title: Éamon de Valera

text: In 1931, de Valera said in the Dáil: "I believe that every citizen in this country is entitled to his share of public appointments, and that there should not be discrimination on the ground of religion, discrimination, mind you, in the sense that because a person was of a particular religion, religion should not be made an excuse for denying a person an appointment for which he or she was fully qualified. Then there comes the question, what are qualifications? If I thought that the principle that the librarian in a Catholic community should be Catholic was a new principle, introduced merely to deny a Protestant an appointment, I would vote against it, but I know from my youth that it is not so. ... if I had a vote on a local body, and if there were two qualified people who had to deal with a Catholic community, and if one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant, I would unhesitatingly vote for the Catholic. Let us be clear and let us know where we are." Ryle Dwyer, writing in 2008, said "If those were his honest views, one could also say without hesitation that the Long Fellow was a bigot. But, in fact, he was just playing the role of a political hypocrite. It was cynical, but it should be stressed that he behaved responsibly in this regard when he came to power."


title: Éamon de Valera

text: De Valera led Fianna Fáil to adopt conservative social policies, since he believed devoutly that the Catholic church and the family were central to Irish identity. He added clauses to the new Constitution of Ireland (1937) to "guard with special care the institution of marriage" and prohibit divorce. His constitution also recognised "the special position" of the Catholic Church and recognised other denominations including the Church of Ireland and Jewish congregations, while guaranteeing the religious freedom of all citizens; however, he resisted an attempt to make Roman Catholicism the state religion and his constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion. His policies were welcomed by a largely devout, conservative and rural electorate. The unenforceable articles in the constitution which reinforced the traditional view that a woman's place was in the home further illustrate the direction in which Ireland was moving. An act of 1935 prohibited the importation or sale of contraceptives. The most rigorous censorship laws in western Europe complete the picture.


title: Éamon de Valera

text: The specific recognition of Roman Catholicism was deleted by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (1973) and the prohibition of divorce was removed by the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (1996). Nevertheless, the Irish Supreme Court declared in 1973 that the 1935 contraception legislation was not repugnant to the Constitution and therefore remained valid.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. It also led to the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union—the world's largest communist state—and the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. The events, especially the fall of the Soviet Union, drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Post-Cold War era. The reason it is called the "Revolutions of 1989" is because 1989 was the peak year of the revolutions.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The earliest recorded protests were started in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986 with the student demonstrations — the last chapter of these revolutions is considered to be in 1993 when Cambodia enacted a new Constitution in which communism was abandoned. The main region of these revolutions was in Eastern Europe, starting in Poland with the Polish workers' mass strike movement in 1988, and the revolutionary trend continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. On 4 June 1989, the trade union Solidarity won an overwhelming victory in a partially free election in Poland, leading to the peaceful fall of communism in that country. Also in June 1989, Hungary began dismantling its section of the physical Iron Curtain, while the opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary in August 1989 set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, in which the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. This led to mass demonstrations in the cities such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to the German reunification in 1990. One feature common to most of these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to the pressure for change. Romania was the only country where citizens and opposition forces used violence to overthrow its communist regime. The Cold War is considered to have "officially" ended on 3 December 1989 during the Malta Summit between the Soviet and American leaders. However, many historians argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 was the end of the Cold War.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Soviet Union itself became a multi-party semi-presidential republic from March 1990 and held its first presidential election, marking a drastic change as part of its reform program. The Union dissolved in December 1991, resulting in seven new countries which had declared their independence from the Soviet Union in the course of the year, while the Baltic states regained their independence in September 1991 along with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The rest of the Soviet Union, which constituted the bulk of the area, continued with the establishment of the Russian Federation. Albania and Yugoslavia abandoned communism between 1990 and 1992, and by the end Yugoslavia had split into five new countries. Czechoslovakia dissolved three years after the end of communist rule, splitting peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993. North Korea has abandoned Marxism-Leninism since 1992.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The impact of these events were felt in many third world socialist states throughout the world. Concurrently with events in Poland, protests in Tiananmen Square (April–June 1989) failed to stimulate major political changes in Mainland China, but influential images of courageous defiance during that protest helped to precipitate events in other parts of the globe. Three Asian countries, namely Afghanistan, Cambodia and Mongolia, had successfully abandoned communism by 1992–1993, either through reform or conflict. Additionally, eight countries in Africa or its environ had also abandoned it, namely Ethiopia, Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, Somalia, as well as South Yemen (unified with North Yemen).


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The political reforms varied, but in only four countries were communist parties able to retain a monopoly on power, namely China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. However, these countries would later make economic reforms in the coming years to adopt some forms of market economy under market socialism. The European political landscape changed drastically, with several former Eastern Bloc countries joining NATO and the European Union, resulting in stronger economic and social integration with Western Europe and North America. Many communist and socialist organisations in the West turned their guiding principles over to social democracy and democratic socialism. In contrast, and somewhat later, in South America, a Pink tide began in Venezuela in 1999 and shaped politics in the other parts of the continent through the early 2000s. Meanwhile, in certain countries the aftermath of these revolutions resulted in conflict and wars, including various post-Soviet conflicts that remain frozen to this day as well as large-scale wars, most notably the Yugoslav Wars which led to Europe's first genocide since the Second World War in 1995.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Labour turmoil in Poland during 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union Solidarity, led by Lech Wałęsa, which over time became a political force, nevertheless, on 13 December 1981, Polish Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski started a crackdown on Solidarity by declaring martial law in Poland, suspending the union, and temporarily imprisoning all of its leaders.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Although several Eastern Bloc countries had attempted some abortive, limited economic and political reform since the 1950s (e.g. the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring of 1968), the ascension of reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 signaled the trend toward greater liberalization. During the mid-1980s, a younger generation of Soviet apparatchiks, led by Gorbachev, began advocating fundamental reform in order to reverse years of Brezhnev stagnation. After decades of growth, the Soviet Union was now facing a period of severe economic decline and needed Western technology and credits to make up for its increasing backwardness. The costs of maintaining its military, the KGB, and subsidies to foreign client states further strained the moribund Soviet economy.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and came to power in 1985. The first signs of major reform came in 1986 when Gorbachev launched a policy of "glasnost" (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need for "perestroika" (economic restructuring). By the spring of 1989, the Soviet Union had not only experienced lively media debate but had also held its first multi-candidate elections in the newly established Congress of People's Deputies. While glasnost ostensibly advocated openness and political criticism, these were only permitted within a narrow spectrum dictated by the state. The general public in the Eastern Bloc was still subject to secret police and political repression.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Gorbachev urged his Central and Southeast European counterparts to imitate "perestroika" and "glasnost" in their own countries. However, while reformists in Hungary and Poland were emboldened by the force of liberalization spreading from the east, other Eastern Bloc countries remained openly skeptical and demonstrated aversion to reform. Believing Gorbachev's reform initiatives would be short-lived, hardline communist rulers like East Germany's Erich Honecker, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu obstinately ignored the calls for change. "When your neighbor puts up new wallpaper, it doesn't mean you have to too," declared one East German politburo member.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: By the late 1980s, people in the Caucasus and Baltic states were demanding more autonomy from Moscow, and the Kremlin was losing some of its control over certain regions and elements in the Soviet Union. Cracks in the Soviet system had begun in December 1986 in Kazakhstan when its citizens protested over an ethnic Russian who had been appointed as the secretary of the CPSU's Kazakh republican branch. These protests were put down after three days.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In November 1988, the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic issued a declaration of sovereignty, which would eventually lead to other states making similar declarations of autonomy.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 had major political and social effects that catalyzed or at least partially caused the Revolutions of 1989. One political result of the disaster was the greatly increased significance of the new Soviet policy of glasnost. It is difficult to establish the total economic cost of the disaster. According to Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion roubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, supported by the Catholic Church. However, by the late 1980s, Solidarity became sufficiently strong to frustrate Jaruzelski's attempts at reform, and nationwide strikes in 1988 forced the government to open dialogue with Solidarity. On 9 March 1989, both sides agreed to a bicameral legislature called the National Assembly. The already existing Sejm would become the lower house. The Senate would be elected by the people. Traditionally a ceremonial office, the presidency was given more powers (Polish Round Table Agreement).


