The western media and the western think-tanks are either incredibly naive or purposely distorting the truth about the East-Central Europe. There is for example plenty of talk about the success of democracy in Poland (this is a wider issue, but let us just focus on Poland for the purpose of this letter), while there is really no evidence that democracy, democratic principles and mechanisms really took hold in Poland.
Jackson Diehl, the Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post, wrote in his article Egypt 'democrats' abandon democracy, 22 July 2013:
What happened to Egypt's young liberals? Five years ago they were the most promising movement in an Arab world dominated by strongmen like Mubarak. Now the vast majority of them are cheering another general, coup leader Abdel Fatah al-Sissi [...]
The dizzying turnaround is unprecedented in the history of popular pro-democracy movements. Poland's Solidarity or the anti-Pinochet movement in Chile would never have dreamed of embracing their former oppressors.Mr. Diehl is completely wrong on this issue. It would be interesting to know how he got to be so blind while holding an important job in a newspaper shaping the views of the ruling elites of the world's superpower. This short excerpt shows how the public opinion in the US is misinformed (some might say 'lied to') by those who are paid to monitor and interpret the world affairs. That sentence about Solidarity not embracing their former oppressors is simply a bold lie. Jackson Diehl worked as a WP's foreign correspondent in Warsaw for several years in the 1980s. One would expect him to know the basics of the Polish situation.
The myth of Solidarity was cooked up by the communists themselves.
Yes, there are several dominant parties in Poland, which is stereotypically taken as one of the signs of democracy. We have different newspapers and tv channels. However, when you just scratch the surface a little bit more, you can clearly see that this is just a deception.
One should remember that the rulers of the former communist countries perfected deception techniques since 1945. In 1989 they presented themselves as people without power. Corrupt regimes that supposedly crumbled under their own weight. Unfortunately this is not true. The communist regimes had plenty of time to prepare for the regime change so that the power remained in the same circles.
