Introduction

The Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 1989

As we noted in Chapter 3, the Cold War was a time of mutual obsession between the United States and the USSR, with many other nations allied with one side or the other. Each side’s national security strategy was based on countering the other, and they spent many billions of dollars to do so. Massive propaganda campaigns, global in scope, were waged to influence the world community to join the struggle. The superpowers’ nuclear arsenals were poised for use on only a 15-minute warning, perpetually risking global annihilation. This situation had simmered tensely from about 1947, and by the mid-1980s there was still no end in sight.

What no one expected was that this apparently intractable conflict would disappear in a period of only two years. It is perhaps unsurprising that few saw it coming; it would have been extremely difficult to envision such an earth-shaking change at the time. This chapter is the story of why and how it happened.

Solidarity

Some revolutions are led by military commanders (Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh) and others are led by lawyers (Gandhi, Mandela). But the nonviolent revolt which spelled the end of communism in Europe was started by shipyard workers, led by an electrician.

It began in Poland, a Warsaw Pact nation, in 1980. As we saw in Chapter 2, the economies of both the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations were weaker than those of the West. The socialist government of Poland ran all aspects of its Marxist economy – and the wages were poor, the rents and foodstuffs expensive. Independent labor unions were illegal in Poland, as they were all across the communist world (in a Marxist economy, the government controls the means of production, but unions are meant to counterbalance the owners of the means of production. Since the government has complete power in a Marxist system, unions are therefore illegal). Poland did have a few government-run unions which were said to advocate for the workers, but these had no real power. Labor strikes in Poland in 1956, 1970, and 1976 were ineffective in forcing the government to make lasting changes, mainly because they lacked centralized leadership, and instead left hundreds dead in clashes with police. In July 1980, Polish workers went on strike again to protest an increase in meat prices.

The next month, a forklift operator at the Gdańsk Shipyard named Anna Walentynowicz was fired for distributing the underground newsletter of an illegal union. Gdańsk Shipyard workers struck to protest her firing, demanding both her reinstatement as well as a pay raise for all. But the protest quickly spread to nearby factories and facilities, with thousands of workers now striking.

On August 17, the different groups of strikers sent representatives to Gdańsk to establish the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (MKS in Polish). This committee was created to represent the workers of the various factories involved, which by that time was over one hundred and fifty and still growing. This gave the movement something it did not have in the 1970s: centralized leadership, which could coordinate the group’s actions and ensure that the government could not try to appease some groups with concessions while cutting others out. The elected chairman of MKS was Lech Walesa, a former electrician at Gdańsk Shipyard who was fired for his role in the 1976 strikes.

Lech Walesa, 1980.

MKS distributed a list of twenty-one demands to be fulfilled in order to lift the strike. Most of them concerned economic matters, such as lowering food prices and increasing wages. But one of the demands was that the Polish people be permitted to establish legal labor unions outside of government control, something unheard-of in the communist world. Seeing the size of the strike and the damage it was doing to the already-weak economy, the government decided to grant all twenty-one demands, which it did with the Gdańsk Agreement on August 31. At this point, MKS now represented about three million workers.

MKS leaders then pressed their advantage and, on September 17, transformed the organization from an action committee into Solidarity (Solidarność in Polish), the first legal independent labor union in the Soviet world. Lech Walesa was elected its first president. Since it was the only legal union, and was open to all workers, it was tremendously popular, eventually surpassing ten million members, or about one-third of the entire Polish population.

Solidarity leaders quickly realized that they could not achieve their economic goals without addressing politics; to that end, they began to change Solidarity from a labor union into a social movement. As a Solidarity publication put it: “History has taught us that there is no bread without freedom. What we had in mind was not only bread, butter, and sausages, but also justice, democracy, truth, legality, human dignity, freedom of convictions, and the repair of the republic.” Solidarity pursued not only workers’ benefits via strikes, but also had several corrupt politicians removed from their posts. All the while, they remained carefully committed to nonviolence, to avoid giving the government a moral and legal excuse to use force against them.

