In Poland, the Gdansk dockworkers' union Solidarity turned into a mass political movement and won 99 of the 100 seats it was allowed to contest in the 1989 election. Hungary held multi-party elections in 1990. The same year, mass demonstrations led to elections in Czechoslovakia. In 1993, that country split up into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the happiest and most mutually beneficial divorce since Cher left Sonny. Of course, sometimes the transition away from communism was violent and painful. In Romania, for instance, the communist dictator Ceausescu held onto power until he was tried and put before a firing squad at the end of 1989, and it took until 1996 for a non-communist government to take power there. And in Yugoslavia, well, not so great.