Were you old enough...

[spartan]

... to remember the gradual collapse of the eastern bloc in the late 80's (fall of the Berlin wall etc) and the eventual end of the USSR in 1991/92?

If so what were your feelings at the time when you heard of this and watched the news, read newspaper reports about it etc? (bearing in mind that you may not have been a leftist back then).

Unfortunately I was born in 1990 so I was only one when the USSR came to an end and thus unable to see this momentous point in history for myself.

Do you remember (or have been told later on) your relatives and their reaction to all the events that unfolded in those fateful years?

[Devrim]

I remember it well. It didn't seem that gradual at the time. It was a really quick series of events.

I seemed to take everyone by surprise. As far as I am aware, the IBRP were the only left political organisation to predict it in advance.

I remember clearly the day that I realised it was going to go. I was on holiday in İstanbul (I lived in Beirut at the time), and I was sitting on Galata bridge drinking beer, and reading the Arabic papers, which were talking about free elections in Poland, and I realised that it was all going to collapse.

My feelings were more of shock than anything else. Our tendency didn't describe the USSR as socialist, but it was a huge change to the entire world.

I also remember my grandfather, a lifelong Stalinist, crying in public on the day that the coup in Moscow was defeated.

Devrim

[JimmyJazz]

I was born in '84 and I don't remember it whatsoever. I remember the first Gulf War distinctly, including a National Geographic fold-out map of the conflict. At seven I wasn't really interested in any war that wasn't hot.

[Sentinel]

Probably my first memory of these events is from 1989 when Nicolae Ceasescu was executed. I had only just turned 9, but remember the photos in the newspapers of the shot Romanian president couple.

I was ten-eleven when the USSR collapsed. I vaguely recall some of glimpses of that as well, from TV -- such as Yeltsin standing on the tank holding his speech, and the failed coup by the 'hardliners' Devrim mentioned.

My parents who were tankie communists (although no longer very active at this point) were quite disheartened by the fall of the Eastern bloc, but they did try to explain what was happening to me.

I certainly remember these events better than other ones from the time, those were emotional times in our family.

[Plagueround]

I had cousins who lived in West Germany, so the fall of the wall is a very early memory. I was too young to really understand it, although I distinctly remember being told by a teacher that "Eastern Germans aren't allowed to say the things they want".

[thejambo1]

i remember it well, as devrim stated it just seemed to happen. i cant really remember a slow build up of change at all. i was pretty much out of leftist politics at that time as well. strange times as the old eastern bloc was what i had grown up with.

[Ismail]

The only thing more annoying than those who think that the USSR by 1985 was genuine are those that think Gorbachev's rise up was suddenly the end of socialism there and that the hardliners were genuine Communists. (See sig)

Anyway, apparently when the USSR voted to dissolve itself (December 26) there was partying all over the USA that night. At least when people say "Russia" they are correct now.

[Holden Caulfield]

nope, but the wall came down within like a week or so of my birth

[Louis Pio]

I remember it quite well, also considering I've been "behind the iron curtain" 2 times, visiting DDR, Checoslovakia and Hungary. However I was only 9 when the wall fell, and I was hoping for better conditions for the people those countries, especially and end to all the "big brother" types of things going on. Especially DDR was crazy in that aspect, I remember how it normally took us at least 4 hours at the bordercrossings because the guards almost took the car apart piece from piece in their search for people trying to leave the country. Now history has showed how capitalism in no way pawed the way for "an golden era" in those countries, however the old conditions wasn't "glorious" either.

[DancingLarry]

Having been born in 1955, this "anarcho-kiddie" grew up with the Cold War looming ever-present in the background. My vague memory of the Berlin Wall was its construction in 1961. It was the "Cuban missile crisis" in 1962 that brought home to me as a 7 year old the fact that a small number of old men were perfectly capable of destroying the world, of killing everybody.

It was in 1980, when the entire Polish working class rose virtually as one against the "non-revisionist Marxist-Leninist" state that I was convinced the "existing socialism" of the Soviet bloc was doomed. The workers were intent on liberating themselves from the iron fist of "the workers state", the proletariat itself entered into a death conflict with "the dictatorship of the proletariat". Ironically, I believe that the very beginning of the Solidarnosc movement offered "existing socialism" the option of evolving to the next, higher phase of socialism, to begin the transition to communism with a workers self-managed socialist economy. Needless to say, fearfully, desperately clinging to their personal power and privilege, the Stalinist apparatchiks met this historical opportunity the only way they understood, responding to the unified class conscious demands of the proletariat with non-revisionist Marxist-Leninist martial law. While this reactionary response was entirely predictable, and while there was nothing even vaguely socialist about the Polish United Workers Party by 1981, the consequences of Jaruzelski's crackdown in the political and ideological sense were catastrophic. Once Solidarnosc was driven underground, all socialist/syndicalist elements of the movement which had been dominant were discredited and defeated, and the reactionary forces of nationalist and capitalist restoration gained the upper hand. The historic lesson of Poland 1980-1981 is that the hopes for the emergence of communism, of the Internationale becoming the human race, were ground under the iron heel of non-revisionist Marxist-Leninists seeking to preserve their personal power and control.

It was with this self-imposed discrediting of "existing socialism's" entire ideological premise, combined with the growing economic weakness of the Soviet bloc, that I became certain that the fall of the Stalinist bloc would occur in my lifetime. It came even quicker than I expected, and was triggered in 1988 by the Polish regime's final, desperate belated effort to coopt Solidarnosc to save the regime's economic hide. From that moment events began to accelerate, and in the course of just over a year the entire imposing edifice of the Warsaw Pact collapsed, the Berlin Wall smashed into little bits, Dubcek brought back to Wenceslas Square, and Ceaucescu receiving his just reward. While the pace of events in 1988-89 was dizzying, after the complete abdication of everything "socialism" claimed to stand for in the confrontation with Solidarnosc, I viewed it as a historical inevitability.

