Cold War Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Eastern Europe breaks away=== {{Main|Revolutions of 1989}} [[File:Oliver Mark - Otto Habsburg-Lothringen, Pöcking 2006.jpg|thumb|150px|[[Otto von Habsburg]], who played a leading role in opening the Iron Curtain]] [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0518-182, Erich Honecker.jpg|thumb|150px|upright|East German leader [[Erich Honecker]] lost control in August 1989.]] Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in ''[[Beyond Oil]]'' that the [[Presidency of Ronald Reagan|Reagan administration]] encouraged [[Saudi Arabia]] to [[1980s oil glut|lower the price of oil]] to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, and resulted in the depletion of the country's [[hard currency]] reserves.<ref>Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak.</ref> [[File:00 Páneurópai Piknik emlékhely.jpg|thumb|left|150px|The [[Pan-European Picnic]] took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border.]] Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. [[Yuri Andropov]] was 68 years old and [[Konstantin Chernenko]] 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected [[Mikhail Gorbachev]]. He made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called ''[[perestroika]]''. His policy of ''[[glasnost]]'' freed public [[Freedom of information|access to information]] after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the USSR abandoned its [[Soviet–Afghan War|war in Afghanistan]] and began to [[Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan|withdraw its forces]]. In the following year, [[Sinatra Doctrine|Gorbachev refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet satellite states]], which paved the way for the [[Revolutions of 1989]]. In particular, the standstill of the Soviet Union at the [[Pan-European Picnic]] in August 1989 then set a peaceful chain reaction in motion, at the end of which the Eastern Bloc collapsed. With the tearing down of the [[Fall of the Berlin Wall|Berlin Wall]] and with East and West Germany pursuing re-unification, the [[Iron Curtain]] between [[Western world|the West]] and Soviet-occupied regions came down.<ref name="Andreas Rödder 2009">Andreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).</ref><ref name="Thomas Roser 2018">Thomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) in: Die Presse 16 August 2018.</ref><ref name="Otmar Lahodynsky 2014">Otmar Lahodynsky: Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall – German), in: Profil 9 August 2014.</ref> By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.{{sfn|Gaddis|2005|pp=235–236}} Grassroots organizations, such as Poland's [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]] movement, rapidly gained ground with strong popular bases. The Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 in Hungary finally started a peaceful movement that the rulers in the Eastern Bloc could not stop. It was the largest movement of refugees from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 and ultimately brought about the fall of the Iron Curtain. The patrons of the picnic, [[Otto von Habsburg]] and the Hungarian Minister of State [[Imre Pozsgay]], saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction. The Austrian branch of the [[Paneuropean Union]], which was then headed by [[Karl von Habsburg]], distributed thousands of brochures inviting the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary to a picnic near the border at Sopron. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic the subsequent hesitant behavior of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-interference of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer willing to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use armed force. On the one hand, this caused disagreement among the Eastern European states and, on the other hand, it was clear to the Eastern European population that the governments no longer had absolute power.<ref name="Andreas Rödder 2009"/><ref name="Thomas Roser 2018"/><ref name="Otmar Lahodynsky 2014"/><ref>Hilde Szabo: Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland – German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999.</ref> In 1989, the communist governments in Poland and Hungary became the first to negotiate the organization of competitive elections. In Czechoslovakia and East Germany, mass protests unseated entrenched communist leaders. The communist regimes in Bulgaria and Romania also crumbled, in the latter case as the result of a [[Romanian Revolution|violent uprising]]. Attitudes had changed enough that US Secretary of State [[James Baker]] suggested that the American government would not be opposed to Soviet intervention in Romania, on behalf of the opposition, to prevent bloodshed.{{sfn|Garthoff|1994}} The tidal wave of change culminated with the [[fall of the Berlin Wall]] in November 1989, which symbolized the collapse of European communist governments and graphically ended the Iron Curtain divide of Europe. The [[Revolutions of 1989|1989 revolutionary wave]] swept across Central and Eastern Europe and peacefully overthrew all of the Soviet-style [[Communist state|Marxist–Leninist states]]: East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria;{{sfn|Lefeber|Fitzmaurice|Vierdag|1991|p=221}} Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.{{sfn|Gaddis|2005|p=247}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page