The Soviet Union became a multi-party semi-presidential republic from March 1990 and heldits first presidential election, marking a drastic change as part ofits reform program. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, resulting in seven new countries which had declared theirindependence from the Soviet Union, while theBaltic statesregained their independence in September 1991 along withUkraine,Georgia,Azerbaijan andArmenia. The rest of the Soviet Union continued with the establishment of theRussian Federation.Albania andYugoslavia abandoned communism between 1990-92, by which time Yugoslavia hadsplit into five new countries.Czechoslovakia dissolved three years after theend of communist rule, splitting peacefully into theCzech Republic andSlovakia on 1 January 1993.[14]North Korea abandoned Marxism–Leninism in 1992.[15] The Cold War is considered to have ended on 3 December 1989 during theMalta Summit between the Soviet and American leaders.[16] However, many historians conclude that the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 was the true end of the Cold War.[17]
Labour turmoil in Poland during 1980 led to the formation of the independenttrade unionSolidarity, led byLech Wałęsa, which over time became a political force. Nevertheless, on 13 December 1981, Polish prime ministerWojciech Jaruzelski started a crackdown on Solidarity by declaringmartial law in Poland, suspending the union, and temporarily imprisoning all of its leaders.[21]
Although several Eastern Bloc countries had attempted some abortive, limited economic and political reform since the 1950s (e.g. theHungarian Revolution of 1956 andPrague Spring of 1968), the ascension of reform-minded Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev in 1985 signaled the trend toward greaterliberalization. During the mid-1980s, a younger generation of Sovietapparatchiks, led by Gorbachev, began advocating fundamental reform in order to reverse years ofBrezhnev stagnation. After decades of growth, the Soviet Union was now facing a period of severe economic decline and needed Western technology and credits[clarification needed] to make up for its increasing backwardness. The costs of maintaining its military, theKGB, and subsidies to foreign client states further strained the moribundSoviet economy.[22]
Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded to theGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and came to power in 1985. The first signs of major reform came in 1986 when Gorbachev launched a policy ofglasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need forperestroika (economic restructuring). By the spring of 1989, the Soviet Union had not only experienced lively media debate but had also held its first multi-candidate elections in the newly establishedCongress of People's Deputies. While glasnost ostensibly advocated openness and political criticism, these were only permitted within a narrow spectrum dictated by the state. The general public in the Eastern Bloc was still subject tosecret police andpolitical repression.[23]
Gorbachev urged his Central and Southeast European counterparts to imitateperestroika andglasnost in their own countries. However, while reformists in Hungary and Poland were emboldened by the force of liberalization spreading from the east, other Eastern Bloc countries remained openly skeptical and demonstrated aversion to reform. Believing Gorbachev's reform initiatives would be short-lived, hardline communist rulers likeEast Germany'sErich Honecker,Bulgaria'sTodor Zhivkov,Czechoslovakia'sGustáv Husák andRomania'sNicolae Ceaușescu obstinately ignored the calls for change.[24] "When your neighbor puts up new wallpaper, it doesn't mean you have to too," declared one East Germanpolitburo member.[25]
Soviet republics
An animated series of maps showing the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and thedissolution of the Soviet Union, which later led to conflicts in the post-Soviet space
By the late 1980s, people in theCaucasus andBaltic states were demanding more autonomy fromMoscow, and the Kremlin was losing some of its control over certain regions and elements in theSoviet Union. Cracks in the Soviet system had begun in December 1986 inKazakhstan when its citizensprotested over an ethnic Russian who had been appointed as the secretary of theCPSU's Kazakh republican branch. These protests were put down after three days.
TheChernobyl disaster in April 1986 had major political and social effects that catalyzed or at least partially caused the Revolutions of 1989. One political result of the disaster was the greatly increased significance of the new Soviet policy of glasnost.[27][28] It is difficult to establish the total economic cost of the disaster. According to Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billionroubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.[29]
The 20–21 March 1981 issue ofWieczór Wrocławia (This Evening inWrocław) shows blank spaces remaining after the government censor pulled articles from page 1 (right, "What happened atBydgoszcz?") and from the last page (left, "Country-wide strike alert"), leaving only their titles as the printers—Solidarity-trade-union members—decided to run the newspaper with blank spaces intact. The bottom of page 1 of this master copy bears the hand-written Solidarity confirmation of that decision.
Throughout the mid-1980s,Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, supported by the Catholic Church. However, by the late 1980s, Solidarity became sufficiently strong to frustrateJaruzelski's attempts at reform, andnationwide strikes in 1988 forced the government to open dialogue with Solidarity. On 9 March 1989, both sides agreed to abicameral legislature called theNational Assembly. The already existingSejm would become the lower house. The Senate would be elected by the people. Traditionally a ceremonial office, the presidency was given more powers[30] (Polish Round Table Agreement).
On 7 July 1989, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev implicitly renounced the use of force against other Soviet-bloc nations. Speaking to members of the 23-nationCouncil of Europe, Mr. Gorbachev made no direct reference to the so-calledBrezhnev Doctrine, under which Moscow had asserted the right to use force to prevent aWarsaw Pact member from leaving the communist fold. He stated, "Any interference in domestic affairs and any attempts to restrict the sovereignty of states—friends, allies or any others—are inadmissible".[31] The policy was termed theSinatra Doctrine, in a joking reference to theFrank Sinatra song "My Way". Poland became the first Warsaw Pact country to break free of Soviet domination.
Exact tallies of the number of democracies vary depending on the criteria used for assessment, but by some measures by the late 1990s there were well over 100 democracies in the world, a marked increase in just a few decades.[33]
Awave of strikes hit Poland from 21 April, which continued in May 1988. A second wave began on 15 August, when a strike broke out at theJuly Manifesto coal mine inJastrzębie-Zdrój, with the workers demanding the re-legalisation of the Solidarity trade union. Over the next few days, sixteen other mines went on strike followed by a number of shipyards, including on 22 August theGdansk Shipyard, famous as the epicentre of the1980 industrial unrest that spawned Solidarity.[34] On 31 August 1988Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Solidarity, was invited to Warsaw by the communist authorities, who had finally agreed to talks.[35]
On 18 January 1989, at a stormy session of the Tenth Plenary Session of the rulingUnited Workers' Party, GeneralWojciech Jaruzelski, the First Secretary, managed to get party backing for formal negotiations with Solidarity leading to its future legalisation, although this was achieved only by threatening the resignation of the entire party leadership if thwarted.[36] On 6 February 1989 formal Round Table discussions began in the Hall of Columns in Warsaw. On 4 April 1989 the historicRound Table Agreement was signed legalising Solidarity and setting up partly freeparliamentary elections to be held on 4 June 1989, incidentally, the day following the midnight massacre of Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square.
A political earthquake followed as the victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in theSejm. Inthe Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats, with the one remaining seat taken by an independent candidate. At the same time, many prominent communist candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them.
