Eastern Europe In Revolution [antikvár]

PrefaceThe articles assembled in this book represent the first thoroughgoing assessments of the East European revolution of 1989. More correctly, since the revolutionary processes were not completedand in some cases not even initiatedin 1989, the authors have followed the time frame imposed by their case studies. But whether they discuss the Hungarian "refolution" that ended a decade of piecemeal retreat by the ruling Communists, or the strange turnabout of 1991 in Albania, where the revisionism of the Khrushchev era, the move toward a free market of the early 1980s, and the pluralist upsurge of 1989 were telescoped in an odd revolutio interrupta, they always seek to explain the sources, issues, and political contenders in the unheroic fall of East European communism. For never has an ideology and a system of power built on such vast pretensions and still greater human tragedies fallen so ignobly as did the red star that sought to unite the lands from the gray shores of the Baltic to the azure coves of the Adriatic within a single allegiance.The downfall of East European communism was a heralded revolution, but its timing was resistant to prediction. As soon as the magnitude of the events became apparent, the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale initiated a set of conferences, lectures, and seminars with the common theme "East European Turning Points, 1989 and Beyond." The partial proceedings of one of these conferences, titled "East Europe in Revolution," which was held at Yale on November 5, 1990, and some additional material constitute the contents of this book. I thank the center