Paul Seary Case
On Wednesday, 20 November 2013, Paul Seary wrote:
Despite decades of often brutal repression, the eventual transition out of communism was generally peaceful throughout east central Europe. Discuss why this was the case and identify why it was not in those states and regions where conflict did arise.
‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet Sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence …show more content…
but to a very high and , in many cases , increasing measure of control from Moscow’
Winston Churchill, Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946.
In 1944, the Soviet Union used military might to impose communism on Eastern Europe – communism was ‘imposed on the peoples of Eastern Europe from outside, not generated internally; it did not express national sentiments but often tried to suppress them.’ (2) Here, is the inherent and fatal weakness which contributed to the demise of communism. Conversely, the people’s revolutions were successful because ‘none of the people’s revolutions was imposed from outside, even though the Soviet reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev played a part in each of them. They were national revolutions in which populations long enslaved, sought to recover their own history. ‘(2)
Historically, Eastern and Central Europe have experienced more than their fair share of turmoil. It is a region whose countries at one time or another formed part of different empires – the Ottoman, the Hapsburg, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. This is an area that has been riven by wars. World War 1, World War 2 and the Cold War all began in Eastern Europe. Viewed from the perspective of the West, the Soviet Bloc of Eastern and Central Europe appeared monolithic but in reality it was composed of a multiplicity of ethnic groups and states with long standing divisive feuds and enmities. Most people were Slavish in origin but there were western Slavs, eastern Slavs and Southern Slavs .Poles, Czechs and Slovaks belonged to the group of Western Slavs, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were Eastern Slavs while Southern Slavs who lived in Bulgaria and Romania had a close affiliation with the Greeks and the Turks. Far from being a homogenous group these countries had long standing enmities and feuds – Hungary had reason to hate Romania. Transylvania had been part of Hungary for centuries but following World War 1 Transylvania was awarded to Romania as part of the Trianon Treaty.
There was not slightest possibility of these Soviet Satellites states working together to defeat the common enemy and so, for more than 40 years the people of Eastern Europe were cowed into submission by the threat of force - in 1953 , the Russians used force to put down the East German workers’ rebellion, in 1956 , Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising and the reformist government under Nagy was removed; following reforms carried out by Alexander Dubcek’s government, the Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia and Dubcek was deposed ; on the 17th November 1989, a peaceful march of 50,000 ,was violently suppressed by police. (2). During more than four decades, the people of these countries of Eastern and Central Europe lived under a brutal regime and they were kept in line by the ever-present threat of Soviet tanks.
For over forty years these citizens of the Soviet Bloc of east central Europe were citizens of a totalitarian state - a ‘regime that aspired to total control, not only of all organs of state but human nature itself. (3) Anne Applebaum claims ‘Britain and the US promised the East Europeans a democratic future but abandoned them to Soviet domination’ (4).
In the autumn of 1989 and spring 1990, the communist regimes of a number of East European countries collapsed.
In Poland, in 1980, exorbitant price rises in the price of meat precipitated major unrest.
Along the Baltic Coast, more than 500,000 workers downed tools in protest. In Gdansk, in the Lenin shipyard , a female activist was sacked and Lech Walesa , a former worker at the shipyard, who had been sacked four years before for trade union activities ,persuaded the workers to form an inter-factory strike committee under his chairmanship – and thus Solidarity was formed.’ When Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarity was driven underground, between 1981 and 1984, it emerged even stronger and more militant . In 1989 a historic deal was done between Jaruzelski and Walesa which paved the way for the first democratic elections in the communist bloc in 45 years. Months later, in Warsaw, on Sunday June 4th 1989, victory was assured. ‘It was clear that a revolution had taken place within the Soviet Empire and it had happened peacefully, in the polling booths of Poland. Nobody expected the overwhelming scale of the Communists’ defeat – it was total humiliation for the Party that had ruled Poland for more than 40 years.’(3) Jaruzelski was furious and he blamed the Catholic Church for hastening the demise of the ruling regime but in truth the party had outlived itself and was disintegrating . Many within the party realised that this was more than just an election defeat – ‘it was the end of an age’. …show more content…
(7)
The fall of communism played out differently in each of these individual states.
