Mart Laar, who served as prime minister of Estonia from 1992 to 1994, is chairman of the Pro Patria parlimentary coalition. He is the founder of the Estonian Christian Democratic Union and a board member of the Jaan Tönisson Institute. The present essay is based on remarks he gave at the Fifth World Conference of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C., on 2 May 1995.
Is the challenge of building and consolidating democracy under postcommunist conditions unique, or can one apply lessons learned from other new democracies? The essays collected in this volume explore these questions, while tracing how the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have fared in the decade following the fall of communism.
