Drawing on a selection of papers presented to the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies held in Warsaw in August 1995, the book presents a broad cross-section of thinking about postcommunist developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Specialists from the region and the West apply their unique insights to challenge some conventional views on the transition. The book is both diverse and focused, suggesting that the experience of democratisation is an open-ended process in which those involved learn both from their own experience and from comparative transitions elsewhere. It provides a rich source for the comparative analysis of democratisation.

JUDITH ARMSTRONG Senior Associate, Department of Germanic Studies and Russian, University of Melbourne
URSULA J.VAN BEEK Research Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
JACK BIELASIAK Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington
ROUMEN D.DASKALOV Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Sofia University, Bulgaria
MICHAL ILLNER Director, Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
RAINER LINDNER
NEIL MELVIN Lecturer in Russian and Central Asian Politics, University of Leeds
DANIEL N. NELSON Professor of International Studies, Old Dominion University, Virginia, and President, Global Concepts, Inc.
GRIGORY NEMIRIA Director, Graduate Programme, Kiev Mohyla Academy, Ukraine
VALENTIN PESCHANSKII Leading Research Fellow, Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences
JOHN RUSSELL Head, Department of Modern Languages, University of Bradford
ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI Assistant Professor of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, European University Institute, Florence
KRZYSTZTOF ZIELKE Fellow, Institute for Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

General Editor's Introduction Notes on the Contributors Introduction: The Democratic Experience; R.Sakwa Experiences of Democratisation: Elements of a Comparative Historical Framework; A.Szakolczái Gorbachev's Bitter Draft: Failure to Achieve a New Union Treaty, 1988-91; J.Russell Continuity and Change in Historical Thinking in Belarus: some Critical Remarks on Post-Soviet Historiography; R.Lindner Regionalism: An Underestimated Dimension of State-building in Ukraine; G.Nemiria Elites of North-Eastern Kazakjstan in a New Geopolitical Context, 1989-95; N.Melvin Civil Society Endangered; D.N. Nelson The Structuring of Party Systems in Postcommunism: The Roles of Political Process and Social Cleavage; J.Bielasiak The Changing Role of Local Government in the Post-communist Transformation; M.Illner Trade Unions and the Making of Civil Society in Russia; V.Peschanskii The Emerging Order: Bulgarian Experiences with Democracy; R.Daskalov Polish Responses to Global Challenges: Geopolitics of Central and East European Transformation; K.Zielke Cultural Difference: Russia's Putative Entry into the European Union; J.Armstrong The Emergence of Democracy in South Africa and Poland: A Comparative Experience; U.J.van Beek Index