Post-communist young have choice -- and stress

By Barbara Sladkowska and Alan Crosby

WARSAW/PRAGUE (Reuters) - When Vladka Soudkova was nursing her baby in the autumn of 1989, she hoped the upheaval across central Europe she was watching on her television screen would bring freedom and choice to her tiny daughter.

She has not been disappointed.

Eighteen this year, Kristyna has opportunities that Vladka and her computer technician husband, Tomas, could only dream of and the chance to travel and study wherever she likes.

"My husband went out to demonstrate and I sat at home watching the exciting events unfold," said Vladka, now a 45-year-old office worker in the Czech capital of Prague.

"That's when we started to hope that our daughters would live in the freedom that we didn't have. Now we can say our wishes and hopes have been fulfilled."

But with that freedom and choice have also come insecurity, a race for material possessions and, for young people, a degree of uncertainty over the future that their parents did not know.

In Hungary, young people have turned away from parliamentary politics and taken to the streets. Young people are leaving Poland rather than trying to make a future there.

"Our children have many more options, but that does not necessarily mean they have it easier," said Vladka.

Kristyna, a student agrees: "I don't think we are happier than our parents were at the same age."

The Soudkovas' views are reflected throughout the central European countries that overthrew the communist system in 1989.

A Reuters survey of young Poles, Czechs and Hungarians who will come of age this year and of their parents shows today's freedoms are widely appreciated. But many young people are dissatisfied with their own lives and feel alienated from the society their parents fought so hard to build.

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Sociologists say the first generation to grow up in central Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall tends to be individualistic and is not particularly interested in politics or in engaging in society in the way their parents did.

Hanna Swida-Ziemba, professor of sociology at Warsaw University who has made a study of Polish youth, says many young Poles are not interested in group values such as citizenship, patriotism or loyalty to society.

"What is characteristic is not the goal toward which they are heading, but rather the feeling of uncertainty, even an aversion to the world they are living in," Swida-Ziemba said.