ABSTRACT
The year 1989, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, was a symbolically appropriate one for revolutionary upheavals. But the revolutions in Eastern Europe differed in many respects from their predecessors’ in 1789, or 1848, or especially 1917. Indeed, according to many commentators, they were revolutions against socialism, and this phenomenon had, or would have, important consequences for the socialist movement in Europe as a whole. This initial judgement, which was far from being universally accepted, in any case needs to be re-examined in the light of more recent experience, and in relation to the expectations that were prevalent before the revolutions.
