Spring in Winter: The 1989 Revolutions

This absorbing collection of eight essays gives readers a glimpse of the historic events of 1989 from an Eastern European point of view. East German Jens Reich describes ``wall-sickness,'' the dullness and loneliness that come from being caged in the center of Europe, and the sudden, avalanche-like nature of the German revolution. Jan Urban discusses his own resistance to the Czechoslovakian Communist regime and differences between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the revolt of 1989. Jonathan Eyal reviews Ceausescu'sspelled this way in book strategies for exercising power, noting that the revolt that brought him down was only an ``outburst of anger'' and that Romania's future remains to be decided. Andrei A. Piontkowsky observes that the U.S.S.R.'s decision not to intervene and crush the revolts was less ideologic than pragmatic, deriving from that country's experiences in Afghanistan. In two essays by Westerners, British James Eberle comments that his country must now join the accelerating process of European integrationp. 208 , and John Kenneth Galbraith warns that Eastern Europe will not turn toward a Smithian free market. Prins is director of the University of Cambridge Global Security Programme. (May)