Quick questions on End of the Cold War 1985-1991: VCE Modern History Unit 4

Leonid Brezhnev (General Secretary 1964 to 1982) presided over economic stagnation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (24 December 1979), and the deterioration of relations with Washington. Soviet GDP growth fell from around 5 per cent (1960s) to below 2 per cent (early 1980s). Oil and gas exports masked the decline until the 1986 oil price collapse.

Gorbachev was 54 when appointed; the youngest Politburo member. His advisers (Alexander Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze) shaped a reform program with three pillars.

Gorbachev and Reagan met four times: Geneva (19 to 21 November 1985), Reykjavik (11 to 12 October 1986), Washington (8 to 10 December 1987), and Moscow (29 May to 3 June 1988). Reykjavik nearly produced agreement on eliminating all nuclear weapons but collapsed on SDI.

Gorbachev privately abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine (the 1968 commitment to intervene to preserve socialism in Warsaw Pact states). On 25 October 1989, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, in a quip to a US reporter, called it the "Sinatra Doctrine": Eastern European states could "do it their way."

The free Volkskammer elections in East Germany on 18 March 1990 produced a CDU government under Lothar de Maiziere committed to rapid reunification on Western terms. Currency union came on 1 July 1990.

The Warsaw Pact was dissolved on 1 July 1991. COMECON dissolved on 28 June 1991. Soviet troops left Hungary (June 1991), Czechoslovakia (June 1991), and Poland (1993).

John Lewis Gaddis (The Cold War: A New History, 2005) credits Reagan's military pressure and Gorbachev's reforms in combination, and emphasises the role of individual leaders.

Media censorship was relaxed. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster (26 April 1986) was initially concealed, but the international fallout forced the Politburo into greater openness. By 1988, Pravda was publishing criticism of Stalin and the historical novels of Anatoly Rybakov.

Economic reforms aimed at decentralisation and limited market mechanisms. The Law on State Enterprises (June 1987) gave factory managers more autonomy. The Law on Cooperatives (May 1988) legalised small private enterprise.

The 19th Party Conference (June to July 1988) proposed an elected Congress of People's Deputies. Elections in March 1989 produced the first partially competitive Soviet legislature; televised debates (Andrei Sakharov, Boris Yeltsin) transformed Soviet political discourse.

Round Table talks (6 February to 5 April 1989) between the communist government and the banned Solidarity trade union (under Lech Walesa) produced agreement on partially free elections. Solidarity won 99 of 100 Senate seats and all the contested Sejm seats on 4 June 1989. Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist prime minister in the bloc on 24 August 1989.

The communist government had begun its own reforms in 1988. On 2 May 1989 Hungary began dismantling the barbed-wire fence on its border with Austria. From August 1989, thousands of East Germans on summer holiday in Hungary used the open border to flee west.

The mass exodus through Hungary, large weekly Leipzig demonstrations ("We are the people"), and Gorbachev's visit to East Berlin on the 40th anniversary (7 October 1989) destabilised Erich Honecker. Honecker resigned on 18 October 1989; Egon Krenz replaced him. The new Politburo drafted travel regulations to release pressure.

Riot police beat student protesters on 17 November 1989 (the trigger of the Velvet Revolution). General strikes followed. Vaclav Havel was elected President on 29 December 1989.

A Politburo coup removed Todor Zhivkov on 10 November 1989. Multi-party elections in June 1990.