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→Instability and the Ultimate Fall
==Instability and the Ultimate Fall==
The Soviet Union faced a series of internal and external challenges that it was unable to meet. Gorbachev's reforms had improved some conditions while giving enough of an opening for anti-Communist ideas to spread. Nationalist forces, some suppressed since the First World War began to break out. Violence in the Caucasus began as ethnic Armenians demanded the Azerbaijani-controlled territory Nagorno-Karabakh be united with the Soviet Republic of Armenia. Soviet power appeared on the wane everywhere-- Soviet forces were pulling out of Afghanistan after a decade of unsuccessful war, protests roiled Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics, and the Soviet economy continued to lag.</ref>Lebow, Richard Ned, and Thomas Risse-Kappen, eds. --''International relations theory and the end of the Cold War.-- '' New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.</ref>
One by one nations of Eastern Europe began to remove themselves from the Soviet sphere of influence. Protests began across Poland, Hungary, and East Germany in the spring of 1989. After a declaration that East German citizens could visit West Germany unimpeded on November 9th the Berlin Wall was opened and travel between the two Germanies began. Germany would be reunited the next year. By the end of 1990 each of the former Soviet satellite states were against independent with democratically elected governments.