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 7 July 1989, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev implicitly renounced the use of force against other Soviet-bloc nations. Speaking to members of the 23-nation Council of Europe, Mr. Gorbachev made no direct reference to the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, under which Moscow had asserted the right to use force to prevent a Warsaw Pact member from leaving the communist fold. He stated, "Any interference in domestic affairs and any attempts to restrict the sovereignty of states—friends, allies or any others—are inadmissible". The policy was termed the Sinatra Doctrine, in a joking reference to the Frank Sinatra song "My Way". Poland became the first Warsaw Pact country to break free of Soviet domination.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In February 1986, in one of the first peaceful, mass-movement revolutions against a dictatorship, the People Power Revolution in the Philippines peacefully overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos and inaugurated Cory Aquino as the President.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The domino effect of the revolutions of 1989 affected other regimes as well. The South African apartheid regime and Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile were gradually dismantled during the 1990s as the West withdrew their funding and diplomatic support. Ghana, Indonesia, Nicaragua, South Korea, Suriname, Republic of China and North-South Yemen, among many others, elected democratic governments.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Exact tallies of the number of democracies vary depending on the criteria used for assessment, but by some measures by the late 1990s there were well over 100 democracies in the world, a marked increase in just a few decades.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: A wave of strikes hit Poland from 21 April then this continued in May 1988. A second wave began on 15 August, when a strike broke out at the July Manifesto coal mine in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, with the workers demanding the re-legalisation of the Solidarity trade union. Over the next few days, sixteen other mines went on strike followed by a number of shipyards, including on 22 August the Gdansk Shipyard, famous as the epicentre of the 1980 industrial unrest that spawned Solidarity. On 31 August 1988 Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Solidarity, was invited to Warsaw by the communist authorities, who had finally agreed to talks.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 18 January 1989 at a stormy session of the Tenth Plenary Session of the ruling United Workers' Party, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the First Secretary, managed to get party backing for formal negotiations with Solidarity leading to its future legalisation, although this was achieved only by threatening the resignation of the entire party leadership if thwarted. On 6 February 1989 formal Round Table discussions began in the Hall of Columns in Warsaw. On 4 April 1989 the historic Round Table Agreement was signed legalising Solidarity and setting up partly free parliamentary elections to be held on 4 June 1989 (incidentally, the day following the midnight crackdown on Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square). A political earthquake followed as the victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats (with the one remaining seat taken by an independent candidate). At the same time, many prominent communist candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 15 August 1989, the communists' two longtime coalition partners, the United People's Party (ZSL) and the Democratic Party (SD), broke their alliance with the PZPR and announced their support for Solidarity. The last communist Prime Minister of Poland, General Czesław Kiszczak, said he would resign to allow a non-communist to form an administration. As Solidarity was the only other political grouping that could possibly form a government, it was virtually assured that a Solidarity member would become prime minister. On 19 August 1989, in a stunning watershed moment, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, an anti-communist editor, Solidarity supporter, and devout Catholic, was nominated as Prime Minister of Poland and the Soviet Union voiced no protest. Five days later, on 24 August 1989, Poland's Parliament ended more than 40 years of one-party rule by making Mazowiecki the country's first non-communist Prime Minister since the early postwar years. In a tense Parliament, Mazowiecki received 378 votes, with 4 against and 41 abstentions. On 13 September 1989, a new non-communist government was approved by parliament, the first of its kind in the Eastern Bloc. On 17 November 1989 the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Polish founder of the Cheka and symbol of communist oppression, was torn down in Bank Square, Warsaw. On 29 December 1989 the Sejm amended the constitution to change the official name of the country from the People's Republic of Poland to the Republic of Poland. The communist Polish United Workers' Party dissolved itself on 29 January 1990 and transformed itself into the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by Wałęsa, who won the 1990 presidential elections held in two rounds on 25 November and 9 December. Wałęsa's inauguration as president on 21 December 1990 is considered by many as the formal end of the communist People's Republic of Poland and the start of the modern Republic of Poland. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved on 1 July 1991. On 27 October 1991 the first entirely free Polish parliamentary elections since 1945 took place. This completed Poland's transition from communist Party rule to a Western-style liberal democratic political system. The last Russian troops left Poland on 18 September 1993.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Following Poland's lead, Hungary was next to switch to a non-communist government. Although Hungary had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization during the 1980s, major reforms only occurred following the replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the communist Party on 23 May 1988 with Károly Grósz. On 24 November 1988 Miklós Németh was appointed Prime Minister. On 12 January 1989, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package", which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among other provisions. On 29 January 1989, contradicting the official view of history held for more than 30 years, a member of the ruling Politburo, Imre Pozsgay, declared that Hungary's 1956 rebellion was a popular uprising rather than a foreign-instigated attempt at counterrevolution.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mass demonstrations on 15 March, the National Day, persuaded the regime to begin negotiations with the emergent non-communist political forces. Round Table talks began on 22 April and continued until the Round Table agreement was signed on 18 September. The talks involved the communists (MSzMP) and the newly emerging independent political forces Fidesz, the Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz), the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the Independent Smallholders' Party, the Hungarian People's Party, the Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Society, and the Democratic Trade Union of Scientific Workers. At a later stage the Democratic Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) were invited. At these talks a number of Hungary's future political leaders emerged, including László Sólyom, József Antall, György Szabad, Péter Tölgyessy and Viktor Orbán.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 2 May 1989, the first visible cracks in the Iron Curtain appeared when Hungary began dismantling its long border fence with Austria. This increasingly destabilized East Germany and Czechoslovakia over the summer and autumn, as thousands of their citizens illegally crossed over to the West through the Hungarian-Austrian border. On 1 June 1989 the Communist Party admitted that former Prime Minister Imre Nagy, hanged for treason for his role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, was executed illegally after a show trial. On 16 June 1989 Nagy was given a solemn funeral on Budapest's largest square in front of crowds of at least 100,000, followed by a hero's burial.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The initially inconspicuous opening of a border gate of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary in August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction, at the end of which the GDR no longer existed and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The idea of opening the border came from Otto von Habsburg and was brought up by him to Miklós Németh, who promoted the idea. The local organization in Sopron took over the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the other contacts were made via Habsburg and Imre Pozsgay. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting them to a picnic near the border at Sopron. After the pan-European picnic, Erich Honecker dictated the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. In particular, the leadership of the GDR in East Berlin no longer dared to completely block the borders of their own country.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Round Table agreement of 18 September encompassed six draft laws that covered an overhaul of the Constitution, establishment of a Constitutional Court, the functioning and management of political parties, multiparty elections for National Assembly deputies, the penal code and the law on penal procedures (the last two changes represented an additional separation of the Party from the state apparatus). The electoral system was a compromise: about half of the deputies would be elected proportionally and half by the majoritarian system. A weak presidency was also agreed upon, but no consensus was attained on who should elect the president (parliament or the people) and when this election should occur (before or after parliamentary elections). On 7 October 1989, the Communist Party at its last congress re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party. In a historic session from 16 to 20 October, the parliament adopted legislation providing for a multi-party parliamentary election and a direct presidential election, which took place on 24 March 1990. The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional structure that ensured separation of powers among the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government. On 23 October 1989, on the 33rd anniversary of the 1956 Revolution, the communist regime in Hungary was formally abolished. The Soviet military occupation of Hungary, which had persisted since World War II, ended on 19 June 1991.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 2 May 1989, Hungary started dismantling its barbed-wire border with Austria. The border was still heavily guarded, but it was a political sign. The Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 finally started a movement that could not be stopped by the rulers in the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The patrons of the picnic, Otto von Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay saw the planned event as an opportunity to test the reaction of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Eastern Bloc countries to a large opening of the border including flight. After the pan-European picnic, Erich Honecker dictated the Daily Mirror of 19 August 1989: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food, and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: By the end of September 1989, more than 30,000 East Germans had escaped to the West before the GDR denied travel to Hungary, leaving Czechoslovakia as the only neighboring state to which East Germans could escape. Thousands of East Germans tried to reach the West by occupying the West German diplomatic facilities in other Central and Eastern European capitals, notably the Prague Embassy and the Hungarian Embassy, where thousands camped in the muddy garden from August to November waiting for German political reform. The GDR closed the border to Czechoslovakia on 3 October, thereby isolating itself from all its neighbors. Having been shut off from their last chance for escape, an increasing number of East Germans participated in the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig on 4, 11, and 18 September, each attracting 1,200 to 1,500 demonstrators. Many were arrested and beaten, but the people refused to be intimidated. On 25 September, the protests attracted 8,000 demonstrators.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: After the fifth successive Monday demonstration in Leipzig on 2 October attracted 10,000 protesters, Socialist Unity Party (SED) leader Erich Honecker issued a "shoot and kill" order to the military. Communists prepared a huge police, militia, Stasi, and work-combat troop presence, and there were rumors a Tiananmen Square-style massacre was being planned for the following Monday's demonstration on 9 October.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 6 and 7 October, Mikhail Gorbachev visited East Germany to mark the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, and urged the East German leadership to accept reform. A famous quote of his is rendered in German as "Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben" ("The one who comes too late is punished by life."). However, Honecker remained opposed to internal reform, with his regime even going so far as forbidding the circulation of Soviet publications that it viewed as subversive.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In spite of rumors that the communists were planning a massacre on 9 October, 70,000 citizens demonstrated in Leipzig that Monday and the authorities on the ground refused to open fire. The following Monday, 16 October 120,000 people demonstrated on the streets of Leipzig.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Erich Honecker had hoped that the Soviet troops stationed in the GDR by the Warsaw Pact would restore the communist government and suppress the civilian protests. By 1989 the Soviet government deemed it impractical for the Soviet Union to continue asserting its control over the Eastern Bloc, so it took a neutral stance regarding the events happening in East Germany. Soviet troops stationed in eastern Europe were under strict instructions from the Soviet leadership not to intervene in the political affairs of the Eastern Bloc nations and remained in their barracks. Faced with ongoing civil unrest, the SED deposed Honecker on 18 October and replaced him with the number-two-man in the regime, Egon Krenz. However, the demonstrations kept growing, and on Monday, 23 October, the Leipzig protesters numbered 300,000 and remained as large the following week.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The border to Czechoslovakia was opened again on 1 November, and the Czechoslovak authorities soon let all East Germans travel directly to West Germany without further bureaucratic ado, thus lifting their part of the Iron Curtain on 3 November. On 4 November the authorities decided to authorize a demonstration in Berlin and were faced with the Alexanderplatz demonstration, where half a million citizens converged on the capital demanding freedom in the biggest protest the GDR ever witnessed. Unable to stem the ensuing flow of refugees to the West through Czechoslovakia, the East German authorities eventually caved in to public pressure by allowing East German citizens to enter West Berlin and West Germany directly, via existing border points, on 9 November 1989, without having properly briefed the border guards. Triggered by the erratic words of regime spokesman Günter Schabowski in a TV press conference, stating that the planned changes were in effect "immediately, without delay," hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity. The guards were quickly overwhelmed by the growing crowds of people demanding to be let out into West Berlin. After receiving no feedback from their superiors, the guards, unwilling to use force, relented and opened the gates to West Berlin. Soon new crossing points were forced open in the Berlin Wall by the people, and sections of the wall were literally torn down. The guards were unaware of what was happening and stood by as the East Germans took to the wall with hammers and chisels.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 7 November, the entire "Ministerrat der DDR" (State Council of East Germany), including its chairman Willi Stoph, resigned. A new government was formed under a considerably more liberal communist, Hans Modrow.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 3 December Krenz resigned as leader of the SED; he resigned as head of state three days later. On 7 December, Round Table talks opened between the SED and other political parties. On 16 December 1989, the SED was dissolved and refounded as the SED-PDS, abandoning Marxism–Leninism and becoming a mainstream democratic socialist party.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 15 January 1990, the Stasi's headquarters was stormed by protesters. Modrow became the de facto leader of East Germany until free elections were held on 18 March 1990—the first since November 1932. The SED, renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism, was heavily defeated. Lothar de Maizière of the East German Christian Democratic Union became Prime Minister on 4 April 1990 on a platform of speedy reunification with the West. On 15 March 1990, a peace treaty was signed between the two countries of Germany and the four Allies to replace the Potsdam Agreement of 1 August 1945 after World War II to return full sovereignty to Germany, which facilitated the reunification. The two German countries were finally reunified into present-day Germany on 3 October 1990, solving German problem about two states status which had existed since 7 October 1949.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Kremlin's willingness to abandon such a strategically vital ally marked a dramatic change by the Soviet superpower and a fundamental paradigm shift in international relations, which until 1989 had been dominated by the East–West divide running through Berlin itself. The last Russian troops left the territory of the former GDR, now part of a reunited Federal Republic of Germany, on 1 September 1994.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The "Velvet Revolution" was a non-violent transition of power in Czechoslovakia from the communist government to a parliamentary republic. On 17 November 1989, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration in Prague, a day after a similar demonstration passed without incident in Bratislava. Although controversy continues over whether anyone died that night, that event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from 19 November to late December. By 20 November the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. Five days later, the Letná Square protest held 800,000 people. On 24 November, the entire Communist Party leadership, including general secretary Miloš Jakeš, resigned. A two-hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was successfully held on 27 November.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: With the collapse of other communist governments, and increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on 28 November 1989 that it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On 10 December, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948 and resigned. Alexander Dubček was elected speaker of the federal parliament on 28 December and Václav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on 29 December 1989. In June 1990 Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. On 27 June 1991 the last Soviet troops were withdrawn from Czechoslovakia.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In October and November 1989, demonstrations on ecological issues were staged in Sofia, where demands for political reform were also voiced. The demonstrations were suppressed, but on 10 November 1989 (the day after the Berlin Wall was breached) Bulgaria's long-serving leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo. He was succeeded by a considerably more liberal communist, former foreign minister Petar Mladenov. Moscow apparently approved the leadership change, as Zhivkov had been opposed to Gorbachev's policies. The new regime immediately repealed restrictions on free speech and assembly, which led to the first mass demonstration on 17 November, as well as the formation of anti-communist movements. Nine of them united as the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) on 7 December. The UDF was not satisfied with Zhivkov's ouster, and demanded additional democratic reforms, most importantly the removal of the constitutionally mandated leading role of the Bulgarian Communist Party.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mladenov announced on 11 December 1989 that the Communist Party would abandon its monopoly on power, and that multiparty elections would be held the following year. In February 1990, the Bulgarian legislature deleted the portion of the constitution about the "leading role" of the Communist Party. Eventually, it was decided that a round table on the Polish model would be held in 1990 and elections held by June 1990. The round table took place from 3 January to 14 May 1990, at which an agreement was reached on the transition to democracy. The Communist Party abandoned Marxism–Leninism on 3 April 1990 and renamed itself as the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In June 1990 the first free elections since 1931 were held, won by the Bulgarian Socialist Party.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák's resignation on 10 December 1989 amounted to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, leaving Ceaușescu's Romania as the only remaining hard-line communist regime in the Warsaw Pact.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: After having suppressed the Brașov rebellion in 1987, Nicolae Ceaușescu was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in November 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe. As Ceaușescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, on 16 December, for sermons offending the regime. Tőkés was seized, but only after serious rioting erupted. Timișoara was the first city to react on 16 December and civil unrest continued for five days.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Returning from Iran, Ceaușescu ordered a mass rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest on 21 December. However, to his shock, the crowd booed and jeered him as he spoke. Years of repressed dissatisfaction boiled to the surface throughout the Romanian populace and even among elements in Ceaușescu's own government, and the demonstrations spread throughout the country.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: At first, the security forces obeyed Ceaușescu's orders to shoot protesters. However, on the morning of 22 December, the Romanian military suddenly changed sides. This came after it was announced that defense minister Vasile Milea had committed suicide after being unmasked as a traitor. It was suggested that he only tried to incapacitate himself in order to be relieved from office, but the bullet hit an artery and he died soon afterwards. Believing Milea had actually been murdered, the rank-and-file soldiers went over virtually "en masse" to the revolution. Army tanks began moving towards the Central Committee building with crowds swarming alongside them. The rioters forced open the doors of the Central Committee building in an attempt to capture Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, coming within a few meters of the couple. However, they managed to escape via a helicopter waiting for them on the roof of the building.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Although elation followed the flight of the Ceaușescus, uncertainty surrounded their fate. On Christmas Day, Romanian television showed the Ceaușescus facing a hasty trial, and then being executed by firing squad. An interim National Salvation Front Council led by Ion Iliescu took over and announced elections for April 1990, the first free elections held in Romania since 1937. These were, however, postponed until 20 May 1990. The Romanian Revolution was the bloodiest of the revolutions of 1989: over 1,000 people died, one hundred of which were children, the youngest only one month old. Unlike its kindred parties in the Warsaw Pact, the PCR simply melted away; no present-day Romanian party claiming to be its successor has ever been elected to the legislature since the change of system. However, former PCR members have played significant roles in post-1989 Romanian politics; every Romanian President until the election of Klaus Iohannis in 2014 was a former Communist Party member.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The years following the disposal of Ceaușescu were not free of conflict, and a series of "Mineriads" organized by dissatisfied Jiu Valley miners occurred. The June 1990 Mineriad turned deadly after university students, the "Golaniads", held a months long protest against the participation of ex-PCR and Securitate members in the 1990 Romanian general election. President Ion Iliescu branded the protesters "hooligans" and called the miners to "defend Romanian democracy". Viorel Ene, president of the Association of Victims of the Mineriads, asserted that:


