Revolutions of 1989

Revolutions of 1989
Part of the Cold War (until 1991)
Clockwise from top-left:
Date16 December 1986 – 28 June 1996
(9 years, 6 months, 1 week and 5 days)
Main phase:
12 May 1988 – 26 December 1991
(3 years, 7 months and 2 weeks)
Location
Caused by
Methods
Resulted inEnd of most communist states

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. This revolutionary wave is sometimes referred to as the Autumn of Nations,[4][5][6][7][8] a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The Revolutions of 1989 were a key factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union—one of the two global superpowers—and in the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. These events drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era.

The earliest recorded protests to be part of the Revolutions of 1989 began in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986, with student demonstrations,[9][10] and the last chapter of the revolutions ended in 1996, when Ukraine abolished the Soviet political system of government, adopting a new constitution which replaced the Soviet-era constitution.[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. On 4 June 1989, Poland's Solidarity trade union won an overwhelming victory in partially free elections, leading to the peaceful fall of communism in Poland. Also in June 1989, Hungary began dismantling its section of the physical Iron Curtain. In August 1989, the opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, in which the Eastern Bloc disintegrated. This led to mass demonstrations in cities of East Germany such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990. One feature common to most of these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to pressure for change.[14] Romania was the only country in which citizens and opposition forces used violence to overthrow its communist regime,[15] although Romania was politically isolated from the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

The Soviet Union itself became a multi-party semi-presidential republic from March 1990 and held its first presidential election, marking a drastic change as part of its reform program. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, resulting in seven new countries which had declared their independence from the Soviet Union over the course of the year, while the Baltic states regained their independence in September 1991 along with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The rest of the Soviet Union, which constituted the bulk of the area, continued with the establishment of the Russian Federation. Albania and Yugoslavia abandoned communism between 1990 and 1992, by which time Yugoslavia had split into five new countries. Czechoslovakia dissolved three years after the end of communist rule, splitting peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.[16] North Korea abandoned Marxism–Leninism in 1992.[17] The Cold War is considered to have "officially" ended on 3 December 1989 during the Malta Summit between the Soviet and American leaders.[18] However, many historians argue that the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 was the end of the Cold War.[19]

The impact of these events were felt in many third world socialist states throughout the world. Concurrently with events in Poland, protests in Tiananmen Square (April–June 1989) failed to stimulate major political changes in Mainland China, but influential images of resistance during that protest helped to precipitate events in other parts of the globe. Three Asian countries, namely Afghanistan, Cambodia[20] and Mongolia, had abandoned communism by 1992–1993, either through reform or conflict. Eight countries in Africa or its environs also abandoned it, namely Ethiopia, Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, Somalia, as well as South Yemen, unified with North Yemen. Political reforms varied, but in only five countries were Marxist-Leninist communist parties able to retain a monopoly on power; namely China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Vietnam, Laos, and China made economic reforms in the following years to adopt some forms of market economy under market socialism. The European political landscape changed drastically, with several former Eastern Bloc countries joining NATO and the European Union, resulting in stronger economic and social integration with Western Europe and North America. Many communist and socialist organisations in the West turned their guiding principles over to social democracy and democratic socialism. In contrast, and somewhat later, in South America, a pink tide began in Venezuela in 1999 and shaped politics in the other parts of the continent through the early 2000s. Meanwhile, in certain countries the aftermath of these revolutions resulted in conflict and wars, including various post-Soviet conflicts that remain frozen to this day as well as large-scale wars, most notably the Yugoslav Wars which led to the Bosnian genocide in 1995.[21][22]

