In Czechoslovakia, the revolution was known as the “Velvet Revolution” because of its nonviolent nature. The Civic Forum, led by Vaclav Havel of Charter 77 fame, began demonstrating after Gorbachev’s visit in 1989. The Czechoslovak Communist Party tried to negotiate a power-sharing agreement, but the crowds would not be denied freedom. The Communist government resigned, and free elections were held in June 1990. Havel was elected president of the new government. Soon after the election, however, Slovak leaders asked for a formal partition of the nation between the Czech and Slovak areas. The government agreed, and the Slovak Republic was formed on 1 January 1993. Havel resigned rather than preside over the partition of his country.
Romania was the bloodiest ending to the Communists in Eastern Europe. There, dictator Nicolai Ceausescu tried to brutally repress demonstrations by calling the army to kill the demonstrators. Instead, army units joined the demonstrators. The battles raged for 2 weeks before Ceausescu and his wife were arrested, tried in a 2-hour trial, and executed by firing squad.
Communism’s Fall in Russia
The winds of change continued sweeping east. In 1988, Estonia amended its constitution to allow the Estonian government to veto Soviet laws. Gorbachev tried to rein in Estonia, but things had gone too far. In 1990, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia all declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics were free from Russian control for the first time since 1940. (The Lithuanians approved independence by a 91% vote.)
Two months after the Baltic Republics left the Soviet Union, the people of Georgia voted for independence (by a 90% margin). Before 1991 ended, 15 of the Soviet republics had left the USSR, including Belorussia, the Baltic Republics, Moldova, and the Ukraine. Most of the Muslim republics of the southern Soviet Union — including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan — also left.
The breakup of the USSR was more than the Communists in Moscow could stand. In August 1991, a group of reactionary Communists staged a coup in Moscow. They placed Gorbachev under house arrest and tried to take control of the Parliament building. Yeltsin called in the Red Army, which had not supported the coup, and ordered the troops to shell the Parliament building. Yeltsin rallied the troops from atop a Red Army tank and crushed the rebellion.
Yeltsin shut down the Communist Party offices, suspended Pravda (the Communist Party newspaper) and practically destroyed the Communist remnants. Parliament voted to disband the USSR in September 1991. Gorbachev resigned in December 1991, and Yeltsin replaced him as president. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally finished. Russia’s empire was finished.
German Reunification
With Communism in its last gasp in East Germany, the “impossible dream” — a united Germany — suddenly seemed not so impossible.
West Germany’s constitution had always allowed for reunification, stating in its preamble that “the entire German people is called upon to achieve by self-determination the unity and freedom of Germany.” Unfortunately, many people remembered the havoc wrought by a united Germany from 1871 to 1945. The Russians in particular had been victims of 2 German invasions and had no desire for Germany to reunite; Gorbachev’s reforms would have been impossible with one Germany on his border. In addition, most Western Europeans thought that the Franco-German relationship would never have occurred had Germany remained united.
With the fall of Communism in East Germany, however, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl seized the opportunity. Kohl had previously been an unremarkable politician. Like Thatcher, Kohl supported a stronger U.S. military presence in Europe. When the Berlin Wall was first opened in November, Kohl quickly responded with a 10-Point Plan for German Unity; the Bundestag (the West German Parliament) quickly passed it. The entire world was caught off-guard. By January, Gorbachev admitted that German unification was possible. Kohl really had no choice but to do something; 500,000 East Germans had fled to West Germany in November alone.
In East Germany, elections in March 1990 forced the issue. 48% of the electorate voted for a party pushing immediate unification; the Communist Party received only 16% of the vote. Within weeks, the 2 Germanys agreed on a common currency and economic policy, both strongly influenced by West Germany. West German administrators were placed in control of East German universities; they immediately closed programs in Marxism-Leninism.
Negotiations called the “two-plus-four negotiations” began in May 1990. The 2 Germanys were joined by the four Allied powers: The U.S., Britain, France, and the USSR. The Russo-German Treaty of July 1990 and the Treaty of Final Settlement in September 1990 settled the terms:
In October 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) joined to form the Federal Republic of Germany. In December 1990, Helmut Kohl was elected the first chancellor of united Germany. In 1991, the Bundestag voted to return the capital of Germany to Berlin over the next 12 years.
