ABSTRACT

The revolutions of 1989 in the countries of East-Central Europe were events of global importance. In the first place these countries (Poland, the Czech lands, Slovakia, Hungary and, possibly, Slovenia and Croatia) made great efforts to liberate themselves from the captivity of the Soviet empire, and their resistance weakened the whole empire fatally. The events of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet empire have made all the contradictions of old world order outdated and have created a great number of new domestic and international contradictions. Yet basically these relatively small countries were, and still are, over-dependent on external factors; they have remained captives of the international system and over-sensitive to all external changes. Thus, despite all of their efforts and contributions, their democratic transition was a direct result not of their own action but of the disintegration of the bipolar world system. Paradoxically, although countries such as Poland and Hungary mostly ‘liberated’ themselves, their liberation from the Soviet empire was, at the same time, a ‘defeat’ for them. Because of their structural and conjunctural weakness, they have had to accept the model of Western

democracy that has been the fundamental precondition for their acceptence in the international system. We can therefore consider these emerging new democracies as ‘forced’ or ‘imposed’ ones. They were, in fact, ‘forced to be free’.