29.2 The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
If the Soviet Union were to realize the goals of perestroika, it had to be willing to forsake its longtime domination of Eastern Europe. President Mikhail Gorbachev realized that the costs of maintaining the massive Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe were no longer tolerable. On his visit to the US in December 1988, Gorbachev made a startling - and welcomed - speech at the United Nations. The Soviet Union, he stated, would unilaterally cut its military forces in Eastern Europe. It would reduce its overall troop presence by 10% (some 500,000 soldiers) and cut its tank forces by 25%. This announcement was received in both the East and West as signaling a major change in Soviet European policy. Later in the spring and summer of 1989, on visits to France and West Germany, Gorbachev spoke of a future "common European home" in which armaments and alliances should be eliminated. As movement towards political reform accelerated in Poland and Hungary, it became clear that the Brezhnev Doctrine would not be implemented. There would be no repeat of the military interventions of 1956 and 1968.
What follows is a very simple review of the momentous events that took place in Eastern Europe in 1989. When the year began, the Brezhnev Doctrine was still in place. The Marxist-Leninist regimes seemed secure. The overwhelming presence of the Soviet army - so much a feature of the Eastern European setting for the previous 44 years - assured continued Soviet hegemony. By the end of the year, Communism had been repudiated and replaced by new governments pledging transition to democracy. The Berlin Wall had come down, and Germany was moving to reunification. In December, Gorbachev and US President George Bush met in Malta and declared the Cold War over.
Poland
Facing an intensifying economic crisis, the government of Polish Communist party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski abandoned its hard-line position and entered into discussions with Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity labor movement. In April 1989, Jaruzelski and Walesa came to an historic agreement. Solidarity would be legalized and elections for a new national parliament would be held.
The first free elections in a Communist country of Eastern Europe in over forty years took place in Poland in June. In an overwhelming rejection of the Communist Party, candidates from Solidarity won one-third of the seats in the Sejm (parliament) and 100% of the seats in the newly created Senate. Walesa urged the Polish people to continue cooperation with Poland's Communist leadership as the new legislature sought to solve the nation's economic problems. In July with Walesa's endorsement, the new parliament elected Jaruzelski President of Poland's new government. Later in August Jaruzelski agreed to appoint Walesa's candidate, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity activist, as Prime Minister as long as the Communists retained control of several ministries including those of defense (army) and interior (security police). For the first time in over 45 years, Poland had a government in which the key leadership positions were not held by Communists. In 1990 Walesa, former shipyard electrician and founder and leader of Solidarity, was elected President of Poland in that country's first free presidential election.
In the US the Bush administration responded to the situation with guarded optimism that events in Poland might be indicative of a significant new direction for the peoples of Eastern Europe. On a visit to Poland and Hungary in July President Bush acclaimed the significant political and economic reforms being attempted in both countries and pledged continued US technical and financial support.
Hungary
In 1989 Hungary was far ahead of its neighbors in the movement for reform. The once hard-line Communist regime headed by Janos Kadar since 1956 had permitted economic experimentation since 1968. Decentralization, limited private enterprise, and profit motive had created an economy responsive to market forces and a high standard of living. Hungarians also enjoyed a greater degree of personal freedom than did others of their Eastern European counterparts. Not fearing their own people, the Hungarian Communists read the winds from the Moscow and took new reform initiatives. In January the freedoms of assembly and association were legalized, enabling the emergence of independent political parties. A new constitution with a bill of rights, separation of powers, and no guaranteed political role for the Communist party was drafted. In May, Hungary demilitarized and opened its border with Austria. Reformers in the Communist Party compelled Kadar to resign in favor of the more liberal leadership of Karoly Grosz. Pledged to permit open elections for a new national parliament, the Hungarian Communists sought to build popular support by distancing themselves from the past. In October they abolished their militia, renounced Marxism and renamed themselves the Hungarian Socialist Party. Earlier in July, a court exonerated Imre Nagy, leader of the 1956 Revolution, declaring him acquitted of the treason for which he had been executed in 1958. Nagy's body was reburied with full state honors as a national hero.
East Germany
Reminiscent of the summer of 1961, the summer of 1989 saw thousands of East Germans begin a human exodus to West Germany. Critical of the repression by the East German Communist regime, the East Germans sought greater freedom by traveling first to Hungary. Attracted by Hungary's open border with Austria, it was relatively simple for East Germans to cross into Hungary. In spite of protests by the East German government, Hungary permitted the Germans to pass through to Austria. Austria provided the refugees with rail and bus transportation to West Germany. West Germany, which regarded all Germans as West German citizens, permitted the refugees easy entrance and provided necessary relief. The Soviet Union responded to the situation with concern.
