MOST OF HISTORY: THE FIRST HUMANS

1
Era 8 The Collapse of Communism and the End of
the Cold War
Day Three, Session 5C Craig Benjamin
2
INTRODUCTION
3
The Laboratory of Perestroika

• Despite appearances at the time, emergence of
  General Jaruzelski in Poland on the night of 13
  December 1981 was the first sign of a reforming
  trend that was about to surface in Moscow itself
• This trend (eventually given the Russian name of
  perestroika - restructuring) was based on the
  realization that the system was seriously sick
• Realization first came out of the KGB, the only
  body with the means of knowing what was really
  happening
• Jaruzelski had served for 25 years as head of the
  Polish armys political department, and as such
  was a close associate of the man who ran the KGB
  throughout the 1970s
• With the collusion of Mikhail Gorbachev,
  Jaruzelski was destined to turn Poland into the
  laboratory of perestroika

www.time.com
4
Problems in the Soviet System

• By the early 1980s it was obvious that the
  internal operations of the Soviet bloc were no
  longer working forty years of corrosion had
  sapped its strength
• On the surface everything was in place
  underneath almost nothing was working well
• In the age of the Inter-Continental Ballistic
  Missile (ICBM) the territory of the Warsaw Pact
  could no longer serve as an effective buffer zone
• In an age of television, the gulf between living
  conditions in the East and West was evident in
  every home
• As Solidarity showed, even the workers had no
  respect for the Workers State

The USAF Atlas ICBM
www.cswayne.com/icbm.html
5
Yuri Andropov
www.peoples.ru

• The career of Yuri Andropov provides the key to
  the collapse of the Soviet system
• As Soviet ambassador in Budapest, Andropov had
  pushed for a strategy that substituted economic
  for political reform
• He was also aware of how easily costly revolts
  like those that had occurred in Hungary,
  Czechoslovakia and Poland could spread to the
  USSR
• And later, as head of the KGB during an era of
  détente he was the person best placed to see the
  glaring contrast between external strength and
  internal decay

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Andropovs Campaign Against Soviet Dissenters

• In the 1970s Andropov waged a cunning campaign of
  persecution against Soviet dissenters
• Instead of using mass terror, he limited the
  access of dissenters to the population at large,
  consigning some to psychiatric hospitals, others
  to foreign exile
• He also gave Soviet Jews preferential permission
  to emigrate to Israel
• But he also began to wonder why the finest minds
  in the Soviet Union had no love for communism.
• List included Solzhenitsyn (political novelist)
  Nureyev (ballet dancer) Rostropovich (cellist)
  Sakharov (physicist) Bukovsky (biologist) and
  Almarik (mathematician)

www.todayinliterature.com
Novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Nobel Prize
Winning Physicist Andrei Sakharov
www.nobel.se
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Nureyev and Rostropovich
Nureyev - Corsair
www.ecodibergamo.it

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Andropov and Reform

• Concerned about this drain of outstanding talent,
  Andropovs penchant for reform figured in
  conversations he had with the young Mikhail
  Gorbachev (then Party Secretary) in the late 70s
• But the Politburo was packed with anti-reformers
  when Gorbachev was finally given a senior
  position, it was only as Secretary of Agriculture
• Then Andropov died of kidney failure, which gave
  the Brezhnevites a final lease of inaction
• By 1984, the Soviet Empire was still intact,
  although its days were numbered
• Before we explore the circumstances in which the
  final act was played out in 1989, we need to turn
  to a consideration of East-West relations during
  the preceding 40 years of the Cold War

www.time.com
9
PART B THE COLD WAR - MILITARY, POLITICAL AND
CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS
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Europe as the Main Theater of the Cold War

• From start to finish, Cold War was focused on
  Europe, although later it included an Asian
  component and became truly globalized
• Its entire dynamic developed out of the collapse
  of the Great Power Triangle of the Second World
  War, which left the victorious Western Allies
  face to face with the Soviet Union
• Also grew from the inability of wartime allies to
  reach agreement on the fate of Poland, the future
  of Germany, and the division of Europe as a whole
• Cold War came to a head with the expression of
  the
• Truman Doctrine and the implementation of the
• Marshall Plan in 1947
• It was already in operation during the Berlin
• Blockade (1948-9) which led to the formation of
  NATO
• It did not end until the Iron Curtain was
• breached some 40 years later!