‘The best managed of these transitions was the Hungarian one where, almost until the end of 1989, the local ruling party managed to control the process. Hungary’s communists were well aware of the growing crisis of authority. The younger better educated membership looked to recast the basis on which the party exercised its authority by seeking an alliance with political traditions outside the party – especially nationalism. Pozsgay and nationalist intellectuals founded the country’s first non-communist organisation since 1956.....by Spring 1989, Hungary’s Communists were formally committed to a multi- party system and the introduction of a market economy to replace the socialist economic system...At the same time, an increasingly organised opposition grew in strength – they brought 150,000 people on to the streets of Budapest on March 15th, 1989, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. They were increasingly unified, forming an opposition round table and demanding negotiations with the government over the nature and timing of democratic transition- negotiations that began in the summer and which had led by September to basic agreement over most of the details of Hungary’s transition.
‘(5)
Romania experienced the most violent transition from communism to democracy. Ceausescu‘s regime was the most brutally repressive of all and he was reviled by the people for his savagery. In 1989, Ceausescu had done his best to isolate the country from the rest of the world. But, even there people had heard that the Berlin wall had fallen and that neighbouring communist states had toppled their regimes. Yet it appeared as if Ceausescu was carrying on as though nothing had happened.’ At the end of November 1989, Ceausescu was unanimously re-elected Romanian Communist Party leader but the tide was soon to turn against him. When Pastor Tokes, a former member of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, spoke out against Ceausescu he was badly beaten by Securitate forces in front of his three year old son and was threatened with violence against his pregnant wife – this was the spark that ignited the conflagration. A battle raged between the riot police and thousands of Romanians who had been inspired by Father Lazlo Tokes, . ‘The week long revolution that ensued was one of Europe’s most bloody and hostile revolutions since World War 2. On December 21, When Ceausescu was shouted down at a mass rally in Bucharest, that he himself had called, violence erupted and the security services fired on demonstrators. The revolution rapidly spread beyond Bucharest throughout the country. Ceausescu fled in panic but he was captured by the army; riots and chaos ensued as members of the security forces fought along with demonstrators against the police. The National Salvation Front seized power but fighting continued until the televised execution of the Ceausescu’s on Christmas Day. Thus, the victory of Romania’s violent revolution was assured.(5) The transition from communism to democracy was most bloody in Romania because the people were not merely rebelling against an ideology but they were rebelling against an inhuman wretch who had perpetrated crimes of unspeakable cruelty on his people who in their daily lives had food shortages, food rationing and no personal freedoms.
In the end, when Communism fell, it collapsed or imploded for many reasons. ‘Why, after 45 years of unlimited power, were these Communist regimes so weak? By meeting the Soviet requirements for a uniform Communist empire, a supposedly proletarian commonwealth in which class overruled nationality, the Communists of Eastern Europe had lost the chance to speak for their people’. (2).The Soviet Union that Gorbachev inherited was a moribund, totalitarian society. Outwardly, it appeared stable.’ The non-Russian republics acquiesced in rule from the Kremlin; Soviet engineers had sent the first man into space. Its military matched the West in weaponry. Soviet athletes were among the best in the world. The vast majority of its inhabitants were literate and higher education was within everyone’s reach’ but thousands of political prisoners were languishing in jails or detention centres; the media was state controlled ; citizens did not have the right of assembly nor the right to emigrate and most importantly severe punishments were meted out to those whose dared to voice their criticism of any aspect of the regime or its leadership – ‘the secret police stamped out unauthorised activities , from art shows to students discussion groups’(1)
Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 – he wanted to breathe new life into this moribund Communism not to destroy it. The pillars of his political philosophy were Perestroika and Glasnost – restructuring and openness. He believed the Eastern European countries would embrace this new Communism and they would work in partnership and harmony together. But, ‘Gorbachev’s policies of radical reform and a relaxation of political control over the Soviet Union’s Central and East European clients provided the backdrop to the collapse of Communist rule in the region ‘ (5) The manner of the collapse of communism differed in each of the individual states but almost everywhere the transition was a peaceful one which is surprising when we take into account the sheer bloody brutality of these regimes. ‘There was one major case of violent transition – Romania, where Ceausescu’s dictatorship was overthrown in 1989 at the cost of about 1,100 dead and several thousand wounded.’ (6) By contrast, in Poland and Hungary, members of the ruling party began negotiating with opposition members in 1988 to plan the details of the transition. While in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria the communist ruling parties were not as ready to negotiate but neither were they willing to use force and the use of force is the only possible way that they could have held on to power.(6) One primary reason for the demise of communism is that communists had lost confidence in the state’s socialist system and so, they did not have the will to use force and terror to maintain a political system that they no longer believed in.
