Twenty-five years ago this November, the Berlin Wall fell and a once divided Germany became one nation again.
Two years after that, in December of 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
In between these two radical political changes, communism was falling all over Eastern Europe.
There were expectations and hopes that were, both, realized and unrealized with the promise of a new beginning for those who had suffered under harsh and stifling regimes for several generations.
The new democratic revolutions, that followed the former communist ones, were mostly quiet (save the initial protests and demonstrations) and largely nonviolent.
Today, Eastern Europe has emerged from the ashes, with some of its members becoming part of the European Union and fitting seamlessly into the economic and social fold of Western Europe.
Hungary is an excellent example of this, as is the rising Czech Republic.
But what of the once partitioned East Germany and the former Soviet Union? How have these two Leninist nations of the past progressed into the 21st century? What expectations of their people have been met and what is still lacking? Germany - There was a sense of freedom and possibility with the fall of the wall and the reuniting of a Germany that had been split for more than 45 years.
People believed that they would have the freedom of choice to create better income for themselves, provide a better education for their children, and generally, move upward in the economic growth of Western Europe.
They expected to be able to live without the restraints that came with the tight hold of a communist regime.
Germans, east and west, hoped to be forgiven for past Nazi sins, that this new Europe would not see, in the young people, the hatred and transgressions of the grandparents.
East Germans, more than most other Eastern Europeans experiencing a new birth of freedom, expected to be seen as fresh and new as they hoped their lives under a united Germany would be.
Germans simply expected a clean slate, a new page turned.
The German people expected economic and political reform as well.
They wanted to see the secret police, the Stasi, and any political and police force like them, eliminated from the German governmental landscape.
They expected that, by connecting seamlessly with West Germany, East Germany would be able to hold their political figures accountable for their own wrong doings and hold a standard above their heads that would actually be met.
The bribery and payoffs of the past would be gone with the new Germany, with the admission of the East into the well-oiled politics and material wonders of the West.
There was a hope for more liberalism within society, because the West clearly had a strong handle on what it meant to be liberal.
However, the eastern portion of Germany still has very strong conservative and nationalist movements.
Experts believe that this has to do with the financial unrest experienced by the former communist half of Germany and by the lack of opportunity felt by young people.
What are the consequences for the eastern half of Germany? Political and economic change came slower to the east.
Citizens had suffered decades under the iron fist of a socially, financially, and in all other ways, controlled society.
They have been slow in demanding the kind of changes required to succeed in a capitalist and more open European Union.
The freedom to improve economically did not come for the former East Germany.
Her half of the country still sits well below the financial level of her equals on the West side of the country.
The other half of the country had already embraced a more liberal view of freedom and ideas, so when communism fell in the East, it was assumed that a united Germany would naturally bring a stabilizing liberalism to all its citizens.
However, what resulted was a united constitution that did not erode all the nationalism and conservatism in the East, the kind that encouraged neoNazi growth in the young and a sense of hierarchy of West German over East.
Nearly one million Germans were unemployed when communism fell and this created a great economic burden for both sides of the country, one that has proven a difficult hole from which to claw out.
The economy that now keeps both sides of Germany afloat is one of the strongest in the world.
The Western half of Germany has allowed for some integration of liberalism and, most definitely, the same social, religious, and other freedoms that the East had hoped for and longed for when the Wall fell in 1989.
But despite the many obvious benefits of change that have occurred in the former East Germany, nothing has been more profoundly positive than the reunification of country and kin.
Today, families that had been separated since the end of World War II have found each other once again.
Some were unable to repair the damages of war, separation, and communist rule, but others have connected once more and the country is the better for it.
Soviet Union - The Soviet Union fell in the typical Russian fashion, sans excessive violence.
There were several lean years where standing in line for bread, going without the basic necessities of life that other parts of the world had, and being forced to accept governmental say without question had become the norm.
The Russian people could take no more, and as they watched the Soviet satellite countries and its other republics begin to radically break away, they too decided to throw off the chains of dictatorship.
When Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev, the people had several demands, and the world was watching.
Were these demands met? People wanted a good and dignified life.
They wanted to be able to make their own choices - live wherever they wanted, have basics goods available to them as a developed nation, and be allowed to worship and express themselves politically as they wished.
