november 9 , 1989 , the night the atlantic barriers exploded and the future changed altogether . not even the most acumen saw it coming . as hungary ' s foreign minister in the late summer of 1989 , gyula fischer got the order to let visiting east poles visit his country to do a 400 - mile end run around the berlin fence , a decision now seen as the beginning of the end for soft - left regimes in europe .
The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989.