  As the reality of Gorbachev's message dawned, Poland took the lead. Solidarity became a political party, then won a parliamentary election, then-at Jaruzelski's request-put one of its strategists, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, into the premiership. Soon Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was President of Poland. Meanwhile, Hungary took down its barbed-wire barriers to the West, literally dismantling a sector of the Iron Curtain, and thousands of East German vacationers swarmed through. Demonstrators in East German cities toppled Erich Honecker and his regime, and on Nov. 9, 1989, they dismantled, almost stone by stone, the stark symbol of communism's impotence: the Berlin Wall.
|
A similar bloodless onslaught, which Czech leader Vaclav Havel called the "velvet revolution," felled the communists in Prague and then in Sofia. In all the East bloc, only the December 1989 uprising that ended Nicolae Ceausescu's reign in Romania touched off bloodshed, and both the ousted dictator and his wife were executed. Still, the contemporary epigram had it about right: in the surge toward freedom, Poland took 10 years, Hungary 10 months, East Germany 10 weeks, Czechoslovakia 10 days and Romania 10 hours. Gorbachev the liberator was not a success at home. The Soviet economy drifted further into decline, strikes erupted, and-most threatening of all-the constituent republics of the union began declaring their "sovereignty." Even so, Gorbachev plunged ahead with his version of reform and in February 1990 directed an overhaul of the Soviet constitution that eliminated Article 6, the provision that gave the Communist Party a monopoly on political power. That action marked the end of the cold war. A banner unfurled outside the Kremlin wall carried the reproach and the admission: 72 YEARS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.  4 of 5
 |
