>> Probably the biggest driver towards the collapse of the Eastern Bloc was Germans and Poles
>> seeing the greater freedom and prosperity their near-neighbours enjoyed and ceasing to believe what their
>> masters in Moscow told them.
>>
Surely most of the population of the Eastern bloc had been "disillusioned" with the Soviet Union from very shortly after their troops arrived. That's why they were kept from the West by walls, minefields and electrified fences.
What changed over the years was the Soviet Union's economic ability to maintain a vast military force necessary to suppress dissent and indeed the will to use it as had been done in 1956 Hungary or later in Czechoslovakia
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