1989. A year that seems so insignificant, yet for me and over 160 million people across 6 countries, this year signifies the year that these countries revolted against the communist regimes. Here are 5 countries who decided that enough was enough in 1989.
1: Czechoslovakia
Dubbed the “Velvet Revolution”, protests began on 17th November with a student march in Prague to commemorate the life of Jan Palach, a university student who set himself on fire 20 years prior as an act of protest to the communist regime. Over 50,000 students waved banners in the air demanding an end to the regime, shouted slogans such as “Strength in unity! Strength in unity!” and jingled their keys in the air as symbols of keys to freedom. The protest ended with water guns being deployed, secret police brutally using police batons to disband groups of protestors and rumours that a student had died at the hands of the police, which thankfully turned out to be false.
Over multiple weeks of protests, with over 200,000 people taking to the streets of Prague on 21st November, as well as 30,000 people in Brno, finally, on 28th November 1989, the Czechoslovakian Communist Government relinquished all its power over the country, ending over 40 years of communist rule without a single life lost.
2: Romania
The story of the Romanian Revolution begins on 14th December, with a small local protest in Timisoara over the decision to evict Reverend Laszlo Tokes. The protests grew in number and in violent nature, however, after President Nicolae Ceausescu, ordered Securitate forces (Romania’s secret police) to restore order and evict Tokes.
Tensions continued to boil up to 21st December, when Ceausescu organised a public rally to try to gain back the support of his people, however, people fled from the square where the rally was held after protesters clashed with forces, who utilised tear gas, water jets and even guns against crowds of protesters.
Protest of such nature continued over the following days, with violent exchanges of gunfire between forces loyal to Ceausescu and revolutionary forces, with the conflict coming to an end on Christmas day, when Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who had been previously captured, were sentenced to death for their crimes and publicly executed on television. Overall, over a thousand people were killed during the revolution, marking it as one of the deadliest revolutions of the decade.
3: Poland
Political unrest began at the start of the decade in 1980, where food price increases by the government led to widespread unrest across the working-class of Poland, with worker strikes seen in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. With pressure from Moscow, the government responded to this through deploying harsher measures, such as martial law being imposed, however ideas of rebellion against the system were continued by the underground organisation Solidarity, which had been forbidden by the government.
After widespread labour strikes in 1988, which led to an increase of 40% in food prices, the government gave in and began negotiations with Solidarity. On 6th February 1989, Solidarity participated in discussions with the government, and an agreement was made that free elections would be held. Poland’s first free elections resulted in Solidarity gaining 99 out of 100 in the senate and a majority in the lower house in a “landslide victory”. The struggles of Poland under the regime came to an end on December 29th, when the political power of the communist government was removed and the country was renamed to the Republic of Poland.
4: Hungary
Hungary was also able to revolt against its regime, but under a much more peaceful premise. Hungarians had previously attempted to break away from the regime under leader Imre Nagy in 1956, which was unsuccessful and led to Nagy being executed by the government.
Signs of hope for freedom became evident on August 19th, when Hungarians and Austrians held a so-called “friendship picnic” on the border, which also allowed around 900 East Germans to flee the Soviet bloc through Austria, after which the foreign minister of Hungary announced that would not prevent people from fleeing by this border. As repressive regimes became less present in Eastern Europe, a future without the communist government in Hungary seemed more likely.
On the 1989 anniversary of Nagy’s execution, his reburial was attended by Imre Pozsgay, a then Communist Party member who would become crucial in Hungary’s non-violent transition to a democratic republic, which was attended by more than 200,000 people. He and others took control of the party and allowed multi-party elections to happen. Finally, on October 23rd, the Republic of Hungary was formed, signalling a successful transition from a communist state to a democracy in a peaceful manner.
5: East Germany
Unrest began in the mid-1980s, with demands for political change in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) growing more frequent. One such example of this unrest takes place in Leipzig, where people gathered every Monday in front of the Nikolai church for peace prayers.
From September 1989, people began gathering for candlelight vigils after the prayers in protest to the government, to which more people attended each week until October 9th, when a procession of over 100,000 people marched through the city as an act of peaceful protest.
These forms of protest then began to spread to other cities in East Germany, and eventually the number of demonstrations grew so large that the government of East Germany admitted to the lack of popularity of their government and forced the President Erich Honecker to resign on October 19th.
During this time, some East Germans fled the country through Czechoslovakia and Hungary. On November 9th, the government lifted the restrictions from travelling between East and West Germany, which was announced on television during an interview. Almost immediately, crowds gathered around the border checkpoints, demanding that they be let through, with the border being opened to avoid violence breaking out. As time went on, people brought sledgehammers to the wall to chip off parts of the wall as memorabilia, with most of the wall eventually being removed with exception to a few parts of the wall and watchtowers as memorials. The fall of the Berlin Wall signified an end to almost 30 years of separation and allowed for the reunification of East and West Germany into the economic powerhouse we know today.
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