IntroductionOn November 9, 1989, the most iconic symbol of communism and the USSR fell. The Berlin Wall symbolically represented the division of Europe following the Cold War; divided Western and Eastern Europe. Originally, after the end of World War II, the Allied Powers disarmed and divided Berlin into four occupation zones: American, Soviet, British and French. Slowly, after the war, the Soviet Union began to take control of Eastern Europe. The Yalta Agreement of February 1945 gave the Soviet Union complete power to extend its control beyond its borders into Eastern European countries under the Red Army, and, eventually, Eastern Germany was engulfed by the communist regime. Until the 1980s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, was under the complete control of the Soviet Union. The governing party of the GDR was the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) until its fall in 1989. At the dawn of the 1980s, the Soviet Union was facing economic collapse. Economic failures in Soviet industry were frequent, and virtually all economic and social progress had stopped. The growth rate of national income in the Soviet Union fell by more than 150% and remained stagnant. On the brink of economic crisis, the Central Committee held a plenary meeting in April 1985. At this meeting perestroika was approved, and at the plenary meeting in March of the same year the election of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev as general secretary of the Soviet took place. Union. Aside from his compatriots, Gorbachev promised revolutionary change. His promises were based on the principles of perestroika and glasnost. Furthermore, he pursued the dream of a “common European home”. 2013. Kenney, Padraic. 1989: Democratic Revolutions at the End of the Cold War: A Brief History with Documents Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2010. Print.Plock, Ernest D.. East German-West German Relations Fall of the GDR. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993. Print.Schmemann, Serge When the Wall Fell: The Berlin Wall and the Fall of Soviet Communism Boston: Kingfisher, 2006. Print.Shultz, George P. and Sidney D. Drell. Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on its twentieth anniversary. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 558, 2007. Print. "Walter Ulbricht (German Communist Leader) – Encyclopedia Britannica". Web. 15 April. 2013. .