UC Berkeley - HIST 186 - 2012 Spring - Sargent - International and Global History Since 1945 - Lecture 21 - The New World Order - 01h 22m 08s

Preliminaries

[00:00]

Okay, well today it seems like the combination of the weather and the podcast proved irresistible for (laughter from the class) something like 50% of the class but then that's okay at least the podcast is here.

[00:15]

Thank you especially to all of you who did show up to lecture. Is there something else happening today on campus by the way? That would...okay...cause I saw at Sproul Plaza↗ there are people carrying signs for the student elections are those today?

(student response)

[00:30]

Okay, so maybe that...people are busy exercising their democratic prerogatives. Which is appropriate given that today we're talking about the sort of end of the Cold War international order and the origins of a new international order in the post Cold War world.

Lecture Overview: A New World Order: The Fall of Communism and the Breakup of the Soviet Union

[00:48]

Yesterday -- sorry, not yesterday, on last Thursday ,that's right, last Thursday we took the story up to the end of the sort of Soviet-American Cold War.

[00:59]

We discussed transformations in US foreign policy during the 1980s -- transformations in the Soviet Union associated with the processes of glasnost and perestroika that Mikhail Gorbachev set in motion -- and we discussed the transformations in the East-West Cold War that occur as a consequence of these developments within the United States and within the Soviet Union.

[01:22]

Today we're going to talk instead about sort of the international order that came into being in the aftermath of the Cold War. So this is a lecture about endings but also about beginnings. What kind of international relations would follow this long phase of Cold War?

[01:39]

And this is a really important question. In some ways it's a very difficult question for students of postwar international history to pose. After all until you know relatively recently it was easy to think of the history of the postwar era as being more or less synonymous with the history of the Cold War.

[01:55]

And this was particularly sort of easy to do if you happen to be a historian who was interested in international relations. Of course if you're interested in domestic American history, or domestic Soviet history even, you could engage with a whole set of themes beyond the Cold War. You didn't have to be preoccupied with the Cold War.

[02:14]

But if your interests had to do with diplomacy and foreign relations and even sort of the international system...writ large the Cold War was inescapable as the framework within which international history was conceived, researched, written, and taught.

[02:29]

So too for the makers the foreign policy did the Cold War look like a permanent feature of the international landscape. Of course with the end of the Cold War new concepts had to be devised. New frameworks had to be contemplated for comprehending the world and for acting within it. And it's this sort of difficult transition from a bipolar international order characterized by durable animosity between the Soviet Union and the United States -- the era of the Cold War -- to a new era, a somewhat less choate era of international history, that we're going to focus on today.

Eastern Europe as the Crucible of Transformation

[03:03]

I'm going to start with Europe. Europe was the crucible of the Cold War's division in the 1940s. And Europe would also be the site of the world's sort of reintegration after the collapse of Communism in the 1980s.

[03:19]

I'm going to start by talking about Eastern Europe. How did the reintegration of Europe come to pass? Well, it came to pass most obviously as a consequence of the collapse of the East European Communist governments that the Soviet Union had set up and then superintended during the course of the Cold War.

[03:38]

1989 is the sort of year that marks Eastern Europe's transition from Soviet domination and...Communist rule to a new era of political pluralism and self-determination. 1989 is the key year. The transformative year in Europe's history. How many of you remember 1989?

[04:02]

Okay, a few of you. This is always an interesting exercise. It's particularly interesting for me because I was born in 1979 ten years before 1989 so the sort of memories of this era -- some of the earliest you know sort of substantial historical memories that I have myself. But you're, what, probably ten, twelve, years younger than I am, at least on average, most of you were born in what the 1990s?

[04:28]

(student response)

I'm sorry.

(student response)

1990.

(student response)

[04:33]

Okay, so then abouts the early 1990s. So these events are not for you the defining historical events of your sort of formative years. Probably for you 9/11 was the equivalent to what 1989 was for me. What difference this you know makes in terms of our basic historical and even political presumptions I don't know but these are very different kinds of events. 1989 and September 11, 2001 -- both transformative events in their own ways, but very different events.

1989 as the Year of Transformation

[05:03]

But it's on 1989 that we're going to be focusing today. We'll come to 9/11 in due course. How do we explain 1989? Why did these regimes collapse? Why did the Cold War world sort of hinge or turn on the implosion of the East European Communist governments?

[05:22]

These are really difficult questions. They're difficult for historians to engage and they're difficult too because they're politically loaded. Sort of inherent in the answers to these questions, are a whole set of assumptions about the inevitably of democracy: the durability of alternatives to it, specifically, but not limited to Communist regimes.

[05:42]

How do we explain 1989? Did the regimes of Eastern Europe collapse because of the rise of internal opposition? Sort of reassuring groundswell of democratic support that overwhelmed illegitimate and perhaps corrupt Communist governments. This is one possible explanation.

[06:03]

We might alternatively emphasize the influence of the West. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe↗ the Helsinki Accord of 1975↗ sort of paved the way for new openings between East and West. It expanded the domain for communications, the exchange of ideas between East and West, and in doing so may have helped to sort of lay the foundations for an overthrow of the East European Communist regimes by the force of internal public opinion gravitating toward Western models, Western examples. The pull of the West is one sort of hypothetical explanation for 1989.

The Soviet Union and the Sinatra Doctrine

[06:43]

Another explanation that it would be important to give serious consideration to would emphasize the role of the Soviet Union. To what extent was East European Communism pushed by the USSR -- specifically by Mikhail Gorbachev. After all the Communist regimes that came to be in Eastern Europe after the Second World War were very fundamentally the constructions of Soviet power.

[07:09]

After the Second World War, as you all know, because we've discussed this, at length, the Soviet Union created regimes in its own self-image where the Red Army ruled. Europe at the end of the Second World War was divided between sort of American, Anglo-American occupation forces, and Soviet occupation forces. As the Cold War intensified the Soviet Union used the sort of opportunities that the Red Army's presence afforded it to create pro-Soviet Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

[07:38]

The process of Sovietization↗ or Stalinization as it's sometimes described was gradual. It wasn't as if the Red Army just came in and created these hardline Communist regimes in 1945. It took a period of years. But Soviet power was the crucial resource that upheld Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

[07:58]

By the late 1980s the Soviet Union had itself transformed considerably. Mikhail Gorbachev had set in motion a process of glasnost↗ that opened Soviet politics to expanded range of debate, to free speech even, to you know expanded participation in the political sphere. Gorbachev as we've discussed encouraged the rise of civil society organizations within the USSR -- the so-called informals.

[08:28]

And Gorbachev also transformed the relationship of the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe. And this is really important. This is probably where we should begin -- with the so-called Sinatra Doctrine↗. I concluded last Thursday's lecture with the Sinatra Doctrine so it's a sensible point at which to pick up the story -- with the Soviet Union telling the East European countries that they could now go their way -- an allusion of course to Frank Sinatra's↗ My Way↗.

[08:55]

How did this come to pass? What kind of transformation did it represent? Well, to grasp the significance of the Sinatra Doctrine we need to go all the way back to the Brezhnev Doctrine↗. Can anybody remind me when the Brezhnev Doctrine was proclaimed?

(student response)

[09:11]

Absolutely. It was in the late 1960s, in 1968 to be specific. What event might have prompted the articulation of the Brezhnev Doctrine?

(student response)

[09:23]

That's right: the Prague Spring↗. An explosion of dissent, of political pluralism even -- in Czechoslovakia -- prompted Brezhnev↗ to send in the tanks -- to correct what the Soviet Union described as a deviation from socialist orthodoxy.

