ABSTRACT
The democratic revolutions in East-Central Europe were perceived at the time as an event with its symbolic turning point (the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989) and its conclusion with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. In actual fact it was not an event but a process with antecedents going back to 1956, and it was by no means concluded with the collapse of the Soviet empire. In many ways it remains unfinished business some 20 years on. It was made possible under the combined pressures of East European peripheries and the retreat of the imperial centre. Non-violent change, as it turned out, became possible in 1989 because the victim was a consenting one. Thus Václav Havel, the hero of the ‘velvet revolution’ in Prague, could succeed because Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow too had renounced violent means to keep East European Communism in power and became a “hero of retreat” (as Hans Magnus Enzensberger put it). This unique historical moment in which both sides rejected violence and opted for a negotiated exit from dictatorship remains 1989’s major achievement and, for some, an inspiring example. Eastern Europe in 1989 showed it was possible. China’s repression at Tiananmen Square in Beijing at the very same time was a reminder that this was by no means the only option.
