Quick questions on Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall: HSC Modern History Cold War

The Eastern European communist regimes had been in long economic and ideological decline. The "social contract" of low expectations in exchange for full employment and basic welfare was breaking down. Polish foreign debt reached $40 billion by 1989. Hungarian living standards had fallen 20 per cent during the 1980s.

Solidarity (Solidarnosc) had been founded at the Gdansk shipyards in August 1980 by Lech Walesa and had reached 10 million members before being banned under martial law (13 December 1981). Through the 1980s it remained an underground mass movement.

The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party began reform under reformers Imre Pozsgay and Miklos Nemeth from 1988. Janos Kadar was eased aside in May 1988. Reformers reburied 1956 Prime Minister Imre Nagy on 16 June 1989, an act of public reconciliation that delegitimised the post-1956 order.

East German emigration accelerated through October 1989: 24,000 left through Czechoslovakia in early October, 14,000 by the end of October. Monday demonstrations in Leipzig grew from a few hundred in early September to 70,000 on 9 October, the "October 9" night that did not become Tiananmen.

A student demonstration in Prague on 17 November 1989 marking the 50th anniversary of the Nazi closure of the universities was beaten by riot police on Narodni Trida. The rumour of a student's death (false but politically decisive) brought 200,000 to Wenceslas Square on 19 November and over 500,000 on 25 and 26 November. The Civic Forum was founded on 19 November under Vaclav Havel.

Bulgaria: Todor Zhivkov, in power since 1954, was deposed by a Politburo coup on 10 November 1989, the day after the Wall fell. The reformed party (renamed Bulgarian Socialist Party) won the June 1990 elections.

By the end of 1989 every Warsaw Pact regime except Albania (which had left in 1968) had fallen or was in transition. The Cold War in Europe was over in a way no one had imagined at the start of the year. The Soviet bloc's hollowness was exposed; the chain reaction had been accelerated by the open border in Hungary, the East German collapse, and the demonstration effect.

Timothy Garton Ash's The Magic Lantern (1990) is the contemporary participant account. Padraic Kenney's A Carnival of Revolution (2002) emphasises civil society. Stephen Kotkin's Uncivil Society (2009) downplays civil society and stresses regime hollowness. Mary Sarotte's The Collapse (2014) is the standard account of the Wall's fall as accident.

None of the regimes was expected to fall. The cascade was contingent on Gorbachev's permission, Polish and Hungarian initiative, and the East German collapse.

Schabowski's confused press conference, not a planned opening.

Romania's revolution was the only violent one and the only one where the leadership refused to negotiate.