Many historians claim that the fact that the transition was mainly peaceful is due ‘the ability of members of the old ruling class to adapt to the new socio-economic system and merge smoothly into the new ruling class’ (6) ‘Many communist bureaucrats in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union welcomed the privatisation of capital because they saw the opportunity to exploit their official positions to establish themselves as private capitalists.’(6)
Finally, conditions that were conducive to the overthrow of communism had developed over the previous decade. Soviet troops were being withdrawn from the region; the Brezhnev doctrine that countenanced the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was dead and Gorbachev had made clear to hardline Eastern European leaders that they could not expect financial or military support from Moscow .Ties were deepening with the west – countries like Poland owed a lot of money to western creditors, east and west Germany were forming economic ties and Hungary was seeking to join the European Economic Community.
Moscow , ‘December 25th, 1991 marked the collapse of the Soviet regime itself which followed an unsuccessful coup in August 1991. It was ‘the end of a millennium of Russian and Soviet Empire ....the defeat of the twentieth century’s two totalitarian systems –Nazi fascism and Soviet communism - ...... That day is viewed by many in Russia, as, in Vladimir Putin’s words, a “great geopolitical catastrophe”.... Celebrated in the United States as a victory in the Cold War, rather than as the triumph of a people who peacefully overthrew a totalitarian system to embrace democracy and free market economics.’(1)
References
1) O’Clery, Conor, (2011), Moscow: December 25th 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, Transworld Ireland, (Dublin).
2) Flint, Hawkes et al., (1990), The Observer: Tearing Down The Curtain –The People’s Revolution in Eastern Europe, Hodder and Stoughton, (London).
3) Applebaum, Anne,(2012) Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe-1956, Max Frankel (pub), New York.
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/ironcurtain-by-anne-applebaum.html?
5) Pittaway, M.(2007), Developments in Central and East European Politics, Palgrave, Macmillian , London, White, S., Batt, J., and Lewis P.,(eds.)
6)http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/200s/2009/no-1263-november-2009/fall-%E2%Ccommunism%%E2%80%9D-why-so-peaceful accessed 17th March 2013.
(7)Sebastian, Victor,(2010), Revolution 1989, Fall of the Soviet Empire. (2010) , Vintage Publishers , New York, (Pryce-Jones, p. 256, and author’s conversations with Geremek, October 1985.)
On 20 November 2013 20:16, Paul Seary wrote: References
1) O’Clery, Conor, (2011), Moscow: December 25th 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, Transworld Ireland, (Dublin).
2) Flint, Hawkes et al., (1990), The Observer: Tearing Down The Curtain –The People’s Revolution in Eastern Europe, Hodder and Stoughton, (London).
3) Applebaum, Anne,(2012) Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe-1956, Max Frankel (pub), New York.
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/ironcurtain-by-anne-applebaum.html?
5) Pittaway, M.(2007), Developments in Central and East European Politics, Palgrave, Macmillian , London, White, S., Batt, J., and Lewis P.,(eds.)
6)http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/200s/2009/no-1263-november-2009/fall-%E2%Ccommunism%%E2%80%9D-why-so-peaceful accessed 17th March 2013.
