Revolutions of 1989

“Fall of Communism” redirects here. For the fall of theSoviet Union, see Dissolution of the Soviet Union.For the fall of Communism in different countries thatwere part of the Eastern Bloc, see End of Communism.

The Revolutions of 1989 were part of a revolutionarywave that resulted in the Fall of Communism in theCommunist states of Central and Eastern Europe and be-yond. The period is sometimes called the Autumn ofNations,[1][2][3][4][5] a play on the term “Springtime ofNations” sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of1848.The events began in Poland in 1989,[6][7] and continued inHungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, andRomania. One feature common to most of these de-velopments was the extensive use of campaigns of civilresistance demonstrating popular opposition to the con-tinuation of one-party rule and contributing to the pres-sure for change.[8] Romania was the only Eastern Bloccountry whose people overthrew its Communist regimeviolently;[9] however, in Romania itself and in some otherplaces, there was some violence inflicted by the regimeupon the population. The Tiananmen Square protests of1989 failed to stimulate major political changes in China.However, powerful images of courageous defiance dur-ing that protest helped to spark a precipitation of eventsin other parts of the globe. The same day June 4, Sol-idarity won an overwhelming victory in a partially freeelection in Poland leading to the peaceful fall of Com-munism in that country in the summer of 1989. Hungaryphysically dismantled its section of the Iron Curtain lead-ing to a mass exodus of East Germans through Hungaryand destabilizing East Germany. This would lead to massdemonstrations in cities such as Leipzig and subsequentlyto the fall of the Berlin Wall, which served as the sym-bolic gateway to German reunification in 1990.The Soviet Union was dissolved by the end of 1991, re-sulting in 14 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine,and Uzbekistan) declaring their independence from theSoviet Union in the course of the years 1990-91 and thebulk of the country being succeeded by Russia in De-cember 1991. Communism was abandoned in Albaniaand Yugoslavia between 1990 and 1992, the latter coun-try having split into five successor states by 1992: Bosniaand Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia (later renamed Serbiaand Montenegro, and later still split into two states,

Serbia and Montenegro). Serbia was then further splitwith the breakaway of the partially recognized state ofKosovo. Czechoslovakia too was dissolved three yearsafter the end of communist rule, splitting peacefully intothe Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992.[10] The impactwas felt in dozens of Socialist countries. Communismwas abandoned in countries such as Cambodia, Ethiopia,Mongolia, and South Yemen. The collapse of Commu-nism (and of the Soviet Union) led commentators to de-clare the end of the Cold War.In the years immediately following 1989, the fall ofApartheid system, the end of Chilean Military Dictator-ship, the democratization of Ghana and Suriname, thefall of communist party in Italy and San Marino, and therenewal of the Italian political class were recorded.The adoption of varying forms ofmarket economy imme-diately resulted in a general decline in living standards,[11]birth rates and life expectancies in post-CommunistStates, together with side effects including the rise ofbusiness oligarchs in countries such as Russia, and highlydisproportionate social and economic development. Po-litical reforms were varied but in only five countries wereCommunist institutions able to keep for themselves amonopoly on power: China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos,and Vietnam. Many Communist and Socialist organisa-tions in the West turned their guiding principles over tosocial democracy. The European political landscape wasdrastically changed, with numerous Eastern Bloc coun-tries joining NATO and stronger European economic andsocial integration entailed.The Revolutions of 1989 also coincided with a massivewave of international democratization: from a minoritymostly restricted to the First World and India up until themid-1980s, the electoral democracy became at least of-ficially the political system of about half of the countriesof the world by the early 1990s.

1 Background

1.1 Development of the Communist Bloc

Further information: Eastern Bloc and List of socialiststatesIdeas of Socialism had been gaining momentum amongworking class citizens of the world since the 19th century.These culminated in the early 20th century when sev-eral countries and subsequent nations formed their own

1

2 1 BACKGROUND

The fourth congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party, held in1963.

Queue waiting to enter a store, a typical view in Poland of 1980s

Communist Parties. Many of the countries involved hadhierarchical structures with monarchic governments andaristocratic social structures with an established nobility.Socialism was economically undesirable within the cir-cles of the ruling classes (which had begun to include in-dustrial business leaders), in the late 19th/early 20th cen-tury states; as such, Communist ideology was repressed– its champions suffered persecution while the nation onthe whole was discouraged from adopting the mindset.This had been the practice even in the states which iden-tified as exercising a multi-party system.The Russian Revolution of 1917 saw the multi-ethnic So-viets overturn a previously nationalist czarist state. TheBolsheviks comprised ethnicities of all entities whichwould compose the Soviet Union throughout its phases.During the interwar period, Communism had been on therise in many parts of the world (e.g. in the Kingdomof Yugoslavia, it had grown popular in the urban areasthroughout the 1920s). This led to a series of purges inmany countries to stifle the movement.Just as Communism had at some stage grown popularthroughout the entities of Central and Eastern Europe, itsimage had also begun to tarnish at a later time all withinthe interwar period. As Socialist activists stepped uptheir campaigns against their oppressor regimes, they re-sorted to violence (including bombings and various otherkillings) to achieve their goal: this led large parts of the

previously pro-Communist populace to lose interest inthe ideology. A Communist presence forever remainedin place however, but reduced from its earlier size.In the early stages of World War II Nazi Germany in-vaded and occupied the countries of Eastern Europe, withthe agreement of the USSR. Germany then turned againstand invaded the USSR: the battles of this Eastern Frontwere the largest in history. The USSR perforce became amember of the Allies. The USSR fought the Germans toa standstill and finally began driving them back, reachingBerlin before the end of the war. Nazi ideology was vi-olently opposed to Communism, and The Nazis brutallysuppressed the Communist movements in the occupiedcountries. The Communists played a large part in the re-sistance to the Nazis in these countries. As the Sovietsforced the Germans back, they assumed temporary con-trol of these devastated areas. Earlier in the war in con-ferences at Tehran and Yalta, the allies had agreed thatcentral and eastern Europe would be in the “Soviet sphereof political influence.”After World War II the Soviets brought into power vari-ous Communist parties who were loyal to Moscow. TheSoviets retained troops throughout the territories they hadoccupied. The Cold War saw these states, bound to-gether by the Warsaw Pact, have continuing tensions withthe capitalist west symbolized by NATO. Mao Zedongestablished communism in China in 1949.During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a spontaneousnationwide anti-authoritarian revolt, the Soviet Union in-vaded Hungary to assert control. In 1968, the USSR re-pressed the Prague Spring by organizing theWarsaw Pactinvasion of Czechoslovakia.

1.2 Emergence of Solidarity

Main article: Solidarity (Polish trade union)

Labour turmoil in Poland during 1980 had led to the for-mation of the independent trade union, Solidarity, led byLech Wałęsa, which over time became a political force.On 13 December 1981, Communist leader WojciechJaruzelski started a crack-down on Solidarity, declaringmartial law in Poland, suspending the union, and tem-porarily imprisoning all of its leaders.

1.3 Mikhail Gorbachev

Main articles: Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika, Glasnostand Democratisation in the Soviet Union

Although several Eastern bloc countries had attemptedsome abortive, limited economic and political reformsince the 1950s (Hungarian Revolution of 1956, PragueSpring of 1968), the ascension of reform-minded So-viet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 signaled the trend

3

toward greater liberalization. During the mid-1980s, ayounger generation of Soviet apparatchiks, led by Gor-bachev, began advocating fundamental reform in orderto reverse years of Brezhnev stagnation. The SovietUnion was facing a period of severe economic declineand needed Western technology and credits to make upfor its increasing backwardness. The costs of maintain-ing its so-called “empire” – the military, KGB, subsidiesto foreign client states – further strained the moribundSoviet economy.The first signs of major reform came in 1986 when Gor-bachev launched a policy of glasnost (openness) in theSoviet Union, and emphasized the need for perestroika(economic restructuring). By the spring of 1989, the So-viet Union had not only experienced lively media debate,but had also held its first multi-candidate elections in thenewly established Congress of People’s Deputies. Thoughglasnost advocated openness and political criticism, at thetime, it was only permitted in accordance with the polit-ical views of the Communists. The general public in theEastern bloc were still threatened by secret police and po-litical repression.Moscow’s largest obstacle to improved political and eco-nomic relations with the Western powers remained theIron Curtain that existed between East andWest. As longas the specter of Soviet military intervention loomed overCentral, South-East and Eastern Europe, it seemed un-likely that Moscow could attract the Western economicsupport needed to finance the country’s restructuring.Gorbachev urged his Central and South-East Europeancounterparts to imitate perestroika and glasnost in theirown countries. However, while reformists in Hungaryand Poland were emboldened by the force of liberal-ization spreading from East to West, other Eastern bloccountries remained openly skeptical and demonstratedaversion to reform. Past experiences had demonstratedthat although reform in the Soviet Union was manageable,the pressure for change in Central and South-East Eu-rope had the potential to become uncontrollable. Theseregimes owed their creation and continued survival toSoviet-style authoritarianism, backed by Soviet militarypower and subsidies. Believing Gorbachev’s reform ini-tiatives would be short-lived, orthodox Communist rulerslike East Germany’s Erich Honecker, Bulgaria’s TodorZhivkov, Czechoslovakia’s Gustáv Husák, and Roma-nia’s Nicolae Ceauşescu obstinately ignored the calls forchange.[12] “When your neighbor puts up new wallpaper,it doesn’t mean you have to too,” declared one East Ger-man politburo member.[13]

2 Solidarity’s impact grows

Main article: Solidarity (Polish trade union)Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely asan underground organization, supported by the CatholicChurch. However, by the late 1980s, Solidarity became

20–21 March 1981, issue of Wieczór Wrocławia (This Eveningin Wrocław). Blank spaces remain after the government cen-sor pulled articles from page 1 (right, “What happened atBydgoszcz?") and from the last page (left, “Country-wide strikealert”), leaving only their titles. The printers—Solidarity-trade-union members— decided to run the newspaper as is, with blankspaces intact. The bottom of page 1 of this master copy bears thehand-written Solidarity confirmation of that decision.

sufficiently strong to frustrate Jaruzelski’s attempts at re-form, and nationwide strikes in 1988 forced the govern-ment to open a dialogue with Solidarity. On 9 March1989, both sides agreed to a bicameral legislature calledthe National Assembly. The already existing Sejm wouldbecome the lower house. The Senate would be elected bythe people. Traditionally a ceremonial office, the pres-idency was given more powers[14] (Polish Round TableAgreement).By 1989, the Soviet Union had repealed the BrezhnevDoctrine in favor of non-intervention in the internal af-fairs of its Warsaw Pact allies, termed the Sinatra Doc-trine in a joking reference to the Frank Sinatra song "MyWay". Poland became the first Warsaw Pact state countryto break free of Soviet domination. Taking notice fromPoland, Hungary was next to follow.

