AN EEPS ROUND TABLE: The Revolutions of 1989: Lessons of the First Postcommunist Decade. Introduction
AN EEPS ROUND TABLE: The Revolutions of 1989: Lessons of the First Postcommunist Decade. Introduction

Summary/Abstract: Ten years have passed since the extraordinary events that led to the collapse of the Leninist regimes in East and Central Europe. The ten years have been filled with high expectations, noble dreams of justice and freedom, as well as frustration, neuroses, and painful disappointments. Throughout the last decade of the twentieth century, some countries have initiated and consolidated viable democratic practices and institutions. Others have lagged behind and are still perceived as quasi-democracies with little prospect of being accepted into the Western "club." Free and fair elections did take place in all these countries, but their results have not necessarily consolidated full-fledged, pluralist arrangements. On the positive side, popular sovereignty has replaced the rule of the self-appointed "proletarian vanguards," and ideological monism has vanished. Still imperfect, to be sure, the rule of law is now part and parcel of the everyday life of these societies. [...]

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