20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall - Book Author Media Availability

November 2, 2009

TWO DECADES AFTER BERLIN: EXPERTS SAY A "NEW WALL" DIVIDES FORMERLY COMMUNIST STATES FROM EACH OTHER - AND WESTERN-LIKE PROGRESS

New Geography of NATO/EU Membership Replaces Iron Curtain In Terms of Defining Key Differences; Former Ambassador to Romania, Network Correspondent Are Authors of New Book: "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians Survived Communism, Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy"

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With the approach next Monday (November 9, 2009) of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, two experts and book authors are tackling one of the biggest questions of the day: Why have some former Communist nations made so much progress in the direction of democracy while others have changed much less?

The experts available for interviews on this topic are former United States ambassador to Romania Jim Rosapepe (1998-2001) and distinguished journalist Sheilah Kast, who reported for ABC on the collapse of Communism from Moscow and Tbilisi and covered Hillary Clinton's first trip to Eastern Europe. Rosapepe and Kast are the authors of "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians Survived Communism, Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy" (Bancroft Press, November 2009, $25.95 hardcover) which zeroes in on Romania -- past, present and future -- as a microcosm to examine the period before, during and after the fall of Communism.

Rosapepe and Kast say: "Twenty years later, the Wall is down, but a great split remains -- it's just moved east. The border is that of the European Union and NATO. In the (new) West, EU member countries from Estonia to Bulgaria have adopted the democratic norms of Western Europe and the US -- free elections, free media, and free enterprise. But to the east -- Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, etc, countries not in the EU or NATO -- democracy ranges from the endangered to the non-existent."

Why does such a great split remain? Rosapepe and Kast see these key factors as being responsible:

    --  "History -- Communism came to the new EU counties much later (the
        1940's) than it came to Russia and other former states of the USSR (the
        1920's). That meant that in the 1990's, while Poles and Croats had heard
        about democracy from their parents and grandparents, in Belarus and
        Kazakhstan no one was alive who remembered it."

    --  "Nationalism -- Few peoples among the former Soviet satellites of
        central and eastern Europe feel ethnic bonds to the Russians. For
        Hungarians and Lithuanians, bringing down the Iron Curtain was more
        about national freedom from domination by a foreign power than about
        democracy vs dictatorship. To the east, Russian nationalism is not
        defined against the pre-1989 political system. Russians had no outside,
        imperialistic power to rebel against. And countries from Ukraine to
        Kazakhstan have large Russian populations who are drawn to Moscow's
        orbit."

    --  "The EU and NATO themselves -- By creating strong security, economic,
        and political alliances with their new members, NATO and the EU sharpen
        the divide between those new members and their neighbors to the east --
        less trade, less travel, less trust. Simply being inside these alliances
        promotes democracy through example, rules, and expectations. Outside
        them, anti-democratic factions have more space to maneuver. That's why
        democratic forces in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, for example, want to
        join the EU and NATO. They want to move to the western side of the 'new
        wall.'"

What does this portend for the future? Rosapepe and Kast offer these thoughts:

    --  "The paths to democracy in places like Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, even
        with the Orange Revolution, will not follow the Polish and Romanian
        models. The future of democracy in former Soviet states now outside the
        EU and NATO is highly uncertain."

    --  "American and European engagement with the countries east of the NATO/EU
        border remains the right policy to promote change. The more travel and
        trade, the better. And, for those countries who are interested, keeping
        a path to EU and NATO membership open is critical. It emboldens the
        local democrats and discourages the local autocrats."

    --  "Beyond that, we need the focused patience we had in the Cold War. We
        didn't know when or how it would end. But we knew the endgame we wanted
        -- democracy and freedom from Soviet domination for eastern Europe. By
        keeping committed to that goal, we helped keep hope alive behind the
        iron curtain and were ready to welcome them to the democratic coalition
        when the opportunity appeared."

ABOUT THE BOOK

To be released on November 9, 2009 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians Survived Communism, Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy" (Bancroft Press, November 2009, $25.95 hardcover) zeroes in on Romania - past, present and future - as a microcosm to examine the period before, during and after the fall of Communism.

As Kast and Rosapepe write in their preface: "Many of Romania's most difficult challenges in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany and the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania have been similar to those encountered throughout the former Soviet bloc . . . This is the story of all 350 million people in two dozen countries."

In "Dracula is Dead," the authors present a portrait of a nation that serves as a model for the region and the world for how people of diverse ethnic heritages can co-exist in one country, and as neighbors. Through their thoughtful analysis, Kast and Rosapepe provide a new understanding of the dramatic transformation of Romania from a Communist country into a vibrant democracy and a member of NATO and the European Union -- and what its metamorphosis means to the rest of the world.

For Romanians, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 was an important step toward their own revolution against Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in late November, 1989.

More information about the book can be found online at: http://www.draculaisdead.com/news/news-2.html.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sheilah Kast is an award-winning journalist well known to viewers of PBS, ABC, and CNN, and to listeners of NPR. For ABC, she reported on the collapse of Communism from Moscow and Tbilisi and covered Hillary Clinton's first trip to Eastern Europe. She hosts AARP's weekly newsmaker cable TV show, "Inside E Street," as well as her own daily magazine show on WYPR, the public radio affiliate in Maryland.

Jim Rosapepe represented the United States as ambassador to Romania from 1998 to 2001, bringing to the job experience in American government and business, as well as in the former Communist world. Since returning to Maryland, where he is a state senator, he has served on the boards of various investment funds and companies active in Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has written on economic and security issues for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Harvard International Review. Jim and Sheilah have been married for 26 years, and live in College Park, Maryland.

SOURCE Book Authors Jim Rosapepe and Sheilah Kast and Bancroft Press, NYC