The government was not as careful about violence as Solidarity. On March 19, 1981, Solidarity leaders attended negotiations with government officials when the meeting became heated. In response, government administrators summoned the local militia, who brutally beat the Solidarity representatives and jailed them. In response, Lech Walesa called for a general strike on just a four-hour warning. On March 27, between 12 and 14 million Poles went on strike, shutting down the entire country. Considering that Solidarity had no access to the media, arranging such a strike in only four hours was an amazing organizational feat. The government, realizing it had been outmaneuvered, quickly apologized for the attacks and promised an investigation. Solidarity lifted the strike, having made a major show of force.

The Polish communist party was at first uncertain about how to confront such a popular organization, and Solidarity continued its campaign. The economic situation in Poland continued to decline, resulting in further Solidarity strikes and protests. Finally, on December 13, 1981, First Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski of the communist party decided he had to eliminate Solidarity or face a civil war. He declared martial law, closing the country, shutting down the telephone systems, and putting troops into the streets. He forcefully suppressed the resulting strikes, killing nine people. Security forces also arrested 5,000 Solidarity members, imprisoning them in a special facility. The next year, the communists declared Solidarity an illegal organization.

Despite all this, Solidarity survived – by going underground. It continued as an illegal trade union, arranging strikes and other work actions, like slow-downs and call-outs. It coordinated its reduced membership via hand-printed newsletters and a pirate radio station. Solidarity spent years in a cat-and-mouse game with the government, which arrested anyone suspected of belonging to the union.
Solidarity received a great deal of support from the outside world. The Reagan administration, the Vatican, and various unions worldwide supported Solidarity with money and other assistance. The West largely embargoed Poland, damaging its economy even further. Walesa was released from prison in November 1982, but when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the next year, the Polish government refused to allow him to travel to receive it.

The situation intensified through the mid-1980s, with the Polish economy in shambles due to external embargoes, Solidarity actions, and government ineptitude. Strikes waxed and waned, and the government tried to placate the movement by releasing political prisoners, only to arrest more immediately afterward. If the government could have improved the economy, that probably would have reduced the social temperature; but it was incapable of doing so. The USSR, suffering from a poor economy of its own, was in no position to give much help. On the other side, Solidarity’s commitment to nonviolence protected its image both in Poland and abroad, and helped win the support of the Vatican, which was important in Catholic Poland.

Finally, the government understood that the situation was untenable. In 1989, it was agreed through a series of negotiations that Solidarity would be legalized again – but this time, it would become a political party and stand candidates for office. Solidarity would become the only legal non-communist party in Eastern Europe, participating in the first multiparty elections in Poland since World War II. The communist party may have agreed to this arrangement because it was confident it would win; if it did, it would have shown Solidarity that the labor union was not as popular as it thought.

The results of the June 1989 elections surprised even Solidarity; they had won a landslide victory over the communist party, taking control of virtually the entire parliament. The Solidarity government made Tadeusz MazowieckiPoland’s first noncommunist prime minister in 44 years. The new government moved quickly to write a new, noncommunist constitution, and became a democratic republic in December 1989. The next year, Lech Walesa was elected the new president of Poland.

Despite all the changes and celebrations, a terrible specter haunted these events. The Warsaw Pact had seen revolts against communist rule before, in Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968. In both cases, the revolts were put down by the Soviet Red Army. The Soviet Union had a policy of allowing no secession from the Warsaw Pact or the USSR itself. The Solidarity government had done just that by instituting a democratic constitution. The world held its breath. Would the USSR now invade Poland?

The answer to that weighty question was no. Mikhail Gorbachev, elected in 1985, had a different approach to Eastern Europe than his predecessors. Known as the Sinatra Doctrine (see Chapter 2), this 1988 policy allowed Warsaw Pact countries to chart their own destiny without Soviet interference. It was one thing to make such a statement; when Poland became the first country to test the new doctrine in 1989, it turned out that Gorbachev was telling the truth. He did not invade Poland, much to everyone’s surprise. The consequences of the new policy were about to change the world.

The Reunification of Germany

The limits of this new tolerance were further tested in late summer of 1989. Communist Hungary announced that it would remove its border fence with Austria. Hungary was a popular vacation destination for East Germans, and suddenly became even more popular due to its lax border with the West. That summer, thousands of East Germans traveled to Hungary and, finding the Hungarian border guards quite lackadaisical, crossed over into Austria from where they could easily enter West German and receive political asylum. The East Germans were at first reticent about acting; there was a longstanding tradition of keeping the borders between Warsaw Pact countries open. But after 30,000 East Germans had escaped via Hungary, the GDR decided to close the border to that country. The incident did not bring a major response from the USSR.

