What would Vaclav Havel, a fan of the United States until his death in December 2011 and a proud Central European, have made of all this? I asked Michael Zantovsky, Mr. Havel’s biographer and longtime friend.

Mr. Zantovsky, who has served as ambassador to Washington, Tel Aviv and London, and now heads Mr. Havel’s presidential library in Prague, was positive. Looking at Central Europe today, Mr. Havel “would almost certainly have observed that 30 years have passed and we are not dealing here with Socialist basket cases that would need every kind of support.” Some countries “are certainly struggling with some kind of internal problems,” even “slipping back according to some criteria of freedom, and tolerance, and democracy,” he said, diplomatically avoiding names.

In a sense, though, that is testament to progress.

“Havel always would say that it is one of the tragedies of this society to expect salvation — or damnation — to come from the outside and save us,” Mr. Zantovsky said. “He would say that it’s our job to do that. And we can certainly do it.”

There are grounds for optimism. A recent survey of Austria and six former Communist countries — conducted for Globsec, a nongovernmental organization in Slovakia, to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of Communism in the region — reflected the often-confused mood of the area. But encouragingly, it found little pronounced hankering for authoritarian or nationalist rule. And it also indicated growing support for European Union membership and democratic institutions such as free media and civic society.

Mr. Zantovsky expressly sees young people in Central Europe as “a shining light of hope.” They are “flexing their muscles to do the job,” he said.

A four-hour train ride southeast of Prague lies the Slovak capital, Bratislava, where a 46-year-old lawyer, Zuzana Caputova, is a fresh face in the region’s politics. She won a surprise victory in presidential elections in March after campaigning on her ability to shut down a landfill and, significantly, on cleaning up Slovakia’s corrupt politics following the murder of a young investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.

Their deaths galvanized Slovaks, in the spirit of 1989, to demand justice. Images of the couple still stare out from walls in the city center. In a hopeful sign, a genuine investigation of their shocking killing was completed; four men will go on trial.