Collapse of Communism

I

Introduction

Collapse of Communism, the disintegration of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) between 1989 and 1991.

II

Causes of the Collapse of Communism

The basic causes were economic stagnation, the rise of nationalist resistance to the ideology of communism, attempts to increase democracy, and changes in the international political environment. These factors were all interlinked and the Soviet leadership failed to devise a sequence of reforms that would enable it to sustain its rule.

By the 1980s the Communist regimes were all coming close to economic stagnation, in part caused by enormous defence expenditures. The “Star Wars” initiative proposed by the United States president Ronald Reagan in 1983 threatened to provoke an arms race that would impose even greater burdens on people who had experienced improvements in their standard of living and wanted more.

There had been earlier attempts in Eastern Europe at reforming the Communist system from within (1956 in Hungary (see Hungarian Revolution) and 1968 in Czechoslovakia (see Prague Spring), but these had been repressed by Soviet leaders who feared losing the buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the West that had been established after World War II. What had changed by the mid-1980s was the emergence in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev, representing a new political generation, as general-secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

III

Gorbachev, Perestroika, and Glasnost

Initially Gorbachev’s first priority was reviving economic dynamism at home through greater discipline, but little was achieved. Consequently, he launched what he claimed was a “scientific” programme of economic restructuring (perestroika). This aimed at reducing the bureaucratic economic planning machine with greater reliance on the forces of the free market. When this ran into resistance from bureaucrats, he tried to mobilize pressure from below through greater transparency (glasnost), by increasing the powers of elected local soviets, and appealing to grass-roots support. What he wanted was a modern, civilized, democratic, prosperous, “European”, form of socialism. However, as the dislocation of the economy increased, the regime granted increasing opportunities for people to complain and protest. They took full advantage.

At the same time Gorbachev also tried to reduce the burden of military spending by reaching arms control agreements with the West. Here he had greater success and as reforms stalled at home, provoking increasing turmoil, he concentrated increasingly on foreign policy. He pulled Soviet forces out of Afghanistan, where they had been embroiled in a war since 1979, and then negotiated the historic SALT agreements with the US on the limitation and reduction of nuclear weapons, but this then constrained rather than widened his freedom to manoeuvre at home.

IV

Events of 1989

The pace of events quickened in 1989. In Poland at the beginning of the year round-table talks between the government and the independent trade union movement Solidarity led to a commitment to free elections in August, won by Solidarity. In the spring massive daily demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, in the Chinese capital Beijing, aroused hopes of wider change in the Communist world (though the protests were violently suppressed by the Chinese army at the beginning of June). Also during the spring Hungary began removing the worn-out barbed wire along its frontier with Austria. During the summer increasing numbers of East Germans travelled east to Hungary, circumventing the Berlin Wall, then wandered across from Hungary into Austria while others sought refuge in West German embassies in several East European countries. The local authorities did little to obstruct them, increasing the sense of a historic opportunity opening up. Protests gathered momentum more or less spontaneously. The old leadership in the German Democratic Republic appealed to Moscow for support, but the younger Gorbachev refused to contemplate a “Chinese solution” (as the East German leader Erich Honecker had put it,implying mass shootings). He knew that this would have ruined détente with the West and with that his plans for reform in the Soviet Union and throughout the Communist bloc.

The nerve of the old leaders in Eastern Europe began to crack. Gorbachev wanted new, like-minded reformist leaders. Honecker was quickly replaced by a reformer, Egon Krenz, but this failed to quell the protests. Mass demonstrations began, nervously at first, but then with increasing confidence when it became clear that they no longer faced brutal repression. They spread to the rest of Eastern Europe and one regime after another fell. On November 9 the East German regime effectively admitted defeat and opened the Berlin Wall. As people flooded across the divide, the East German government began talks with West Germany over reunification. The same day saw the fall of the long-serving Bulgarian Communist leader, Todor Zhivkov. Later in the month the new reformist Communist leadership in Hungary lost a referendum over the powers of the president. The Czechoslovak Communist leadership was forced to resign after several days of peaceful protests beginning on November 17 (the “Velvet Revolution”). The cycle ended on December 22 with the downfall of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, who was executed with his wife three days later. Within a space of four months communism in Eastern Europe had collapsed. The veteran civil rights protester and playwright Václav Havel, who had been jailed by the Communist regime in early 1989, was elected president of Czechoslovakia by acclamation of parliament at the end of December. The unemployed former shipyard worker from Gdañsk, Lech Wałęsa, became president of Poland the following year.

The impact of these events had further repercussions. The draught of democracy began to blow into Yugoslavia which, though not part of the Communist bloc since 1948, had been suffering from a decade-long, apparently insurmountable, economic crisis. Communist leaders in Croatia and Slovenia called for democratic elections, thereby worsening their already fractious relations with Serbia. As each republic within Yugoslavia sought to maximize its autonomy and prosperity, the country descended within 18 months into the most violent conflict in Europe since World War II, in which perhaps a quarter of a million people died (see Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War). Albania, which had also been outside the Soviet bloc, collapsed into anarchy, as the warlords of regional clans fought among themselves.