Solidarity ChairmanLech Wałęsa (center) with PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush (right) and Barbara Bush (left) in Warsaw, July 1989
On 15 August 1989, the communists' two longtime coalition partners, theUnited People's Party (ZSL) and theDemocratic Party (SD), broke their alliance with the PZPR and announced their support for Solidarity. The last communist prime minister of Poland, GeneralCzesław Kiszczak, said he would resign to allow a non-communist to form an administration.[37] As Solidarity was the only other political grouping that could possibly form a government, it was virtually assured that a Solidarity member would become prime minister.[38]
On 19 August 1989, in a stunning watershed moment,Tadeusz Mazowiecki, an anti-communist editor, Solidarity supporter, and devout Catholic, was nominated as Prime Minister of Poland and the Soviet Union voiced no protest.[38] Five days later, on 24 August 1989, Poland's Parliament ended more than 40 years of one-party rule by making Mazowiecki the country's first non-communist Prime Minister since the early postwar years. In a tense Parliament, Mazowiecki received 378 votes, with 4 against and 41 abstentions.[39] On 13 September 1989, a new non-communist government was approved by parliament, the first of its kind in theEastern Bloc.[40]
On 17 November 1989, the statue ofFelix Dzerzhinsky, Polish founder of theCheka and symbol of communist oppression, was torn down inBank Square, Warsaw.[41] On 29 December 1989 the Sejm amended the constitution to change the official name of the country from the People's Republic of Poland to the Republic of Poland. The communist Polish United Workers' Party dissolved itself on 29 January 1990 and transformed itself into theSocial Democracy of the Republic of Poland.[42]
In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by Wałęsa, who won the1990 presidential elections[42] held in two rounds on 25 November and 9 December. Wałęsa's inauguration as president on 21 December 1990 is considered by many as the formal end of the communistPeople's Republic of Poland and the start of the modernRepublic of Poland. TheWarsaw Pact was dissolved on 1 July 1991. On 27 October 1991 thefirst entirely free Polish parliamentary elections since 1945 took place. This completed Poland's transition from communist Party rule to a Western-style liberal democratic political system. The last Russian troops left Poland on 18 September 1993.[42]
Following Poland's lead, Hungary was next to switch to a non-communist government. Although Hungary had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization during the 1980s, major reforms only occurred following the replacement ofJános Kádár as General Secretary of the communist Party on 23 May 1988 withKároly Grósz.[43] On 24 November 1988Miklós Németh was appointed prime minister. On 12 January 1989, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package", which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among other provisions.[44] On 29 January 1989, contradicting the official view of history held for more than 30 years, a member of the ruling Politburo,Imre Pozsgay, declared that Hungary's 1956 rebellion was a popular uprising rather than a foreign-instigated attempt at counterrevolution.[45]
Hungarians demonstrate at state TV headquarters, 15 March 1989
On 2 May 1989, the first visible cracks in theIron Curtain appeared whenHungary begandismantling its 240-kilometre (150 mi) long border fence with Austria.[48] This increasingly destabilized East Germany andCzechoslovakia over the summer and autumn, as thousands of their citizens illegally crossed over to the West through the Hungarian-Austrian border. On 1 June 1989 the Communist Party admitted that former prime ministerImre Nagy, hanged for treason for his role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, was executed illegally after a show trial.[49] On 16 June 1989 Nagy was given a solemn funeral on Budapest's largest square in front of crowds of at least 100,000, followed by a hero's burial.[50]
The initially inconspicuous opening of a border gate of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary in August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction, at the end of which the GDR no longer existed and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The idea of opening the border came fromOtto von Habsburg and was brought up by him to Németh, who promoted the idea.[51] The local organization in Sopron took over the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the other contacts were made via Habsburg and Pozsgay.[52][53]
Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of thePaneuropean Union, which was then headed byKarl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting them to a picnic near the border at Sopron.[52][53] After the pan-European picnic,Erich Honecker dictated theDaily Mirror of 19 August 1989: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West."[54][55]
With the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. In particular, the leadership of the GDR in East Berlin no longer dared to completely block the borders of their own country.[54][55]
TheRound Table agreement of 18 September encompassed six draft laws that covered an overhaul of theConstitution, establishment of aConstitutional Court, the functioning and management of political parties, multiparty elections for National Assembly deputies, the penal code and the law on penal procedures. The last two changes represented an additional separation of the Party from the state apparatus.[56][57] The electoral system was a compromise: about half of the deputies would be elected proportionally and half by the majoritarian system.[58] A weak presidency was agreed upon. No consensus was attained on who should elect the president, the parliament or the people, and when this election should occur, before or after parliamentary elections.[59]
On 7 October 1989, the Communist Party, at its last congress, re-established itself as theHungarian Socialist Party.[59] In a historic session from 16 to 20 October, the parliament adopted legislation providing fora multi-party parliamentary election and a direct presidential election, which took place on 24 March 1990.[60] The legislation transformed Hungary from aPeople's Republic into theRepublic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional structure that ensured separation of powers among the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government.[61] On 23 October 1989, on the 33rd anniversary of the 1956 Revolution, the communist regime in Hungary was formally abolished. TheSoviet military occupation of Hungary, which had persisted since World War II, ended on 19 June 1991.
On 2 May 1989,Hungarystarted dismantling its barbed-wire border withAustria. Theborder was still heavily guarded, but it was a political sign. ThePan-European Picnic in August 1989 finally started a movement that could not be stopped by the rulers in the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The patrons of the picnic,Otto von Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of StateImre Pozsgay saw the planned event as an opportunity to test the reaction of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Eastern Bloc countries to a large opening of the border including flight.[55][62][51][63][64][65]
After the pan-European picnic, Erich Honecker dictated the Daily Mirror of 19 August 1989: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food, and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms.[55][62][51][63][64][65]
By the end of September 1989, more than 30,000 East Germans had escaped to the West before theGDR denied travel to Hungary, leavingCzechoslovakia as the only neighboring state to which East Germans could escape. Thousands of East Germans tried to reach the West by occupying the West German diplomatic facilities in other Central and Eastern European capitals, notably thePrague Embassy and the Hungarian Embassy, where thousands camped in the muddy garden from August to November waiting for German political reform. The GDR closed the border to Czechoslovakia on 3 October, thereby isolating itself from all its neighbors. Having been shut off from their last chance for escape, an increasing number of East Germans participated in theMonday demonstrations in Leipzig on 4, 11, and 18 September, each attracting 1,200 to 1,500 demonstrators. Many were arrested and beaten, but the people refused to be intimidated. On 25 September, the protests attracted 8,000 demonstrators.[66]
After the fifth successive Monday demonstration inLeipzig on 2 October attracted 10,000 protesters, Honecker issued ashoot and kill order to the military.[67] Communists prepared a huge police, militia,Stasi, and work-combat troop presence, and there were rumors a Tiananmen Square-style massacre was being planned for the following Monday's demonstration on 9 October.[68]
On 6 and 7 October,Mikhail Gorbachev visited East Germany to mark the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, and urged the East German leadership to accept reform. A famous quote of his is rendered in German as "Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben" ("The one who comes too late is punished by life."). However, Honecker remained opposed to internal reform, with his regime going so far as forbidding the circulation of Soviet publications that it viewed as subversive.
In spite of rumors that the communists were planning a massacre on 9 October, 70,000 citizens demonstrated in Leipzig that Monday and the authorities on the ground refused to open fire. The following Monday, 16 October, 120,000 people demonstrated on the streets of Leipzig.
Honecker had hoped that theSoviet troops stationed in the GDR by theWarsaw Pact would restore the communist government and suppress the civilian protests. By 1989, the Soviet government deemed it impractical for the Soviet Union tocontinue asserting its control over the Eastern Bloc, so it took a neutral stance regarding the events happening in East Germany. Soviet troops stationed in eastern Europe were under strict instructions from the Soviet leadership not to intervene in the political affairs of the Eastern Bloc nations, and remained in their barracks. Faced with ongoing civil unrest, the SED deposed Honecker on 18 October and replaced him with the number-two-man in the regime,Egon Krenz. However, the demonstrations kept growing. On Monday, 23 October, the Leipzig protesters numbered 300,000, and remained as large the following week.
