ABSTRACT
THE GREAT political change in the Eastern European countries in 1989 has shaken contemporary international relations. This change has a global historical significance. It started in Poland, spread to Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania, overthrew communist one-party dictatorships, and achieved democratisation. It demonstrated the vitality of liberty and democracy, destroyed the Berlin Wall, led to the end of the Cold War, and created a new European order. It came in reaction to Gorbachev’s perestoroika, one of the preconditions for the change, and brought about a multi-party system and a presidential system in the then Soviet Union. It shocked the actually existing socialist countries and international communist movement, led to changes of government in Yugoslavia, Albania and Mongolia as well as the democratisation of African socialism, and effected the conversion of the Italian Communist Party into the Left Democratic Party.
