Fall of the Iron Curtain &

Reunification of Germany

Fall of Iron Curtain

In the 1980s, Soviet economics and politics stagnated.

USSR decreased its involvement in Eastern Bloc politics and under Gorbachev,
initiated policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic
restructuring)

Revolutions occurred in Eastern Bloc countries in 1989

Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Yugoslavia & Albania

 April 1989 Peoples Republic of Poland legalise Solidarity

organisation
Independent Self-governing Trade Union
Not communist

Captured 99% of available seats in the parliament

Catalyst for a the peaceful anti-communist revolutions across Central

Europe

 19 August 1989 Pan European Picnic

Peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border
More than 600 East Germans broke through the fencing at the border and
fled into Austria
Hungarian border guards did not intervene and allowed the people to cross

 16-20 October 1989 Hungarian Parliament adopted legislation

providing for multi-party elections and a direct presidential election
Transformed Hungary from a Peoples Republic into the Republic of Hungary
Guaranteed human and civil rights
Created an institutional structure that ensured separation of powers among
judicial, legislative and executive branches of government

 November 1989
Peoples Republic of Bulgaria ousted their leaser Todor Zhivkov

Half a million Chechoslovaks protested

Government permitted travel to the west, abolished provisions that
guaranteed a communist government

Velvet Revolution
Non-violent transition of power in Czechoslovakia

Demonstrations against the one party government combining students and

older protesters as well
Converted power to a parliamentary republic

Demonstrators
lay flowers in
Prague during
the Velvet
Revolution to
honour the
deaths of
people who
protested and
fought the
government in
the past.

 22 December 1989
In the Socialist republic of Romania, military sided with protestors and turned
on communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu
He was executed under firing squad 3 days later

3 July 1990
Peoples Socialist Republic of Albania allowed all citizens over 16 to own a
passport and travel across Europe
Hundreds of citizens gathered around foreign embassies to seek political
asylum and flee the country

Fall of Berlin Wall

November 1989
Following mass protests in East Germany and the relaxing of border control in
Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of East Berliners flooded checkpoints along
the Berlin Wall, crossing from East to West Berlin
The wall remained guarded even though the inter-German border was
effectively meaningless
Official dismantling of the wall by East German military did not begin until
June 1990

 July 1990
East Germany adopted West German currency, all border controls ceased
West German chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Gorbachev to drop Soviet
objections to a reunited Germany within NATO in return for substantial
German economic aid to the Soviet Union

Walking freely
through Checkpoint
Charlie 10
November 1989

People standing upon the wall 10 November 1989

Wall removal begins 1990

West Germans peer at East German border guards 5

January 1990

Reunification of Germany

Process in 1990 in which East Germany and West Germany to form

the reunited nation of Germany
Berlin also reunited as a single city

3 October celebration of German unity

 Result of the fall of Berlin Wall and decrease of Soviet involvement in

East Germany
18 March 1990 First free elections for East Germany
Culminated in the Unification Treaty

Negotiations between East Germany, West Germany, USSR, USA, UK

and France resulted in the Treaty in the Final Settlement with
Respect to Germany
Granted full sovereignty to a unified German state
Essentially the West absorbed the East, and as such retained all of West
Germanys memberships to NATO, UN and the EU.