3 National political movements

3.1 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

Main article: Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

New Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (in office 13 Septem-ber 1982 – 2 November 1987), developed the concept ofSocialismwith Chinese characteristics local market econ-omy around 1984, but the policy stalled.[15]

The first Chinese student demonstrations, which directlypreceded the Beijing protests of 1989, took place in De-cember 1986 in Hefei. The students called for campuselections, the chance to study abroad and greater avail-ability of western pop culture. Their protests took advan-tage of the loosening political atmosphere and included

4 3 NATIONAL POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

rallies against the slow pace of reform. Chairman HuYaobang, a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and a leading advo-cate of reform, was blamed for the protests and forced toresign as the CCP General Secretary in January 1987. Inthe “Anti Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign”, Hu wouldbe further denounced.The Tiananmen Square protests were sparked by thedeath of Hu Yaobang on 15 April 1989. By the eve ofHu’s state funeral, some 100,000 students had gatheredat Tiananmen square to observe it; however, no leadersemerged from the Great Hall. The movement lasted forseven weeks.[16]

Gorbachev’s visit to China on 15 May during the protestsbrought many foreign news agencies to Beijing, and theirsympathetic portrayals of the protesters helped galvanizea spirit of liberation among the Central, South-East andEastern Europeans who were watching. The Chineseleadership, particularly Communist Party General Secre-tary Zhao Ziyang, having begun earlier than the Sovietsto radically reform the economy, was open to politicalreform, but not at the cost of a potential return to the dis-order of the Cultural Revolution.The movement lasted from Hu’s death on 15 April untiltanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. InBeijing, the military response to the protest by the PRCgovernment left many civilians in charge of clearing thesquare of the dead and severely injured. The exact num-ber of casualties is not known and many different esti-mates exist.On 7 July 1989 President Mikhail Gorbachev implicitlyrenounced the use of force against other Soviet-bloc na-tions. Speaking to members of the 23-nation Councilof Europe, Mr. Gorbachev made no direct reference tothe so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, under which Moscowhas asserted the right to use force to prevent a WarsawPactmember from leaving the Communist fold, but stated‘Any interference in domestic affairs and any attempts torestrict the sovereignty of states – friends, allies or anyothers – are inadmissible’.[17]

3.2 Poland

Main article: History of Poland (1945–89) § Final yearsof communist rule (1980–90)A wave of strikes hit Poland in April and May 1988, anda second wave began on 15 August 1988 when a strikebroke out at the July Manifesto coal mine in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, the workers demanding the re-legalisation ofSolidarity. Over the next few days sixteen other mineswent on strike followed by a number of shipyards, in-cluding on 22 August the Gdansk Shipyard famous asthe epicentre of the 1980 industrial unrest that spawnedSolidarity.[18] On 31 August 1988 Lech Walesa, theleader of Solidarity, was invited to Warsaw by the Com-munist authorities, who had finally agreed to talks.[19] On18 January 1989 at a stormy session of the Tenth Ple-

Solidarity Chairman Lech Wałęsa (center) with US PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush (right) and Barbara Bush (left) in Warsaw,July 1989.

nary Session of the ruling United Workers’ Party, Gen-eral Wojciech Jaruzelski, the First Secretary, managed toget party backing for formal negotiations with Solidar-ity leading to its future legalisation – although this wasachieved only by threatening the resignation of the en-tire party leadership if thwarted.[20] On 6 February 1989formal Round Table discussions began in the Hall ofColumns inWarsaw. On 4 April 1989 the historic RoundTable Agreement was signed legalising Solidarity and set-ting up partly free parliamentary elections to be held on4 June 1989 (incidentally, the day following the midnightcrackdown on Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square).A political earthquake followed. The victory of Solidaritysurpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates capturedall the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm,while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 avail-able seats (with the one remaining seat taken by an inde-pendent candidate). At the same time, many prominentCommunist candidates failed to gain even the minimumnumber of votes required to capture the seats that werereserved for them.On 15 August 1989, the Communists’ two longtimecoalition partners, the United People’s Party (ZSL) andthe Democratic Party (SD), broke their alliance withthe PZPR and announced their support for Solidarity.The last Communist Prime Minister of Poland, GeneralCzeslaw Kiszczak, said he would resign to allow a non-Communist to form an administration.[21] As Solidaritywas the only other political grouping that could possiblyform a government, it was virtually assured that a Sol-idarity member would become prime minister. On 19August 1989, in a stunning watershed moment, TadeuszMazowiecki, an anti-Communist editor, Solidarity sup-porter, and devout Catholic, was nominated as PrimeMinister of Poland – and the Soviet Union voiced noprotest, despite calls from hard-line Romanian dictatorNicolae Ceaușescu for the Warsaw Pact to intervene mil-itarily to ‘save socialism’ as it had in Prague in 1968.[22]Five days later, on 24 August 1989, Poland’s Parliament

3.4 East Germany 5

ended more than 40 years of one-party rule by mak-ingMazowiecki the country’s first non-Communist PrimeMinister since the early postwar years. In a tense Par-liament, Mazowiecki received 378 votes, with 4 againstand 41 abstentions.[23] On 13 September 1989 a new non-Communist government was approved by parliament, thefirst of its kind in the Eastern Bloc.[24] On 17 Novem-ber 1989 the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Polish founderof the Cheka and symbol of Communist oppression, wastorn down in Bank Square, Warsaw.[25] On 29 December1989 the Sejm amended the constitution to change the of-ficial name of the country from the People’s Republic ofPoland to the Republic of Poland. The communist Pol-ish United Workers’ Party dissolved itself on 29 January1990 and transformed itself into the Social Democracyof the Republic of Poland.[26]

In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland’s president andwas succeeded by Wałęsa, who won the 1990 presiden-tial elections[26] held in two rounds on 25November and 9December. Wałęsa’s inauguration as president on 21 De-cember 1990 is thought by many to be the formal end ofthe Communist People’s Republic of Poland and the be-ginning of the modern Republic of Poland. The WarsawPact was dissolved on 1 July 1991. On 27 October 1991the first entirely free Polish parliamentary elections since1945 took place. This completed Poland’s transition fromCommunist Party rule to a Western-style liberal demo-cratic political system. The last Russian troops left Polandon 18 September 1993.[26]

3.3 Hungary

Main article: End of Communism in Hungary (1989)See also: Removal of Hungary’s border fence andPan-European Picnic

Following Poland’s lead, Hungary was next to switchto a non-Communist government. Although Hungaryhad achieved some lasting economic reforms and lim-ited political liberalization during the 1980s, major re-forms only occurred following the replacement of JánosKádár as General Secretary of the Communist Party on23 May 1988 with Karoly Grosz.[27] On 24 November1988 Miklós Németh was appointed Prime Minister. On12 January 1989, the Parliament adopted a “democracypackage”, which included trade union pluralism; freedomof association, assembly, and the press; a new electorallaw; and a radical revision of the constitution, amongothers.[28] On 29 January 1989, contradicting the officialview of history held for more than 30 years, a member ofthe ruling Politburo Imre Pozsgay declared that Hungary’s1956 rebellion is a popular uprising rather than a foreign-instigated attempt at counterrevolution.[29] Mass demon-strations on 15 March, the National Day, persuaded theregime to begin negotiations with the emergent non-Communist political forces. Round Table talks beganon 22 April and continued until the Round Table agree-

ment was signed on 18 September. The talks involvedthe Communists (MSzMP) and the newly emerging in-dependent political forces Fidesz, the Alliance of FreeDemocrats (SzDSz), the Hungarian Democratic Forum(MDF), the Independent Smallholders’ Party, the Hun-garian People’s Party, the Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Soci-ety, and the Democratic Trade Union of Scientific Work-ers. At a later stage the League of Free Trade Unionsand the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KNDP)were invited.[30] It was at the talks that a number of Hun-gary’s future political leaders emerged, including LászlóSólyom, József Antall, György Szabad, Péter Tölgyessyand Viktor Orbán.[31]

On 2 May 1989, the first visible cracks in the Iron Cur-tain appeared when Hungary began dismantling its 150mile long border fence with Austria.[32] This increasinglydestabilized the GDR and Czechoslovakia over the sum-mer and autumn as thousands of their citizens illegallycrossed over to the West through the Hungarian-Austrianborder. On 1 June 1989 the Communist Party admit-ted that former Prime Minister Imre Nagy, hanged fortreason for his role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, wasexecuted illegally after a show trial.[33] On 16 June 1989Nagy was given a solemn funeral on Budapest’s largestsquare in front of crowds of at least 100,000, followed bya hero’s burial.[34]

The Round Table agreement of 18 September encom-passed six draft laws that covered an overhaul of theConstitution, establishment of a Constitutional Court, thefunctioning and management of political parties, multi-party elections for National Assembly deputies, the pe-nal code and the law on penal procedures (the last twochanges represented an additional separation of the Partyfrom the state apparatus).[35][36] The electoral systemwas a compromise: about half of the deputies wouldbe elected proportionally and half by the majoritariansystem.[37] A weak presidency was also agreed upon, butno consensus was attained on who should elect the pres-ident (parliament or the people) and when this electionshould occur (before or after parliamentary elections).On 7 October 1989, the Communist Party at its lastcongress re-established itself as the Hungarian SocialistParty.[38] In a historic session from 16 to 20 October, theparliament adopted legislation providing for multi-partyparliamentary elections and a direct presidential election,which took place on March 24, 1990.[39] The legislationtransformed Hungary from a People’s Republic into theRepublic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights,and created an institutional structure that ensured sepa-ration of powers among the judicial, legislative, and ex-ecutive branches of government.[40] The Soviet militaryoccupation of Hungary, which had persisted since WorldWar II, ended on 19 June 1991.

