"I said: 'In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks; perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!"'
Ash makes this statement to his contact, Vaclav Havel, in Prague. He's interested in how Czechoslovakia is following in the seemingly increasingly inevitable diversion of East and West which has been overtaking Central Europe. As the year draws on, this statement is repeated on news reports and in political discussions, garnering much attention.
"I cannot emphasize too strongly that this is not a comprehensive history of the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe.'
Ash is not concerned with presenting a most historically accurate account of the politics in this region. As an eyewitness, he's trying to capture the experience. He wants to draw the reader into the unique atmosphere and the terrifying conversations to which he was privy at the time in order to make these events seem more tangible and real to the casual reader.
"Ideology provided a residual legitimation, perhaps also enabling the rulers, and their politi-bureaucratic servants, at least partly to deceive themselves about the nature of their own rule. At the same time it was vital for the semantic occupation of the public sphere."
In his analysis of the events of 1989 in Europe, Ash understands that ideology was what differentiated leaders from cons. They weren't merely looking for power because they believed they were part of a cause. The ideology provided an excuse which the government could successfully hide behind.
"The ideas whose time has come are old, familiar, well-tested ones. (It is the new ideas whose time has passed.) So is all they have to offer us their unique, theoretically intriguing but practically burdensome problems? Do they come like mendicants to the door bearing only chronicles of wasted time?"
"Why return to old patterns of thought?" Ash wonders. He cannot see an outcome different from those previous, which have played out in largely similar fashion and always spelled endings. He is troubled at the idea of re-entertaining these old-fashioned prospects of communism and the idyllic.
