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30 years ago…

Thirty years ago Communism collapsed in a series of revolutions that swept through Central and Eastern Europe.  Much has been, and is being, written about those tumultuous events.  Our pick of the crop is a piece by the Financial Times that tracks the fortunes of five people – Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian – in a series of interviews in 1999, 2009 and this summer.  They recount how their lives changed, and reflect on the political developments that followed the revolutions of 1989, here.

Our photograph was taken by Jaromír Čejka during the Velvet Revolution in what was then Czechosolvakia, at a demonstration on Prague’s Wenceslas Square on November 20th 1989.  The banner reads ‘Don’t live in lies’.