6 3 NATIONAL POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, 10 November 1989

3.4 East Germany

Main articles: Die Wende, German reunification andPeaceful Revolution

On 2 May 1989, Hungary started dismantling its barbedwire border with Austria, opening a large hole throughthe Iron Curtain to the West that was used by a grow-ing number of East Germans. By the end of September1989, more than 30,000 East Germans had escaped tothe West before the GDR denied travel to Hungary, leav-ing the CSSR (Czechoslovakia) as the only neighboringstate where East Germans could escape to. Thousands ofEast Germans tried to reach the West by occupying theWest German diplomatic facilities in other Central andEastern European capitals, notably the Prague Embassyand the Hungarian Embassy where thousands camped inthe muddy garden from August to November waiting forGerman political reform. The GDR closed the border tothe CSSR on 3 October, thereby isolating itself from allneighbors. Having been shut off from their last chancefor escape, an increasing number of East Germans par-ticipated in the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig on 4,11, and 18 September, each attracting 1,200 to 1,500demonstrators; many were arrested and beaten. However,the people refused to be intimidated. The 25 Septemberdemonstration attracted 8,000 demonstrators.After the fifth successive Monday demonstration in

Leipzig on 2 October attracted 10,000 protesters,Socialist Unity Party (SED) leader Erich Honecker is-sued a shoot and kill order to the military.[41] Commu-nists prepared a huge police, militia, Stasi, and work-combat troop presence and there were rumors a Tianan-men Square-style massacre was being planned for the fol-lowing Monday’s demonstration on 9 October.[42]

On 6 and 7October, Mikhail Gorbachev visited East Ger-many to mark the 40th anniversary of the German Demo-cratic Republic, and urged the East German leadership toaccept reform. A famous quote of his is rendered in Ger-man as “Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben” (Hewho is too late is punished by life). However, Honecker re-mained opposed to internal reform, with his regime evengoing so far as forbidding the circulation of Soviet publi-cations that it viewed as subversive.In spite of rumours that the Communists were planninga massacre on 9 October 70,000 citizens demonstratedin Leipzig that Monday. The authorities on the groundrefused to open fire. This victory of the people facingdown the Communists guns encouraged more and morecitizens to take to the streets. The following Monday on16 October 120,000 people demonstrated on the streetsof Leipzig.Erich Honecker had hoped that the Soviets would enterthe GDR, as by the Warsaw Pact, and restore the com-munist government and suppress the civilian protests. By1990 the Soviet Government deemed it impractical forthe Soviet Union to continue holding its grasp on theEastern Bloc, and so it took a neutral stance regarding theevents happening in East Germany. Faced with this on-going civil unrest, the SED deposed Honecker on 18 Oc-tober and replaced him with the number-two man in theregime, Egon Krenz. However, the demonstrations keptgrowing – on Monday 23 October the Leipzig protestersnumbered 300,000 and remained as large the followingweek. The border to Czechoslovakia was opened againon 1 November, but the Czechoslovak authorities soon letall East Germans travel directly to West Germany with-out further bureaucratic ado, thus lifting their part of theIron Curtain on 3 November. On 4 November the au-thorities decided to authorize a demonstration in Berlinand were faced with the Alexanderplatz demonstrationwhere half a million citizens converged on the capital de-manding freedom in the biggest protest the GDR everwitnessed. Unable to stem the ensuing flow of refugeesto the West through Czechoslovakia, the East Germanauthorities eventually caved in to public pressure by al-lowing East German citizens to enter West Berlin andWest Germany directly, via existing border points, on9 November 1989, without having properly briefed theborder guards. Triggered by the erratic words of regimespokesman Günter Schabowski in a TV press conference,stating that the planned changes were in effect “imme-diately, without delay,” hundreds of thousands of peo-ple took advantage of the opportunity. The guards werecaught by surprise; unwilling to use force, they let the

3.6 Bulgaria 7

crowds through. Soon new crossing points were forcedopen in the Berlin Wall by the people, and sections ofthe wall literally torn down as this symbol of oppressionwas overwhelmed. The bewildered guards were unawareof what was happening, and meekly stood by as the EastGermans tore down large chunks of the wall.On 13 November GDR Prime Minister Willi Stoph andhis entire cabinet resigned. A new government wasformed under a considerably more liberal Communist,Hans Modrow. On 1 December the Volkskammer re-moved the SED’s leading role from the constitution ofthe GDR. On 3 December Krenz resigned as leader ofthe SED; he resigned as head of state three days later. On7 December Round Table talks opened between the SEDand other political parties. On 16 December 1989 theSEDwas dissolved and refounded as the SED-PDS, aban-doning Marxism-Leninism and becoming a mainstreamdemocratic socialist party.On 15 January 1990 the Stasi’s headquarters was stormedby protesters. Modrow became the de facto leader ofEast Germany until free elections were held on 18 March1990—the first held in that part of Germany since 1933.The SED, renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism,was heavily defeated. Lothar deMaizière of the East Ger-man Christian Democratic Union became Prime Minis-ter on 4 April 1990 on a platform of speedy reunificationwith the West. The two Germanies were reunified on 3October 1990.The Kremlin’s willingness to abandon such a strategicallyvital ally marked a dramatic shift by the Soviet super-power and a fundamental paradigm change in interna-tional relations, which until 1989 had been dominated bythe East-West divide running through Berlin itself. Thelast Russian troops left the territory of the former GDR,now part of a reunited Federal Republic of Germany on1 September 1994.

3.5 Czechoslovakia

Protests beneath the monument in Prague's Wenceslas Square.

Main article: Velvet Revolution

The “Velvet Revolution” was a non-violent revolution inCzechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the Communist

government. On 17 November 1989 (Friday), riot policesuppressed a peaceful student demonstration in Prague,although controversy continues over whether anyone diedthat night. That event sparked a series of popular demon-strations from 19 November to late December. By 20November the number of peaceful protesters assembledin Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous dayto an estimated half-million. Five days later, the LetnáSquare held 800,000 protesters.[43] On 24 November,the entire Communist Party leadership, including gen-eral secretary Miloš Jakeš, resigned. A two-hour generalstrike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was suc-cessfully held on 27 November.With the collapse of other Communist governments,and increasing street protests, the Communist Party ofCzechoslovakia announced on 28 November 1989 thatit would relinquish power and dismantle the single-partystate. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removedfrom the border with West Germany and Austria in earlyDecember. On 10 December, President Gustáv Husákappointed the first largely non-Communist governmentin Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned. AlexanderDubček was elected speaker of the federal parliamenton 28 December and Václav Havel the President ofCzechoslovakia on 29 December 1989. In June 1990Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since1946. On 27 June 1991 the last Soviet troops were with-drawn from Czechoslovakia.[44]

3.6 Bulgaria

In October and November 1989 demonstrations on eco-logical issues were staged in Sofia, where demands for po-litical reform were also voiced. The demonstrations weresuppressed, but on 10 November 1989 – the day after theBerlinWall was breached – Bulgaria’s long-serving leaderTodor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo. He was suc-ceeded by a considerably more liberal Communist, for-mer foreign minister Petar Mladenov. Moscow appar-ently approved the leadership change, as Zhivkov hadbeen opposed to Gorbachev’s policies. The new regimeimmediately repealed restrictions on free speech and as-sembly, which led to the first mass demonstration on 17November, as well as the formation of anti-communistmovements. Nine of them united as the Union of Demo-cratic Forces (UDF) on 7 December.[45] The UDF wasnot satisfied with Zhivkov’s ouster, and demanded ad-ditional democratic reforms, most importantly the re-moval of the constitutionally mandated leading role of theBulgarian Communist Party.Bowing to the inevitable, Mladenov announced on 11December 1989 that the Communist Party would aban-don its monopoly on power, and that multiparty electionswould be held the following year. In February 1990, theBulgarian legislature deleted the portion of the constitu-tion about the “leading role” of the Communist Party.Eventually, it was decided that a round table on the Pol-

8 4 MALTA SUMMIT

ish model would be held in 1990 and elections held byJune 1990. The round table took place from 3 Januaryto 14 May 1990, at which an agreement was reached onthe transition to democracy. The Communist Party aban-doned Marxism-Leninism in April 1990 and renamed it-self as the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In June 1990 the firstfree elections since 1931 were held, won by the BulgarianSocialist Party.

3.7 Romania

Main article: Romanian RevolutionAfter having survived the Braşov Rebellion in 1987,

Revolutionaries on the streets during the Romanian Revolution of1989

Nicolae Ceauşescu was re-elected for another five yearsas leader of the Romanian Communist Party in Novem-ber 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-Communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe. AsCeauşescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, hisSecuritate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungar-ian Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, on 16 December,for sermons offending the regime. Tőkés was seized, butonly after serious rioting erupted. Timişoara was the firstcity to react, on 16 December, and civil unrest continuedfor 5 days.Returning from Iran, Ceauşescu ordered a mass rallyin his support outside Communist Party headquarters inBucharest on 21 December. However, to his shock, thecrowd booed and jeered him as he spoke. Years ofrepressed dissatisfaction boiled to the surface through-out the Romanian populace and even among elementsin Ceauşescu’s own government, and the demonstrationsspread throughout the country.At first the security forces obeyed Ceauşescu’s orders toshoot protesters. However, on the morning of 22 De-cember, the Romanian military suddenly changed sides.This came after it was announced that defense minis-ter Vasile Milea had committed suicide after being un-masked as a traitor. Believing Milea had actually beenmurdered, the rank-and-file soldiers went over virtuallyen masse to the revolution.[46] Army tanks began mov-ing towards the Central Committee building with crowds

swarming alongside them. The rioters forced open thedoors of the Central Committee building in an attempt tocapture Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, coming within afew meters of the couple. However, they managed to es-cape via a helicopter waiting for them on the roof of thebuilding. The revolution resulted in 1,104 deaths. Unlikeits kindred parties in the Warsaw Pact, the PCR simplymelted away; no present-day Romanian party claiming tobe its successor has ever been elected to the legislaturesince the change of system.Although elation followed the flight of the Ceauşescus,uncertainty surrounded their fate. On Christmas Day,Romanian television showed the Ceauşescus facing ahasty trial, and then undergoing summary execution. Aninterim National Salvation Front Council led by Ion Ili-escu took over and announced elections for April 1990 –the first free elections held in Romania since 1937. How-ever, they were postponed until 20 May 1990.

4 Malta Summit

Mikhail Gorbachev and President George Bush on board the So-viet cruise shipMaxim Gorky, Marsaxlokk Harbour.

The Malta Summit consisted of a meeting betweenU.S. President George H. W. Bush and U.S.S.R. leaderMikhail Gorbachev, taking place between 2–3 Decem-ber 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the BerlinWall, a meeting which contributed to the end of the ColdWar partially as a result of the broader pro-democracymovement. It was their second meeting following a meet-ing that included then President Ronald Reagan, in NewYork in December 1988. News reports of the time[47] re-ferred to the Malta Summit as the most important since1945, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President FranklinD. Roosevelt agreed on a post-war plan for Europe at theYalta Conference.