The border to Czechoslovakia was opened again on 1 November, and the Czechoslovak authorities soon let all East Germans travel directly to West Germany without further bureaucratic ado, thus lifting their part of the Iron Curtain on 3 November. On 4 November the authorities decided to authorize a demonstration in Berlin and were faced with theAlexanderplatz demonstration, where half a million citizens converged on the capital demanding freedom in the biggest protest the GDR ever witnessed.
Unable to stem the ensuing flow of refugees to the West through Czechoslovakia, the East German authorities eventually caved in to public pressure by allowing East German citizens to enter West Berlin and West Germany directly, via existing border points, on 9 November 1989, without having properly briefed the border guards. Triggered by the erratic words of regime spokesmanGünter Schabowski in a TV press conference, stating that the planned changes were in effect "immediately, without delay," hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity.
The guards were quickly overwhelmed by the growing crowds of people demanding to be let out into West Berlin. After receiving no feedback from their superiors, the guards, unwilling to use force, relented andopened the gates to West Berlin. Soon new crossing points were forced open in theBerlin Wall by the people, and sections of the wall were literally torn down. The guards were unaware of what was happening and stood by as the East Germans took to the wall with hammers and chisels.
The Berlin Wall, October 1990, sayingThank You,Gorbi
On 7 November, the entireMinisterrat der DDR (State Council of East Germany), including its chairmanWilli Stoph, resigned.[69] A new government was formed under a considerably more liberal communist,Hans Modrow.[70]On 1 December, theVolkskammer removed the SED's leading role from theconstitution of the GDR. On 3 December Krenz resigned as leader of the SED; he resigned as head of state three days later. On 7 December, Round Table talks opened between the SED and other political parties. On 16 December 1989, the SED was dissolved and refounded as theSED-PDS, abandoning Marxism–Leninism and becoming a mainstream democratic socialist party.
On 12 September 1990,a peace treaty was signed between the two countries of Germany and the four Allies, to replace thePotsdam Agreement of 1 August 1945 afterWorld War II to return full sovereignty to Germany, which facilitated the reunification. The two German countrieswere reunified into present-dayGermany on 3 October 1990, solving the German problem of two states status, which had existed since 7 October 1949.
TheKremlin's willingness to abandon such a strategically vital ally marked a dramatic change by the Soviet superpower and a fundamentalparadigm shift ininternational relations, which until 1989 had been dominated by the East–West divide running through Berlin itself. The lastRussian troops left the territory of the former GDR, now part of areunited Germany, on 1 September 1994.
The "Velvet Revolution" was a non-violent transition of power in Czechoslovakia from the communist government to a parliamentary republic. On 17 November 1989, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration in Prague, a day after a similar demonstration passed without incident in Bratislava. Although controversy continues over whether anyone died that night, that event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from 19 November to late December. By 20 November the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. Five days later, the Letná Square protest held 800,000 people.[71] On 24 November, the entire Communist Party leadership, including general secretaryMiloš Jakeš, resigned. A two-hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was successfully held on 27 November.
With the collapse of other communist governments, and increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on 28 November 1989 that it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On 10 December, PresidentGustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948 and resigned.Alexander Dubček was elected speaker of the federal parliament on 28 December andVáclav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on 29 December 1989. In June 1990 Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. On 27 June 1991 the last Soviet troops were withdrawn from Czechoslovakia.[72]
Bulgaria
In October and November 1989, demonstrations on ecological issues were staged in Sofia, where demands for political reform were also voiced. The demonstrations were suppressed, but on 10 November 1989, the day after the Berlin Wall was breached, Bulgaria's long-serving leaderTodor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo. He was succeeded by a considerably more liberal communist, former foreign ministerPetar Mladenov. Moscow apparently approved the leadership change, as Zhivkov had been opposed to Gorbachev's policies. The new regime immediately repealed restrictions on free speech and assembly, which led to the first mass demonstration on 17 November, as well as the formation of anti-communist movements. Nine of them united as theUnion of Democratic Forces (UDF) on 7 December.[73] The UDF was not satisfied with Zhivkov's ouster, and demanded additional democratic reforms, most importantly the removal of the constitutionally mandated leading role of theBulgarian Communist Party.
Mladenov announced on 11 December 1989 that the Communist Party would abandon its monopoly on power, and that multiparty elections would be held the following year. In February 1990, the Bulgarian legislature deleted the portion of the constitution about the "leading role" of the Communist Party. Eventually, it was decided that a round table on the Polish model would be held in 1990 and elections held by June 1990. The round table took place from 3 January to 14 May 1990, at which an agreement was reached on the transition to democracy. The Communist Party abandoned Marxism–Leninism on 3 April 1990 and renamed itself as theBulgarian Socialist Party. In June 1990 the first free elections since 1931 were held, won by the Bulgarian Socialist Party.[74]
Czechoslovak PresidentGustáv Husák's resignation on 10 December 1989 amounted to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, leaving Ceaușescu's Romania as the only remaining hard-line communist regime in the Warsaw Pact.[75][76][77]
After having suppressed theBrașov rebellion in 1987,Nicolae Ceaușescu was re-elected for another five years as leader of theRomanian Communist Party (PCR) in November 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe. As Ceaușescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, hisSecuritate ordered the arrest and exile of a local HungarianCalvinist minister,László Tőkés, on 16 December, for sermons offending the regime. Tőkés was seized, but only after serious rioting erupted.Timișoara was the first city to react on 16 December and civil unrest continued for five days.
Returning from Iran, Ceaușescu ordered a mass rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest on 21 December. To his shock, the crowd booed and jeered him as he spoke. Years of repressed dissatisfaction boiled to the surface throughout the Romanian populace and even among elements in Ceaușescu's own government, and the demonstrations spread throughout the country.
At first, the security forces obeyed Ceaușescu's orders to shoot protesters. On the morning of 22 December, the Romanian military suddenly changed sides. This came after it was announced that defense ministerVasile Milea had committed suicide after being unmasked as a traitor. It was suggested that he only tried to incapacitate himself in order to be relieved from office, but the bullet hit an artery and he died soon afterwards.[78] Believing Milea had actually been murdered, the rank-and-file soldiers went over virtuallyen masse to the revolution.[79] Army tanks began moving towards the Central Committee building, with crowds swarming alongside them. The rioters forced open the doors of the Central Committee building in an attempt to capture Ceaușescu and his wife,Elena, coming within a few meters of the couple. They managed to escape via a helicopter waiting for them on the roof of the building.
Although elation followed the flight of the Ceaușescus, uncertainty surrounded their fate. On Christmas Day, Romanian television showed the Ceaușescus facing a hasty trial, and then being executed by firing squad. An interimNational Salvation Front Council led byIon Iliescu took over and announced elections for April 1990, the first free elections held in Romania since 1937. These were postponed until 20 May 1990. The Romanian Revolution was the bloodiest of the revolutions of 1989: over 1,000 people died,[80] one hundred of which were children, the youngest only one month old.
Unlike its kindred parties in the Warsaw Pact, the PCR simply melted away. No present-day Romanian party claiming to be its successor has ever been elected to the legislature since the change of system. However, former PCR members have played significant roles in post-1989 Romanian politics. EveryRomanian President until the election ofKlaus Iohannis in2014 was a former Communist Party member.
The years following the disposal of Ceaușescu were not free of conflict, and a series of "Mineriads" organized by dissatisfiedJiu Valley miners occurred. TheJune 1990 Mineriad turned deadly after university students, the "Golaniads", held a months long protest against the participation of ex-PCR andSecuritate members in the1990 Romanian general election.[81] PresidentIon Iliescu branded the protesters "hooligans" and called the miners to "defend Romanian democracy". Viorel Ene, president of the Association of Victims of the Mineriads, asserted that:[82]
There are documents, testimonies of doctors, of people from Domnești and Străulești cemeteries. Although we have said all along that the real number of dead is over 100, no one contradicted so far and there was no official position against.
