Beyond some questions of modernization theory.

As more social theorists suggest (Fukuyama, Habermas), the 1989 revolutions should be considered as modernizing revolutions that have caused the 're-birth of history' or a return to 'mainstream' western development in societies of Central and Eastern Europe. Modernization theory is a very broad theoretical strategy that includes a variety of theories. This article inquires current understanding of modernization and its different theoretical roots. Four concepts of modernization are particularly stressed: 1. Modernization as the result of technological development and innovation; 2. Modernization as a change caused by introduction of new forms of social organization; 3. Universal spread of the pattern of 'present industrial society'; 4. Sum of globaly occuring evolutional changes leading to 'global cosmopolitan society'. Modernization is explained here not as an a priori given process but as a result of intense individual and socio-institutional activities that are characteristic for different ways of social development in particular countries.