9

5 Election chronology in Centraland Eastern Europe 1989–1991

Between the spring of 1989 and the spring of 1991 ev-ery Communist or former communist Central and East-ern European country, and in the case of the USSR andYugoslavia every constituent republic, held competitiveparliamentary elections for the first time inmany decades.Some elections were only partly free, others fully demo-cratic. The chronology below gives the details of thesehistoric elections; the date is the first day of voting asseveral elections were spilt over several days for run-offcontests:

• Poland – 4 June 1989

• Turkmenistan – 7 January 1990

• Uzbekistan – 18 February 1990

• Lithuania – 24 February 1990

• Moldova- 25 February 1990

• Kyrgyzstan – 25 February 1990

• Tajikistan – 25 February 1990

• Belarus – 3 March 1990

• Russia – 4 March 1990

• Ukraine – 4 March 1990

• East Germany – 18 March 1990

• Estonia – 18 March 1990

• Latvia – 18 March 1990

• Hungary – 25 March 1990

• Kazakhstan – 25 March 1990

• Slovenia – 8 April 1990

• Croatia – 24 April 1990

• Romania – 20 May 1990

• Armenia – 20 May 1990

• Czechoslovakia – 8 June 1990

• Bulgaria – 10 June 1990

• Azerbaijan – 30 September 1990

• Georgia – 28 October 1990

• Macedonia – 11 November 1990

• Bosnia and Herzegovina – 18 November 1990

• Serbia – 8 December 1990

• Montenegro – 9 December 1990

• Albania – 7 April 1991

6 Albania and Yugoslavia

6.1 Breakup of Yugoslavia

Main articles: Breakup of Yugoslavia and YugoslavWars

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not apart of the Warsaw Pact but pursued its own version of“Communism” under Josip Broz Tito. It was a multi-ethnic state which Tito was able to maintain through adoctrine of "Brotherhood and unity", but tensions be-tween ethnicities began to escalate with the so-calledCroatian Spring of 1970–71, a movement for greaterCroatian autonomy, which was suppressed. In 1974there followed constitutional changes, and the 1974 Yu-goslav Constitution devolved some of the federal powersto the constituent republics and provinces. After Tito’sdeath in 1980 ethnic tensions grew, first in Albanian-majority SAP Kosovo with the 1981 protests in Kosovo.In late 1980s Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević used theKosovo crisis to stoke up Serb nationalism and attemptto consolidate and dominate the country, which alienatedthe other ethnic groups.Parallel to the same process, SR Slovenia witnessed a pol-icy of gradual liberalization since 1984, somewhat sim-ilar to the Soviet Perestroika. This provoked tensionsbetween the League of Communists of Slovenia on oneside, and the central Yugoslav Party and the federal armyon the other side. By the late 1980s, many civil soci-ety groups were pushing towards democratization, whilewidening the space for cultural plurality. In 1987 and1988, a series of clashes between the emerging civil so-ciety and the Communist regime culminated with the so-called Slovene Spring, a mass movement for democraticreforms. The Committee for the Defence of HumanRights was established as the platform of all major non-Communist political movements. By early 1989, sev-eral anti-Communist political parties were already openlyfunctioning, challenging the hegemony of the SlovenianCommunists. Soon, the Slovenian Communists, pres-sured by their own civil society, came into conflict withthe Serbian Communist leadership.In January 1990, an extraordinary Congress of theLeague of Communists of Yugoslavia was called in orderto settle the disputes among its constituent parties. Facedwith being completely outnumbered, the Slovenian andCroatian Communists walked out of the Congress on 23January 1990, thus effectively bringing to an end the Yu-goslav Communist Party. Both parties of the two westernrepublics negotiated free multi-party elections with theirown opposition movements.On 8 April 1990, the democratic and anti-YugoslavDEMOS coalition won the elections in Slovenia, whileon 24 April 1990 the Croatian elections witnessed thelandslide victory of the nationalist Croatian DemocraticUnion (HDZ) led by Franjo Tuđman. The results were

10 7 DISSOLUTION OF THE SOVIET UNION

much more balanced in Bosnia and Herzegovina andMacedonia in November 1990, while the parliamentaryand presidential elections of December 1990 in SerbiaandMontenegro consolidated the power ofMilošević andhis supporters. Free elections on the level of the federa-tion were never carried out.The Slovenian and Croatian leaderships started preparingplans for secession from the federation, while the Serbs ofCroatia organized the so-called Log Revolution, an insur-rection that would lead to the creation of the breakawayregion of SAO Krajina. In the Slovenian independencereferendum on 23 December 1990, 88.5% of residentsvoted for independence.[48] In the Croatian independencereferendum, on 2 May 1991, 93.24% voted for indepen-dence.The escalating ethnic and national tensions were exacer-bated by the drive for independence and led to the follow-ing Yugoslav wars:

• War in Slovenia (1991)

• Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995)

• Bosnian War (1992–1995)

• Kosovo War (1998–1999), including the NATObombing of Yugoslavia.

In addition, the insurgency in the Preševo Valley (1999–2001) and the insurgency in the Republic of Mace-donia (2001) are also often discussed in the samecontext.[49][50][51]

6.2 Fall of Communism in Albania

Main article: Fall of Communism in AlbaniaIn the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania, Enver

The Fall of Enver Hoxha’s Statue in central Tirana

Hoxha, who led Albania for four decades, died on 11April 1985. His successor, Ramiz Alia, began to gradu-ally open up the regime from above. In 1989, the first re-

volts started in Shkodra and spread in other cities. Even-tually, the existing regime introduced some liberaliza-tion, includingmeasures in 1990 providing for freedom totravel abroad. Efforts were begun to improve ties with theoutside world. March 1991 elections—the first free elec-tions in Albania since 1923, and only the third free elec-tions in the country’s history—left the former Commu-nists in power, but a general strike and urban oppositionled to the formation of a coalition cabinet including non-Communists. Albania’s former Communists were routedin elections held in March 1992, amid economic collapseand social unrest.

7 Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Tanks in Moscow's Red Square during the 1991 coup attempt

Main article: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

On 1 July 1991, the Warsaw Pact was officially dissolvedat a meeting in Prague. At a summit later that samemonth, Gorbachev and Bush declared a US–Soviet strate-gic partnership, decisively marking the end of the ColdWar. President Bush declared that US–Soviet coopera-tion during the 1990–91 Gulf War had laid the ground-work for a partnership in resolving bilateral and worldproblems.As the Soviet Union rapidly withdrew its forces fromCentral and Southeast Europe, the spillover from the1989 upheavals began reverberating throughout the So-viet Union itself. Agitation for self-determination ledto first Lithuania, and then Estonia, Latvia and Arme-nia declaring independence. However, the Soviet centralgovernment demanded the revocation of the declarationsand threatened military action and economic sanctions.Disaffection in other Soviet republics, such as Georgiaand Azerbaijan, was countered by promises of greater de-centralization. More open elections led to the election ofcandidates opposed to Communist Party rule.Glasnost had inadvertently released the long-suppressednational sentiments of all peoples within the borders of

7.1 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania 11

the multinational Soviet state. These nationalist move-ments were further strengthened by the rapid deteriora-tion of the Soviet economy, whose ramshackle founda-tions were exposed with the removal of Communist dis-cipline. Gorbachev’s reforms had failed to improve theeconomy, with the old Soviet command structure com-pletely breaking down. One by one, the constituent re-publics created their own economic systems and voted tosubordinate Soviet laws to local laws. In 1990, the Com-munist Party was forced to surrender its seven-decademonopoly of political power when the Supreme Soviet re-scinded the clause in the Soviet Constitution that guaran-teed its sole authority to rule. Gorbachev’s policies causedthe Communist Party to loose its grip over themedia. De-tails of the Soviet Union’s past was quickly becoming de-classified. This caused many to distrust the 'old system'and push for greater autonomy and independence.After a referendum confirmed the preservation of the So-viet Union but in a looser form, a group of Soviet hard-liners represented by Vice-President Gennadi Yanayevlaunched a coup attempting to overthrow Gorbachev inAugust 1991. Boris Yeltsin, then president of the RussianSFSR, rallied the people and much of the army againstthe coup and the effort collapsed. Although restored topower, Gorbachev’s authority had been irreparably un-dermined. In September, the Baltic states were grantedindependence. Later that month, Gorbachev resigned asleader of the Communist Party, and the Supreme Sovietindefinitely suspended all party activities on Soviet soil.Over the next three months, one republic after anotherdeclared independence, mostly out of fear of anothercoup. Also during this time, Russia began taking overwhat remained of the Soviet government, including theKremlin. The penultimate step came on 1 Decem-ber, when voters in the second most powerful republic,Ukraine, overwhelmingly voted to secede from the SovietUnion in a referendum. This ended any realistic chanceof keeping the Soviet Union together. On 8 December,Yeltsin met with his counterparts from Ukraine and Be-larus and signed the BelavezhaAccords, declaring that theSoviet Union had ceased to exist. Gorbachev denouncedthis as illegal, but he had long since lost any ability to in-fluence events outside of Moscow.Two weeks later, 11 of the remaining 12 republics—allexcept Georgia—signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, whichconfirmed the Soviet Union had been effectively dis-solved and replaced by a new voluntary association, theCommonwealth of Independent States. Bowing to the in-evitable, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 25December, and the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself thenext day. By the end of 1991, the few Soviet institu-tions that hadn't been taken over by Russia had dissolved.The Soviet Union was officially disbanded, breaking upinto fifteen constituent parts, thereby ending the world’slargest and most influential Socialist state, and leavingChina to that position. A constitutional crisis dissolvedinto violence in Moscow as the Russian Army was called

in to reestablish order.

7.1 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Baltic Way was a human chain of approximately two millionpeople dedicated to liberating the Baltic Republics from the USSR.

Main article: Singing Revolution

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania implemented democraticreforms and achieved independence from the SovietUnion.The Singing Revolution is a commonly used namefor events between 1987 and 1991 that led to therestoration of the independence of Estonia, Latvia andLithuania.[52][53] The term was coined by an Estonianactivist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article publisheda week after the 10–11 June 1988 spontaneous massnight-singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festi-val Grounds.[54] Lithuania declared its independence on11 March 1990. On 30 March, Estonia announced thestart of a transitional period to independence, and Latviafollowed suit a few days later. These declarations weremet with force from the Soviet Union in early 1991, inconfrontations known as "The Barricades" in Latvia andthe “January Events” in Lithuania. The Baltic states con-tended that their incorporation into the Soviet Union hadbeen illegal under both international law and their ownlaw, and they were reasserting an independence that stilllegally existed.Soon after the launching of the August coup, Estonia andLatvia declared full independence. By the time the coupwas foiled, the USSR was no longer unified enough tomount a forceful resistance, and it recognized the inde-pendence of the Baltic states on 6 September.

7.2 Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova

In Belarus, a new postcommunist leader AlexanderLukashenko has obtained power. After a short period heincreased his power as a result of referendums (1995–1996) and has been criticized for repressing political op-position ever since.

12 7 DISSOLUTION OF THE SOVIET UNION

Moldova – Participated in the War of Transnistria be-tween Moldova and Russian-connected forces. Com-munists came back to power in a 2001 election underVladimir Voronin, but faced civil unrest in 2009 over ac-cusation of rigged elections.Ukraine – Ukraine declared its independence in Au-gust 1991. Presidencies of former Communists LeonidKravchuk and Leonid Kuchma were followed by theOrange Revolution in 2004, in which Ukrainians electedViktor Yushchenko (also former member of CPSU).

7.3 Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan

Photos of the 9 April 1989 victims of the Tbilisi Massacre on abillboard in Tbilisi.