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Over 10,000 miners were transported to Bucharest and in the ensuing clashes, seven protesters died and hundreds more were injured, although media estimates on the casualty figures were much higher. The opposition newspaper "România Liberă" alleged that over 128 unidentified bodies were buried in a common grave in Străulești II cemetery, near Bucharest. A few weeks after the mineriad, several medical students conducted research in Străulești II cemetery, discovering two trenches with about 78 unmarked graves, which they claimed to contain victims of the events.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not a part of the Warsaw Pact but pursued its own version of communism under Josip Broz Tito. It was a multi-ethnic state which Tito was able to maintain through a Yugoslav patriotic doctrine of "Brotherhood and unity". Tensions between ethnicities began to escalate, however, with the Croatian Spring of 1970–71, a movement for greater Croatian autonomy, which was suppressed. Constitutional changes were instituted in 1974, and the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution devolved some federal powers to the constituent republics and provinces. After Tito's death in 1980 ethnic tensions grew, first in Albanian-majority SAP Kosovo with the 1981 protests in Kosovo.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Parallel to the same process, Slovenia initiated a policy of gradual liberalization in 1984, somewhat similar to the Soviet Perestroika. This provoked tensions between the League of Communists of Slovenia and the central Yugoslav Party and federal army. In 1984 the decade long ban to build the Saint Sava Cahedral in Belgrade was lifted, the backdown of the communist elite and a popular gathering of 100.000 believers on 12 May 1985 to celebrate liturgy inside the walls of the ruins marked the return of religion in postwar Yugoslavia. By the late 1980s, many civil society groups were pushing towards democratization, while widening the space for cultural plurality. In 1987 and 1988, a series of clashes between the emerging civil society and the communist regime culminated with the so-called Slovene Spring, a mass movement for democratic reforms. The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights was established as the platform of all major non-Communist political movements. By early 1989, several anti-communist political parties were already openly functioning, challenging the hegemony of the Slovenian Communists. Soon, the Slovenian Communists, pressured by their own civil society, came into conflict with the Serbian Communist leadership.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In January 1990, an extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was called in order to settle the disputes among its constituent parties. Faced with being completely outnumbered, the Slovenian and Croatian communists walked out of the Congress on 23 January 1990, thus effectively bringing to an end to Yugoslavia's communist party. Both parties of the two western republics negotiated free multi-party elections with their own opposition movements.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 8 April 1990, the democratic and anti-Yugoslav DEMOS coalition won the elections in Slovenia, while on 22 April 1990 the Croatian elections resulted in a landslide victory for the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Franjo Tuđman. The results were much more balanced in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Macedonia in November 1990, while the parliamentary and presidential elections of December 1990 in Serbia and Montenegro consolidated the power of Milošević and his supporters. Free elections on the level of the federation were never carried out.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Slovenian and Croatian leaderships started preparing plans for secession from the federation, while a part of the Serbs of Croatia started the so-called Log Revolution, an insurrection organized by Serbia that would lead to the creation of the breakaway region of SAO Krajina. In the Slovenian independence referendum on 23 December 1990, 88.5% of residents voted for independence. In the Croatian independence referendum on 19 May 1991, 93.24% voted for independence.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The escalating ethnic and national tensions were exacerbated by the drive for independence and led to the following Yugoslav wars:


