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... Gorbachev had led the effort for glasnost, but it took the Chernobyl disaster to see it forward. This new openness allowed Hungary and other Eastern European countries to reexamine its past, open its press, have publicly differing opinions. This new openness "pushed" Hungary to more open debates and eventually the formation of no less than a half dozen political parties challenging the old order by the end of 1990.3 While Gorbachev was pushing the communist nations with glasnost, the West was continuing to "pull" from Europe. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC), Radio Liberty (RL) and Radio Free Europe (RFE) had been broadcasting to Eastern Europe since the 1950s. These radio broadcasts to the communist world espoused stability based on democratic ideals and free-market economies.4 This "pull" 1. David Reynolds, One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.), 343. 2. ThinkQuest.com, ...