Considering the amount of coverage that the arbitrarily chosen 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall received, one would think that it was purely, or at least mostly a media event.
As it turned out, despite the cold rain falling on November 9, 2009, it was more of a celebration of the human spirit, of the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and a call for action against continuing violations of human rights throughout the world.
There have been many discussions as to who actually contributed the most to the disintegration of communism.
Most knowledgeable experts underscore the huge contribution of Pope John Paul II, who has given the Polish people the encouragement needed to start the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and to found the Solidarity trade union in 1980.
The communist government has cracked down on Solidarnosc on December 13, 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but the opposition remained very active, finally reaching the point in February of 1989 of forcing the Polish government to initiate talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.
Here’s the rest of the timeline of events, leading up to the demise of communism in Europe:
1989
April 5: The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.
May 2: Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.
Aug. 19: The ‘Pan-European Picnic’ – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West.
Aug. 24: Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.
Sept. 10: Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.
Oct. 18: East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.
Nov. 4: One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.
Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls.
Nov. 17: The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia erupts in reaction to a police crackdown on peaceful student protests in Prague. Days of mass demonstrations ensue.
Nov. 24: Communists in Prague step down.
Dec. 3: Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, speaking after a press conference between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were concluding a shipboard summit at Malta, declared: “From Yalta to Malta, the cold war ended at 12.45 p.m. today.”
Dec. 22: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown. He and his wife, Elena, are executed three days later after a summary trial.
1990
April 8: Hungary elects a non-communist government.
Oct. 3: Germany unifies.
Dec. 9: Poland elects Lech Walesa president.
July 1: Baltic states gain independence from the Soviet Union.
Dec. 25: The Soviet Union dissolves.
Technorati Tags: Berlin wall, Communism, fall, Germay, media, overkill, poland, Pope John Paul II, Solidarity, Walesa
The headline is not strictly true any longer, as the “star” anchors of all three U.S. TV networks have returned to New York by now.
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