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Fall of Authoritarian Regimes

"On top of the world?" [Editorial] The Economist (March 9, 1991), 1516.

The year 1989 was one of those extraordinary years of modern history that deserves to be long remembered as an important watershed, alongside 1789, 1848, 1870, 1914, and 1945. The fabric of the Soviet Communist empire, longrotted but previously outwardly intact and even seemingly strong, suddenly tore to shreds. One by one, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe fell; in every case save that of backwards and benighted Romania, the revolution was bloodless or nearly so. With them fell an era, the Cold War, and a wellunderstood system of world power relationships that had endured for nearly half a century.

Because the bloodless fall of authoritarian regimes to democratic movements was the dominant news scenario of the year, 1989 seemed to be not only a decisive year, but the happiest of all those great years listed above. Democracy was triumphant. One enthusiastic writer proclaimed the "end of history," meaning that while older troubles might endure for a little while in Third World backwaters, there was now no global intellectual challenge to liberal democracy. Symbol of the year was the breaching of the Berlin Wall, concrete emblem of authoritarian repression of the human spirit. Yes, the year did have its down moment  the massacres in and around Tienanman Square in Beijing  but this could be as merely a sad but temporary interruption in the world's progress.

Then came 1990, and a sobering backwash that continues into 1991. With the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, old quarrels and fears reemerged out of the shadows of the past. The fall of the Berlin Wall meant the rise of the German Question, a question that had haunted Europe for three generations before 1945. German reunification proceeded swiftly, more swiftly than anyone could have imagined a few months earlier. As it happens, it proceeded peacefully, an...

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Fall of Authoritarian Regimes. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:26, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705383.html