In October 1989, longtime leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, relinquished his position due to illness, and was replaced by Egon Krenz. Krenz sought to release some of the social stress in his country, which was rising due to both a bad economy and the democratic example recently set by Poland. In November, he concocted a plan to allow East German citizens to enter West Germany under greatly relaxed requirements. However, the East German government prematurely announced this program at a press conference on November 9, 1989. With Western journalists present, a government spokesman told everyone that the program was effective immediately, although the plan had not yet filtered through the byzantine communist bureaucracy.

The program was announced on West German TV that evening; many East Germans watched Western news, although it was illegal to do so in the East. Seeing the reports, tens of thousands of East Berliners headed to the checkpoints in the Belin Wall to cross over into the West. The handful of East German guards at the gates had received no instructions regarding the new program and tried to turn people back. The increasingly-agitated crowd only grew larger, and the police were unwilling to use violence to disperse them. Finally, at 11 PM local time, the guards gave up and opened the gates, allowing everyone present to pass through without any control. Tens of thousands of East Berliners entered West Berlin, many for the first time. There were instant celebrations in the streets and bars of West Berlin, welcoming the visitors. People from both sides even danced atop the dreaded Berlin Wall and no one tried to stop them. That euphoric night, November 9, is remembered as the night the Berlin Wall fell. People took turns chipping away at it with sledgehammers for weeks to come.

The German situation now accelerated with amazing speed. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced that the two Germanies would cooperate closely in a program of reunification. In February 1990, Gorbachev again asserted that the future of the two Germanies was up to the Germans and that the USSR would not intervene, again to the disbelief of the West.

Interestingly, not everyone in Western Europe was thrilled with these events. Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the UK, and François Mitterrand, President of France, both resisted the reunification of Germany on the grounds that a new, resurgent Germany might present a security threat to Europe. Some Western European conservatives, recalling the two world wars, agreed with them, fearing a return of the Nazis. Thatcher even asked Gorbachev to intervene in East Germany to prevent a reunification – an embarrassing situation for the United States, since Ronald Reagan had, just two years earlier, insisted that Gorbachev “tear down” the Berlin Wall. In any event, President Bush of the United States fully supported German reunification, and France and the UK had no way of preventing it.

Now confident that the USSR would not invade, East Germany held its first multiparty elections in March 1990. The communists were soundly defeated, and the Christian Democratic Union (the East German branch of Helmut Kohl’s political party) won most of the seats. The new government immediately initiated a program of reunification. The first step of this process was financial assistance from West Germany; with the departure of the communists, the economy had to transition to free-market capitalism, a difficult transformation which required a lot of help from the West.

That left only the final political transition. Rather than form a new country, East Germany was to become a part of West Germany, and the reunified nation would be known by the same name West Germany had, the Federal Republic of Germany, and with the same constitution. This final act formally occurred at midnight on October 3, 1990, only 339 days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. German reunification ended one of the greatest Cold War dramas and was, for Germany, the true end of World War II.

That left only five Warsaw Pact countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and the USSR. (Albania was originally a Warsaw Pact member. Although socialist, it was fiercely independent in the vein of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and withdrew from the alliance in 1968. Since no Warsaw Pact nation shared a border with Albania, the USSR could not invade it to bring it back under control.) Each of these remaining countries went through a local drama regarding continued socialist rule, demonstrating the universal drive towards democracy in Europe.

Hungary

Of all the Warsaw Pact countries, Hungary had the smoothest transition to democracy. This is ironic, since the largest rebellion against communist rule in Eastern Europe was the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which left thousands of people dead. But the revolution was followed by a period of liberalization, allowing for more freedom of speech, as well as access to Western goods and travel, than anywhere else in the Soviet Bloc. Known as “goulash communism,” this system kept the Hungarians relatively happy with their country, though not entirely without dissent.

