Dullness follows romance and revolutions

If you joined or even just watched the revolutions in eastern Europe in 1989-91, life may have started to look rather dull soon afterwards. Any chance of recapturing the heady spirit of those days is understandably tempting. But trying to relive the joyous days of your youth can be as disappointing in politics as it is in romance.

The "colour revolutions" of 2000-2005 in Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Lebanon and (not much mentioned these days) Kirgizstan were entrancing because they promised more of that collective joy that made the earth move from Berlin to Vladivostok.

On one level, it seems curmudgeonly to complain. Hopeful, patriotic, idealistic (and photogenic) youngsters trying to topple cruel, deceitful, incompetent (and unphotogenic) oldies deserve the support of all right-thinking people, surely?

Up to a point. When all else fails, mass demonstrations may be the only means left to resist and protest. It was people-power on the street (and Boris Yeltsin on a tank) that stopped the coup attempt in Moscow in August 1989. It was people-power flooding out of the prison camp of the Soviet-occupied zone of East Germany that forced the old guard there to admit defeat.

But in anything but the short term, people-power, especially when inspired and financed from abroad, is little substitute for democracy. Ivan Krastev, a sharp-witted Sofia-based analyst, argues now that the colour revolutions, although important and inspiring, are a poor model for political change.

For a start, the foreign-funded non-governmental organisations which prepared and organised them now face big obstacles in the ex-Soviet countries where they would most like to work. Society’s appetite for economic and political liberalism and for Euroatlanticism has waned over the past decade. Taking money, however innocently, from the European Union or from the US government, may be a political no-no.

Iraq has weakened America’s soft-power appeal and stoked anti-Americanism. So has the perception of double standards. Dick Cheney may see the logic of bashing the Kremlin for authoritarianism and praising Kazakhstan for its progress towards democracy, as he did during a trip round the region last year, but for most audiences, the argument is hard to grasp.

The bottled-up anger with the petty humiliations of daily life that fuelled past protest movements in ex-communist countries has weakened, partly because life has improved, partly because of the opportunities offered by migration. The EU - to put it mildly - no longer looks like a lighthouse beckoning new members towards peace and prosperity. As Krastev notes, the clearer the EU’s borders become, the less attractive it is to outsiders, and the weaker the promise: "If you are like us, you could become one of us."

And then there is Russia. The country is now trying the same people-power game, in some respects with more success. In much of the region the Kremlin now has more money, more time, more expertise and a longer attention-span than its western rivals. Groups like ‘Nashi’, ‘Walking together’ and the ‘Young Guard’ are often, and rightly, described as puppet organisations with a sinister agenda. The same outsiders who delight in orange-clad people-power start talking alarmedly about mob rule when the youngsters are clad in the Kremlin’s red, white and blue.

Toppling autocracies in places like Belarus and Russia may look a formidable task for pro-democracy activists, but what comes after is even harder. As Ukraine shows, making democracy work properly after a revolution is a long and tedious struggle. It does not help that the West, democracy’s supposed showcase, is divided, demoralised and inattentive. Nostalgia for 1989 is nice, but it is memories of the hard slog of the previous decades that now look more relevant.

• The writer is central and eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist.

If you joined or even just watched the revolutions in eastern Europe in 1989-91, life may have started to look rather dull soon afterwards. Any chance of recapturing the heady spirit of those days is understandably tempting. But trying to relive the joyous days of your youth can be as disappointing in politics as it is in romance.