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Globalization of the Cold War

• Globalization of the war took place in the 1950s
• Natural outcome of a confrontation that pitted
  the dominant power of the Eurasian landmass
  against a power that could project forces all
  over the world by land, sea and air
• Also pitted one bloc which aimed at worldwide
  communist revolution against another bloc
  committed to democracy, capitalism and free trade
• Fueled by decolonization, which left a string of
  unstable, ex-colonial countries open to Cold War
  competition, or in the Middle East to rivalry
  over its oil resources
• Globalization was finalized in the 1950s by the
  invention of ICBMs, which put the earth in
  constant danger of nuclear attack

SM Titan I
www.globalsecurity.org
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www.military.cz/ russia
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Military Phase of the 1950s

• In military terms, the Cold War passed through
  several distinct phases
• In the 1950s, when the USA held a distinct
  advantage in weaponry, Soviets could not risk a
  major clash
• Then Britain (1952) followed by France (1960)
  also developed nuclear capacity, and NATO
  published its doctrine of overwhelming
  retaliation
• Wars were fought by the communists in Korea
  (against the US-led forces) in 1950-1 and
  Indo-China where defeated French troops gave way
  to Americans in 1954
• Europe, although bristling with weapons in two
  armed camps, did not erupt

www.education-world.com
www.vietnamwar.com
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Into the 1960s
In the late 1950s the game changed, as first
through launching Sputnik (1958) and the U2
rocket incident (1960) the Kremlin could
demonstrate it had bridged the technological gap
www.cira.colostate.edu

• Superpowers both poured vast resources into the
  Space Race and the deployment of ICBMs
• USA won the race to put a man on the moon, but
  there was no certainty where the military
  advantage lay
• USSR seemed to be building a remorseless
  superiority in nuclear and conventional weapons
• Pressure on Europe was somewhat relieved by the
  realization that if ICBMs were launched, they
  would pass over the North Pole, not Europe
• Eventually a nuclear stalemate was reached,
  ensuring that the European conflict remained cold

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The 1980s

• Cold War tensions increased to an even higher
  level in the 1980s with the development of a more
  deadly generation of missiles
• These included the Soviet SS-20s and the American
  Pershing 2 and Cruise Missiles
• In 1983 President Reagan announced a
  multi-billion dollar Strategic Defense Initiative
  (popularly known as Star Wars) - a plan to set
  up a space-based anti-ICBM defense system
• But the world was increasingly weary of the
  weapons race each side possessed the kilotonnes
  to destroy the world many times over
• Movies like Dr Strangelove had made the point
  that military planners had gone mad, but the
  atomic peace held

Dr Strangelove Ending
www.cyphertext.net
16
Political History of the Cold War

• Political rhythms of the Cold War followed these
  military developments
• Tensions highest in the 1950s, and reached
• their peak in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
• Later in the 1960s both sides lost their
  expectations of a simple victory, if hot war
  broke out
• Russians were almost paralyzed by the Sino-Soviet
  split in 1969 and the USA embarrassed by its
  inability to defeat the tiny state of Vietnam

w1.1559.telia.com
www.rand.org
www.iisg.nl
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SALT Talks and Afghanistan

• So by the 1970s both sides were prepared to give
  greater emphasis to a process called détente
• This led to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in
  Vienna, and the Helsinki Act of 1975
• But in the 1980s tensions rose again after the
  Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979 the
  Kremlins Vietnam) and the declaration of martial
  law in Poland (1981)

www.g2mil.com
Afghanistan 1980 Mujahadeen anti Soviet forces
Soviet troops in Kabul
www.videofact.com
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Cultural Relations

