Global Factors

This chapter discusses global factors that brought communism in Europe to an end. It presents the economic crisis which affected the Eastern Bloc and contributed to the fall of communism. It depicts the failure of communist ideology and development of anti-communist opposition in the Soviet satellite countries. This was happening while the West rose in power. Internal to the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost played its crucial role along with rising national movements accelerated the process of disintegration.