Over 10,000 miners were transported toBucharest and in the ensuing clashes, seven protesters died and hundreds more were injured, although media estimates on the casualty figures were much higher. The opposition newspaperRomânia Liberă alleged that over 128 unidentified bodies were buried in a common grave in Străulești II cemetery, nearBucharest.[83] A few weeks after the mineriad, several medical students conducted research in Străulești II cemetery, discovering two trenches with about 78 unmarked graves, which they claimed to contain victims of the events.[84]
Parallel to the same process,Slovenia initiated a policy of gradual liberalization in 1984, somewhat similar to the Soviet Perestroika. This provoked tensions between theLeague of Communists of Slovenia and thecentral Yugoslav Party andfederal army. In 1984, the decade long ban to build theSaint Sava Cathedral inBelgrade was lifted. The backdown of the communist elite and a popular gathering of 100,000 believers on 12 May 1985 to celebrate liturgy inside the walls of the ruins marked the return of religion in postwar Yugoslavia.[86] By the late 1980s, many civil society groups were pushing towardsdemocratization, while widening the space for cultural plurality.[87]
In 1987 and 1988, a series of clashes between the emerging civil society and the communist regime culminated with the so-calledSlovene Spring, a mass movement for democratic reforms. TheCommittee for the Defence of Human Rights was established as the platform of all major non-Communist political movements. By early 1989, several anti-communist political parties were already openly functioning, challenging the hegemony of the Slovenian Communists. Soon, the Slovenian Communists, pressured by their own civil society, came into conflict with theSerbian Communist leadership.[87]
In January 1990, an extraordinary Congress of theLeague of Communists of Yugoslavia was called in order to settle the disputes among its constituent parties. Faced with being completely outnumbered, the Slovenian andCroatian communists walked out of the Congress on 23 January 1990, effectively bringing to an end to Yugoslavia's communist party. Both parties of the two western republics negotiated free multi-party elections with their own opposition movements.
The Slovenian and Croatian leaderships started preparing plans for secession from the federation, while a part of theSerbs of Croatia started the so-calledLog Revolution, an insurrection organized bySerbia that would lead to the creation of the breakaway region ofSAO Krajina. In theSlovenian independence referendum on 23 December 1990, 88.5% of residents voted for independence.[88] In theCroatian independence referendum on 19 May 1991, 93.24% voted for independence.
The escalating ethnic and national tensions were exacerbated by the drive for independence and led to the followingYugoslav wars:
In thePeople's Socialist Republic of Albania,Enver Hoxha, who led Albania for four decades, died on 11 April 1985.[92] His successor,Ramiz Alia, began to gradually open up the regime from above. In 1989, the first revolts started inShkodra and spread in other cities.[93] Eventually, the existing regime introduced some liberalization, including measures in 1990 providing for freedom to travel abroad. Efforts were begun to improve ties with the outside world. March 1991 elections—the first free elections in Albania since 1923, and only the third free elections in the country's history—left the former communists in power, but a general strike and urban opposition led to the formation of a coalition cabinet including non-communists. Parliamentary elections were held inAlbania on 22 March 1992, with a second round of voting for eleven seats on 29 March,[94][95] amideconomic collapse and social unrest.
Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) declared independence from China in 1911 during thefall of theQing dynasty. TheMongolian People's Partytook power in 1921, and the party renamed itself the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party.[96] During these years, Mongolia was closely aligned with the Soviet Union. AfterYumjaagiin Tsedenbal left in 1984, the new leadership underJambyn Batmönkh implemented economic reforms, but failed to appeal to those who, in late 1989, wanted broader changes.[97]
During the morning of 10 December 1989, the first public demonstration occurred in front of the Youth Cultural Center in the capital of Ulaanbaatar.[99] There, Elbegdorj announced the creation of theMongolian Democratic Union,[100] and the first pro-democracy movement in Mongolia began. The protesters called for Mongolia to adoptperestroika andglasnost. Dissident leaders demanded free elections and economic reform, but within the context of a "human democratic socialism".[97] The protesters injected anationalist element into the protests by using traditionalMongolian script—which most Mongolians could not read—as a symbolic repudiation of the political system which had imposed theMongolian Cyrillic alphabet.[97]
In late December 1989, demonstrations increased when news came ofGarry Kasparov's interview inPlayboy, suggesting that the Soviet Union could improve its economic health by selling Mongolia to China.[97] On 14 January 1990, the protesters, having grown from three hundred to some 1,000, met in a square in front of Lenin Museum in Ulaanbaatar, which has been named Freedom Square since then. A demonstration inSükhbaatar Square on 21 January followed, in weather of −30 C. Protesters carried banners alluding to Chinggis Khaan, also referred toGenghis Khan, rehabilitating a figure whom Soviet schooling neglected to praise.[101]
In subsequent months of 1990, activists continued to organize demonstrations, rallies, protests and hunger strikes, as well as teachers' and workers' strikes.[102] Activists had growing support from Mongolians, both in the capital and the countryside and the union's activities led to other calls for democracy all over the country.[103] After numerous demonstrations of many thousands of people in the capital city as well as provincial centers, on 4 March 1990, the MDU and three other reform organizations held a joint outdoor mass meeting, inviting the government to attend. The government sent no representative to what became a demonstration of over 100,000 people demanding democratic change.[104] This culminated withJambyn Batmönkh, chairman of Politburo of MPRP's Central Committee decided to dissolve the Politburo and to resign on 9 March 1990.[105][106]
Mongolia's first free, multi-party elections for a bicameral parliament took place on 29 July 1990.[104][107] Parties ran for 430 seats in the Great Hural. Opposition parties were not able to nominate enough candidates. The opposition nominated 346 candidates for the 430 seats in the Great Hural (upper house). TheMongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) won 357 seats in the Great Hural and 31 out of 53 seats in the Small Hural.[108] The MPRP enjoyed a strong position in the countryside. TheState Great Khural first met on 3 September 1990 and elected a president (MPRP), vice president (Social Democrat) who was also a chairman of the Baga Hural, prime minister (MPRP), and 50 members to the Baga Hural (lower house).
In November 1991, the People's Great Hural began a discussion on anew constitution, which entered into force on 12 February 1992. The new constitution restructured the legislative branch of government, creating a unicameral legislature, the State Great Hural (SGH). The MPRP retained its majority but lost the 1996 elections. The final Russian troops, which had been stationed in Mongolia since 1966, fully withdrew in December 1992.
While China did not undergo a revolution resulting in a new form of government in 1989, a popular national movement led to large demonstrations in favor of democratic reforms.Chinese leaderDeng Xiaoping had developed the concept ofsocialism with Chinese characteristics and enacted localmarket economy reforms around 1984, but the policy had stalled.[109]
The first Chinese student demonstrations, which eventually led to the Beijing protests of 1989, took place in December 1986 inHefei. The students called for campus elections, the chance to study abroad, and greater availability of Western pop culture. Their protests took advantage of the loosening political atmosphere and included rallies against the slow pace of reform.Hu Yaobang, a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and a leading advocate of reform, was blamed for the protests and forced to resign as theCCP general secretary in January 1987. In the "Anti Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign", Hu would be further denounced.
