Communist Party USA
A full generation has elapsed since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in late 1991. Two years earlier, in 1989, the communist states of Eastern Europe dissolved, with the first salvo fired when Hungary opened its border. On 3 March 1989, Hungary’s last communist prime minister Miklós Németh asked the USSR’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev whether the border to Western Europe could be opened. “We have a strict regime on our borders,” Gorbachev told Németh, “but we are also becoming more open.” Three months later, on 15 June, Gorbachev told the press in Bonn (West Germany) that the Berlin Wall “could disappear when the preconditions, which brought it about, cease to exist.” He did not list the preconditions, but he said, “Nothing is permanent under the Moon.” On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was knocked down. By October 1990, the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik…
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Recovering East Germany’s socialist history