[W]hile Eastern Europe was acquired by the Soviets as a buffer zone, in the long term it proved to be a gate. lt did not shield the USSR from Western influences; it ushered them into the tent.

In matters of economic and social reform, the satellites led, and the Soviet Union followed—albeit usually with a delay, and only after an intervening period of repression and retrenchment. Hungary, following 1956, became an example of a socialist economy that could deliver a relatively high standard of living. Czechoslovakia, during the brief flowering of the Prague Spring, showed that socialist leadership could conceivably coexist with a free press and a multiparty system. Polish Solidarity, although anti-Communist, paradoxically showed what a real worker-led social movement looked like.

—Jacob Mikanowski, Goodbye Eastern Europe, (Great Britain: Oneworld Publications Ltd, 2023), 287-288.