Introduction

Abstract

In 1989–90, Eastern Europe became independent and began to free itself from the political and socioeconomic burden of over four decades of Soviet-imposed Communism. The transformation process has been complex, the states of the region have travelled different roads to democratization. The states of East-Central Europe — Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland — have already made quantum leaps toward the realization of pluralist democracies. Their Balkan neighbors, Romania and Bulgaria, have encountered more obstacles but are moving in the same direction. The boundaries separating the two Germanys were erased and Germans once again live in a single nation-state.