Fall Of Communism

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Term Paper Title	Fall Of Communism
# of Words	1631
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.52

Fall of Communism

The shocking fall of communism in Eastern and Central
Europe in the late eighties was remarkable for both its
rapidity and its scope. The specifics of communism's demise
varied among nations, but similarities in both the causes and
the effects of these revolutions were quite similar. As well, all
of the nations involved shared the common goals of
implementing democratic systems of government and moving
to market economies. In each of these nations, the
communist regimes in power were forced to transfer that
power to radically different institutions than they were
accustomed to. Democracy had been spreading throughout
the world for the preceding two decades, but with a very
important difference. While previous political transitions had
seen similar circumstances, the actual events in question had
generally occurred individually. In Europe, on the other
hand, the shift from communism was taking place in a
different context altogether. The peoples involved were not
looking to affect a narrow set of policy reforms; indeed,
what was at stake was a hyper-radical shift from the
long-held communist ideology to a western blueprint for
governmental and economic policy development. The
problem inherent in this type of monumental change is that,
according to Ulrich K. Preuss, "In almost all the East and
Central European countries, the collapse of authoritarian
communist rule has released national, ethnic, religious and
cultural conflicts which cannot be solved by purely economic
policies" (47). While tremendous changes are evident in both
the governmental and economic arenas in Europe, these
changes cannot be assumed to always be "mutually
reinforcing" (Preuss 47). Generally it has been theorized that
the most successful manner of addressing these many
difficulties is the drafting of a constitution. But what is clear is
the unsatisfactory ability of a constitution to remedy the
problems of nationalism and ethnic differences. Preuss notes
that when the constitutional state gained favor in North
America, it was founded on the principle of the unitary state;
it was not designed to address the lack of national identity
which is found throughout Europe - and which is counter to
the concept of the constitutional state (48). "Measured in
terms of socioeconomic modernization," writes Helga A.
Welsh, "Central and Eastern European countries had
reached a level that was considered conducive to the
emergence of pluralis...

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