Everyone — especially in the West — expected that the end of Communism would bring about shock, chaos, disorder, even civil war. As we know, this did not materialise. Even in the Soviet Union, where Communism lasted for more than seven long decades, it foundered more or less quietly. All of us who knew the book by Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, written at the end of the 1960s, expected much more dramatic events. This relatively quiet end reveals the weakness and effective defencelessness of Communism at the end of the 1980s.

Despite all my criticism of subsequent developments in my country and elsewhere — which I experienced both as a citizen and as a leading politician — I must admit that the post-Communist transition (or transformation) was a success. Criticism of certain aspects is undoubtedly justified but the fact that it was essentially positive cannot be disputed.

In Czechoslovakia we rapidly succeeded in establishing the framework of a fully-fledged parliamentary democracy. It proved that it was not necessary to create a political system: it was sufficient, to use economic terminology, to begin the process of entering the political market.

This favourable political structure lasted until the end of the last decade, and the outbreak of the 2008-09 financial and economic crisis. Different political tendencies then started to prevail. It led to the shift from standard politics to post-political, post-democratic arrangements, from authentic, ideologically well-defined political parties to ad hoc political projects based more on marketing than on ideology or party membership.

It was not a consequence of the economic crisis; the crisis only accelerated it. I am afraid this is a more general European trend. It is the consequence of the increasingly destructive weakening, if not destruction, of the nation-state by the European Union and of the strengthening of global governance. It is also a result of the gradual replacement of traditional European and Western values with politically correct norms based on new "isms" — cultural relativism, human rightsism, multiculturalism, NGO-ism, feminism, homosexualism, environmentalism, juristocracy and mediacracy. Classical political democracy is, I am afraid, finished.

On the economic side, we organised a rapid systemic change. We proclaimed very early and quite explicitly that we wanted capitalism. We resolutely refused any kind of "third way" or any convergence of existing economic and political systems. What we are now getting, however, is not the "first way". It is the old, well-known "second way" — European socialism. This is another reason for our frustration.