Ben Ali’s regime has fallen. In Egypt those in Tahrir Square do not intend to give an inch. The clear objective is to depose Mubarak and win the revolution. Tension is also rising to various levels in other Arab countries too, such as Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Syria. In a sense this is like watching a repetition of events in 1989 albeit with obvious differences. To start with there is no Soviet Union and no Mikhail Gorbachov. But there are mass movements and dissent, people have taken to the streets with tenacity and the will to fight to the bitter end. Perhaps there is a domino effect, perhaps. History never repeats itself in exactly the same way, but at times it does repeat itself. Journalist Paola Caridi, an expert on the Middle East and the author of Arabi invisibili [Invisible Arabs] (Feltrinelli, 2007), is one of those who from the very beginning of the revolts in the Arab world remarked on the presence of a series of analogies between current events in 2011 and those of 1989 in central-eastern Europe. We have asked us to explain this comparison.