HONOURS MODERN
HISTORY
The Fall of Communism
*In
the late 1960s the Cold War seemed to be at its worst. The Cuban
missile crisis was over, but the Vietnam War was at its peak, the
Prague Spring had been crushed, and the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed to
reverse Khrushchev's peaceful co-existence with the West and preclude
any further reform in the Soviet Sphere. However, the Sino-Soviet
Split meant that the USSR no longer controlled the entire Communist
world, and the Cold War became a three-sided struggle.
*In 1969 the United States under Richard Nixon and leaders of the
Warsaw Pact began talks to reduce tensions between the USA and
USSR. This was the beginning of a period of Détente that
lasted throughout the 1970s. Among its greatest accomplishments
were the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties: SALT I and SALT
II. These placed limits on both countries' nuclear arsenals.
*In July 1975 NASA and the Soviet space programme co-operated in the
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in which an American space capsule docked
with the Soviet space station, Soyuz. This may be considered the
end of the Space Race.
*The United States even shipped huge quantities of grain to the USSR
during the 1970s to prevent famines brought about by the failures of
collective farming.
*In West Germany, Chancellor Willy Brandt began a policy of Ostpolitik
upon his election in 1969 that attempted to improve relations with East
Germany and the Warsaw Pact.
*The United States even improved relations with China in the 1970s
following Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972. This also
encouraged the Soviet Union to maintain and improve Détente out
of fear of a Sino-American alliance. In 1979 the USA recognised
the People's Republic of China. Since then, thanks in part to
Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, China has become one of America's
main trading partners.
*Détente came to an end in 1979. The Soviet Union
supported a Communist revolution in Afghanistan in 1978 and then
invaded in 1979 to support the revolutionaries. The United States
began to support Pakistan (which in turn supported anti-Soviet
Mujahideen). In 1980 the President Carter boycotted the Summer
Olympics in Moscow and cut of grain shipments to the Soviet
Union. Ronald Reagan also opposed the compromises of the 1970s
during his 1980 election campaign.
*Between 1979 and 1985 the Cold War intensified again as Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher (and the new Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), the first
non-Italian pope since Adrian VI (a Dutchman) in 1523) took a strong
ideological stand against the Evil Empire of Communism.
*On the Soviet side, Yuri Andropov (1982-1984, former head of the KGB
and a strong opponent of any reform or democratisation ever since
witnessing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956) and Konstantin Chernenko
(1984-1985, who boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles) were
opposed to compromise with the West. During this period the arms
race re-intensified to a point where the USSR was spending a quarter of
its GDP on the military, which ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union.
*Within the Soviet Sphere, workers in Poland for Solidarity, a labour
union led by Lech Walesa that demanded greater freedom.
Solidarity was banned and in 1981 martial law was declared, but
Solidarity simply went underground, and created a 'secret state,' a
shadow government with the philosophy that if you act as if you are
free, then you will be free.
*In Czechoslovakia, playwright Vaclav Havel argued that if
totalitarianism is based on propaganda based on lies, then the weapon
against it is truth, no matter what the cost. Havel was banned
from the theatre, and went to work in a brewery, but his plays were
distributed in secret.
*In 1985 the Soviet Union's leaders chose a new General Secretary,
Mikhail Gorbachev. He had grown up on a collective farm and seen
the hardships of the peasants, and asked if their life was really any
different from serfdom.
*Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union began to work towards better
relations with the USA. He met several times with President
Reagan (who also visited Ronald Reagan visited the Berlin Wall in 1987
and in a speech said 'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'
*Gorbachev also began policies of perestroika (reform) and glasnost
(openness—limited freedom of the press). He also pulled the USSR
out of the expensive and unpopular war in Afghanistan.
*As Soviet citizens began to experience some freedom and to have more
exposure to the luxuries of the West (like LEvi's jeans, Pepsi-cola,
and McDonald's) they wanted reform to come even faster than the
government was allowing it to. The same was true in the Soviet
Union's satellite countries.
*In 1989 Solidarity was made legal in Poland again and won the 1989
elections in a landslide (in the Senate Solidarity won 99 out of 100
seats).
*Soon afterwards, Hungary elected a non-Communist government, re-buried
Nagy Imre with honours, and opened its border with Austria, and soon
people from all over Eastern Europe, especially East Germany, went to
Hungary, then Austria, then West Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
*In East Germany pressure for reform led to demands to allow free
travel between East and West Berlin, and when the government agreed
(but did not specify how it would work) jubilant crowds took matters
into their own hands. The flooded the checkpoints on 9 November,
1989, and within days, began tearing down the wall. On 3 October,
1990, Germany was re-unified.
*On 17 November, 1989 peaceful student protests in Czechoslovakia were
put down by riot police, but more people protested in the Velvet
Revolution. By the end of the month the Communist party promised
to step down and in December new elections were held. Alexander
Dubček was elected speaker of the federal parliament and Václav
Havel the President of Czechoslovakia. On 1 January, 1993, the
Czech Republic and Slovakia formally separated into two countries.
*Bulgaria also had a peaceful revolution in 1989-1990, but Romania did
not. In December 1989, Nicolae Ceauşescu (and his wife) who had
maintained a Stalinist state since taking power in 1965 were captured
by rioting mobs waving flags with the Communist emblem in the centre
cut out (the flag with the hole) and soon executed.
*In Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia within the USSR there had been
agitation for independence since 1987 in peaceful protests known as the
Singing Revolution, as they protests had begun with the singing of
nationalist songs at protests and music festivals. In the rest of
the Soviet Union there were other calls for reform and greater local
autonomy.
