23. The collapse of communism in the Eastern European

• Apr 1989 – Poland ends its ban on Solidarity 
• Jun 1989 - Free elections are agreed in Hungary; overwhelming election victory by Polish Solidarity candidates 
• Jul 1989 - Solidarity is invited to form a coalition government 
• Sept 1989 - Hungary permits East Germans to enter Austria via Hungary 
• Oct 1989 - East German leader Eric Honecker resigns
• Nov 1989 - Czechoslovakia opens its border to allow access to Western European states; the Berlin Wall is brought down 
• Bicameral legislature – a legislative body which is divided into 2 houses, or assemblies, but is collectively charged with making laws 
• East Germany – When the train stopped in the East German city of Dresden, unauthorised people tried to board the train, causing chaos and overcrowding, and leading East German police to beat members of the crowd. 

  The number of demonstrators agitating for change increased dramatically throughout October, nearing 100,000 in cities such as Leipzig.

  Despite the announcement from Krenz about democratic reforms, demonstrations continued; on 4 November alone, an estimated 300,000 people congregated in Leipzig and 500,000 in Berlin, demanding immediate change. 
• Charter 77 – a manifesto written by Vaclav Havel to call attention to human rights violations within Hungary. It used the Helsinki Acts against the repressive measure of the Hungarian government, reminding the government that, as a signatory, it had agreed to respect the civil, social and cultural respects of its people. Initially, there were 243 signatories, and Havel sent it to Deutsche Welle radio and West German television, knowing this would make it known in East Germany. 
• Vaclev Havel (1936-2011) – began life as a writer and philosopher, but Czechoslovak censorship led him to become a dissident who spoke out against the communist regime, After the publication of Charter 77, he was imprisoned for four years, but this didn’t change his view. When the demonstrations of 1989 began, he quickly emerged as the leader of the opposition, and became Czechoslovakia’s president in December 1989. 
• The Brezhnev Doctrine endured into the 1980s
• When MG came to power in 1985, change was clearly afoot in EE
• The satellites to the east faced the same problems as the USSR did – economic instability, and lack of consumer goods
• MG was looking for ways to divest the USSR of its responsibilities to other comm countries
• It cost the Soviets tremendous sums of money over the years and resulted in the USSR becoming a debtor nation
• MG’s promised reforms and rejection of the Brezhnev Doctrine weren’t welcome news to the Party leaders in EE
• Intervention from Moscow was always a concern, but it proved them with support and the knowledge that their regimes would continue 
• The changes brought by MG threatened the stability of apparatchiks in Soviet satellite states in EE
• Traditionally, there had been 2 changes that EE states couldn’t make 
• They couldn’t challenge the authority of the Communist Party
• They couldn’t leave the Warsaw Pact
• The circumstances in EE were changing as rapidly as those in the USSR
• The Soviet gov. that had been willing to crush revolutions in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981 was no more 
• If the Soviet Union was unwilling to uphold the above principles, the comms in EE lacked the authority to enforce their will, and public opinion prevailed 
• The end of comm in EE developed from the USSR
• The only real generalisation that can be made was that, by the end of 1989, only Albania remained comm among EE countries