ABSTRACT
The United States has won the cold war in the sign of an idea: democracy has held its ground against an ideology that, armed with every weapon known to man, sought to subvert it. It has come again to the peoples of East-Central Europe, who, for more than forty years, lived on the other side of the ideological divide. The idea of The End of History entered the history of ideas nearly two hundred years ago. In 1806, G. W. F. Hegel contemplated Napoleon's defeat of the Prussian Army at Jena, and declared history to have ended. The history of ideas is full of surprises: an idea gains wide public acceptance at a certain time and, at another time, does not. The idea is the same; it is the public that has changed its desires. Having thus changed, the public searches for a rationale that explains why values heretofore cherished need to be discarded and values heretofore neglected need to be pursued.
