The Wall Comes Down: 1989

FIRST CRACK

In December 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with outgoing U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his successor, George Bush. Gorbachev had decided that the Cold War must end -- and that Soviet control over the Communist bloc nations must be loosened. He told the peoples of Eastern Europe that they had the right of self-determination. But his listeners -- including those in the United States -- were skeptical of the Soviet response if non-Communist leaders were elected.

Miklos Nemeth

In Hungary, where Soviet tanks smashed an uprising in 1956, people were again growing angry. Economic reforms had met with disaster, and the Communist Party was losing control. In fear, the leadership promised more democracy -- and planned for multi-party elections. Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth went to Moscow to inform Gorbachev -- who didn't approve but promised no repeat of 1956.

Hungarian reforms included the rehabilitation of the 1956 uprising's leaders. Executed leader Imre Nagy and his comrades were given a public funeral, and the government declared the revolution justified. A month earlier, the Hungarian government made an even bolder move, taking down the barbed wire on its border with Austria and the West. The Soviet Union did nothing. Although travel was still not completely free, the Iron Curtain was starting to unravel.

POLAND

The Poles, like the Hungarians, were breaking with the communist system. Faced with a wave of political strikes led by the Solidarity opposition movement, the communist regime had given way. In early 1989, government leaders opened talks with Solidarity and were prepared to share power and discuss a shift toward democracy.

In June, elections were held -- and produced a stunning defeat for the communists. Solidarity won 99 out of 100 seats in the Senate. Within weeks, the first anti-communist prime minister in the Soviet bloc took office. At a Warsaw Pact summit in July, Eastern bloc leaders were divided. East Germany's Erich Honecker and Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu were alarmed by events in Poland and Hungary. Some say they even conspired to urge Soviet intervention.

At about the same time, U.S. President Bush visited Poland and Hungary, giving them moral support for democratic change -- but little else. Back in the United States, Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, assured his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, that the West would tread carefully in Eastern Europe and not exploit Soviet problems there.

EXODUS

In East Germany, Erich Honecker refused to admit there was anything wrong with his system -- but in reality, the country was rotting away. Pollution poisoned the air and water. The economy was running down. The police state provoked mass suspicion and stifled all initiative.

Erich Honecker

In the summer of 1989, East Germans rushed to take vacations in Hungary -- where the border with the West was weakening -- and besieged the West German Embassy in Budapest, demanding help to emigrate.

In Berlin, Honecker called the refugees moral outcasts and blocked further travel to Hungary. Desperate, the fleeing East Germans turned to Czechoslovakia -- and gathered at the West German Embassy in Prague. Refugees crammed themselves into the embassy and refused to leave -- until, under Soviet and West German pressure, Honecker consented to a face-saving deal: The refugees could go to West Germany, but only if their train crossed East German territory first. Then Honecker could claim he had expelled them and canceled their citizenship.

PROTEST

Some East Germans chose to stay and protest. Inspired by Gorbachev, they dreamed of turning their country into a democracy. Weekly demonstrations in Leipzig soon swelled into mass protests. Police tried to stop them, but the government was losing its nerve.

Only Honecker seemed confident of his country's future. As he welcomed Gorbachev to Berlin on the eve of East Germany's 40th anniversary in October 1989, he pretended not to notice when a group of communist youth marchers dropped their rehearsed slogans and began to chant "Gorby, save us!"

The Soviet leader's visit had in fact galvanized protests against the deeply unpopular Communist regime. Gorbachev suggested to Honecker that the way to stop public protest engulfing his government would be to introduce a German version of perestroika. Honecker would not listen -- he was planning to stamp out the new opposition. Some feared a repeat of the Chinese crackdown against dissidents earlier that year in Tiananmen Square. An internal plot was hatching against Honecker. A group in the East German Politburo had decided it was time for him to go.

TURNING POINT

A protest rally was planned for two days later in Leipzig. The East German army was on alert, and the city was in a state of emergency. As the demonstration began, 70,000 people were on the streets. Alarmed, the Soviet ambassador telephoned the commander of Soviet forces in the region -- and ordered them not to interfere. Local Communist Party leaders begged the opposition to talk. Then, without higher orders, officials pulled back the police and troops. The demonstration went off peacefully. For East Germans, this was the turning point.