[09:40]

And Brezhnev didn't just describe the Prague Spring as a one-off intervention; rather, the Prague Spring became an operational principle for Soviet power in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union, Brezhnev proclaimed in 1968, had a right, a prerogative, to intervene in Eastern Europe, to correct deviations from socialist orthodoxy.

[10:00]

When, you know, East European Communist regimes exhibited reformist tendencies, if they exhibited reformist tendencies, then the Soviet Union could come in and put things back to right.

[10:11]

This was the essence of the Brezhnev Doctrine. And Mikhail Gorbachev repudiates the Brezhnev Doctrine. And he does so very forcefully. As early as 1985, this is his first year in office as General Secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev privately tells East European leaders that he will not intervene in their domestic affairs anymore. That he has disavowed that legacy.

[10:34]

As Gorbachev becomes more confident in his own reformist project he makes this commitment increasingly public. The 19th Party Conference in June 1988↗ is a really important turning point. Remember that this is the conference that ratifies the slate of reformist political moves that Gorbachev wants to make at home. It's the 1998 party conference that introduces the elected Chamber of Deputies and creates a presidency of the Soviet Union which Gorbachev will occupy in due course.

[11:09]

This conference also has implications for Soviet relations with Eastern Europe. Gorbachev proclaims in a public speech, a speech that is widely reported by the media, that, and here I quote directly, imposition from outside, of a social structure, way of life or policy is from the dangerous armory of past years. Sovereignty and independence, equal rights and non-interference, are becoming the generally recognized norms of international relations.

[11:39]

So Gorbachev with these words effectively declares that the East European countries are fully sovereign. That they will not be subject to Soviet intervention in their domestic affairs. That their leaders, their national leaders, will be free to determine their futures on their own terms.

[11:55]

This is a really important move. It forcefully repudiates the Brezhnev Doctrine. As if the point was not made clear enough Gorbachev in his December 1988 speech, to the United Nations, proclaims to the world that the Soviet Union will not intervene in Eastern Europe.

[12:15]

This is widely reported on. Gorbachev also announces a unilateral set of reductions in Soviet conventional force levels in Europe which are widely discussed but the commitment, the philosophical commitment to respect sovereign self-determination, in Eastern Europe is a crucial turning point.

[12:34]

When asked about this commitment in the press conference that followed Gorbachev's speech, Gennadi Gerasimov↗, Gorbachev's press secretary, coins the phrase Sinatra Doctrine↗. He's elaborating upon what his boss has said, journalists ask, Gerasimov, you know does Gorbachev really mean that the East Europeans can go their own way?

[12:56]

And Gerasimov invokes Frank Sinatra and says, yes, they're free to do it their way. Thus the Brezhnev Doctrine becomes replaced by the Sinatra Doctrine.

Transformation in Eastern Europe

[13:05]

What does this mean in practice? What does the promulgation of the Sinatra Doctrine, a bold new departure in Soviet foreign policy, mean for countries of Eastern Europe? Well, to answer this I think we have to look at the East European countries themselves.

[13:20]

To survey the political transformation and tumult of 1989 from a series of national vantage points. Once we've done that we can probably make some useful generalizations about sort of forces or themes that my have been present across the cases.

Hungary

[13:35]

Let's start by talking about Hungary. Hungary is...as all of the national cases are, unique. In Hungary's case, Hungary's trajectory as a sort of Communist state was unusually reformist. Hungarian Communism, by the standards of Eastern Europe, is after 1956 uniquely liberal -- accommodating of...pluralism is not the right word, but something about halfway towards that point -- dialog, free speech even.

[14:10]

Hungary of course experiences a major you know round of turmoil in 1956 with the sort of Budapest uprisings↗ against the Stalinist regime that is imposed by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. The Hungarian uprising in 1956 shakes the foundations of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and it gives, and it makes possible, a sort of period of long relatively stable reform under the leadership of János Kádár↗ -- a reformist Communist who comes to power in 1956.

[14:47]

Kádár pursues reform as a self-conscious strategy for maintaining the stability and even survival of his regime. Kádár understands that the legitimacy of Communism in Hungary will depend upon the ability of the Hungarian regime to provide welfare goods to its citizens.

[15:06]

The phrase Goulash Communism↗ is coined in the 1960s as a way of describing the particular sort of characteristics of Hungarian Communism -- a Communism that tries to improve material life for its people so as to sustain its own political legitimacy.

[15:22]

János Kádár also relaxes political controls. Hungary ceases to be a sort of hard totalitarian regime that it became in the late 1940s and early 1950s and becomes something more like a soft authoritarian country -- a country in which there are clearly defined bounds to political activity and free expression but within there is more scope for dissent, more scope for you know free discourse and the free exchange of ideas than...in a hardline Stalinist regime.

[15:53]

So you might think about the distinction say between China today and North Korea today as marking the difference between sort of Hungary under Kádár and the sort of classic Stalinist model of state socialism.

[16:08]

Kádár...is overthrown in 1988. Importantly he's not overthrown by hardliners but by people who argue that Kádár is insufficiently committed to reform. Why is this? Well, Hungary experiences a long period of economic stasis even relative decline. As the opportunities for extensive growth are exhausted the Hungarian Communist state struggles to meet the expectations of its people for consumer goods.

[16:40]

It depends upon imports from the West -- imports even of hamburgers. As early as 1981 Hungarians, at least those who live in Budapest, were able to buy McDonald's. McDonald's burgers like other Western commodities have to be paid for. How are they to be paid for if you're not making the export goods that will balance your international payments?

[17:02]

You have to turn to borrowing. So Hungary like other East European countries gets itself in hock to Western banks because it borrows in order to finance the imports of consumer goods on which its political legitimacy depends.

[17:16]

Reformers within the Communist Party realize that this is an unsustainable strategy -- that Hungary needs real change. That it needs to reinvigorate its economy, and that it needs to expand the domain of political freedom.

[17:32]

Kádár is overthrown in 1988; the modernizers come to power. The new leader, who replaces János Kádár, Károly Grósz↗ is not himself a reformer, but influential leaders within the Hungarian Politburo will be reformers. The most important of these will be Imre Pozsgay↗.

[17:52]

Imre Pozsgay enters the Politburo in 1988 favoring a far-reaching transformation of Hungarian politics. He wants to reconcile the party to civil society and even to pluralize Hungary's politics. In...January 1998 Imre Pozsgay makes a very bold move.

[18:14]

He does this while Grósz, the formal leader of Hungary, is out of the country. Grósz is actually at Davos, at the time, at the international summit of sort of world economic leaders↗. And Imre Pozsgay uses the sort of opportunity to make two very bold announcements.

[18:30]

The first of these is to announce publicly the findings of a Communist Party investigation of the events of 1956. The Budapest uprisings of 1956 were of course a traumatic defining event in the history of Communist Hungary.

[18:48]

During the late 1980s the Hungarian Communist Party undertook a systemic study of 1956 -- to determine what happened and to produce an official party reinterpretation of it. And in January 1998 Pozsgay announces the results of this historical study.

[19:06]

And these are really shaking. Pozsgay declares that the party has found that the 1956 uprising was a popular uprising. That it was an uprising of the people against the regime. And this is profoundly subversive. Because in the context of a sort of Communist dictatorship the party...presumes itself to be the spokesperson of the people.

[19:28]

Right, if the party derives its legitimacy from claiming to represent the people, the working classes, then the conclusion that 1956 was a popular uprising is deeply subversive to the basic legitimacy of the regime. Because it follows logically that the regime, that exists in 1998, is the heir to a counterrevolution against the popular uprising of 1956.

