The fall of the Berlin Wall rocked the sociopolitical equilibrium of eastern and central Europe. Communism lost its grip over much of Europe. The USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia divided along ethnic, religious, and historical lines. Ethnopolitical tensions surfaced across the region, and in Yugoslavia, tensions combusted. Whereas democracy was supposed to bring wealth, freedom, and hope to eastern and central Europe, the immediate consequences of postcommunism were violence, economic instability, and political unpredictability. Beyond the urgent task of crisis management, an incredible amount of work was needed to support the transition from a closed to an open society. With funding from the Soros Foundation, this author developed a conflict management program that has reached nearly 1 million youth in twenty-one former communist-bloc countries: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The program was designed to equip youth with skills to deal effectively with interpersonal and intergroup conflicts in an open society. Program development began in 1991. Implementation of the program's curriculum into eastern and central Europe began in 1995 and is ongoing. This article examines some of the challenges in building the conflict management program, as well as some of its accomplishments in helping youth shift toward an open society. (Contains 13 notes.)