The Revolutions of 1989 (also known as the Fall of Communism, the Collapse of Communism, the Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the Autumn of Nations) were the revolutions which overthrew the communist states in various Central and Eastern European countries. The Revolutions of 1989 also gave way to a massive wave of international democratization: from a minority mostly restricted to the First World and India up until the 1980s, the electoral democracy became the political system of about half of the countries of the world from the 1990s on.