• Cultural relations between all sides in the Cold
  War were small in scale and content
• Soviet performing arts groups who toured the West
  included the Bolshoi Ballet and the red Army
  Choir
• In return, various western orchestras and the
  Royal Shakespeare Company toured the USSR
• The Soviet bloc set great store in the Olympics,
  where state-sponsored athletes performed very
  well
• But sport became a political weapon when the
  Americans boycotted the Moscow Games in 1980, and
  the Soviets retaliated by not turning up to the
  LA Games in 1984

www.detnews.com
Bolshoi Ballet at the Detroit Opera House
Actors form the Royal Shakespeare Company on tour
in Prague
www2.davidson.edu/news
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www.profitlover.com

Moscow 1980 Los Angeles 1984
www.geoffhook.com
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Diplomatic Relations

• Diplomatic relations were almost at a standstill
  between the warring parties
• Security Council of the UN was virtually
  paralyzed for 40 years, most frequently by the
  Soviet veto
• War between spies reached grotesque proportions,
  and Western intelligence organizations were
  penetrated at the highest level by Soviet spies
• In the 1950s, in the era of Senator Joe McCarthy,
  fears about the activities of communist agents in
  the USA caused a totally unreasonable witch-hunt
• American embassies in Moscow were so riddled with
  bugging devices that they had to be abandoned
• There was absolutely no trust between West and
  East

www.oskarwerner.com
McCarthy
www.monmouth.com
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PRELUDE TO DÉTENTE
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The Origins of Détente

• Origins of détente go right back to the start of
  the Cold War
• Stalin once offered to permit the reunification
  of Germany in return for America pulling out of
  Europe
• In 1955 when Eisenhower met Khrushchev, the West
  was surprised by far-reaching Soviet proposals
  for disarmament
• In 1959 Khrushchev went to Camp David, and
  British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan went to
  Moscow
• But all these hopeful developments were thwarted
  by the U2 crisis, the second Berlin crisis, and
  most particularly by the Cuban missile crisis

www.nps.gov
Harold Macmillan
www.weltchronik.de
23
U2 Crisis

• The U2 was an American high altitude spy-plane
• In 1960 a flight from Turkey was shot down by the
  Soviets over the Volga River
• Eisenhower at first denied all existence of the
  plane, until Khrushchev produced the pilot!

www.awesomestories.com
karws.gso.uri.edu
24
Second Berlin Crisis

• Berlin crisis of 1961 had been brewing for years
• Stream of refugees fleeing from East to West
  Germany was an embarrassment to the Soviet bloc
• (10,000 crossed in the last week of July 1961
  alone)
• Then on 13 August 1961 the Wall went up, testing
  the young President Kennedy as never before
• He did not respond militarily, but instead staged
  a propaganda coup
• Standing beside the wall he shouted defiantly
  Ich bin ein Berliner
• (This actually meant I am a donut! He should
  have said Ich bin Berliner)

Kennedy 'Ich bin ...'
www.european-history.com/ kennedy_berlin.html
25
Cuban Missile Crisis

• The Cuban crisis the following October brought
  the Cold War to the brink
• Kennedy was convinced he had failed to impress
  the Soviets with Americas determination, and
  wanted to demonstrate firmness
• When aerial photographs revealed Soviet missiles
  in Cuban silos only 90 miles from the coast of
  Florida, he decided the Kremlin must back down
• For a week the world held its breath, and then
  the Soviet missiles were withdrawn
• The US agreed to withdraw its own missiles from
  Turkey in return, and to refrain from attacking
  Cuba

future.state.gov
United States diplomats at the UN demand that
the USSR withdraw its missiles from Cuba. In the
foreground Adlai Stevenson says to the Soviets
You are in the courtroom of international
opinion now!
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Disarmament Talks

