[.ca] Eastern Europe Since 1970 (ISBN 0582328586)

Why Did Communist System Fail?:
This small book is a very useful guide to understand the reasons and origins of the collapse of the state-socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. Particularly the sections on the "international debt crisis" and the negative impact of the IMF and the World Bank on the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe are thougt-provoking and very helpful. In this way, the book prepares the ground for a complicated argument in which long-term/ sytemic factors intermingle with the short-term factors, like Gorbachov's comimg to power in the SU, and presents a very readable and interesting account for the students of this important question of modern European history.