I need some basic info on: What factors played a role in the collapse of Russian Control over Eastern Europe?

The Soviet Union spend a far greater portion of its GNP on defense than the United States,but still had a smaller economy than the U.S. Ronald Reagan accelerated this trend in the 1980s,which he also went out on try to roll back communism in wherever it planted itself,especially in the Western Hemisphere,so back overstreching the Soviet Union therefore,it wasn't even able to hold on to Eastern Europe like it had for 4 decades.


I was a teenager when the Berlin Wall fell.

Because the communist system of everyone happily working for the common good was contrary to the way humans really behave. The only way to maintain such a system is Stalin's way -- ruthless mass murder. Once the threat of violence was gone, people ran for the exits.

guy H may be correct;the utter incompetence of gorbatchov added to the woes.

I'll give you the bullet points and let you fill in the blanks:
-The political structure of the USSR was weak at its foundation. With no clear method of power sharing or succession and fears of strong leaders (Stalin, Khrushchev) stagnation occurred.
-Trade decisions were made on what was best for the USSR and not it's satellites in Eastern Europe.
-Construction and maintenance was poorly done causing many projects to be redone time and again, diverting resources from producing consumer goods.
-Restrictions on personal liberties and self determination and the violent repression of nationalist movements (Hungry in 54, Czechoslovakia in 68, Poland in the 80's, etc).
-The growing environmental movement both internal to the USSR and in the Eastern Bloc.
-Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. The troops, material, and money used in Afghanistan weakened the system of social controls while simultaneously raising dissenting opinions and voices.
-Centuries of cultural identity that had survived oppression from a variety of empires was able to express itself.

By no means is this an exhaustive list, but it'll get you started.

Something to add to what others have already said:

1. Chernobyl. It was a big one. It demolished Russia's industrial prestige and destabilized the central part of the country.

2. Increasing erosion of responsibility. That's the PSYCHOLOGICAL effect of living in a totalitarian communist state -- where "ze government" is responsible for everything, no individual is responsible for anything. Little by little, generation by generation, government functionaries from top to bottom just stopped, well, functioning.

3. The demise of agriculture and farming. This began with collectivization in the 1930's and was accelerated by Kruschev inane agricultural policies in the 1960's. The system of collective farms turned rural residents into virtual slaves, whose right to travel, move, etc. was even more severely restricted than that of urban domiciliaries. At the same time, poverty in the rural areas was indescribable. People, consequently, sought to escape in any way they could. Young people particularly, high school graduates, left in droves, turning themselves inside out to get into college, signing up to go to the Arctic -- anything to escape the village. By the mid-1980's, the Russian countryside was pretty much deserted, and the only people left were mostly very old. The result? A country with the largest land mass in the world, most of it very fertile, became unable to feed itself. The USSR, which could have been, literally, the world's bread basket, was buying grain abroad since the 1960's, and the purchases were growing at staggering rates throughout the following next decades. Even today, agriculture in Russia is virtually non-existent.

4. Ronald Reagan. Seriously. The man was a genius, even when he had Alzheimer's. As someone who lived in the USSR in the 1980's, let me assure you: the USSR really believed that the "Star Wars" thing was the real deal. Seriously. (Reagan's mind may have been slipping, but the string of GenSec's the Soviet Union had in that decade was more so by several orders of magnitude.) Naturally, when you are a leader and you think your enemy is in the process of contructing a Death Star in outer space and cloning a Darth Vader, your priorities are going to change. The USSR spent INSANE amounts of money on its military in the 1980's -- INSANE. Most of it on stockpiling nukes. Those INSANE expenditures is what broke the camel's back.