The collapse of single-party dictatorship in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 constituted a watershed in the political, economic and military history of Europe, which continues to pose an enormous challenge to that continent in the present century and to the Western alliance, which helped to protect it. In 1919, the collapse of autocracy and supranational empires in Central and Eastern Europe presented the Allied and Associated Powers with unprecedented opportunity to shape the political and economic construction of the successor states. In that year, Sir George Russell Clerk had become private secretary to the acting British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. During the Great War,