The 10th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Europe is about to be celebrated with predictable ringing speeches and ceremonies.

A decade later it is still difficult not to be moved by the pictures of youngsters tearing at the Berlin Wall with their bare hands, the steely silence of millions of Czechs and Slovaks who simply refused to be frightened any more, or the crowds of Romanians who stormed their dictator's palace. The revolutions of 1989 will survive in the history books.

Yet future generations will miss one of the most important ingredients of the event: the total lack of comprehension in Western Europe about what was happening further East at that time and the sheer maturity of the nations which were emerging from dictatorship.

The West did little to help the people of Eastern Europe during that year of upheavals. Indeed, as the revolutions unfolded, Western politicians advised caution: right until October 1989 the overwhelming yearning in the West was for a gradual rather than sudden transformation, a coexistence between the jailers and the jailed.

Having spent decades during the Cold War trying to contain the Soviet Union, the West's overriding concern in 1989 was to keep the Soviet Union together; if this meant that Moscow retained some control over half of the continent, it was a price which Western governments were prepared to pay.

To be sure, lip service was paid to democracy and human rights. Yet opposition leaders in Eastern Europe were often regarded as a nuisance, people high on principle but low on experience and ignorant of the finer points of governance.

At the height of the Romanian revolution in December 1989 the US administration privately let Moscow know that it would not object to a Soviet invasion of Romania. In a strange twist of European history, it was the Kremlin which ultimately declined this offer.

Ultimately, the people of Eastern Europe liberated themselves by simply ignoring Western advice. They dismantled the communist dictatorships, dissolved the Warsaw Pact and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops from their soil. At every stage, the West claimed that these demands were "rash".

But Europe is safer today precisely because the East Europeans refused to listen to such warnings. And Germany is united because the East Germans demanded unity from the start; if matters were left to the British and French governments, the continent could have still been plagued today by a ramshackle East German state and a resentful, morose West Germany.

Having failed to tone down what they regarded as the hot heads of the revolutions, Western governments then proceeded, almost in unison, to tell the people of Eastern Europe how to organise their affairs. Armies of economists descended on the region, all offering a simple formula: shock economic therapy, based on the immediate sale of all state assets.

There was something faintly ridiculous about the entire exercise. Economic experts were trying to persuade newly-elected governments to cut social security benefits and pensions, precisely what no Western electorate was prepared to countenance.

And the message was frequently delivered in a haughty, insensitive manner, as though the East Europeans were expected to re-learn how to eat with a knife and fork.

Yet again, much of the advice was simply ignored. And, yet again, the result was beneficial.

Any Western government which presided over a drop in economic growth of even 1 per cent would have been thrown out of office.

In the first year after the fall of communism, East European societies experienced falls of up to 30 per cent in their national wealth, while most bank savings were pulverised by inflation.

And yet there were no riots and few strikes. The first generation of reformers did lose power by the mid-1990s, but elections continued to be held peacefully and fairly.

The region is still poorer than the rest of Europe. And yet, it can be justifiably proud of its achievements, which include a total redirection of trade away from the old Soviet Union and towards the West in less than a decade, the most stupendous achievement in modern economic history.

Millions of farmers reclaimed their lands and knew how to work them; from literal starvation in 1989, Romania's and Poland's problem today is how to export agricultural surpluses.

Of course, much more needs to be done, and the economic development of Poland or Hungary is not mirrored in the laggard countries of the Balkans.

Nevertheless, what has been accomplished in the last decade is little short of a miracle.

Meanwhile, most of the other doomsday scenarios which frightened Western governments never came to pass. When communism collapsed, the West assumed it would be faced with persistent ethnic bloodshed, demands for territorial changes and widespread political violence.

Predictably, teams of experts were quickly dispatched in order to impress upon the "natives" the importance of toleration for each other. Innumerable Western diplomats boosted their frequent flyer mileage schemes by hopping off from one East European capital to another, drafting what were called at the time "stability pacts", treaties in which countries were supposed to pledge their good behaviour.

Interestingly, Western fears were concentrated on the plight of the sizeable Hungarian minority in Romania and Slovakia; the one country whose collapse nobody predicted was precisely Yugoslavia which, in 1989, was still considered the most modern and tolerant in the region. Yugoslavia duly exploded with terrible bloodshed. But, far from being a warning of things to come, the country remained an exception.

Everywhere else, minorities learnt how to lead a new life and exercise their newly gained electoral rights; ethnic Hungarians are part of the ruling coalition in Romania and Slovakia, and ethnic Turks now support the Bulgarian government. Czechs and Slovaks separated with tears, rather than bullets, while the military throughout Eastern Europe led the process of regional co-operation.

Ethnically related violence is still the speciality of Belfast or Bilbao, not of Bratislava or Bucharest. Nor are East Europeans obsessed with old historic quarrels.

It took France decades before accepting the presence of German troops on its soil; the Poles, who suffered just as much at the hands of the Germans, did the same in a few years.

FINALLY, the East European revolutions were exceptionally forgiving towards their former dictators as well. With the exception of Romania, not one communist murderer was executed, few were tried and even fewer jailed. Western Europe punished more collaborators after four years of Nazi occupation than Eastern Europe did after four decades of communism.

Next month, the leaders of the European Union will meet in Helsinki in order to issue a formal invitation to most of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe to start their accession negotiations for full membership. The final distinctions between the old East and West will therefore be removed.

But, as they put the final seal on the creation of a new continent, Western politicians will do well to be humble. The Europe we have today is more peaceful because of our Eastern brethren.

Jonathan Eyal is director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London