The Soviet Bloc Unwinds: Crash Course European History #46

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, protests and unrest continued across Europe, and the Soviet Union was having increasing trouble holding its sphere of influence together. Today you’ll learn about the labor strikes of Poland, the dissident punks of East Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the breakup of the Soviet Union, among other things.

Namenlos: Nazis Back in East Berlin – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kcLjYR4nAc

Sources:

-Ekiert, Grzegorz and Jan Kubik. Rebellious Civil Society – Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.

-Kenney, Padraic. 1989 Democratic Revolutions and the Cold War’s End. A Brief History With Documents. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2010

-Kotkin, Steven. Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. 2010.

-Krapfl, James. Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989-1992. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.

-Mohr, Tim. Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall New York: Algonquin, 2018. -Plokhy, Sirhil. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

-Sarotte, Mary Elise. Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, New York: Basic Books, 2014

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

-Taubman, William. Gorbachev, His Life and Times. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017.

-Veldman, Meredith. Margaret Thatcher: Shaping the New Conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.