This topic will be for people to post links to websites, videos, book reviews, newspaper articles or other source materials about the events of 1989. Please join in the discussion.
I will try to post something daily, and I encourage players to post any links they think will be of interest to other 1989 players. This is to encourage discussion of how the game reflects, or fails to reflect, the events of 1989.
A Carnival of Revolution
The first link I will post is to a clip of an interview with historian Padraic Kenney. Professor Kenney is unique among scholars in arguing that student activists played the primary role in triggering the collapse of Communism in Poland.
As he states, all the factors that are commonly discussed as causes of the 1989 revolutions were important. Professor Kenney lists Gorbachev, the economic crisis and the ideas of the intellectuals. I would add to that list the crisis in the Marxist paradigm and Communists' loss of determination to rule against the will of their own people.
I don't entirely agree with his understanding of the events in Poland, but the point I wanted to make is that when you design a game you don't want to decide what was primary, secondary or tertiary in importance. The players can decide that, along with the cards and events. So for instance if Gorbachev is drawn once by the Democrat and twice by the Communist in a game, and for the event he rolls a 1 or 2 each time, then in that game he was not decisive in helping either side. If he is drawn by the Communist 3 times and rolls a 6 each time, then perhaps Gorbachev has managed to install popular and successful reform Communists across Eastern Europe. If the Democrat draws the Intelligentsia card 3 times and draws Intellectual leader cards that he uses to win a couple Power Struggles, then the intellectual ideas were of primary importance to the events in that particular game.
There are several economic events in the deck: Inflationary Currency, Foreign Currency Debt Burden, My First Banana, Shock Therapy, Consumerism, and just two student events: Fidesz and Jan Palach Week. Also there is only 1 Student Leader card, reflecting, I think, a bias in 1989 toward the various economic crises of Communism being the most important, but by no means only, factor in triggering the revolutions.
Professor Kenney's book about 1989 is called A Carnival of Revolution. He was completing research for his doctoral thesis in Wroclaw Poland in 1988-1989, and so gives the perspective of the revolutions from the street participants themselves. He contrasts the writings of the intellectuals with the concrete action of the students. He also points out the students rejected the ideals of anti-politics. They wanted to participate in politics by overthrowing the Communist system. Their weapon was their own refusal to take the system seriously. Communism simply could not survive people making fun of it. Hence the title a carnival of revolution. His writing is superb, and for those interested in details far beyond the normal survey history of 1989 it is highly recommended.
New Books in History and New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies has quite a few good interviews with authors of books dealing with or touching on this topic. There's another interview with Padraic Kenney, an interview with Stephen Kotkin on his book Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment and, for a view from the other side, with James Mann on his book on The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War.
For events in other parts of the world at the same time, there are two interviews on Afghanistan: with Rodric Braithwaite and Artemy Kalinovsky.
Ah great, I will watch the Kotkin interview and post my thoughts. Kotkin has a monistic view of the events of 1989, arguing that the intellectuals, and the student activists for that matter, were no factor at all in the downfall of the regimes. He says they rotted from the inside, were exhausted of political, social and economic capital and collapsed of their own weight. The analogy he uses is a run on the bank. From the outside we constructed a narrative of the intellectuals writing about a civil society that inspired the people to rise up.
I said in my first post I think the monistic view, attributing the revolutions solely to any single factor, is wrong. All the factors were important, but I am glad that as a game we can create a new answer to the question of what was most important each time the game is played.
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know.
1989Game wrote:
I said in my first post I think the monistic view, attributing the revolutions solely to any single factor, is wrong.
I haven't studied this nearly as much as you, but I am instantly suspicious when anybody claims that major events such as the collapse of Communism in Central Europe were caused by one factor. Too simplistic!
This thread is a great idea, thanks. Looking forward to the game!
I haven't studied this nearly as much as you, but I am instantly suspicious when anybody claims that major events such as the collapse of Communism in Central Europe were caused by one factor. Too simplistic!
In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. THE one factor
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know.
Slabcity wrote:
wifwendell wrote:
I haven't studied this nearly as much as you, but I am instantly suspicious when anybody claims that major events such as the collapse of Communism in Central Europe were caused by one factor. Too simplistic!
In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. THE one factor
Nice try - but the design of electrical generation and transmission systems could also have been a factor!
