In this sense, the developments in the Eastern Bloc countries played a decisive role in breaking up the Soviet Union. Most important in this regard was Gorbachev’s explicit reversal of the Brezhnev doctrine, making clear that the USSR would not intervene to shore up the beleaguered Eastern Bloc regimes. The debt crisis in the late 1980s, and the resulting pressure on the price of consumer goods, only fed mounting street protests in countries like East Germany and Poland. In certain states these were partially animated by left-wing and independent trade union movements, but they were also shaped by a strong rejection of Soviet control.