Democracy at Dawn: Notes from Poland and Points East (Eugenia & Hugh M. Stewart '26 Series on Eastern Europe) [Hardcover]

Frederick Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Series: Eugenia & Hugh M. Stewart '26 Series on Eastern Europe | Publication Date: January 1, 1998

From 1993 to 1995, Frederick Quinn traveled the nations of Eastern Europe and central Asia to help leaders build new judicial systems based on the Rule of Law. As he traveled, he kept a journal of his experiences. A modern Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, this account of the author's encounters with everyone from presidents to guerrillas offers a trenchant and sometimes poignant view of these turbulent regions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is a very personal memoir by a career foreign-service officer, who has also served as head of the Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights rule of law programs, which helped set up new constitutions and judicial systems in the region. He has traveled in, and writes about, the entire belt of former Soviet satellites, or provinces, in eastern Europe and the Caucasus. For the most part, though, he concentrates on Poland. Generally, his views are upbeat and optimistic about the future of these new states. However, he does not spare the confusion, corruption, and disorganization in many areas. For example, crime in Warsaw is rampant, and the young police force, purged of communists, barely able to cope. In Ukraine, a potentially rich country, the economy is in a shambles. Farther south, in the Caucasian and central Asian states, some of which are still part of Russia, the situation is even worse, as in Kazakhstan, where the minimum wage is just $7 a month. Justice in some of these new countries has become atavistically brutal if Quinn's examples are anything to go by. Quinn, one of the first noncombatants to enter the Chechen Republic and the editor of The Federalist Papers Reader, is a cogent observer of the area. If the book has any weakness, it is in the tendency to jump around geographically. 15 b&w photographs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In 1993, Quinn, an American career foreign service officer, began a two-year stint as head of the Rule of Law Programs in Warsaw. His task was to assist the nations of Eastern Europe with constitutional and judicial reforms, but he quickly became bogged down in the bureaucratic frustrations of everyday life in the former communist states. His book is an episodic account of his travels and meetings, told in a diary format that creates a revealing sociological ethnography of those emerging nations. Although Quinn devotes many pages to the transitional struggles in Moldova, Georgia, Albania, and the embattled Chechen Republic, his observations of life in Poland are the most telling. Polish crime and corruption dominate his reports, yet there is an optimism among the people that he finds contagious. A valuable addition to the literature of postcommunist Europe; highly recommended for most libraries.?Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: TAMU Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0890967865
• ISBN-13: 978-0890967867
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,111,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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