Introduction

The political structures of Europe have undergone an extraordinary level of change over the last few years-most obviously in Eastern and Central Europe, where the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 was followed by German unity in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. This has been a sequence of change unmatched by any other two-year period in the peacetime history of Europe. Throughout the region new states are emerging out of the rubble of the old regime, sometimes, as in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, occupying (at least for the time being) the same territory as their predecessors, but in other cases-the majority-within new boundaries. Each of these new political systems must carry out the fundamental economic changes required to replace the discredited communist command economy; almost all are attempting to establish liberal democratic political institutions; and in every case nationalist sentiments threaten these new countries with internal divisions and external conflicts. ‘Eastern Europe’—a term now politically suspect, given its association with the old divisions of Europe, but as yet irreplaceable-is facing a desperate crisis: widespread political unrest, economic hardship, malnutrition, even mass starvation in some areas, are possibilities in the autumn of 1992, perhaps realities by the time these words are read.