Georgia and the North Caucasus have been marred byethnic and sectarian violence since the collapse of theUSSR. In April 1989 the Soviet Armymassacred demon-strators in Tbilisi. By November 1989, the GeorgianSSR officially condemned the Russian invasion in 1921and continuing genocidal occupation. Democracy ac-tivist Zviad Gamsakhurdia served as president from 1991to 1992. Russia aided break-away republics in wars inSouth Ossetia and Abkhazia during the early 1990s, con-flicts that have periodically reemerged, and Russia has ac-cused Georgia of supporting Chechen rebels during theChechen wars. A coup d'état installed former Commu-nist leader Eduard Shevardnadze as President of Georgiauntil the Rose Revolution in 2003.In Armenia, the independence struggle included violence.The Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought between Arme-nia and Azerbaijan. Armenia became increasingly mil-itarized (with the ascendancy of Kocharian, a formerpresident of Nagorno-Karabakh, often viewed as a mile-stone), while elections have since been increasingly con-troversial, and government corruption became more rife.After Kocharyan, notably, Serzh Sargsyan ascended topower. Sargsyan is often noted as the “founder of theArmenian and Karabakh militaries” and was, in the past,defense minister and national security minister.In Azerbaijan the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party wonfirst elections with the self-described pro-Western, pop-

ulist nationalist Elchibey. However, Elchibey plannedto end Moscow’s advantage in the harvesting of Azerioil and build much stronger links with Turkey and Eu-rope, and as a result was overthrown by former Com-munists in a coup backed by Russia and Iran (whichviewed the new country as a compelling threat, with ter-ritorial ambitions within Iranian borders and also beinga strong economic rival).[55] Mutallibov rose to power,but he was soon destabilized and eventually ousted dueto popular frustration with his perceived incompetence,corruption and improper handling of the war with Ar-menia. Azerbaijani KGB and Azerbaijani SSR leaderHeydar Aliyev captured power and remained presidentuntil he transferred the presidency to his son in 2003.The Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought between Arme-nia and Azerbaijan, and has largely defined the fates ofboth countries. However, unlike Armenia, which remainsa strong Russian ally, Azerbaijan has begun, since Rus-sia’s 2008 war with Georgia, to foster better relations withTurkey and other Western nations, while lessening tieswith Russia.[56]

7.4 Chechnya

Chechen women praying in Grozny, December 1994.

In Chechnya, using tactics partly copied from the Baltics,Anti-Communist coalition forces led by former Sovietgeneral Dzhokhar Dudayev staged a largely bloodlessrevolution, and ended up forcing the resignation of theCommunist republican president. Dudayev was electedin a landslide in the following election and in Novem-ber 1991 he proclaimed Checheno-Ingushetia's indepen-dence as the Republic of Ichkeria. Ingushetia voted toleave the union with Chechnya, and was allowed to doso (thus it became the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria).Due to his desire to exclude Moscow from all oil deals,Yeltsin backed a failed coup against him in 1993. In 1994,Chechnya, with only marginal recognition (one country:Georgia, which was revoked soon after the coup landingShevardnadze in power), was invaded by Russia, spurringthe First ChechenWar. The Chechens, with considerableassistance from the populations of both former-Sovietcountries and from Sunni Muslim countries repelled this

13

invasion and a peace treaty was signed in 1997. How-ever, Chechnya became increasingly anarchic, largely dueto the both political and physical destruction of the stateduring the invasion, and general Shamil Basaev, havingevaded all control by the central government, conductedraids into neighboring Dagestan, which Russia used aspretext for reinvading Ichkeria. Ichkeria was then rein-corporated into Russia as Chechnya again, though fight-ing continues.

7.5 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

A depiction of the Jeltoqsan events on Republic Square in Almaty.

In Kazakhstan, the independence struggle began with theJeltoqsan uprising in 1986. Former Communist leaderNursultan Nazarbayev has been in power since 1990when he started serving as President of Kazakh SSR.In Kyrgyzstan, former Communist leader Askar Akayevretained power until the Tulip Revolution in 2005.In Tajikistan, former Communist leader RahmonNabiyev retained power, which led to the civil war inTajikistan. Emomalii Rahmon has succeeded Nabiyevand has retained power since 1992.In Turkmenistan, former Communist leader SaparmuratNiyazov retained power until his death 2006 and has beencriticized as one of the world’s most totalitarian and re-pressive leaders, maintaining his own cult of personality.In Uzbekistan, former Communist leader Islam Karimovretained power and has been criticized for repressing thepolitical opposition ever since.

7.6 Post-Soviet conflicts

Russia was involved in a number of conflicts, includingthe Nagorno-Karabakh War, the War of Transnistria, the1991–1992 South Ossetia War, the First Chechen War,the War in Abkhazia (1992–1993), the Ossetian–Ingushconflict, and the Crimea conflict in Ukraine.

8 Other events

8.1 Communist and Socialist countries

See also: List of socialist states

Reforms in the Soviet Union and its allied countries alsosaw dramatic changes to Communist and Socialist statesoutside of Europe.

8.1.1 Africa

• Angola – The ruling MPLA government aban-doned Marxism-Leninism in 1991 and agreed tothe Bicesse Accords in the same year, however theAngolan Civil War between the MPLA and the con-servative UNITA continued for another decade.

• Benin – Mathieu Kérékou's regime was pressured toabandon Marxism-Leninism in 1990.

• Congo-Brazzaville – Denis Sassou Nguesso'sregime was pressured to abandon Marxism-Leninism in 1991. The nation had elections in1992.

• Ethiopia – A new constitution was implementedin 1987 and, following the withdrawal of Sovietand Cuban assistance, the Communist military juntaDerg led byMengistu HaileMariamwas defeated bythe rebel EPRDF in the Ethiopian CivilWar and fledin 1991.

• Madagascar – Socialist President Didier Ratsirakawas ousted.

• Mali – Moussa Traoré was ousted, Mali adopted anew constitution and held multi-party elections.

• Mozambique – TheMozambican CivilWar betweenthe socialist FRELIMO and the RENAMO conser-vatives was ended via treaty in 1992. FRELIMOsubsequently abandoned socialism and with the sup-port of the U.N., held multiparty elections.

• Somalia – Rebelling Somalis overthrew Siad Barre'sCommunist military junta during the Somali Revo-lution. Somalia has been in a constant state of civilwar ever since.

• Tanzania – The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi partycut down its Socialist ideology and foreign donorspressured the government to allow multiparty elec-tions in 1995.

8.1.2 Middle East

• Afghanistan – Soviet occupation ended and theCommunist government under Mohammad Na-jibullah fell to the Mujahideen in 1992.

14 8 OTHER EVENTS

• South Yemen – Abandoned Marxism-Leninism in1990; it reunified with the more capitalist NorthYemen that year, though this later led to a civil war.

• Syria – Syria participated in the Madrid Conferenceof 1991 and met its Cold War enemy Israel in peacenegotiations.

8.1.3 Asia

Sanjaasürengiin Zorig calms the crowd in Sükhbaatar Squareduring the 1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia

• Burma – The 8888 Uprising in 1988 saw the demiseof the Burma Socialist Programme Party, but failedto bring democracy, although Marxism was aban-doned. The country was led by a military govern-ment under the State Peace and Development Coun-cil until 2011, following 2010 elections viewed bymany Western countries as fraudulent.

• Cambodia – The Vietnam-supported government,which had been in power since the fall of theKhmer Rouge, lost power following UN-sponsoredelections in 1993.

• China – The Communist Party of China began im-plementing liberalizing economic reforms duringthe late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping. However, thepro-democracy protests of 1989 were crushed by themilitary.

• Laos – Remained Communist under the Lao Peo-ple’s Revolutionary Party. Laos was forced to askFrance and Japan for emergency assistance, and alsoto ask the World Bank and the Asian DevelopmentBank for aid. Finally, in 1989, Kaisôn visited Bei-jing to confirm the restoration of friendly relations,and to secure Chinese aid.

• India – Indian economic reforms were launched in1991.

• Mongolia – The 1990 Democratic Revolution inMongolia saw a gradual moved to allow freemulti-party elections and the writing of the newconstitution. The Mongolian People’s Revolution-ary Party retained its majority in the 1990 elections,but lost the 1996 elections.

• North Korea – Kim Il-sung died in 1994, passingpower to his son Kim Jong-il. Unprecedented floodsand the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to theNorth Korean famine, which resulted in the deathsof an estimated 2.5 million to 3 million North Kore-ans. All references to Marxism-Leninism were re-placed by Juche in 1992, thus signifying an apparentdownplaying of the role of Communism in NorthKorea.

• Vietnam – The Communist Party of Vietnam hasundertaken Doi Moi reforms since 1986, liberaliz-ing certain sectors of the economy in a manner sim-ilar to China. Vietnam is still a single-party Com-munist state.

8.1.4 Latin America

• Cuba – The end of Soviet subsidies led to the SpecialPeriod. An unsuccessful protest was held in 1994.

• Nicaragua – Daniel Ortega's Sandinista lost themulti-party elections in 1990, and the National Op-position Union won.

• Panama - Opposition to Manuel Antonio Noriega´sdictatorship grew. There was a coup attempt againsthim. On December 20, 1989, the US launchedOperation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama.

8.2 Other countries

Many Soviet-supported political parties and militantgroups around the world suffered from demoralizationand loss of financing.

• Austria – The Communist Party of Austria lost itsEast German financing and 250 million euros in as-sets.

• Belgium – The Communist Party of Belgium wasdivided to two parties in 1989.

• Finland – The Finnish People’s Democratic Leaguewas dissolved in 1990 and the bankrupt CommunistParty of Finland collapsed in 1992, and absorbed tothe Left Alliance.

• France – The collapse of the Eastern Bloc came asa shock to the French Communist Party. The crisisis called la mutation.

8.2 Other countries 15

• West Germany – The Red Army Faction lost itslong-term supporter, the Stasi, after the Berlin Wallfell.[57]

• Greece – The Organisation of Marxist-LeninistCommunists of Greece was dissolved in 1993 andmerged into the Movement for a United CommunistParty of Greece.

• Ireland – The Communist Party of Ireland declinedsignificantly.

• Italy – The collapse caused the Italian CommunistParty to reform itself, creating two new groups, thelarger Democratic Party of the Left and the smallerCommunist Refoundation Party. The disappear-ance of the Communist party in part led to profoundchanges within the Italian political party system in1992–1994.

• Japan – The Japanese Communist Party issued astatement titled “We welcome the end of a great his-torical evil of imperialism and hegemonism”.

• Malaysia – The Malayan Communist Party laiddown its arms in 1989, ending the Communist In-surgency War that had lasted decades.

• Mexico – The Mexican Communist Party and anumber of other Communist parties were dissolvedin 1989 and absorbed first into the Mexican Social-ist Party and then into the Party of the DemocraticRevolution.

• Netherlands – The Communist Party of the Nether-lands was dissolved in 1991 and absorbed to theGreenLeft.

• Norway – The Communist Party of Norwaychanged their pro-Soviet line.

• Palestinian Territories – The Palestine LiberationOrganization lost one of its most important diplo-matic patrons, due to the deterioration of the So-viet Union, and Arafat’s failing relationship withMoscow.

