Soviet Union The Hungarian Uprising
Hungarian Revolution, popular uprising in Hungary in 1956, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin's rule. ... On November 4 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the revolution, and Nagy was executed for treason in 1958.
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring of 1968. ... The Prague Spring ended with a Soviet invasion, the removal of Alexander Dubček as party leader and an end to reform within Czechoslovakia. The first signs that all was not well in Czechoslovakia occurred in May 1966 when there were complaints that the Soviet Union was exploiting the people.
Solidarity
The crisis stemmed from the formation of Solidarity, which started out as a free trade union but quickly became far more: a social movement, a symbol of hope and an embodiment of the struggle against communism and Soviet domination.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika to transform the Soviet Union, but it hastened its collapse. ... And with perestroika, the Soviet Union would undergo a rapid political and economic restructuring that aimed to transform much of society.
Perestroika and Glasnost
Glasnost and Perestroika. ... To reform the distraught Soviet Union, the democratization of the Communist Party was promoted through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost.” Perestroika refers to the reconstruction of the political and economic system established by the Communist Party.
Velvet Revolution: The Fall of the Berlin Wall:
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.
