“Legacies of 1989 for dissent today” by Barbara J. Falk published in Eurozine

Street photo from the “Velvet revolution” in Prague 1989. Photo by Josef Šrámek ml. from Wikimedia Commons.

What are the legacies of dissent, thirty years after 1989? Two places to look are the 2011 Arab Spring and Armenia’s revolts in 2018. They both teach different lessons about establishing the interpersonal conditions for successful non-violent rebellions and restoring social trust in an illiberal age when authoritarians use ‘hybrid warfare’ tactics to disrupt democracies from the inside.

Barbara J. Falk’s article published in Eurozine magazine on 31 October 2019. It is based on Dr. Falk’s recent keynote speech presented in the conference “East European Dissent between Agenda & Legacy” that was jointly organized by WG1 and WG4.

Barbara J. Falk is an associate professor at the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College, Toronto.