The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
Gale Stokes
 Beginning with the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and culminating in the 1989-1991 revolutions, The Walls Came Tumbling Down is a narrative of the gradual collapse of Eastern European communism. Focusing on the decades of unrest that precipitated 1989's tulmultuous events, Stokes provides a history of the various communist regimes and the opposition movements that brought them down, including the "March Days" and Solidarity, the 1975 Helsinki Accords, Czechoslovakia's Charter 77 opposition movement, and the autocratic policies of Romania's Nicolae Ceauşescu that precipitated the 1989 Revolution. Stokes examines the first tottering steps in 1990-1991 toward pluralist government, from the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev to the bloody partioning of war-torn Yugoslavia.