[19:54]

That makes sense, right, if 1956 was a popular uprising then the regime that followed upon the suppressing of the popular uprising is a counterrevolutionary regime. And in...the Communist world this is a very bad thing to be. So the party, through this reinterpretation of the events of 1956, effectively smashes the sort of ideological basis of its own legitimacy.

[20:18]

This is a very sort of bold departure. The reinterpretation of 1956 effectively makes the -- the Hungarian Communist Party itself -- a counterrevolutionary and therefore illegitimate force. Who would have thought that historical interpretation and reinterpretation could have been so consequential?

[20:39]

Besides announcing the results of this historical study Pozsgay makes a bold commitment to political pluralism. He comes out in favor of multiparty elections. The next month in February 1998 the Hungarian Communist Party will vote to introduce the first multiparty elections in Hungary's postwar history.

[21:02]

The party spurred by reformers like Imre Pozsgay is sort of willfully dissolving its own leading role in Hungarian politics. During 1989 the commitment to change is reenforced by the rise of popular demonstrations from below. Street protests grow in scale during 1998. Civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations, proliferate. The emergence of politics from below emboldens the courage of reformers from above -- people like Imre Pozsgay.

[21:32]

Their sort of relative power in the Communist Party is enhanced by the rise of mass politics. Politics outside the party comes to bolster and sustain reform -- the cause of reform within the party. And the dynamic between those two things is really important. And that's something that you should think about when we talk about the other cases too. How are reformers within the party sort of galvanized and encouraged by processes of mass politics outside of the party organization?

[22:04]

The decisive rupture with the Communist system comes in the fall of 1989. At this point the Communist Party, the Hungarian Communist Party, voluntarily splits. It divides itself in two. A majority of the party in fact, so these are not two even parts, a majority of the party leaves the Communist Party to found a new political organization -- the Hungarian Socialist Party↗.

[22:29]

And this will be a social democratic party committed not only to the pursuit of social justice but also, and this is the crucial point, to political pluralism and electoral democracy.

[22:40]

So Hungary is finally, sort of transitioning, towards the kind of social democratic synthesis that West European countries embraced after the Second World War. The country itself changes its name in October 1998. The Hungarian People's Republic renames itself the Hungarian Republic.

[22:59]

People is dropped from the name of the country. And this ironically suggests that the Republic will be for all the people not just the working class. That it will be a truly pluralistic, mass society, not just a society ruled by a Communist Party in the name of proletarian revolution.

Understanding the Fall of Communism in Hungary

[23:17]

How do we explain this transition? It's a remarkably rapid transition. In less than a year the Hungarian Communist Party dissolves its own leading role in Hungarian politics and Hungary transforms itself into a multiparty democracy.

[23:32]

We might want to start this task of explanation by making some reference to the long history of moderation, even moderate reform, under János Kádár. Hungary had long been the most liberal of the East European Communist countries. Thus it's not altogether surprising that it is within Hungary that inner internal reformers like Imre Pozsgay are able to make sort of bold moves to transform the system from within.

[23:59]

Clearly -- central attention has to be played to the role of internal reformers within the party. People like Pozsgay play key roles in catalyzing and initiating the process of reform. It would be very difficult to explain the end of Communism in Hungary without paying central attention to the roles of reformers within the party. Reform was not imposed upon the party from without; rather, the party reformed itself from within.

[24:28]

But the dynamic sort of interference between the pursuit of reform from above and the promotion of social change from below is clearly crucial to explaining outcomes in 1989. The rise of mass politics will galvanize and sustain the pursuit of reform from above. In the end the two things reform from above and pressure from below become symbiotic and sort of interdependent.

Poland

[24:55]

Similar dynamics manifests themselves elsewhere including in Poland.

[25:01]

Poland, like Hungary, was unique, all of these countries are unique in their own way. Hungary is sort of unique, sorry, Poland is probably unique in terms of the depth of hostility to Soviet rule that Poland sort of manifests bubbling below the surface for virtually the entirety of the Communist era.

[25:23]

After all there's a long history of national rivalry, even hostility, between Poland and Russia. In the postwar era this never really goes away. The Soviets are able to find willing collaborators from amongst the Polish elite but much of Poland remains unreconciled to Soviet domination.

[25:43]

By consequence the project of Communization in Poland is always somewhat more limited than it is elsewhere. The Soviet sponsored Communist government never attempts to implement a program of mass land reform in Poland as occurs elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Catholic Church is allowed to continue to exist although its activities are subject to some surveillance and restriction.

[26:07]

Poland uniquely in the Eastern Bloc also has a history of organized opposition to the Communist regime. The rise of the Solidarity Movement↗ in the early 1980s is a sort of unique phenomenon in Communist Eastern Europe.

[26:23]

Like Hungary Poland by the late 1980s is beset by serious structural dilemmas. These include serious structural economic dilemmas, international indebtedness, and rising popular support for opposition...forces within Polish society.

[26:42]

The Solidarity Movement resurges from 1987 onwards. It does so in part because of an economic downturn that encourages protests. Polish workers go on strike; they cease producing things; by consequence the economy is even less able to supply the needs of Polish consumers than had previously been the case.

[27:04]

The Catholic Church plays an important role as an incubator of political dissent. The Catholic Church both encourages dissent within Poland and provides space and sanctuary to those who will protest against the regime.

[27:18]

Beset by economic crisis and rising mass politics the Polish Communist Party in early 1989 enters into a dialog with Solidarity -- the principle representative organization of the Polish opposition.

[27:36]

This dialog becomes known as the Round Table Talks↗ -- talks between the regime and representatives of Solidarity occur around a round table. They begin in April 1989 and as a consequence they're known as the Round Table Talks.

[27:54]

They quickly produce agreement between the representatives of Solidarity and the representatives of the Polish Communist Party -- first to give the Catholic Church full legal recognition. The fact that full legal recognition of the Church was a central objective for Solidarity tells you something about just how important the Catholic Church was as a source of dissent and opposition within Communist Poland.

[28:22]

Importantly the Round Table Talks also produce an agreement to hold competitive multiparty elections in June 1989. These elections will not be entirely competitive. Only some of the seats in the Polish National Assembly will be competed for by representatives of all parties -- a number of seats will be reserved for members of the Communist Party.

[28:44]

But the introduction of elections is nonetheless a major turning point. The outcome of the elections is even more transformative. Solidarity sweeps the field. Solidarity wins all of the open competitive seats in the 1989 election.

[29:02]

The Communists fail, and this is really striking, to win a majority of the seats that had been reserved for Communists. The reason is that under the rules that are agreed to between -- in the Roundtable Talks -- the Communist candidates for the seats reserved for the Communist Party need to secure 50% of the vote in order to be elected.

[29:23]

Now on the face of things this shouldn't be too difficult because they're not running against any competitors. They're running unopposed. But enough voters cross out the names of the Communist Party candidates and write in names of alternative candidates that the Communists fail to secure even a majority of the seats that are reserved for them.

[29:42]

So the electoral result is a decisive repudiation of the Communist Party. And it ultimately precipitates a transformation in Poland's leadership that marks a decisive end of the Communist Era.

[29:57]

Through this phase of political renegotiation and transformation Poland's president, General Jaruzelski↗, remains in place. Jaruzelski was the President at the beginning of 1989 and he remains the President at the end of 1989. But in order to secure his own legitimacy in a changing Poland he decides to resign his chairmanship of the Communist Party.

