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POLAND. One of the largest of the countries of Eastern Europe, Poland was the first of these countries to liberate its government from the Communist domination endured for 45 years. It was the relegalization of the trade union Solidarity and the agreement to hold partially free parliamentary elections that appeared to have opened the floodgates of radical reforms that spilled over into other countries of the Soviet bloc. In 1989, a year of drama unmatched in modern history, government after government collapsed in Eastern Europe and politically transformed not only Poland but also East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Soviet Union itself.*
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