What price freedom? The question on the lips of East Europeans a year ago seemed to have been answered when communist dictatorships gave way one after another without offering more than token resistance. The startling disintegration of the East bloc registered a 7, maybe an 8, on a Richter scale of this century's most significant events, yet the bill for half a dozen revolutions seemed exceedingly modest. The cost of erasing the 45-year-old political division of Europe and opening the way toward democratic pluralism and free-market economies: a few hundred killed, mainly in Romania.
One year later, as elected governments from...