Gordon Carrera

It was failing to keep up economically with the West.

There were these increasing problems with legitimacy.

Some of the pillars were a bit weaker.

The pillars we talked about last time, dissent growing.

But no one predicted the sudden collapse across Eastern Europe in 1989 of all those communist regimes and then eventually the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I think, worth saying, different in different countries.

For instance, Poland, it was driven through the 80s, particularly by the trade union solidarity and civil society.

I actually went on a slight sidebar.

I went to Gdansk last year and I went to the Solidarity Museum in Gdansk.

Anyone who's interested in the end of the Cold War, it is absolutely fantastic.

Go to Gdansk and go to the museum because it just gives you an understanding of what happened in Poland.

But I think

So one of the things I'd say is, you know, we talked a bit about the bandwagon effect, the revolutionary bandwagon, and what you saw in Eastern Europe that year was a revolutionary bandwagon across countries.

So you saw one country rise up and to some extent succeed, and then others would follow.

in its footsteps.

So I think that is part of it across what happened.

East Germany, though, is the one I think worth focusing on because it famously leads to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was the symbolic moment for the collapse of communism.

And I think it's also interesting because we talked about authoritarian states.

Well, famously, the Stasi, the East German Security Service,

were incredibly effective in many ways.