Why is it so much harder than anyone expected to break ties with the soviet past?

William Browder, the Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, turned campaigner and began to wage war for justice after one of his lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was killed in a Moscow prison.

In a replay of the classic East-West rivalry of the Cold War, but with the United States conspicuously on the sidelines, Russia has used economic and security threats to draw post-communist countries into its Eurasian Customs Union and to block the European Union’s Eastern Partnership initiative, Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, writes for WP

"Not all countries will become successful democracies. But I still think of liberal democracy as the only serious alternative"

A profound reboot of Ukraine’s socio-economic system is the only way to transform it from an uncompetitive Soviet fragment to a modern dynamic economy

Why are Batkivshchyna and UDAR leaders celebrating a Ukrainian tragedy?

To regain its status as a natural part of Europe, Ukraine needs to break free from Russian and Soviet colonial heritage

Ukrainian-European or the Soviet-Russian civilizational model will win out: with the former, Ukraine will quickly catch up with its Western neighbours. With the latter, it will likely cease to exist

Estonians took radical action to get rid from the Soviet legal system and laid the foundation for the rule of law, with a clear separation of powers and an independent judiciary.

Apologising for past events in history has become an explosive issue around the world. Should statesmen take personal responsibility for events that happened long before they were born?

Dutch Sovietologist Robert van Voren speaks about Soviet repressive psychiatry and its surviving offshoots

Jerzy Eisler talks about the role of history in contemporary Poland and the country's experience with de-sovietization

Village Grutas is located near the small Lithuanian resort town Druskininkai. The village’s name evokes a range of emotions – from outrage to satirical smiles – but leaves no-one in Lithuania indifferent. The reason — its unusual open-air museum, Grutas Park, where the key exhibits are the sculptures of Soviet leaders that long "decorated" squares in Lithuanian cities. These are the monuments in front of which both rallies were held and pioneers took their oaths

Ronaldas Racinkas, who is tasked with providing a legal assessment of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes against Lithuanians, speaks on his country’s successes and its failures in saying goodbye to its Soviet legacy

The Occupation Museum of Latvia is a reflection of the country’s historical contradictions

Estonia established a museum with a good sense of humor, evidently to attract more Russians

A museum by this name opened in Budapest in 2002 to tell about two tragic periods in Hungarian history – the repressive rules of the Nazis and of the Soviets

Eugenijus Peikštenis, director of the Museum of Genocide Victims, speaks about how the taboo history of Soviet repressions came to light

Lithuanian authorities set up the Museum of Genocide Victims in a building once occupied by the KGB

The Museum of Soviet Occupation in Georgia is a monument to the nation's critical reappraisal and rejection of is Soviet past

Why an American decided to set up a Museum of Communism in the Czech Republic

In 2011, Ukraine will in many ways look like the USSR at the time of stagnation