• Disarmament talks dragged on for decades
• In 1963 the Moscow Agreement banned nuclear
  testing in the environment, but only after
  enormous environmental damage had been done
• The first round of SALT I talks reached an
  interim agreement in 1972 after four years
• SALT II was blocked by the US Congress in 1980
• The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) began
  in Madrid in 1982
• All these inter-government dialogues took place
  in an environment of large anti-nuclear protests
  that broke out in the 1960s and 1982

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty
June 16, 1979
www.hangitonthewall.com
27
Ostpolitik

• Direct European involvement in Cold War diplomacy
  inevitably took second place to the main
  US-Soviet confrontation
• But West German Chancellor Willy Brandt played a
  major diplomatic role through the institution of
  an Eastern Policy (Ostpolitik) in 1969
• Brandt broke the ice by communicating directly
  with the DDR government for the first time since
  the war
• His hope was that if dialogue could be maintained
  for decades, eventual reconciliation could be
  achieved
• By ending the boycott of the DDR, Brandt helped
  diffuse the threat-laden atmosphere of the 1960s,
  and opened the way for an era of détente

West German Chancellor Willy Brandt visits East
Germany, 1970
www.goethe.de/in/d
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Meaning of Détente
Détente is a French term, meaning a relaxing or
easing the term has been used in international
politics since the early 1970s. Generally, it may
be applied to any international situation where
previously hostile nations not involved in an
open war "warm up" to each other and threats
de-escalate. However, it is primarily used in
reference to the general reduction in the tension
between the Soviet Union and the United States
and a thawing of the Cold War, occurring from the
late 1960s until the start of the 1980s.
(Wikipedia)

• So détente is a deliciously ambiguous
  diplomatic term
• It can mean relaxation or a mild spell of
  weather
• But it is also the French word for the trigger of
  a gun

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Nixon in China

• Apart from Ostpolitik and the progress of SALT I,
  an important spur to détente must be sought in
  China
• In 1972 US President Nixon visited the aging
  Chairman Mao Zedong, which brought China into a
  previously bi-polar world
• The Soviets were forced by this to attempt to
  stabilize their European flank, leading directly
  to the Helsinki Conference on Security and
  Cooperation in Europe, which ran from 1972-75

President Nixon dines with Mao Zedong, February
1972
www.columbia.edu
30
Helsinki Final Act

• From the Soviet perspective, Helsinki Act took
  the place of a German peace treaty that never was
• From the Western viewpoint it marked the
  recognition that Soviet dominance in Eastern
  Europe could never be removed by force
• Europes existing frontiers were guaranteed by
  the Act, and measures for economic cooperation
  were also included
• The Act also contained an
• agreement promoting increased
• communication and contact
• between East and West, and a
• provision for the respecting of
• human rights by the Soviets

President Ford signs the Helsinki Accords, 1 Aug
1975
www.ford.utexas.edu
31
Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and
President Reagan

• Late in the 1970s three new faces appeared in the
  West - a Polish Pope (Karol Wojtyla) Margaret
  Thatcher (the Iron Lady of Downing Street) and a
  retired film actor who became President of the
  USA
• Pope toured Poland in 1979, drawing wildly
  enthusiastic crowds, and speaking out against
  repression and tyranny
• Reagan soon called the Soviet Union the Evil
  Empire, and between them the three breathed new
  fire into East-West relations
• Each opposed communism on moral grounds each was
  more popular in East Europe than West and each
  was unhappy with the détente accommodations of
  previous decades

www.sancta.org
news.bbc.co.uk
www.kapitalizm.republika.pl/
32
Illusions of Détente

• By the 1980s hard experience showed that the West
  was suffering from three illusions
• One was the idea that over time the two sides
  would converge the truth was they were
  becoming further apart with every day that passed
• Another was the idea that communist regimes
  should be judged according to their degree of
  subservience to Moscow, which meant repressive
  regimes lake that of Ceausescu in Romania were
  supported
• The third was the idea that only by speaking
  kindly of the Soviets could they be appeased yet
  the Soviets appeared not to respond to kind words
• Others (who had the ear of Thatcher and Reagan)
  argued that the only strategy with any hope of
  success was to raise the tensions in East-West
  relations

33
Mikhail Gorbachev

• In the midst of these divisions Mikhail Gorbachev
  (b. 1931) emerged in March 1985 as the fourth
  General Secretary of the CPSU in three years
• He was chosen by the Party apparatus, and had no
  democratic credentials, yet he was also the first
  Soviet leader to be untainted by the Stalin era
• He was also friendly, intelligent and spoke
  without notes
• Margaret Thatcher declared Here was a man we
  can do business with!

www.peoples.ru/state/ king/russia
34
Early Months

• Gorbachevs early months in office were spent in
  reshuffling the Politburo, in the ritual
  denunciation of previous leaders, and in a
  campaign against corruption
• The style of Soviet leadership had obviously
  changed, and the world waited to see if the
  content would change with it
• Gorbachev seemed to have most room to maneuver in
  foreign policy, so it was assumed he would soon
  make a move on East-West relations

www.inch.com
35
Talks at Reykjavik

• Talks were scheduled between Reagan and Gorbachev
  at Reykjavik in Iceland for December 1987
• In the middle of the talks Gorbachev suddenly
  proposed a sensational 50 cut in all nuclear
  weapons
• Reagan was taken by surprise, but the treaty on
  the reduction of Intermediate-range Nuclear
  Forces was signed
• It appeared as though Gorbachev was intent upon
  stopping the Cold War in its tracks

Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland,
December 1987
www.reagan.utexas.edu/
36
PART D THE END OF THE COLD WAR
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Prelude to Disintegration
Gorbachev greets Party members at the 70th
Anniversary of the revolution
pseudoco.de/article/10

• For the first two to three years after Gorbachev
  appeared, the political map of Europe was largely
  untouched
• In Western Europe the presence of American forces
  was still a determining factor and in Eastern
  Europe people were still shot for trying to cross
  the Iron Curtain
• In November 1987 Gorbachev presided over the 70th
  Anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik
  Revolution in traditional style
• Yet Europe was fast approaching a brink of
  unimaginable proportions and as the clouds of
  Cold War lifted, new exciting vistas were glimpsed

38
Timetable to Collapse

• Within two years of Reykjavik the Soviet Union
  had relinquished its grip on the satellite states
  of Eastern Europe
• Within three years political union had moved to
  the top of the agenda in Western Europe
• Within four years the Soviet Union itself had
  disappeared!
• As Western Europe integrated, Eastern Europe
  disintegrated

39
Disintegration of the Soviet Bloc
users.erols.com
40
Gorbachevs Assessment of the Soviet Crisis

• Gorbachevs analysis of the crisis of the Soviet
  Union in the late 80s was explicitly stated in
  his book Perestroika (1989)
• Amongst other factors he pointed to in this sorry
  catalogue were
• That further expansion of the Soviet arsenal
  would not lead to greater security
• Military spending had already reached such a
  level that improvements in civilian living
  standards were impossible
• Communist planning methods had failed and the
  technology gap with the West was widening every
  day
• Party itself was corrupt and dispirited the
  young were turning their backs on Communism the
  citizens had lost patience with empty promises
• War in Afghanistan also proving a bottomless
  drain on resources and men
• Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe was paying no
  dividends

41
Gorbachevs Strategy

• Gorbachevs strategy was first to try and defuse
  the Cold War climate of fear and hatred upon
  which the old system had thrived
• And then to move on to the even more difficult
  area of internal reform
• On the external front he was brilliantly
  successful, being hailed like a conquering hero
  on visits to the USA and West Germany
• He was also glad to welcome President Reagan to
  Moscow

www.reagan.dk
www.reagan.utexas.edu
The Reagans leaving after the Moscow Summit,
6/2/88
42
Internal Policy Perestroika

