On the evening of November 9, 1989, an East German official named Günter Schabowski held a long, dull press conference. Near the end he read out a new rule letting citizens travel west. A reporter asked when it took effect. Schabowski shuffled his papers and said, as far as he knew, immediately. That was a mistake: the rule was meant to start the next day, with controls. Within hours, thousands of East Berliners crowded the checkpoints, and the overwhelmed guards opened the gates. The Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989, and the Cold War order in Europe collapsed with astonishing speed.
Détente and its breakdown
The road there was not straight. After the Cuban scare, both sides sought calmer relations. Détente was a period of eased tensions in the 1970s, marked by arms control treaties such as SALT I in 1972. Nixon also visited China that year, exploiting the bitter split between the two communist giants. Détente faded after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, condemned the Soviet Union in sweeping moral terms, expanded military spending and proposed a missile defense system in space. The early 1980s were among the most frightening years of the whole conflict.
Gorbachev
In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader. He inherited a stagnant economy, falling oil prices, the war in Afghanistan and a population increasingly aware of how much better people lived in the West. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and the government's early silence about it, strengthened his belief that the system needed honesty. Glasnost meant openness and perestroika meant restructuring: more freedom to speak and publish, and an attempt to reform the planned economy without abandoning socialism. Gorbachev and Reagan, once far apart, built a working relationship. The INF Treaty of 1987 eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles, the first agreement ever to do so.
Most important for Eastern Europe, Gorbachev let the bloc countries choose their own path, abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine. A Soviet spokesman joked that the new policy was the Sinatra Doctrine, since each country could now do it its way.
1989
Poland moved first. Round table talks between the government and Solidarity led to partly free elections in June 1989, and Solidarity won almost every seat it was allowed to contest in Poland's June 1989 elections. By August, Poland had its first non-communist prime minister in four decades. Hungary began taking down its border fence with Austria, and East Germans poured through. In the Baltic states, about two million people joined hands in a human chain across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in August 1989. Huge peaceful marches in Leipzig and other cities preceded the opening of the Wall. In Czechoslovakia, the Velvet Revolution brought Havel to the presidency by the end of December. Only in Romania did the fall turn violent, ending with the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife on Christmas Day.
The end of the Soviet Union
Germany reunified on October 3, 1990. Inside the Soviet Union, freedom to speak released long suppressed national movements, and the republics pushed for independence. In August 1991 hardliners tried to seize power, but the coup collapsed within days in the face of crowds in Moscow led by the Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. The Soviet Union formally dissolved in December 1991, splitting into fifteen independent states, and Gorbachev resigned.
Why did it end?
Historians weigh several explanations. Some credit Western pressure, especially Reagan's military buildup, for straining the Soviet economy. Others stress decades of economic decline that no amount of pressure created. Others point to Gorbachev's own choices, especially his refusal to use force to save the bloc. Still others credit the millions of ordinary people who marched, struck and refused the sign in the window. Most historians conclude that the end came from a combination of causes rather than any single one, and they disagree mainly about the weights.
The legacy is still with us. Russia and the United States hold most of the world's nuclear weapons, and several arms control treaties have since lapsed. NATO expanded eastward from 1999, which supporters see as securing young democracies and critics, including some American diplomats at the time, warned would feed Russian resentment. Korea remains divided.
Worked example: one bad answer at a press conference
Was the fall of the Wall an accident? Apply the explanations above. In the narrow sense, yes: a confused official gave the wrong start time, and guards at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing chose to open the gate rather than shoot. But the accident could only matter because of everything around it. East Germany was nearly bankrupt, which fits the economic decline view. Its people had already fled through Hungary and were marching in the streets, which fits the people power view. Soviet troops stayed in their barracks, which reflects Gorbachev's choices. Decades of Western strength and the attraction of West German life shaped what East Germans wanted. The press conference lit the match, but the room was already full of fuel. Good historical thinking separates triggers from deeper causes and weighs both.