"By elevating the 1989 revolutions from an event to an epoch, the authors want to place it on an equal footing with other historical epochs—neither the culmination nor a stage of a process of global liberalization, nor a mythical Year Zero that closes the postwar period and sets it apart from our own, still nameless post-Cold War time. Instead, in the editors’ words, the 1989 revolutions were a 'signpost of gradual change.' The contradictions, discrepancies, and implicit polemics present in various chapters are in themselves a sign of the complexity of the topics tackled by the volume. The Long 1989 will remain a valuable contribution especially in the field of intellectual history."
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