ABSTRACT
From the end of the Second World War and the Yalta Agreement of 1945, Central and Eastern Europe fell – or, in the case of the Soviet Union itself, remained – under communist rule and was thus subject to an authoritarian system of government. Various popular uprisings or reform movements were crushed by Soviet military intervention (East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968), some states removed themselves – partly or wholly – from Soviet influence (Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania), while the Polish leadership put an end to the conflicts of the Solidarity period and preserved one-party rule by declaring a domestic state of war in 1981. Authoritarian rule of somewhat different kinds was nevertheless maintained for some 40 years, and the regional picture only began to undergo significant change with the accession to power in the Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.