[30:22]

Previously the roles of the party chairmanship and the state presidency had been wrapped together -- a single person had occupied both offices representing the fusion of party and state under the Communist model.

[30:35]

Well, Jaruzelski, a little bit like Gorbachev in the United States, sorry, a little bit like Gorbachev in the Soviet Union...consolidates his power as state president and sort of at the same time as he sort of diminishes his own responsibilities as Communist Party chairman.

[30:56]

The state as it were is reinvigorated and rehabilitated as a counterweight to the party. This is a dynamic that will sort of replicate itself elsewhere.

[31:07]

After the elections a representative of Solidarity, Tadeusz Mazowiecki↗, becomes Poland's Prime Minister. Inaugurated in June 1989 he's actually the first non-Communist head of government in Eastern Europe.

[31:22]

Subsequent to the June 1989 elections the leading role of the Communist Party in Poland's politics will be gradually and incrementally disestablished. As the political system opens to pluralism and to competitive elections the Communist Party gradually sort of negotiates its own disestablishment and disillusion.

[31:43]

The transformation to sort of non-Communist leadership is completed in 1991 when Lech Wałęsa↗ the leader of the Solidarity Movement is elected as Poland's President. So Wałęsa's election marks the sort of final achievement of Poland's decommunization.

Understanding the Fall of Communism in Poland

[32:04]

The Polish story reveals sort of similarities with the Hungarian story. We see the rise of politics from below -- probably more vigorous in Poland than in Hungary. We see the willingness of reformers within the party to negotiate, to make concessions, to hold free elections, ultimately to negotiate the party out of its leading role in Polish politics.

[32:28]

So there are similar dynamics in these two cases: Hungary and Poland. East Germany will be a somewhat different kind of case.

East Germany

[32:37]

East Germany is a very particular case within Eastern Europe. After all East Germany is not sort of a real country in the way that Hungary or Poland are. East Germany is a construction of the postwar era. East Germany is the rump that is left over following the division of Germany at the end of the Second World War. So it's a small sort of portion of Germany that becomes transformed into a hardline Communist state under the guidance of the Soviet Union.

[33:07]

East Germany is one of the most repressive countries in Eastern Europe. This is a repressive reality that has been sort of well documented in a couple of you know recent movies -- detailing life in East Germany. I think Good Bye, Lenin!↗ is one of them that you might want to watch if you want to get a sense of what life in East Germany was like.

[33:30]

The Stasi↗, or the secret police, exercise a very important role in the maintenance of political stability in East Germany. There are more secret police officers in East Germany per head of capita than there are in any other Communist country in Europe including even the Soviet Union itself.

[33:49]

Though East Germany is a very repressive, very authoritarian state, it has some of the highest standards of living anywhere in the Eastern Bloc. So East Germans are sort of in the peculiar position of being materially more affluent than most other East Europeans but at the same time subject to more intense political repression.

[34:11]

Within the Communist Party itself there is much less enthusiasm for reform in East Germany than there is in Hungary or in Poland. In both of those other cases there are willing, even enthusiastic, reformers to be found within the party apparatus -- not the case in East Germany. Erich Honecker↗ -- the leader of the East German Communist Party is an anti-reformer. He has no desire to reform the German Democratic Republic -- the GDR.

[34:41]

Even though Mikhail Gorbachev impresses upon Honecker the need for change Honecker repudiates Gorbachev's call for reform. And ironically Gorbachev is in little position to press the case for change because Gorbachev has made clear that he has no intention of meddling in the affairs of East European countries.

[34:58]

So...Honecker's commitment to sort of hardline unreformed, unreconstructed version of Communism, leaves Gorbachev having renounced interference with, you know, little option for impressing change upon the East German state.

[35:15]

During 1989 change comes nonetheless. It comes in large part because of developments outside of East Germany. Here Hungary has a crucial role to play. In April 1989 Hungary opens its borders to Western Europe. As part of the process of internal reform Hungary removes the border controls that had previously prevented Hungarian citizens from traveling to the West.

[35:42]

Insofar as East Germans can travel relatively freely to Hungary, an opportunity for East Germans who want to relocate to the West, has now sort of presented itself. East Germans are able to travel to Hungary and through Hungary to Western Europe, ultimately, to West Germany.

[36:01]

This is a really appealing thing for East Germans to do. Under the basic constitutional law or Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany↗ of the West German state, any East German who is able to make it to the West, automatically has citizenship. Because West Germany never really recognizes, at least constitutionally, the legitimacy of East Germany.

[36:20]

It recognizes only one Germany. Thus, Germans who happen to be sort of trapped behind the iron curtain become West German citizens if they make it to the West. And during 1989 many East Germans avail themselves of this opportunity. About a third of a million people leave East Germany during 1989.

[36:41]

For a country of what 20 million, this is a really substantially movement of people. People are leaving, fleeing the Communist state, for the West.

[36:51]

East Germany is subject to other sort of external forces bearing upon it. Gorbachev is important. Though Gorbachev will not force Honecker to do something that Honecker doesn't want to do Gorbachev leads by example.

[37:05]

Indeed Gorbachev visits East Berlin in October 1989 as street protests, street demonstrations, against the regime are massing. And Gorbachev is hailed by the East European, East German crowds, as a sort of hero, as an exemplar of the kind of reform that East Germans would like to see at home.

[37:24]

Gorbachev very publicly cautions the East Germans against using force against their own people. He...makes the emphatic case that East Germany needs to embrace reform, that it needs to expand the scope for political freedom.

[37:40]

He's not going to force the East Germans into any particular courses of action or choices but he uses his prestige and sort of moral influence to make the case for accommodation.

[37:51]

(student question)

[37:56]

It's only in East Germany where Gorbachev's visit plays a sort of catalytic role in the events that ultimately bring down the regime. But travel and consultation is you know very frequent throughout the East Bloc. So Gorbachev had good relations with many reformers -- especially reformers within Communist Parties. Jaruzelski in Poland was particularly close to Gorbachev.

[38:19]

Probably Gorbachev's influence and example was one of the factors that made Jaruzelski in 1989 accommodative of reform rather than reactive against it. So you're absolutely -- that's a good question and...you're right that Gorbachev has a role to play in other contexts.

[38:34]

But it's in East Germany in October where Gorbachev gives a public speech in East Berlin and becomes a sort of focal point for the pent up frustrations of the East German population.

[38:47]

And...this is consequential. It signals that the legitimacy of the East German Communist Party itself is beginning to crumble. During October and into November the mass demonstrations against East German Communist Party mounts.

[39:05]

Ultimately,Honecker will be ousted by opponents within the East German Politburo. This is not to say that there is a you know groundswell of reformers within the East German Politburo. But more realistic colleagues of Erich Honecker are dismayed when in late October 1989 Honecker argues for what he calls a Chinese solution -- for the introduction of military force on the streets of East Berlin to suppress the demonstrations.

[39:34]

Honecker is impressed by the efficacy with which the People's Republic of China suppressed demonstrations in Tiananmen Square↗ earlier in 1989 and he asks whether East Germany cannot do much the same. Can you not learn from the example of China and use force to clamp down on political dissent?

[39:53]

At this point more realistic leaders within the East German Politburo recoil. They recognize that East Germany is deeply indebted to the West. That it depends upon the West for imports of consumer goods and so on and so forth. And that using military force against unarmed people would be catastrophic for East Germany's relations with the larger world.

[40:17]

Perhaps not only the West, perhaps also even the Soviet Union, would repudiate East Germany and impose economic sanctions if it were to turn the tanks on its own people.