(7)Sebastian, Victor,(2010), Revolution 1989, Fall of the Soviet Empire. (2010) , Vintage Publishers , New York, (Pryce-Jones, p. 256, and author’s conversations
Despite decades of often brutal repression, the eventual transition out of communism was generally peaceful throughout east central Europe. Discuss why this was the case and identify why it was not in those states and regions where conflict did arise.
‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet Sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence …show more content…
but to a very high and , in many cases , increasing measure of control from Moscow’
Winston Churchill, Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946.
In 1944, the Soviet Union used military might to impose communism on Eastern Europe – communism was ‘imposed on the peoples of Eastern Europe from outside, not generated internally; it did not express national sentiments but often tried to suppress them.’ (2) Here, is the inherent and fatal weakness which contributed to the demise of communism. Conversely, the people’s revolutions were successful because ‘none of the people’s revolutions was imposed from outside, even though the Soviet reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev played a part in each of them. They were national revolutions in which populations long enslaved, sought to recover their own history. ‘(2)
Historically, Eastern and Central Europe have experienced more than their fair share of turmoil. It is a region whose countries at one time or another formed part of different empires – the Ottoman, the Hapsburg, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. This is an area that has been riven by wars. World War 1, World War 2 and the Cold War all began in Eastern Europe. Viewed from the perspective of the West, the Soviet Bloc of Eastern and Central Europe appeared monolithic but in reality it was composed of a multiplicity of ethnic groups and states with long standing divisive feuds and enmities. Most people were Slavish in origin but there were western Slavs, eastern Slavs and Southern Slavs .Poles, Czechs and Slovaks belonged to the group of Western Slavs, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were Eastern Slavs while Southern Slavs who lived in Bulgaria and Romania had a close affiliation with the Greeks and the Turks. Far from being a homogenous group these countries had long standing enmities and feuds – Hungary had reason to hate Romania. Transylvania had been part of Hungary for centuries but following World War 1 Transylvania was awarded to Romania as part of the Trianon Treaty.
There was not slightest possibility of these Soviet Satellites states working together to defeat the common enemy and so, for more than 40 years the people of Eastern Europe were cowed into submission by the threat of force - in 1953 , the Russians used force to put down the East German workers’ rebellion, in 1956 , Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising and the reformist government under Nagy was removed; following reforms carried out by Alexander Dubcek’s government, the Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia and Dubcek was deposed ; on the 17th November 1989, a peaceful march of 50,000 ,was violently suppressed by police. (2). During more than four decades, the people of these countries of Eastern and Central Europe lived under a brutal regime and they were kept in line by the ever-present threat of Soviet tanks.
For over forty years these citizens of the Soviet Bloc of east central Europe were citizens of a totalitarian state - a ‘regime that aspired to total control, not only of all organs of state but human nature itself. (3) Anne Applebaum claims ‘Britain and the US promised the East Europeans a democratic future but abandoned them to Soviet domination’ (4).
In the autumn of 1989 and spring 1990, the communist regimes of a number of East European countries collapsed.
In Poland, in 1980, exorbitant price rises in the price of meat precipitated major unrest.
Along the Baltic Coast, more than 500,000 workers downed tools in protest. In Gdansk, in the Lenin shipyard , a female activist was sacked and Lech Walesa , a former worker at the shipyard, who had been sacked four years before for trade union activities ,persuaded the workers to form an inter-factory strike committee under his chairmanship – and thus Solidarity was formed.’ When Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarity was driven underground, between 1981 and 1984, it emerged even stronger and more militant . In 1989 a historic deal was done between Jaruzelski and Walesa which paved the way for the first democratic elections in the communist bloc in 45 years. Months later, in Warsaw, on Sunday June 4th 1989, victory was assured. ‘It was clear that a revolution had taken place within the Soviet Empire and it had happened peacefully, in the polling booths of Poland. Nobody expected the overwhelming scale of the Communists’ defeat – it was total humiliation for the Party that had ruled Poland for more than 40 years.’(3) Jaruzelski was furious and he blamed the Catholic Church for hastening the demise of the ruling regime but in truth the party had outlived itself and was disintegrating . Many within the party realised that this was more than just an election defeat – ‘it was the end of an age’. …show more content…
(7)
The fall of communism played out differently in each of these individual states.