Additionally, they wanted social change and economic stability.
Just like the former East Germans, they were hoping for governmental corruption to be dealt with by the new Russian government.
Russians also hoped for a curtailing of the Mafia that had plagued both Russia and Ukraine for the entirety of the Soviet period.
A loose set of criminal organizations that had been birthed in the Gulags had been somewhat clamped by the Soviet authorities, but there was fear that with more freedom would come more Mafia.
This was a great fear of the Russian people.
There was, also, a great desire for a decent and fair education and a hopeful future for the nation's children.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a strong resurgence in public religious expression.
Many of the destroyed and shut-down Russian Orthodox Churches have been reopened and citizens are even encouraged to worship.
Other religions and faiths are not as widely accepted in Russia, but there is no longer a prison sentence for public displays of religious practice either.
Education has not improved for those living in the rural areas, but in the cities, Russian students frequently score as high as their European counterparts in standardized testing and higher than their American counterparts in math and science.
Whether or not there is a greater future for Russian children now, as opposed to what had been available for their parents, there is a lot of argument.
Some insist that the old structure of communism was helpful in providing some stability, but others believe that the freedoms extended with the new Federation are worth the trouble of some of the more dramatic instability the nation has had to endure on the road to a new government and society.
Some of the former artistic endeavors squashed by the regimes of the past are once again celebrated in the country.
Authors once banned, music made illegal, artists who were sent to camps in Siberia because of their individualist message, are now celebrated and the Russian art and music scene has once again been uncovered for the country and the world.
The mafia made an immediate comeback with the end of communism, and only in the last few years, has there been a greater handle on the terror and criminal activity they have used against their own people and the rest of the world.
They still are the largest players in human trafficking and continue to encourage the sale of illegal drugs throughout the world.
There is not much belief, throughout Russia, that the mafia's activities will ever fully be stopped or halted.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe has experienced many changes.
Some have been beneficial and some have been detrimental.
Where some countries have thrived, others have fallen short and continue to struggle.
The former East Germany is slowly climbing upwards, as is the 23 year old Russian Federation.
Two years after that, in December of 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
In between these two radical political changes, communism was falling all over Eastern Europe.
There were expectations and hopes that were, both, realized and unrealized with the promise of a new beginning for those who had suffered under harsh and stifling regimes for several generations.
The new democratic revolutions, that followed the former communist ones, were mostly quiet (save the initial protests and demonstrations) and largely nonviolent.
Today, Eastern Europe has emerged from the ashes, with some of its members becoming part of the European Union and fitting seamlessly into the economic and social fold of Western Europe.
Hungary is an excellent example of this, as is the rising Czech Republic.
But what of the once partitioned East Germany and the former Soviet Union? How have these two Leninist nations of the past progressed into the 21st century? What expectations of their people have been met and what is still lacking? Germany - There was a sense of freedom and possibility with the fall of the wall and the reuniting of a Germany that had been split for more than 45 years.
People believed that they would have the freedom of choice to create better income for themselves, provide a better education for their children, and generally, move upward in the economic growth of Western Europe.
They expected to be able to live without the restraints that came with the tight hold of a communist regime.
Germans, east and west, hoped to be forgiven for past Nazi sins, that this new Europe would not see, in the young people, the hatred and transgressions of the grandparents.
East Germans, more than most other Eastern Europeans experiencing a new birth of freedom, expected to be seen as fresh and new as they hoped their lives under a united Germany would be.
Germans simply expected a clean slate, a new page turned.
The German people expected economic and political reform as well.
They wanted to see the secret police, the Stasi, and any political and police force like them, eliminated from the German governmental landscape.
They expected that, by connecting seamlessly with West Germany, East Germany would be able to hold their political figures accountable for their own wrong doings and hold a standard above their heads that would actually be met.
The bribery and payoffs of the past would be gone with the new Germany, with the admission of the East into the well-oiled politics and material wonders of the West.
There was a hope for more liberalism within society, because the West clearly had a strong handle on what it meant to be liberal.
However, the eastern portion of Germany still has very strong conservative and nationalist movements.