With Solidarity’s victories in Poland, and Gorbachev’s refusal to intervene, the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, MSZMP) decided that opposing the march of democracy was useless; the communists would be better off going along with it, and forming a new political party to retain some of their power. Janos Kádár, longtime leader of the MSZMP, was replaced by the reform-minded Imre Pozsgay in late 1988. Some traditional communists in the Parliament wanted to adjust the communist model in Hungary to allow for new freedoms, but Pozsgay and his group of reformers planned a full transition to democracy. As a result, the MSZMP gave up its Marxist monopoly on power in February 1989, paving the way for a multiparty system.

In late 1989, the MSZMP dissolved, then recreated itself, as the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt, MSZP), a social democratic party. Traditional communists – one could hardly call them hardliners at this point – formed another communist party, the Hungarian Workers’ Party. It would have to compete with other parties now in elections. The same month, the parliament adopted over 100 amendments to the 1949 Hungarian Constitution, espousing democracy and establishing civil rights. On October 23, not coincidentally the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution, Mátyás Szűrös was named the provisional president, pending the planned 1990 elections. Szűrös then officially proclaimed that the Republic of Hungary was established.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria had a unique relationship with the USSR among Warsaw Pact countries. It was so closely tied to the Soviet Union that, at one point, its leadership considered becoming a republic of the USSR. Since WWII, it had quickly industrialized, and now produced about 70% of all Soviet electronics, with virtually no economic relations with any other nation. But its close association with the USSR meant that, when the USSR began to falter and dissolve, Bulgaria was sure to suffer the same fate.

Bulgaria was ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and its long-serving autocrat, Todor Zhivkov. Having worked for decades to pacify the country, Zhivkov suffered very little resistance from the people. His problems began with the victory of the Solidarity government of Poland and the non-response of the USSR. With the rest of Eastern Europe in transition to democracy, BCP ruling elites predicted the end of European communism. The question was how it would happen in Bulgaria. Would it come peacefully, as in Czechoslovakia, or violently, as in Romania? And, of course, the elites were most concerned with what would happen to them when the end did come.

Todor Zhivkov

The trigger for the Bulgarian transformation was a poor policy decision by Zhivkov. Communist Bulgaria bordered Turkey, a NATO country. Turkey had been worrying Bulgarian leaders, since it had demonstrated some aggression with the 1974 invasion of Cyprus; in 1980, a coup brought to power a militant, anticommunist government in Ankara. Fearing that the Turks would threaten his nation, Zhivkov decided to crack down on the ethnic Turkish minority living in Bulgaria, hoping to remove anyone who would be loyal to the Turkish regime. In March 1989, he forced the Bulgarian Turks to adopt Bulgarian names and made it illegal to speak Turkish. The ethnic Turks took this as an attack on their identity, and some launched small-scale violent resistance campaigns. Zhivkov then offered to allow anyone who wanted to live in Turkey to leave. This led to over 350,000 ethnic Turks exiting the country, a loss of about 1 out of every 25 citizens nationally; many claimed that they did not leave voluntarily, but were forced out by police. Not only did this obviously damage the economy and social fabric, but also brought condemnation from the international community, Bulgaria’s National Assembly, and even Gorbachev himself.

At this point, BCP leaders decided that Bulgaria under Zhivkov would descend into violence, as Romania had, and, therefore, planned to remove him from power. They formulated the plot while Zhivkov was visiting China. When Zhivkov returned on November 9 (the same day the Berlin Wall would fall, but before the evening drama), his old comrade, Petar Mladenov, informed him that he must resign his position, or be executed for his crimes against the ethnic Turks. Finding that the National Assembly backed Mladenov, Zhivkov resigned the next day. He and his supporters were expelled from the BCP, removing them from the equation permanently. Mladenov was made leader of the BCP and therefore head of state. He quickly denounced the anti-Turkish campaign and ended it, allowing refugees to return. He also permitted independent labor unions to organize. The BCF renamed itself the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSF), making it clear that it had softened its policies.

In January 1990, the ruling BSF and various noncommunist parties (now legal) began discussions on a transition to democracy; they also agreed to renounce violence, to avoid a debacle such as Romania had suffered. The elections were held in June 1990. The BSF won most of the seats, with the anti-communist Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) a close second. The new government then established a new constitution for Bulgaria, signed on May 15, 1990, finally replacing the old postwar communist constitution and cementing the new democracy.

