The Fall of Communism in East Europe - Case Study Example

1989: The Fall of Communism in East Europe. The night of November 9, 1989 witnessed one of the most epoch-making events in the annals of Communism, or in the annals of world political history itself – the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Wall, the most powerful symbol of the Cold War, heralded the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and was the culmination of a train of events that irrevocably changed the political scenario in that part of the world. Right from the end of World War II in 1946, the dominant political force on the international stage was the Cold War, which saw a bi-polar world order under two Super Powers: the Soviet Union and the USA. In Winston Churchill’s memorable words, an “Iron Curtain” stretched from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, dividing Europe into two mutually exclusive camps – Communist and non-Communist. The two Super Powers stockpiled conventional and nuclear arsenals, targeted at each other, and periodically engaged in ‘hot’ hostilities, in proxy, in several parts of the world, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. An uneasy state of détente was maintained on both sides of the Iron Curtain in the 1970’s (Clark. Making the History of 1989. Introductory Essay). However, the winds of change were gathering, and a series of developments led to the dramatic fall of six Communist regimes in quick succession in 1989: Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. While the causes and the denouements of the collapse of Communism in these six states varied, several similarities may also be seen. The underlying cause of the Revolutions of 1989 was the transformation of the Soviet Union. If these changes can be attributed to any one man, that man is undoubtedly Mikhail Gorbachev. On assuming the General Secretary ship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Gorbachev initiated a series of far-reaching economic and political reforms, in response to a continuing, steep decline in the Soviet economy. He introduced political reform as openness, or glasnost, with the withdrawing of censorship and democratization of the Soviet polity. His perestroika, or restructuring of the economic structure, was designed to stop the drain on the Soviet economy by military expenditure, including military aid to Third World allies and the direct intervention in Afghanistan. Gorbachev emphatically signaled his departure from the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine,’ by which the Soviet Union was committed to military intervention in support of Communist regimes in its satellite states. Gorbachev commenced the disengagement of the Soviet Union from the arms race, and from military intervention in the Third World. These political and economic reforms pressurized the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe to follow suit. Gorbachev attempted to halt the political and economic decline of the Soviet Union by a rapprochement with the West, through dialogue and arms control. This took priority over shoring up the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, and the economic burdens of their indirect subsidies. In this context, the East European conservative leaders could no longer count on Soviet help in the suppression of the dissidents and the movements for change in their states. (Lévesque. Chapter 4). The Soviet withdrawal of the Brezhnev Doctrine in support of the Communist regimes in the satellite states under its hegemonic control encouraged the people to emphatically express their desire for change. The Marxist-Leninist ideology was no longer blindly accepted by the new generation, who leaned towards Western cultural influences, including consumerism and individualism. US President Ronald Reagan’s stepping up of military spending compelled the Communist states to keep pace, and this further adversely affected the economy. The stagnant economic growth of the 1980’s precipitated hardship, which increased the perceived attraction of the East Asian and Spanish models of economic development. The widespread, cross-border reach of the global media, particularly television, exposed the people to the attractions of the popular Western culture and its prosperity, in comparison with the economic decline of communism. Once the movement for change took root in Eastern Europe, it was accelerated by the so-called Domino Effect. The fall of the communist regime in one state weakened the legitimacy of other regimes: the movement was “contagious”. In all the six regimes, except Romania, the “pacifist quality,” both of the resistance, and of the reaction of the communist rulers, was remarkable. The moving spirit of the popular revolutions was nationalism, and a desire for autonomy, individual liberty and civil rights, and an improved economic climate (Kocka. 