After six successful months of producing this journal, the contributors and staff of Central Europe Review are pausing for three weeks to put their shattered family and social lives in order. We will return to weekly publication, starting on 10 January 2000.
    In the past half year, Central Europe Review has grown from a rough idea into the leading journal on the region. CER has always been free to readers, and we intend to keep it that way in future. To help us to do so, please consider a small donation to help us with our costs.
    Enjoy this expanded issue, and we'll see you again in January.

E U R O P E:
Return to Helsinki
Martin D Brown
Last week's EU Summit in Helsinki should have been the most important international event in that city since the Cold War talks of 1975. In the end, however, it was a disappointment.

E N V I R O N M E N T:
From Puppet Master to
Listless Puppet
Andreas Beckmann
Concerns over the environment played a prominent role in the unrest of November 1989 in the Czech Republic. Today, the issue has dropped in priority, and although environmentalists are quick to pin the blame on former Premier Vaclav Klaus, they have made few efforts to come to terms with the changed circumstances and find a language that the general Czech population can understand.

P O L A N D:
The Pro-Government Church
Mariusz Janicki
In Poland, the Catholic Church is trying to strike a balance between its support of the government and the discontented. In the eyes of many, its recent criticism of protesters and backing of the reforms introduced by Jerzy Buzek's cabinet have tipped the scales too far in favour of government.

	S L I C E   O F   L I F E: Postcard from Ul'yanovsk Derek S Hutcheson
At one point, I was accused of being a Chechen travelling on a stolen British passport, and it looked like I might be spending a night at the Ul'yanovsk town jail pending deportation. There is a phrase the Russians use to describe this sort of thing: Eto Rossiya ("It's Russia").

L e t t e r s   to   C E R

DEAR CER: Pulp Faction Kieran Williams On reading Professor Keane's reply to my review of his biography of Vaclav Havel, I find nothing that would cause me to rethink or retract any of my criticisms. When we get beyond the uncivil invective, we encounter little in the way of answers to the questions I raised.

DEAR CER: On Cavemen and Aliens Susan Smolens Sam Vaknin's article last week was spot on: one can only be cynical of the West's intentions in the East.

Theme of the week: The Year For the last issue of Central Europe Review this year, we present overviews of what 1999 has meant to various countries of the region.

CER's Regular Columnists:

TEN YEARS AFTER:
Schengen's Iron Curtain
Zhidas Daskalovski
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was seen by many Eastern Europeans as the beginning of a new era in the relations between West and East. The EU's Schengen agreement, however, has created a barrier as effective as the Iron Curtain ever was.

BALKAN ENCOUNTER:
As CER will be on holiday until 10 January, we present two articles from Sam Vaknin to keep you going through the next few weeks:

The Magla Vocables Sam Vaknin Whereas for most people speech is a form of communication and contact, for the residents of former Communist countries it is a method of establishing distance and fending off. This affects the behaviour of intellectuals and politicians and even the whole course of transition.

The Elders of Zion Sam Vaknin Anti-Semitism is only one species in the zoo of rumours, conspiracy theories and meta histories. In Central and East Europe's void created by unreliable, politicized and corrupt media, rumour mills spring eternal.

Kinoeye Kinoeye finishes 1999 with a look at "New Waves" in Hungarian cinema, with reports from the 9th Festival of Young East European Cinema, where CER caught up with director Csaba Bollok and the recent retrospective of 1990s Hungarian cinema at the ICA in London.

INTERVIEW:
Young Hungarian Cinema:
"We are working on it"
Andrew J Horton
Following the mid-1990s nadir of Central European cinema, eyes have been pinned on the up-and-coming talent to

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Csaba Bollok's Eszak, Eszak Andrew J Horton reviews Bollok's elegaic study of directionlessness.

see if the region can regain some of its former film glory. CER talked to the young Hungarian director Csaba Bollok to ask him about his debut, the problems of making films in the current age, the influence of Hollywood and the future of Hungarian cinema.