• Philippines - The Communist Party of the Philip-pines experienced criticism and the debates that en-sued between the leading party cadres resulted tothe expulsion of advocates of “left and right oppor-tunism” notably forming the so-called “rejection-ists” and “reaffirmist” factions. Those who affirmedthe Maoist orthodoxy was called the “Reaffirmists”,or RA, while those who rejected the documentwere called “Rejectionists” or RJ. In July 1993, theKomiteng Rehiyon ng Manila-Rizal (KRMR), oneof the Rejectionists, declared its autonomy fromthe central leadership. Within a few months, sev-eral of the Party’s regional formations and bureausfollowed suit, permanently formalizing and deepen-ing the schism. See a comprehensive third-party

account of the schism here: <http://pcij.org/imag/SpecialReport/left.html>

• Peru – The Shining Path, responsible for killing tensof thousands people, shrunk in the 1990s.

• Sweden – The Communist Association of Nor-rköping was dissolved in 1990 and KommunistiskaFörbundet Marxist-Leninisterna ceased to func-tion as nationwide party. The pro-AlbanianKommunistiska Partiet i Sverige and the MaoistCommunist Workers’ Party of Sweden weredissolved in 1993. The main leftist party,Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna, VPK (Left Party –Communists), abandoned the Communist part ofits name, and became simply Vänsterpartiet (LeftParty).

• Turkey – The Communist Labour Party of Turkeywas split.

• United Kingdom – The Communist Party of GreatBritain was dissolved.

Concurrently, many anti-Communist authoritarian states,formerly supported by the US, gradually saw a transitionto democracy.

• Brazil had the first democratic presidential electionsince 1960 due to reforms started a few years earlier.

• Chile – The military junta under Augusto Pinochetwas pressured to implement democratic elections,which saw Chile’s democratization in 1990.

• El Salvador – The Salvadoran Civil War ended in1992 following the Chapultepec Peace Accords.The rebel FMLN movement became a legal polit-ical party and participated in subsequent elections.

• Panama – The Manuel Noriega regime was over-thrown by the US invasion in 1989 as a result of hissuppression of elections, drug-trafficking activitiesand the killing of a US serviceman.

• Paraguay – The dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessnercame to an end when he was deposed in a militarycoup d'état. In 1992, the country’s new constitutionestablished a democratic system of government.

• South Korea – The June Democracy Movement'sprotests led to the fall of the Chun Doo-hwan gov-ernment in 1987, and the country’s first democraticelections. In 2000, North and South Korea agreedin principle to work towards peaceful reunificationin the future.

• South Africa – Negotiations were started in 1990to end the Apartheid system. Nelson Mandela waselected as the President of South Africa in 1994.

16 11 IDEOLOGICAL CONTINUATION OF COMMUNISM

• Taiwan – The nationalist Kuomintang party thathad ruled under strict martial law since the end ofthe Chinese Civil War introduced democratizing re-forms.

• United States – Following the end of the Cold War,the United States became the world’s main super-power, growing even more in world influence as aresult. The United States ceased to support manyof the Right-wing military regimes it had duringthe Cold War, pressing for more nations to adoptdemocratic policies.

9 Political reforms

Main article: Decommunization

Decommunization is a process of overcoming the lega-cies of the Communist state establishments, culture, andpsychology in the post-Communist states.Decommunization was largely limited or non-existent.Communist parties were not outlawed and their mem-bers were not brought to trial. Just a few places evenattempted to exclude members of communist secret ser-vices from decision-making. In a number of countries theCommunist party simply changed its name and continuedto function.[58]

In several European countries, however, endorsing or at-tempting to justify crimes committed by Nazi or Com-munist regimes will be punishable by up to 3 years ofimprisonment.[59]

10 Economic reforms

Enterprises in Socialist countries had little or no interestin producing what customers wanted because of prevail-ing shortages of goods and services.[60] In the early 1990s,a popular refrain stated that “there is no precedent formoving from Socialism to capitalism”.[61] Only the over-60-year-old people remembered how a market economyworked. It was not hard to imagine Central, Southeastand Eastern Europe staying poor for decades.[62]

There was a temporary fall of output in official econ-omy and increase in unofficial economy.[60] Countriesimplemented different reform programs such as theBalcerowicz Plan in Poland. Eventually the official econ-omy began to grow.[60]

In 2004 Polish Nobel Peace Prize winner and PresidentLech Wałęsa described a transition from capitalism toCommunism as “heating up an aquarium with fish” to getfish soup. He said that reversing communism to capital-ism was challenging, but “We can already see some littlefish swimming in our aquarium”.[63]

In a 2007 paper Oleh Havrylyshyn categorized the speedof reforms in the Soviet Bloc:[61]

• Sustained Big-Bang (fastest): Estonia, Latvia,Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia

• Advance Start/Steady Progress: Croatia, Hungary,Slovenia

• Aborted Big-Bang: Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia,Kyrgyzstan, Russia

• Gradual Reforms: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia,Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Romania

• Limited Reforms (slowest): Belarus, Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan

The 2004 enlargement of the European Union includedthe Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The 2007 enlargement ofthe European Union included Romania and Bulgaria, andCroatia joined the EU in 2013. The same countries havealso become NATO members.Chinese economic liberalization started since 1978 havehelped lift millions of people out of poverty, bringing thepoverty rate down from 53% of the population in theMaoera to 12% in 1981. Deng’s economic reforms are stillbeing followed by the CPC today and by 2001 the povertyrate became only 6% of the population.[64]

Economic liberalization in Vietnamwas initiated in 1986,following the Chinese example.Economic liberalization in India was initiated in 1991.Harvard University Professor Richard B. Freeman hascalled the effect of reforms “The Great Doubling”. Hecalculated that the size of the global workforce doubledfrom 1.46 billion workers to 2.93 billion workers.[65][66]An immediate effect was a reduced ratio of capital to la-bor. In the long, term China, India, and the former Sovietbloc will save and invest and contribute to the expansionof the world capital stock.[66]

China’s rapid growth has led some people to predict a"Chinese Century".[67][68][69]

11 Ideological continuation ofcommunism

Further information: Decommunization in Russia,Putinism, Neo-Stalinism and Human rights in Russia

Compared with the efforts of the other former con-stituents of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union,decommunization in Russia has been restricted to half-measures, if conducted at all.[70] As of 2008, nearly

17

Five double-headed Russian coat-of-arms eagles (below) sub-stituting the former state emblem of the Soviet Union and the“CCCP” letters (above) in the facade of the GrandKremlin Palaceafter the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

half of Russians view Stalin positively, and many sup-port restoration of his monuments dismantled in thepast.[71][72] Neo-Stalinist material such as describingStalin’s mass murder campaigns as “entirely rational” hasbeen pushed into Russian textbooks.[73]

In 1992, President Yeltsin’s government invited VladimirBukovsky to serve as an expert to testify at the CPSUtrial by Constitutional Court of Russia, where the Com-munists were suing Yeltsin for banning their party. Therespondent’s case was that the CPSU itself had been anunconstitutional organization. To prepare for his testi-mony, Bukovsky requested and was granted access to alarge number of documents from Soviet archives (then re-organized into TsKhSD). Using a small handheld scannerand a laptop computer, he managed to secretly scan manydocuments (some with high security clearance), includ-ing KGB reports to the Central Committee, and smugglethe files to the West.[74] The event that many expectedwould be another Nuremberg Trial and the beginningsof reconciliation with the Communist past, ended up inhalf-measures: while the CPSU was found unconstitu-tional, the Communists were allowed to form new partiesin the future. Bukovsky expressed his deep disappoint-ment with this in his writings and interviews: “Havingfailed to finish off conclusively the Communist system,

we are now in danger of integrating the resulting mon-ster into our world. It may not be called Communismanymore, but it retained many of its dangerous charac-teristics... Until the Nuremberg-style tribunal passes itsjudgment on all the crimes committed by Communism,it is not dead and the war is not over.”[75]

12 Interpretations

The events caught many by surprise. Predictions ofthe Soviet Union’s impending demise had been oftendismissed.[76]

Bartlomiej Kaminski’s book The Collapse Of State Social-ism argued that the state Socialist system has a lethal para-dox: “policy actions designed to improve performanceonly accelerate its decay”.[77]

By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one capi-tal to another, ousting the regimes imposed on Central,South-East and Eastern Europe after World War II. Eventhe isolationist Stalinist regime in Albania was unable tostem the tide. Gorbachev’s abrogation of the BrezhnevDoctrine was perhaps the key factor that enabled the pop-ular uprisings to succeed. Once it became evident that thefeared Red Army would not intervene to crush dissent,the Central, South-East and Eastern European regimeswere exposed as vulnerable in the face of popular upris-ings against the one-party system and power of secret po-lice.Coit D. Blacker wrote in 1990 that the Soviet leadership“appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authoritythe Soviet Union might suffer in Central and South-EastEurope would be more than offset by a net increase in itsinfluence in western Europe.”[78] Nevertheless, it is un-likely that Gorbachev ever intended for the complete dis-mantling of Communism and the Warsaw Pact. Rather,Gorbachev assumed that the Communist parties of Cen-tral and South-East Europe could be reformed in a simi-lar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU.Just as perestroika was aimed at making the Soviet Unionmore efficient economically and politically, Gorbachevbelieved that the Comecon and Warsaw Pact could be re-formed into more effective entities. However, AlexanderYakovlev, a close advisor to Gorbachev, would later statethat it would have been “absurd to keep the system” inCentral and South-East Europe. Yakovlev had come tothe conclusion that the Soviet-dominated Comecon couldnot work on non-market principles and that the WarsawPact had “no relevance to real life.”[13]

13 Remembrance

13.1 Organizations

• Memorial – Memorial is an international histori-

18 13 REMEMBRANCE

cal and civil rights society that operates in a num-ber of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recordingand publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian as-pect of the past, but also monitors human rights inpost-Soviet states at the present time, for example inChechnya.[79]

13.2 Events

• German Unity Day in Germany – A national holidaycommemorating the anniversary of German reunifi-cation in 1990

• Statehood Day in Slovenia – Commemorates thecountry’s declaration of independence from Yu-goslavia in 1991.

• Independence and Unity Day in Slovenia – Com-memorates the country’s independence referendum.

• Day of National Unity in Georgia – is a public holi-day commemorating victims of the 9 April tragedy

• National Day in Hungary

• Constitution Day in Romania – Commemorates the1991 Romanian Constitution that enshrined the re-turn to democracy after the fall of the Communistregime.

• Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day in theSlovak Republic

• Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day in theCzech Republic

• Restoration of Independence Day in Latvia – Com-memorates the 1990 declaration restoring the coun-try’s independence.

13.3 Places

This list is incomplete; you can help byexpanding it.

• Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin, Germany

• DDR Museum in Berlin, Germany

• Stasi Museum in the old headquarters

• Gdańsk Shipyard in Poland

• Museum of Communism, Poland

• Museum of Communism, Czech Republic

• Memorial to the Victims of Communism in theCzech Republic

• Lennon Wall in the Czech Republic

• House of Terror in Hungary

• Memento Park in Hungary

• Memorial of Rebirth in Romania

• Sighet Memorial Museum in the old prison inSighetu Marmației, Romania

• Museum of Socialist Art in Bulgaria

• Museum of the Occupation of Latvia

• Museum of Occupations (Estonia)

• Museum of Occupation (Lithuania)

• Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, Lithuania

• Grūtas Park in Lithuania

• Museum of Victims of Communism in Moldova

• Museum of Victims of Occupational Regimes“Prison on Lontskoho” in Lviv, Ukraine

• Museum of Soviet occupation in Kiev, Ukraine

• Museum of Soviet Occupation in Tbilisi, Georgia

• Dawn of Liberty in Kazakhstan – Amonument ded-icated to Jeltoqsan

• Global Museum on Communism

13.4 Other

This list is incomplete; you can help byexpanding it.

• The Soviet Story – An award-winning documentaryfilm about the Soviet Union.

• The Singing Revolution – A documentary film aboutthe Singing Revolution.

• Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism –A book and a documentary film based on the book

• Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire– A Pulitzer Prize-awarded book

• A Political Tragedy in Six Acts – the biography ofdissident Václav Havel

• Right Here, Right Now (Jesus Jones song) – An in-ternational hit written by Mike Edwards and per-formed by his rock band Jesus Jones, released inSeptember 1990

• “Wind of Change” (song) – A hit song by the Ger-man heavy-metal band Scorpions that celebratesPerestroyka and the fall of communism in Centraland Eastern Europe

19

14 See also

• Arab Spring

• Atlantic Revolutions

• Baltic Tiger

• Breakup of Yugoslavia

• Carpat Tiger

• Chinese democracy movement

• Civil resistance

• Color revolutions

• Commonwealth of Independent States

• Enlargement of NATO

• Enlargement of the European Union

• Euromaidan

• History of Solidarity

• Ján Čarnogurský

• January Events

• JBTZ-trial

• Jeans Revolution

• Orange Revolution

• Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

• People Power Revolution

• Polish Round Table Agreement

• Reagan Doctrine

• Revolutions of 1820

• Revolutions of 1830

• Revolutions of 1848

• Revolutions of 1917–23

• Rose Revolution

• Yugoslav Wars

15 References[1] Nedelmann, Birgitta; Sztompka, Piotr (1 January 1993).

Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity. Walter deGruyter. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-3-11-013845-0.

[2] Bernhard, Michael; Szlajfer, Henryk (1 November 2010).From the Polish Underground: Selections from Krytyka,1978–1993. Penn State Press. pp. 221–. ISBN 0-271-04427-6.

[3] Luciano, Bernadette (2008). Cinema of Silvio Soldini:Dream, Image, Voyage. Troubador. pp. 77–. ISBN 978-1-906510-24-4.

[4] Grofman, Bernard (2001). Political Science as Puzzle Solv-ing. University of Michigan Press. pp. 85–. ISBN 0-472-08723-1.

[5] Sadurski, Wojciech; Czarnota, Adam; Krygier, Martin(30 July 2006). Spreading Democracy and the Rule ofLaw?: The Impact of EU Enlargemente for the Rule ofLaw, Democracy and Constitutionalism in Post-CommunistLegal Orders. Springer. pp. 285–. ISBN 978-1-4020-3842-6.

[6] Antohi, Sorin; Tismăneanu, Vladimir, “Independence Re-born and the Demons of the Velvet Revolution”, BetweenPast and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Af-termath, Central European University Press, p. 85, ISBN963-9116-71-8.

[7] Boyes, Roger (4 June 2009). “World Agenda: 20 yearslater, Poland can lead eastern Europe once again”. TheTimes (UK). Retrieved 4 June 2009.

[8] Roberts, Adam (1991), Civil Resistance in the East Euro-pean and Soviet Revolutions (PDF), Albert Einstein Insti-tution, ISBN 1-880813-04-1.

[9] Sztompka, Piotr, “Preface”, Society in Action: the Theoryof Social Becoming, University of Chicago Press, p. x,ISBN 0-226-78815-6.

[10] “Yugoslavia”, Constitution, GR: CECL date = 1992-04-27, retrieved 2013-08-12.

[11] Vývoj vybraných ukazatelů životní úrovně v České repub-lice v letech 1993 – 2008 (PDF). Praha: Odbor analýz astatistiky. Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí ČR. 2009.

[12] “Romania – Soviet Union and Eastern Europe”, Countrystudies, US: Library of Congress.

[13] Steele, Jonathan. Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev andthe Mirage of Democracy. Boston: Faber, 1994.

[14] Poland:Major Political Reform Agreed, Facts on FileWorld News Digest, 24 March 1989. Facts on File NewsServices. 6 September 2007

[15] "‘Market fundamentalism’ is unpractical”, People’s Daily(CN: Central Committee of the Communist Party), 3February 2012, retrieved 13 January 2013.

[16] Zhao, Dingxin (2001), The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 153, ISBN 0-226-98260-2.

20 15 REFERENCES

[17] Markham, James M. (7 July 1989). “Gorbachev spurnsthe use of force in Eastern Europe”. The New York Times.

[18] Walesa 1991, p. 151.

[19] Walesa 1991, p. 157.

[20] Walesa 1991, p. 174.

[21] Tagliabue, John (15 August 1989). “Poland’s premier of-fering to yeld to non-Communist”. The New York Times.

[22] Apple Jr, R. W. (20 August 1989). “A New orbit:Poland’s Break Leads Europe And Communism To aThreshold”. The New York Times.

[23] Tagliabue, John (25 August 1989). “Opening new era,Poles pick leader”. The New York Times.

[24] Tagliabue, John (13 September 1989). “Poles ApproveSolidarity-Led Cabinet”. The New York Times.

[25] “Across Eastern Europe, Remembering the Curtain’sFall”. Wall Street Journal. April 24, 2009.

[26] “Polska. Historia”, Internetowa encyklopedia PWN [PWNInternet Encyklopedia] (in Polish), retrieved 11 July 2005.

[27] Kamm, Henry (23 May 1988). “HUNGARIAN PARTYREPLACES KADARWITH HIS PREMIER”. The NewYork Times.

[28] “Hungary Eases Dissent Curbs”. The New York Times. 12January 1989.

[29] “Hungary, in Turnabout, Declares ’56 Rebellion a PopularUprising”. The New York Times. 29 January 1989.

[30] Falk, p. 147

[31] Bayer, József (2003), “The Process of Political SystemChange in Hungary” (PDF), Schriftenreihe des Europa In-stitutes Budapest, HU: Europa Institut, p. 180.

[32] Stokes, G (1993), The Walls Came Tumbling Down,Oxford University Press, p. 131.

[33] “Hungarian Party Assails Nagy’s Execution”. The NewYork Times. 1 June 1989.

[34] Kamm, Henry (17 June 1989). “Hungarian Who Led ’56Revolt Is Buried as a Hero”. The New York Times.

[35] Heenan, p. 13

[36] De Nevers, p. 130

[37] Elster, p.66

[38] Kamm, Henry (8 October 1989). “Communist party inHungary votes for radical shift”. The New York Times.

[39] “Hungary Purges Stalinism From Its Constitution”. TheNew York Times. 19 October 1989.

[40] “Hungary legalizes opposition groups”. The New YorkTimes. 20 October 1989.

[41] Pritchard, =Rosalind MO. Reconstructing education: EastGerman schools and universities after unification. p. 10.

[42] Fulbrook, Mary. History of Germany, 1918–2000: thedivided nation. Text “page 256” ignored (help)

[43] Demonstrace na letne pred 25 lety urychlily kapitulaci ko-munistu (in cz), CZ newspaper = Denik.

[44] “20 Years After Soviet Soldiers Left the Czech Republic,Russians Move In”. The Wall Street Journal. June 28,2011.

[45] History of the UDF(Bulgarian)

[46] Cornel, Ban (Nov 2012). Sovereign Debt, Austerity, andRegime Change: The Case of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Roma-nia. East European Politics & Societies. p. 34. RetrievedFeb 23, 2015.

[47] N/A (Dec 3, 1989). “1989: Malta Summit Ends ColdWar”. BBC News. BBC News. Retrieved Feb 23, 2015.

[48] REFERENDUM BRIEFING NO 3

[49] Judah, Tim (17 February 2011). “Yugoslavia: 1918 –2003”. BBC. Retrieved 1 April 2012.

[50] Naimark (2003), p. xvii

[51] Rogel (2004), pp. 91–92

[52] • Thomson, Clare (1992). The Singing Revolution: APolitical Journey through the Baltic States. London:Joseph. ISBN 0-7181-3459-1.

[53] Ginkel, John (September 2002). “Identity Construction inLatvia’s “Singing Revolution": Why inter-ethnic conflictfailed to occur”. Nationalities Papers 30 (3): 403–433.doi:10.1080/0090599022000011697.

[54] Between Utopia and Disillusionment By Henri Vogt; p 26ISBN 1-57181-895-2

[55] Curtis, Glenn E. (1995). “Azerbaijan: A Country Study”.

[56] “Nagorno-Karabakh profile”. BBCNews. BBC. Retrieved18 February 2015.

[57] Schmeidel, John. “My Enemy’s Enemy: Twenty Years ofCo-operation between West Germany’s Red Army Fac-tion and the GDRMinistry for State Security.” Intelligenceand National Security 8, no. 4 (October 1993): 59–72.

[58] After Socialism: where hope for individual liberty lies.Svetozar Pejovich.

[59] Is Holocaust denial against the law? Anne Frank House

[60] Anders Aslund (1 December 2000). “TheMyth of OutputCollapse after Communism”.

[61] Oleh Havrylyshyn (9 November 2007). “Fifteen Years ofTransformation in the Post-Communist World” (PDF).

[62] “The world after 1989: Walls in the mind”. TheEconomist. 5 November 2009.

[63] “Nobel Peace Prize winner predicts optimism for thefuture under “the banner of Our Lady"". Sato-dayscatholic.com. 2004-11-12. Retrieved 2013-10-01.

21

[64] Fighting Poverty: Findings and Lessons fromChina’s Suc-cess (World Bank). Retrieved 10 August 2006.

[65] “The Great Doubling: The Challenge of the New GlobalLabor Market” (PDF). Retrieved 2013-11-16.

[66] Richard Freeman (2008). “The new global labor mar-ket” (PDF). University of Wisconsin–Madison Institutefor Research on Poverty.

[67] “China set to be largest economy”. BBC News. 22 May2006.

[68] Elliott, Michael (22 January 2007). “The Chinese Cen-tury”. TIME Magazine.

[69] Fishman, Ted C. (4 July 2004). “The Chinese Century”.The New York Times. Retrieved 12 September 2009.

[70] KarlW. Ryavec. Russian Bureaucracy: Power and Pathol-ogy, 2003, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-8476-9503-4,page 13

[71] “The Glamorous Tyrant: The Cult of Stalin Experiencesa Rebirth,” by Mikhail Pozdnyaev, Novye Izvestia

[72] Кавказский Узел | Сегодня исполняется 55 лет со днясмерти Сталина. Kavkaz-uzel.ru (2012-10-14). Re-trieved on 2013-08-12.

