Gorbachev
This Russian term meaning "openness" was introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev to encourage transparency and self-criticism, ultimately shattering the Communist Party's monopoly on information
What is Glasnost?
According to historical data from C.S. Maier, this Eastern Bloc nation had accumulated the largest hard-currency Western debt by 1989, reaching a crushing $41.4 billion
What is Poland?
Founded at the Lenin Shipyards under the leadership of electrician Lech Wałęsa, this independent, self-governing trade union became the first of its kind recognized by a communist government in the Soviet bloc
What is Solidarity (Solidarność)?
Officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), this space-based anti-ballistic missile system designed to use lasers to shoot down incoming nuclear weapons was famously nicknamed this by the media
What is Star Wars?
In March 1990, this Baltic nation became the very first constituent Soviet republic to declare its complete independence from the Soviet Union
What is Lithuania?
This catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine served as the definitive catalyst for glasnost, proving that transparency was a matter of physical survival rather than choice
What is the Chernobyl disaster?
The vulnerability of the Soviet "rentier state" was exposed when the global price of this primary hard-currency-earning commodity plummeted from $35 to $16 a barrel in the mid-1980s
What is oil?
The historic 1979 visit of this religious figure to his native Poland sparked a massive "national awakening" and provided an alternative moral and spiritual space outside of state control
Who is Pope John Paul II?
President Ronald Reagan fundamentally altered the "morally neutral" tone of détente by calling the USSR this during a famous March 1983 speech to American evangelicals
What is the "evil empire"?
This populist politician rose to prominence by championing Russian sovereignty over the central USSR apparatus, eventually becoming the first directly elected President of the Russian Federation in June 1991
Who is Boris Yeltsin?
In 1989, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov jokingly named this doctrine to describe the formal revocation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, signaling that Eastern European nations could now "do it their way"
What is the Sinatra Doctrine?
Illustrating the chronic domestic shortages of the 1980s, ordinary Soviet citizens frequently spent between three to five hours in queues to buy this basic everyday food item.
What is sausage? (Accept: "lousy sausage")
This non-violent political movement, spearheaded by playwright Václav Havel and the human rights advocates of Charter 77, successfully coordinated Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution"
Specifically under "Basket III" of this 1975 international agreement, domestic dissidents gained a legitimate legal framework to hold Eastern Bloc governments accountable for human rights violations
What is the Helisinii Accords?
During the failed August 1991 coup, the plotters of the hardline "Emergency Committee" betrayed their own lack of conviction during a televised press conference by displaying this visible physical symptom
What were trembling hands?
In his landmark December 1988 speech to the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev officially announced this strategic shift, which abandoned "class struggle" and "proletarian internationalism" in favor of "mutual security"
What is the "de-ideologization" of foreign policy?
To pay off his nation's foreign debt, this Romanian dictator enforced a brutal austerity program that starved his population while he funneled state resources into building a massive 1,100-room palace.
Who is Nicolae Ceaușescu?
n May 1989, this country's reformist prime minister, Miklós Németh, refused to fund the upkeep of the "technically obsolete" barbed-wire border fence with Austria, creating the first physical tear in the Iron Curtain
What is Hungary?
This U.S. foreign policy doctrine abandoned traditional containment in favor of actively funding and training anti-communist insurgencies to "roll back" Soviet influence in places like Afghanistan and Nicaragua
What is the Reagan Doctrine?
Highlighting the technological "computer anxiety" of the Soviet leadership, this Chief of the General Staff famously warned that introducing microcomputers to Soviet recruits would lead to a fatal "loss of political control"
Who is Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov?
In February 1990, Gorbachev proposed canceling this specific part of the Soviet Constitution, ending the Communist Party's legal monopoly on political power within the USSR
What is Article 6?
In a bizarre display of agricultural inefficiency, the director of this high-tech Soviet institute—normally responsible for space launches—was forced to divert rocket scientists to collective farms to manually harvest potatoes
What is the Vostok Institute?
Demonstrators in Leipzig chanted this defiant German phrase ("Wir sind das Volk"), signaling to the Stasi and the ruling socialist regime that the population had lost its fear of state repression.
What is "We are the people"?
Under the Reagan administration, the supply of these US-made, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to the Afghan mujahideen drastically escalated the physical and financial costs of the war for Soviet forces?
What are Stinger missiles?
On this exact day, Mikhail Gorbachev formally resigned his presidency, and the red Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin dome for the final time
What is December 25, 1991?