National Security Archive Update, October 9, 2009: A Different October Revolution: Dismantling the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe
For more information contact:
Svetlana Savranskaya / Thomas Blanton: 202/994-7000
Washington, DC, October 9, 2009 – Twenty years ago today, crowds of East German demonstrators took to the streets in Leipzig starting their own October revolution that would bring down the Berlin Wall a month later. Ironically, these massive peaceful crowds of about 70,000 people gathered in the streets and squares of Leipzig just two days after the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic and the visit by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Berlin. Honecker’s security forces were faced with a choice—to apply the Chinese Tiananmen model or to go along with their Soviet patron’s advice not to use force. They chose the latter, and several days later Honecker was sent to retirement and replaced with reform Communist Egon Krenz on October 17, 1989.
To mark this anniversary, today the National Security Archive publishes the first in a series of document postings on the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe. The documents come from the forthcoming book Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989, ed. by Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton and Vladislav Zubok (Central European University Press, 2010), which grew out of the Archive’s groundbreaking conference on the end of the Cold War in Europe at Musgrove Conference Center in May 1998. The documents in the book include formerly top secret deliberations of Soviet, U.S. and East European decision makers, memoranda of conversations and intelligence estimates. Most of the documents are published here in English for the first time.
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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.