The Balkans — Again
Yugoslavia had been created in 1919 from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia. The areas of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovena, Macedonia, and Montenegro had been merged into one country ruled from Belgrade, the Serbian capital. This union was a disaster in the making: The ethnic groups used different languages and alphabets (the Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet, while others use the Roman alphabet), had different religions (the Serbs are Orthodox, the Croats and Slovenians are Roman Catholic, and the Bosnians are Muslim), and basically hadn’t liked one another for centuries. The Serbs, for instance, had never forgiven the Muslims for the Battle of Kosovo in 1294.
Tito, the head of the Partisans in World War II and Communist ruler (a Croat) since World War II, had held things together during his lifetime, but Tito died in 1980. Tito’s successors relied on a rotating presidency between the groups to maintain the peace, but the Albanians in Kosovo province rioted for independence in 1981. Croatian terrorists started a bombing campaign in 1985.
In 1989, the lid blew as the Yugoslav Communist Party collapsed. Slovenia and Croatia, the most Westernized republics, held free elections in 1990; Slovenia declared independence a few weeks later.
Croatia began plans for independence, but a large Serb population lived in Croatia; the Serbs resisted Croatian independence and, when that failed, demanded self-government. In 1991, the entire region exploded with the Serbo-Croatian War. The Serb minority tried to secede from Croatia when Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia; they planned to join their region — Krajina — to Serb-controlled areas of Bosnia. By the end of 1991, Yugoslavia no longer existed. In its place were 3 major ethnic groups — the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims — who had long-standing scores to settle.
The European Union recognized Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia as independent nations in 1992, and the UN accepted all 3 as members. The war between the Croats and Serbs shifted to Bosnia in 1992. Bosnia was the focus of the conflict because the nation was roughly divided between the 3 ethnic groups. Sarajevo its capital, had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. By 1995, Sarajevo had been bombed into the pre-industrial age, all 3 groups were committing war crimes and genocide, and the UN was establishing the first war crimes tribunal since World War II. Fighting ended in Bosnia with the signing of the Dayton Accords in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995. Bosnia was divided into 2 regions: a Bosnian-Croatian federation and a Serb republic. NATO send 60,000 troops to maintain the peace between the 2 areas.
In 1998, fighting shifted to Kosovo, where the Serbs and Albanians were slaughtering one another. Although Serbia wanted Kosovo for its historical significance, the region was 90% Albanian Muslim in population. Serb President Slobodan Milosevic ordered the Serb army into Kosovo when the Albanians attacked in 1998; in 2 months, the Serbian army killed more than 10,000 civilians, sent more than 600,000 people running to Albania and Macedonia, and sent another 700,000 people on the move within Serbia.
By the time Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and sent to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague in 2001, more than 3 million people had been displaced and more than 300,000 killed. In the trials that followed, testimony revealed that the Serbs had also systematically raped more than 50,000 women in the conflict.
The European Union: Elusive European Unity
The Common Market of 1957 evolved into the European Community in 1967. When Britain joined the EC in 1973, other countries began seeking membership. Spain and Portugal soon joined bringing the total membership to 12 nations. In 1986, the 12 member nations passed the Single European Act. By 1990, it was possible to travel anywhere in the EU with no passport. In 1992, the EC became the European Union in a summit meeting in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The Maastricht summit laid the framework for a European Central Bank and a common currency. The central bank became a reality in 1998. The common currency, the Euro, was formally introduced in 1999, replacing all currencies within the European Union except for the British pound sterling.
After the revolutions of the 1990’s the EU entered another period of expansion. Plans were made to include formerly Communist states in the Union: Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia. These were the nations which were best prepared economically for EU membership. Other nations, including Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Malta, and Cyprus, also sought membership. These latter nations had human rights issues to overcome before they could join.
The campaign for unification hit a snag in the late 1990’s when Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty by a narrow margin; the Danes narrowly passed the referendum after the Danish government negotiated several “opt-out” clauses. Margaret Thatcher continued her fierce opposition to the EU, stating that “during my lifetime, most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or another, from mainland Europe.”