ABSTRACT
At the beginning of 1989 the Soviet bloc was entering a major crisis, the course of which was not predictable any more than its eventual outcome was inevitable. A series of remarkable policy shifts in Hungary and Poland were underway. In January, non-Communist parties were legalised in Hungary. In February, Round Table talks began in Poland. In April, the Hungarian leadership resigned. In May, Budapest began to dismantle the fortifications on its border with Austria. In June, the Polish Communist Party relinquished its hold on power. All of these transformations met with the Kremlin’s approval, or at least toleration (although it did insist that in Poland Communists retain the defence and interior ministry portfolios). Soviet leaders and advisers knew that their room for manœuvre was narrow. Intervention by Soviet forces, they feared, could light the touchpaper under Eastern Europe as a whole. Even if the ruling parties in Eastern Europe held to a conservative course, ‘a political eruption’ – or even an ‘acute socialpolitical conflict with an unfathomable outcome’ – could ensue.1 Further reforms, it seemed, were inevitable; the hopes (and assumptions) in Moscow were simply that these would be controlled by reform Communists or other pro-Soviet forces. The Kremlin’s approach was cemented in July with Gorbachev’s formal repudiation of the Brezhnev doctrine.
