Federico Orduz, Camilo Linares, Santiago Angulo

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The Revolutions of 1989 (also known as the Fall of Communism, the Collapse of Communism, the Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the Autumn of Nations) are the revolutions which overthrew Soviet-style communist states in Eastern-bloc European countries.

The events began in Poland, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to overthrow its Communist regime violently. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 failed to stimulate major political changes in China. However, revolutions of courageous defiance during that protest helped to spark a precipitation of events in other parts of the globe.

PolandIn April 1989, Solidarity was again legalized and allowed to participate in parliamentary elections on June 4, 1989 (incidentally, the day following the midnight crackdown on Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square). A political earthquake followed. The victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats (with the one remaining seat taken by an independent candidate). At the same time, many prominent Communist candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them. A new non-Communist government, the first of its kind in the former Eastern Bloc, was sworn into office in September 1989.

HungaryFollowing Poland's lead, Hungary was next to

revert to a non-Communist government. Although Hungary had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization during the 1980s, major reforms only occurred following the replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1988.

In October 1989, the Communist Party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party, which still exists today . In a historic session from October 16 to October 20, the parliament adopted legislation providing for multi-party parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights.

East Germany

After a reformed border was opened from Hungary, a growing number of East Germans began emigrating to West Germany via Hungary's border with Austria. By the end of September 1989, more than 30,000 East Germans had escaped to the West before the GDR denied travel to Hungary, leaving the CSSR (Czechoslovakia) as the only neighboring state where East Germans could travel. Thousands of East Germans tried to reach the West by occupying the West German diplomatic facilities in other Eastern European capitals, notably the Prague Embassy where thousands camped in the muddy garden from August to November. The GDR closed the border to the CSSR in early October, thereby isolating itself from all neighbors.

After the October 2 demonstration, Socialist Unity Party (SED) leader Erich Honecker issued a shoot and kill order to the military.[Communists prepared a huge police, militia, Stasi, and work-combat troop presence and there were rumors of a Tiananmen Square-style massacre.

Scaling the Berlin Wall, November 1989. Photo courtesy of NASA Photos.

Main article: End of Communism in Bulgaria (1989) The Turkish minority, which had suffered under

Communism, began to escape in the summer of 1989. About a quarter million Bulgarian Turks escaped to Turkey where large refugee camps were formed.

On November 10, 1989 — the day after the Berlin Wall was breached — Bulgaria's long-serving leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo. Moscow apparently approved the leadership change, despite Zhivkov's reputation as a slavish Soviet ally. Yet, Zhivkov's departure was not enough to satisfy the growing pro-democracy movement. By the time the impact of Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program in the Soviet Union was felt in Bulgaria in the late 1980s, the Communists, like their leader, had grown too feeble to resist the demand for change for long.

In November 1989 demonstrations on ecological issues were staged in Sofia, and these soon broadened into a general campaign for political reform.

Unlike other Eastern European countries, Romania had never undergone even limited de-Stalinization, yet had adopted a course independent of Soviet domination since the 1960s. In November 1989, Ceauşescu, then aged 71, was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-Communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Eastern Europe. As Ceauşescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian-speaking Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, on 16 December, for sermons offending the regime. Tőkés was seized, but only after serious rioting erupted. Timişoara was the first city to react, on 16 December, and it remained rioting for 5 days.

In the Socialist People's Republic of Albania, Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania for four decades with an iron fist, died 11 April 1985. In 1989, the first revolts started in Shkodra and spread in other cities. Eventually, the existing regime introduced some liberalization, including measures in 1990 providing for freedom to travel abroad. Efforts were begun to improve ties with the outside world. March 1991 elections left the former Communists in power, but a general strike and urban opposition led to the formation of a coalition cabinet including non-Communists. Albania's former Communists were routed in elections March 1992, amid economic collapse and social unrest.

Territory of former Eastern Bloc states with the dates that Communist rule ended. Dates of declaring independence for former USSR states.

Collapse of the Soviet Union : On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Pact was

officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague. At a summit later that same month, Gorbachev and Bush declared a US–Soviet strategic partnership, decisively marking the end of the Cold War. President Bush declared that US–Soviet cooperation during the 1990–91 Gulf War had laid the groundwork for a partnership in resolving bilateral and world problems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989#Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

http://internationalstudies.uchicago.edu/news/2009-2010/091117-1989.shtml

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19991105/index.html NASA Photos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact http://reason.com/assets/mc/mwelch/2009_11/velvet-revolution.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

File:EasternBloc_PostDissolution2008.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989#Poland http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_g-k/

I064_VelvetUprising.jpg http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/

Thefalloftheberlinwall1989-1.JPG http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/

2009/11/9/1257782025756/Strikes-and-demonstations-001.jpg http://www.prague-life.com/media/pics/velvet-revolution.jpg