The fall of Communist governments in Eastern Europe
during the revolutions of 1989 brought a wave of euphoria
to Europe. The new structures meant an end to a postwar
European order that had been imposed on unwilling peoples
by the victorious forces of the Soviet Union. In 1989
and 1990, new governments throughout Eastern Europe
worked diligently to scrap the remnants of the old system
and introduce the democratic procedures and market systems
they believed would revitalize their scarred lands.
But this process proved to be neither simple nor easy.
Most Eastern European countries had little or no experience
with democratic systems. Then, too, ethnic divisions,
which had troubled these areas before World
War II and had been forcibly submerged under Communist
rule, reemerged with a vengeance. Finally, the rapid
conversion to market economies also proved painful. The
adoption of “shock therapy” austerity measures produced
much suffering. Unemployment, for example, climbed to
over 13 percent in Poland in 1992.
Nevertheless, by the beginning of the twenty-first century,
many of these states, especially Poland and the
Czech Republic, were making a successful transition to
both free markets and democracy. In Poland, Aleksander
Kwasniewski, although a former Communist, was elected
president in November 1995 and pushed Poland toward
an increasingly prosperous free market economy. His success
brought his reelection in October 2000. In Czechoslovakia,
the shift to non-Communist rule was complicated
by old problems, especially ethnic issues. Czechs
and Slovaks disagreed over the makeup of the new state
but were able to agree to a peaceful division of the country.
On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the
Czech Republic and Slovakia (see Map 9.2). Václav
Havel was elected the first president of the new Czech
Republic.
World History