Deserted by his allies, Honecker was voted out of power by the entire Politburo on October 17. Egon Krenz took charge, promising to implement democratic reforms -- and make it easier for East Germans to travel West, the issue that had set off the whole crisis. On November 1, he traveled to Moscow, where Gorbachev urged him to ease travel restrictions. Krenz offered East Germans new freedoms, but demonstrators wanted more.

REUNION

With street protests mounting, and thousands of people fleeing the country daily, East Germany was on the verge of disintegration. On November 9, East German Politburo member Gunter Schabowski told journalists in Berlin that restrictions on travel to the West would be lifted. The government meant the change to start the next day. But Schabowski mistook the timing -- and told reporters the change was immediate. The news flashed around the city. East Berliners rushed to see if the checkpoints in the Wall were really opening. Borders guards were baffled. They had only one order -- to stop anyone trying to escape. But the crowds were huge. Suddenly, the guards gave in and opened the barriers.

West Berliners arrived from the other direction and began to demolish the Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Across the Wall, two worlds had faced each other in arms. Now their enmity was dumped into history. Germany would be reunited. But Europe's revolution against communism was not yet done.

Conclusions: 1989-1991
REVOLUTION

As 1989 came to a close, the year of miracles continued. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, a bloodless "Velvet Revolution" forced the Communist Party from power and opened the nation's border to the West. By year's end, Prague Spring reformer Alexander Dubcek was elected speaker of the federal assembly, and playwright Vaclev Havel was named president.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets for days in 1989

In Romania, demand for change ignited violence. Nearly 1,000 people were killed in December as anti-government protesters battled forces loyal to communist leader Nicolae Ceausecu in the streets of Bucharest. Ceausecu and his wife tried to flee Romania but were captured, tried by court martial, and shot on Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held what came to be called the "seasick summit." On the second day, Gorbachev told Bush the Soviets wanted the United States to remain a force in Europe. Then he decisively announced: "We don't consider you an enemy anymore."

BALTIC STRIFE

Leaving Malta, Gorbachev faced grave difficulties within the U.S.S.R. Beyond its borders, he could accept change. But would he allow freedom to the 15 Soviet republics? The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- annexed by Stalin in 1940 -- were demanding total independence.

Soviet tanks took to the streets of Lithuania in January 1991 to stifle the independence movement

In December 1989, the Lithuanian Communist Party voted to declare the country independent from Moscow. The next month, Gorbachev went to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to argue that the Soviet Union must not be broken up. But the Baltic states wouldn't listen. On March 11, Lithuania formally declared its independence. Gorbachev attacked the action as "illegitimate and invalid" but was reluctant to use force. Instead, he imposed an economic embargo on the country. That didn't stop the tide: On March 25, Estonian Communists voted for independence. Latvia followed in May.

At least 14 people were killed, some crushed by tanks, and hundreds injured in the Soviet crackdown.

By the end of the year, though, Gorbachev -- facing pressures in Moscow and other republics -- changed tack. He tightened security and brought hard-liners into the government. In January 1991, crack Soviet troops entered the Baltics to seize state-owned buildings in Vilnius and Latvia's capital, Riga. On January 13 -- "Bloody Sunday" -- Soviet troops stormed the television tower and other public buildings in Vilnius. Fourteen Lithuanians were killed. The following Sunday, Soviet troops stormed the Interior Ministry in Riga, killing five Latvians -- prompting international outrage. In Moscow, Gorbachev ordered a stop to the killings. At first he defended the action, then condemned it, as thousands took to the streets to protest the crackdown.

TWO ROADS

1990 brought turmoil to the other Soviet republics as well. Goods in the shops were scarce. In February, following a massive demostration in Moscow, Gorbachev proposed an end to one-party Soviet rule. He faced two difficult tasks: reforming the economy and government, while holding the union together. The public, meanwhile, was impatient and divided: The right complained he was going too fast, the left that he was not moving fast enough.