I think another quite important factor was growth of media influence. This was also one of the factors of starting globalization. People in border areas could listen to foreign radio stations and watch TV channels from Western Europe.
But I believe that communists must have seen that the regime is unsustainable. Othewise the would just send police or military in the streets and suppress rallies. They still had that power.
I think another quite important factor was growth of media influence. This was also one of the factors of starting globalization. People in border areas could listen to foreign radio stations and watch TV channels from Western Europe.
Foreign TV is a democratic event in the game. Communication is always critical to the success of a revolution, going back to the newspapers and pamphlets like Common Sense during the American Revolution. 1989 was the first real televised revolution, and the participants were well aware of the power of the camera.
American 1980s pop culture was influential among the younger generation in Eastern Europe. Listening to Western music or just wearing designer jeans could be a political statement. This had a downside too. Gorbachev, I think in his speech at Stasbourg in July, talked about the threat to European values of the crude American consumer culture.
stosedem wrote:
But I believe that communists must have seen that the regime is unsustainable. Othewise the would just send police or military in the streets and suppress rallies. They still had that power.
Yes they did. That is part of what makes the revolutions so interesting. The regimes had been unsustainable in the long term, and had been viewed that way by many among the Communist establishment for some time, yet before the fall of 1989 open opposition had been violently suppressed.
American 1980s pop culture was influential among the younger generation in Eastern Europe. Listening to Western music or just wearing designer jeans could be a political statement.
Just a funny fact: Right now Czech national TV is every evening broadcasting TV news from 25 years back. I saw a reportage there about young men wearing long hair. The reporter was asking them if they will cut their hair for 100 Kcs and he finally found one. But it was so obvious that the young man was an actor. Well, state media were trying hard.
It seems the mullet had penetrated East Germany (along with the jeans jacket), but not as much elsewhere. How would you describe the hairstyle in Czech, was it a mullet or a center part, sort of a zipper top?
I think mullet was quite popular in Czechoslovakia too. Jaromir Jagr was wearing it until recently But the guy in the reportage had classic long hair all over his head. I think regime was more affraid of the "hippie" or alternative subcultures than people with mullets.
American 1980s pop culture was influential among the younger generation in Eastern Europe. Listening to Western music or just wearing designer jeans could be a political statement. This had a downside too. Gorbachev, I think in his speech at Stasbourg in July, talked about the threat to European values of the crude American consumer culture.
And British! The biggest foreign band in the Soviet Union was from Hertford.
For the Soviet Union, there's a debate about to what extant the consumption of western culture was subversive. I believe Alexei Yurchak tries to argue that one could consume western culture and conform to the system.
In contrast, Seregei Zhuk argues that Yurchak gets this wrong because he concentrated on the Leningrad area, and thus looked at the Soviet elite for whom conformity came more naturally. Zhuk examines Dniepropetrovsk, which as a closed city had much less access to western culture.
I haven't read the Yurchak book, but Zhuk's is brilliant: it begins with a wonderful anecdote of how a bunch of Dniepropetrovsk students got interested in religion after they bought a recording of Jesus Christ Super Star from some Polish tourists in L'viv. They were interested in JCSS because Ian Gillan was in it; the Poles convinced them that because Gillan was their favourite singer and played Christ, they should also buy crucifixes. When they got back home, they didn't understand much of the musical due to their lack of religious education. They therefore set about reading an old Orthodox bible they found and started going to Baptist meetings.
This fascinating video was taken in Victory Square, Timisoara, Romania at about 1:30 p.m. on December 22, 1989. Events have reached critical mass, and we are in the midst of a revolution. The chants of the crowd are extremely loud and in unison, almost as if the crowd has taken on a life of its own. Unfortunately I don't know what the speakers or the crowd are saying, so I am just going to write about a brief part that occurs at about 28:00-28:15.
To provide some context, there had been protests in Timisoara the previous week over the eviction of Protestant minister Laszlo Tokes. These protests suddenly grew into an anti-Ceausescu demonstration. The Securitiate and the army violently suppressed the uprising, massacring dozens of people.
About 4 hours before this video was taken the government announced that the Defense Minister Milea had been discovered as a traitor and committed suicide. Believing that the Milea had been killed for refusing orders to fire on the crowds, the army turn decisively against the Ceausescus and began to support the revolution.
