ABSTRACT
There is sufficiently strong reason to believe that the changes in the East and Central European socialist states, particularly the opening to political pluralism and the pluralist revolution, are the most significant political events to have occurred at the close of the twentieth century. We have moved at an incredibly fast pace to discard yesterday's labels for "dissidents," "saboteurs," "conspirators," and "enemies of the people." There are now completely new heroes as well as new villains. Pluralism has now become the new basis and source for legitimate government, and it has also become the ideal and the most promising hope in the search for a solution from the existing deep and broad crises besetting society.