The flood of East German refugees into Hungary continued unabated into October. Additional East Germans crowded into the West German embassy compounds in Warsaw and Prague, prompting a serious crisis for the hard-line government of Communist Party leader Erich Honecker. Ill and aging, Honecker had ruled East Germany since 1976. In 1961 as security chief he had supervised the building of the Berlin Wall. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans took to the streets of Leipzig, Dresden, and East Berlin demanding reforms. In spite of police resistance, the demonstrations continued to grow under the leadership of a coalition of anti-Communist groups calling itself New Forum. The failure of Communism in East Germany was becoming increasingly evident to more moderate elements within the party leadership. In early October, Gorbachev made a state visit to Berlin for the celebration of East Germany's 40th year of statehood. The thousands of East Germans mobilized for the ceremonies paraded past Honecker and Gorbachev and began unscripted chanting “Gorby! Gorby! Gorby!” – clearly showing their enthusiasm for a Communist leader who would allow reform. In their meetings Gorbachev urged Honecker to make reforms easing the repressive nature of the Communist regime. There would be no Soviet intervention to save East Germany. Honecker apparently remained unmoved. Then, in an unexpected turn of events a week later, Honecker resigned and was replaced by Egon Krenz as party head. Recognizing the new reality, Krenz promised to relax travel restrictions and make other reforms.
The world was stunned when East Germany opened its borders with West Germany. Most dramatic was the opening of the Berlin Wall. The initial opening of the Wall came about by accident. On November 9th Krenz's cabinet had decided to relax travel restrictions between East and West Germany. The official announcement was to have been made on November 10th. Word of this was passed to Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Party leader, but he was not informed of the November 10th date. Mentioning the new policy in a press conference, Schabowski was asked when the border would be opened. He responded, "As far as I know effective immediately, without delay" (Gaddis 246). That evening, his remarks, reported over West German television, were heard across Berlin. Thousands of East Berliners flocked to the Wall. West Berliners did the same. When the East German border guards asked what to do, their superiors told them to open the crossings. East Germans flooded into West Berlin, virtually closed to them since 1961. Jubilant crowds of Berliners from both sides of the border joyously intermingled and danced on the Wall while border guards looked on in curious bewilderment. Krenz later announced the opening of a new dialogue with West Germany and legalization of opposition political parties.
In December Krenz himself and the entire Communist leadership resigned in the face of huge demonstrations reacting to revelations that Honecker and others had lived in luxury and had hidden millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. East German leadership passed to new Party boss, Gregor Gysi, Prime Minister Hans Modrow, and other reform Communists. More of a reformist than Krenz, Gysi promised to hasten reforms and permit free elections for a new parliament in the spring of 1990. Honecker was arrested and charged with corruption and abuse of power. Modrow met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Dresden and announced agreements intended to move the two Germanys closer together. Later in December both leaders attended ceremonies in Berlin opening the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic center of Berlin. It was clear that people of both Germanys favored reunification of the long-divided country.
The "Sinatra Doctrine"
The Soviet Union, beset with the problems of a failing economy, announced that the Brezhnev Doctrine of enforced Communist solidarity in Eastern Europe had been an ill-conceived concept in violation of international law. In a joking remark, a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, announced that the Brezhnev Doctrine had been replaced by the "Sinatra Doctrine." The Eastern European countries could do things "their way."
Czechoslovakia
Doing things “their way” was not the case in 1968 when Czechoslovakia experienced the application of the Brezhnev Doctrine. When reformist Communists under Alexander Dubček sought to move Czechoslovakia away from Moscow and assert greater freedom and independence, Brezhnev ordered Warsaw Pact tanks into Prague. The reforms of the "Prague Spring" were undone, and in 1969 the Soviets installed hard-liner Gustav Husak as the new Party leader. Husak would serve as party head and later as president until the end of 1989. Under Husak, Czechoslovakia became a model of Marxist-Leninist conformity to Moscow's vision of a properly subservient socialist state. For the other Eastern European states, the lesson of Czechoslovakia was clear. Behave. Stay in line.
But it was now 1989, and the liberal reformist spirit of Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968 was again in the air. Communism had not delivered on its promises. Instead it had become a stale, self-serving oppression perpetuated by the threat of Soviet tanks. And, in Moscow, Gorbachev, the commander of those tanks, was apparently no longer interested in using them. The Czechs took great interest in the developments in Poland, Hungary, and East Germany. In November, they acted.
Beginning on November 17, thousands of Czechoslovakians took to the streets of Prague and other cities demanding the resignation of the hard-line government of Communist Party chief Milos Jakes (in power since 1987). Inspired by events in East Germany, the Czechs rallied behind a hastily-created coalition of dissidents (largely intellectuals, artists, and writers) and reformers calling itself Civic Forum. Instrumental among the leaders of the democratic opposition was the popular dissident playwright Vlaclav Havel. (Havel, incidentally, had only recently been released from jail. He had been arrested in January for participating in an illegal demonstration.) Jakes initially responded by ordering riot police to break up the demonstrations, but the crowds grew ever larger as the days passed. With seemingly infectious goodwill and model behavior, the demonstrators, soon numbering in the hundreds of thousands, chanted and sang. On November 24, Alexander Dubček, the hero of 1968, addressed a crowd of over 500,000 in Prague's Wenceslas Square. The same day the Czech Communists, seeing no support for a hard-line response coming from the USSR, disavowed Jakes' leadership. He resigned in favor of more moderate Communists, but that was not sufficient. On November 27, millions of Czechoslovakian workers walked off the job in a two-hour general strike forcing the government to begin power sharing talks with Civic Forum. The Czech parliament revised the constitution removing the Communist party from its leading role in society. The new Communist government promised a transition to democracy but Civic Forum demanded action, not words. On December 8, the Communists agreed to relinquish power and President Husak resigned. At the end of December, the parliament unanimously elected Vlaclav Havel as President and chose Alexander Dubček as its speaker. Havel promised democracy, a market economy, the end of corruption, environmental revitalization, and an end to the Soviet military presence in his country. The "Velvet Revolution," as the Czech revolution was called, had triumphed. Communism in Czechoslovakia had been virtually shouted out of existence.
In early December, on his way to the Malta summit meeting, Gorbachev made a speech in Italy declaring the 1968 Prague Spring to have been an "acceptable movement for democracy, renewal, and humanization of society. It was right then, and it is right now" (Beschloss and Talbott 149). The Brezhnev Doctrine was indeed dead.
Bulgaria
Communism in Bulgaria fell almost without a push. In early November, some 4000 Bulgarians took to the streets of Sofia in that country's first ever demonstration of popular discontent. Within days the Bulgarian Communist chief, Todor Zhikov, resigned. Zhikov had been party leader since 1954 and President since 1971. An old-time Stalinist, he was believed immovable. He was replaced by a new government of moderate Communists led by Petar Mladenov. In the face of continued and growing demonstrations, Mladenov authorized multiparty participation in Bulgarian politics and called for free parliamentary elections in June 1990.
Rumania*
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe reached a dramatic and violent climax in December with the sudden overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania. In power since 1965, Ceausescu did not fit the mold of other Eastern European Communist leaders. Much like Napoleon the pig in George Orwell's fictional Animal Farm, Ceausescu blatantly built a brutal personal dictatorship supposedly based on Communist "principles." Basing his power on state terror exercised by an efficient and loyal security police force, the Securitate, he sought to homogenize Rumania's diverse population. Ethnic German and Hungarians lost their minority rights and were forced to adopt the Rumanian language and culture. He began a policy of leveling peasant towns and villages, forcing their populations to move into new prefabricated and shoddy agro-cities. In Bucharest he ordered the building of a massive and luxurious presidential palace befitting his stature as a man of the people. Acting independently of Moscow, he condemned Brezhnev's military 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia and hosted a visit by US President Nixon - the first ever by a US president to Communist Eastern Europe. In 1989 as Communism was collapsing around Rumania, Ceausescu publicly condemned Gorbachev for having betrayed Communism in the USSR and reassured his people that he would continue to lead them to a glorious Communist future. In late November, the cowed Rumanian Communist Party obediently and unanimously reelected him as its chairman.
The Rumanian revolution began on December 16 as an ethnic conflict. Rumanian Hungarians in the town of Timisoara began a protest against government policies intended to destroy their cultural identity. Troops and Securitate forces were dispatched to suppress the Hungarian dissent, and hundreds of demonstrators were killed. Alarmed and angered, Rumanians took to the streets of Bucharest and other cities in opposition to the Ceausescu regime. On December 21 at a staged pro-government public rally, Ceausescu, speaking from a balcony of the palace, blamed the disorder on Hungarian separatists. To his bewildered surprise, he was booed and jeered. The state-controlled television, providing live coverage of the speech, immediately cut the picture. Ceausescu retreated back into the palace. To quell the dissent he ordered troops to fire on the demonstrators. When they refused, he ordered the dreaded Securitate to fire on disobedient soldiers. Bucharest was plunged into civil war. Thousands of Rumanians risked their lives to support the rebel troops as fighting swept through the capital. It was estimated that some 7000 were killed. Ceausescu and his wife were reported arrested, escaped, and then were again arrested. On December 25, both were killed by a firing squad following "trial" by their military captors. To prove that the tyrants were dead their corpses were photographed and shown on Rumanian television. The fighting continued as the leaderless Securitate forces desperately fought to save themselves from their vengeful victims.
In an ironic twist, US Secretary of State James Baker let it be known that the US would not oppose Soviet military intervention in Rumania to stop the bloodshed and save the country from renewed dictatorship. The Soviets quickly dismissed the suggestion. As the US had only a few days earlier sent troops into Panama to capture its renegade dictator Manuel Noriega, one Soviet official told the American ambassador in Moscow that "It seems that we've turned the Brezhnev Doctrine over to you" (Beschloss and Talbott 171).
In Bucharest an unlikely coalition of moderate Communists, students, and military leaders, calling themselves the National Salvation Front, proclaimed themselves a provisional government. A former Communist, Ion Iliescu, was named interim president. The National Salvation Front pledged a political transition to democracy through multiparty elections to be held in May, 1990.
* Rumania or Romania? Under the Communist regime, Romania was commonly labeled Rumania. Once Communism was ended, Romania replaced Rumania.
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The Soviet Legacy in Eastern Europe
By New Year's Day 1990, the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe was over. The Soviet legacy, however, was not. The transition to democracy and a market economy would prove difficult, frustrating, and costly. New constitutions had to be written and promulgated. All countries lacked the political experience of multiparty participation, governmental accountability, and the parliamentary process of debate and compromise. The democratic concept of minority rights under majority rule was alien to the region, one of great multicultural and spiritual diversity. The collapse of socialism did not mean the immediate benefits of capitalism as there had been no practical experience with free enterprise for well over forty years. Inflation and unemployment ran hand-in-hand with profiteering. The command nature of centralized economic systems compelled to meet government-set goals and quotas had caused ecological devastation. The lack of air and water pollution codes had contaminated the skies and waterways with toxic wastes. Forests were destroyed and water resources poisoned. Environmental cleanup and reclamation would cost billions that the new democracies simply did not have. Then there was the legacy of the Red Army. Soviet military forces remained in each of the Warsaw Pact countries. All negotiated agreements with the USSR for withdrawal of those forces. Their evacuation would, however, be a gradual process taking years. With uncertainty about the future success of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika policies, the Eastern Europeans watched events in the USSR with concern and anxiety. Gorbachev's "loss" of Eastern Europe was not popular with Soviet Communist hard-liners. If Gorbachev were overthrown, could not future Soviet leadership send the troops back? Czech President Vlaclav Havel expressed it best in a speech before the US Congress in February 1990. "You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible but immensely complicated road to democracy" (Paterson et al. 685).
In July 1991, the six member nations of the Warsaw Pact met in Prague to sign an agreement dissolving their alliance. Formed in 1955, the Warsaw Pact was the military and political alliance of the Soviet Union with its Eastern European Communist satellites – East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany, the Warsaw Pact had become an anachronism. Soviet troops, long-time enforcers of the Pact, began withdrawing from Eastern Europe in 1990. With the meeting in Prague, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe symbolically came to an end. The Hungarian Prime Minister described the dissolution as the end of a bad marriage and the beginning of friendship.
How long the friendship would last came into question in the late summer of 1991. Soviet President Gorbachev was overthrown in a coup led by Communist hard-liners.
Sources for the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
Beschloss, Michael and Strobe Talbott. At The Highest Levels. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Paterson, Thomas et al. American Foreign Policy: A History Since 1900. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1991.