In the 1980s, the Warsaw Pact was comprised of seven Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. However, the Pact was losing its political strength. In Czechoslovakia and Poland dissent arose against the communist parties.

Despite the suppression during the Prague Spring, there were continuous uprisings in Czechoslovakia. During one of the protests, a Czech rock band—The Plastic People of the Universe, were arrested for disturbing the peace. They were charged with alcoholism, drug addiction, and anti-social behavior.

A number of intellectuals attended the band’s trial. In response to the trial, Vaclav Havel wrote a letter calling for the release of the band members because they were being denied basic human rights which was guaranteed in the Helsinki Accords.

Havel was arrested in April 1979 and sentenced to four years of hard labor. When he was released he wrote “The Power of the Powerless” in which he stated that the most important act that an individual could take was to behave as if he were truly free…even if he isn’t. This inspired other protest movements across Europe.

By the early 1980s, a sense of nationalism started to surge in Poland.

The Eastern European states, like Poland, were lacking basic consumer goods and food prices were rising. Workers across Poland began to strike in protest of the Polish government’s handling of the economic crisis. In Gdansk, Poland a successful strike in the shipyards led to the formation of an independent trade union known as Solidarity. It was led by an electrician and former employee at the shipyards, Lech Walesa. Nearly 200 factories had joined in the strike leading to the entire coastline being shut down. By 1981, Solidary—the first national labor union created in a communist nation—had ten million members which was very alarming to the Soviet Union.

The new Prime Minister of Poland, General Wojciech Jarulzelski, wanted to remain close to the Soviet Union so he declared martial law, banned Solidarity, and arrested thousands of activists including Walesa. However, the Soviet Union had no intention of getting involved in Polish affairs. The Soviet Union was too bogged down in a war in Afghanistan.

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The Polish government faced international condemnation and the United States put a trade embargo on Poland. In response, the Polish government released Walesa from prison in November 1982. In 1983 Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but the government refused to issue him a passport to travel to Oslo to accept the award.

In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was the youngest and the first university-educated leader since Stalin to hold this position. He had few ties to the Soviet military elite and aligned himself with reform-minded politicians.

Gorbachev’s new approach involved rethinking Soviet priorities and removing “Marxist-Leninist” ideology in being the main factor in determining Soviet foreign policy. This included adjusting the financial burden put on the Soviet economy due to heavy military spending.

Gorbachev’s domestic policy was shaped by three policies:

1. Glasnost- the policy of “openness.” Gorbachev wanted past mistakes and current problems in the Soviet Union to be voiced in public, including criticism of the leadership of the Communist Party and its policies in the media.

2. Perestroika- the policy of “restructuring.” This policy was aimed at making the Soviet economic system more modern and to improve productivity. The government decided that it was time to decentralize planning and end price controls by the state. However, the state still owned the factories and major industries.

3. Demokratizatsiya- This was Gorbachev’s attempt to make the Soviet political system more democratic. Elections were reformed to give greater choice to the voters. Political organizations and clubs were allowed to operate outside the control of the Communist Party.

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Gorbachev’s foreign policy was known as “New Thinking” which argued that confrontation was counterproductive, and that continuing the arms race was pointless. He believed that only political accommodation, not military power, would enable problems to be solved and real security achieved.

New Thinking reminded some Soviets of peaceful coexistence and détente but there were some clear differences than those previous policies. New Thinking was different in that:

o It eliminated the idea that the Soviet Union could be saved simply by peacefully existing with the United States.

o It eliminated the belief that socialism will automatically prevail in the long run.

As Gorbachev was reshaping Soviet policy, so was US President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, known as a staunch anti-Communist began to change his anti-Soviet position (calling it the “evil empire”), to a more approachable policy. Reagan became more willing to negotiate with Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.

Beginning in 1985, a series of meeting were organized between the Soviet Union and the United States in an attempt to bring the Cold War to an end.

1. November 1985- Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, this was the first major summit between the two superpowers. While no major agreements were reached, both countries did promise to prevent any war between themselves and not to seek military superiority.

2. October 1986- The second meeting took place in Reykjavik, Iceland. At first, the meeting did not go as smoothly as the Geneva summit. Reagan refused to abandon SDI even though both sides were trying to cut back on missile construction. As a show of concession, Gorbachev agreed to accept the NATO policy of the zero-zero option. This plan meant that both sides would withdraw their missiles (SS-20s and Pershing and Cruise) from Europe. Gorbachev also admitted that human rights needed to be improved in the Soviet bloc and that the “Iron Curtain” should be lifted.

