CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. European Peace and Prosperity

III. Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative

Revolution

IV. Discontent in Eastern Europe and the Rise of

Solidarity

V. The Gorbachev Revolution in the USSR,

1985–89

VI. The Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe

VII. The Breakup of the Soviet Union, 1989–91

VIII. Helmut Kohl and the Reunification of
Germany, 1989–90

IX. The Yugoslav War, 1991–95

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CHAPTER 32

THE NEW BELLE ÉPOQUE: DEMOCRACY

AND PROSPERITY SINCE 1975

C

hapter 32 examines contemporary Europe

since the mid-1970s. The year 1975 was not

an abrupt turning point in Western history,

as 1914 or 1939 had been, but the events of

the mid-1970s showed that the cold war was ending

and a prosperous new Europe was emerging. The chap-

ter begins by looking at this peace and prosperity, in-

cluding signs of progress toward the ages-old dream

of European unity. One element of European progress

was the rise of women to real political power, and the

chapter next looks at Great Britain under Margaret

Thatcher, who introduced Europe to a firm, conserva-

tive reevaluation of that prosperity.

The most dramatic changes resulted from the col-

lapse of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union

and Eastern Europe. Chapter 32 shows the background

discontent such as the rise of the Solidarity movement

in Poland, the revolution that Mikhail Gorbachev

brought to the USSR, and the upheavals in Eastern

Europe known as the revolutions of 1989. Two other

historic events followed the collapse of Communist

governments: the reunification of Germany and the

Yugoslav Wars of 1991–99.

European Peace and Prosperity

During 1975 two dramatic events gave Europe greater

hope for an age of peace. The first was the end of the

Vietnam War. This conflict, the last stage of thirty

years of fighting to drive Japanese, then French, and

finally American armies out of Southeast Asia, ended

in April 1975 with the evacuation of the last American

officials from South Vietnam and the fall of the Saigon

government. Although this long war ended in Commu-

nist expansion, it did not greatly worsen cold war rela-

tions; instead, it allowed them to improve, especially in

Europe where the war had been widely opposed.

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