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Recent Studies on the 1989 Revolutions in Eastern Europe and on the Demise of the Soviet Union

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MartinSabrow, ed., 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt [1989 and the Role of Force] (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 428 pp. (pb), £24.28, ISBN 978-3-8353-1059-9.
AndreasOplatka, Der erste Riß in der Mauer: September 1989 – Ungarn öffnet die Grenze [The First Crack in the Wall: September 1989 – Hungary Opens its Borders] (Vienna: Zsolnay, 2009), 303 pp. (hb), £13.52, ISBN 978-3-552-05459-2.
MikhailPolynov, Istoricheskie predposylki perestroiki v SSSR: Vtoraya polovina 1940 – pervaya polovina 1980-kh gg. [Historical Preconditions for Perestroika in the USSR: From the Second Half of the 1940s to the First Half of the 1980s] (St Petersburg: Aleteya, 2012). 512 pp. (hb), 350 Rb/£60.34, ISBN 978-5-91419-435-9.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

OL´GA PAVLENKO  and
PETER RUGGENTHALER
OL´GA PAVLENKO
Affiliation:
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Faculty of International Relations and Area Studies, Miusskaya pl. 6, 125993 Moscow, Russia; [email protected]
PETER RUGGENTHALER
Affiliation:
Ludwig Boltzmann-Institut für Kriegsfolgen-Forschung, Schörgelgasse 43, 8010 Graz, Austria; [email protected]
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Extract

Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? What made the 1989 revolutions in ‘Eastern Europe’ possible and why were they not crushed? What appeared as the logical consequence of Gorbachev's perestroika to many observers at the time – and has indeed been painted as such by quite a few historians – turns out on closer inspection to have been far more complex.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 139 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Salmon, Patrick, Hamilton, Keith and Twigge, Stephen, eds, German Unification 1989–90: Documents on British Policy Overseas, Ser. 3. Vol. 7 (Abingdon: Routledge 2010)Google Scholar.

2 This is owed above all to the Gorbachev Foundation which has already published a great number of documents, most recently the very substantial book by Savranskaya, Svetlana, Blanton, Thomas and Zubok, Vladislav, eds, Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 (Budapest: CEU Press 2010)Google Scholar.

3 To name only one substantive paper: Kramer, Mark, ‘The Demise of the Soviet Bloc’, Europe-Asia Studies, 63, 9 (2011), 1535–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Küsters, Hanns Jürgen, ed., Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik: Deutsche Einheit: Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (Munich: Oldenbourg 1998)Google Scholar.

5 Hertle, Hans-Hermann, ed., Mauerbau und Mauerfall: Ursachen – Verlauf – Auswirkungen (Berlin: Links, 2002)Google Scholar; and ‘The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Self-Dissolution of East Germany's Ruling Regime’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 12–13 (2001), 131–40.

6 Kramer, Mark, ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 5, 4 (2003), 178–256Google Scholar; 6, 4 (2004), 3–65; 7, 1 (2005), 3–96. For specific countries see the works cited below.

7 Kramer, Mark, ‘Ideology and the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, 25 (1999), 539–76, here 547–53Google Scholar.

8 Even more informative in many respects is Kemp-Welch, Anthony, Poland under Communism: A Cold War History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See also the incisive analyses by Oldřich Tůma, most recently Tůma, Oldřich, ‘Der Fall des kommunistischen Regimes in der Tschechoslowakei’, in Heiss, Gernot, Králová, Katerina, Pešek, Jiri and Rathkolb, Oliver, eds, Tschechien und Österreich nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges: Auf getrennten Wegen ins neue Europa (Ústí nad Labem: Albis International 2009)Google Scholar; Blehova, Beata, Der Fall des Kommunismus in der Tschechoslowakei (Berlin: LIT, 2006)Google Scholar.

10 See the numerous seminal works by Iskra Baeva, e.g. Baeva, Iskra, ‘The Year of the “Palace Coup” or a New Start in Bulgarian History’, in Bachmaier, Peter, ed., Der Transformationsprozess in Bulgarien und der Weg in die EU (Vienna: Ostag 2006)Google Scholar.

11 Essential reading on Romania: Siani-Davis, Peter, The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2005)Google Scholar; Deletant, Dennis, Romania under Communist rule (Iaşi: Center for Romanian Studies 1999)Google Scholar.

12 Kramer, ‘The Demise of the Soviet Bloc’, 1586.

13 Ibid. 1584–87.

14 Essential reading on Hungary: Békés, Csaba and Kalmár, Melinda, ‘The Political Transition in Hungary, 1989–90’, Cold War International History Bulletin 12–13 (Fall–Winter, 2001)Google Scholar; Békés, Csaba, ‘Back to Europe: The International Context of the Political Transition in Hungary, 1988–1990’, in Bozóki, Andras, ed., The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (Budapest: CEU Press 2002), 237–72Google Scholar.

15 Kramer, ‘The Demise of the Soviet Bloc’, 1586–7.