(Repeats story moved on Nov. 4 without changes in text)

(For full coverage of the fall of the Wall, please click on [ID:nL3349130])

By Jan Lopatka

PRAGUE, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The collapse of communism may have changed the face of eastern Europe but the region remains blighted by corruption and poor governance, lacking the strong institutions and leaders essential to a healthy society.

Dictatorships across the region collapsed like a house of cards along with the November 1989 breach of the Berlin Wall. Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and others quickly embraced the newly found freedom to vote in fair elections, participate in public life, travel and do business.

Economic progress, aided by foreign investment and EU entry in 2004-2007, was rapid though uneven around the region. Some of the region's capital cities, such as Prague or Budapest, have income high above the EU average.

Democracy has taken root, drawing in countries like the Czech Republic, on pre-communist traditions. However, in political leadership, the civil service and judiciary progress has been hampered by the tenacity of old ideas and the old bureaucrats and officials who grew up with them.

This suggests the communist era damaged and deformed the nations' elites deeper than it seemed when the Berlin Wall fell.

Vaclav Havel, the former dissident jailed for years by the Communists before he became Czechoslovak president in 1989, said cleaning up politics was much further off than he had thought.