[40:28]

So Honecker is ousted after advocating the use of force against unarmed demonstrators. At this point a new government under the leadership of Egon Krenz↗ comes into power. But it has no coherent strategy. It is beset by sort of rising popular demonstrations and has no sort of solution at hand for dealing with them.

[40:50]

In exasperation an East German government spokesperson who is being interviewed actually by Tom Brokaw↗, an American correspondent, in November 1989 says that the Berlin Wall↗ can be opened up.

[41:03]

And this was a decision that the government spokesperson takes without any higher authorization. He was not authorized by the Politburo. A bureaucrat who's responsible for dealing with the media simply said that the gates of the Berlin Wall could be opened and that people can move freely to the West.

[41:19]

This announcement, which was not intended to be an announcement of policy but was a sort of haphazard response to a journalist's question, leads throngs of East Germans to climb -- to come to the Berlin Wall to clamor for it to be opened so that they can pass freely to the West.

[41:37]

The guards are totally dumbfounded. They don't have any instructions. There's no authorization to open the gates. But the mass demonstration is so powerful there's -- so many people there -- that they don't know what else to do. The choice is simple. Either you start shooting at these people or you open the gates and let them through to the West. And the guards decide to open the gates and let the crowd through into West Germany.

[42:00]

And it's at this point that ordinary East Germans start physically assaulting the Berlin Wall -- taking hammers and chisels and axes to the wall to smash it. So what happens is that the regime is overwhelmed sort of both by its own incompetence and by the rise of popular opposition to it.

[42:21]

Popular opposition that overwhelms first the Berlin Wall, the symbol of Europe's division, and of Germany's division and then the regime itself. The GDR collapses very quickly. Unlike in Poland, unlike in Hungary, there will not be a sort of negotiated democratization of the state. What happens instead is that the state implodes.

German Reunification

[42:45]

There is no East Germany by the end of 1990; rather, East Germany has collapsed and will be sort of assimilated by West Germany. The decisive steps towards reunification are taken very, very quickly. In the first months of 1990, so this is just months after the Berlin Wall has fallen, the key players in the diplomacy of reunification↗ make their key moves.

[43:10]

Gorbachev signals that he is willing to permit the reunification of Germany in exchange for West German economic aid to the Soviet Union. This is really key. Had the Soviet Union opposed reunification it would have been in a legitimate position to do so. After all the Soviet Union like Great Britain, like France, and like the United States has legal prerogatives in Germany as a consequence of the settlement that ends the Second World War.

[43:37]

The Soviet Union is an occupying power. And the Soviet Union could have opposed East Germany's, sorry, could have opposed Germany's reunification. It would have been on strong legal grounds had it chosen to do so. But Gorbachev agrees to go along.

[43:51]

The key sort of mover beyond the reunification of Germany is however the chancellor of West Germany: Helmut Kohl↗. Helmut Kohl commits himself decisively to reunification in early 1990 and in doing so is bolstered by the strong support of the United States of America -- now led by a new president -- George H. W. Bush.

[44:15]

With Kohl working hard to achieve reunification Germany will be reunified less than a year after the Berlin Wall falls. In October 1990 East Germany is formally dissolved and a new German Republic is born. This reunification is referred to in German as the turning point -- Die Wende↗. Germans would, some Germans would contest whether this was a reunification or the creation of an entirely new state.

[44:43]

Answering that question would take us deeper into the history of Germany than I want to go to today. But the...terminology is important to distinguish. In English we typically refer to this as a reunification in Germany it's referred to as a turning point.

[44:58]

But that's one very dramatic sort of ending -- that of the East German Communist state.

[45:05]

(student question)

Yeah.

[45:14]

Okay, no, that's a really good question. Because I've talked about the Soviet Union and the United States but not very much about Britain nor about France.

[45:22]

And you're absolutely right. Britain and France too were much more wary about German reunification than was the United States. The Soviet Union can be bought off with economic aid and this is what Kohl does. But Britain and France may be can't be bought off so easily.

[45:38]

Thatcher was opposed to reunification as was François Mitterrand↗ because both feared the resurgence of a powerful German state in the center of Europe. The reasons for this are obvious enough when you think about Europe's twentieth century.

[45:52]

Ultimately, Thatcher and Mitterrand are persuaded to go along with this. And I think that the key explanation for that has to do with Germany's integration to European institutions. The United States prevails upon Thatcher, Kohl prevails upon Thatcher, to acknowledge that Germany has been transformed by a European Project.

TSS46:15

The integration of Europe's nation-states into a common union, a union that is by the early 1990s becoming increasingly political, not just economic...reassures the concerns -- reassures Margaret Thatcher, and leaves -- leads her ultimately to set aside the concerns which previous -- which initially led her to oppose German reunification. Much the same dynamic plays out with regard to Mitterrand. Reassurance from Kohl and from the United States helps these leaders to overcome their initial misgivings.

Czechoslovakia

[46:50]

In Czechoslovakia, the process of reform is remarkable, perhaps, most of all, for its rapidity. Czechoslovakia...in the 1980s lacks a broad based dissident movement. Unlike Poland where the Solidarity Movement is a mass movement Czechoslovakia has no mass anti-Communist movement during the 1980s.

[47:16]

The dissident movement that exists in Czechoslovakia is fledgling. It's comprised mainly of intellectuals and artists.

[47:25]

After the Helsinki Final Act↗ -- it is true -- a group of Czechoslovakian intellectuals organize themselves as Charter 77↗ -- they sign a document -- Charter 77 -- which is concluded in 1977, which calls upon the Czechoslovakian government to honor the commitments that it has made in the Helsinki Final Act: the commitments to respect human rights, to expand freedom of mobility and so on and so forth.

[47:49]

But this dissident movement in Czechoslovakia is small and fledgling. The fact that it's led by Václav Havel↗, a very prominent intellectual and playwright who died actually earlier, no, he died last year, should not distract us from the fact that in political terms dissent is a marginal phenomenon in Communist Czechoslovakia.

[48:14]

The state is fairly repressive and it looks fairly stable for it. Still despite repression being a stable reality Czechoslovakia is not wholly immune from changes elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc.

[48:29]

The rise of mass demonstrations in Poland and in Hungary as well as in Eastern Europe have a contagious effect. During 1981 -- during 1989 -- Czechoslovakia too begins to experience the rise of mass politics -- of mass public demonstrations against the Communist Party regime: wide public calls for reform, for change, for democratization.

[48:56]

Mikhail Gorbachev plays an important role in Czechoslovakia's democratization. Gorbachev actually meets with leaders of the Czech Communist Party and suggests that Czechoslovakia needs to reform itself. Gorbachev also suggests that Czechoslovakia should open itself to the larger world.

[49:15]

He specifically requests that Czechoslovakia cease blocking Radio Free Europe↗ -- the US sponsored radio station that broadcasts free sort of information, news and programming, into occupied Eastern Europe for the duration virtually of the Cold War.

[49:34]

The Czechoslovakian Communist Party is uncertain how to respond to the phenomenon of mass politics. In early November 1989 the regime violently suppresses one popular demonstration I think in Prague. This ends up marking an important turning point. The decision to suppress popular demonstrations at a time when regimes elsewhere in Eastern Europe are negotiating with demonstrators only encourages the demonstrators within Czechoslovakia.

[50:09]

The dissidents are emboldened by the suppression of a popular uprising in November -- not chastened by it. After the suppression the dissidents create a new organization, an umbrella organization, to bring together opponents of the Communist regime. This organization is called Civic Forum↗.

