‘General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’
Ronald Reagan
The Curtain Begins to Crumble
From 1964 to 1982 the General Secretary of The CPSU and Soviet Premier was Leonid Brezhnev. Under Brezhnev and his immediate successors, the USSR’s economy stagnated. People were poor and weren’t getting richer. For this reason the USSR became less involved in Eastern Bloc politics.
After 1985 the General Secretary was Mikhail Gorbachev. He had to start restructuring the USSR’s economy. If that didn’t happen then the country was at a potential risk of the people uprising. Gorbachev started to follow the guidelines of the Brezhnev Doctrine (which stated that if there was an uprising in a socialist state that other surrounding socialist countries should suppress it immediately to preserve the one party rule) less and less. He favoured the ‘Sinatra Doctrine’ (the name Gorbachev’s soviet government used jokingly to describe its policy of allowing neighbouring Warsaw Pact states to determine their own internal affairs. The name alluded to the Frank Sinatra song “My Way" — the USSR was allowing these states to go their own way. It was first used for Gorbachev’s doctrine on ‘new political thinking’.
Gorbachev also began enforcing the policies of ‘Glasnost’ (openness) and ‘Perestroika’ (economic restructuring). This begged the question, if the Soviet Union was opening up and withdrawing its involvement in Eastern Bloc politics, would the Eastern Bloc break?
The Fall of the Iron Curtain
In February 1989 the Hungarian Politburo (the executive cabinet for communist parties) advised the government that the Iron Curtain along the Hungarian border with Austria should be dismantled. The Hungarian Premier Miklós Németh firstly informed the Austrian Chancellor of the government’s plans, then he was granted an informal clearance by Gorbachev on 3rd March.
In May of that year the Hungarian government announced the dismantling of the Iron Curtain in Hungary and began demolition in Rajka, a city on the northern end of the border with Austria.
However, the Iron Curtain was only gone as a physical entity. As the border fortifications were disappearing, the army presence on the border was ever increasing. The border was still closed and soldiers still had the orders to shoot. The Iron Curtain had only disappeared in one sense.
The eventual opening of the Hungary-Austria border did not come until the Pan-European Picnic in August, where one of the border crossing points was opened.
By this time Poland had already held elections and the anti-communist party, Solidarity, won 99 out of 100 seats.
Meanwhile in East Germany, many citizens left for Hungary that summer. Finally, for the first time since 1961, the Iron Curtain was unraveling. East Germany however was still ruled by a hardline Stalinist, Erich Honecker. He banned travel to Hungary and when protests broke out in East Berlin, he ordered guards to brutally suppress them. By that time though, the East German parliament had already voted him out of office.
On 4th November over half a million people demonstrated against the German separation. The pressure on the East German government became too great and on 9th November the East German government announced the end of the travel ban between East and West. The ban wasn’t supposed to end until midnight and guards still had orders to shoot, but, hundreds of East and West Berliners gathered at Checkpoint Charlie. The guards lifted the barriers and in seconds an astronomical change took place. After decades, the Berliners were united. People celebrated through the night and some even started to knock the wall down. The Iron Curtain had fallen.
By 1990 Germany was reunited and the Eastern Bloc was liberated. Communist rule had ended in Eastern Europe and on Christmas Day 1991 Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union, dissolving the worlds second superpower and ending the cold war.
Find out more on the Dissolution Of the Soviet Union in my other article linked here
https://www.curioustimes.co.uk/politics/the-dissolution-of-the-soviet-union---what-happened