1. THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM
January 1989: “Solidarity” gains legal recognition in Poland
June 1989: Solidarity wins Polish election; Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing; Hungary opens its border with Austria
9 November 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall
Nov-Dec 1989: Vaclav Havel elected president of Czechoslovakia
21-25 December 1989: Violent revolution in Rumania
October 1990: Unification of East and West Germany
June 1991: Outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia
August 1991: Communist coup & dissolution of the USSR

2. The “Goddess of Democracy” in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, June 1989
"Goddess of Democracy." Photograph. Tianamen Square, Beijing, From

3. A lone protester blocks the advance of tanks sent to crush the demonstration on June 5, 1989; estimates of the death toll in the following days range from 200 to 3,000
An unknown protester blocks a column of tanks heading east on Beijing's Chang'an Boulevard (Avenue of Eternal Peace) near Tiananmen Square; photograph taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press on June 5, 1989, from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile away, through a 400mm lens. Estimates of the death toll in the repression that began soon thereafter range from the official Chinese figure of 200 up to 3,000, the figure given by the Chinese student associations involved.
SOURCE:

4. The Hungarian and Austrian foreign ministers dismantle the “Iron Curtain” near Sopron, 27 June 1989
In this ceremonial act for the newspaper reporters, the Austrian foreign minister, Alois Mock, and his Hungarian counterpart, Gyula Horn, cut through the "Iron Curtain" near Sopron on 27 June SOURCE: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der BRD, ed., _Erlebnis Geschichte_, 4th edn (Bonn, 2003), p. 251.

5. East Germany relied on its Communist allies to prevent defections
Europe during the Cold War, The "Iron Curtain" is marked in heavy black.
SOURCE: Hammond's _HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE WORLD_, rev. edn (Maplewood, NJ, 1987), H-52.

6. Honecker and Gorbachev celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, East Berlin, 7 October 1989: “When we fall behind, life punishes us immediately.”
Honecker and Gorbachev celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, East Berlin, 7 October From Robert Darnton, Berlin Journal, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), following p Their speeches are reproduced in UNITING GERMANY.

7. The Leipzig “Monday rally” of October 9, 1989, when 70,000 citizens faced down the security forces
The dramatic Leipzig rally of October 9, 1989, when 70,000 marchers confronted thousands of heavily armed police and soldiers.
SOURCE: Hans Ottomeyer and Hans-Joerg Czech, eds., _Deutsche Geschichte in Bildern und Zeugnissen_ (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2007), p. 360.

8. One million protesters marched in East Berlin on November 4
One million East Germans attend a protest rally in East Berlin on 4 November From Darnton, BERLIN DIARY, after p. 173.

9. THE CONQUEST OF THE BERLIN WALL, NOV
THE CONQUEST OF THE BERLIN WALL, NOV. 8/9, 1989: The regime abdicated by endorsing free travel in principle….
The youth of Berlin rejoices on top of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate on the night of November 9/10, A few hours before, Günter Schabowski had become confused at a televised press conference and gave the impression that all citizens were free to leave the country immediately, without any visa.
[Bildersammlung: Eiserner Vorhang. The Yorck Project: Das große dpa-Bildarchiv, S. 431
(vgl. dpa, S. 130) (c) 2005 The Yorck Project]

10. Police intervene against peaceful demonstrators in Prague, November 17, 1989
Police intervene to suppress a peaceful student demonstration in Prague on 17 November 1989.
SOURCE:

11. “Havel to the Castle” (Prague, November 1989)
"Havel to the Castle!" Poster from the Velvet Revolution in Prague, November 1989.
SOURCE:

12. PROTEST LEADERS SOON BECAME ELECTED PRESIDENTS
Lech Walesa addresses the Polish parliament, December 22, 1990
Vaclav Havel discusses Czech entry to the EU with Jacques Delors in Brussels, March 1991
President Vaclav Havel meets with Jacques Delors, chief executive of the European Community, in Brussels in March 1991.
SOURCE:
Lech Walesa addresses the Polish parliament after taking his oath as President on December 22, 1990.
[Bildersammlung: Eiserner Vorhang. The Yorck Project: Das große dpa-Bildarchiv, S. 440
(vgl. dpa, S. 133) (c) 2005 The Yorck Project]

13. Only in Romania did the Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, order security forces to open fire on protesters; he was deposed and killed in December 1989, when the army sided with the demonstrators.
Romanian demonstrators confront armored personnel carriers on the streets of Bucharest in late December 1989, published in Denoel Paris (with the help of other foreign photojournalists in Bucharest), _1989 Liberate Roumanie_.
SOURCE:

14. Gorbachev greets Helmut Kohl in Moscow, 1990; they agreed that Germany could be unified and remain in NATO
Helmut Kohl is received by Gorbachev in Moscow in 1990.
SOURCE:

15. Germans before the Reichstag in Berlin celebrate their national reunification on October 3, 1990
SOURCE: From the photo archive of the German National Archive,

16. Potsdamer Platz, the Times Square of old Berlin (1982)
Brandenburg Gate from West Berlin, with guard tower (photograph by WLP, 1974).

17. POTSDAMER PLATZ TODAY WITH THE SONY CENTER
SOURCE:

18. Within the USSR Gorbachev still defended the Communist monopoly on power (here at the Communist Party Congress of 1989).
Yurchenko, Boris. "Gorbachev Addresses the Congress." Photograph From

19. The Azeri-Armenian war of 1989-1994
Since 1994 Armenian troops have controlled most of Nagorno-Karabakh, but negotiations over its legal status continue
From

20. Elite KGB troops confront independence demonstrators in Lithuania, 1990
From Shakhverdiev, Tofik. "Elite KGB Troops." Photograph. Ca From

21. Boris Yeltsin addresses demonstrators against the Communist coup in Moscow, August 1991
TASS. "Yeltsin Outside the White House." Photograph From

22. The “Commonwealth of Independent States” (1992)
The successor states to the former Soviet Union in 1992.
SOURCE:
The new Russia stumbled into its first bloody war when Muslim Chechnya (#7 above) declared independence in 1994

23. GADDIS REFLECTS ON THE END OF THE COLD WAR
“Perhaps the ultimately decisive factor [was] the ruling elite’s loss of belief in its own right to rule” (237).
“The Soviet Union… was a sandpile ready to slide. All it took to make that happen were a few more grains of sand. The people who dropped them were… ordinary people with simple priorities….” (238).
Intellectuals such as George Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, and John Paul II “advanced a moral and spiritual critique of Marxism-Leninism for which it had no answer” (263-4).
“Post-industrial economies…reward lateral over hierarchical organization” (264).
“The world came closer than ever before to reaching a consensus, during the Cold War, that only democracy confers legitimacy” (265).