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THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM

THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM. June 1982: In the skies over Lebanon, Israeli jets down 82 “state-of-the-art” Syrian Migs with 0 losses. January 1989: “Solidarity” gains legal recognition in Poland June 1989: Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing; Hungary opens its border with Austria

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THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM

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  1. THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM June 1982: In the skies over Lebanon, Israeli jets down 82 “state-of-the-art” Syrian Migs with 0 losses. January 1989: “Solidarity” gains legal recognition in Poland June 1989: 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. Potsdamer Platz, the Times Square of old Berlin (1982)

  3. POTSDAMER PLATZ TODAY WITH THE SONY CENTER

  4. East Germany relied on its Communist allies to prevent defections

  5. Leonid Brezhnev agreed at the Helsinki Conference in 1975 to promote “security and cooperation” in Europe Erich Honecker of East Germany confers with West Germany’s Helmut Schmidt at Helsinki

  6. ARTICLE VII OF THE HELSINKI DECLARATION,August 1, 1975 • “The participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion…. • “Within this framework the participating States will recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice, alone or in community with others, religion or belief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience…. • “In the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the participating States will act in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

  7. “CHARTER 77”(issued in Prague on January 1, 1977, by Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout “On 13.10.1976, there were published in the Codex of Laws of the CSSR /no.120 an ‘International Pact on Civil and Political Rights’ and an ‘International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, which had been signed on behalf of Czechoslovakia in 1968, confirmed at Helsinki in 1975 and which came into force in our country on 23.3.1976. Since that time our citizens have had the right and our state the duty to be guided by them. “… We welcome the fact that Czechsoslovak Socialist Republic has expressed aherence to these pacts. But their publication reminds us with new urgency how many fundamental civil rights for the time being are – unhappily – valid in our country only on paper. Completely illusory, for example, is the right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by article 19 of the first pact.” [The Charter then discusses violations of the right to “freedom from fear,” to “freedom of religious conviction,” etc.]

  8. Pope John Paul II celebrates mass in Gdansk, Poland, June 1979. Catholic volunteers organized the whole event.

  9. Lech Walesa addresses a Solidarity rally at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, 1980. The movement also studied Gandhi’s methods of community organizing

  10. General Jaruzelski appears on Polish TV in December 1981 to declare martial law, banning “Solidarity”

  11. Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985 and proclaimed a new gospel of glasnost (openness) & perestroika (restructuring).

  12. President Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, June 12, 1987:“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

  13. President Reagan greets Gorbachev in Washington, Dec. 1987

  14. Gorbachev sought anxiously to extricate Soviet troops from Afghanistan, where they fought a bloody war from 1979 to 1989 Mujahideen ride a captured Soviet tank near Allah Jirga in 1980 Training in weapons smuggled from Pakistan, 1982

  15. Lech Walesa addresses a “Solidarity” rally in late 1988(Gorbachev encouraged Poland to lift martial law)

  16. In 1976 economic modernizers led by Deng Xiaoping (shown here in 1979) gained power in China, but they rejected any challenge to Communist political rule

  17. The “Goddess of Democracy” in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, June 1989

  18. 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

  19. The Hungarian and Austrian foreign ministers dismantlethe “Iron Curtain” near Sopron, 27 June 1989

  20. 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.”

  21. The Leipzig “Monday rally” of October 9, 1989, when70,000 citizens faced down the security forces

  22. One million protesters marched in East Berlin on November 4

  23. THE CONQUEST OF THE BERLIN WALL, NOV. 8/9, 1989:The regime abdicated by endorsing free travel in principle….

  24. Police intervene against peaceful demonstratorsin Prague, November 17, 1989

  25. “Havel to the Castle” (Prague, November 1989)

  26. 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

  27. 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.

  28. Gorbachev greets Helmut Kohl in Moscow, 1990; they agreed that Germany could be unified and remain in NATO

  29. Germans before the Reichstag in Berlin celebrate their national reunification on October 3, 1990

  30. Within the USSR Gorbachev still defended the Communist monopoly on power (here at the Communist Party Congress of 1989).

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

  32. Elite KGB troops confront independence demonstrators in Lithuania, 1990

  33. Boris Yeltsin addresses demonstrators against the Communist coup in Moscow, August 1991

  34. The “Commonwealth of Independent States” (1992) The new Russia stumbled into its first bloody war when Muslim Chechnya (#7 above) declared independence in 1994

  35. Among the peoples of the Caucasus, only the Georgians, Armenians, & Azeris gained “republics” in the old USSR

  36. NATO as of 2009, with its new members, Croatia and Albania.

  37. The Republic of Georgia,with the Russian-occupied enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (where massive fighting broke out in 2008)

  38. Soviet leaders drew the current eastern border of Ukraine in 1954. In 1991, 90% of Ukrainians supported independence.

  39. Independence Square, Kiev, at the beginning of the “Orange Revolution,” November 22, 2004

  40. President Viktor Yuschenko suffered dioxin poisoning

  41. Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, 2009

  42. POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN UKRAINE, 2010

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