6). Poland may be considered the leader of the revolutions of 1989. Workers led the movement for change, and the crucial factors were economic issues, such as wages and price rises. Polish resistance to Communist rule dated back to 1956 and was led, from 1980, by the independent Trade Union, Solidarity, under the leadership of Lech Walesa. Martial law was declared in 1981, and Solidarity was banned. However, the deepening economic crisis of 1988 led to uncontrolled rise of food prices, and resulted in a wave of strikes across Poland, under the direction of Solidarity. Polish Prime Minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski was left without the prop of supportive Soviet military intervention, expressed by Gorbachev’s announcement of troop reduction in Eastern Europe at the United Nations in December 1988. Jaruzelski was forced to legalize Solidarity and legitimize its relations with the Communist regime. This led to the ‘Round Table Talks’ between the regime and the opposition, from February 6 to April 5, 1989. According to the Talks, Solidarity was granted legalization and freedom of social and political actions. Judicial and administrative reforms, and the dilution of media censorship, were also dealt with. The most significant outcome of the Round Table accords was the formation of a bicameral Polish Parliament. The Polish upper house, or Senate, was to consist of hundred freely elected members. In the Lower House, or Sejm, two-thirds of the seats would be reserved for the Communists. However, the voters could reject the candidates for these seats. The remaining one-third seats would be open to free election. Solidarity’s participation in the elections was the most significant aspect of the Round Table Talks. When the elections were held on June 4 and 18, Solidarity won a landslide majority, with 161 seats in the Sejm and 92 seats in the Senate. Many of the Communist leaders failed to gather enough votes to enter the Senate. The Communist regime was totally discredited. After much disagreement and negotiation, Jaruzelski was elected President, and Solidarity agreed to participate in a coalition government with the Communists, with Walesa as the Prime Minister. It must be noted that the Catholic Church, with a Polish Pope, had also contributed to the establishment of the first non-Communist majority government in Eastern Europe. (Clark. Poland). The fall of the Communist regime in Hungary can be traced to the 1956 Hungarian revolt against Soviet control, which had been crushed by armed might. This brutal suppression of a popular uprising by the Communist regime left a lingering resentment, and eroded the legitimacy of the government. In 1981, the intellectuals continued the resistance struggle through a clandestine journal, Samizdat, Throughout the 1980’s, students and opposition parties deliberately showed their resistance by publicly commemorating the anniversary of the execution of Imre Nagy, the leader of the 1956 revolt, on June 16, and the anniversary of the commencement of the revolt on October 30. The underground opposition movements then evolved into political organizations. The main opposition parties were: the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which had a nationalist agenda; the Alliance of Free Democrats, which emphasized the movement to restructure the economy along capitalist lines; the Alliance of Young Democrats, or FIEDSz, which was a predominantly student movement demanding accelerated reforms. In 1984, environmentalists and activists formed the Duna Kor, or Danube Circle, and organized massive demonstrations against the construction of the Gabičkovo-Nagymaros dam across the Danube, in 1988. This was a direct challenge to the power of the government. At the beginning of 1989, the reformist faction consolidated its strength in the Communist regime, and Imre Pozsgay, in an attempt to shore up rapidly declining support for the government, agreed to ‘rehabilitate’ the leaders of the 1956 Revolution, thus acknowledging it as a popular, legitimate uprising. A new constitution was drafted, and free elections called for. On 16 June, 1989, about 2000,000 Hungarians gathered for the reburial of Imre Nagy in a hero’s grave, in a symbolic demonstration of their support for independence from Soviet control. Victor Orban, the leader of FIEDSz, made a unilateral call for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Bowing to the popular movement, the government declared Hungary a Republic in October 1989. The first free democratic elections, which followed in May 1990, ushered a majority for the Democratic Forum and brought down the curtain on the Communist regime. (Clark. Hungary). The fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was termed the ‘Velvet Revolution.’ The roots of this Revolution dated back to the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968, when the reformist President Alexander Dubcek, attempted to liberalize politics. This reformation was crushed by the Soviet Union, which sent in Warsaw Pact troops, and purged the reformers from the Czechoslovakian Communist regime. The veterans of the Prague Spring regrouped in early 1989. January 15, 1989, witnessed a demonstration by over 5,000 people, in Prague’s Wenceslaus Square, in commemoration of the self-immolation of Jan Palach, a Czech student, in1968, as a form of protest against the suppression of the Prague Spring. The Government reacted with violence and arrested a large number of protestors. The demonstrations intensified into conflicts between the police and the protestors, and led to the arrest of Vaclav Havel, a prominent dissident. Despite the preventive measures taken by the Communist regime, mass demonstrations again took place on August 21, the anniversary of the 1968 invasion. This was followed by another large demonstration on November 17, which gave the decisive impetus to the Velvet Revolution. The Communist regime’s brutal tactics of suppression on this occasion, including the violent beating of student protestors, precipitated the fall of the regime. Nationwide strikes followed, and the opposition, spurred to concerted action, formed the Civic Forum in Prague, under Vaclav Havel, on November 19, and the Public Against Violence in Bratislava. On November 20, about 200,000 demonstrators gathered in Wenceslaus Square. The Communist regime bowed to pressure, and the government resigned on December 7, and transferred power to a coalition government under Vaclav Havel (Levesque. Chapter 10). The Communist regime in East Germany, under Eric Honecker, was one of the most repressive governments in Eastern Europe. The revolution in East Germany was particularly influenced by the popularity of Gorbachev, whose policy of arms reduction was appreciated, as the majority of the Cold War arsenal was based in Germany. The unfolding of events in East Germany was greatly influenced by Hungary deciding to ‘lift the Iron Curtain,’ in May 1989, by opening its western border with Austria. Thousands of East Germans, vacationing in Hungary, used the opportunity to take the Austrian route to West Germany. Hungary was bound by agreement with East Germany to prevent this exit. About 65,000 East Germans gathered in the West German embassy in Budapest, and Bonn pressurized Hungary to authorize their departure for West Germany. In June 1989, on a visit to West Germany, Gorbachev acknowledged “the people’s right to self-determination” (Levesque, 148). The failure of the Soviet Union to intervene at this juncture was interpreted by Hungary a sign of approval for granting access to West Germany. On September 10, Hungary opened its borders with West Germany and facilitated the exodus of East Germans. The migration problem immediately extended to Czechoslovakia. In the same month, the Neues Forum, or New Forum, was formed in opposition to the Communist regime, and coordinated street protests and demonstrations. On his visit to East Germany on October 6, Gorbachev expressed his support of the "process of the drawing together of East and West, through which all the walls of hostility, alienation and distrust between Europeans will fall" (Levesque. 155), and for reforms by the Honecker regime. Gorbachev’s popularity soared in East Germany. The Social Democratic Party in the GDR (SDP) emerged as East Germany’s first independent political party. On October 9, growing mass demonstrations in Leipzig put the East German Revolution on the world stage. The mounting pressure led to the resignation of Honecker, with Egon Krenz replacing him as the Party leader on October 17. Demonstrations increased, with the number of protesters reaching 3,350,000. The waves of emigration continued unabated, leading to protests from Czechoslovakia. The East German economy was on the point of imminent collapse. On November 9, Krenz, with Moscow’s tacit approval, announced the decision to partially open borders with West Germany (in return for financial help), to dilute the power of the Communist Party, to agree to free elections, and to permit trips abroad. A vast crowd spontaneously moved to the infamous Berlin Wall and pulled it down. The subsequent free election in March 1990, saw the end of the Communist regime in East Germany, and the Revolution culminated in the reunification of East and West Germany in October 1990. The Romanian Revolution was the only bloody transition of power in Eastern Europe. Doubts persist as to whether the overthrow of the Communist regime was the result of a popular insurrection, or a coup d’état within the Party. Nicolae Ceausescu, with the aid of the dreaded Romanian state police (the Securitate), ruled Romania with an iron hand. Ceausescu openly opposed Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, and was considered “an international pariah” (Levesque, 192). The first stirrings of protest in the spring of 1989, in Transylvania, with a large ethnic Hungarian