1989: The Parting of the “Iron Curtain”

It is difficult to give an exact date for the start of the upheavals which brought down the Communist systems in Central and Eastern Europe. One of the decisive factors was undoubtedly the increasing independence accorded to these countries by Mikhail Gorbachev. He made this particularly clear on two occasions: in September 1988, the Soviet head of state and party leader made an official declaration before the UN in which he unmistakably distanced himself from the “Brezhnev doctrine” and the “limited sovereignty of Socialist countries”. He also spoke of the right of peoples to self-determination as a universally valid principle, thus implying that the USSR would make no attempt to force other states to adopt a particular form of government.

On October 7, 1989, at East Germany’s 40th anniversary celebrations, he urged Erich Honecker to carry out reforms and made a clear appeal for “brave decisions” from the members of the Politburo. To this day, his statement that “life punishes those who come too late” stands for the East German Politburo's resistance to reform. Just ten days later, amidst growing public protest, Erich Honecker and two other leading SED politicians were forced to step down by a younger group centred on Egon Krenz and Hans Modrow. Exactly one month later, on November 7, 1989, the entire East German government stepped down, with the Politburo following suit the next day.

Basically, however, real existing Socialism in some countries had been called into question by some sections of the population long before 1989. Behind the apparent stabilization in the Soviet bloc, specific developments had already begun, without which the events of 1989 cannot be understood. In Poland, for example, even after General Jaruzelski's coup in 1981, the Solidarity Union continued to influence society, and its ideas (the insistence on reform and the questioning of Communist Party hegemony) began to spread outside of the country. The example of Hungary demonstrates another model of change: the introduction of so-called “Goulash Socialism” under Janos Kadar. This was a form of unspoken agreement between a state that attempted to improve economic conditions and allowed increased private initiative and a people that withdrew into the private sphere, relying on the so-called “shadow economy”. In the summer of 1989, the Hungarian government finally went so far as to partially open its border with Austria, allowing tens of thousands of East Germans, who were on holiday in Hungary at the time, to flee to the West.

This exodus destabilized the government of Czechoslovakia, which clung to a strict interpretation of Socialism, not to mention East Germany, calling the existence of these Communist systems into question. But Hungary refused to reverse its decision, and the course of events proved irreversible. During this summer, the GDR once more lost a part of its working population via Czechoslovakia as East Germans sought refuge in Western embassies in Prague. A gap opened up in the Iron Curtain which was to bring down the Wall within just a few months.

Besides mass demonstrations for democratic reform and freedom of movement, opposition movements in East Germany organized initiatives like the “New Forum” and “Democracy Now”. At the same time, the mass exodus took on dramatic proportions. The Krenz government reacted hesitantly at first, before announcing a new travel law which provoked much criticism and had to be revised. In the night of November 8/9, 1989, alone, 11,000 East Germans fled to West Germany via Czechoslovakia. Finally, at a press conference in East Berlin on November 9, 1989, Günter Schabowski, the Central Committee secretary for information, read out a draft of the government's revised travel law: it stated that all East German citizens could obtain travel visas; the authorities were obliged to issue passports and visas with a minimum of bureaucracy. Schabowski was not aware that the contents of the document Krenz had given him for the press conference did not represent a final decision: instead, he responded to journalists questions by saying that it was to take force “immediately”, which effectively meant the borders were open.

Once the news had spread through East Berlin, ever larger crowds of people gathered at the border crossing points between the two halves of the city. The overwhelmed border guards finally received orders to let anyone with a passport through into the West. Thousands of East Berliners and East Germans who crossed the border that night celebrated a spontaneous party with the West Berliners who gave them an enthusiastic welcome on the other side of the wall. “Crazy!” was certainly the word most used by people in the crowd interviewed about their feelings. Speaking in front of West Berlin’s City Hall on November 10, 1989, former chancellor Willy Brandt, who had been mayor of West Berlin when the Wall was built, said: “The division of Europe, Germany and Berlin was the result of the war and the split between the Allies. What belongs together is now growing together. As we are now experiencing (...), the parts of Europe are growing back together”.

After 28 years of separation, the Berliners were reunited. The population began immediately with the demolition of the detested Wall, with thousands attacking this symbol of division with hammer and chisel. Individual segments of the Wall fell immediately with the creation of new border crossing points on November 10, 1989. In December 1989, the East German ministry of defence officially called an end to any further development of the Wall and the border installations between East and West Germany. As soon as December 29, 1989, the East Germany’s transitional government decided to tear down the Wall, a task that was completed by November 30, 1990. The work was carried out by the same border guards who had previously been responsible for patrolling the Wall. Most of the concrete segments were broken up and used in road surfacing. The swift disappearance of the Wall was brought about not only by the political will to break through a concrete border, but also by the numerous “wallpeckers” who hacked out chunks on their own initiative.

The Collapse of the People’s Democracies

The radical changes of the autumn of 1989 are impressive for their simultaneity, although there were certain national peculiarities. In Poland and Hungary, the upheavals were set in motion by a dialog between government and opposition. As a result of the wave of strikes in 1988, the Polish head of state General Jaruzelski was forced to lift the ban on the Solidarity union and to call free elections. In the semi-free election of 1989, Solidarity scored a clear victory. Tadeusz Mazowiecki formed Eastern Europe's first non-communist government, and in December 1989, the former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was elected president. In an unprecedented move, the ruling Hungarian Communist Party dissolved itself in 1989 and reformed as the Socialist Party to stand in parliamentary elections in March 1990. Here too, the opposition won a clear victory in free elections.

In Bulgaria, the election was won by the Communists, who had renamed themselves the Socialist Party. East Germany and Czechoslovakia showed similarities in that the victory of the people over the Party was achieved by means of mass demonstrations. In the case of Czechoslovakia, this led to rapid change: after the demonstration of November 17, 1989, it was only six weeks before the dissident Vaclav Havel was elected president on December 29. And finally, the Rumanian revolution constituted an exception as the only bloody uprising. The people and the army faced each other in a civil war. Although Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were arrested and executed on December 25, old party cadres returned to power in the “Front for National Salvation”.

In less than six months, systems which been considered indestructible collapsed with unsuspected ease. In the spring of 1990, free elections were held in all eastern European countries. Moscow had only wanted to loosen its excessively tight hold on the reigns, but was finally unable to maintain control over the changes. This process of transformation did not bring immediate or universal adoption of democracy based on the western model. Instead, hybrid systems were formed, mixtures of old authoritarian and new democratic elements. Authoritarian tendencies were more noticeable in some countries than in others, but they all freed themselves of Moscow’s influence.