This book looks at the liberalisation process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the period 1987-1989, 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 1987-1989 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...