20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall - Book Author Media Availability

TWO DECADES AFTER BERLIN: EXPERTS SAY A "NEW WALL" DIVIDES FORMERLY COMMUNIST
STATES FROM EACH OTHER - AND WESTERN-LIKE PROGRESS

New Geography of NATO/EU Membership Replaces Iron Curtain In Terms of Defining
Key Differences; Former Ambassador to Romania, Network Correspondent Are
Authors of New Book: "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians Survived Communism, Ended
it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy"

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With the approach next Monday
(November 9, 2009) of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, two
experts and book authors are tackling one of the biggest questions of the day:
Why have some former Communist nations made so much progress in the direction
of democracy while others have changed much less?

The experts available for interviews on this topic are former United States
ambassador to Romania Jim Rosapepe (1998-2001) and distinguished journalist
Sheilah Kast, who reported for ABC on the collapse of Communism from Moscow
and Tbilisi and covered Hillary Clinton's first trip to Eastern Europe.
Rosapepe and Kast are the authors of "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians Survived
Communism, Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy" (Bancroft Press,
November 2009, $25.95 hardcover) which zeroes in on Romania -- past, present
and future -- as a microcosm to examine the period before, during and after
the fall of Communism.

Rosapepe and Kast say: "Twenty years later, the Wall is down, but a great
split remains -- it's just moved east. The border is that of the European
Union and NATO. In the (new) West, EU member countries from Estonia to
Bulgaria have adopted the democratic norms of Western Europe and the US --
free elections, free media, and free enterprise. But to the east -- Russia,
Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, etc, countries not in the EU or NATO
-- democracy ranges from the endangered to the non-existent."

Why does such a great split remain? Rosapepe and Kast see these key factors
as being responsible:

-- "History -- Communism came to the new EU counties much later (the
1940's) than it came to Russia and other former states of the USSR
(the
1920's). That meant that in the 1990's, while Poles and Croats had
heard
about democracy from their parents and grandparents, in Belarus and
Kazakhstan no one was alive who remembered it."

-- "Nationalism -- Few peoples among the former Soviet satellites of
central and eastern Europe feel ethnic bonds to the Russians. For
Hungarians and Lithuanians, bringing down the Iron Curtain was more
about national freedom from domination by a foreign power than about
democracy vs dictatorship. To the east, Russian nationalism is not
defined against the pre-1989 political system. Russians had no
outside,
imperialistic power to rebel against. And countries from Ukraine to
Kazakhstan have large Russian populations who are drawn to Moscow's
orbit."

-- "The EU and NATO themselves -- By creating strong security, economic,
and political alliances with their new members, NATO and the EU
sharpen
the divide between those new members and their neighbors to the east
--
less trade, less travel, less trust. Simply being inside these
alliances
promotes democracy through example, rules, and expectations. Outside
them, anti-democratic factions have more space to maneuver. That's why
democratic forces in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, for example, want
to
join the EU and NATO. They want to move to the western side of the
'new
wall.'"

What does this portend for the future? Rosapepe and Kast offer these
thoughts:

-- "The paths to democracy in places like Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,
even
with the Orange Revolution, will not follow the Polish and Romanian
models. The future of democracy in former Soviet states now outside
the
EU and NATO is highly uncertain."

-- "American and European engagement with the countries east of the
NATO/EU
border remains the right policy to promote change. The more travel and
trade, the better. And, for those countries who are interested,
keeping
a path to EU and NATO membership open is critical. It emboldens the
local democrats and discourages the local autocrats."

-- "Beyond that, we need the focused patience we had in the Cold War. We
didn't know when or how it would end. But we knew the endgame we
wanted
-- democracy and freedom from Soviet domination for eastern Europe. By
keeping committed to that goal, we helped keep hope alive behind the
iron curtain and were ready to welcome them to the democratic
coalition
when the opportunity appeared."

ABOUT THE BOOK

To be released on November 9, 2009 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of
the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, "Dracula is Dead: How Romanians
Survived Communism, Ended it, and Emerged Since 1989 as the New Italy"
(Bancroft Press, November 2009, $25.95 hardcover) zeroes in on Romania - past,
present and future - as a microcosm to examine the period before, during and
after the fall of Communism.

As Kast and Rosapepe write in their preface: "Many of Romania's most difficult
challenges in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany and
the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania have been similar to those
encountered throughout the former Soviet bloc . . . This is the story of all
350 million people in two dozen countries."

In "Dracula is Dead," the authors present a portrait of a nation that serves
as a model for the region and the world for how people of diverse ethnic
heritages can co-exist in one country, and as neighbors. Through their
thoughtful analysis, Kast and Rosapepe provide a new understanding of the
dramatic transformation of Romania from a Communist country into a vibrant
democracy and a member of NATO and the European Union -- and what its
metamorphosis means to the rest of the world.

For Romanians, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 was an important step
toward their own revolution against Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in
late November, 1989.

More information about the book can be found online at:
http://www.draculaisdead.com/news/news-2.html.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sheilah Kast is an award-winning journalist well known to viewers of PBS, ABC,
and CNN, and to listeners of NPR. For ABC, she reported on the collapse of
Communism from Moscow and Tbilisi and covered Hillary Clinton's first trip to
Eastern Europe. She hosts AARP's weekly newsmaker cable TV show, "Inside E
Street," as well as her own daily magazine show on WYPR, the public radio
affiliate in Maryland.

Jim Rosapepe represented the United States as ambassador to Romania from 1998
to 2001, bringing to the job experience in American government and business,
as well as in the former Communist world. Since returning to Maryland, where
he is a state senator, he has served on the boards of various investment funds
and companies active in Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has written on
economic and security issues for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
The Harvard International Review. Jim and Sheilah have been married for 26
years, and live in College Park, Maryland.

SOURCE Book Authors Jim Rosapepe and Sheilah Kast and Bancroft Press, NYC

Pat Mitchell, +1-703-276-3266, pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com