Revolutions of 1989

Revolutions of 1989
Part of the Cold War
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
Date	9 March 1989 – 27 April 1992 (3 years, 1 month, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location	Europe (especially Central Europe, then South-East and Eastern Europe) China Russia Communist countries in other parts of Europe and the world
Causes	Political repression Religious persecution Poverty and corruption State murder
Goals	Democracy National self-determination Free elections Right to recall of elected officials Political freedoms Human rights Labour rights
Methods	Protests, various
Result	Dismantling of the planned economies and privatisation of publicly owned industry Transfer of power to capitalist governments in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Albania End of the Cold War German reunification Violent transfer of power to a capitalist government in Romania End of the Soviet Union as a superpower Breakup of the Soviet Union New states created from former Soviet Union Formation of the Russian Federation (major cause) Beginning of the first Post-Soviet conflicts Breakup of Czechoslovakia Breakup of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars Violent suppression of the Chinese democracy movement Dissolution of the Warsaw Pact Withdrawal of Soviet military troops from Afghanistan Collapse of Communism in Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Somalia and Yemen The North Korean famine Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia ends Yemeni unification Integration of most former Warsaw Pact members into NATO and the European Union. Intensification of the process of European integration The Congress Party in India adopts neoliberal reforms in 1991 Economic liberalization begins in China and Vietnam Skepticism about Communism all over the world associated with decreasing support for Communist and left-wing parties, especially in Europe Expansion of the Internet into the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe The spread of American culture and capitalism to previously sealed-off Communist countries, such as the entry of McDonald's into Russia and China in 1990.
Parties to the civil conflict
Citizens of Eastern Bloc nations
Also known as: Fall of Communism, Fall of Stalinism, Collapse of Communism, Collapse of Socialism, Fall of Socialism, Autumn of Nations, Fall of Nations, European Spring

The Revolutions of 1989 were part of a revolutionary wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s that resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. The period is sometimes called the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term "Spring of Nations" sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848.

By the late 1980s, people in the Caucasus and Baltic states were demanding more autonomy from Moscow, and the Kremlin was losing some of its control over certain regions and elements in the Soviet Union. In November 1988, Estonia issued a declaration of sovereignty, which would eventually lead to other states making similar declarations of autonomy.

The Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 had major political and social effects that catalyzed or at least partially caused the revolutions of 1989. One political result of the disaster was greatly increased significance of the new Soviet policy of glasnost. It is difficult to establish the total economic cost of the disaster. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion rubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.

Momentum towards full blown revolution began in Poland in 1989 and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. 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 the pressure for change. Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country whose people overthrew its Communist regime violently, whereas the regimes in Romania and in some other countries inflicted violence on the population. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 failed to stimulate major political changes in China, but powerful images of courageous defiance during that protest helped to spark a precipitation of events in other parts of the globe. On the same day, 4 June, Solidarity won an overwhelming victory in a partially free election in Poland, leading to the peaceful fall of Communism in that country in the summer of 1989. Hungary dismantled its section of the physical Iron Curtain, leading to a mass exodus of East Germans through Hungary, which destabilized East Germany. This led to mass demonstrations in cities such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990.