TWENTY YEARS on, 1989 stands out as one of the most significant and formative years in European and world history. The initial disintegration and then collapse of communist rule in Poland, Hungary and Germany cascaded on to Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states inside the Soviet Union, heralding its own disappearance in 1991. A year of revolutionary but mostly non-violent change in Europe also saw the Chinese regime ruthlessly suppress the Tiananmen democratic rebellion in fear of a similar fate. The major and tragic exception to peaceful change in Europe was in the Balkans when Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s.
From the ruins emerged a united Germany, a victorious and uniquely powerful United States, an enlarged Nato, and a growing European Union dedicated to deeper economic and political integration. Privatisation programmes rapidly transformed state-run economies into capitalist ones, existing and new party elites were empowered by electoral democratisation, liberal freedoms of expression and travel opened up closed societies and systems of social protection were often brutally dismantled. These shocks varied in timing, management and impact throughout the former Warsaw Pact states, but the trends were unidirectional: towards freer and gradually more prosperous societies, yet with a more risky and precarious future for many citizens.
Like all the great revolutions these events were multi-causal. Longer term trends like the exhaustion of economic resources, lagging productivity and military capacity in the Soviet bloc combined with political pressure from Ronald Reagan’s US and Pope John Paul II’s Vatican to bring them closer. It is difficult to exaggerate the role of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union. His refusal to countenance another round of Polish martial law in May-June 1989, to reject Hungary’s relaxation of border controls during that summer, or to endorse military repression by East German leaders in October-November convinced figures like Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel that change could and should be peaceful. Mr Gorbachev’s belief that the Soviet Union could be saved from disintegration proved ill-founded. But that this too happened without a third world war is in good part due to his leadership.
Helmut Kohl is another towering figure. His immediate recognition that German unification must follow the fall of the Berlin Wall and his single-minded pursuit of that goal determined the future course of European politics. It was no easy task in the face of Margaret Thatcher’s rooted hostility and Francois Mitterrand’s deep scepticism.
Germany remains grateful for the support it received from Ireland at the time. We can see better now that this year which brought the Cold War to an end helped the British and Irish governments to find agreement on Northern Ireland. No European state was left untouched by 1989. Its consequences are all around us. They have given us a more united and democratic continent, even though it has still not met the promise and potential of those momentous events.