Continuation of Prof. Martin Palous’ (Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic) speech as a panelist in “Winners and Losers in the Great Transformations Since 1989” the third panel of the “Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Struggle for Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe" international conference held at CEU in March 1999. The next persons to deliver the speech after Martin Palous are Valerie Bunce, Professor at Cornell University and János Kis, Professor at CEU.