Thus, it is clear that, unlike in Poland or East Germany, the fall of Bulgarian communism was not due to popular pressures such as Solidarity; it was due to communist elites who understood that European communism could not survive much longer. Rather than go down the violent Romanian route, they wisely decided to transition to democracy willingly, giving them the chance to continue participating in Bulgarian politics. The fact that the BSF did so well in the first elections, in contrast to the communists in Poland, indicates that the Bulgarian people approved of this transition strategy.

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia had been a communist country since a 1948 coup brought the Communist Party to power with assistance from the USSR, and subsequently eliminated all other parties. The coup, and Czechoslovakia’s accession to the Warsaw Pact, were major factors in the decision to implement the Marshall Plan and establish NATO. Under communist rule, it was subdivided into the Czech Socialist Republic in the west, and the Slovak Socialist Republic in the east. These areas represented separate ethnic enclaves, each with its own dominant language.

The Czechoslovaks, however, demonstrated a penchant for revolt. In January 1968, Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Dubček was a reformer whose plans presaged Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, but 20 years too early. Dubček proposed decentralizing the economy and allowing for greater democratic freedoms, such as more rights for the media and freedom of travel. Dubček referred to these policies as “Socialism with a Human Face,” and the following eight months of relative freedom were known as the Prague Spring.

The USSR was not prepared to accept such changes in a Warsaw Pact neighbor, and in August 1968, a collection of Warsaw Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia with a huge military force. While the Czechoslovak military stood down, the citizens resisted for months before the invasion force finally regained control. Dubček’s reforms were reversed and he was removed from power. Anger at the USSR simmered beneath the surface (including anti-Soviet riots when the Czech national hockey team beat the Soviets in the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships), but the government kept a tight lid on dissent.

The next major movement came in 1976. A Czech rock band named Plastic People of the Universe (in tribute to a Frank Zappa song) was arrested for disturbing the peace. Their crimes were quoting a banned Czech poet, Egon Bondy, in their songs, as well as having long hair. Although sentenced to between three months and three years in prison, the band continued to play illegal concerts on the underground circuit, becoming leaders in the anti-communist movement.

In response to the oppression of the band, a group of dissidents formed a new organization called Charter 77 (for the year of its founding). The most important member was Václav Havel, a poet and playwright who had seen his works banned in Czechoslovakia for his participation in the Prague Spring. This group wrote a charter protesting the arrest of the band, as well as other suppressions of freedom, on the grounds that they violated international treaties to which Czechoslovakia was signatory (such as the Helsinki Accords and certain UN charters), as well as the constitution of the country.

Vaclav Havel

The government responded harshly. The charter was declared illegal and the group’s leaders declared “traitors.” Their punishments ranged from arrest and imprisonment, to losing their jobs and exile from the country. The treatment of the Charter 77 members led to the launch of a new organization in April 1978, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS in Czech), which sought to publicize their plight. Since the government controlled the media, few Czech citizens understood the actual nature of the case. The government then arrested the leaders of the new group, including Havel, who was sentenced to five years in prison. Both Charter 77 and VONS survived underground, though, and continued to distribute illegal publications criticizing the government’s human rights record. Plastic People continued to play underground shows.

By 1988, the situation in Eastern Europe had changed sufficiently that Roman Catholic dissident groups decided to launch a mass protest in Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Socialist Republic. Although they were denied a permit, over ten thousand people turned out for the Candle Demonstration to demand more freedom of religion in Czechoslovakia. Since they could not legally organize, the plan had to be disseminated through Western media, such as Radio Free Europe. The nonviolent protest was dispersed by police with water cannons and batons.

By November 1989, the winds of change had swept through Eastern Europe; the Berlin Wall had fallen on November 9. In Czechoslovakia, International Students Day (Nov. 17), commemorating the 1939 storming of Czechoslovak universities by the Nazis, provided the opportunity for student protests. Thousands of high school and college students, many of them socialists, protested government policies. Radio Free Europe reported that one of the students, named Martin Šmíd, had been killed by security forces. The news spread quickly through the country, galvanizing support for the movement. Never mind that it wasn’t true; despite the rumor, no one had been killed during the protest. But the story was enough to generate public anger.

