Lessons of the First Postsocialist Decade
Lessons of the First Postsocialist Decade

Summary/Abstract: Prior to 1989, there was a scholarly consensus, based primarily on studies of the French, Russian, and Chinese cases, that revolutions are distinctive in combining: 1) the sudden collapse of the state's coercive authority; 2) the multiplication of regimes; 3) mass mobilization; 4) widespread violence; and 5) the construction of a new and durable political, economic, and social order. By this standard, the dramatic changes of 1989-92-or the collapse of Communist party hegemony throughout the socialist region and the dissolution of the Yugoslav, Soviet, and Czechoslovak stateswere not full-scale revolutions. [...]

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