Throughout the cold war the USSR's satellite states wanted reforms in their respective countries; reforms that would liberalise things such as religion and a less central leadership (a step towards democratic socialism), with an increase in focus on consumer goods. These sort of reforms were usually not tolerated by the USSR and resulted in the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops in 1968, and supression in Hungary, Romania and Albania in the years previous.

Do you think that if the USSR had allowed these countries to adopt a more progressive stance and independant style of socialism, then socialism would still exist in Europe today? If this was allowed, then those countries wouldn't have been so eager to drop communism after Gorbachev came into power.