Over the coming days, the protests grew and developed into a general strike. In the Slovak Socialist Republic, a group called Public Against Violence formed to coordinate the protests; in Prague, Havel formed another group called Civic Forum, coordinating actions in the Czech Socialist Republic. The nation’s prime minister, Ladislav Adamec, was sympathetic towards the protesters’ aims, but was prevented by the communist party from making political concessions. He did, however, promise to avoid using violence against the demonstrators, who by November 25 had grown to about one million people.

The Catholic Church backed the demonstrators. The news media went on strike and broke with the government, allowing independent reports of the protests and giving voice to the demonstrators. Finally, on November 28, the Federal Assembly declared Czechoslovakia a multiparty state, breaking the Communist Party’s stranglehold on power; this represented the victory of the movement, which became known at the Velvet Revolution for its relative nonviolence. On December 29, Havel was appointed president of Czechoslovakia, heading an interim government. The first free elections were held in June 1990, with Civic Forum and Public Against Violence winning most of the votes. The communist party won some votes in the assembly, but their power was broken.

The new democracy had an immediate, secondary problem: trying to hold the two halves of Czechoslovakia together. Ethnic differences strained relations between the urbanized Czechs, who traditionally held most of the nation’s power, and the mainly rural Slovaks. Although a contentious issue, the decision was made to separate the country into the Czech and Slovak republics. This was accomplished, without violence, in December 1992.

Romania

Romania’s transition to democracy was probably the most violent in all the Warsaw Pact. The main reason for this was the egomaniacal nature of the nation’s General Secretary, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu had ruled the nation with an iron fist since 1965. He valued Romanian nationalism over socialist unity, and often opposed Soviet policy (like the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968), but he hated Soviet hegemony mostly because it interfered with his own hegemony. Ceaușescu built up a cult of personality resembling Stalin’s, filling the government with his supporters and family regardless of their qualifications. He built a massive palace for himself and his wife, Elena, and the streets were adorned with pictures of him. To protect himself, he created a vast security system in which secret police tapped phones, read mail, and arrested anyone opposing the government. Between the military and the secret police, Ceaușescu had a near-Stalinist level of control over Romania. He was not going to relinquish it easily.

Romania’s economy foundered in the late 1980s, largely because Ceaușescu introduced harsh austerity measures; his plan was to use the money to pay off international loans, and in that he was successful. But the economic hardships suffered by the people in order to do so provoked revolt, especially when everyone could see Ceaușescu’s lavish lifestyle. In November 1987, factory workers at a truck manufacturer in Brașov rebelled against the harsh economic policies, leading security forces to imprison hundreds of people. When the collapse of European communism began in 1989, Romania’s government tried to prevent the news from spreading, but was unable to do so. Inspired by other democratic movements, a group of students protested in Bucharest on November 9, but were quickly apprehended.

By December 1989, it seemed that Romania might be the last bastion of communism in Eastern Europe. But on December 16, a group of local people surrounded the home of the popular dissident pastor, László Tőkés; the government had ordered him evicted from his house in Timișoara, and the people turned out to protect him. Soon, this effort developed into a massive protest, with crowds fighting security forces in the streets. The next day, rioters ransacked the local offices of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and demanded Ceaușescu’s resignation. The street battles became so intense that security forces and police were unable to contain them, and the army was called out to disperse the demonstrators with armored vehicles. Ceaușescu then decided to stage a counter-revolutionary demonstration in Palace Square in Bucharest on December 21, and what happened that day became the trigger for revolution.

The PCR bussed in one hundred thousand people to witness Ceaușescu’s speech, provided them with flags, banners, and photographs of the dictator, and told them to cheer the speech – or else they would be shot. Ceaușescu gave a speech in which he blamed outside influences and “fascists” for the troubles. The dictator, however, had lost touch with his people. They began to boo and jeer him, chanting, “Timișoara! Timișoara!” Stunned, Ceaușescu tried to silence the crowd, then tried to placate them with offers of wage increases. Then came the sounds of gunfire from the edge of the crowd. Rumors quickly circulated through the massive crowd that security forces were shooting at them, and that a revolution was now underway. National television, which had been covering the event, cut away to patriotic programming, but all of Romania had seen the unruly crowd and knew that something important was happening in Bucharest. Security forces quickly hustled Ceaușescu to safety. The crowd that the dictator had assembled now developed into a street demonstration, demanding his resignation. By the next day, hundreds of thousands more flooded into Bucharest to join them.

