Central Europe on the Way to Democracy

In 1990, IWM organized the landmark conference Central Europe on the Way to Democracy, bringing together leading intellectuals and politicians from across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union to discuss Europe’s future prospects at a time of dramatic change. It was a remarkable event that drew great media attention and international visibility, organized in the premises of Vienna’s Palais Schwarzenberg. And it was a milestone in the history of IWM, crystallizing its mission of offering a space for discussions that transcend “any ideology, church, bureaucracy, or political party,” as founding rector Krzysztof Michalski put it in one of his interventions at the conference.

As part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of IWM in 2022, the Institute is housing an in-house exhibition on the many faces and facets of this conference, using sound and images from this event.

Here, in this virtual exhibition, we offer some voices of the conference alongside the visual. Short excerpts of the original recordings, as well as transcriptions in the respective language (English, German, Russian, Polish, or Czech) and English translation are available.