Engage

Overview

In this experience, students examine how the collapse of communist rule reshaped governments and economies across Eastern Europe. They first explore the regional transition from one-party communist systems toward new political and economic structures, including the contrasting experiences of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Students then research one Eastern European country to investigate changes in government, citizen participation, economic activity, trade, and market systems. Finally, they compare countries across the region and explain shared patterns and important differences in how Eastern Europe changed after the Cold War.

Objectives:

Explain how the end of communist rule changed governments and political participation in Eastern European countries
Compare how Eastern European countries changed politically and economically after the Cold War, including changes in economic systems, trade, borders, and national organization

For much of the period after World War II, many countries in Eastern Europe had communist governments closely connected to the Soviet Union. By the late 1980s, economic problems, political pressure, public protests, and changes within the Soviet Union were weakening communist rule across the region.

In 1989, communist governments lost power in several Eastern European countries. In many places, political change occurred largely through peaceful protests, elections, and negotiations, although the process was not the same everywhere. During the years that followed, countries developed new political and economic systems at different speeds and in different ways.

One of the most complicated changes occurred in Yugoslavia. Political and economic crises, competing nationalist movements, and disagreements among its republics contributed to the breakup of the country and a series of violent conflicts during the 1990s.

In this experience, you will examine how political change reshaped Eastern Europe after the Cold War and investigate how the breakup of Yugoslavia affected governments, borders, and people across the region.

Objectives:

Explain how the end of communist rule changed governments and political participation in Eastern European countries
Compare how Eastern European countries changed politically and economically after the Cold War, including changes in economic systems, trade, borders, and national organization

Hammer and Sickle, Symbols of the Soviet Union

If a government system changes, what other parts of a country might change as a result?

Discuss student responses and record several examples of what might change when a government system changes, such as elections, laws, political rights, economic policies, borders, public institutions, or daily life.

Use those ideas to help students generate questions for the lesson. Ask them to turn one of the possible changes they identified into a question they would want answered about Eastern Europe.

For example, students might ask: