The Collapse of Communism and The Revolutions of 1989
I. The unexpected happens
II. Causes (I): problems in the Communist regimes
III. Causes (II): the Gorbachev effect
IV. Nonviolent revolutions: the events of 1989

"Despite [all the] problems, liabilities, and handicaps that the Soviet Union incurs from its continuing imposition of Communism on East Central Europe, there is no signal that Stalin’s heirs are prepared to retreat from it, nor any flagging of their political will to dominate the area."
Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II (first edition published 1989)

map:  events in Eastern Europe, 1989-1990

…history started to accelerate at a giddy pace…In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks; perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days.
Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern, p.19, 78

What was most striking [in the revolutions of 1989] was not the language of nationhood. That was wholly predictable. What was striking was the other ideas and words that, so to speak, shared top billing. One of these was “society”…A concept that played a central role in opposition thinking in the 1980s was that of “civil society”…It contained several basic demands. There should be forms of association, national, regional, local, professional, which would be voluntary, authentic, democratic, and first and last, not controlled or manipulated by the Party or Party-state. People should be “civil”: that is, polite, tolerant, and above all non-violent. Civil and civilian. The idea of citizenship had to be taken seriously.
Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern, pp.145-147

Causes for the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. long-term economic decline
2. political sclerosis in the Communist parties
3. a change in Soviet policy: the “Gorbachev effect”
4. citizens’ movements “from below,” e.g. Solidarity in Poland, Monday demos in East Germany(see Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern)

legitimacy | delegitimation
shortages
“they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work” (Polish wisecrack)
nomenklatura
“Little Stalins”: Husák (CZ), Honecker (DDR), Ceausescu (Romania)
playing the nationalist card to survive the end of Communism: Milosevic (Serbia), Tudjman (Croatia), and the breakup of Yugoslavia

dissident intellectuals
KOR (Poland): Committee for the Defense of Workers
Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia) | Helsinki Final Act, human rights (1975)
Václav Havel
problems in building opposition:
     1. repression
     2. disconnect between workers, dissidents, church (PL)
     3. “safety valves” (Polish migrant labor, east German pensioners)

Poland: Solidarity (Solidarnosc) | trade union (at first unofficial and illegal)
alliance: 1. workers | 2. dissident intellectuals | 3. Catholic Church
Lech Walesa
Gdansk shipyards
John Paul II (Cardinal Wojtyla)
1980: right to strike
1981: martial law (the Polish Winter)

Brezhnev doctrine: military intervention to defend Communist regimes, esp. Warsaw Pact (Prague 1968)
"Sinatra doctrine": “I Did It My Way”
“We now have the Frank Sinatra doctrine. He has a song, ‘I Did It My Way.’ So every country decides on its own which road to take.”
--Soviet foreign minister Gennadi Gerasimov, on “Good Morning America,” October 1989
note the date:  after the Hungarian and Polish elections; sending a signal to the “Little Stalins” in DDR, CZ, elsewhere

breakup of the USSR:
1. as the last act in the process of the breakup of European empires
2. as the unintended consequence of a final attempt to reverse the sclerosis of the Communist part

Mikhail Gorbachev
Soviet in invasion of Afghanistan (1979), war against Muslim insurgents in Afghanistan | decline of the Red Army
Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident (1986)
perestroika = economic restructuring
glasnost = openness--publicity, information, and criticism
(recall Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" in CZ, 1968)
Law on State Enterprises (1988)
free elections to 1/3 of Congress of People’s Deputies (1989)
renunciation of communist Party’s monopoly of political power (1990)
Boris Yeltsin
breakup of the Soviet Union (December 1991)
"katastroika"

map:  the Soviet Republics (the last of the empires in Europe)

Garton Ash: “refolution”
1. Poland in 1989: long-term, revolution from below, negotiated transition
     round table talks w/Solidarity
     Solidarity wins summer election
     August: first non-Communist prime minister
2. Hungary in 1989: more of “reform from above”
     dismantling of barbed wire on Austrian border, allowing East German tourists to leave
     reburial of Imre Nagy (commemoration of Hungarian revolt of 1956)
3. East Germany in 1989: rapid revolution from below
     “Monday demonstrations” in Leipzig
     opening of the Berlin wall: November 9, 1989
     German unification: October, 1990
     "Wir sind das Volk" = "We are the people." (we--not the party or the state)
     "Wir sind ein Volk" = "We [all Germans] are one people."
4. Czechoslovakia in 1989: the “velvet revolution”
     Václav Havel becomes first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia