The “Iron Curtain” (black line)
Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet leader, 1953-64) denounced
Stalin’s “cult of personality” in a closed meeting of the 20th
Congress of the CPSU in February 1956 but was shocked
when anti-Stalinist riots broke out in Poland and Hungary
Soviet tanks crush
the uprising in
Budapest in October
1956;
3,000 Hungarians
were killed, and
200,000 fled the
country
In 1961 the “Berlin Wall”
plugged the last gap in the
Iron Curtain
The death strip at
Potsdam Square,
Berlin, 1982
Soviet tanks intervene in Czechoslovakia,
August 1968, ending the “Prague Spring”
The West German Chancellor Willy
Brandt (SPD) pursued Ostpolitik
(shown here in 1970 honoring the
dead of the Warsaw Ghetto)
Brandt welcomes
Leonid Brezhnev to
Bonn in 1973 to
promote detente
Brezhnev (Soviet leader, 1964-82)
sought to reduce the cost of the
arms race, so he agreed at the
Helsinki Conference in 1975 to
promote “security and cooperation”
in Europe and to respect the
principles of the UN “Universal
Declaration of Human Rights” (1948)
Erich Honecker of East
Germany confers with
West Germany’s Helmut
Schmidt at Helsinki
Pope John Paul II celebrates mass in Gdansk, Poland,
in June 1979, inspiring the growth of “Solidarity”
Lech Walesa addresses a Solidarity rally at the Lenin
Shipyards in Gdansk, 1980. The podium is decorated
with pictures of the Virgin Mary and John Paul II.
General Jaruzelski appears on Polish TV
in December 1981 to declare martial law, banning “Solidarity”
•Mikhail Gorbachev
became the Soviet
leader in 1985 and
proclaimed a new
gospel of
glasnost (openness)
& perestroika
(restructuring)
President Reagan greets Gorbachev in Washington, Dec. 1987
ECONOMIC FAILURES
OF COMMUNIST
EAST GERMANY
Strip mining for brown
coal near Leipzig
GDR foreign debt
1972
$1 billion
1980
$13.9 billion
1989
$20.6 billion
Estimated ratio between
average household income
in East and West Germany
1970
64%
1983
46%
Lech Walesa addresses a mass rally of “Solidarity” in 1988
(in January 1989 the government recognized it legally)
The “Goddess of
Democracy” in
Tiananmen Square
(Beijing,
June 1989):
China had pursued
economic
modernization
since 1976, but the
Communist Party
retained all power
A lone protester blocks the advance of tanks sent to crush
the demonstration on June 5, 1989; estimates of the death
toll in the following days range from 200 to 3,000
The Hungarian and Austrian foreign ministers dismantle
the “Iron Curtain” near Sopron, 27 June 1989
East Germans scale the fence of the West German embassy
in Prague, 28 September 1989 (140,000 made it to the West)
Honecker and Gorbachev celebrate the 40th anniversary of the
founding of the GDR, East Berlin, 7 October 1989:
“When we fall behind, life punishes us immediately.”
Demonstration by 120,000 in Leipzig, 16 October 1989
Demonstration by
500,000 in
East
Berlin,
4 Nov.
1989
THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, November 8/9, 1989:
The old regime abdicated with a TV press conference
vaguely endorsing freedom of travel
Police intervene against peaceful demonstrators
in Prague, November 17, 1989
[Vaclav] “Havel to the Castle” (Prague, November 1989)
Only in Romania did the Communist dictator,
Nicolae Ceauşescu, order security forces to open fire on
protesters; he was deposed and killed in December 1989.
PROTEST LEADERS SOON BECAME ELECTED PRESIDENTS
Lech Walesa addresses the Polish
parliament, December 22, 1990
Vaclav Havel discusses Czech
entry to the EU with Jacques
Delors in Brussels, March 1991
Gorbachev and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Moscow, 1990
(economic aid purchased a Soviet evacuation of East Germany)
Elite KGB troops confront independence demonstrators
in Lithuania, 1990 (they used lethal force)
The Azeri-Armenian war of 1989-1994
Since 1994
Armenian troops
have controlled
most of
NagornoKarabakh, but
negotiations
over its legal
status continue
Boris Yeltsin addresses demonstrators against the
Communist coup in Moscow, 1991
The “Commonwealth of Independent States”
(1992)
The
expansion of
NATO as of
2004.
Croatia &
Albania joined
in 2009, but
talk of
membership
for Ukraine
and Georgia is
fading.
POTSDAMER PLATZ TODAY WITH THE SONY CENTER
REFLECTIONS ON THE
COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM
Communism had achieved successes in smokestack
industries but fell far behind the West in the 1980s in
computing and communications technology.
The USSR blundered by seeking to match U.S. military
spending with a much weaker economic base.
Gorbachev’s career suggests an answer to Machiavelli’s
old question, “Is it better to be loved or feared?”
Economic stagnation alone cannot explain regime
collapse (see North Korea and Cuba).
Hundreds of thousands of incredibly brave citizens
throughout Eastern Europe gave their tottering regimes
a big push by coming out onto the streets.
For many, nationalism filled the emotional vacuum left
by the collapse of Communism.