, how fragile forms of government are and to protect the ones we like and fight the ones we don't. I suppose it's a call for action over apathy.

3) We are far away enough from that time to recognise certain fashions - sartorial, hair etc - that stretch across countries and circumstances. All the people in the photos look "of an era" in a way that separates them from us and puts them into "history" rather than the present.

4) As revolutions, they may well turn out to be more important than May 68. Or rather, of a different importance. For me, 68's legacy is more social than political. In fact the political ones failed. Student leaders of the time, permanently shaped by their experiences, became human rights lawyers, psychologists campaigning for better conditions for patients, leading environmentalists, that sort of thing. 1989's legacy appears, at this moment, to be more political than social, heralding the end of one world and the start of another.