Revolution in Bucharest, Romania, December 1989.

The critical event in the revolution occurred the next morning, December 22. Ceaușescu announced that he had fired the minister of defense, Vasile Milea, for treason, and that Milea had committed suicide as a result. He then appointed Victor Stănculescu as the new minister of defense. What Ceaușescu didn’t realize was that rumors quickly spread through the ranks of the military that Ceaușescu had ordered Milea’s murder. Ceaușescu was displeased with Milea’s hesitation to use force against demonstrators, so it is possible he ordered his killing; the truth will likely never be known.

The result of the rumor, however, is that almost the entire military now abandoned Ceaușescu; Stănculescu ordered the troops to return to barracks, and apparently few of them argued. Stănculescu later said that he also saw the writing on the wall; anyone who still supported the dictator would soon find himself executed by the next government, so it seemed wise enough to switch sides. The police and security forces followed suit, and Ceaușescu no longer had any allies in Romania.

That afternoon, demonstrators burst into the Communist Party headquarters where Ceaușescu and his wife were hiding; the military did not attempt to stop them. The Ceaușescus barely escaped with their lives when they were picked up from the terrace by helicopter. Before they could get out of the country, however, the military ordered them to land or face being shot down. They landed in a field, and subsequently given a hiding place by a local man. Unbeknownst to the Ceaușescus, the man called the police, and the dictator and his wife were arrested.

Bucharest was suffering chaotic violence; street battles continued between soldiers and police still loyal to Ceaușescu and the demonstrators who knew that victory was near. In the meantime, a new revolutionary party, the National Salvation Front (FSN), collaborated with the military to assemble an immediate, ad-hoc court martial and charge the Ceaușescus with genocide. The pair were quickly found guilty of ordering the killings of civilian demonstrators in Timișoara, and were then shot dead by a firing squad. It took another two days for the chaos in Bucharest to calm, followed by raucous celebrations at the fall of the dictator. The cost of the revolution is difficult to ascertain; it is generally thought that between 1000 and 7000 people were killed, with many thousands more wounded.

The transition to democracy was not as smooth as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, even after Ceaușescu’s death. The weeks before the May 1990 post-communist elections were marred by protests and violence between the different parties, but the communist PCR was banned. The FSN (composed largely of former PCR members) won most of the seats in the elections, and FSN leader Ion Iliescu became the new president.

The only other communist nations in Eastern Europe were Yugoslavia and Albania, though neither were members of the Warsaw Pact. Yugoslavia fragmented between 1990 and 1992, and Albanian communism fell in December 1990 (both covered in Chapter 12). As we saw in Chapter 2, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was quickly followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union into its 15 constituent republics, ending communism in Europe. This was considered the end of the Cold War. Note that the Cold War ended exactly as George Kennan predicted in his 1946 Long Telegram (see Chapter 3), an event he lived long enough to witness.

Who Won the Cold War?

In psychology, a Rorschach, or inkblot, test is used to help determine a patient’s personality and emotional state. The patient looks at a random ink blot and is asked what he sees. Of course, the ink blot has no meaning at all, but the patient’s response tells the psychologist something about his perception.

A famous question in recent history is, “Who won the Cold War?” The question can serve as a sort of political Rorschach test, with liberals and conservatives giving different answers according to their political bent. Conservative commentators (John Lewis Gaddis, Francis Fukayama, etc.) claim that the US won the Cold War. After all, the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact are gone, and the US and NATO still exist. Also, some conservatives credit Ronald Reagan with destroying the USSR; he embargoed the Soviet Union, built up American defenses, and challenged Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall – and the Berlin Wall came down the next year.

