Why is it proper to have many writings, talks, events on the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Communism in Central Europe? The answer can be brief: it ended the postwar period known as the Cold War.
The sudden collapse of Communism in 1989 was the third major turning point in the 20th century after 1919 and 1945. Both world wars started, at least concretely, in Central Europe, in the zone between Western Europe and the Russian heartland. After Sarajevo and Danzig/ Gdañsk it was again what happened in the fault line between Eastern and Western Europe that had worldwide repercussions. Two nations, the Poles and the Hungarians were the pioneers in overturning the Communist dominoes; their peaceful dismantling of the oneparty dictatorship, and Hungary facilitating the escape of so many East Germans prompted first the so-called German Democratic Republic, then the Czechs to follow the example, while the year ended in the dramatic and violent overthrow of that most distasteful tyrannous boss, Ceaus¸escu of Romania. The process continued in the more gradual political transformation of Bulgaria and Albania, and was crowned in the voluntary dissolution of the Soviet State (that involuntary union)

at the end of 1991. Contrary to Marx's predictions it was not the state that withered away, but Marxist communism.
While the march to victory of Solidarity in Poland is well documented, very little is available in English on the peaceful regime change, the negotiated revolution in Hungary. The Lawful Revolution in Hungary, 1989–94, edited by Béla K. Király and András Bozóki (Boulder, Colorado, 1995), also in the present series, was a collection of essays by many authors, most of whom stood close to the then governing coalition, and the result was a rather one-sided picture. Ignác Romsics, one of the leading Hungarian historians, and a prolific one, was the first to produce a comprehensive account in Hungarian: Volt egyszer egy rendszerváltás (Once Upon a Time There Was a Regime Change, Budapest, 2003). Originally it was meant as an explanatory text to 200 photos taken by Imre Prohászka illustrating those crucial years (not reproduced in the English version), but Romsics took his task very seriously and wrote a full, researched history. The book reviewed here is its practically unrevised English version, with the addition of eleven important, wellselected documents.