Boris Yeltsin

By May, Boris Yeltsin began his rise to power, becoming parliamentary leader of the Russian republic. Popular and ambitious, the former member of the Soviet Politburo and Communist Party used economic discontent to weaken Gorbachev and the union. Over the next several months, six republics declared their soverignty. In October, both Russia and Ukraine announced that their state laws took precedence over Soviet laws -- and two divergent paths came into focus: Gorbachev and a restructured Soviet Union, or Yeltsin, Russia and the end of the union.

STORM CLOUDS

As 1990 ended, the Supreme Soviet had taken giant strides, voting to guarantee freedom of worship and create a multi-party system. Meanwhile, Gorbachev struggled to find a way to preserve the union: First he proposed a new central government, then a new Union Treaty with loosened ties between the republics and Moscow. In early 1991, Gorbachev's new Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics won a referendum -- but Yeltsin and several republics boycotted the vote. Demonstrators in Moscow backed Yeltsin against Gorbachev. The Soviet leader, who had adopted a more hard-line stance in late 1990, was losing respect among reformers.

Yeltsin lost his job at the Politburo and the Moscow party leadership in 1987 when Gorbachev turned on his protege

By April 1991, Georgia declared its independence. Two months later, Russians elected Yeltsin to the newly created post of president, making him the first democratically elected leader in Russian history. Meanwhile, Gorbachev moved away from his hard-line approach and formulated a reform package with nine of the republics. But the Soviet Union still needed American aid. Gorbachev repeatedly asked Bush for help with his economic problems, but there was no support in Washington for bailing out the Soviets.

The tank crew , which was defending Russian parliament during all the coup from the troops loyal to Boris YELTSIN leaves under applause of the people the defense position when coup failed

Back in Moscow, storm clouds were brewing: In December 1990, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze resigned -- and warned Gorbachev of a hard-line coup. The CIA, too, warned of a possible hard-line coup against Gorbachev -- a warning that was passed on to the Soviet leader. But Gorbachev ignored the omnious forcasts and went on vacation in the Crimea. He would return a changed man.

COUP ATTEMPT

For months, Soviet hard-liners had been urging Gorbachev, unsuccessfully, to impose emergency rule. Now they would impose it themselves. On Sunday, August 18, as Gorbachev's vacation was ending, a delegation arrived in the Crimea and demanded he declare emergency rule. He refused and was put under house arrest. Gorbachev's phone was cut off, while Soviet naval vessels maneuvered menacingly near the shore.

Sent by coup plotters, Soviet tanks line the streets of Moscow in August 1991.

The next day, Moscow awoke to the sound of tanks and the news that Gorbachev was ill and that an "Emergency Committee" had taken over. Vice President Gennadi Yanayev had assumed the presidency.

Boris Yeltsin gained world attention when he climbed aboard a tank outside the Russian parliament and defied the hard-liners' coup.

But the coup had not succeeded in seizing power outright. Soldiers and other civil servants were refusing to obey the Emergency Committee. Gorbachev's insistence on moving to democracy was paying off. Boris Yeltsin, usually at odds with Gorbachev, this time defended him. As Muscovites began to gather at Russia's seat of parliament, the White House, Yeltsin denounced the coup and prepared to resist. As night fell, fears grew that desparate committee members might order an attack on the White House and its defenders.

In September 1993 Yeltsin dissolved parliament and militant deputies gathered inside the White House with armed supporters. After a pitched battle outside Moscow's television studios, Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire at the White House, and forced the pro-parliament rebels to surrender.

On the night of August 20, the first blood was spilled -- three young men were killed by armored personnel carriers moving toward the White House in support of the coup. But the committee didn't have the stomach for an overthrow -- and at 3 a.m., one of the plotters, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kruichkov, called Yeltsin in the White House and admitted defeat. Yeltsin sent a plane to bring Gorbachev back to Moscow. He arrived early on August 22 and announced, "I have come back ... to another country, and I myself am a different man now." But far more had changed than Gorbachev realized.