[73] Stalin’s mass murders were 'entirely rational' says newRussian textbook praising tyrant. The Daily Mail. 23April 2010

[74] Many of these scanned documents are available as the“Soviet Archives” (INFO-RUSS)

[75] The Cold War and the War Against Terror By JamieGlazov (FrontPageMagazine) 1 July 2002

[76] Cummins, Ian (23 December 1995). “The Great Melt-Down”. The Australian.

[77] The Collapse of State Socialism Foreign Affairs

[78] Coit D. Blacker. “The Collapse of Soviet Power in Eu-rope.” Foreign Affairs. 1990.

[79] “Memorial website”. Memo.ru. Retrieved 2013-10-01.

16 Further reading

• Garton Ash, Timothy (5 November 2009). “1989!".The New York Review of Books 56 (17).

• Leffler, Melvyn P.; Westad, Odd Arne, eds. (2010).The Cambridge History of the Cold War. III. End-ings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-83721-7.

• Lévesque, Jacques (1997). The Enigma of 1989:The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe.University of California Press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-520-20631-1.

• Roberts, Adam (1991). Civil Resistance in the EastEuropean and Soviet Revolutions. Cambridge, MA:Albert Einstein Institution. ISBN 1-880813-04-1.

• Roberts, Adam; Garton Ash, Timothy, eds. (2009).Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experi-ence of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to thePresent. Oxford: University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6. Contains chapters on the Soviet Union(Mark Kramer), Czechoslovakia (KieranWilliams),Poland (Alexander Smolar), Baltic States (Mark R.Beissinger), China (Merle Goldman), and East Ger-many (Charles Maier).

• Sebestyen, Victor (2009). Revolution 1989: TheFall of the Soviet Empire. Phoenix. ISBN 978-0-7538-2709-3.

• Sarotte, Mary Elise (2014). The Collapse: The Ac-cidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. Basic Books.ISBN 978-0-465-06494-6.

• Walesa, Lech (1991). The Struggle and the Triumph:An Autobiography. Arcade. ISBN 1-55970-221-4.

• Wilson, James Graham (2014). The Triumph of Im-provisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s En-gagement, and the End of the ColdWar. Ithaca: Cor-nell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-5229-5.

17 External links• The History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in

Eastern Europe, GMU.

• Syndrome of Socialism, RU:Narod. Some of aspectsof state national economy evolution in the system ofthe international economic order.

• A look at the collapse of Eastern European Com-munism two decades later

• “Post-socialist countries”, History of the publicsphere (annotated bibliography), SSRC.

• Kloss, Oliver (2005), “Revolutio ex nihilo? Zurmethodologischen Kritik des soziologischen Mod-ells “spontaner Kooperation” und zur Erklärung derRevolution von 1989 in der DDR”, in Timmermann,Heiner, Agenda DDR-Forschung. Ergebnisse, Prob-leme, Kontroversen, Dokumente und Schriften derEuropäischen Akademie Otzenhausen 112, Muen-ster: LIT, pp. 363–79, ISBN 3-8258-6909-1 +Ergänzender Anhang A – F.

Video of the revolutions in 1989

• Revolutions footage on YouTube

22 18 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

18 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

18.1 Text• Revolutions of 1989 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989?oldid=676923649 Contributors: Rickyrab, GCarty,

Timwi, Lfh, Nv8200pa, Samsara, Joy, Warofdreams, Jusjih, Qertis, Dale Arnett, Jmabel, Fifelfoo, Altenmann, Mervyn, DocWatson42,MaGioZal, Vasi, HangingCurve, Everyking, Ezhiki, Kpalion, Matthead, Pgan002, Ex ottoyuhr, Piotrus, OwenBlacker, B.d.mills, Robinklein, Trevor MacInnis, Lacrimosus, Gazpacho, Rich Farmbrough, Pmsyyz, Kostja, Pavel Vozenilek, Bender235, Kelvinc, Shrike, XerK-ibard, Circeus, Ertly, Polylerus, Pearle, Miranche, Logologist, Anittas, Nick Moss, Irdepesca572, Fdedio, DeirYassin, Kusma, Firsfron,Woohookitty, Jersyko, Admrboltz, Elmarco, Lkjhgfdsa, Tabletop, Hotshot977, Julo, Mandarax, Graham87, Descendall, Rjwilmsi, Tim!,Nightscream, Koavf, Lairor, Nihiltres, Russavia, Scoops, Jaraalbe, Gregorik, Volunteer Marek, Wavelength, Hairy Dude, Kafziel, Con-scious, Tkelly7, Gaius Cornelius, Juyukichi~enwiki, Manxruler, Ejdzej, Srinivasasha, Renata3, Syrthiss, Lockesdonkey, Sharkb, Joshmaul,Petri Krohn, DGaw, Xil, Tsiaojian lee, Katieh5584, Children of the dragon, SmackBot, InverseHypercube, Kintetsubuffalo, Aivazovsky,Srnec, Yamaguchi , Gilliam, Hmains, Chris the speller, Timbouctou, H2ppyme, Thumperward, Torzsmokus, GoodDay, Onorem, La-battblueboy, Alexmcfire, Xeeron, Maksim-bot, TheLateDentarthurdent, Verycharpie, Viking880, Evlekis, Ohconfucius, Cast, Mksword,Juantag, J 1982, Barabum, Jaywubba1887, Geoffrey Pruitt, BillFlis, Joeylawn, Zemenespuu~enwiki, AdultSwim, Andrwsc, NeroN BG,Joseph Solis in Australia, JoeBot, Sander Säde, Amakuru, Buffer v2, Lucy-marie, Woodshed, Eluchil404, FairuseBot, Tawkerbot2, Vanhelsing, Vints, Josh02 11, MiShogun, Nemeng, Devatipan, Spritewithnoice, Cydebot, Poeticbent, Bellerophon5685, Tec15, SteveMc-Cluskey, JamesAM, Thijs!bot, Epbr123, Biruitorul, Konradek, CopperKettle, Vidor, Hires an editor, Zweifel, Eamonnca1, Yalens, MingHua, DuncanHill, Turgidson, Arch dude, Nwe, MegX, Magioladitis, Alexander Domanda, Balloonguy, BilCat, Styrofoam1994, Grantsky,Daaf, Bastiaquinas, Goldsztajn, Stephenchou0722, MartinBot, Brickie, Rettetast, Sm8900, Lamato, R'n'B, CommonsDelinker, ShoWPiece,TVCGuy, Maurice Carbonaro, Cdamama, Tdadamemd, Kuzwa, DarwinPeacock, Skier Dude, DadaNeem, Honzula, STBotD, DASonnen-feld, Pazsit Ulla, VolkovBot, BoogaLouie, TXiKiBoT, Laveol, Lambdoid, Frvp, Wassermann~enwiki, Gestapos, Yaan, Viator slovenicus,CO, Y, Orestek, Dragostanasie, SieBot, Dca5347, Jingiby, Digwuren, Themartinrobinsons, Lightmouse, Aris 8564, Johnanth, Jmj713,Ken123BOT, Tripod86, Martarius, ClueBot, The Thing That Should Not Be, Afrique, Jacurek, JTBX, Monrh, Niceguyedc, Bobanni,Grandpallama, Excirial, Renegade xwo, Socrates2008, PixelBot, Asmaybe, Pragmatismo, Audaciter, Aleksd, ForestDim, One-eyed pi-rate, Razvanus~enwiki, WikHead, JCDenton2052, Elizard16, Good Olfactory, Addbot, Some jerk on the Internet, CanadianLinuxUser,LaaknorBot, Michaelwuzthere, Mosedschurte, SoloWing3844, Fireaxe888, Tassedethe, Lightbot, Yourroads~enwiki, Quantumobserver,VVPushkin, Bricklayer, Shikuesi3, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Ptbotgourou, Fraggle81, Frichmon, Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, Tem-podivalse, AnomieBOT, DemocraticLuntz, 1exec1, Jim1138, Rejedef, DavidSpanel, Csigabi, Materialscientist, Flamns, Citation bot,ArthurBot, Srwalden, Xqbot, Poetaris, RZimmerwald, ChildofMidnight, Csendesmark, Brandon5485, RibotBOT, Invest in knowledge,Edgars2007, FrescoBot, CaptainFugu, LucienBOT, Lothar von Richthofen, Haeinous, Trust Is All You Need, BenzolBot, CircleAdrian,Mimzy1990, Radu Gherasim, HRoestBot, Mnh123, ImageTagBot, Seryo93, Vinie007, Biala Gwiazda, Arise13, Cnwilliams, Designate,Samuel Salzman, Double sharp, Stewartsoda, DriveMySol, Lotje, Damczyk, Routlee, Lucius Winslow, Gazpr, Stephen MUFC, Com-missarusa, User.korisnik, Asimathar, RjwilmsiBot, VernoWhitney, MAXXX-309, Cheeselor19, EmausBot, John of Reading, Rail88,Dangling Reference, Slawekb, ZéroBot, Barzdonas, Tulandro, Olidaman, H3llBot, Zloyvolsheb, SporkBot, Lokpest, VanSisean, Shrigley,Sabaku The Berserk, BioPupil, Lokalkosmopolit, Depenaille, Xanchester, ClueBot NG, Somedifferentstuff, Aberdonian99, TimElessness,Iloveandrea, Philokomos, Ejensyd, ScottSteiner, V Debs, Helpful Pixie Bot, Electriccatfish2, Lacetnoir, Anonymous02748, Taykilla12,Nicholas.Sortino, Jevoite, HIDECCHI001, Konullu, User1961914, Compfreak7, FutureTrillionaire, Yerevantsi, Altaïr, The AlmighteyDrill, 23haveblue, Qasaur, BattyBot, Iloverussia, DemirBajraktarevic, Dog Whipper, Khazar2, Charles Essie, Mogism, Lugia2453, Greg-NGM, KingQueenPrince, Xwoodsterchinx, Popcultureman, Hashhash10, Patroit22, Hward4116SS, Jodosma, Haephrati, Thevideodrome,My name is not dave, Inanygivenhole, McRyach, Chipperdude15, SKMcG, 1990’sguy, Communist-USSR, Monkbot, Filedelinkerbot,Jss199, ♥Golf, Lucasdealmeidasm, Briwinus, Sigehelmus, Smlqwerty, Sourec, Leftcry, Oranges Juicy, EpicOrange, Sundayclose, PatchyP,Patton.loop, Sco096, Srednuas Lenoroc, LVHynes, Dutral and Anonymous: 346

18.2 Images• File:1989_08_23_Baltijoskelias14.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/1989_08_23_Baltijoskelias14.

jpg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Rimantas Lazdynas• File:April9victims.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/April9victims.jpg License: Public domain Con-

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