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In addition, the insurgency in the Preševo Valley (1999–2001) and the insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia (2001) are also often discussed in the same context.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Enver Hoxha, who led Albania for four decades, died on 11 April 1985. His successor, Ramiz Alia, began to gradually open up the regime from above. In 1989, the first revolts started in Shkodra and spread in other cities. Eventually, the existing regime introduced some liberalization, including measures in 1990 providing for freedom to travel abroad. Efforts were begun to improve ties with the outside world. March 1991 elections—the first free elections in Albania since 1923, and only the third free elections in the country's history—left the former communists in power, but a general strike and urban opposition led to the formation of a coalition cabinet including non-communists. Parliamentary elections were held in Albania on 22 March 1992, with a second round of voting for eleven seats on 29 March, amid economic collapse and social unrest.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) declared independence from China in 1911 during the fall of the Qing dynasty. The Mongolian People's Party took power in 1921, and the party renamed itself the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. During these years, Mongolia was closely aligned with the Soviet Union. After Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal left in 1984, the new leadership under Jambyn Batmönkh implemented economic reforms, but failed to appeal to those who, in late 1989, wanted broader changes. The "Mongolian Revolution" was a democratic, peaceful revolution that started with demonstrations and hunger strikes and ended 70-years of Marxism-Leninism and eventually moved towards democracy. It was spearheaded by mostly younger people demonstrating on Sükhbaatar Square in the capital Ulaanbaatar. It ended with the authoritarian government resigning without bloodshed. Some of the main organizers were Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Sanjaasürengiin Zorig, Erdeniin Bat-Üül, and Bat-Erdeniin Batbayar.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: During the morning of 10 December 1989, the first public demonstration occurred in front of the Youth Cultural Center in the capital of Ulaanbaatar. There, Elbegdorj announced the creation of the Mongolian Democratic Union, and the first pro-democracy movement in Mongolia began. The protesters called for Mongolia to adopt perestroika and glasnost. Dissident leaders demanded free elections and economic reform, but within the context of a "human democratic socialism". The protesters injected a nationalist element into the protests by using traditional Mongolian script—which most Mongolians could not read—as a symbolic repudiation of the political system which had imposed the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet. In late December 1989, demonstrations increased when news came of Garry Kasparov's interview in "Playboy", suggesting that the Soviet Union could improve its economic health by selling Mongolia to China. On 14 January 1990, the protesters, having grown from three hundred to some 1,000, met in a square in front of Lenin Museum in Ulaanbaatar, which has been named Freedom Square since then. A demonstration in Sükhbaatar Square on 21 January (in weather of −30 C) followed. Protesters carried banners alluding to Chinggis Khaan (also referred to Genghis Khan), rehabilitating a figure whom Soviet schooling neglected to praise.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In subsequent months of 1990, activists continued to organize demonstrations, rallies, protests and hunger strikes, as well as teachers' and workers' strikes. Activists had growing support from Mongolians, both in the capital and the countryside and the union's activities led to other calls for democracy all over the country. After numerous demonstrations of many thousands of people in the capital city as well as provincial centers, on 4 March 1990, the MDU and three other reform organizations held a joint outdoor mass meeting, inviting the government to attend. The government sent no representative to what became a demonstration of over 100,000 people demanding democratic change. This culminated with Jambyn Batmönkh, chairman of Politburo of MPRP's Central Committee decided to dissolve the Politburo and to resign on 9 March 1990.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mongolia's first free, multi-party elections for a bicameral parliament took place on 29 July 1990. Parties ran for 430 seats in the Great Hural. Opposition parties were not able to nominate enough candidates. The opposition nominated 346 candidates for the 430 seats in the Great Hural (upper house). The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) won 357 seats in the Great Hural and 31 out of 53 seats in the Small Hural (which was later abolished) as well. The MPRP enjoyed a strong position in the countryside. The State Great Khural first met on 3 September 1990 and elected a president (MPRP), vice president (Social Democrat) who was also a chairman of the Baga Hural, prime minister (MPRP), and 50 members to the Baga Hural (lower house). In November 1991, the People's Great Hural began a discussion on a new constitution, which entered into force on 12 February 1992. In addition, the new constitution restructured the legislative branch of government, creating a unicameral legislature, the State Great Hural (SGH). The MPRP retained its majority but lost the 1996 elections. The final Russian troops, which had stationed in Mongolia in 1966, fully withdrew in December 1992.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: While China did not undergo a revolution resulting in a new form of government in 1989, a popular national movement led to large demonstrations in favor of democratic reforms. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had developed the concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics and enacted local market economy reforms around 1984, but the policy had stalled.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The first Chinese student demonstrations, which eventually led to the Beijing protests of 1989, took place in December 1986 in Hefei. The students called for campus elections, the chance to study abroad, and greater availability of Western pop culture. Their protests took advantage of the loosening political atmosphere and included rallies against the slow pace of reform. Hu Yaobang, a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and a leading advocate of reform, was blamed for the protests and forced to resign as the CCP general secretary in January 1987. In the "Anti Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign", Hu would be further denounced.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Tiananmen Square protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April 1989. By the eve of Hu's state funeral, some 100,000 students had gathered at Tiananmen Square to observe it; however, no leaders emerged from the Great Hall. The movement lasted for seven weeks.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Mikhail Gorbachev visited China on 15 May during the protests, bringing many foreign news agencies to Beijing, and their sympathetic portrayals of the protesters helped galvanize a spirit of liberation among the Central, South-East and Eastern Europeans who were watching. The Chinese leadership, particularly Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang, who had begun to radically reform the economy earlier than the Soviets, was open to political reform, but not at the cost of a potential return to the disorder of the Cultural Revolution.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The movement lasted from Hu's death on 15 April until tanks and troops rolled into the Tiananmen Square protests of 4 June 1989. In Beijing, the military response to the protest by the PRC government left many civilians in charge of clearing the square of the dead and severely injured. The exact number of casualties is not known and many different estimates exist. The event, however, did make some political change; the most notable being that China started to open up its economy. This allowed for the country to bring in large sums of money and also started the wave of mass migration from rural Western China to urban Eastern China. The problem with the mass migration is that it has now started a deepening divide between the rural poor and the rich urban people.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The Malta Summit took place between U.S. President George H. W. Bush and U.S.S.R. leader Mikhail Gorbachev on 2–3 December 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a meeting which contributed to the end of the Cold War partially as a result of the broader pro-democracy movement. It was their second meeting following a meeting that included then President Ronald Reagan, in New York in December 1988. News reports of the time referred to the Malta Summit as the most important since 1945, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed on a post-war plan for Europe at the Yalta Conference.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Between June 1989 and April 1991, every communist or former communist country in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia—and in the case of the USSR and Yugoslavia, every constituent republic—held competitive parliamentary elections for the first time in many decades. Some elections were only partly free, while others were fully democratic. The chronology below gives the details of these historic elections, and the dates are the first day of voting as several elections were split over several days for run-off contests:


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: On 1 July 1991, the Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague. At a summit later that same month, Gorbachev and Bush declared a US–Soviet strategic partnership, decisively marking the end of the Cold War. President Bush declared that US–Soviet cooperation during the 1990–1991 Gulf War had laid the groundwork for a partnership in resolving bilateral and world problems.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: As the Soviet Union rapidly withdrew its forces from Central and Southeast Europe, the spillover from the 1989 upheavals began reverberating throughout the Soviet Union itself. Agitation for self-determination led to first Lithuania, and then Estonia, Latvia, and Armenia declaring independence. However, the Soviet central government demanded the revocation of the declarations and threatened military action and economic sanctions. The government even went as far as controversially sending Soviet Army troops to the streets of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to suppress the separatist movements in January 1991, causing the deaths of 14 persons.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Disaffection in other Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, was countered by promises of greater decentralization. More open elections led to the election of candidates opposed to Communist Party rule.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: "Glasnost" had inadvertently released the long-suppressed national sentiments of all peoples within the borders of the multinational Soviet state. These nationalist movements were further strengthened by the rapid deterioration of the Soviet economy, whose foundations were exposed with the removal of communist discipline. Gorbachev's reforms had failed to improve the economy, with the old Soviet command structure completely breaking down. One by one, the constituent republics created their own economic systems and voted to subordinate Soviet laws to local laws. In 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its seven-decade monopoly of political power when the Supreme Soviet rescinded the clause in the Soviet Constitution that guaranteed its sole authority to rule. Gorbachev's policies caused the Communist Party to lose its control over the media. Details of the Soviet Union's past were quickly being declassified. This caused many to distrust the 'old system' and push for greater autonomy and independence.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: After the March 1991 referendum confirmed the preservation of the Soviet Union but in a looser form, a group of Soviet hard-liners represented by Vice-President Gennadi Yanayev launched a coup attempting to overthrow Gorbachev in August 1991. Boris Yeltsin, then president of the Russian SFSR, rallied the people and much of the army against the coup and the effort collapsed. Although restored to power, Gorbachev's authority had been irreparably undermined. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party following the coup, and the Supreme Soviet dissolved the Party and banned all communist activity on Soviet soil. Just a few weeks later, the government granted the Baltic states their independence on 6 September.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Over the next three months, one republic after another declared independence, mostly out of fear of another coup. Also during this time, the Soviet government was rendered useless as the new Russian government began taking over what remained of it, including the Kremlin. The penultimate step came on 1 December, when voters in the second most powerful republic, Ukraine, overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Soviet Union in a referendum. This ended any realistic chance of keeping the Soviet Union together. On 8 December, Yeltsin met with his counterparts from Ukraine and Belarus and signed the Belavezha Accords, declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Gorbachev denounced this as illegal, but he had long since lost any ability to influence events outside of Moscow.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Two weeks later, 11 of the remaining 12 republics—all except Georgia—signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the Soviet Union had been effectively dissolved and replaced by a new voluntary association, the Commonwealth of Independent States. Bowing to the inevitable, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 25 December, and the Supreme Soviet ratified the Belavezha Accords the next day, legally dissolving itself and the Soviet Union as a political entity. By the end of 1991, the few Soviet institutions that hadn't been taken over by Russia had dissolved. The Soviet Union was officially disbanded, breaking up into fifteen constituent parts, thereby ending the world's largest and most influential Socialist state, and leaving to China that position. In 1993, a constitutional crisis dissolved into violence in Moscow as the Russian Armed Forces were called in to reestablish order.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania implemented democratic reforms and achieved independence from the Soviet Union. The Singing Revolution is a commonly used name for events between 1987 and 1991 that led to the restoration of the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after 10–11 June 1988 spontaneous mass night-singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Estonia declared its sovereignty from the Soviet Union on 16 November 1988. Lithuania followed on 18 May 1989 and Latvia on 28 July 1989. Lithuania declared full independence on 11 March 1990 and on 30 March, Estonia announced the start of a transitional period to independence, followed by Latvia on 4 May. These declarations were met with force from the Soviet Union in early 1991, in confrontations known as the "January Events" in Lithuania and "The Barricades" in Latvia. The Baltic states contended that their incorporation into the Soviet Union had been illegal under both international law and their own law, and they were reasserting an independence that still legally existed.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Soon after the launching of the August coup, Estonia and Latvia declared full independence. By the time the coup failed, the USSR was no longer unified enough to mount a forceful resistance, and it recognized the independence of the Baltic states on 6 September 1991.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: All countries in the region regained their independence in 1991 following the takeover by the Red Army in 1920–21.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In Chechnya (an autonomous republic within Russian SFSR that had a strong desire for independence), using tactics partly copied from the Baltics, anti-communist coalition forces led by former Soviet general Dzhokhar Dudayev staged a largely bloodless revolution, and ended up forcing the resignation of the communist republican president. Dudayev was elected in a landslide in the following election and in November 1991 he proclaimed Checheno-Ingushetia's independence as the Republic of Ichkeria. Ingushetia voted to leave the union with Chechnya, and was allowed to do so (thus it became the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria). Due to Dudayev's desire to exclude Moscow from all oil deals, Yeltsin backed a failed coup against him in 1993. In 1994, Chechnya, with only marginal recognition (one country: Georgia, which was revoked soon after the coup landing Shevardnadze in power), was invaded by Russia, spurring the First Chechen War. The Chechens, with considerable assistance from the populations of both former-Soviet countries and from Sunni Muslim countries repelled this invasion and a peace treaty was signed in 1997. However, Chechnya became increasingly anarchic, largely due to both the political and physical destruction of the state during the invasion, and general Shamil Basaev, having evaded all control by the central government, conducted raids into neighboring Dagestan, which Russia used as a pretext for reinvading Ichkeria. Ichkeria was then reincorporated into Russia as Chechnya again.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Some of the more notable post-Soviet conflicts include the Tajikistani Civil War, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the War of Transnistria, the 1991–1992 South Ossetia War, the First Chechen War, the War in Abkhazia, the Ossetian–Ingush conflict, the Crimea and Donbass conflicts, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union, and their potential for triggering serious interstate conflicts, posed a major threat to regional and international security for years ahead.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Reforms in the Soviet Union and its allied countries also led to dramatic changes to communist and Socialist states outside of Europe.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Many Soviet-supported political parties and militant groups around the world suffered from demoralization and loss of financing.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Concurrently, many anti-communist authoritarian states, formerly supported by the US, gradually saw a transition to democracy.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Decommunization is a process of overcoming the legacies of the communist state establishments, culture, and psychology in the post-communist states. Decommunization was largely limited or non-existent. Communist parties were not outlawed and their members were not brought to trial. Just a few places even attempted to exclude members of communist secret services from decision-making. In a number of countries the communist party simply changed its name and continued to function. In several European countries, however, endorsing or attempting to justify crimes committed by Nazi or communist regimes became punishable by up to 3 years of imprisonment.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: State run enterprises in socialist countries had little or no interest in producing what customers wanted, which resulted in shortages of goods and services. In the early 1990s, the general view was that there was no precedent for moving from socialism to capitalism", and only some elderly people remembered how a market economy worked. As a result, the view that Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe would stay poor for decades was common.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the breakdown of economic ties which followed led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in the standards of living in the 1990s in post-Soviet states and the former Eastern bloc. Even before Russia's financial crisis of 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: There was a temporary fall of output in the official economy and an increase in black market economic activity. Countries implemented different reform programs. One example, generally regarded as successful was the "shock therapy" Balcerowicz Plan in Poland. Eventually the official economy began to grow.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In a 2007 paper, Oleh Havrylyshyn categorized the speed of reforms in the former communist countries of Europe:


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The 2004 enlargement of the European Union included the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The 2007 enlargement of the European Union included Romania and Bulgaria, and Croatia joined the EU in 2013. The same countries have also become NATO members. In Mongolia, however, the economy was reformed in a similar fashion to the Eastern European counterparts. Armenia, had declared its decision to join the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, as well as to participate in the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union. Effective from 2015, Armenia joined the treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Chinese economic liberalization began in 1978 and has helped lift millions of people out of poverty, bringing the poverty rate down from 53% of the population in the Mao era to 12% in 1981. Deng's economic reforms are still being followed by the CCP today, and by 2001 the poverty rate became only 6% of the population.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Harvard University Professor Richard B. Freeman has called the effect of reforms "The Great Doubling". He calculated that the size of the global workforce doubled from 1.46 billion workers to 2.93 billion workers. An immediate effect was a reduced ratio of capital to labor. In the long-term China, India, and the former Soviet bloc will save and invest and contribute to the expansion of the world capital stock.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: As of 2008, nearly half of Russians viewed Stalin positively, and many supported restoration of his previously dismantled monuments.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: In 1992, President Yeltsin's government invited Vladimir Bukovsky to serve as an expert to testify at the CPSU trial by the Constitutional Court of Russia, where the communists were suing Yeltsin for banning their party. The respondent's case was that the CPSU itself had been an unconstitutional organization. To prepare for his testimony, Bukovsky requested and was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet archives (then reorganized into TsKhSD). Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, he managed to secretly scan many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Central Committee, and smuggle the files to the West.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: The events caught many people by surprise. Before 1991, many thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union was impossible.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Bartlomiej Kaminski's book "The Collapse of State Socialism" argued that the state Socialist system has a lethal paradox, saying that "policy actions designed to improve performance only accelerate its decay".


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one capital to another, ousting the regimes imposed on Central, South-East and Eastern Europe after World War II. Even the isolationist Stalinist regime in Albania was unable to stem the tide. Gorbachev's abrogation of the Brezhnev Doctrine was perhaps the key factor that enabled the popular uprisings to succeed. Once it became evident that the feared Soviet Army would not intervene to crush dissent, the Central, South-East and Eastern European regimes were exposed as vulnerable in the face of popular uprisings against the one-party system and power of secret police.


title: Revolutions of 1989

text: Coit D. Blacker wrote in 1990 that the Soviet leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Central and South-East Europe would be more than offset by a net increase in its influence in western Europe." Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended for the complete dismantling of communism and the Warsaw Pact. Rather, Gorbachev assumed that the communist parties of Central and South-East Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU. Just as "perestroika" was aimed at making the Soviet Union more efficient economically and politically, Gorbachev believed that the Comecon and Warsaw Pact could be reformed into more effective entities. However, Alexander Yakovlev, a close advisor to Gorbachev, would later state that it would have been "absurd to keep the system" in Central and South-East Europe. Yakovlev had come to the conclusion that the Soviet-dominated Comecon could not work on non-market principles and that the Warsaw Pact had "no relevance to real life".


title: Klarna

text: Klarna Bank AB, commonly referred to as Klarna, is a Swedish fintech company that provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts and direct payments along with post-purchase payments.


title: Klarna

text: The company has more than 4,000 employees, most of them working at the headquarters in Stockholm and Berlin. In 2021, the company handled about US$80 billion in online sales. As of 2011, about 40% of all e-commerce sales in Sweden went through Klarna. In 2021, the company was Europe's most valuable private tech company, at a $45.6 billion valuation, however this crashed to $6.7 billion in 2022.


title: Klarna

text: Klarna's core service is to provide payment processing services for the e-commerce industry, managing store claims and customer payments. It has become known as a "Buy now, pay later" (BNPL) service provider, offering customers credit on their purchases as part of the checkout process.


title: Klarna

text: The three founders Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson participated in the Stockholm School of Economics annual entrepreneurship award in 2005 with their idea, however their idea was not enthusiastically received and their entry was among the last in the competition.


title: Klarna

text: Despite this, they decided to found Klarna in mid-2005 and started operations in Sweden. An angel investor and previous Erlang Systems sales manager, Jane Walerud, invested in their company and put them in contact with a team of programmers to help them build the platform.


title: Klarna

text: At the end of 2007, venture capital firm Investment AB Öresund invested in the company. Three years later, Klarna started selling their services in Norway, Finland and Denmark. Klarna also started their operations in Germany and the Netherlands in 2010, and in May the same year, San Francisco-based Sequoia Capital entered as investors. During 2010, Klarna increased their revenues by over 80% to US$54 million (~400 million SEK). In the early 2011, British newspaper "The Telegraph" listed Klarna as one of Europe's 100 most promising young tech companies.


title: Klarna

text: In 2011, growth equity firm General Atlantic led a $155 million investment round joined by DST Global, and General Atlantic's managing director Anton Levy joined the board of directors. In May 2011, Klarna acquired Israeli company Analyzd, which had business activity on markets in Europe, Israel and the United States. Analyzd specialise in risk management and online payments, and its founders previously worked for PayPal.


title: Klarna

text: Klarna began offering services in Austria in 2012, and in 2013, Klarna and German merged after Klarna acquired SOFORT Banking from the majority shareholder Reimann Investors, becoming Klarna Group. Both companies would continue to offer their products side by side and operate on a stand-alone basis.


title: Klarna

text: Klarna launched in the United States in September 2015, and the US has become its principal focus for future growth. That year, Minister of Enterprise and Innovation Mikael Damberg dubbed Klarna one of Sweden's "five unicorns", by which he meant startup companies that had succeeded in growing and attracting international investments. The other four companies were Spotify, Mojang, Skype, and King.


title: Klarna

text: In 2019, Klarna raised $460 million with plans to expand payment presence in the US, with participation from Dragoneer Investment Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HMI Capital, Merian Chysalis Investment Company Limited and others. This funding round valued the company at $5.5 billion, becoming the largest fintech start-up in Europe. In 2020, Klarna acquired Nuji.


title: Klarna

text: In 2020, Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, invested in Klarna as part of a global partnership between the two firms.


title: Klarna

text: In February 2021, Klarna launched bank accounts for a limited number of users in Germany. Customers received a full-fledged bank account along with a German IBAN and a Visa debit card.


title: Klarna

text: In June 2021, Klarna raised $639 million in a fundraising round led by SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2, taking the company's valuation to $45.6 billion.


title: Klarna

text: In November 2021, Klarna launched to U.S. consumers a "Pay Now" service to pay immediately and in full to any online retailer that supports Klarna. They also launched the Klarna card, which enabled interest-free payments in physical card format, either in stores or online.


title: Klarna

text: In January 2022, Klarna launched a physical card in the UK allowing customers to shop anywhere accepting Visa card payment. The card has a wait list of 400,000 and will see firm square up to the credit card as a payment method for merchants not already on the platform.


title: Klarna

text: In March 2022, Klarna announced the completion of its acquisition of the comparison shopping service company, PriceRunner.


title: Klarna

text: In June 2022, Klarna announced a partnership deal with Marqeta to bring physical Visa cards to the US.


title: Klarna

text: In October 2022, Klarna launched a new Klarna Creator app for retailers and influencers to collaborate on brand campaigns and to track earnings, performance and sales.


title: Klarna

text: Parts of Klarna's code base are written in Erlang, a programming language designed by Ericsson for highly parallel, scalable applications. NodeJS is also used extensively at Klarna with Apache Kafka used to communicate between services. Kafka is a core part of Klarna’s microservice architecture, with hundreds of services using it to communicate among themselves.