[50:30]

Its members will include Václav Havel, the orchestrator of Charter 77↗, and the most respected sort of member of the dissident community within Czechoslovakia.

[50:42]

But...Civic Forum will be a broad based organization. Participants will even include Alexander Dubček↗. Do any of you remember Alexander Dubček?

[50:54]

(student response)

[50:59]

Exactly. It was Dubček who coined the expression, Communism with a human face↗ who tried in the late 1960s to reform Czechoslovakia's Communist system to make it more responsive to the needs of the people -- even to expand the scope for political pluralism.

[51:17]

Well, Dubček comes back in 1989, this is what twenty years, twenty-one years, after the suppression of the Prague Spring↗ and lends his credibility to the insurgent anti-regime movement.

[51:32]

At this stage, and this is late in 1989, reformers within the Communist Party, begin to side with demonstrators on the streets. A sort of working coalition is quickly formed between latent reformist elements within the party and opponents of the regime outside of the party.

[51:53]

Communist leaders move quickly to reform and transform the state as it becomes clear that the legitimacy of the Czechoslovakian Communist regime is crumbling. In December 1989 Communist leaders resign en masse from office. New elections are quickly convened. Václav Havel is elected president at the very end of the year.

[52:20]

This whole transition, from the suppression of the November demonstration, through to the convention of free elections and the installation of Havel as President takes about six weeks.

[52:32]

This is a truly remarkable transformation. I mean in the United States it took us longer than six weeks to count the votes that were cast in Florida in 2000↗. Czechoslovakia orchestrates an internal regime change in that time. This is very, very impressive.

[52:50]

And it ultimately produces a sort of wholesale change in the regime -- a transformation that is essentially nonviolent aside from the sort of suppression of the November demonstration that catalyzed the formation of Civic Forum.

Romania

[53:06]

Romania will be the exception to the general rule of nonviolence. In East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, the transitions from Communism will be nonviolent. In Romania it's a different story.

[53:25]

Here the regime that is overthrown is a very particular kind of regime. Nicolae Ceaușescu↗ had ruled Romania since 1965. He was a long serving Communist dictator.

[53:39]

Unlike Communist rule elsewhere in Eastern Europe the Communist regime in Romania was highly personalized. Ceaușescu ruled more like the Kim dynasty↗, or to Castro's in Cuba. He sort of forged an ideological synthesis of Communism and you know sort of personal charisma.

[54:02]

Ceaușescu was a charismatic leader and his regime was very much built around the force of his own personality.

[54:10]

In geopolitical terms Ceaușescu was a fairly flexible leader. Whereas other East European Communist countries cleaved very closely to a pro-Soviet line in the Cold War Ceaușescu showed a little bit more capacity for independence. He invited Richard Nixon to visit Romania, for example, in 1971. And sort of maneuvered himself between the Soviet Union and the United States to some extent as it suited his interests to do so.

[54:40]

Ceaușescu in fact wins plaudits from Western leaders in the 1960s and 1970s for his flexibility in Cold War politics. At home however it's a different story. Ceaușescu's regime is repressive and very authoritarian.

[54:57]

It's not a particularly pleasant regime to be a citizen of. Romania also lags far beyond the rest of Eastern Europe, Albania apart, in its economic development. GDP per capita, I don't have the chart, but I think you've seen it before, is much lower in Romania than it is East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and so on.

[55:19]

So this is an unstable regime -- a regime that struggles to develop, but which is held together by force organized around the personality and person of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

[55:31]

Ceaușescu during 1989 is very disturbed by what he sees elsewhere in Eastern Europe. I mean you would be if you were a Communist dictator. You wouldn't be much reassured to see Communist dictators being overthrown in neighboring countries.

[55:45]

And he decides to you know sort of do something about it. What is he going to do to stabilize his regime to shore up support? Ceaușescu hits upon the brilliant idea of holding a mass political rally which is convened at the very end of 1989.

[56:03]

He convenes a massive political rally in order to put on a demonstration of popular support for his regime. It turns out to have exactly the opposite effect. Demonstrators far from shouting, you know, pro-Ceaușescu slogans, are overheard to be shouting anti-regime slogans: down with the dictator and so on and so forth.

[56:25]

So having invoked mass politics, as a mechanism of supporting his regime, Ceaușescu rapidly find himself coming face-to-face with mass political opposition to his rule.

[56:38]

At this point the regime divides upon itself. Bureaucrats and military leaders within the Romanian state recognize that sort of history is moving against the regime, that Ceaușescu's days are numbered. This impression you know derives in large part from the examples that other East European countries set.

[57:00]

As sort of regime officials look at Eastern Europe they can see very clearly what is happening and they make the rational calculation that continuing to serve this you know authoritarian dictatorship is not in their individual own best interests.

[57:16]

So the regime divides upon itself in December 1989. The military and state bureaucracies for the most part desert Ceaușescu. They, you know, decide to defect from the regime to the demonstrators who are quickly sort of assembling on streets.

[57:35]

Only the Securitate↗ which is the personal security force that serves Ceaușescu himself remains wholly loyal to the regime. And something like a brief civil war ensues as the Securitate stays loyal to Ceaușescu and the mainstream Romanian military defects from the regime. So there is a sort of conflict between the fragmenting parts of this you know sort of personalized Communist party-state.

[58:06]

Ceaușescu ends up being captured on Christmas Day 1989, December 25th, by opponents of the regime, and he's quickly executed. And that's how Romanian Communism ends. It's the only sort of Communist implosion that concludes with the execution of a Communist dictator. And that's sort of how that story ends.

Analysis of the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe

[58:28]

As we kind of step back and look at these cases in general what common forces do we see operating? What are the common sort of hypotheses that might help us to explain...the variety of outcomes in the cases that we've sampled as well as one or two others which we haven't had, you know, time to discuss?

[58:48]

External influences are clearly you know very important though their importance is not the same in every case. The Soviet Union has an important influence on outcomes within Eastern Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev leads by example. Reformers within countries like Hungary will be powerfully influenced by the example of Gorbachev's domestic reforms within the USSR itself.

[59:14]

But there is a paradox so far as Gorbachev's direct influence goes. Gorbachev can encourage East European leaders to do the right thing as he does in Poland with Jaruzelski, as he does in Czechoslovakia, as he tries to do with Honecker in Eastern Europe.

[59:30]

But Gorbachev has disavowed direct intervention in the affairs of the East European satellite republics. So Gorbachev is restrained by the restrictions that he has himself imposed upon Soviet meddling in Eastern Europe. So Gorbachev's influence is somewhat you know sort of paradoxical because he can't be as interventionist on behalf of political reform as he might like to be.

[59:57]

The West is clearly important. The West is an appealing model. We've already talked about the ways in which the sort of availability of television and radio representations of ordinary life in the West helps to undermine and erode the legitimacy of Communism in the East. The West is a...sort of...aspirational ideal for dissidents in the West who want to emulate both the West's political freedoms and its material affluence.

[1:00:26]

But it's also important to think about the realities of the economic interdependence that exists between Eastern Europe and Western Europe by the end of the 1980s. By economic independence I refer specifically to financial interdependence -- to the intensive borrowing that East European Communist countries have embarked upon in order to sustain imports of consumer goods from the West -- from the capitalist world.

[1:00:54]

Countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia and East Germany depend upon borrowing from the West to sustain imports of goods. This has serious implications for the range of political strategies that Communist leaders might adopt at the moment of sort of systemic upheaval or tumult in 1989.

