After their 1968 military intervention in Czechoslovakia, Soviet leaders worked to restore order and stability. Free expression and open protest disappeared throughout their satellite nations. Dissidents were blacklisted or imprisoned in jails or mental institutions. Although the economic crisis of the 1970s slowed the rate of improvement, a rising standard of living helped ensure stability as well. The privileges enjoyed by the Communist Party elite also served as incentives to do as the state wished for those who sought access to special well-stocked stores, superior schools, vacations, and cars. Beneath this appearance of stability, however, the Soviet Union underwent a social revolution. The urban population expanded rapidly. The number of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists increased fourfold between 1960 and 1985. The education that created expertise helped foster the growth of Soviet public opinion. Educated people read, discussed, and formed definite ideas about social questions ranging from pollution to urban transportation.

When Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) became premier in 1985, he set out to reform the Soviet system with policies he called democratic socialism, or “socialism with a democratic face.” The first set of reforms was intended to transform and restructure the economy. This limited economic restructuring, perestroika, permitted freer prices, more autonomy for state enterprises, and the establishment of some profit-seeking private cooperatives. When the Soviet economy stalled, Gorbachev’s popular support gradually eroded. Gorbachev’s bolder and more far-reaching campaign of openness, or glasnost, introduced in 1985, was more successful. Where censorship and uniformity had long characterized public discourse, the new frankness approached free speech and marked a significant shift.

Democratization under Gorbachev led to the first free elections in the Soviet Union since 1917. Gorbachev and the party remained in control, but an independent minority was elected in 1989 to a revitalized Congress of People’s Deputies. Democratization encouraged demands for greater autonomy from non-Russian minorities, especially in the Baltic region and in the Caucasus. These demands went beyond what Gorbachev had envisaged. But Gorbachev drew back from repression, and nationalist demands continued to grow.

Finally, Gorbachev brought “new political thinking” to foreign affairs. He withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 and sought to reduce Cold War tensions. Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine, pledging to respect the political choices of eastern Europe’s peoples. Soon after, a wave of peaceful revolutions swept across eastern Europe, overturning Communist regimes. New governments proclaimed support for democratic elections and human rights. Eastern Europe changed dramatically almost overnight.

Poland led the way. It had resisted Soviet-style collectivization and had refused to break with the Catholic Church. Faced with an independent agricultural base and a vigorous church, the Communists failed to monopolize society. They also mismanaged the economy, which had stalled by the mid-1970s. When Polish-born Pope John Paul II (pontificate 1978–2005) returned to his native land to preach the love of Christ and country and the “inalienable rights of man,” he electrified the Polish nation, and the economic crisis became a spiritual crisis as well.

In August 1980 strikes grew into a working-class revolt. Led by Lech Wałęsa (lehk vah-LEHN-suh) (b. 1943), workers organized the independent trade union Solidarity. Communist leaders responded by imposing martial law in December 1981 and arresting Solidarity’s leaders. (See “Listening to the Past: A Solidarity Leader Speaks from Prison.”) Though outlawed, Solidarity maintained its organization and strong popular support. By 1988 labor unrest and inflation had brought Poland to the brink of economic collapse. Solidarity pressured Poland’s Communist Party leaders into legalizing Solidarity and allowing free elections in 1989 for some seats in the Polish parliament. Solidarity won every contested seat. A month later Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927–2013), the editor of Solidarity’s weekly newspaper, was sworn in as the first noncommunist prime minister in eastern Europe in a generation.

Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution followed the dramatic changes in Poland and led to the peaceful ouster of Communist leaders. The Czech movement for democracy grew out of massive street protests led by students and intellectuals and resulted in the election of Václav Havel (VAH-slahf HAH-vuhl) as president in 1989. (See “Individuals in Society: Václav Havel.”)

Only in Romania was revolution violent. Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (chow-SHEHS-koo) (1918–1989) unleashed his security forces on protesters, sparking an armed uprising. After Ceauşescu’s forces were defeated, he and his wife were captured and executed by a military court.

Amid growing resistance, the Hungarian Communist Party scheduled free elections for early 1990. Hungarians gleefully tore down the barbed wire “iron curtain” that separated Hungary and Austria (see Map 31.1) and opened their border to refugees from East Germany. As thousands of East Germans passed through Czechoslovakia and Hungary on their way to West Germany, a protest movement arose in East Germany. East Germany’s leaders relented and opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989, before being swept aside. An “Alliance for Germany” won general elections and negotiated an economic union with West Germany.

Two factors contributed to the rapid reunification of East and West Germany. First, in the first week after the Berlin Wall opened, almost 9 million East Germans — roughly half the country’s population — poured across the border into West Germany. Almost all returned home, but their experiences in the West aroused long-dormant hopes of unity and change. Second, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl reassured American, Soviet, and European leaders that they need not fear a reunified Germany. Kohl and Gorbachev signed a historic agreement in July 1990 in which united Germany affirmed its peaceful intentions. Within the year, East and West Germany merged into a single nation under West Germany’s constitution and laws.

Eastern European countries pursued liberalization, but electoral politics suffered from intense battles between presidents and parliaments, and from weak political parties. The elderly suffered from the loss of pensions and social welfare programs after the end of communism, but the young often enjoyed greater economic opportunities. Many former Communist Party officials became wealthy as they gained control of state enterprises that were privatized. Regional inequalities persisted. Capital cities such as Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest concentrated wealth, power, and opportunity; provincial centers stagnated; and industrial areas declined.

The great postcommunist tragedy was Yugoslavia, whose federation of republics and regions had been held together under Josip Tito’s Communist rule. After Tito’s death in 1980, power passed increasingly to the republics. Rising territorial and ethnic tensions were intensified by economic decline and charges of ethnically inspired massacres during World War II. The revolutions of 1989 accelerated the breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbian president Slobodan Milošević (SLOH-buh-dayn muh-LOH-suh-vihch) (1941–2006) attempted to grab land from other republics and unite all Serbs in a “greater Serbia.” His ambitions led to civil wars that between 1991 and 2001 engulfed Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Map 32.3). In 1999 Serbian aggression prompted NATO air strikes, led by the United States, against the Serbian capital of Belgrade as well as against Serbian military forces until Milošević relented. Milošević was voted out of office in 2000. The new Serbian government extradited him to a United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands to stand trial for crimes against humanity as peace was restored to the former Yugoslav republics.