The year 1989 marked a significant turning point for the Eastern European countries of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, after decades of dependence on the USSR and the rule of communist dictatorship: finally, these countries could take their fate into their own hands, establish democratic structures, and seek integration with Western Europe. The writer György Dalos recounts how the process of liberation began, the coincidences and details that played a role, and the resistances that had to be overcome before Eastern Europe could emerge from the Eastern Bloc behind the Iron Curtain. The mass exodus of East German citizens across the Hungarian border or the joint appearance of Václav Havel and Aleksander Dubcek in Prague's Wenceslas Square - these events powerfully testify to a historic mass movement, an euphoric and un.