ABSTRACT
This chapter began with an emphasis on the revolutions in Eastern Europe, an argument could be made for the post-1989 period as being equally revolutionary for Western Europe and the United States. The warming of relations between the West and the Soviet Union in the 1980s that brought an end to the Cold War turned out to be the prelude to the end of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Communism, like monarchical absolutism in a previous age, had unified people in opposition to it; once removed, political divisions inherent in any democracy quickly emerged. Communism even retained or regained its appeal among some people dissatisfied with the messy chaos of the transition to capitalism and democracy. The revolutions that led to the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe had numerous causes, but most likely could not have occurred without a sea change in the policy of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.