The Tiananmen Square protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April 1989. By the eve of Hu's state funeral, some 100,000 students had gathered atTiananmen Square to observe it; however, no leaders emerged from theGreat Hall. The movement lasted for seven weeks.[110]
Mikhail Gorbachev visited China on 15 May during the protests, bringing many foreign news agencies to Beijing, and their sympathetic portrayals of the protesters helped galvanize a spirit of liberation among the Central, South-East and Eastern Europeans who were watching. The Chinese leadership, particularly Communist Party general secretaryZhao Ziyang, who had begun to radically reform the economy earlier than the Soviets, was open to political reform, but not at the cost of a potential return to the disorder of theCultural Revolution.
The movement lasted from Hu's death on 15 April until tanks and troops rolled into the Tiananmen Square protests of 4 June 1989. In Beijing, themilitary response to the protest by the PRC government left many civilians in charge of clearing the square of the dead and severely injured. The exact number of casualties is not known and many different estimates exist. The event, however, did make some political change. The problem with the mass migration is that it has now started a deepening divide between the rural poor and the rich urban people.[111]
TheMalta Summit took place between U.S. President George H. W. Bush and U.S.S.R. leader Mikhail Gorbachev on 2–3 December 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a meeting which contributed to the end of theCold War[112] partially as a result of the broader pro-democracy movement. It was their second meeting following a meeting that included then President Ronald Reagan, in New York in December 1988. News reports of the time[113] referred to the Malta Summit as the most important since 1945, when British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed on a post-war plan for Europe at theYalta Conference.
Election chronology in Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia
Between June 1989 and April 1991, every communist or former communist country in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia—and in the case of the USSR and Yugoslavia, every constituent republic—held competitive parliamentary elections for the first time in many decades. Some elections were only partly free, while others were fully democratic. The chronology below gives the details of these historic elections, and the dates are the first day of voting as several elections were split over several days for run-off contests:
On 1 July 1991, the Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague. At a summit later that same month, Gorbachev and Bush declared a US–Soviet strategic partnership, decisively marking the end of the Cold War. President Bush declared that US–Soviet cooperation during the 1990–1991Gulf War had laid the groundwork for a partnership in resolving bilateral and world problems.
As the Soviet Union rapidly withdrew its forces from Central and Southeast Europe, the spillover from the 1989 upheavals began reverberating throughout the Soviet Union itself. Agitation for self-determination led to first Lithuania, and then Estonia, Latvia, and Armenia declaring independence. However, the Soviet central government demanded the revocation of the declarations and threatened military action and economic sanctions. The government even went as far as controversially sendingSoviet Army troops to the streets of the Lithuanian capital,Vilnius, tosuppress the separatist movements in January 1991, causing the deaths of 14 persons.
Disaffection in other Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, was countered by promises of greater decentralization. More open elections led to the election of candidates opposed to Communist Party rule.
Glasnost had inadvertently released the long-suppressed national sentiments of all peoples within the borders of the multinational Soviet state. These nationalist movements were further strengthened by the rapid deterioration of the Soviet economy, whose foundations were exposed with the removal of communist discipline. Gorbachev's reforms had failed to improve the economy, with the old Sovietcommand structure completely breaking down. One by one, the constituent republics created their own economic systems and voted to subordinate Soviet laws to local laws.
In 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its seven-decade monopoly of political power when the Supreme Soviet rescinded the clause in the Soviet Constitution that guaranteed its sole authority to rule. Gorbachev's policies caused the Communist Party to lose its control over the media. Details of the Soviet Union's past were quickly being declassified. This caused many to distrust the 'old system' and push for greater autonomy and independence.
After theMarch 1991 referendum confirmed the preservation of the Soviet Union but in a looser form, a group of Soviet hard-liners represented by Vice-PresidentGennadi Yanayev launcheda coup attempting to overthrow Gorbachev in August 1991.Boris Yeltsin, then president of theRussian SFSR, rallied the people and much of the army against the coup and the effort collapsed. Although restored to power, Gorbachev's authority had been irreparably undermined. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party following the coup, and the Supreme Soviet dissolved the Party and banned all communist activity on Soviet soil. Just a few weeks later, the government granted the Baltic states their independence on 6 September.
Over the next three months, one republic after another declared independence, mostly out of fear of another coup. Also during this time, the Soviet government was rendered useless as the new Russian government began taking over what remained of it, including the Kremlin. The penultimate step came on 1 December, when voters in the second most powerful republic, Ukraine, overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Soviet Union in a referendum. This ended any realistic chance of keeping the Soviet Union together. On 8 December, Yeltsin met with his counterparts from Ukraine and Belarus and signed theBelavezha Accords, declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Gorbachev denounced this as illegal, but he had long since lost any ability to influence events outside of Moscow.
Changes in national boundaries after the end of theCold War
Two weeks later, 11 of the remaining 12 republics—all except Georgia—signed theAlma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the Soviet Union had been effectively dissolved and replaced by a new voluntary association, theCommonwealth of Independent States. Bowing to the inevitable, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 25 December, and the Supreme Soviet ratified the Belavezha Accords the next day, legally dissolving itself and the Soviet Union as a political entity. By the end of 1991, the few Soviet institutions that hadn't been taken over by Russia had dissolved. The Soviet Union was officially disbanded, breaking up into fifteen constituent parts, thereby ending the world's largest and most influential Socialist state, and leaving to China that position. In 1993, aconstitutional crisis dissolved into violence in Moscow as theRussian Armed Forces were called in to reestablish order.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania implemented democratic reforms and achieved independence from the Soviet Union. TheSinging Revolution is a commonly used name for events between 1987 and 1991 that led to the restoration of the independence ofEstonia,Latvia andLithuania.[114][115] The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist,Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after 10–11 June 1988 spontaneous mass night-singing demonstrations at theTallinn Song Festival Grounds.[116] Estoniadeclared its sovereignty from the Soviet Union on 16 November 1988. Lithuania followed on 18 May 1989 and Latvia on 28 July 1989.
Lithuania declared full independence on 11 March 1990 and on 30 March, Estonia announced the start of a transitional period to independence,followed by Latvia on 4 May. These declarations were met with force from the Soviet Union in early 1991, in confrontations known as the"January Events" in Lithuania and "The Barricades" in Latvia. The Baltic states contended that their incorporation into the Soviet Union had been illegal under both international law and their own law, and they were reasserting an independence that still legally existed.
Soon after the launching of the August coup, Estonia and Latvia declared full independence. By the time the coup failed, the USSR was no longer unified enough to mount a forceful resistance, and it recognized the independence of the Baltic states on 6 September 1991.
Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova
Belarus declared full independence from the USSR on 25 August 1991. The main political changes of the early 1990s were driven by theBelarusian Popular Front and its fraction in theSupreme Soviet of Belarus. A few years later, a new post-communist leader,Alexander Lukashenko, obtained power. After a short period, he increased his power as a result of two controversial referendums (1995–96) and has been criticized forrepressing political opposition ever since.
Photos of 9 April 1989 victims of theTbilisi massacre on a billboard inTbilisiFollowing Georgia's declaration of independence in 1991,South Ossetia andAbkhazia declared their desire to leave Georgia and remain part of the Soviet Union/Russia.[121]
All countries in the region regained their independence in 1991 following the takeover by theRed Army in 1920–21.
Armenia's independence struggle included violence as theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia became increasingly militarized, with the ascendancy of Kocharian, a former president ofNagorno-Karabakh, often viewed as a milestone. Elections have since been increasingly controversial, and government corruption became rifer. After Kocharyan, notably,Serzh Sargsyan ascended to power. Sargsyan is often noted as the "founder of the Armenian and Karabakh militaries" and was, in the past, defense minister and national security minister.
