ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relatively short time period beginning in October 1989, when the Peaceful and Velvet Revolutions led to the creation of a liberal democratic system, ending with the participation of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in the first election in unified Germany in December 1990. Whereas the PDS party members were enthusiastic about the electoral campaign, the Czech communists were full of fear, scepticism, grief, and even anger. The public mood in Slovakia was rather similar to East Germany, and the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) was able to organize its rallies in the city squares without being disturbed by the anti-communists. Slovakia was even more open, and some of those from the pre-1989 nomenklatura were accepted as the new democratic leaders. In a general sense, Czech, Slovak, and East German post-communist parties had a similar fate during the peaceful revolutions of 1989 and in 1990.