  1. ^ Kochanowicz, Jacek (2006). Berend, Ivan T. (ed.). Backwardness and Modernization: Poland and Eastern Europe in the 16th–20th Centuries. Collected studies: Studies in East-Central Europe. Vol. 858li. Aldershot: Ashgate. p. 198. ISBN 978-0-7546-5905-1. Within the communist world, certain strata of population were particularly sensitive to Western influences. Late communism produced sizable, specific middle classes of relatively well-educated professionals, technicians and even highly skilled blue-collar workers. These classes had no attachment whatsoever to Marxist–Leninist ideology, while they became attracted to the Western way of life. Many members of the ruling 'nomenklatura' shared the same sentiments, as Western consumerism and individualism seemed more attractive to them than communist collective Puritanism. There were two very important consequences of this, one economic, and the second political. The economic one was the attractiveness of consumerism. The political consequence was the pressure to increase the margins of political freedom and public space.
  2. ^ Cross, Gary S. (2000). "1: The Irony of the Century". An All-consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-2311-1312-0. For East Europeans, the promise of mass consumption was preferable to the nightmare of solidarity even if it meant also the dominance of money and the private control of wealth. In reality, the fall of communism had more to do with the appeals of capitalist consumerism than political democracy.
  3. ^ Gehler, Michael; Kosicki, Piotr H.; Wohnout, Helmut (2019). Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism. Leuven University Press. ISBN 978-9-4627-0216-5.
  4. ^ Nedelmann, Birgitta; Sztompka, Piotr (1 January 1993). Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-3-1101-3845-0.
  5. ^ Bernhard, Michael; Szlajfer, Henryk (1 November 2010). From the Polish Underground: Selections from Krytyka, 1978–1993. Penn State Press. pp. 221–. ISBN 978-0-2710-4427-9.
  6. ^ Luciano, Bernadette (2008). Cinema of Silvio Soldini: Dream, Image, Voyage. Troubador. pp. 77ff. ISBN 978-1-9065-1024-4.
  7. ^ Grofman, Bernard (2001). Political Science as Puzzle Solving. University of Michigan Press. pp. 85ff. ISBN 0-4720-8723-1.
  8. ^ Sadurski, Wojciech; Czarnota, Adam; Krygier, Martin (30 July 2006). Spreading Democracy and the Rule of Law?: The Impact of EU Enlargemente for the Rule of Law, Democracy and Constitutionalism in Post-Communist Legal Orders. Springer. pp. 285–. ISBN 978-1-4020-3842-6.
  9. ^ Putz, Catherine (16 December 2016). "1986: Kazakhstan's Other Independence Anniversary". The Diplomat. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  10. ^ Yakubova, Aiten (6 April 2020). "Collapse of the Soviet Union: National Conflicts and Independence". Socialist Alternative.
  11. ^ "Constitutional Instability in Ukraine Leads to 'Legal Turmoil'".
  12. ^ Antohi, Sorin; Tismăneanu, Vladimir (January 2000). "Independence Reborn and the Demons of the Velvet Revolution". Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath. Central European University Press. p. 85. ISBN 9-6391-1671-8.
  13. ^ Boyes, Roger (4 June 2009). "World Agenda: 20 years later, Poland can lead eastern Europe once again". The Times. Retrieved 4 June 2009.
  14. ^ Roberts, Adam (1991). Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions. Albert Einstein Institution. ISBN 1-8808-1304-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 January 2011.
  15. ^ Sztompka, Piotr (27 August 1991). "Preface". Society in Action: the Theory of Social Becoming. University of Chicago Press. p. 16. ISBN 0-2267-8815-6.
  16. ^ "Yugoslavia". Constitution. Greece: CECL. 27 April 1992. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
  17. ^ Yoon, Dae-kyu (2003). "The Constitution of North Korea: Its Changes and Implications". Fordham International Law Journal. 27.
  18. ^ "A Day That Shook The World: Cold War officially ends". The Independent. 3 December 2010.
  19. ^ Service, Robert (2015). The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991. Macmillan.
  20. ^ Findlay, Trevor (1995). Cambodia: the legacy and lessons of UNTAC (reprinted 1997 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 96. ISBN 0-1982-9185-X.
  21. ^ Kenney, Padraic (2006). The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989. pp. 3, 57.
  22. ^ Glazer, Sarah (27 August 2004). "Stopping Genocide". CQ Researcher. 14 (29): 685–708.