Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?

Answer 1

Glasnot was a signal to other countries that they could get rid of communism.

Answer 2

The causes of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe were that it had no popular support, political downfall, and economic problems. The fact that the USSR had gained all of its money from the Eastern European states (after World War 2), Stalin's paranoia of the West forced him to put all that money into defensive arms and therefore none of that money was being channeled into the country. Many historians would argue that it was at this point that the USSR began its downward spiral and this is were the country began its snowball effect.

Answer 3

After communism had fell on eastern Europe ,Europe became a place were it was hard to get a long with others it like having a king with unlimited power boss you around all day. It became hard knowing that the government had unlimited power over farm and factories they choose what would grow and what would be produced.

Answer 4

Because it was failing both economically (which led to ration books and all sorts of shortages in Romania, for instance, and to power cuts - in East Germany) and humanly, if I may say so - as people decided that enough was enough. They had endured decades of tyrrany and Dictatorship and one day - "boom!". All we needed was a sparkle - East Germany - and then everything came crumbling down like some domino pieces.

Answer 5

Following a series of political, economic, and social reforms (i.e. Perestroika and Glasnost) under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began to change dramatically. Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had maintained the nations of Central & Eastern Europe in de-facto satellite status. Ostensibly, this was done because then-Chairman Josef Stalin feared a third attack from an eventually-resurgent Germany or a jealous Western power; by controlling the independent states of Central Europe, the Soviet Union would theoretically be able to ensure that any future wars would be fought outside the Soviet hinterland.

When Chairman Gorbachev began to loosen state control of the economy in the Soviet Union and made no effort to quash labor protests in Eastern Europe, the Soviet model began to unravel not just in the various republics of the Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, etc), but also in Poland (Solidarity Movement) and Czechoslovakia under leaders like Vaclav Havel. In 1989, the people of East and West Berlin -- Berlin had been divided since the end of the Second World War and the joint occupation of the city by the victorious allied powers -- acted unilaterally to destroy the wall separating the capitalist west from the socialist east. In prior decades, East Germany would have responded with gunfire and the Soviet Union would have used lethal force to prevent this. Gorbachev refused to dispatch Soviet armored divisions as Kruschev had done during the "Prague Spring" of the 1960s and the Hungarian protests in the 1950s. This failure to act sent a message to other protestors that their actions would not meet with lethal consequences.

Over the next two years (1989-1991), Soviet controls over the various socialist republics of Eastern Europe evaporated. Within two years of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, nearly all of the former eastern bloc countries had begun a firm transition to democratic government and market economies -- a transition that continues to this day. It should be noted that in at least one sense, the region's experience with totalitarianism did not completely end in the early 1990s as, even now, the country of Belarus remains something of a pariah state still clinging to aspects of its Soviet past.

For further reading, consider "The Man Who Changed the World," a biography of Mikhail Gorbachev written in the early 1990s. While lacking the analysis and access to documents that subsequent studies have revealed, it provides a very raw, emotional account of what it meant to live both in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Soviet era -- and it does a good job of painting Gorbachev not as a Communist dissentor, but rather a man who loved a system that could not be saved.

Answer 6

Democracy's victory in the Cold War ultimately brought an end to communism in Europe. However, rejection from the population played a huge role as well. Ultimately, communism is meant to be a utopia, however, it failed to achieve such a state.

Answer 7

they formed a new governments that were not controlled by communists