N O EMPIRE IN history has disintegrated as quickly or as bloodlessly as the Soviet one, in the remarkable year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. A period of carnage in Romania the following month was the only grisly counter-example. Yugoslavia, never a part of that empire, followed a tragically different path; but for the rest of central and eastern Europe, though clearly imperfect, the past 30 years have been a time of marvels.

Standards of living for most of the region’s peoples have vastly improved, and most of them know it. New polling by the Pew Research Centre shows that 81% of Poles, 78% of Czechs and 55% of Hungarians agree that this is the case. Only Bulgarians on balance take a gloomy view, with just 32% of them thinking that their standard of living has improved since 1989. Development has been patchy, but for every depopulating and ageing rustbelt in eastern Europe there is a booming industrial region, a tech cluster or a services centre desperate for more workers.

Majorities in every country, mostly very big ones, approve of the multiparty systems and market economies that have delivered this, as well as their integration into Western institutions—the EU (from 2004) and NATO (from 1999). Free to travel and work anywhere in the EU , millions have done just that. Many who stayed behind, though, feel left behind. Aniko Takacs, aged 25, who works at a petrol station on the Hungarian side of the border with Austria, earns €500 ($550) a month. Her sister, who does the same job for the same company in Austria, earns €1,500. Countries with low fertility rates and little immigration are facing steep population declines.

People leave not only because wages are higher in western Europe but also because public services are better and corruption rare. So many eastern European doctors and nurses have emigrated that access to good health care has deteriorated in some places, especially outside big cities.

After three decades of democracy, cynicism about politicians is as widespread as it is in western Europe. In Slovakia 63% of people think most elected officials do not care what they think, a Pew poll finds; in Hungary, 71% and in Bulgaria, 78%. By way of comparison, the figures in France and Britain are 76% and 70%, respectively.

In western Europe and America such anger at the ruling class has translated into votes for nationalists, populists, Brexit and Donald Trump. In Hungary and Poland those who feel left behind tend to blame liberalism and the West. Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, who was an anti-communist activist in Hungary in 1989, says that many of her compatriots were disappointed after the fall of communism because they expected their country “to become like Austria overnight”. It did not, of course, but GDP per person, not to mention life expectancy, has risen sharply across the region.

Some people have done much better than others, and not all of them by fair means. Communist officials and securocrats who rebranded themselves as democrats had the education and connections to retain power, make money and profit from insider-dominated privatisations. The first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia in 1989 was Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright. Today the prime minister of the Czech Republic is Andrej Babis, the second-richest man in the country and a former intelligence service collaborator.

The success of former communists has rankled. In some countries, populists have exploited this mood. Ardent supporters of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party did not celebrate the 30th anniversary this year of the country’s first semi-free elections, which followed the demise of the Kremlin-backed communist dictatorship. The way they see it is that in 1989 “the pinkos struck a deal with the reds to keep the reds in power at the expense of the Polish people. Poland only became genuinely independent in 2015 when they were voted out and the true patriots [ie, Law and Justice] were voted in,” sighs Konstanty Gebert, a former anti-communist activist. This is an odd way to describe Poland’s rise to prosperity under a series of post-communist democratic governments.

In Hungary Viktor Orban, a revolutionary anti-communist turned populist prime minister, uses anti-Western rhetoric to win support. He talks of defending the common man, downtrodden by the arrogant liberal elite. Members of this elite imitate the West, which in turn looks down on eastern Europeans as country bumpkins, he suggests. The end of communism was a liberation, he says, but Hungary also needs a revival of nationalist and Christian values, which he says he is delivering. He rejects liberal notions of human rights, tolerance and consensus.

Different places, different values

Eastern Europe remains far less liberal than the west. Tolerance towards gay people is uneven, and has diminished since 2002 in several countries, polls suggest. The end of communism unleashed hostility to the region’s large Roma minority, who remain almost completely unrepresented politically. Hungary’s regime has undermined the institutions that are supposed to check it, such as the courts and the media. Poland’s ruling party has tried to nobble the courts and the civil service.

Despite such setbacks, progress has been striking since communism ended. Eastern Europeans have never been as free or as rich as they are today. Some of the elderly grumble that life was more secure in the old days, but their memories may be tinged with regret that they are no longer as young as they were then. Historians will describe the communist era in Eastern Europe as four decades of servitude. ■