The Fall of Communism: Crash Course European History #47

The aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact had a huge impact on the countries of Eastern Europe. As the former satellite states turned away from communism and Soviet influence, some of them shifted toward democracy in an orderly way, and some descended into violence and bloodshed, and ethnic recrimination. In many ways, this collapse is still playing out today. In this video, you’ll learn how countries like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and many others moved into the post-Soviet world.

Sources

-Alexievich, Svetlana. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. An Oral History. Bella Shayevich, trans. New York: Random House, 2017.

-Hsu, Roland, ed. Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

-James, Harold. Making of the European Monetary Union. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.

-Smith, Bonnie G. Europe in the Contemporary World, 1900 to the Present. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.