BREAKUP

When the dust from the coup settled, Yeltsin was the victor. Gorbachev reaffirmed his belief in the Communist Party, but this was not what people wanted to hear. He was jeered in the Russian parliament and humiliated by Yeltsin -- who, without warning, forced his rival to read, on live television, documents showing that Gorbachev's Communist allies, members of his government, had been behind the coup. Russian viewers and U.S. diplomats knew he was finished. On August 24, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party and disbanded the Central Committee. But it was too late -- five days later, the Soviet Communist Party essentially dissolved itself.

Commonwealth of Independent States

As talks on the future of the Soviet Union continued, Gorbachev -- still the country's president -- was isolated. At Minsk on December 8, the three Slav states -- Russia, Belarus and Ukraine -- signed a pact ending the U.S.S.R. and creating instead the Commonwealth of Independent States. They called Bush before telling Gorbachev what they had done. Gorbachev, humiliated, denied their right to do it -- but within days the Russian parliament ratified the commonwealth agreement, and all but one of the other republics joined.

Mikhail Gorbachev calling President Bush on the day of his resignation - December 1991

On December 25, Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev called Bush and told him it was his last day in office. That night, the red flag of the Soviet Union, with its gold hammer and sickle, was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. In Washington, Bush made his Christmas address and announced to the world that the Cold War confrontation between the two superpowers -- which had dominated world affairs for 45 years -- was now over.

Additional Sources:

www.cnn.com
www.us-israel.org
www.pogo.org
www.dtra.mil
www.check-six.com
grove.ufl.edu
www.reagan.utexas.edu
members.rogers.com
www.hq.nasa.gov
www.publicanthropology.org
www.hdg.de
alum.mit.edu
news.bbc.co.uk
www.funet.fi
www.joschwartz.com
www.aber.ac.uk
www.cia.gov
www.geographic.org

In 1981, Ronald Reagan -- a strident Cold Warrior -- enters the White House on a platform of "making America strong again." Convinced the United States is lagging in the arms race, Reagan increases defense spending and proposes a "Star Wars" anti-missile system -- alarming leaders in Moscow.

For nearly three decades, the Berlin Wall symbolized the Iron Curtain that separated East from West. But by 1989, the Wall was starting to crumble -- and by the end of the year it would collapse.

It is the twilight of the Soviet empire. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Kremlin loses its iron-fisted grip on Eastern Europe. As events spiral out of control, Mikhail Gorbachev finds his authority challenged from within -- both from communist hard-liners, and from a popular reformer named Boris Yeltsin.

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization. The primary area of concern to all VetsCoR members is that our national and local educational systems fall short in teaching students and all American citizens the history and underlying principles on which our Constitutional republic-based system of self-government was founded. VetsCoR members are also very concerned that the Federal government long ago over-stepped its limited authority as clearly specified in the United States Constitution, as well as the Founding Fathers' supporting letters, essays, and other public documents.

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UPDATED THROUGH APRIL 2004

The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

Click on Hagar for
"The FReeper Foxhole Compiled List of Daily Threads"

"FALL IN" to the FReeper Foxhole!

Good Thursday Morning Everyone.

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Good Night, Snippy. Another busy day coming up tomorrow. Hopefully some of our phone calls we get returned.

Good night Sam. I think being busy has become our way of life. :-)

Good morning Snippy.

This thread dovetails with my SDI posts earlier in VII. SDI was not just "brilliant pebbles" but instead an integrated nuclear war system. The space based stuff was going to be totally amazing, beyond your wildest dreams.

One error in the piece. The author says, speaking of Perestroika, that "The right complained he (Gorbachev) was going too fast, the left that he was not moving fast enough." "Right" and "Left" are reversed here. The folks resistant to change were the Communists, they were Leftists. The Rightists were the Solzhenitsyn people.

WE are Rightists here at the Foxhole. Rightists are all those who fight the Left's monsters, Lenin, Stalin, and - Hitler. Pol Pot. The Marquis de Sade. The group that organized the war of 1861-65.

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.

September 30, 2004

Follow The Instructions

Read: Psalm 119:129-136

The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. —Psalm 119:130

Bible In One Year: Isaiah 9-10; Ephesians 3

After a woman sued a fast-food restaurant for being burned by coffee, companies started changing their manuals and warning labels. Check out these instructions:

On a frozen dinner: DEFROST BEFORE EATING
On an iron: CAUTION! DO NOT IRON CLOTHES ON BODY
On a peanut butter jar: MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS
On a milk bottlecap: AFTER OPENING, KEEP UPRIGHT

If some people need these obvious guidelines on household items, think about how much more we need God's direction. Psalm 119 tells of the importance of His instruction manual—the Bible. On the pages of Scripture we find what God wants us to believe, to be, and to do.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31).

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32).

"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15).

Ask the Lord to teach you His statutes and to direct your steps according to His Word (Psalm 119:133,135). Then read it often and follow the instructions. —Anne Cetas

Give us, O Lord, a strong desire
To look within Your Word each day;
Help us to hide it in our heart,
Lest from its truth our feet would stray. —Branon

Scripture is meant to give us protection, correction, and direction.

We really need to add the story about the CIA hand in blowing up the Trans-Siberian Pipeline in June, 1982. The story on FR is here: The Farewell Dossier

In 1981 the CIA discovered that the Soviet Union was pillaging American (and other Western) technology at an alarming rate, starting way back in 1970. They were using stolen foreign technology to bolster their own weapons programs and other strategic initiatives. This program was called “Line X”, and it was described in detail in a report called “The Farewell Dossier”. “Farewell“, it turns out, was a 53-year-old Russian engineer assigned to evaluate the stolen technologies acquired by Line X. However, Farewell was actually spying for the French, and was reporting everything to the French intelligence agency. France's Prime Minister at the time turned over the Dossier to the CIA, who then presented it to a horrified Ronald Reagan. The Dossier included some 4000 documents on stolen technology, and the names of over 200 Line X operatives actively stealing foreign technology for the Soviet Union.
The Dossier also included a shopping list of technologies the Russians were especially interested in. And this, my friends, is where the story really gets interesting.
In early 1982, the CIA proposed an operation to slip buggy software and other subtly flawed technologies to the eager Russians. With “Farewell“ in place to give the buggy software the thumbs up, the Soviets were none the wiser. The systems would work for a while and then fail. The operation was incredibly successful, and the Soviets gobbled up all the technology they could get their hands on, not realizing it was all programmed for failure. The best example of the operation was the theft of Canadian computer control systems that were designed to control parts of large gas pipelines. The CIA arranged for Line X operatives to “steal“ the software and use it in the large trans-Siberian pipeline project that was key to the Soviet Union's plans to sell gas exports to Eastern Europe. Unbeknownst to the Soviets, the CIA had planted a Trojan into the software, causing it to malfunction in a very violent manner after it was in use for a period of time. The resulting explosion of the gas pipeline in 1982 was the largest non-nuclear explosion ever seen from space at the time, and it was the direct result of this trojaned software. By the time the Soviets realized they had been stealing flawed software and other technology, it was so widespread that they had no idea what technology was valid and what was bogus. “The heart of Soviet technology crumbled, and would never recover,” wrote Gus Weiss, an economist who helped devise the plan, in a paper on the subject published in the 1996 edition of Study in Intelligence, a periodic journal published by the CIA.
So, was this crude early version of cyberwarfare responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union? It could be argued that the lost revenue from the catastrophic failure of the Siberian gas line certainly put a crimp on Soviet gas exports to Eastern Europe. It's also certain that the loss of faith in a large portion of their technology was also a contributing factor to the eventual bankruptcy of the Soviet government. How much this operation contributed to the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union may never be fully understood, but it certainly had an impact.
By the way, Col. Vladimir Vetrov, aka “Farewell”, was exposed as a spy in 1983 and promptly executed by the KGB for his part in the operation.

See also: The Farewell Dossier at the CIA website.

Present!

Good morning everyone.

Thursday Mornning greettings to the Foxhole gang.

Hi manna, hehehe

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

Good morning ladies. Flag-o-gram.

Woo Hoo PE!!

Great Flag-o-gram!! Thank You.

Good Morning Aeronaut.

"Right" and "Left" are reversed here.

Good obeservation.

When Reagan wouldn't "negotiate" away SDI, the smart Soviets knew the end was coming.

Hi Sam.