When I lived in Goettingen which was only 20 km. from the old East German border, I often took trips to Soviet block cities, e.g. Prague, Weimar, Budapest, Cracow, etc. If you had asked me back then how long it would've taken Eastern Europe to free itself from the communists, I would have answered: "One or two centuries".

The Soviet block was falling apart at the seams but the people were totally cowed by the local equivalent of the Volkspolizei. Labor unions and opposition groups were heavily infiltrated by state informers. The basic culture was so perverted by the communists that it no longer had the moral integrity to rid itself of them. However what I didn't realize was the political system was quietly falling apart from the top down. Gorbachev unwisely tried to repair a political system that was hopelessly rotten. When he tried to fix one thing, he broke two other things. Then trying to fix two new broken things broke four other things and so forth. Nobody expected the Soviet Empire to collapse as rapidly as it did (certainly not me).

Gary