Interesting things what I did learn from reading History of the Present by Timothy Garton Ash:


1. Difficulty in forming democratic governments in central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism.  A single movement united against communism (eg, Solidarity in Poland) suddenly has to almost divide to form a multi-party democracy.  TGA believes the most successful countries needed a strong coalition government to drive the necessary economic changes from a collective to a market economy.


2. Talking of a former Solidarity member who once ran an underground anti-communist newspaper in Warsaw, and who now stands to make millions as the post-communist media conglomerate she helped found is floated on the stock market: "Perhaps this is the last irony of freedom's battle: the compulsory could be defied, but the voluntary may be irresistible".


3.  TGA suggests that states can only be stable with a majority of the same ethnicity, and states of mixed ethnicities - eg, Yugoslavia, Bosnia - are being torn apart through civil war and often end up being divided into smaller nation states.  Czechoslovakia is another example, although its separation in to two countries was managed peacefully.  Suggests that in order for Europe to integrate more fully (ie, through the EU), states may first have to divide into smaller nations in order to achieve peace and stability.


4. Writing in 1999, TGA suggests that Europe should focus on enlarging the EU rather than pushing on with monetary union with some countries which are "not ready for it".  "I fear the resulting strains will make Western Europe a very bad-tempered place - perhaps even worse - at some point in the next ten years".  It's 2012, so he was a few years out, but the current riots in Greece and the problems in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others, are more than enough to vindicate his argument.