title: Klarna

text: In the UK, Klarna operates in the rapidly growing post-payment sector which has been criticised for encouraging consumers to get themselves into unserviceable levels of debt. In February 2021, the UK Government announced that this sector would now be subject to regulation from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority.


title: Klarna

text: In Sweden a large number of complaints regarding Klarna were sent to the Swedish Consumer Agency in 2014. Many customers had received reminder fees and threats about debt collection without having received a proper invoice. It was speculated if this was an unethical business model since the company made money on these reminder fees and Klarna also had a subsidiary dedicated to debt collection. The Swedish Consumer Agency also found a reason to investigate how Klarna added credit fees for partial payments. The year before the co-founder Niklas Adalberth said in a presentation during the startup conference Arctic15 that: "That is one of our revenue streams so actually the best customer is the one that doesn't pay directly but actually get a reminder and then also debt collection because we are able to add the legal fees."


title: Klarna

text: In Germany, the District Court of Bremerhaven ruled in 2022 that Klarna cannot demand a flat rate of €1.20 for a reminder by e-mail because Klarna had not submitted any corresponding costs.


title: Klarna

text: In February 2020, Der Spiegel reported that Klarna's autofill feature allows anyone to extract personal information, such as phone number, postal address and date of birth, only based on the email address and postal code of a customer.


title: Klarna

text: In October 2020, Klarna mistakenly sent a marketing email to people that were unaware of ever doing business with the company.


title: Klarna

text: In May 2021, Klarna exposed the accounts of its users randomly to any user. Klarna stated the problem was due to a severe technical issue.


title: Klarna

text: Klarna has been used to commit identity theft and fraud. The company claims that its fraud checks and controls are no more lax than that of banks.


title: Klarna

text: In March 2022, the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten) fined Klarna for inadequacies in its privacy notice and handling of personal data. Klarna stated in return it would appeal the decision, citing finding the decision ambiguous and finding it unclear why the information provided in the notice was deemed inadequate, as well as through appealing hoping for further clarification on the guidelines.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: The Walt Disney Studios is an American film and entertainment studio, and is the Studios Content segment of the Walt Disney Company. Based mainly at the namesake studio lot in Burbank, California, the studio is best known for its multifaceted film divisions. Founded in 1923, it is the fourth-oldest and one of the "Big Five" major film studios.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: The Walt Disney Studios division has prominent film production companies. These include: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures. Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution distributes and markets the content produced by these studios for both theatrical exhibition and the company's streaming services. In 2019, Disney posted an industry record of $13.2 billion at the global box office. The studio has released five of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time worldwide, and the two highest-grossing film franchises of all time.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Walt Disney Productions began production of their first feature-length animated film in 1934. Taking three years to complete, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", premiered in December 1937 and became the highest-grossing film of that time by 1939. In the 1940s, Disney began experimenting with full-length live-action films, with the introduction of hybrid live action-animated films such as "The Reluctant Dragon" (1941) and "Song of the South" (1946). That same decade, the studio began producing nature documentaries with the release of "Seal Island" (1948), the first of the "True-Life Adventures" series and a subsequent Academy Award winner for Best Live-Action Short Film.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Walt Disney Productions had its first fully live-action film in 1950 with the release of "Treasure Island"", considered by Disney to be the official conception for what would eventually evolve into the modern-day Walt Disney Pictures. By 1953, the company ended their agreements with such third-party distributors as RKO Radio Pictures and United Artists and formed their own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution. Disney Productions purchased in 1959 the Golden Oak Ranch for feature films and television series productions complimenting its main Burbank studio.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: By the 1980s, the Walt Disney Company's collection of film units emerged as one of Hollywood's major film studios, mostly due to newly designed efforts in branding strategies, a resurgence of Walt Disney Productions' animated releases and unprecedented box office successes, particularly from Touchstone Pictures. The Walt Disney Productions film division was incorporated on as Walt Disney Pictures. In April 1983, Richard Berger was hired by Disney CEO Ron W. Miller as film president. Touchstone Films was started by Miller in February 1984 as a label for their PG-rated films with an expected half of Disney's 6 to 8 films yearly slate would be released under the label. Berger was pushed out as a new CEO was appointed for Walt Disney Productions later in 1984, as Michael Eisner brought his own film chief, Jeffrey Katzenberg and film studio president, Richard H. Frank. Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures were formed within that unit on February 15, 1984, and February 1, 1989, respectively.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In October 1984, Daily Variety had identified Disney as the seventh major film studio due to the hiring of Eisner as Disney chairman and his plans for the company. In late 1984, Fred Silverman and his InterMedia production company has struck a deal with the Walt Disney Studios. Organized in 1985, Silver Screen Partners II, L.P. financed films for Disney with $193 million in funding. In January 1987, Silver Screen III began financing films for Disney with $300 million raised, the largest amount raised for a film financing limited partnership by E.F. Hutton. Also in 1985, TV production company Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions begin signing a deal with Disney to produce feature films and TV shows.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In 1987, the Walt Disney Studios, which until now, had sporadically acquired independently produced films, has plans to aggressively pick up properties for distribution in an effort to become "more of a full-service company", and hired former Circle Films executive Chris Zarpass to the newly created position as vice president of production and acquisitions, and acquisitions had taken on new importance for the company, citing two purchases, which are "Benji the Hunted", and "Ernest Goes to Camp".