‘The best managed of these transitions was the Hungarian one where, almost until the end of 1989, the local ruling party managed to control the process. Hungary’s communists were well aware of the growing crisis of authority. The younger better educated membership looked to recast the basis on which the party exercised its authority by seeking an alliance with political traditions outside the party – especially nationalism. Pozsgay and nationalist intellectuals founded the country’s first non-communist organisation since 1956.....by Spring 1989, Hungary’s Communists were formally committed to a multi- party system and the introduction of a market economy to replace the socialist economic system...At the same time, an increasingly organised opposition grew in strength – they brought 150,000 people on to the streets of Budapest on March 15th, 1989, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. They were increasingly unified, forming an opposition round table and demanding negotiations with the government over the nature and timing of democratic transition- negotiations that began in the summer and which had led by September to basic agreement over most of the details of Hungary’s transition.
‘(5)
Romania experienced the most violent transition from communism to democracy. Ceausescu‘s regime was the most brutally repressive of all and he was reviled by the people for his savagery. In 1989, Ceausescu had done his best to isolate the country from the rest of the world. But, even there people had heard that the Berlin wall had fallen and that neighbouring communist states had toppled their regimes. Yet it appeared as if Ceausescu was carrying on as though nothing had happened.’ At the end of November 1989, Ceausescu was unanimously re-elected Romanian Communist Party leader but the tide was soon to turn against him. When Pastor Tokes, a former member of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, spoke out against Ceausescu he was badly beaten by Securitate forces in front of his three year old son and was threatened with violence against his pregnant wife – this was the spark that ignited the conflagration. A battle raged between the riot police and thousands of Romanians who had been inspired by Father Lazlo Tokes, . ‘The week long revolution that ensued was one of Europe’s most bloody and hostile revolutions since World War 2. On December 21, When Ceausescu was shouted down at a mass rally in Bucharest, that he himself had called, violence erupted and the security services fired on demonstrators. The revolution rapidly spread beyond Bucharest throughout the country. Ceausescu fled in panic but he was captured by the army; riots and chaos ensued as members of the security forces fought along with demonstrators against the police. The National Salvation Front seized power but fighting continued until the televised execution of the Ceausescu’s on Christmas Day. Thus, the victory of Romania’s violent revolution was assured.(5) The transition from communism to democracy was most bloody in Romania because the people were not merely rebelling against an ideology but they were rebelling against an inhuman wretch who had perpetrated crimes of unspeakable cruelty on his people who in their daily lives had food shortages, food rationing and no personal freedoms.
In the end, when Communism fell, it collapsed or imploded for many reasons. ‘Why, after 45 years of unlimited power, were these Communist regimes so weak? By meeting the Soviet requirements for a uniform Communist empire, a supposedly proletarian commonwealth in which class overruled nationality, the Communists of Eastern Europe had lost the chance to speak for their people’. (2).The Soviet Union that Gorbachev inherited was a moribund, totalitarian society. Outwardly, it appeared stable.’ The non-Russian republics acquiesced in rule from the Kremlin; Soviet engineers had sent the first man into space. Its military matched the West in weaponry. Soviet athletes were among the best in the world. The vast majority of its inhabitants were literate and higher education was within everyone’s reach’ but thousands of political prisoners were languishing in jails or detention centres; the media was state controlled ; citizens did not have the right of assembly nor the right to emigrate and most importantly severe punishments were meted out to those whose dared to voice their criticism of any aspect of the regime or its leadership – ‘the secret police stamped out unauthorised activities , from art shows to students discussion groups’(1)
Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 – he wanted to breathe new life into this moribund Communism not to destroy it. The pillars of his political philosophy were Perestroika and Glasnost – restructuring and openness. He believed the Eastern European countries would embrace this new Communism and they would work in partnership and harmony together. But, ‘Gorbachev’s policies of radical reform and a relaxation of political control over the Soviet Union’s Central and East European clients provided the backdrop to the collapse of Communist rule in the region ‘ (5) The manner of the collapse of communism differed in each of the individual states but almost everywhere the transition was a peaceful one which is surprising when we take into account the sheer bloody brutality of these regimes. ‘There was one major case of violent transition – Romania, where Ceausescu’s dictatorship was overthrown in 1989 at the cost of about 1,100 dead and several thousand wounded.’ (6) By contrast, in Poland and Hungary, members of the ruling party began negotiating with opposition members in 1988 to plan the details of the transition. While in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria the communist ruling parties were not as ready to negotiate but neither were they willing to use force and the use of force is the only possible way that they could have held on to power.(6) One primary reason for the demise of communism is that communists had lost confidence in the state’s socialist system and so, they did not have the will to use force and terror to maintain a political system that they no longer believed in.