Azerbaijan'sPopular Front Party won the first elections with the self-described pro-Western, populist nationalist Elchibey. However, Elchibey planned to end Moscow's advantage in the harvesting of Azeri oil and build much stronger links with Turkey and Europe, and as a result was overthrown by former communists in a coup backed by Russia and Iran, which viewed the new country as a compelling threat, with territorial ambitions within Iranian borders and also being a strong economic rival.[122] Mutallibov rose to power, but he was soon destabilized and eventually ousted due to popular frustration with his perceived incompetence, corruption and improper handling of the war with Armenia. Azerbaijani KGB and Azerbaijani SSR leaderHeydar Aliyev captured power and remained president until he transferred the presidency to his son in 2003. TheFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and has largely defined the fates of both countries. Unlike Armenia, which remains a strong Russian ally, Azerbaijan has begun, since Russia's 2008 war with Georgia, to foster better relations with Turkey and other Western nations, while lessening ties with Russia.[123]
InChechnya, anautonomous republic withinRussian SFSR that had a strong desire for independence, using tactics partly copied from the Baltics, anti-communist coalition forces led by former Soviet generalDzhokhar Dudayev staged a largely bloodless revolution, and ended up forcing the resignation of the communist republican president. Dudayev was elected in a landslide in the following election. In November 1991, he proclaimedChecheno-Ingushetia's independence as the Republic of Ichkeria. Ingushetia voted to leave the union with Chechnya, and was allowed to do so after which, Chechnya became theChechen Republic of Ichkeria.[124]
Due to Dudayev's desire to exclude Moscow from all oil deals, Yeltsin backed a failed coup against him in 1993. In 1994, Chechnya was invaded by Russia, spurring theFirst Chechen War. Chechnya had only marginal international recognition, from one country: Georgia, which was revoked soon after the coup landing Shevardnadze in power. The Chechens, with considerable assistance from the populations of both former-Soviet countries and from Sunni Muslim countries repelled the invasion, and a peace treaty was signed in 1997. However, Chechnya became increasingly anarchic, largely due to both the political and physical destruction of the state during the invasion, and general Shamil Basaev, having evaded all control by the central government, conducted raids into neighboring Dagestan, which Russia used as a pretext for reinvading Ichkeria. Ichkeria was then reincorporated into Russia as Chechnya again.[124]
Turkmenistan'sSaparmurat Niyazov retained power until his death in 2006 and was criticized as one of the world's most totalitarian and repressive leaders, maintaining his owncult of personality. Niyazov's successorGurbanguly Berdimuhamedov initially eased changes made by Niyazov before starting his very own cult of personality.
Uzbekistan'sIslam Karimov retained power until his death in 2016[127] and was widely criticized for repressing the political opposition throughout his tenure.
Vietnam – Vietnam remained under the leadership of theCommunist Party of Vietnam and pursued economic reforms that were much less far-reaching than China's and many socialist economic policies were retained.
Angola – The rulingMPLA government abandoned Marxism–Leninism in 1991 and agreed to theBicesse Accords in the same year, however theAngolan Civil War between the MPLA and the conservativeUNITA continued for another decade until 2002.
Benin –Mathieu Kérékou's regime was pressured to abandon Marxism–Leninism in 1989.
Tanzania – The rulingChama Cha Mapinduzi party cut down its Socialist ideology and foreign donors pressured the government to allow multiparty elections in 1995.
Iraq –Uprisings in 1991, leading to Kurdistan becoming an autonomous region.[136] The rest of Iraq remained underSaddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime until 2003 withAmerican invasion overthrowing his regime in 1 month.[137]
Kuwait – Annexed by Iraq in 1990. Then liberated in 1991 during theGulf War.
Palestinian Territories – ThePalestine Liberation Organization lost one of its most important diplomatic patrons, due to the deterioration of the Soviet Union, Arafat's failing relationship with Moscow and loss of a one-party government, and Suspension PFLP-GC of the PLO in 1984.First Intifada occurred from 1987[138] to 1991,[139] leading to the PLO recognition of Israel.[140]
Afghanistan – ThePeople's Democratic Party underwentNational Reconciliation reforms from 1987, renaming the country to Republic of Afghanistan (from "Democratic Republic") and removing the red star of communism from the coat of arms. TheSoviet occupation ended in 1989, and in 1990 the ruling party renamed itself, removing all references to Marxism–Leninism in the process. The Soviet-backed governmentfell in 1992 and the party was dissolved; a newCivil War followed.
Laos – Remained communist under theLao People's Revolutionary Party. Laos was forced to ask France and Japan for emergency assistance, and also to ask theWorld Bank and theAsian Development Bank for aid. Finally, in 1989, Kaisôn visited Beijing to confirm the restoration of friendly relations, and to secure Chinese aid. The red star and the hammer and sickle was taken out from the crest in 1991.
North Korea –Kim Il-sung died in 1994, passing power to his sonKim Jong-il. Unprecedented floods and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to theNorth Korean famine, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2.5 million to 3 million North Koreans. All references to Marxism–Leninism were absolutely replaced byJuche in 2009, thus signifying an apparent downplaying of the role of communism in North Korea. North Korea is still a single-party totalitarian state.
Vietnam – TheCommunist Party of Vietnam has undertakenDoi Moi reforms since 1986, liberalizing certain sectors of the economy in a manner similar to China. Vietnam is still a single-party communist state andbloc parties were dissolved in 1988.
Latin America
Cuba – The end of Soviet subsidies led to theSpecial Period. Anunsuccessful protest was held in 1994, in which thousands of Cubans took to the streets around theMalecón in Havana to demand freedom and express frustration with the government.[145] Cuba is still a single-party communist state.
Canada – In 1990 theCommunist Party of Canada was de-registered and had its assets seized, forcing it to begin an ultimately successful thirteen-year political and legal battle to maintain registration of small political parties in Canada known asFigueroa v. Canada, thus changing the legal definition of a political party in Canada in 2003 and now operates without any elected political representation.
France – The collapse of the Eastern Bloc came as a shock to theFrench Communist Party. The crisis is calledla mutation. Fusion of theUnified Socialist Party with the New Left for Socialism, Ecology and Self-management for Red and Green Alternatives in 1989.
Japan – TheJapanese Communist Party became gradually influenced byEurocommunism and issued a statement titled "We welcome the end of a great historical evil of imperialism and hegemonism". As a result, the JCP survived the post-Cold War decline of communist parties in the Western Bloc, and remains one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world.
Mexico – theMexican Socialist Party, the last effort to unify the different Mexican left-wing parties, and the last political party in Mexico to officially use the word "socialist" in its name, dissolved in 1989.
Philippines – TheCommunist Party of the Philippines experienced criticism and the debates that ensued between the leading party cadres resulted to the expulsion of advocates of "left and right opportunism" notably forming the so-called "rejectionists" and "reaffirmist" factions. Those who affirmed the Maoist orthodoxy were called the "Reaffirmists", or RA, while those who rejected the document were called "Rejectionists" or RJ. In July 1993, the Komiteng Rehiyon ng Manila-Rizal (KRMR), one of the Rejectionists, declared its autonomy from the central leadership. Within a few months, several of the Party's regional formations and bureaus followed suit, permanently formalizing and deepening the schism.[152]
Concurrently, many anti-communist authoritarian states, formerly supported by the US, gradually saw a transition to democracy.
Bangladesh – In 1990, amass uprising leads to the end of the country's military dictatorship and a restoration of democracy.[153] TheCommunist Party of Bangladesh experiences a split between an orthodox Marxist–Leninist faction and a more democratic and libertarian faction. The country experiences aninternal conflict, driven by the rise ofIslamism since 1989. The left-leaningAwami League returned to power inJune 1996 for the first time since thecoup in 1975.
