Personal ideologies Nationalisms The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism,[3] were a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world.

[11] The main region of these revolutions was Central Europe, starting in Poland[12][13] with the Polish workers' mass-strike movement in 1988, and the revolutionary trend continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

[24] Although several Eastern Bloc countries had attempted some abortive, limited economic and political reform since the 1950s (e.g. the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring of 1968), the ascension of reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 signaled the trend toward greater liberalization.

Believing Gorbachev's reform initiatives would be short-lived, hardline communist rulers like East Germany's Erich Honecker, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu obstinately ignored the calls for change.

Not wanting to escalate violence before the 1988 Summer Olympics being hosted in Seoul next year, the government made concessions with the protestors demands, including free elections, amnesty to political prisoners, restoring press freedom and revisions to the constitution.

On 4 April 1989 the historic Round Table Agreement was signed legalising Solidarity and setting up partly free parliamentary elections to be held on 4 June 1989, incidentally, the day following the midnight massacre of Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square.

[41] On 19 August 1989, in a stunning watershed moment, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, an anti-communist editor, Solidarity supporter, and devout Catholic, was nominated as Prime Minister of Poland and the Soviet Union voiced no protest.

On 12 January 1989, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package", which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among other provisions.

[47] On 29 January 1989, contradicting the official view of history held for more than 30 years, a member of the ruling Politburo, Imre Pozsgay, declared that Hungary's 1956 rebellion was a popular uprising rather than a foreign-instigated attempt at counterrevolution.

[49] At these talks a number of Hungary's future political leaders emerged, including László Sólyom, József Antall, György Szabad, Péter Tölgyessy and Viktor Orbán.

[53] The initially inconspicuous opening of a border gate of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary in August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction, at the end of which the GDR no longer existed and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated.

The patrons of the picnic, Otto von Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay saw the planned event as an opportunity to test the reaction of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Eastern Bloc countries to a large opening of the border including flight.

[69] After the fifth successive Monday demonstration in Leipzig on 2 October attracted 10,000 protesters, Socialist Unity Party (SED) leader Erich Honecker issued a shoot and kill order to the military.

Triggered by the erratic words of regime spokesman Günter Schabowski in a TV press conference, stating that the planned changes were in effect "immediately, without delay," hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity.

The Kremlin's willingness to abandon such a strategically vital ally marked a dramatic change by the Soviet superpower and a fundamental paradigm shift in international relations, which until 1989 had been dominated by the East–West divide running through Berlin itself.

[78][79][80] After having suppressed the Brașov rebellion in 1987, Nicolae Ceaușescu was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in November 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe.

As Ceaușescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, on 16 December, for sermons offending the regime.

Although we have said all along that the real number of dead is over 100, no one contradicted so far and there was no official position against.Over 10,000 miners were transported to Bucharest and in the ensuing clashes, seven protesters died and hundreds more were injured, although media estimates on the casualty figures were much higher.

[86] A few weeks after the mineriad, several medical students conducted research in Străulești II cemetery, discovering two trenches with about 78 unmarked graves, which they claimed to contain victims of the events.

A demonstration in Sükhbaatar Square on 21 January followed, in weather of −30 C. Protesters carried banners alluding to Chinggis Khaan, also referred to Genghis Khan, rehabilitating a figure whom Soviet schooling neglected to praise.

[106] After numerous demonstrations of many thousands of people in the capital city as well as provincial centers, on 4 March 1990, the MDU and three other reform organizations held a joint outdoor mass meeting, inviting the government to attend.

[114] The Malta Summit took place between U.S. President George H. W. Bush and U.S.S.R. leader Mikhail Gorbachev on 2–3 December 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a meeting which contributed to the end of the Cold War[115] partially as a result of the broader pro-democracy movement.

News reports of the time[116] referred to the Malta Summit as the most important since 1945, when British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed on a post-war plan for Europe at the Yalta Conference.

[117][118] The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after 10–11 June 1988 spontaneous mass night-singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds.

However, Chechnya became increasingly anarchic, largely due to both the political and physical destruction of the state during the invasion, and general Shamil Basaev, having evaded all control by the central government, conducted raids into neighboring Dagestan, which Russia used as a pretext for reinvading Ichkeria.

[162] In a 2007 paper, Oleh Havrylyshyn categorized the speed of reforms in the former communist countries of Europe:[163] The 2004 enlargement of the European Union included the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, he managed to secretly scan many documents, some with high security clearance, including KGB reports to the Central Committee, and smuggle the files to the West.

Once it became evident that the feared Soviet Army would not intervene to crush dissent, the Central, South-East and Eastern European regimes were exposed as vulnerable in the face of popular uprisings against the one-party system and power of secret police.

[179] In 1991, Timur Kuran wrote that generally leaders were despised and failed to meet expectations of freedoms and economic prosperity that they had promised, leading to citizen motivation to upheave the government.

[181] While socialist economics may have played a role, Stathis N. Kalyvas argues that international sanctions as well as the government makeup of authoritarian regimes were equally as impactful in reducing their economy's prosperity.