Author Description

Beginning with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and culminating in the 1989-1991 revolutions, The Walls Came Tumbling Down is a sweeping, vivid narrative of the gradual collapse of Eastern European communism. Focusing on the decades of unrest that precipitated 1989's tumultuous events, and including information obtained firsthand from personal interviews, Gale Stokes provides a comprehensive history of the various communist regimes and the opposition movements that brought them down, including the "March Days" and Solidarity Movement of Poland, the 1975 Helsinki accords, Czechoslovakia's Charter 77 opposition movement, the autocratic policies of Romania's Nicolae Ceaucescu that brought his people to the point of violent outrage, and every other major event that marked the crumbling of communism. Stokes also examines the first tottering steps in 1990-1991 toward pluralist government, from the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev to the bloody partitioning of war-torn Yugoslavia. For courses in communist studies or recent history, The Walls Came Tumbling Down is ideal for making clear the most widespread and significant upheaval of the latter twentieth century.