“The Walls Came Tumbling Down. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe”

The revolutions of 1989 were as pivotal a moment in European history as 1917, 1848, or 1789 – yet almost no-one saw them coming until nearly the last moment: not Washington, not Moscow, the Communist regimes, nor even the victorious rebels themselves. But as Gale Stokes shows in this powerful new history – the most comprehensive, analytical, and readable of its kind – momentum for change had been building since 1968, momentum which soon drove past Gorbachev-inspired reform to outright revolution. In “The Walls Came Tumbling Down”, Stokes provides a compelling account of the Eastern European struggle for democracy, from the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 through the most recent elections. Stokes vividly describes the thinkers, leaders and event in each country, showing how the crushing of the Prague Spring had sparked the final disillusionment in Eastern Europe that culminated in the revolts of 1989.