The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberatioa of Eastern Europe.(Review) (book review)

The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberatioa of Eastern Europe. By Jacques Levesque, trans. Keith Martin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 267p. $35.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Few developments in the twentieth century were more dramatic than the abrupt and largely peaceful collapse of East European communist regimes in 1989. For roughly forty years, the Soviet Union had maintained a bloc in Eastern Europe through the use or threat of military force. When Mikhail Gorbachev took office as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) in March 1985, he ...

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