Many historians claim that the fact that the transition was mainly peaceful is due ‘the ability of members of the old ruling class to adapt to the new socio-economic system and merge smoothly into the new ruling class’ (6) ‘Many communist bureaucrats in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union welcomed the privatisation of capital because they saw the opportunity to exploit their official positions to establish themselves as private capitalists.’(6)
Finally, conditions that were conducive to the overthrow of communism had developed over the previous decade. Soviet troops were being withdrawn from the region; the Brezhnev doctrine that countenanced the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was dead and Gorbachev had made clear to hardline Eastern European leaders that they could not expect financial or military support from Moscow .Ties were deepening with the west – countries like Poland owed a lot of money to western creditors, east and west Germany were forming economic ties and Hungary was seeking to join the European Economic Community.
Moscow , ‘December 25th, 1991 marked the collapse of the Soviet regime itself which followed an unsuccessful coup in August 1991. It was ‘the end of a millennium of Russian and Soviet Empire ....the defeat of the twentieth century’s two totalitarian systems –Nazi fascism and Soviet communism - ...... That day is viewed by many in Russia, as, in Vladimir Putin’s words, a “great geopolitical catastrophe”.... Celebrated in the United States as a victory in the Cold War, rather than as the triumph of a people who peacefully overthrew a totalitarian system to embrace democracy and free market economics.’(1)
References
1) O’Clery, Conor, (2011), Moscow: December 25th 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, Transworld Ireland, (Dublin).
2) Flint, Hawkes et al., (1990), The Observer: Tearing Down The Curtain –The People’s Revolution in Eastern Europe, Hodder and Stoughton, (London).
3) Applebaum, Anne,(2012) Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe-1956, Max Frankel (pub), New York.
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/ironcurtain-by-anne-applebaum.html?
5) Pittaway, M.(2007), Developments in Central and East European Politics, Palgrave, Macmillian , London, White, S., Batt, J., and Lewis P.,(eds.)
6)http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/200s/2009/no-1263-november-2009/fall-%E2%Ccommunism%%E2%80%9D-why-so-peaceful accessed 17th March 2013.
(7)Sebastian, Victor,(2010), Revolution 1989, Fall of the Soviet Empire. (2010) , Vintage Publishers , New York, (Pryce-Jones, p. 256, and author’s conversations with Geremek, October 1985.)
On 20 November 2013 20:16, Paul Seary wrote: References
1) O’Clery, Conor, (2011), Moscow: December 25th 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, Transworld Ireland, (Dublin).
2) Flint, Hawkes et al., (1990), The Observer: Tearing Down The Curtain –The People’s Revolution in Eastern Europe, Hodder and Stoughton, (London).
3) Applebaum, Anne,(2012) Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe-1956, Max Frankel (pub), New York.
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/ironcurtain-by-anne-applebaum.html?
5) Pittaway, M.(2007), Developments in Central and East European Politics, Palgrave, Macmillian , London, White, S., Batt, J., and Lewis P.,(eds.)
6)http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/200s/2009/no-1263-november-2009/fall-%E2%Ccommunism%%E2%80%9D-why-so-peaceful accessed 17th March 2013.
(7)Sebastian, Victor,(2010), Revolution 1989, Fall of the Soviet Empire. (2010) , Vintage Publishers , New York, (Pryce-Jones, p. 256, and author’s conversations