The collapse of soviet control

• German people pulled down the Berlin wall

  1989
• The Warsaw Pack ended


  1991
• Hard line communists tried and failed to overthrow Gorbachev
• The USSR broke away into Soviet republics that made separate, independent states
• Gorbachev resigned as the USSR had broken up
• Hungary and Austria opened their borders
• Poland elected a non-Communist government
• A peaceful revolution (The Velvet Revolution) ended communist rule in Czechoslovakia