Revolutions of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe

The revolutions of 1989 were a wave of popular movements and negotiated transitions that brought down communist governments across Eastern Europe within a single year. Beginning with round-table talks in Poland and Hungary and climaxing in the opening of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Prague and the violent overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania, they ended four decades of Soviet-backed one-party rule. Together they marked the end of the Cold War division of Europe.

Background

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union installed communist regimes across the countries its armies had occupied. Attempts to break free were crushed: in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Warsaw Pact tanks ended the Prague Spring. The so-called Brezhnev Doctrine asserted Moscow’s right to intervene to defend socialism in any bloc country.

By the 1980s the system was in deep trouble. Planned economies stagnated, living standards fell behind those of Western Europe, and several countries, notably Poland, Hungary and Romania, had borrowed heavily from Western banks. In Poland, the independent trade union Solidarity had emerged in 1980 with around ten million members, and although it was suppressed under martial law from December 1981, it survived underground.

The decisive change came in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader from 1985, launched glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). He signalled that the Soviet Union would no longer prop up its allies by force. In a speech to the United Nations on 7 December 1988 he announced unilateral cuts of 500,000 Soviet troops and stressed every nation’s freedom of choice. A Soviet spokesman later joked that the Brezhnev Doctrine had been replaced by the “Sinatra Doctrine”: each country could do it its way.

The revolutions country by country

Poland and Hungary: negotiated change

Poland moved first. Faced with strikes in 1988 and a collapsing economy, the government opened round-table talks with Solidarity and other opposition figures on 6 February 1989. The agreement of 5 April legalised Solidarity and allowed partly free elections. In June 1989 Solidarity won all 161 freely contested seats in the lower house, the Sejm, and 99 of the 100 seats in a new Senate. On 24 August Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Catholic journalist and Solidarity adviser, became prime minister.

Hungary’s reform communists also negotiated their way out of power. On 2 May 1989 Hungary began dismantling the fortified fence on its border with Austria. On 16 June a crowd estimated at 100,000 to 250,000 people attended the ceremonial reburial of Imre Nagy, the leader of the 1956 revolution who had been executed in 1958. Round-table talks agreed a multi-party system, and on 23 October Hungary was proclaimed a republic, dropping the word “People’s” from its name.

East Germany and the Berlin Wall

Hungary’s open border created a crisis for East Germany. Thousands of East Germans on holiday in Hungary tried to cross to the West, and on 19 August several hundred escaped during the Pan-European Picnic near Sopron. On 11 September Hungary opened its border to East Germans altogether, and tens of thousands left within days. Others crowded into the West German embassy in Prague.

At home, protest grew, especially the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. On 9 October about 70,000 people marched there without being fired upon, a turning point that showed the regime would not risk a massacre. The veteran leader Erich Honecker was removed on 18 October. On 9 November a confused announcement of new travel rules led crowds to the checkpoints, and the fall of the Berlin Wall followed that night.

Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia

On 10 November 1989, the day after the Wall opened, Bulgaria’s leader Todor Zhivkov, in power since 1954, was removed by his own party colleagues in an internal coup. Large demonstrations in Sofia followed, and the communist party gave up its constitutional monopoly on power in early 1990.

In Czechoslovakia, police violently broke up a student march in Prague on 17 November. The response was the Velvet Revolution: daily mass rallies, a two-hour general strike on 27 November and the formation of the Civic Forum led by the dissident playwright Václav Havel. Within six weeks the communist leadership had resigned, and on 29 December Havel was elected president.

Romania: the violent exception

Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu had refused any reform. Protests began in the western city of Timișoara on 16 December and were met with gunfire. When Ceaușescu tried to address a mass rally in Bucharest on 21 December, the crowd turned against him on live television. The next day the army changed sides and he fled the capital.

The Romanian Revolution was the only one of 1989 to overthrow a regime by force. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were captured, tried by a hastily convened military tribunal and executed on 25 December. Around 1,100 people were killed in the fighting of that month.

Why the regimes fell

Historians stress several causes. Economic failure and debt had undermined the regimes’ claims to deliver prosperity. Opposition movements, churches, independent intellectuals and, above all, ordinary citizens prepared to march in huge numbers made it impossible to rule as before.

Above all, the threat of Soviet intervention was gone. Without it, local leaders faced a stark choice between massacre and compromise, and most chose not to shoot. Events in one country also inspired the next. Television, including Western broadcasts watched across East Germany and Czechoslovakia, carried images of each breakthrough across borders within hours.

Not every challenge to communist rule succeeded that year. In China, the Tiananmen Square protests were crushed by the army on 3 and 4 June 1989, the same day Poland held its elections. The contrast showed that the outcome in Europe was not inevitable.

Key people

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022), General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from 1985, did not plan the end of communism in Eastern Europe. He hoped reform would renew socialism. His refusal to send in tanks, however, left the bloc’s rulers without their ultimate guarantee.

Lech Wałęsa (1943–), the electrician from the Gdańsk shipyard who led Solidarity, negotiated at the Polish round table and later became Poland’s first popularly elected president in 1990. Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927–2013) headed the first non-communist government in the bloc.

Václav Havel (1936–2011), a dissident playwright imprisoned several times, became the face of the Velvet Revolution and president of Czechoslovakia. In Hungary, reform communists such as Miklós Németh and Gyula Horn chose to open the border rather than defend the old order.

On the other side stood hardliners who refused to change: Erich Honecker in East Germany, Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria and Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania. All three were removed before the end of the year.

Myths and facts

It is often said that the fall of the Berlin Wall started the revolutions. In fact, Poland and Hungary had already negotiated the end of one-party rule months earlier, and the Wall opened partly because of the pressure created by Hungary’s open border.

Another common belief is that the West engineered the collapse. Western governments welcomed the changes, and Western radio and television played a role, but the decisive actors were the people of Eastern Europe and the choices made in Moscow. Leaders such as US President George H. W. Bush were in fact cautious, worried that rapid change might provoke instability or a Soviet backlash.

By the numbers

Consequences and legacy

The changes of 1989 soon reached further. Germany was reunified on 3 October 1990. The Soviet-led economic bloc Comecon and the Warsaw Pact military alliance were dissolved in 1991, and by the end of that year the Soviet Union itself had broken apart. The Baltic states, which had protested in their own Baltic Way human chain in August 1989, regained independence.

The transitions that followed were often painful, with rapid privatisation, unemployment and inflation in the early 1990s. Over time, most of the former bloc countries built democratic institutions and market economies. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999, and many joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007.

Timeline

• 1989, 6 February: Round-table talks begin in Warsaw.
• 1989, 2 May: Hungary starts dismantling its border fence with Austria.
• 1989, 4 June: Solidarity wins the first round of Poland’s partly free elections.
• 1989, 24 August: Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes prime minister of Poland.
• 1989, 9 October: About 70,000 people march peacefully in Leipzig.
• 1989, 9 November: The Berlin Wall is opened.
• 1989, 10 November: Todor Zhivkov is ousted in Bulgaria.
• 1989, 17 November: Police attack a student march in Prague, starting the Velvet Revolution.
• 1989, 25 December: Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu are executed in Romania.
• 1989, 29 December: Václav Havel is elected president of Czechoslovakia.

Why it matters

The revolutions of 1989 ended the division of Europe that had existed since 1945 and brought the Cold War to a close with remarkably little bloodshed. They showed the power of peaceful mass protest and negotiation, and they reshaped the map of Europe, leading directly to German reunification and the enlargement of the European Union and NATO.