population, were ruthlessly suppressed. Protests again amplified in December 1989, when the government attempted to transfer Lazslo Tokes, a pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church, and a popular human rights activist, from the city of Timisoara. Beginning with ethnic Hungarians, the protests grew to include workers and students. Ceausescu reacted by ordering the use of force, resulting in the massacre of as estimated 97 people. This exacerbated the scale of demonstrations against the Communist regime, and culminated in open protests at a political meeting in Bucharest, on December 21, which Ceausescu unsuccessfully attempted to stage-manage. Acknowledging defeat, Ceausescu made an abortive attempt to flee from Romania, but was apprehended, found guilty of genocide, and executed, along with his wife, on December 25, under the eye of television cameras. Ion Iliescu, a high-ranking member of the Ceausescu regime, emerged as the head of the obscure National Salvation Front, and formed a government which was slightly more liberal than the former regime, but remained authoritarian and Communist, and retained the Securitate. (Clark. Romania). Bulgaria was the smallest of the East European states, and was largely subsidized by the Soviet Union. Moscow’s own attempts to revamp the economy led to the cutting down of these subsidies. Todor Zhivkov, who had led the Communist regime in Bulgaria for three decades, was adept at following the Soviet lead in all policy making, and attempted his unsuccessful version of perestroika in Bulgaria. In 1987, Zhivkov attempted some reforms to introduce a new model of socialism. This ill-advised reorganization resulted in a marked decline in the economic growth rate and a massive foreign debt. The decline in standards of living fostered opposition movements. In the summer of 1989, opposition was further fostered by Zhivkov’s policy of ‘Bulgarianization,’ under which the Turkish minority in Bulgaria was forcibly made to adopt Bulgarian names and to renounce their language. This led to a deliberately engineered mass emigration to Turkey and invited international condemnation. On November 10, 1989, Zhivkov was forced to resign by a group within the Bulgarian Communist Party, led by the foreign minister, Petar Mladenov (Levesque. Chapter 9). However, the opposition continued to agitate for change, and combined to form the Union of Democratic Forces in December 1989. The new Communist regime bowed to the demand for political liberalization by granting legal status to Ecoglastnost, the opposition party of environmental activists, in December 1989, and later to the other parties under the umbrella of the Union of Democratic Forces. The first free elections in Bulgaria were held in June 1990, and resulted in the triumph of the reformed Communist regime, which retained power for another eighteen months (Clark. Bulgaria). The fall of the six Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, can definitely be traced to the momentous changes which took place in the Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev. Increasingly preoccupied with the economic crises in the Soviet Union, the East European Communist regimes were not a priority for Moscow. Lack of unequivocal support from Moscow left the leaders of the various Communist Regimes vulnerable to the pressures of popular opposition, which took the form of public, mass demonstrations. One of the remarkable characteristics of the events of 1989 was the speed at which the regimes collapsed. The revolutions ushered in changes in the political, economic and social scenarios of the liberated nations. Eastern Europe witnessed a tremendous revival of human and civil rights, and individual freedom. The collapse of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe in 1989 was a contributory factor towards the subsequent collapse of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. In all the six states, the Revolution of 1989 was a direct result of popular agitation for reforms, and can be considered a triumph of the human spirit. Works Cited. Clark, Elizabeth. Center for History and New Media. George Mason University. Making the History Of 1989. Introductory Essay. Retrieved on 6 April 2009 from < http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/exhibits/intro/originsofchange > Lévesque, Jacques. The Enigma of 1989. The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe University of California Press. Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford. © 1997 The Regents of the University of California. E-Scholarship edition. Retrieved on 6 April 2009 from < http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4q2nb3h6/ > Kocka, Jürgen. Public Lecture on March 4th, 2009 at UCLA by, Free University of Berlin, Visiting Professor, UCLA, History. The Collapse of Communism in Europe, 1989 Causes and Consequences. 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