• Gorbachevs internal policies were outlined in
  two programmatic buzz-words that went round the
  world
• The first of these was Perestroika
• Perestroika (restructuring) imagined the
  injection of capitalist market principles into
  economic management, and of non-Party interests
  into political life

www.sursumcorda.com
43

• Glasnost wrongly translated as openness, but
  was
• actually the Russian word for publicity (the
  opposite
• of silence)
• Intended to encourage Party officials to try and
• come up with solutions to problems whose very
• existence had never been openly acknowledged
  before now
• Gorbachev wanted to stimulate debate, so it was
  essential his outspoken views be published
• So the party began to talk openly, then the
  media, then the public
• For the first time in four decades people were
  free to talk openly without fear of the secret
  police
• So Glasnost did eventually turn into openness,
  and into an unrestrained and unstoppable torrent
  of argument
• The strongest point of agreement was the
• near-universal denunciation of communism!

Glasnost
44


45

• Gorbachev soon found himself in a very difficult
  position, because in spite of his liberal
  reputation in the West, he was a convinced
  communist who wanted to revitalize the system,
  not dump it
• He stood for democratization, but not for
  democracy
• He was appointed to the position of President,
  and never faced a real election in his life
• He did open up the central Party organs by
  injecting hand-picked new members, but he never
  granted free elections
• He refused to decollectivize agriculture or
• desubsidize prices delayed the legalization
• of private property and only toyed with
• market reforms
• Result was that the planned economy
• system began to collapse before the market
• economy could start to function

Gorbachevs Dilemma
46
Gorbachevs Misjudgment of the Effects of Glasnost

• Beyond doubt Gorbachev was a political tactician
  of
• great skill, able to coax the conservatives and
  restrain
• the radicals at the same time
• But he did not win great public confidence within
  Russia, and was regarded as a typical Communist
  activist
• Gorbachev and his allies seemed to ignore the
  implications of removing coercion from a machine
  that had known no other motivation
• They abandoned the Partys dictatorial powers
  (the equivalent of the spine of the beast) and
  were then surprised when the limbs stopped
  responding to the brain
• They also persisted in thinking of the vast,
  disparate Soviet Union as a natural, national
  entity, rather than a patchwork of ethnicities
  held together by coercion
• As they tinkered, the whole system began to
  collapse

47
PART E THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN
EUROPE
48
Causes of the Collapse of Communism

• Debate and discussion continues on the causes for
  the collapse of communism in Europe and the
  Soviet Union
• Political scientists focus on systemic political
  causes economists on the failings of the economy
• But equal attention needs to be paid to the role
  of ordinary citizens, particularly for Eastern
  Europeans who struggled with the absurdities of
  life under communism
• In retrospect, it was as though a generation
• which had lost the pervasive fear of Stalins
• terror simply decided that enough was enough
• As the Party bosses lost the will to enforce
  their
• authority, millions of people lost the
• inclination to obey

49
The Role of Independent Culture

• Aspects of national culture independent to the
  communist structure also played a critical role,
  especially religion
• Artists and true Christian believers were often
  the only people in a society who could even
  imagine a world without communism
• When the first cracks began to appear, it was
  because of the activities of independent groups
  within society
• And these first cracks opened up in Poland

www.mariavite.org/ chvisitp.htm
The Polish Catholic Church in Krakow
www.disordered.org
50
Poland 1989

• In Poland by the late-80s material conditions
  were spiraling downwards at an alarming rate, and
  renewed massive strikes loomed
• In their desperation, Party bosses turned to the
  leader of the banned Solidarity organization,
  Lech Walesa
• Early in 1989 they called round table discussions
  with a view to set up a power-sharing arrangement
  with a still-illegal organization
• Resulting agreement saw Solidarity allowed to
  compete with the Communist Party in a limited
  number of parliamentary elections

51
Solidarity Wins the Election!

• The elections were sensational, and Solidarity
  swept the board in every constituency they
  contested
• Many prominent communists were not re-reelected,
  even when they were the only candidate on the
  ballot, because people just crossed their names
  off!