*In August 1991, hard-line politicians and military officers in the
Soviet Union attempted a coup, arresting Gorbachev. They did not
have the support of the people or many members of the government, and
the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (and
former mayor of Moscow) Boris Yeltsin led opposition to the coup, which
quickly collapsed. Gorbachev was released, but had lost his
authority.
*In August and September, 1991, all the republics of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (except Russia, although it also considered
it) declared independence from the USSR. On Christmas Day, 1991,
Gorbachev resigned. On the 26th, the USSR dissolved.
*Boris Yeltsin went on the serve as president of Russia until 1999,
during which time he oversaw democratisation, economic liberalisation,
and friendship with Europe and the United States, even supporting the
US in the 1991 war in Iraq.
*However, Russia also had problems: Chechnya demanded
independence, crime and unemployment rose, and as Russia declined in
world power, a new sense of nationalism led many Russians to desire a
return to their former status as a superpower, and Yeltsin's successor,
Vladimir Putin, despite initially being friendly towards the United
States has since come to oppose many American policies as well as the
expansion of NATO and the EU into former Soviet republics and
satellites. This was one of the causes of the 2008 invasion of
Georgia, which, despite bordering Russia and being a former Soviet
republic, had developed a democratic government and aligned itself
towards the West—seeking to join NATO and the EU. Control of oil
lines was another important motivation, as was helping two non-Georgian
ethnic groups (with fellow nationals in Russia) get their independence.
*Some former Soviet Republics continued to be politically dominated by
Russia. Ukraine’s government tended to have pro-Russian leaders,
but eventually the people of Ukraine tired of this, and in the 2004
elections chose Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-Western presidential
candidate. The vote was close, however, and the outgoing
pro-Russian government apparently rigged it so that Yuschenko’s
opponent won. Hundreds of thousands—perhaps a million—protesters
gathered in Kiev and other major cities, many of them wearing orange,
the colour of Yuschenko’s political party. From November through
January 2005, the Orange Revolution forced a recount of the votes and
placed Yushchenko in power.
*During the breakup of the USSR, Mongolia began to allow democracy,
although the Communist party remained in the majority until 1996.
*Albania, which had been isolated both from Communist and non-communist
countries in Europe allowed free elections in 1992 and the Communist
party was defeated.
*In 1989 Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia (which it had occupied for years) and in 1993 Cambodia became a constitutional monarchy.
*Other countries were less fortunate in their efforts to create democracy.
*In 1989, as revolution was begining in Eastern Europe, students,
intellectuals, and labour activists in China held a massive protest in
Tiananmen Square in Beijing near the old imperial Forbidden City (and
in several other cities).
*The protesters demanded democratisation and an end to totalitarian
rule. At first they even stood off the army as it tried to enter
Beijing—the most famous image of the protest was a man in a white shirt
standing in front of a column of tanks to stop them from entering the
Forbidden City. Ultimately the protesters were cleared out of Tiananmen
Square by soldiers with bayonets and tanks from the Red Army, which
even crushed cars and protesters. Between 2,000 and 5,000
protesters were killed.
*After the protests, the Chinese government backed off from some
discussion of allowing its people greater freedom, and in official
communist Chinese history, the protests never happened. The USA
and EU imposed a ban on arms sales to China after the protests that
still remains in place.
*The end of Communism was also a very bloody affair in Yugoslavia, a
land with many ethnic and religious groups. In 1991 Yugoslavia
broke into Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia separated, with
some fighting known as the Yugoslav Wars, of which by far the worst was
in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
*In March 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence.
However, Bosnia is an ethnically and religiously diverse place with
Croats (Catholic Slavs), Serbs (Orthodox Slavs), and Bosniaks (Moslem
Slavs). There are historic and religious sites that are important
to all three groups in the region. Furthermore, many Serbs
believe strongly in Pan-Slavism, which impelled them to seem control of
Bosnia (or at least a part of it) with the goal of re-uniting with
Serbia. Shortly after Bosnia declared its independence from
Serbia, Bosnian Serbs declared independence from Bosnia, as did Bosnian
Croats.
*The Bosnian Wars that followed lasted until 1995, and involved mass
slaughter based on religion and ethnicity called ethnic
cleansing. Croats killed Bosniaks and Serbs, Serbs killed
Bosniaks and Croats, and some Bosniaks even killed Serbs and Croats,
although the Bosniaks were the main victims of the struggle and the
Serbs the main perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and mass rapes.
The Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs both had support from Croatia and
Serbia.
*It is estimated that between 200,000 and 400,000 (or about one in
twelve) Bosnians died during the Bosnian Wars, and a number of Serbian
and some Croatian military officers have been accused of war crimes and
crimes against humanity as a result.
*Between 1996 and 1999, Albanian Moslems known as Kosovars in Kosovo
(part of Serbia) fought for their independence, but without immediate
success. On 17 February, 2008 Kosovo declared its independence,
and although Serbia did not recognise it, the United States and many
European countries (but notably not Russia) do. However, some
ethnic Serbs in Kosovo want independence from Kosovo so they can return
to Serbia.
*Serbia also allowed the peaceful separation of Montenegro (a primarily Orthodox, Slavic nation) in May, 2006.
*Today only the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea,
and Cuba are officially Communist states. Among those, China,
Vietnam, and Laos are reforming their markets to allow some capitalist
competition, and Cuba has occasionally experimented with a limited
amount of economic freedom as well.