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The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, [3] was a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, [4] [5] [6 ...
By August 24, ten years after Solidarity emerged on the scene, Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist Prime Minister in Eastern Europe. In Hungary, drastic changes were also under way. The government, already the most liberal of the communist governments, allowed free association and assembly and ordered opening of the country’s ...
- Overview
- The coup against Gorbachev
collapse of the Soviet Union, sequence of events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991. The former superpower was replaced by 15 independent countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
That the Soviet Union was disintegrating had been subtly apparent for some time, but the final act began at 4:50 pm on Sunday, August 18, 1991. Soviet Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev was at his dacha in the Crimean resort of Foros when he was contacted by four men requesting an audience. They were his chief of staff, Valery Boldin; Oleg Baklanov, first deputy chairman of the U.S.S.R. defense council; Oleg Shenin, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); and Gen. Valentin Varennikov, chief of the Soviet Army’s ground forces. They were accompanied by KGB Gen. Yury Plekhanov, chief of security for party and state personnel. Their unexpected arrival aroused Gorbachev’s suspicions, and, when he tried to use the phone, it was dead. They had come to demand, in the name of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R., that Gorbachev sign a document declaring a state of emergency and transferring power to his vice president, Gennady Yanayev. They were taken aback when Gorbachev refused and rebuked them as treasonous blackmailers.
Gorbachev and his family were placed under house arrest by Gen. Igor Maltsev, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Defense Troops. Both Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, later stated that they had fully expected to be killed. Although outside communication had been cut off, Gorbachev was able to get word to Moscow and confirm that he was fit and well. Members of Gorbachev’s personal bodyguard remained loyal throughout the episode, and they were able to fashion a simple receiver so that the imperiled president could learn what was happening beyond the walls of the dacha. BBC and Voice of America broadcasts kept Gorbechev abreast of the coup’s progress and international reaction to it.
Just after 6:00 am Moscow time on August 19, TASS and Radio Moscow proclaimed that “ill health” had prevented Gorbachev from executing his duties and that, in accordance with Article 127-7 of the Soviet constitution, Yanayev had assumed the powers of the presidency. Yanayev headed an eight-member Emergency Committee. Its other members were Baklanov; Vladimir Kryuchkov, chairman of the U.S.S.R. KGB; Premier Valentin Pavlov; Minister of Internal Affairs Boris Pugo; Vasily Starodubtsev, chairman of the Farmers’ Union; Aleksandr Tizyakov, president of the U.S.S.R. Association of State Enterprises; and Minister of Defense Marshal Dmitry Yazov. They soon issued Resolution No. 1, which banned strikes and demonstrations and imposed press censorship. There was also an address to the Soviet people claiming that “mortal danger hangs over our great fatherland.”
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The planned signing on August 20 of a new union treaty that would have weakened central control over the republics appeared to explain the timing of the coup. A sharp attack on the union treaty by Anatoly Lukyanov, chairman of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, was distributed by TASS early on August 19. The U.S.S.R. Cabinet of Ministers met later that morning, and most of the ministers supported the coup. All but nine newspapers were banned.
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On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall—the most potent symbol of the cold-war division of Europe—came down. Earlier that day, the Communist authorities of the German Democratic Republic had announced the removal of travel restrictions to democratic West Berlin. Thousands of East Germans streamed into the West, and in the course ...
Nov 5, 2019 · It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East ...
Gorbachev’s decision to loosen the Soviet yoke on the countries of Eastern Europe created an independent, democratic momentum that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and then the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. While Bush supported these independence movements, U.S. policy was reactive.
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For those in the former Soviet Bloc, 1989 has been called an annus mirabilis —a year of miracles. With astonishing speed, communist rule ended in Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and the nature of Europe was changed entirely. In 2009, those countries, from Germany to Bulgaria to Poland, have all mounted celebrations of the ...