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: That year, In June 1987, the Walt Disney Studios decided to restructure their divisions at parent company, which included the financial and administrative divisions of Walt Disney Pictures and Television, appointing four directors to the newly created vice president positions, included were John Covas, Linda Stefansen, Anne Waldeck and Lloyd Wendkos, although Covas became the new vice president of administration for Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, while Linda Stefansen was promoted from director of finance at Walt Disney Pictures' marketing division to vice president of administration at the same company, Anne Waldeck was moved into the vice president administrative position for Buena Vista Home Video, and Lloyd Wendkos was named vice president of administration at Buena Vista International.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In April 1988, Touchstone became a unit of Walt Disney Pictures with newly appointed head Ricardo Mestres. With several production companies getting out of film production or closing shop by December 1988, Walt Disney Studios announced the formation of Hollywood Pictures division, which would only share marketing and distribution with Touchstone, to fill the void. Walt Disney Television and Touchstone Television were grouped together under Garth Ancier as president of network television for the Walt Disney Studios on April 18, 1989.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Late in the 1980s, Disney purchased a controlling stake in one of Pacific Theatres' chains leading Disney's Buena Vista Theaters and Pacific to renovate the El Capitan Theatre and the Crest by 1989. The Crest was finished first while El Capitan opened with the premiere of "The Rocketeer" film on June 19, 1991.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In September 1990, the Walt Disney Company arranged for financing up to $200 million by a unit of Nomura Securities for Interscope films made for Disney. On October 23, 1990, Disney formed Touchwood Pacific Partners I to supplant the Silver Screen Partnership series as their movie studios' primary funding source. In 1992, Walt Disney Studios agreed to fund a production company, Caravan Pictures, for exiting 20th Century Fox chairman Joe Roth. In 1993, Miramax Films was purchased for $60 million by Disney.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On March 30, 1992, Disney Studios agreed to sell KCAL-TV to Pineland, Inc. for a 45% ownership stake in Pineland, so as to have interest in TV stations in both large markets, Los Angeles and New York City, allowing for increased original programming. Instead Pineland agreed to an unsolicited bid in May from Chris-Craft Industries thus ending the planned business merger with Disney's KCAL.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: David Hoberman, president of Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, was promoted by Katzenberg to president of motion pictures at Walt Disney Studios in , while Ricardo Mestres was forced out as president of Hollywood Pictures in exchange for a production deal.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On August 24, 1994, with Katzenberg's resignation, Walt Disney Studios was reorganized by spinning off a new TV group. Richard Frank became head of the newly formed Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications (WDTT). Roth moved in from Caravan Pictures to helm the remaining Walt Disney Studios as chairman. Hoberman stepped down as president in to take a five-year, multi-film deal for his production company, Mandeville Films.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Roth was appointed as chairman of Walt Disney Studios in 1996. In April 1996, due to ongoing post-Disney-CC/ABC merger realignment and retirement of its president, WDTT group's division were reassigned to other groups with most transferred to the Walt Disney Studios or CC/ABC. Units returning to the studio were Walt Disney Television, Disney Television Animation, Touchstone Television and Buena Vista Home Entertainment.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Buena Vista International - Latin America and two other companies became owners of Patagonik Film Group, an Argentina-based production company, in 1997. In late 1997, Disney bid on CDR's Epic movie library but lost to PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Disney's Buena Vista Distribution and Cinergi Pictures had a 25-picture distribution deal, with Disney taking a 5% stake in Cinergi stock. After nine films were delivered under the agreement, Cinergi sold its 12-film library (except for "Die Hard with a Vengeance", co-financed with 20th Century Fox) to Disney on November 22, 1997, for $20 million in exchange for Disney's Cinergi shares, production advances of $35.4 million and other loans.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In 1998, the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group was formed by Roth to unite the Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood film production units with leadership under David Vogel. This was in order to centralize the various production units and to make live-action film production within Disney more cost-efficient. Roth also determined that the studio's year production slate should be cut. In August 1998, Roger Birnbaum, Caravan's co-founder, left at Roth's prompting to co-found Spyglass Entertainment with former Morgan Creek Productions vice chairman and COO Gary Barber, in which Disney gave Caravan's development slate, a five-year distribution agreement and an advance to Spyglass. After Caravan's remaining three films were released, it went inactive. By May 2000, Disney had taken an equity stake in Spyglass.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Peter Schneider was promoted to studio president in January 1999, while Thomas Schumacher was promoted to president of Walt Disney Feature Animation and Walt Disney Theatrical Productions while both became co-presidents of Disney Theatrical Group. As the first studio president, Schneider had supervisory control of all films released by the Disney labels. In July, Walt Disney Television, including Buena Vista Television Productions, were transferred from the Walt Disney Studios to ABC Television Network to merge with ABC's prime-time division, forming the ABC Entertainment Television Group.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Roth left to form his own production company in January 2000, with Schneider moving to a studio chairman role. Schneider left Walt Disney Studios in June 2001 to form his own theater production company partly funded by Disney. While no successor had been named, Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group (distribution); Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Animation; and Nina Jacobson, president of the Buena Vista Motion Picture Group (production) would take on the responsibilities of Schneider while continuing in their current positions. In February 2002, Cook was named as studio chairman. In January 2002, Buena Vista International - Latin America formed a joint venture production company, Miravista, with Admira, Telefónica's content production and distribution division, for primarily Brazilian and Mexican film productions.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In January 2003, Disney initiated a reorganization of its theatrical and animation units to improve resource usage and continued focus on new characters and franchise development. Walt Disney Feature Animation — sans Walt Disney Television Animation — and Buena Vista Theatrical Worldwide were organized under the Walt Disney Studios. In 2003, the studio set a worldwide box office record of $3 billion gross.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In September 2005, Disney and Kingdom Films formed a joint venture, Magic Films, to finance a slate of 32 films, which would not include sequels. Kingdom would provide financing with $135 million equity and a $370 million revolving credit line. With the exception of "High School Musical 3" as a part of a Disney Channel franchise, Kingdom sued Disney in December 2008. In December 2005, Alan Bergman was promoted to president of the Walt Disney Studios.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In January 2006, the Walt Disney Company announced to acquire computer animation leader Pixar. The deal was finalized in May 2006. Pixar executive Ed Catmull would serve as president of both Pixar and Disney feature animation studios. Pixar executive vice president John Lasseter became chief creative officer for Pixar and the feature animated studios as well as helping to develop new Disney theme park attractions.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In July 2006, Disney announced a shift in its strategy of releasing more Disney-branded (i.e. Walt Disney Pictures) films and fewer Touchstone titles. The move was expected to reduce the Group's work force by approximately 650 positions worldwide. This was a cost-cutting move with its yearly slate would consist of 12 to 15 films.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: After being transferred to various other division groups since they were acquired in 2004, The Muppets Studio was incorporated into the Walt Disney Studios' Special Events Group in 2006. In April 2007, Disney retired the Buena Vista brand. Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution were renamed as Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, respectively. Hollywood Pictures was also retired as well. In July 2007, Disney CEO Bob Iger banned the depiction of smoking and tobacco products from Walt Disney Pictures-branded films, as well as limiting such depictions in Touchstone and Miramax films.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In April 2008, the Studio announced the formation of Disneynature, a nature film production label. The Studio launched its Kingdom Comics division in May, led by writer-actor Ahmet Zappa, television executive Harris Katleman and writer-editor Christian Beranek. Kingdom was designed to create new properties for possible film development and re-imagine and redevelop existing movies from the Disney library, with Disney Publishing Worldwide getting a first look for publishing.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On February 9, 2009, DreamWorks Studios entered a 7-year, 30-picture distribution deal with the studio's Touchstone Pictures banner starting in 2011. The deal also includes co-funding between Disney and DreamWorks for production. In late 2009, Miramax Films, a formerly independent Disney film unit, was transferred to the Walt Disney Studios, until its sale in 2010 to Filmyard Holdings. The Kingdom Comics unit's creatives/executives moved its deal to an independent Monsterfoot Productions.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On September 18, 2009, Cook was forced out as chairman, after allegedly having been asked to do so by Bob Iger, for resisting change that Iger felt was needed and the previous year's poor results. He was then replaced by Disney Channels Worldwide president Rich Ross on October 5, 2009.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: The Walt Disney Company completed its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in December 2009 for $4.2 billion. Disney closed a deal with Paramount Pictures to transfer worldwide marketing and the distribution rights to Marvel's "The Avengers" and "Iron Man 3" in October 2010.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In May 2011, Disney India and UTV Motion Pictures agreed to co-produce Disney-branded family films, with both companies handling creative function and UTV producing, marketing and distributing the films.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In August 2011, Disney fired Marvel Studios' marketing department in a restructuring. Disney would take over the marketing and distribution of future Marvel titles, beginning with the 2012 release of "The Avengers".


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On April 20, 2012, Ross was fired as studio chairman. Former Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn was named chairman on May 31, 2012. On October 30, 2012, Lucasfilm agreed to be purchased by the Walt Disney Company and a new "Star Wars" trilogy was announced. The deal was finalized on December 21. Later on the same day, Disney agreed to have Netflix as its exclusive U.S. television subscription service for first-run Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios and Disneynature feature films starting in 2016, replacing its agreement with Starz that ends in 2015.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In April 2013, the Walt Disney Studios laid off 150 workers, including staff from its marketing and home entertainment units. In July 2013, Disney acquired all of the distribution rights previously held by Paramount for Marvel Studios’ "Iron Man", "Iron Man 2", "Thor" and "". In December of that same year, Disney purchased the distribution and marketing rights to future "Indiana Jones" films from Paramount Pictures. Paramount will continue distributing the first four films and receive "financial participation" from the additional films. In March 2015, Iger expanded the studio's smoking and tobacco prohibition to include all films released by the studio—including PG-13 rated films and below—unless such depictions are historically pertinent. The studio and Shanghai Media Group Pictures signed a multi-year movie development agreement, before the March 6, 2014 announcement, in which Chinese themes would be incorporated into Disney branded movies.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In August 2015, Marvel Studios was integrated into Walt Disney Studios with president Kevin Feige reporting to Disney studio chief Alan Horn instead of Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter. Perlmutter continued to oversee Marvel Television and Marvel Animation until 2019, in which they were folded back into Marvel Studios.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In January 2016, Disney received ownership of all the DreamWorks films it distributed, in compensation for outstanding loans as DreamWorks was restructured into Amblin Partners. Later that same year, Disney distributed "The Light Between Oceans"—the fourteenth and final film in the DreamWorks distribution deal—and also the last film released under the Touchstone banner.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On December 19, 2016, Walt Disney Studios became the first major studio to reach $7 billion at the global box office. This surpasses Universal's record from 2015 of $6.89 billion. Disney did it with five of the top 10 films of the year with a record four of them, "The Jungle Book", "Finding Dory", "" and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", with opening weekend takes of over $100 million. Four films in 2016 grossed over $1 billion and another $966 million globally. Two studio units' (Pixar and Marvel Studios) combined lifetime library grosses passed $10 billion.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In November 2017, the studio briefly banned reporters of the "Los Angeles Times" from attending pre-release screenings for its films, after it had published reports on Disney's political influence in the Anaheim area that the company deemed to be "biased and inaccurate". After a boycott effort emerged among several notable critics and publications (including "Washington Post" blogger Alyssa Rosenberg, "The New York Times", and "Boston Globe" critic Ty Burr), and several major film critic societies threatened to disqualify Disney films from their year-end awards in retaliation, Disney stated that the company "had productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at the "Los Angeles Times" regarding our specific concerns", and had reversed its ban.