From Leipzig to Kyiv through Brussels: How the Revolution of 1989 Defined an Era

To mark the 35th anniversary of the revolutionary events of 1989, the twentieth anniversary of the European Union’s 2004 enlargement, and the tenth anniversary of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, East European Politics and Societies has invited six members of the journal’s editorial and advisory boards to contribute reflections on problems associated with the anniversaries. This introduction sets the contributions in context, and it asks how the period as a whole—now nearly as long as the period of Communist rule in most of the region—should be conceptualized. It argues for the explanatory value of defining the era not so much in terms of “post-Communism,” but in terms of the revolutionary experience that in 1989 provided the yardstick against which subsequent developments have been measured.