WikipediaExtracts:Die Wende
Extracted from Wikipedia --
The Peaceful Revolution (German: Friedliche Revolution) – also, in German called Die Wende (German pronunciation: [diː ˈvɛndə], "the turning point") – was one of the peaceful revolutions of 1989 at the peak of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s. A process of sociopolitical change that led to, among other openings, the opening of their borders to the Western world.
These events were precipitated by Solidarity's peaceful revolution in Poland and enabled by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to abandon intervention in the Soviet sphere of influence and other shifts to the Soviet Union's foreign policy.
In East Germany—the former German Democratic Republic (GDR or DDR)—the peaceful revolution marks the end of the ruling by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1989 and the transition to a parliamentary system. This peaceful transition later enabled the German reunification in October 1990. The peaceful revolution was marked by nonviolent initiatives and demonstrations.
The GDR's lack of competitiveness in the global market economy, as well as its sharply rising national debt, hastened the destabilization of the SED's one-party state, similar to destabilization of such regimes in other Eastern Bloc countries.
