People who lived behind the Iron Curtain are substantially happier with life 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but express reservations about democracy, capitalism and their lot in the modern market economy, a new survey reports.

Fewer than a third of Ukrainians approve of the change to multiparty democracy, according to a wide-ranging poll by the Pew Research Center. In Russia, a majority mourns the Soviet Union, and nearly half say there ought to be a Russian empire. In every former Soviet bloc country polled,...