This book, available for the first time in paperback, looks at the liberalisation process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the period 1987–89, focusing on Gorbachev’s initiative to encourage perestroika in all the fraternal regimes of CEE outside the Soviet Union. Archival materials, interviews and textual analysis identify a joint initiative among these fraternal communist parties to perpetuate the one-party system. For this purpose, fraternal parties were expected to follow the example of the CPSU in convening the national party conference, an all-party meeting on a similar scale to the five-yearly congress, and yet mysteriously, one which was barely described in the Party Statutes and rarely convoked. Gorbachev made use of CEE dependence on the Soviet Union for energy supplies to ensure that at least some fraternal parties followed his line.

This book will be of interest to those studying the transition process in CEE, democratisation, comparative politics more generally and students of research methods.