r Marxist economy work better than any of the other East European Marxist economies.
It was the ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership in 1985, however, that ushered in the most dramatic political and economic changes in Eastern Europe since the Russian Revolution in 1917. Gorbachev assumed office with an agenda calling for a liberalization of the Soviet political structure, a reform of the Soviet economic structure, and a policy of self determination for the Soviet satellite nation states (Gorbachev, 1987, pp. 24, 76, 113). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one's perspective, Gorbachev initiated his reformist policies before establishing new
structures to manage and control the pace and direction of the reforms. As a consequence, the reforms soon went out of control on all fronts political, economic, and the satellite nation states. In turn, Marxist political and economic control collapsed all across Eastern Europe beginning in 1989, and the Soviet satellite empire in Eastern Europe disintegrated
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