History of Disintegration in Eastern Europe

The collapse of the USSR:

• The decline of Soviet power began in the late 1980s with protests in the Eastern Bloc as well as in Soviet republics and the Soviet exit from Afghanistan.
• The Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan in 1979 to install a communist regime and after 10 years of fighting the Mujahideen, who were backed by the U.S., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the Soviets had to pull back in February 1989.
• Within months, Soviet-backed communist regimes in Eastern Europe started collapsing, practically bringing the Cold War to an end.
• It started in Poland, which hosted the headquarters of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact security alliance.
• Protests spread to Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
• In June 1989, the anti-communist Solidarity movement, led by Lech Wałęsa, won an overwhelming victory in a partially free election in Poland, leading to the peaceful fall of communist rule.
• It triggered a chain reaction across the Eastern Bloc.
• In November 1989, the Berlin Wall that had separated the capitalist West Berlin and the communist east, fell, leading to the German reunification a year later.