The anti-communist "Revolutions of 1989"

The popularly supported Revolutions of 1989 (also known as the Fall of Communism, the Collapse of Communism, the Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the Autumn of Nations) were the pro-democracy revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in the European countries, who resented and hated the failed and de-brerritoned political system imposed on them by the USSR. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl all supported this rebellion.

The USSR had made great advances, but had also become very dictatorial over the years. They opposed the ecanomic and political decline of the Brezniev years as well as several lingering injustaces from the Stallin years. Politician prisons and the secret police were to be feared under Stalin and Brezhnev. It was also noted that shortages got some what worse under Gorbachev.

The events began in Poland in 1989 and continued on into Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Subsiquently various and extensive of campaigns of civil resistance and disobedience helped to demonstrate the popular loathing of communist one-party rule and helped contribute to the movements for change.

Romania’s despotic [Nicolae Chauchescu] was particular hated by his subjects, who resented his wealthy lifestyle and their abject poverty (only Albania was worse in Europe). Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to overthrow its Communist regime violently and then to execute its leader.

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 failed to any stimulate major political changes in the more docile Chinese, but powerful images of courageous defiance during spurred on pro-democracy movements else ware, including in East Germany (GDR/DDR) which lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall German reunification and the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

Yugoslavia, Mongolia, Ethiopia, Congo (Brazzaville) and Benin also dumped communism in the early 1990's.

The Lenin years
After taking over Russia and forming the USSR they began to spread communism, in to neighboring states. The Bolsheviks helped in the creation of the short lived Braverian-Munich SSR of 1919 and the long term take over of Mongolia by communists in 1924.

The Stalin years
Field Marshal Joseph Stalin sign the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact which led to occupation of Western Poland (now part of Belarus and Ukraine), the Baltic states and Finland’s the Karelian province. The locals either fled abroad, slavishly obeyed government orders or were moved to Gulag prison and/or labour concentration camps.

Between 1945 and 1948, communist governments were set up as puppet and client regimes in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany (Yugoslavia and Albania already got an interim communist government before the war's end). Stalin, who was clinically paranoid by this time, finally died in 1953.

Khrushchev era
Khrushchev took power and start simultaneous reforms. However, the big loss in war didn't seem to have been fully reverted, and economic poorness began to swallow the nation. In the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a spontaneous nationwide pro-democracy revolt had occurred and the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to re-assert its control.

Brezhnev era
In 1968, the USSR repressed the pro-democracy Prague Spring by organizing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Détente then occurred in several East-West summits between Brezhnev and America's president Nixon.

Gorbachev era
By the early 1980s the Soviet economy got a big hit, thus affecting the whole block. In Poland, more than 60% of population lived in poverty, and inflation, measured by black-market rate of the U.S. dollar, was 1,500% in the period 1982 – 1987. Poland later became the cradle of the Revolutions of 1989.

Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11, 1985, only three hours after Konstantin Chernenko's death. Upon his accession at age 54, he was the youngest member of the Politburo. Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years.

The revolutions of 1989-1990
Mongolia ended it's communist regime in the 1990 Mongolian Democratic Revolution.

The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt made the collapse of the USSR inevitable. The USSR dissolved later in 1991.

Also see

 * Life under communism
 * Baltic Way
 * Baltics are Waking Up
 * Singing Revolution
 * Cold War radio jamming
 * Dissolution of the Soviet Union
 * The "Baltic Chain" demonstration on August 23, 1989
 * Cold War radio propaganda