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was Reagan’s plan to protect the United States against a nuclear attack. SDI would shoot down a nuclear missile and would place a nuclear shield around those countries under its umbrella. SDI was more commonly known as “Star War.”

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3. December 1987- The third summit meeting took place in Washington, DC. This resulted in the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This treaty stated that all land-based intermediate and short-range nuclear missiles would be withdrawn from Europe.

4. May 1988- The fourth summit took place in Moscow, Soviet Union. This meeting accomplished very little because Reagan refused to budge on his SDI program. However, the two leaders did lay the groundwork for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that eventually was finalized in 1991. START reduced the Soviet Union’s nuclear arms by 25% and the United States’ arms by 15%.

In an attempt to correct the economic problems of communism, reforms had to be made. The result of these reforms was revolution and the end of communism in Eastern Europe. The success of the 1989 revolutions as opposed to past revolutions was due to:

The application of the domino theory to Europe. When one country successfully rejected communism, given the similarities of the regimes and their connection to the Warsaw Pact, other revolutions would subsequently follow suit.

When Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union and replaced Brezhnev, he quickly abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine. This meant that Soviet forces would not be sent into any Eastern European state just to defend an existing regime or to crush reform movements. In addition, in 1988, Gorbachev made a speech at the United Nations in which he announced that the number of Soviet troops committed to the Warsaw Pact would be cut by 500,000.

The leadership of the communist parties was ageing and dying. All of the leaders of the satellite states were in their 70s. The new leaders came from younger generations who did not share the same experiences of the Second World War and instead had memories of repression by the Warsaw pact governments. They saw the benefits of capitalism and democracy on their television sets.

The protestors refused to engage in the use of force to bring about change. They had learned the tactics of civil disobedience from Mahatma Gandhi as well as the US civil rights movement.

Gorbachev told the satellite states to embrace perestroika, glasnost, and demokratizasiya like the Soviet Union. Upon hearing this, the Polish government legalized Solidarity in an attempt to maintain domestic peace. Solidarity also demanded (1) the legalization of non-governmental trade unions; (2) the creation of the position of President; and (3) the formation of a bicameral legislature of which 35% of the seats in the Sejm (lower house) would be freely elected. In July 1989, Solidarity won 99% of the seats in the Senate and all 35% of the seats in the Sejm. A year later (1990), Lech Walesa was elected as President of Poland.

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In 1989, East German Communist leader Erich Honecker ordered the police to crush the protesters in East Berlin. When the police refused to follow orders, the East German politburo ousted Honecker and replaced him with Egon Krenz. Krenz, listening to Gorbachev to have East Germany grow economically closer to West Germany, decided to demolish the Berlin Wall. The city of Berlin was united once again. A year later, the West German Deutschmark became the common currency in Germany.

At the Malta Summit in December 1989, Gorbachev and George Bush officially declared the end of the Cold War. The US offered economic help and the two parties reached agreements on the future of Eastern Europe, Germany and the Baltic republics.

Within the Soviet Union, some hardline communists were alarmed by the actions taken by Gorbachev. With the dissolving of the Warsaw Pact, NATO was now unchallenged in Europe. This worried many members of the communist party.

In August 1991, communist hardliner launched a coup of the Soviet government by kidnaping Gorbachev and announcing he was too ill to govern. The coup failed because the army and security forces refused to support it. However, the coup resulted in Russian President Boris Yeltsin gaining more public support. During the coup, Yeltsin said that he still recognized Gorbachev as the head of the Soviet Union.

In reaction to the attempted coup, Gorbachev dissolved the Central Committee of the Communist Party and resigned as General Secretary. Gorbachev remained on as the Soviet President, but his actions were constantly undermined by Yeltsin.

Between August and December 1991, ten republics declared their independence from the USSR. Later that month (December 25), Gorbachev announced on television his resignation as President of the Soviet Union. In January 1992, Russia, along with the republics of Belorussia and the Ukraine declared the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). There were now 15 independent but related countries of which Russia was the largest and most powerful. Boris Yeltsin was the President of Russia until 1999.

The Cold War did not end communism. However, it signaled the end of the bipolar world that existed since 1945. It has seen the balkanization of central and eastern Europe and an increase in factional violence.

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