Three months that changed the world
9 Oct More than 70,000 East Germans march through Leipzig in the country’s biggest anti-Communist demonstration. The regime threatens a military crackdown but backs down when faced with the large number of protesters. By month-end, 300,000 people are calling for an end to the regime.
9 Nov The Berlin Wall falls. East Berliners flood through to West Berlin after a senior communist official says on television that the regime plans to allow free travel to the West and mistakenly says that it is effective immediately. Reunification comes 11 months later.
10 Nov Bulgaria’s Communist leader Todor Zhivkov is ousted by his own politburo in a bloodless coup approved by Moscow. This came after mounting opposition to the regime and demands from the streets for political reforms.
17 Nov Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” begins after riot police suppress a peaceful student demonstration in Prague. Three days later, the number of peaceful protesters assembled in the city’s streets swells to 500,000.
27 Nov Millions of Czechs stage a two-hour general strike as the Communist regime teeters on the brink.
16 Dec Serious rioting breaks out in the Romanian city of Timisoara in protest against the arrest of a religious minister accused of delivering sermons that are critical of dictator Nicolai Ceausescu’s hardline communist government. Riots last five days. Anti-Ceausescu demonstrations spread throughout the country and police and army obey orders to shoot protesters.
22 Dec The Romanian military changes sides. Army tanks and crowds storm Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest in an attempt to detain Ceausescu and his wife. They escape via a helicopter waiting for them on the roof of the building.
25 Dec The army arrests Ceausescu and his wife. On Christmas Day, television shows the couple facing a hasty trial before being taken out of the court into a yard where they are shot dead in a summary execution. An interim national salvation council assumes power. Romania’s first free elections are scheduled for the following May.
29 Dec Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech playwright who is acclaimed in the West but held under house arrest by the former communist regime is made Czechoslavkia’s first post-communist President.
My favoite part in this general sequence is when the dictator and his wife in Romania were put against a wall and machinegunned by their own troops.