[don_esteban]

"relatively" can cover a lot of ground :-)

From my naive observation, the regimes of Eastern Europe had lost their will to perpetuate. (Everybody saw, including party apparatchiks, that the people in the west have better lives. Or at least better goods. :-) )

The cynical take would be that the (smarter) communists in power prepared themselves for the transition, positioning themselves to benefit after the change.