209.157.64.200/focus
www.nandotimes.com
52
Tiananmen Square

• In June 1989 the Chinese Communist Party showed
  the world how it dealt with similar popular
  uprisings in China
• Coincidentally, Gorbachev was visiting Beijing
  on an official visit and personally witnessed the
  massacre of thousands of young Chinese protesters
• Later, when he visited East Berlin for the 40th
  Anniversary of the DDR, he told Party officials
  that they should not expect Soviet troops to help
  them
• There was to be no Tiananmen Square in Europe!

53
Events in August and September

• In August the bewildered Polish communists
  invited Solidarity to form a national government
  under their own continuing communist state
  presidency
• Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a devout Catholic, was
  accepted as Premier, and took his seat in the
  Council of the Warsaw Pact
• Hungarian party officials then began to engage in
  their own round-table talks with opposition
  groups
• And regular demonstrations broke out all over
  East Germany organized by the Protestant Churches

www.photo-es.art.pl/ mazowiecki.htm
Tadeusz Mazowiecki (left), Prime Minister of
Poland in 1989
54
The Avalanche in Hungary!

• Reform quickly turned to avalanche!
• As early as January 1989, political parties had
  been legalized in Hungary
• Then on 23 October the Hungarian Peoples
  Republic was abolished
• The Hungarian communists admitted the Opposition
  into parliament, and at the same time turned
  themselves into a social democratic party

www.webdesign.hu
Hungarys Communist Party leadership Faces the
reality of defeat, Oct 1989
55
The Berlin Wall Comes Down!

• Even more astonishingly, in Berlin on 9 November
  1989, East German border guards stood quietly by
  while crowds on both sides of the Berlin Wall
  began to demolish it with gusto
• The communist government of the DDR had
  apparently lost all will to fight!

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

56
Czechoslovakia

• Meanwhile, in Prague on 24 November, Party boss
  Dubcek appeared side-by-side with dissident
  Vaclav Havel on a balcony in Wenceslas Square
  before adoring crowds
• Remaining pockets of communist opposition were
  then finished off completely by a subsequent
  general strike

www.gallery.cz/cgi-bin
Crowds in Wenceslas Square, Prague, Nov 1989
Alexander Dubcek (left) and Vaclav Havel,
November 1989
www.slovakradio.sk
57
The Velvet Revolution

• The velvet revolution was over as quickly as it
  had begun
• One political commentator described the timetable
  of events in this way
• In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten
  months, in East Germany ten weeks, and in
  Czechoslovakia ten days!
• Finally, over Christmas, a bloody uprising broke
  out in Bucharest, where the hated Romanian
  Securitate defended itself to the death
• This resulted in the death of Nicolai Ceausescu
  and his entire family

www.spiegel.de/kultur
Ceausescu dead!
58
Events in Eastern Europe 1989-90
wps.ablongman.com
59
Gorbachevs Role?

• This is the subject of one of your essay
  questions, because Gorbachevs role in all this
  is continually being reassessed
• Some argue that he was the architect of the
  entire revolution, and must be personally
  credited as the man who ended the Cold War and
  lifted the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe
  for 40 years
• Others suggest that his role, though clearly
  honorable, has been exaggerated

• They suggest he was not the architect of East
  Europes freedom, but rather the lock-keeper who
  saw that the dam was about to burst, and simply
  opened the floodgates to let the water flow out
• Beyond doubt is the fact that his role ensured
  that the bursting of the dam was not accompanied
  by violent catastrophe, as it so easily could
  have been

mexicosiemprefiel.com
60
The West

• As these extraordinary events unfolded, Western
  Europe stood by watching and astonished
• This was accompanied by an extraordinary degree
  of relief
• The war between East and West had remained
  cold throughout, and now the West had won it
  without a shot being fired

www.macitynet.it
President Bush Snr announces Victory in the
Cold War!