Reflections on the Revolution in Europe [antikvár]

Dear MrJ.,When at the end of my recent trip to your country, I came to see you on that sunny morning in early March, I expected us to sit down to a cup of coffee and chat a little about current affairs in the manner of what the French sometimes call café de commerce. The winter was odd, was it not? Stormy, but mild. The 'greenhouse effect,' no doubt. In fact, it may have saved Gorbachev. At any rate, it reduced his energy bill. . . But you never allowed such small talk to begin. Instead you showered me with questions about the riddles of Poland and Europe after the revolution of 1989 until I was too dazed to answer any of them properly. Only now, in the quiet of my Oxford study, surrounded by books and papers and gazing out at the friendly motley of the buildings of St Antony's College, do I find the resources to try to respond to you properly.What does it all mean, and where is it going to lead (you wanted to know)? Are we not witnessing a process of dissolution without anything taking the place of the old and admittedly dismal structures? How can political parties emerge (you asked for example) when the old ones of 1946 and of the interwar years have become irrelevant, and new parties are unable to find a social base to sustain them? And why (you added