As a single event, the initial breach of the Berlin Wall succinctly symbolized the entire tumult of twenty years ago, so on the twentieth anniversary of the event earlier this month everyone reflected on what it meant to them, personally, and what it has meant to the wider world. But the wall's fall was just the beginning of change.
The really great compilation called The Collapse of Communism, as written at the time by the correspondents of the New York Times, captures the sense of wonder with which we all watched the daily events, from Lithuania in the northwest of the increasingly tenuous Soviet empire all the way down to the Caspian Sea, where pogroms against Armenians had already begun in Baku, Ajerbaijan by this time twenty years ago.
Just today twenty years ago, 24 November, 1989, the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leadership resigned and, from a NYT article on 25 November by Steven Greenhouse, some
"350,000 protesters crowded into central Prague in the eighth straight day of huge demonstrations.
"In a striking paradox, the throng was addressed by Alexander Dubcek, whose liberal regime was overthrown by a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968.... It was Mr. Dubcek's first public appearance in Prague since 1968."
Ominously (since we all watched the brutal Christmas Day demise of the Ceausescus), further to the southeast in Romania, old Nicolae and Elena just didn't get the whole change thing. From Alan Riding, writing in the NYT twenty years ago today:
"In a huge display of government control, tens of thousands of workers were marched to a demonstration here today to celebrate the re-election of President Nicolae Ceausescu as General Secretary of the Communist Party."
Read the entire article, In Rumania, the Old Order Won't Budge.
(Photos: Top, "Red Square" sign from the Russia Gallery, and bottom, the Ceausescus' Palace in Bucharest, Romania, from the Romania Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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