Panama – TheManuel Noriega regime was overthrown by theUS invasion in 1989 as a result of his suppression of elections, drug-trafficking activities and the killing of a US serviceman.
Paraguay – The dictatorship ofAlfredo Stroessner came to an end when he was deposed in a military coup d'état. In 1992, the country's new constitution established a democratic system of government.
Saudi Arabia – Following the Soviet-Afghan War,Osama bin Laden, the founder of the Islamist militant groupal-Qaeda, proposed to the Saudi monarchy not to rely on the United States after thefall of Kuwait. Bin Laden later denounced the Saudi invitation of the U.S.82nd Airborne Division and was eventually expelled from the country in 1992 due to the criticism. His citizenship was revoked in 1994.
United States – Following the end of theCold War, the United States became the world's solesuperpower. It ceased to support many of themilitary dictatorships it had during the Cold War, pressing more nations to adopt democracy.
Israel – In 1990, the Soviet Union finally permitted free emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Prior to this,Jews trying to leave the USSR faced persecution; those who succeeded arrived as refugees. Over the next few years, some one million Soviet citizens migrated to Israel. Although there was a concern that some of the new immigrants had only a very tenuous connection to Judaism, and many were accompanied by non-Jewish relatives, this massive wave of migration brought large numbers of highly educated Soviet Jews and slowly changed the demographic nature of Israel. In addition, thousands ofEthiopian Jews wererescued by theIsrael Defense Forces in 1991.[156]
Decommunization is a process of overcoming the legacies of the communist state establishments, culture, and psychology in the post-communist states. Decommunization was largely limited or non-existent. Communist parties were not outlawed and their members were not brought to trial. Just a few places even attempted to exclude members of communist secret services from decision-making.[157]
In a number of countries the communist party simply changed its name and continued to function.[157] In several European countries, however, endorsing or attempting to justify crimes committed by communist regimes became punishable by up to three years of imprisonment.[158]
Economic reforms
Russian GDP since the end of theSoviet Union. From 2014 are forecasts
State run enterprises in socialist countries had little or no interest in producing what customers wanted, which resulted in shortages of goods and services.[159] In the early 1990s, the general view was that there was no precedent for moving from socialism to capitalism",[160] and only some elderly people remembered how a market economy worked. As a result, the view that Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe would stay poor for decades was common.[161]
The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the breakdown of economic ties which followed led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in thestandards of living in the 1990s in post-Soviet states and the former Eastern bloc.[162][163] Even before Russia'sfinancial crisis of 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s.[164]
There was a temporary fall of output in the official economy and an increase in black market economic activity.[159] Countries implemented different reform programs. One example, generally regarded as successful was the "shock therapy"Balcerowicz Plan in Poland. Eventually the official economy began to grow.[159]
In a 2007 paper, Oleh Havrylyshyn categorized the speed of reforms in the former communist countries of Europe:[160]
The2004 enlargement of the European Union included the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The2007 enlargement of the European Union included Romania and Bulgaria, and Croatiajoined the EU in 2013. The same countries have alsobecome NATO members. In Mongolia, the economy was reformed in a similar fashion to the Eastern European counterparts. Armenia declared its decision to join the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and participated in the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union.[165] Effective from 2015, Armenia joined the treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union.[166]
Chinese economic liberalization began in 1978 and has helped lift millions of people out of poverty, bringing the poverty rate down from 53% of the population in the Mao era, to 12% in 1981. Deng's economic reforms are still being followed by theCCP today, and by 2001 the poverty rate was only 6% of the population.[167]
Harvard University ProfessorRichard B. Freeman has called the effect of reforms "The Great Doubling". He calculated that the size of the global workforce doubled from 1.46 billion workers to 2.93 billion workers.[168][169] An immediate effect was a reduced ratio of capital to labor. In the long-term, China, India, and the former Soviet bloc will save and invest and contribute to the expansion of the world capital stock.[169]
The facade of theGrand Kremlin Palace was restored to its original form after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. TheState Emblem of the USSR and the embedded letters forming theabbreviation of the USSR (CCCP) were removed and replaced by five Russiandouble-headed eagles. In a restoration of the coat of arms, the territories of the Russian Empire were placed above the eagles.
As of 2008, nearly half of Russians viewed Stalin positively, and many supported restoration of his previously dismantled monuments.[170][171]Neo-Stalinist material such as describing Stalin's mass murder campaigns as "entirely rational" has been pushed into Russian textbooks.[172]
In 1992, President Yeltsin's government invitedVladimir Bukovsky to serve as an expert to testify at theCPSU trial by theConstitutional Court of Russia, where the communists were suing Yeltsin for banning their party. The respondent's case was that theCPSU itself had been an unconstitutional organization. To prepare for his testimony, Bukovsky requested and was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet archives, then reorganized into theTsKhSD. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, he managed to secretly scan many documents, some with highsecurity clearance, includingKGB reports to theCentral Committee, and smuggle the files to the West.[173]
Interpretations
The events caught many people by surprise. Before 1991, many thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union wasimpossible.[174]
Bartlomiej Kaminski's bookThe Collapse of State Socialism argued that the state Socialist system has a lethal paradox, saying that "policy actions designed to improve performance only accelerate its decay".[175][further explanation needed]
By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one capital to another, ousting the regimes imposed on Central, South-East and Eastern Europe after World War II. Even the isolationist Stalinist regime in Albania was unable to stem the tide. Gorbachev's abrogation of theBrezhnev Doctrine was perhaps the key factor that enabled the popular uprisings to succeed. Once it became evident that the feared Soviet Army would not intervene to crush dissent, the Central, South-East and Eastern European regimes were exposed as vulnerable in the face of popular uprisings against the one-party system and power ofsecret police.
In 1990,Coit D. Blacker wrote that the Soviet leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Central and South-East Europe would be more than offset by a net increase in its influence in western Europe."[176] Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended for the complete dismantling of communism and the Warsaw Pact. Rather, Gorbachev assumed that the communist parties of Central and South-East Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU.[25]
Just asperestroika was aimed at making the Soviet Union more efficient economically and politically, Gorbachev believed that theComecon and Warsaw Pact could be reformed into more effective entities. However,Alexander Yakovlev, a close advisor to Gorbachev, later stated that it would have been "absurd to keep the system" in Central and South-East Europe. Yakovlev came to the conclusion that the Soviet-dominated Comecon could not work on non-market principles, and that the Warsaw Pact had "no relevance to real life".[25]
In retrospect, authoritarian regimes such as the Soviet Union are more likely to be subject to economic sanctions by democratic nations, creating a riskier vulnerability to collapse.[177] In 1991,Timur Kuran wrote that generally leaders were despised and failed to meet expectations of freedoms and economic prosperity that they had promised, leading to citizen motivation to upheave the government.[178] Economic distress mirrored across most regimes had declined growth rates to near zero leading up to their respective uprisings.[179] While socialist economics may have played a role,Stathis N. Kalyvas argues that international sanctions as well as the government makeup of authoritarian regimes were equally as impactful in reducing their economy's prosperity.[179]
Scholars such as Gale Stokes argue that the moral repression under the guise of security by communist regimes had brought citizens to the streets.[180] Others argue that the repression of revolutionary dissidents and human rights justified revolutionary privilege throughout Europe.[181]
Remembrance
Organizations
Memorial, an international historical andcivil rights society that operates in a number ofpost-Soviet states which focuses on recording and publicising theSoviet Union'stotalitarian aspect of the past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states at the present time, for example inChechnya[182]
A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, biography of dissidentVáclav Havel
Right Here, Right Now, an international hit written by Mike Edwards and performed by his rock bandJesus Jones and released in September 1990
"Wind of Change", a hit song by the German heavy-metal bandScorpions that celebratesPerestroika and the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe.
