ABSTRACT

This introduction presents some key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the revolutions in East-Central Europe and their impact on the region, the world, and on international politics. It provides an overview of the post war history of the region, from the establishment of communist rule in the 1940s to the fragmentation and decay of the communist system through the early 1980s. The book looks at the roots of reform in the Soviet Union and reviews the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. It discusses how the revolutions led to the collapse of old states in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia and the formation of new states out of those as well as of the formerly divided Germany. The book considers the rebuilding of the political and economic orders in the former communist states and their often difficult transitions toward political democracy and market economies.