The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe'

A crucial part of the revolution of 1989 was the rise in self-confidence on the part of East Europeans. They became unwilling to accept previously tolerated strictures. In 1989, this unwillingness was particularly pronounced among East Germans, who had seemed relatively restrained in contrast with Solidarity in Poland and reformers in Hungary. In the fall of 1989, however, several factors contributed to give East Germans the courage they needed to change their future.

Gorbachev's numerous hints to East German leaders and citizens that nonviolent reform was the order of the day removed the fear that the Soviets would act where the East German leadership had not. Economic grievances contributed as well. Enough was enough, ran the general sentiment. The sixteen-year wait for a car and the twenty-five-year wait for a telephone were no longer tolerable. Although the deprivation was not as bad as that experienced in Poland and Romania, it was still painful. In 1986–87, roughly a hundred thousand people living in thirty-five thousand houses had no heat in the depths of winter. In 1988 and 1989, consumers discovered that it was increasingly difficult to find meat (except on the black market). The comparison with the success of West Germany's economy exacerbated the resentment. And repeated missteps by the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) intensified anxieties.

East Germans decided that in order to improve their lives, they must either leave the country, confront their ruling regime, or accept what would come. In other words, they faced a choice between exiting, voicing their discontent, or staying quiet. At first, Hungary's September 1989 announcement that it would allow East Germans to travel through Hungary to Austria made the exit option the most attractive.

This announcement was the result of Hungarian Minister President Miklós Németh's decision to change sides at the end of the Cold War. In spring 1989, he and Gorbachev had seemed to be like-minded souls, agreeing in a March conversation that there was "no difference between pluralism in a single-party system and in a multi-party system."

Political liberalization in Hungary over the summer, however, had an unexpected consequence. Not only Hungarians but also East Germans sought to take advantage of the May 1989 cutting of the fence on the Hungarian border to Austria. Due to treaty obligations, Hungary was not supposed to let East Germans utilize this new gap in the iron curtain; but East Germans came and camped at the border anyway.

At first a holiday atmosphere prevailed, but the crowds grew restless as conditions became wet and swampy in the waning days of a Central European summer. Nervous Hungarian border guards even shot one East German after an altercation on August 21. It was clear that something had to give.

In a hastily arranged secret meeting on August 25, 1989, outside of Bonn, Németh and his foreign minister, Gyula Horn, informed West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that they would no longer prevent East Germans from crossing the "green border" into Austria and then going onward to the FRG. The Hungarian leaders were wisely seeking to make a virtue out of the necessity of resolving the unstable situation.

Németh kept his word and opened the border to East Germans in September. Dramatic scenes filled television screens worldwide as a mass exodus ensued. By the end of the month, roughly forty thousand had exited—far more than the Hungarian leadership or indeed anyone else had anticipated. This opening was one of the single most important events leading to the breakdown of the old Cold War order.


Source