^Kochanowicz, Jacek (2006).Berend, Ivan T. (ed.).Backwardness and Modernization: Poland and Eastern Europe in the 16th–20th Centuries. Collected studies: Studies in East-Central Europe. Vol. 858li. Aldershot: Ashgate. p. 198.ISBN978-0-7546-5905-1.Within the communist world, certain strata of population were particularly sensitive to Western influences. Late communism produced sizable, specific middle classes of relatively well-educated professionals, technicians and even highly skilled blue-collar workers. These classes had no attachment whatsoever to Marxist–Leninist ideology, while they became attracted to the Western way of life. Many members of the ruling 'nomenklatura' shared the same sentiments, as Western consumerism and individualism seemed more attractive to them than communist collective Puritanism. There were two very important consequences of this, one economic, and the second political. The economic one was the attractiveness of consumerism. The political consequence was the pressure to increase the margins of political freedom and public space.
^Cross, Gary S. (2000). "1: The Irony of the Century".An All-consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 8.ISBN978-0-2311-1312-0.For East Europeans, the promise of mass consumption was preferable to the nightmare of solidarity even if it meant also the dominance of money and the private control of wealth. In reality, the fall of communism had more to do with the appeals of capitalist consumerism than political democracy.
^Service, Robert (2015).The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991. Macmillan.
^Findlay, Trevor (1995).Cambodia: the legacy and lessons of UNTAC (reprinted 1997 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 96.ISBN0-1982-9185-X.
^Kenney, Padraic (2006).The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989. pp. 3, 57.
^Glazer, Sarah (27 August 2004)."Stopping Genocide".CQ Researcher.14 (29):685–708.
^Andrzej Paczkowski,Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980–1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe (Boydell & Brewer, 2015).
^David Lane, "The Gorbachev revolution: The role of the political elite in regime disintegration."Political studies 44.1 (1996): 4–23.
^Brian McNair,Glasnost, perestroika and the Soviet media (Routledge, 2006).
^Shlyakhter, Alexander; Wilson, Richard (1992). "Chernobyl andGlasnost: The Effects of Secrecy on Health and Safety".Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development.34 (5): 25.Bibcode:1992ESPSD..34e..25S.doi:10.1080/00139157.1992.9931445.
^abcMiklós Németh in Interview, Austrian TV – ORF "Report", 25 June 2019.
^abHilde Szabo:Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland – German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999; Otmar Lahodynsky:Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall – German), in:Profil 9 August 2014.
^abLudwig Greven "Und dann ging das Tor auf", in Die Zeit, 19 August 2014.
^abMichael Frank: Paneuropäisches Picknick – Mit dem Picknickkorb in die Freiheit (German: Pan-European picnic – With the picnic basket to freedom), in:Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 May 2010.
^abcdAndreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).
^abThomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) in: Die Presse 16 August 2018.
^abOtmar Lahodynsky: Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall – German), in: Profil 9 August 2014.
^ab"Der 19. August 1989 war ein Test für Gorbatschows" (German – 19 August 1989 was a test for Gorbachev), in: FAZ 19 August 2009.
^abHilde Szabo: Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland – German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999.
^David Childs,The Fall of the GDR (Routledge, 2014).
^Pritchard, Rosalind MO.Reconstructing education: East German schools and universities after unification. p. 10.
^Fulbrook, Mary.History of Germany, 1918–2000: the divided nation. p. 256.
^Flavius Cristian Marcau,"Revolution of 1989: Milea's Suicide", University of Târgu Jiu, Letter and Social Science Series, Issue 4, 2013, Retrieved February 27, 2016.
^Cornel, Ban (13 December 2012).Sovereign Debt, Austerity, and Regime Change: The Case of Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania. East European Politics & Societies. p. 34.doi:10.1177/0888325412465513.S2CID144784730.
^Dunja Predić 2012: How big is all that, really? In: Cultures of Assembly – Architecture + Critical Architectural Practice. Ständelschule Architecture Class, Frankfurt am Main.[1][permanent dead link]
^There is uncertainty over Hoxha's true date of birth.Fevziu, Blendi (2016).Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania. London:I.B. Tauris. p. 10.ISBN978-1-784-53485-1. notes: "No fewer than five different dates are to be found in the Central State Archives [of Albania] alone."
^Simons, William B., ed. (1980).The Constitutions of the Communist World. BRILL. p. 256.ISBN9028600701.
^abcdKaplonski, Christopher (2004).Truth, History, and Politics in Mongolia: The Memory of Heroes. Psychology Press. pp. 51, 56, 60,64–65, 67,80–82.ISBN1134396732.
^Fineman, Mark (24 January 1990)."Mongolia Reform Group Marches to Rock Anthem".Los Angeles Times. Retrieved26 December 2012.Mongolia-watchers in Beijing said that... the democracy movement is rooted more in nationalism than in dissent.... 'Watching it unfold, you get the feeling this is more a pro-nationalist and pro-Mongolian movement than it is anti-party or anti-government,' said a diplomat who left Ulan Bator on Monday.
^Zhao, Dingxin (2001),The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 153,ISBN0-226-98260-2.
^Thomson, Clare (1992).The Singing Revolution: A Political Journey through the Baltic States. London: Joseph.ISBN0-7181-3459-1.
^Ginkel, John (September 2002). "Identity Construction in Latvia's 'Singing Revolution': Why inter-ethnic conflict failed to occur".Nationalities Papers.30 (3):403–33.doi:10.1080/0090599022000011697.S2CID154588618.
^Andrew Wilson, "Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution' of 2004: The Paradoxes of Negotiation", inAdam Roberts andTimothy Garton Ash (eds.),Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 295–316.[2]Archived 20 March 2017 at theWayback Machine
^Waldron, Hasci, Sidney R, Naima Ali (1994).Somali Refugees in the Horn of Africa: State of the Art Literature Review. University of Oxford. pp. 62–63.ISBN978-91-7106-363-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Central Intelligence Agency (2011)."Somalia".The World Factbook. Langley, Virginia: Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved5 October 2011.
^Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz & Christof Hartmann (2001)Elections in Asia: A data handbook, Volume II, p842ISBN0-19-924959-8
^Freedom House,Freedom in the World 1999–2000 (New York, 2000).
^Schmeidel, John. "My Enemy's Enemy: Twenty Years of Co-operation between West Deutschland's Red Army Faction and the GDR Ministry for State Security."Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 4 (October 1993): 59–72.
^James Dunkerley, "Evo Morales, the 'Two Bolivias' and the Third Bolivian Revolution".Journal of Latin American Studies 39: 133–66. doi:10.1017/s0022216x06002069.
^Clive A. Jones,Soviet Jewish Aliyah, 1989–92: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East (Routledge, 2013).
Bléjer, Mario I.; Škreb, Marko, eds. (2001).Transition: the first decade. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press.ISBN978-0-262-02505-8.
De Nevers, Renée (2003).Comrades no more: the seeds of political change in Eastern Europe. BCSIA studies in international security. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.ISBN978-0-262-04193-5.
Heenan, Patrick; Lamontagne, Monique (1999).The Central and Eastern Europe handbook. Regional handbooks of economic development. London; Chicago (Ill.):Fitzroy Dearborn.ISBN978-1-57958-089-6.
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