Year 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania. In 2015, Diane Vancea and I put together a book commemorating the 25th anniversary and told ourselves that younger academics will take the hint to mark the 30th anniversary. To our surprise, nothing happened. Complete silence. This is the reason why we decided to gather scholars for the 35th anniversary. Of course, this new book had to complement rather than simply repeat what we’ve done at the 25th anniversary. So we chose new themes, brought in new people, thought about another overarching topic. Progress and stagnation, success and failure, intended and unintended consequences was the topic, discussed in relation to the elites, the elections and party system, the fight against corruption, health care, education, military, and other fields. last week we sent all files to Palgrave, which already sent the cover. This is it!