[1:01:17]

Repression might be a rational strategy. Erich Honecker makes that argument. Perhaps these regimes could have stayed in power had they used force to repress demonstrators -- to suppress the demand for democracy.

[1:01:31]

But had force been utilized it would have imperiled the sort of availability of loans of financed capital from the West -- from the capitalist world. The price of repression would very likely have been exclusion from international capital markets -- exclusion from the liberal integrating global economy.

[1:01:55]

So economic interdependence has an important role to play in determining and shaping the nature of the post-Communist transition in the East. Internal changes are also crucial.

[1:02:08]

We've emphasized the rise of internal reformers within the party apparatuses of the East Eastern Communist countries. In Hungary for example the role of reformers like Imre Pozsgay is clearly paramount.

[1:02:22]

Internal reformers, Communist Party apparatchiks↗, who lose confidence in the system that they serve and who begin to contemplate the need for gradual and then sweeping transformations of the system. These individuals are very, very important. Their roles will be crucial in the transition from Communism to democracy in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

[1:02:49]

Communist Party bureaucracies experience crises of confidence -- crises of legitimacy, and this you know produces opportunities for reformers to stake their claims. What role for mass politics? To what extent are the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe overswept by people power? By the rise of pluralism and democracy from below?

[1:03:15]

This is much harder to adjudge, and here I would suggest the record is a little bit more varied. In some cases like Poland the role of mass politics seems clear enough. Solidarity resurges from 1987 in Poland and in effect forces the party-state into a position in which it has few plausible alternatives save to negotiate.

[1:03:38]

Elsewhere the role of mass politics is somewhat less powerful than that. In Hungary for example the rise of opposition from below follows subsequent upon the initiation of reform from above. So I think the most that we can say about mass politics is that there is a dynamic creative and synergistic kind of relationship between the processes of reform from above and contestation from below and beyond.

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

[1:04:10]

What about the Soviet Union itself? How does it end? How does the Soviet Union collapse?

[1:04:19]

To explain this we should start by talking about the so-called nationalities issue. The fact is that the Soviet Union had from the outset been a multinational state. The Soviet Union is constructed not as a singular nation-state but rather as a multiethnic, multinational, empire of nations: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

[1:04:43]

Well, it's the plural, republics, that ought to be the give away. There was not one Soviet state -- not one republic but a coalition of some fifteen Soviet republics that collectively constituted the USSR. And here you can see them all sort of illustrated on the chart.

[1:05:03]

Russia, of course is by far and away the largest member of the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union also includes Ukraine in the east, Belorussia, the so-called Baltic Republics that are incorporated forcibly in 1941, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, home of Borat↗, and the home of...(laughter from the class).

[1:05:28]

Apologies to any podcast listeners in Kazakhstan. I probably won't have anymore after that (laughter from the class) Uzbekistan, and so on -- the stans of central Asia.

[1:05:40]

It's a terrible thing for a country when your most famous representative (laughter from the class) becomes a you know satirical creation but...there it is...

[1:05:49]

[1:05:53]

Changes within the Soviet state orchestrated by Gorbachev in the 1980s encourage a resurgence of political nationalism within the constituent republics of the Soviet Union.

[1:06:05]

The creation of a Soviet Presidency which is initiated in 1988 at the 19th Party Conference spurs the creation of national presidencies. So it's not just that the Soviet Union is creating new state institutions the constituent republics of the USSR are creating new sort of national political institutions from 1998 onwards.

[1:06:27]

As these republics create political institutions of their own some of them begin to press for autonomy from the Soviet Union, even for independence from the Soviet Union. Here the Baltic Republics are sort of the leaders, or the pioneers, in the move to dissolve the USSR.

[1:06:48]

This is in part because these are the most affluent parts of the USSR. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are relatively prosperous. They also look across the Baltic Sea to Scandinavia and see themselves as being part of a sort of common North European region that exists apart from the USSR in terms of sort of the identity of the Baltic Republics. These are countries that define and identify as North European, even greater Scandinavian, not necessarily as Soviet.

[1:07:23]

The fact that these countries were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1941 as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact↗, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, is you know sort of consequential. These are not countries that are ever really assimilated into the USSR in a meaningful or far-reaching way.

[1:07:43]

So independence demonstrations begin in the, in 1990, in the Baltic Republics. These are suppressed initially by force. You know there's much to admire in the processes of reform that Gorbachev initiated but it is also the case that Gorbachev used military force to suppress demonstrations for national independence in the Baltic Republics in 1990 and 1991.

[1:08:10]

These demonstrations on behalf of national autonomy and independence are paralleled by national protests in Georgia, and Armenia and elsewhere. In Armenia an earthquake becomes a sort of catalyst for national self-assertion.

[1:08:27]

In central Asia in the stans -- Communist elites are somewhat more loyal to the union than they are in the Western USSR. In part this is because pro-Soviet sort of Communist leaders in these regions are fearful of the rising influence of political Islam. And they sort of...worry that the results of the breakdown of the Soviet Union might be a rising influence for Islamism in their territories.

[1:08:58]

So the Central Asian republics are something of an exception. They remain more stable, more loyal to the USSR, than do the Western republics in sort of Eastern Europe and the Baltic region.

[1:09:11]

But the rise of the nationalities, the resurgence of nationalism, is clearly a powerful and divisive force in the Soviet Union after 1988. And the question of what to do about this is perhaps the most vexing question that Mikhail Gorbachev faces. The most disruptive nationalist insurgency is the one that occurs in Russia after Boris Yeltsin election as President.

[1:09:40]

Yeltsin is elected President of Russia in 1990. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev who becomes President of the USSR Yeltsin is elected by direct popular election. Gorbachev is indirectly elected by the Soviet parliament -- by the Chamber of Deputies. And this has far-reaching consequences. Yeltsin who aligns himself very sharply with the pro-democracy movement within Russia has a popular legitimacy. He can claim a mantle of democratic support.

[1:10:15]

Gorbachev who has been democratically elected cannot. Gorbachev's legitimacy derives only from his indirect election as President of the USSR and from his chairmanship of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[1:10:29]

By 1990 the legitimacy of the Communist Party is in freefall. So Gorbachev has a less substantial base of political support to stand upon than does Boris Yeltsin. But Gorbachev is trapped in a very difficult situation. Gorbachev is astute and politically aware. He can see that the...rise of nationalism, the rise of nationalist politics, is corrosive of the Soviet Union.

[1:10:59]

At the same time Gorbachev is committed to the preservation and the ongoing reform of the USSR itself. But what is to hold the USSR together if not Communism? Can the USSR exist as a plural multiparty state? Or is Communism, the Communist Party, the only force that holds these fifteen quite disparate republics together? This is the fundamental dilemma with which Gorbachev has to grapple.

[1:11:28]

Gorbachev also has to grapple with practical political dilemmas. Gorbachev, even as he continues to promote a reform agenda, is increasingly confounded, especially after 1990, by a reaction on the right. Actually it might be more accurate to say a reaction on the left. Because we're talking when we talk about reaction in the context of late Soviet era about the die hard Communists -- about the members of the Communist Party who resist reform and seek to impede its progress -- who want to turn back the clock to the Brezhnev Era.

[1:12:03]

These are the most hardline Communists but they are in the context of the moment the conservatives, the reactionaries↗, those who inveigh against reform, who try to thwart it and sort of reverse its course.