Most historians do not accept this simplistic view, knowing the situation was far more complex. First, the Cold War was not actually a war, and its end did not bring a great victory parade for the Americans. One side simply gave up its way of life. In a sense, it proved the superiority of capitalism and democracy to European communism (but not Chinese communism, which continues). Also, most historians do not credit Reagan with a victory. It is true that Reagan’s massive military buildup pressured the USSR into spending more money than it could afford on defense, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the USSR or the Warsaw Pact. It must be remembered that the people of the USSR remained unified through the apocalyptic destruction and suffering of World War II. The pressure Reagan placed on them was hardly the worst they’d suffered. Most historians credit Gorbachev and his Sinatra Doctrine, which gave Eastern Europe the political space it needed to make a free choice between democracy and communism. Had Gorbachev not done so, it is difficult to imagine such a rapid collapse of communism in Europe. One could certainly argue that the real winners of the Cold War were the people of Eastern Europe and the USSR, who gained their political freedom as a result. Their lives changed far more than Americans’ lives after the Wall fell.

It is also worth asking the question: why didn’t China also espouse democracy? The democratic drive was certainly clear at Tiananmen Square in 1989, the same year as the revolutions in the Warsaw Pact. The reason is that Deng Xiaoping was no Gorbachev. Deng wanted to revitalize China by combining capitalist elements with socialism to create a mixed economy. Gorbachev wanted the same thing, but also brought in elements of democracy, like multiparty elections. Deng did not do this; he regarded the primacy of the CCP as non-negotiable. As a result, while he was ready for some capitalism, he was not ready for democracy, and crushed the nascent pro-democracy movement. The CCP continues to wield undisputed power in China.

And what about the rest of the world? How would someone from India, Indonesia, or Argentina answer the question? A likely answer would be that humanity won the Cold War. A full-scale nuclear war between the superpowers would have caused sufficient environmental damage to the planet to endanger the continued survival of mankind. That is enough for the world’s people to breathe a sigh of relief.

Conclusion

What were the consequences of the end of the Cold War?

First, the US and Russia (which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons) reduced their nuclear stockpiles and stopped targeting each other, reducing the risk of nuclear war (at least for now). The US also celebrated a “peace dividend,” which freed up money from the massive defense budget. This extra money did not last long; after September 11, 2001, the War on Terror began, and the US military budget skyrocketed to Cold War levels once again.

The greatest effect was the coming of democracy to Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Democracy’s fortunes have varied wildly there and are certainly not yet up to Western Europe’s standards, particularly in Russia (see Chapter 12). Still, democracy takes a long time to develop properly, and Eastern Europe has only just begun its democratic journey.

The remaining communist countries of the world had to adapt to this new climate. China regarded the USSR as a rival and potential foe, so was not deeply impacted by its fall. North Korea was largely isolated and dependent on China anyway. Vietnam and Laos shifted to stronger relationships with the capitalist West and suffered no major negative consequences. Cuba suffered worst of all; since it is embargoed by the US, it has few options for international trade without the USSR. The country’s economy has suffered badly without the Soviet Union.
The end of the Cold War has had an interesting effect on the policies of the sole remaining superpower, the USA. One would think that the USA could now ride roughshod over other nations with its unopposed power, but that is not entirely true. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it freed the US from having to consider Soviet responses to interventions and invasions. For example, the US did not intervene in the Hungarian Revolt of 1956, nor the Prague Spring of 1968, for fear of war with the Soviets. It could not invade Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, because Iran bordered the USSR, and an invasion might trigger war with the communists. Over and over, American responses were limited by the prospect of war.
After the fall of the USSR, that was no longer true. The US could fight wars in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and elsewhere without invoking the danger of nuclear war, and it certainly did so. But the US could no longer intervene in Latin America the way it once did. The excuse for such interventions was always anti-communism, specifically the fear that the USSR would use Latin America as a base from which to attack the US. With the fall of the USSR, that reason (or excuse) evaporated. US wars since 1991 have never been anti-communist, but have typically been anti-terrorist. Since Islamic terror does not come from Latin America, the US has never invaded the region after the fall of the USSR, although it still practices dollar diplomacy there.

Finally, the end of the Cold War ushered in a new phase in international relations: globalization, covered in Chapter 14. While global trade is hardly a new phenomenon, it was greatly bolstered by the collapse of European communism, because Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states were no longer cut off from trade with the capitalist world. When coupled with new technologies like the internet, the expanded scope of globalization brought most of the world into this new social and economic paradigm. The revolutions of 1989 heralded a new era of opportunity and uncertainty.