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Photo by Emma Slager

In Budapest, plywood boards from a construction site have been spray painted with the words “Economy Sucks,” an indicator of the discontent over the deteriorating Hungarian economic situation.

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Photo by Jill Genzink

Budapest, capital of Hungary, rises above the Danube.

On Monday, the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which divided communist East Germany from democratic West Germany for almost three decades. The Wall was a symbol of the rigid control of life behind the Iron Curtain and the isolation of the Warsaw Pact.

Today, Germany has one of the world’s five strongest economies, has a stable parliamentary government and is a leading West European nation. Its transition from two divided countries to one unified, prosperous country was fairly smooth and complete. But what about the rest of the former Soviet Bloc?

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the many revolutionary events of 1989, which are seldom acknowledged in Western discourse. Also seldom acknowledged is the continuing economic, political and social struggle with the legacies of Communism in Central Europe. As students currently on Calvin’s semester in Hungary program, we have studied and directly witnessed this struggle.

Various conversations and encounters with Central European youth have offered both encouraging and discouraging signs of change. Our experiences in Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and here in Hungary have opened our eyes to issues of poverty, sexism and ethnic discrimination.

One of the issues that has been challenging is the economic transition from a state-controlled to a market-based economy. The economies of Central Europe’s communist countries were false economies, plagued by inefficiencies and shortages. Indeed, economic failure was a significant factor in Communism’s collapse. Unsurprisingly, economic recovery was a priority of the post-communist governments of this region, and Western capitalism was the main model of economic development. Sadly, Western capitalism has destroyed much of Central European culture, replacing local shops and restaurants with tacky souvenir shops and McDonalds.

In Prague, one of the region’s top tourist destinations, we witnessed how Western-style capitalism (and Western capitalists on vacation) can create a culture of carnival. At a tram stop at 11 p.m., a few of us were stopped by a rather drunk American student.

“Hey you American speakers,” she said to us. “Can I pay you all the money I have to take me home?”

After she finished vomiting in the gutter, we walked her home (but didn’t take her money). As a visiting student, she was like countless Germans, Russians, Brits, Americans and others we saw in the city: a Westerner taking advantage of a country that welcomes foreigners and puts on a show for them in the hopes of attracting foreign spending. Inviting tourists is the Czechs’ prerogative, but as we watched drugs and money flow freely in the seedy basement of the Chapeau Rouge lounge, saw the kitschy commoditization of the Communist past and witnessed cynical testaments to the capitalist present in art and graffiti, I couldn’t help but feel that the free market has failed to restore a positive economic identity to parts of the region.

In Warsaw, conversations with Polish young people encouraged more hope. Like the Czech Republic, Poland is a Slavic nation, and our hosts pointed out numerous examples of Polish Slavic identity — for example, in the type of food served at a few successful, new restaurants. This affirmation of Slavic identity meant to them that Poland is developing economically without simply transplanting a Western identity that isn’t really Polish. They also happily pointed out people speaking Polish with immigrants’ accents, taking immigration as a positive sign for Poland’s development. Their enthusiasm for their country’s development and also for its historic identity — without the anger of nationalism — was truly encouraging.

But the legacies of Communism extend far beyond economic issues and Western capitalism. Gender relations have also suffered in these countries since 1989. Sexism and anti-feminism run rampant across Central European societies and are evident in the workplace, universities and the day-to-day interactions between men and women. The policies of forced gender equality implemented by Communist governments have arguably bred this sentiment.

During the Communist period, subsidized day care centers, maternity leave, no fault divorce laws and legalized abortion were meant to free women from the drudgery of household responsibilities and allow them to enter the workforce. Initially, these various laws and policies did have a positive impact on the lives of women, but they soon backfired, contributing to high divorce and abortion rates across Central Europe. The espoused ideal of equality was never attained; women still did a majority of the housework and were soon overburdened with both work and household responsibilities.

The overdose of gender-equalizing policies under Communism has bred a full-force rejection of Western feminism in Central Europe today. Even young, educated university students have expressed their propensity toward separate gender spheres: men in the workplace and women in the household. Women suffer abuses such as sexual harassment, workplace discrimination and domestic abuse under this sexist mentality. The Prague Post recently reported that 78 percent of Czech university students have been victims of verbal and physical sexual harassment, and 3 percent (or about 11,000 students) have experienced violent sexual harassment from teachers or professors.

But while mentions of feminism are greeted with looks of disgust and impatience by the majority, some in the younger generation have shown interest in feminist topics. A fellow student from Germany, after realizing my feminist leanings, surprisingly urged me to press our sociology professor on issues of gender. Not surprisingly, my questions were quickly dismissed by my professor, who deemed women’s issues to be unimportant.

Not only women suffer under discrimination here in Central Europe. Ethnic discrimination is also still a problem, seen most strikingly in the discrimination of the Roma. Often called gypsies, a term that carries significant negative connotations, the Roma suffer under blatant economic and social isolation. In Hungary, the Roma have been isolated economically by clear class divisions. Due to workplace discrimination, Roma were the first to lose their jobs after the fall of Communism and the rise of a market-based, competitive economy. As a result, Roma came to dominate the lowest levels of society. Roma villages are clearly the poorest and most destitute in the Hungarian countryside, and city ghettos and poor districts support an overwhelming Roma population, where they resort to crime, drugs and prostitution to make a living.

A recent visit to the Roma village of Csenyete, outside of Miskolc and near the Slovakian border, made real the hardships of these people. Miles from the nearest town and without transportation, Csenyete’s people are literally trapped in their village. Strangely, the children of Csenyete seemed unaware of their fate. The air of the village was full with the singing and laughter of children. Bianca, a young Roma girl, told me she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. Sadly, her dream will never be realized. In Csenyete, girls get pregnant around the age of 12 or 13 and continue to have children into their 20s and 30s. No one in the village has a job and all live in utter poverty. During the winter, families slowly starve and are driven to burn their houses for heat. This large underclass and the poor relations between Roma and non-Roma communities pose significant challenges for development in the region.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism, most Central Europe governments have overcome the problem of political inexperience that was a major challenge in the early 90s. However, one problem in government that has recently worsened is anti-Semitism. Despite its anti-fascist nature, communism did not put an end to anti-Semitism in Central Europe, and the current economic crisis has increased scapegoating and anti-Jewish sentiment. At National Day celebrations in Budapest on October 23, we saw groups of neo-Nazis waving their flags at public rallies, and a sticker we saw in the underground just last week declared “I hate Jews!” We can only imagine how much more of this we would see if we understood Hungarian.

Unlike in the United States, where the America Israel Public Affairs Committee is one of the strongest lobbies in Washington and where an anti-Semitic statement amounts to political suicide, public anti-Semitism is common here. In 2009 EU parliamentary elections, an explicitly anti-Semitist political party, Jobbik, took nearly 15 percent of the votes. Much of this is also tied up with anti-Roma sentiment, and most of the young Hungarians we’ve spoken to are pessimistic about the strengthening of the extreme right.

Though there are many indications of improvements in life since the end of Communism — foreign investment, social concern and global awareness, not to mention markets full of food, free media and legitimate governments — there is a great amount of cynicism that permeates society here, and while this week marks a major anniversary in the end of European Communism, the legacies of Communism have not disappeared from Central Europe.

Despite the passage of two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the legacies of communism are still alive and well in Central Europe and can be seen in economic, political and social struggles. The countries we’ve visited, often forgotten in the West, must be remembered in light of the Berlin Wall celebrations. Unlike East Germany, which was helped on the road to development by its Western half, many Central European countries are still growing into their post-Communist identities, and there are many growing pains they have yet to overcome.