Fall of Communism in Western Europe

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	Central and Eastern Europe
Caused by	Political repression Authoritarianism Religious persecution State murder Severe economic crisis
Goals	Democracy Civil liberty National self-determination Free elections Right to recall of elected officials Political freedoms Human rights Labour rights
Methods	Mass protests Civil unrest Riots Coup attempt (Soviet Union, in August 1991)
Resulted in	End of the Soviet Union as a superpower and its dissolution, bringing the Cold War to an end. Dissolution of Warsaw Pact and the Eastern Bloc. New world order as the United States becomes the world's sole superpower. Formation of the Russian Federation and 14 other states from former Soviet Union. Dismantling of the planned economies and privatisation of publicly owned industry. Transfer of power to capitalist governments in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Mongolia and Albania. Reunification of Germany. Breakup of Czechoslovakia. Breakup of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars. Economic liberalisation begins in China, Vietnam and India. Scepticism about Communism all over the world associated with decreasing support for various Communist and left-wing parties, especially in Europe and Asia: collapse of Communism in Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Burma, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Somalia and Yemen. The spread of Western culture and capitalism to previously sealed-off Communist countries including China, Russia and Eastern Europe. Expansion of Internet into former Communist countries. End of the Soviet–Afghan War. Suppression of the Chinese democracy movement.
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" that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848.

The events of the 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 influential 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, the trade union 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 destabilised East Germany. This led to mass demonstrations in cities such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990.