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On June 12, 1989, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev began a four-day visit to West Germany, just two weeks after a similar visit to West Germany by United States President George H. W. Bush. Gorbachev had by the summer of 1989 become a popular figure and expectations were running high in West German society over the summit. From the Soviet Union's perspective, West Germany represented….

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On 23 June 1988, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (Communist) Central Committee established a committee to analyze Hungary's political, economic and social development during the preceding thirty years. The issue of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary became a political flashpoint. Was 1956 an attempt to establish an independent Communist movement separate from Soviet authority, or was….

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