In the late 1980s, at the time of the turbulent democratic changes in Eastern Europe, The Soros Foundation organized summer seminars for academics, lawyers and intellectuals from both Western and Eastern Europe at the Inter-University Center (IUC) in Dubrovnik. At that time, George Soros had already started his foundation in Hungary and was, after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, ready to continue his philanthropic activities in the countries of Eastern Europe, which had begun to build their democracies.