muckles:
I always thought that the East European Countries got out when they had a chance after the Communist system of the USSR colapsed and they no longer feared military action if they deared stray from the Warsaw Pact.
Well, this is not completely true.
EE countries were trying all the time - just to mention event of East Berlin in 1948, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968. It was always stopped by force. In all this cases it was iether the intelligentsia, or the workers who were against the power.
The first change was in Poland, during the 1980 strikes, when workers united with the inteligentsia, so it was for first time possible to widely opose the goverment and at the same time make some sensible demands. All postulates were met by the goverment. But then people, on the wave of the changes, started to strike all over the place and demand more, more, and more. In the meantime the Eastern Bloc was getting deeper and deeper into the recession (West too, btw). Gen. Jaruzelski, then Polish PM feared that if he won’t put stop to this, Soviets will and even if not, his back benchers (is that good word in this context) will cause some troubles, so he introduced the martial law and cancelled it all. But the seed was already there, and people knew that if they want to overthrow the goverment they cannot fight with them, but oppose them in different ways.
Meanwhile, in Soviet Union the economical crisis was also causing troubles. So the soviet union, too busy with its own problems inside and outside the country (afganistan) was no longer a threat to its satelites, especially after Gorbatchev reforms - so you are right on this.
So about 1988 Polish Goverment saw no other option as to deal with the oppostition, which ended with Round Table negotiations and resulted in partially free elections of 4/06/1989 won withing the free bits totally by the opposition. This parliament lead Poland through the period of changes and in 1991 we had completely free elections.
The other countries followed the path, using innertia coming from Poland - Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and, Finally, Eastern Germany - when they were practically surrounded by independent countries and their goverment saw that it has no longer power over the people - so they just let the wall fall. This was the end of the era, and this is why it became a symbol.
Soviet Union fell apart only later, 26/12/1991. So you was wrong on this one.
As for Soviet Union - this is interesting example we can learn from in context of our today’s discussion: everyone was less or more happy (as much as soviet standards allowed off course) to be together when the things were going well. But when the economical crisis of the 80s hit it really hard, nationalist thinking got stronger and stronger, as everyone was thinking that they will be much better off if they quit the, nomen omen, Union. As we can see today, altough the strongest member, Russia, is doing relatively well, none of the former Soviet Republic achieved a standard of living even close to the one they used to have in the golden era of the communism (60s/70s). Except for the Baltic States, which joined EU.
I think we should take this into consideration when analysing todays situation. Of course EU can not be directly compared to USSR, but I think there are some valid analogies between the two.
.
