Primary Sources
Browse Items: Official document
U.S. Reaction to Romanian Violence
In this December 18 communique from the U.S. Department of State, spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler briefed the press about the recent events in Timisoara, Romania, where demonstrators protesting the forcible relocation of local minister Laszlo Tokes to another congregation had been assaulted by the government's security forces. Tutwiler's limited account of what happened reflected the efforts by….
Official Romanian Version of December Events
This telegram from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sent on December 19, comes two days after the shooting of demonstrators in Timisoara and informs Romanian ambassadors abroad of the government's official position on the crisis and how they should handle questions from their foreign hosts about the "so-called events" taking place in their country. Ambassadors were instructed to deny….
Resolving the Turkish Question in Bulgaria
The ethnic Turks living in Bulgaria had faced discrimination throughout Bulgaria's history. In response to a series of demonstrations in May 1989 for Turkish rights, the Communist government expelled more than 300,000 Bulgarian Turks over the course of the year. With such a large portion of the population affected, Turkish rights in Bulgaria became one of leading human rights issues facing the….
Breakdowns in Soviet-Romanian Relations
In its final years, Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorial regime in Romania increasingly isolated itself from the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Likewise, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev distanced himself from the ultra-hardliners in Bucharest. In keeping with Gorbachev's policy of non-intervention into East European domestic affairs, the Soviets had not commented officially on the mid-December shootings….
Romanian Assessment of Recent Events in Eastern Europe
In this December 22 telegram, Romanian ambassador to Moscow Ion Bucur reported to Deputy Foreign Minister Constantin Oancea in Bucharest on his discussions with Soviet officials concerning the situation in Eastern Europe, particularly the backlash against communist authorities. Interestingly, Bucur writes that the Soviets were aware of the growing hostility towards the former leaders in the….
Soviet Response to the Romanian Uprising
In mid-December 1989, demonstrations erupted in Timisoara, quickly spread to other parts of Romania, and developed into a full-scale revolution, leading to the execution of President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife on December 25. On December 22, the Romanian ambassador in Moscow, Ion Bucur, sent this telegram to Ion Stoian, the minister of foreign affairs in Bucharest, Romania. As directed by….
Protests in Yugoslavia
By December 1989, the economic hardships, chronic shortages, and unwillingness to reform created the same pressures on the Yugoslav Communist Party as it had elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Popular protests had emerged throughout the country, only growing larger as word spread of similar problems in nearby Romania. This report by the Yugoslav Ambassador to Russia, Milan Veres, to the Soviet….
Assessing the Future of the Bulgarian Communist Party
On November 10, 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading figures in the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) forced Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s leader for more than 35 years, to resign. A coalition of opposition groups formed the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) on December 7, to coordinate efforts to “speed up the processes of democratization,” the group asserted in a statement….
U.S. Embassy Assessment of Political Change in Bulgaria
On November 10, 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading figures in the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) forced Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s leader for more than 35 years, to resign. A coalition of opposition groups formed the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) on December 7, to coordinate efforts to “speed up the processes of democratization,” the group asserted in a statement….
Ethnic Minority Demonstrations in Bulgaria
Since the 1950s, the Bulgarian government conducted campaigns to assimilate Macedonians, Pomaks (ethnic Bulgarian converts to Islam), Gypsies, and Turkish Muslims by requiring them to substitute Slavic names for their own. The government also prohibited the use of the Turkish language in public and forbid Muslims from practicing their religious and traditional cultural activities. In response….
Talking Points on the Malta Meeting
President George H. W. Bush held his first summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev early in December 1989 onboard a Soviet cruise ship docked off the coast of Malta. Although US-Soviet relations had thawed during the second term of President Ronald Reagan as he and Gorbachev developed a personal rapport, signed the first treaty between the superpowers to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals,….
President Bush Orders a Review of US Government International Broadcasting Activities
Following World War II, State Department officials, skeptical of the diplomatic value of programs they considered “propaganda,” persuaded Congress to cut allocations severely for Voice of America (VOA) radio programs that had been established during World War II to communicate US war aims to populations abroad. In late 1947, however, a committee of senators traveling in Europe reported….
The Future of Eastern Europe
By the spring of 1990, the future of the individual countries in Eastern Europe was still open for debate. While Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary seemed to be transitioning toward Western-styled democracies, Romania and Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania were following a different course. The former had experienced violent uprisings, and in the latter the Communists seemed to be more….
Assessing the Future of the Soviet Military
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms followed two paths: perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost' (openness). In order to reform the Soviet economy, Gorbachev believed it was necessary to cut spending on the Soviet military, both inside Soviet borders and throughout Eastern Europe. By the end of 1989, 500,000 men had been decommissioned from the Soviet army, greatly reducing its military presence….
State Department Views on European Security Prior to the 1990 Washington Summit
President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met for a four-day summit, their second together, in Washington and Camp David beginning on May 31, 1990. Discord had grown dramatically within the Soviet government concerning the drastic changes that had occurred in the Soviet bloc during the previous year. The following excerpt from a State Department report produced for Bush….
Provision for the Restatement of Names and Surnames
Images of 1989 tend to center on dramatic events in Berlin, in Beijing, in Bucharest, and in Johannesburg, just to name a few. Visions of mass demonstration and popular uprising predominate. Even in places like the former Czechoslovakia, where peaceful transition occurred in a "velvet" revolution, the perception is one of overthrow of state authority in the name of popular reform. Lost in these….
Arms Reductions and the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was based around the principle of cooperation and mutual assistance for its member states, though primarily it was a military alliance led by the Soviet Union. Therefore, Mikhail Gorbachev's arms reduction plan affected all of the member states of the Warsaw Pact by reducing all of the men under arms in Eastern Europe. In this meeting from July 1988, the Defense Ministers of the….
Report on the future of the Soviet Military in Eastern Europe
In May 1988, Georgi Shakhnazarov, an adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev and a champion of reform in the Soviet Union, responded to a report by Marshal Viktor G. Kulikov, the commander-in-chief of Warsaw Pact forces. In his comments, Shakhnazarov delineated in detail the problems with Kulikov's report, namely, his plan to continue building up the military even following the Intermediate-Range Nuclear….
Soviet Policy toward Eastern Europe under Gorbachev
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States was closely watching the events unfolding in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and this secret service document reveals the extent of that interest. As exhibited in this source, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union embarked on a program of reform both within the Soviet bloc and in its relationships….