The Search for a Navigation Chart: Legitimate Debates, Vested Interests and Reformist Commitments

When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, the euphoria of the satellite countries was palpable, and the rejoicing at the opening of prison gates for millions of repressed people was shared by the population of the non-communist world, particularly in Europe. In the USA, to sympathy was added a strong dose of victorious pride, since Americans saw this as an act of capitulation to President Reagan’s challenge, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ The citizens of the Soviet Union remained uncertain of their fate for another two years until the convulsive events of mid-August 1991 first brought the putsch of anti-Gorbachevites, then within a week of almost vaudevillian dynamics, its termination, ‘not in a bang but in a whimper’. Declarations of independence followed in a flood from all republics including de facto Russia, most of them preceding the formal dissolution of the USSR in mid-December 1991. The euphoria had now spread to the whole of the Soviet bloc, and was virtually universal save perhaps for some high-ranking members of the nomenklatura who faced an uncertain future.1