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In East Central Europe the Poles began the first transition to democracy, and therefore the Polish opposition had to behave in a most cautious manner. Originally the Polish roundtable talks were not so much about paving the way for a full democracy, rather they were meant to produce an agreement. This agreement was designed first to legalize Solidarity and second to set up semi-democratic and partially fixed elections. As a result the June 1989 elections in Poland could not be evaluated as fully democratic ones. In historical perspective, on the other hand, one can safely say that the Polish negotiations had already started in August 1980. Polish dissidents became the pioneers in inventing negotiations with the communists in the region. The selflimiting revolution of Solidarity in 1980-1981 set a pattern of behavior for other opposition groups in East Central Europe. For Poland 1989 meant simply the last chapter of a long historical process, which had been a decade-long transition first from communism to an authoritarian military regime and then to democracy. Viewed from a narrower perspective, between February and April 1989 the Poles closed an era of military dictatorship. The first task was to restore legality and the granting of legalization to Solidarity. The governing bloc, not the opposition, had initiated these steps after the failure of the 1988 referendum. By late 1988 even the communists had to realize that there was no other option for them. While the Polish and the Hungarian roundtable talks represented efforts at extrications from dictatorships, the German and Czechoslovakian roundtable talks only came after the actual revolutionary changes had occurred. In Germany and Czechoslovakia the discussions were about the establishment of the institutional structures for the new regimes, because the extrications from the dictatorships had already been accomplished. Poland was the first to undertake the transition but ended up with semi-free elections. The intention of the Hungarian negotiators, who started after the Poles, was to start down the Polish path but to achieve more than the Poles had.

THE ROUNDTABLE TALKS OF 1989: PARTICIPANTS, POLITICAL VISIONS, AND HISTORICAL REFERENCES