[1:12:16]

Now Gorbachev is caught between the reactionaries and the reformers. He sides intuitively and intellectually with the reformers -- with people like Alexander Yakovlev↗ whom we met last week, with people like Eduard Shevardnadze↗, his Foreign Secretary, but Gorbachev is aware of the political realities that he must navigate as leader of the Soviet Union.

[1:12:37]

So he tries to appease conservatives, hardliners, within the Communist Party, while continuing to move the march of reform forward. And this is a difficult and fraught dilemma to navigate and Gorbachev struggles to navigate it. Like most people navigating a...irreconcilable dilemma he tacks between the different, you know, constituencies that he must struggle to appease.

August 1991 Soviet Coup Attempt

[1:13:04]

In August 1991 the hardliners and the reactionaries try to orchestrate a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. They try to overthrow Gorbachev so as to orchestrate a restoration to the status quo ante↗ -- a return to the sort of Communist political orthodoxy that existed before 1985.

[1:13:27]

Having identified Gorbachev as the problem, or as the root of the problem, the hardliners move against him. Strikingly virtually all of Gorbachev's colleagues on the Politburo of the Soviet Union participate in the coup against him. Top leadership of the Communist Party is by August 1991 fairly well unified against Mikhail Gorbachev.

[1:13:49]

This gives you a sense of just how far out on his own Gorbachev is. Gorbachev is isolated. The plotters, the orchestrators of the coup, take Gorbachev as a prisoner and they confine him to his dacha in southern Russia. Actually it might have been in Georgia on the Black Sea -- I'm not sure...

[1:14:09]

But Gorbachev is isolated and the hardliners sort of try to reassert control in August 1991. But this coup ultimately fails. It fails for a couple of reasons. The first has to do with Mikhail Gorbachev himself. The plotters didn't plan to you know take Gorbachev out back and shoot him. They didn't plan even to overthrow him as Khrushchev's opponents had overthrown him in 1964.

[1:14:36]

Rather Gorbachev's opponents hoped to talk sense into him. They want to do what they see as talk sense into him. They hope to persuade Gorbachev to go along with their agenda -- to reverse glasnost↗, to reverse perestroika↗, to set things back the way they were before the process of reform was initiated.

[1:14:55]

And the reason that they try to get Gorbachev to go along is that they understand that they can't do this without him. That Gorbachev is the only Communist left with any substantial legitimacy, and that absent Gorbachev the coup really won't succeed.

[1:15:08]

But Gorbachev refuses to participate. He maintains a commitment to reform, a commitment to the rule of law, and refuses to participate in what he sees as an illegitimate coup d'etat.So this is very important. Gorbachev does not play the role that the plotters hoped that he will play.

[1:15:26]

Even more important is the role of Boris Yeltsin. Boris Yeltsin, by August 1991, is the elected President of Russia. Russia, as the map ought to indicate, is by far and away the biggest and most important state in the Soviet Union.

[1:15:46]

It's like California on steroids, even bigger, even more important to the USSR than California is to America. Yeltsin sets himself firm against the coup. Yeltsin refuses to have anything to do with the coup and what's more he calls the tanks of the Russian State onto the streets of Moscow to defend the Russian Parliament Building, and the Russian White House where the Russian President resides, against the forces of the Soviet Union.

[1:16:15]

So the coup, at least in theory, brings Russia to the brink of a military showdown with the USSR. This makes it very clear that the Soviet Union is dissolving upon itself. Ultimately the plotters realize that they are unable to sort of achieve their objectives and they end up sort of giving in.

[1:16:36]

This whole episode unfolds very quickly. It's over in a few days. The international media is present throughout and this plays some important role in the resolution of the crisis. Yeltsin is able to use CNN and other Western international media outlets as a sort of grandstand on which to make his case.

[1:16:57]

But the coup ultimately transforms sort of the prospects for the Soviet Union. It's a very consequential turning point. Gorbachev inveighs against the coup but the defeat of the coup ultimately ends up transforming the state that Mikhail Gorbachev leads.

The Outlawing of the Communist Party and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union

[1:17:18]

Boris Yeltsin passes through the Russian Parliament legislation in August 1991, as the coup is defeated, legislation outlawing the Communist Party -- declaring the Communist Party of the Soviet Union an illegal organization.

[1:17:34]

This legislation only applies on Russian territory. It does not outlaw the Communist Party in other republics but Russia is of course the largest and most important of the republics. Once the Communist Party has been outlawed in Russia there is clearly no future for the Communist Party anywhere else in the Soviet Union.

[1:17:52]

And Yeltsin, who holds all of the cards following the suppression of the coup, is able to inveigh upon Gorbachev to sign a treaty between Russia -- and -- between Russia and the Soviet Union recognizing the abolition of the Communist Party as a legitimate political organization in Russia.

[1:18:12]

So this is a very important turning point. The party has been declared illegal -- this undermines sort of the very basis of the Soviet Union itself. In the fall of 1991 Russia, the Ukraine and Belorussia negotiate a new sort of agreement among themselves -- the Commonwealth of Independent States↗. This is a loose federative agreement that is intended to replace the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics -- the USSR↗.

[1:18:42]

To participate in the CIS, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia agree to withdraw from the USSR. These three big important republics, especially Russia, agree to withdraw from the union, and to create a new federation.

[1:18:59]

Gorbachev is left as a sort of president without a state. The state that he leads dissolves upon itself and a new federation, a much looser federation, is formed. But it's clear that real power in the post-Soviet world is being transferred from Mikhail Gorbachev, as General Secretary and President of the Soviet Union, to Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia.

[1:19:22]

At the very end of 1991 the USSR is formally and legally dissolved. The red flag above the Kremlin↗ is lowered and the red, white and blue tricolor of the Russian state↗ is raised.

Consequences of the Fall of the Soviet Union Within the Larger World

[1:19:34]

This has transformative consequences of course not only for Russia, but also for Europe. A new Europe is born, a Europe divided not into East and West, by the lines of Cold War division, but a Europe of independent nation-states -- a Europe that looks ironically much more like the Europe of 1900 than it looks like the Europe of 1950.

[1:19:58]

In 1950 the map of Europe had been shaded in effect, you know, red and blue for the West and the East. By the end of the twentieth century Europe will have returned to being a patchwork of nation-states.

[1:20:11]

But it will be a patchwork of nations bound together by Western institutions. The European Union↗ will expand eastwards to accommodate the states of former Communist Eastern Europe during the first decade of the 21st century -- sorry, this is EU expansion on the right side of the board.

[1:20:30]

NATO -- another crucial Western institution -- also expands eastwards to accommodate the states of the former Eastern Bloc. So the disillusion of the Soviet Union and the disillusion of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe will be followed by sort of two things.

[1:20:48]

First is a return to the politics of national self-determination. But the second will be a expansion of the Western international institutions that were constructed during the course of the Cold War to galvanize and orchestrate the West as a sort of single geopolitical unit.

[1:21:08]

This is how the Cold War ends -- with the resurgence of nationalism within the USSR and with...in Eastern Europe and with the eastward expansion of Western Cold War institutions. This of course leaves the United States in search of a role. The United States for some forty years had defined its foreign policy agenda in terms of the containment of Soviet power.

[1:21:34]

The United States had cleaved to an agenda of anti-Communist containment. What the United States will do next remains to be determined, as will the shape of the postwar sort of post Cold War international order, and international economy.

[1:21:48]

On Thursday we're going to talk about the post Cold War international economy and then we'll come next week to talk about some of the fractures and fissures inherent in the post Cold War international system.

[1:22:00]

And if anybody would like to talk about final paper topics I have office hours, and do it now, right after the lecture.