How did stalin’s death affect the ussr and eastern europe?

Tremendously. Stalin was the USSR everything it was up to his death he had built. But not without getting a lot of hatred on the way. Following his death Soviet leaders had years or "de-stalinization" basically undoing everything he had done. Which lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. After the dissolution of the Soviet union other areas that were claimed by the Soviet Union became independent.

in his book, the riddle of the rosetta stone, james giblin talks about how there was a young british polymath and physician named thomas young who made a lot of advances on the deciphering of the rosetta stone. he says that even though young made a lot of mistakes because he was working under false assumptions, he also made huge contributions like deciphering three out of the seven symbols (more than anyone else before him). young published his findings and continued his good work but he wasn't able to progress much further due to some unfavorable situations, he still laid the basis for many other scholars and of course for the man who has been generally known to have deciphered it, jean-françois champollion