ABSTRACT
The concluding sentences of the second edition of this book, which were written in 1988, noted growing cordiality between Moscow and Washington and looked forward to closer links between European neighbours across the Iron Curtain (Ante 1991; Ritter and Hajdu 1989). In the very next year a largely peaceful and virtually bloodless revolution swept through the states of east-central and Eastern Europe, dismissing administrations, rejecting Communism, and opening the way for economic reform and the espousal of capitalist principles (Murphy 1991). On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall was breached and following free elections in East Germany on 18 March 1990, the territory of the German Democratic Republic was formally incorporated into the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990. This brought a further 16 400 000 people into the EC and extended its territory by 108 000 km2. The two Germanies had already recognized the eastern border with Poland and given up claims to 114 550 km2 to the east of the rivers Oder and Neisse that had been held by Germany before the Second World War (Harris 1991). In July 1990 ministerial representatives of the four wartime allies (France, UK, USA, USSR), the two Germanies and Poland had confirmed that any suggestion that the German-Polish boundary was provisional would be removed from German laws. Four months later the foreign ministers of Germany and Poland signed a treaty guaranteeing that border.
