REMEMBERING THE MIRACLE OF 1989
The East German state would be gone in less than a year. Following democratic elections in March 1990, East Germans decided to merge with the Federal Republic of Germany. With the GDR gone, the collapse of the Soviet empire was all but complete. Some think that the momentous change that began in 1989 was inevitable. They would do well to remember that in June of the same year, China’s elderly rulers had deployed tanks to crush (literally) the peaceful freedom movement in Tiananmen Square. And there Carl Bildt was Sweden's foreign minister from 2006 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden's EU accession. He is also Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations. In the Kremlin, the Soviet leadership – or Gorbachev, at least – continued to believe that the empire was safe and could be reformed. The Baltic Way was tolerated, and the Pan- European Picnic was simply ignored. But the latent potential of those demonstrations soon became apparent. People began to flee the GDR by the thousands. Soon enough, the Hungarian authorities had no alternative but to open the border. Droves of East Germans flooded into Czechoslovakia in search of a route to the West. On November 9, fumbling GDR leaders even opened the Berlin Wall itself.
were plenty of communist leaders urging a “Chinese solution” for the demonstrations of 1989. In fact, at the Soviet command post just south of Berlin (which had served as command center for the German Army during World War II, and which had been seized from Hitler decades earlier), Red Army marshals were awaiting orders to march in and save the empire by whatever means necessary. No one can know what would have happened if more conservative forces within the Kremlin had prevailed. Most likely, there would have been widespread disorder and violence across much of the region, which would have put the West under substantial pressure to intervene. Open war would have been a distinct possibility. After all, large empires throughout history have generally gone out with a bang. If anything, the Soviet experience was an exception. Thankfully, that order to the Red Army was never issued. Part of the reason was that Soviet leaders believed, mistakenly, that a crackdown was unnecessary, and that the system would survive. But it was also because democratic forces were starting to assert themselves within Russia itself. The rising leader in Moscow was Boris Yeltsin, who held no attachment to the nostalgia of an overextended and unsustainable empire. Thirty years ago, Europe experienced a truly miraculous few months. Today, we should honor not only those who fought for change, but also those who refused to send out the tanks. Blood could have flowed through the streets of Europe once again, but it did not. © Project Syndicate
Blood could have flowed through the streets of Europe once again, but it did not.
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September 2019
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