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The East Europeans were so grateful for American help against the defunct Soviet Empire that they tended to idealise the Western Empire. I believe during the first free elections in Poland Solidarity had a poster of Gary Cooper in High Noon wearing a Solidarity badge saying “Solidarity – at High Noon 4th June 1989” The designer of this poster obviously assumed that a reference to the American Western High Noon did not have to be explained to an ordinary Polish voter.
@Robert: while the East Europeans were living under the Soviet boot they really had my sympathy, I even participated in some joint actions with exiled members of Solidarnosc (in these years I was naive, considered myself a conservative, and did not know that Solidarnosc was a creation of Vernon A. Walters of CIA and Karol Wojtyla).
But ever since the East Europeans became voluntary lackeys of NATO our of a hysterical fear of some possible (and in fact totally IMpossible) threat from a “resurgent Russia/USSR” I have nothing good to say about that. Eastern Europe had the possibility to become a source of inspiration for both the East and the West. Instead, they are now despised by both their former and their actual masters. They delude themselves into thinking that they are now “real Europeans” while all they are in semi-bankrupt banana republics for the West.
It is hard for anybody to respect those who do not respect themselves.
Some ascerbic commentory on Poland as a US client state can be found on this site by a guy called Karl Naylor, based in Poland. He claims to be a conservative but is scathing about what neoliberalism did to Russia in the Nineties.
http://easterneuropewatch.blogspot.com/search/label/Poland%20as%20a%20US%20Client%20State
@Robert: thanks for the link, this guy is very good. God willing, one day in the future, people like him will return a real sense of dignity to the East Europeans.
I remember when Lech Walesa came to the ILO conference in Geneva and spoke about the evils of capitalism – just like before him Alexander Solzhenitsyn had. I then had high hope that these people from the East would create a type of “capitalism with a human face” (Now I understand that this is an oxymoron, but then I really believed this). What a crying shame that history put Western lackeys in power in Eastern Europe and a drunken buffoon like Eltsin in power in Russia. That, combined with a push of NATO and the EU to the East did more to sabotage real democracy in the former communist countries then anything the reactionaries, mafia thugs or ex-KGB folks ever did.
It is such a shame as Eastern Europe had so much to offer, so much human potential, a different way to be “European” if you want. All they ended up doing is aping the worst aspects of the West..