There’s a form of social psychology at work here. After seven decades of stability, Western Europeans tend to believe in the resilience of institutions. Eastern Europeans don’t share that confidence. In a sense the European Union is like a married couple (Western Europe and Eastern Europe) who go through a nasty spell whenever some of the family money is lost in the stock market. The memories of their great romantic past have faded and most of their friends (read: the United States) are preoccupied with their own problems. If the family therapist wants to help the couple preserve their marriage, she has to be aware that one of the partners (Eastern Europe) previously endured an awful divorce. And the feeling that what happens today is simply a repetition of what happened before will, to a great extent, define that partner’s expectations.

I was a philosophy student in my final year at Sofia University when the Bulgarian Communist regime collapsed. That sudden and nonviolent end of something that we were sure was forever — until overnight, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was not — is probably the defining experience of my generation. It brought not only a feeling of liberation but also the sense of the fragility of all things political.

True, comparing the current crisis in the European Union with the Soviet and Yugoslav crises of the late 1980s can be a bit like comparing apples and oranges. By its final years, Communism and the regimes had long since lost their ideological appeal, and their capacity to deliver economic growth was exhausted. In 1990, only 11 percent of all consumer goods in the Soviet Union could be found easily in shops, while there was a shortage of the other 89 percent. In contrast, the European Union is the biggest single market in the world, and Europe accounts for half of the world’s welfare spending. Whereas a majority of Soviet citizens were attracted by life in the West, Europeans are proud of their way of life and political model, and hardly aspire to follow the trajectory of China or Russia.

But ordinary people — unlike political scientists — are constantly comparing apples and oranges. They live in a world populated by dangerous analogies where every major crisis evokes memories of the previous one. And the experience of the Communist collapse strongly influences the way Eastern Europeans perceive and process Brexit. As Roth would understand immediately, the psychological impact of the British referendum is more important than any of the economic or institutional damages it can cost.