[Chapter 24]

I was born in 1993 and therefore never lived in a world with a Soviet Union or an Eastern Bloc.

[Dr Mindbender]

yep i remember it, i certainly dont beleive the USSR was genuninely communist but i have fond memories of when the U$A was not the world's only dominant hegemony.

[Hiero]

I also remember my grandfather, a lifelong Stalinist, crying in public on the day that the coup in Moscow was defeated.

I have heard about Communists having nervous break downs when the wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Pretty insane how emotionally attached some people came to these regimes.

[Harrycombs]

I was born at the time of the Russian Constitution Crisis, so no, but I'm sure the rest of my family was very happy.

[Devrim]

I have heard about Communists having nervous break downs when the wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Pretty insane how emotionally attached some people came to these regimes.

I don't think so. If you look at my grandfather, he was in his 80s at the time. He had been in the party for nearly 70 years since its foundation.

It must have been pretty devastating to realise that something that you have fought for all your life was over.


Probably my first memory of these events is from 1989 when Nicolae Ceasescu was executed. I had only just turned 9, but remember the photos in the newspapers of the shot Romanian president couple.

I was there actually. I left Bucharest the day before he got shot.

Devrim

[JimmyJazz]

I had cousins who lived in West Germany, so the fall of the wall is a very early memory. I was too young to really understand it, although I distinctly remember being told by a teacher that "Eastern Germans aren't allowed to say the things they want".

Silly East Germany, didn't they know that people will repeat the official line without coercion?

[bayano]

i remember these events and some of the other surrounding them in 1989-1991. i and mine were never supporters of any Moscow lines, and considered them totalitarian capitalist states, with a side of social democracy and pudding. but we were grossed out by the anticommunism of the news, politicians and others, both as each of these events occurred and after Tiananmen square (of course, there were so many other atrocities in 1989 that we rarely heard of, including most especially the caracazo in venezuela). for so many others that i know, it was a serious couple of years of confusion, shock, dismay, and really the decline of many leninist movements even more. but for us, though there was a little disappointment and dismay deep inside, for the most part we didnt care as we opposed the systems in place in each country. we were just disgusted by the surge in celebratory anti-communism in the west. the fall of the Sandinistas at the same time was a much bigger blow to our morale.

of course, for myself, this was overshadowed by watching on tv and talking to relatives and then experiencing for myself the US invasion and occupation of Panama 1989-90. suddenly the events in eastern europe seemed small to me then. panama didn't get to throw off its dictator.

[ajs2007]

Yeah, I remember it. I was in Militant in Britain during the 80s. We had the perspective that these states were degenerated or deformed workers' states as they did not have capitalist relations of production, because they had a nationalised, planned economy (a good thing), but they lacked the democracy necessary necesary to have a heathly workers' state and hence a healthy economy.

Perhaps I'm being wise after the event, but looking back it seems that the USSR and Eastern Europe was continually in crisis during the 80s. I came to political maturity at the time of the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980 and the subsequent repression. For us at the time that seemed like a failed political revolution. The rapid succession of Soviet General Secretaries leading to Gorbachev, followed by glasnost and perestroika just seemed to add to the sense of growing crisis, which is it was of course. The Soviet bureaucracy just couldn't cope with these policies.

I remember being quite blase about the fall of the Berlin Wall - wrongly I realise now. People had been able to move reasonably freely between East and West for some time earlier as some Eastern European country (Hungary or Romainia, I can't remember) had opened their borders months before and it was just a matter of time before the Wall fell.

I was surprised (and very pleased) at how quickly the various regimes' capacity for military repression just evaporated like dew on a hot summer's day, but disappointed at the way the various mass popular movements were diverted from seeking a democractic form of socialism. Yes there were contradictory currents, but I remember looking at news pictures of a demonstration in Leipzig in 1989, I think it was, where there was hundreds of thousands of protesters calling for democracy but within socialism. Having since spoken to people who were there, it seems it could have gone a number of ways and what actually happened was never predetermined.

I remember watching the events in Romania at Christmas on TV at a friend's and the tanks rolling into Tienanmen Square at another friend's. Again I was taken aback at the heroism of the protesters and disappointed the Chinese Army supressed the movement (& this also had a number of contradictory elements in it).

I thought at the time that the collapse of the USSR was inevitable following the failed coup against Gorbachev. That coup was a surprise to me, much more so than what happened afterwards, as I had thought that the apparatus had defeated politically the tankies (by now I was no longer in Militant). But even then the restoration of capitalism in Russia (which, despite the complete lack of democracy in the USSR, was not a good thing) was not assured until sometime in the 1990s.

So for me the whole process, say from Solidarity in Poland to the restoration of capitalism in Russia, took almost 20 years and wasn't particularly a rapid process. Militant had the perspective that the USSR and the Eastern European countries were in crisis and that either the bureaucracy would be overthrown in a political revolution, thus keeping the nationalised means of production and hence the material basis of socialism, or there would be the restoration of capitalism. That's essentialy what Trotsky said in Revolution Betrayed. I don't think we expected, say in 1986, that it would take only 10 years or so before capitalism was restored, but OTOH in 1986 we fully expected that there would be a successful revolution somewhere in the next 10 years and this would cut across the crisis in the USSR and Eastern Europe enabling a sucessful political revolution to take place.

[Sentinel]

Some very great, informative posts in this thread! Keep them coming, I'm for one giving reputation to all actual memories and perspectives of the events posted.

This is by far the best thread since I became moderator of the History forum in May.