Experts believe that this has to do with the financial unrest experienced by the former communist half of Germany and by the lack of opportunity felt by young people.
What are the consequences for the eastern half of Germany? Political and economic change came slower to the east.
Citizens had suffered decades under the iron fist of a socially, financially, and in all other ways, controlled society.
They have been slow in demanding the kind of changes required to succeed in a capitalist and more open European Union.
The freedom to improve economically did not come for the former East Germany.
Her half of the country still sits well below the financial level of her equals on the West side of the country.
The other half of the country had already embraced a more liberal view of freedom and ideas, so when communism fell in the East, it was assumed that a united Germany would naturally bring a stabilizing liberalism to all its citizens.
However, what resulted was a united constitution that did not erode all the nationalism and conservatism in the East, the kind that encouraged neoNazi growth in the young and a sense of hierarchy of West German over East.
Nearly one million Germans were unemployed when communism fell and this created a great economic burden for both sides of the country, one that has proven a difficult hole from which to claw out.
The economy that now keeps both sides of Germany afloat is one of the strongest in the world.
The Western half of Germany has allowed for some integration of liberalism and, most definitely, the same social, religious, and other freedoms that the East had hoped for and longed for when the Wall fell in 1989.
But despite the many obvious benefits of change that have occurred in the former East Germany, nothing has been more profoundly positive than the reunification of country and kin.
Today, families that had been separated since the end of World War II have found each other once again.
Some were unable to repair the damages of war, separation, and communist rule, but others have connected once more and the country is the better for it.
Soviet Union - The Soviet Union fell in the typical Russian fashion, sans excessive violence.
There were several lean years where standing in line for bread, going without the basic necessities of life that other parts of the world had, and being forced to accept governmental say without question had become the norm.
The Russian people could take no more, and as they watched the Soviet satellite countries and its other republics begin to radically break away, they too decided to throw off the chains of dictatorship.
When Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev, the people had several demands, and the world was watching.
Were these demands met? People wanted a good and dignified life.
They wanted to be able to make their own choices - live wherever they wanted, have basics goods available to them as a developed nation, and be allowed to worship and express themselves politically as they wished.
Additionally, they wanted social change and economic stability.
Just like the former East Germans, they were hoping for governmental corruption to be dealt with by the new Russian government.
Russians also hoped for a curtailing of the Mafia that had plagued both Russia and Ukraine for the entirety of the Soviet period.
A loose set of criminal organizations that had been birthed in the Gulags had been somewhat clamped by the Soviet authorities, but there was fear that with more freedom would come more Mafia.
This was a great fear of the Russian people.
There was, also, a great desire for a decent and fair education and a hopeful future for the nation's children.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a strong resurgence in public religious expression.
Many of the destroyed and shut-down Russian Orthodox Churches have been reopened and citizens are even encouraged to worship.
Other religions and faiths are not as widely accepted in Russia, but there is no longer a prison sentence for public displays of religious practice either.
Education has not improved for those living in the rural areas, but in the cities, Russian students frequently score as high as their European counterparts in standardized testing and higher than their American counterparts in math and science.
Whether or not there is a greater future for Russian children now, as opposed to what had been available for their parents, there is a lot of argument.
Some insist that the old structure of communism was helpful in providing some stability, but others believe that the freedoms extended with the new Federation are worth the trouble of some of the more dramatic instability the nation has had to endure on the road to a new government and society.
Some of the former artistic endeavors squashed by the regimes of the past are once again celebrated in the country.
Authors once banned, music made illegal, artists who were sent to camps in Siberia because of their individualist message, are now celebrated and the Russian art and music scene has once again been uncovered for the country and the world.
The mafia made an immediate comeback with the end of communism, and only in the last few years, has there been a greater handle on the terror and criminal activity they have used against their own people and the rest of the world.
They still are the largest players in human trafficking and continue to encourage the sale of illegal drugs throughout the world.
There is not much belief, throughout Russia, that the mafia's activities will ever fully be stopped or halted.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe has experienced many changes.
Some have been beneficial and some have been detrimental.
Where some countries have thrived, others have fallen short and continue to struggle.
The former East Germany is slowly climbing upwards, as is the 23 year old Russian Federation.
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