So at 28:00 we can see a young revolutionary drawing the attention of the camera; he is wearing the cap of the army officer. The officer stands in front of the camera, embraces the man, smiles to the camera and gives the "V" sign, the universal sign of the 1989 revolutions. The embrace seems like a celebration, but knowing the context - that the army had committed a massacre in the city only days before - it is meant to communicate a message. The officer is telling the viewers that they do not have to be afraid anymore, that the army that had fired on the crowds in Timisoara the week before was now embracing the revolution. His P.R. job done, the officer takes back his hat and returns to the meetings going on inside the building, which seem to be an ad hoc revolutionary council.
Even to the viewer who cannot speak Romanian the rest of the video shows the great power of the rally in the square. If one of our Romanian players could translate just a bit of this video for us that would be most appreciated.
November 10, 1989, 11 pm, American Sector of West Berlin. Peter Jennings of ABC News reports on the opening of the Berlin Wall.
If you are in your 20s you can't really understand what it was like to see the Berlin Wall come down. The divided world we had all known our whole lives had changed, literally overnight. It was amazing - impossible to believe - but there they were, East and West Berliners dancing and singing on top of the Berlin Wall.
November 10, 1989, 11 pm, American Sector of West Berlin. Peter Jennings of ABC News reports on the opening of the Berlin Wall.
If you are in your 20s you can't really understand what it was like to see the Berlin Wall come down. The divided world we had all known our whole lives had changed, literally overnight. It was amazing - impossible to believe - but there they were, East and West Berliners dancing and singing on top of the Berlin Wall.
I was in my senior year of high school at the time, and the wall coming down was the first time I remember thinking that things might just work out OK after all.
If you are in your 20s you can't really understand what it was like to see the Berlin Wall come down.
I was in my second year at university in 1989, and still remember pictures of campers around the embassy in Budapest. We knew a lot of people had lost their lives trying to climb through the Berlin Wall in a desperate attempt to leave Eastern Germany. A Hungarian politician, Gyula Horn had a key role in opening up the borders. As a minister he was in charge of foreign affairs when Hungary decided to open the western border (the "Iron Curtain") to East Germans wishing to emigrate to West Germany. Communist politicians began to realize they had to agree to changes if they ever wanted to retain any power after the changes. I have to say, they played their cards quite well, as they did retain power after the fall of Communism, both economically and politically.
It was amazing - impossible to believe - but there they were, East and West Berliners dancing and singing on top of the Berlin Wall.
Yes, this was one of the key and very memorable events in that year. Each country had one, as it is very well reflected in the game, through the cards. In Hungary, it was when Imre Nagy was reburied - things were told in public that had never been allowed to be told before: we knew changes were coming, but still could hardly believe it. The following youtube insert is in Hungarian, but it is still worth watching. It shows the young leader of the Young Democrats making a very brave speech when Imre Nagy was reburied. He openly warned the Communists to agree to changes that would lead to a free and democratic country.
[youtube=4YybjROUMu0&feature=related]
Most of the changes were happening gradually, around the negotiation tables.
Awesome Judit. Thank you for posting this clip. The image on the Student Leader Power Struggle card is a photo taken during this speech. A very important moment indeed.
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know.
1989Game wrote:
If you are in your 20s you can't really understand what it was like to see the Berlin Wall come down. The divided world we had all known our whole lives had changed, literally overnight. It was amazing - impossible to believe - but there they were, East and West Berliners dancing and singing on top of the Berlin Wall.
Pre-Wall. My wife had a pen-pal starting in 1988 she got from an organization that promoted international contacts between citizens of the West and East. It was with a young German called Jurgen, who lived in Karl-Marx-Stadt, in the German Democratic Republic. That's communist East Germany, y'all. And Karl-Marx-Stadt is today once again Chemnitz.
Anyway Jurgen's pen dried up for a few months earlier in 1989. We were a bit concerned.
Then we got a long letter from Jurgen, postmarked from a town in the Federal Republic of Germany (forget its name, near the Swiss border). That's democratic, free West Germany. Jurgen and his wife with their infant son had dared join the trek, driving their second-hand Trabant thru Czechoslovakia and Hungary to cross the just-opened Hungarian-Austrian border and had reached West Germany.
It was a fascinating letter. For the first time (not having to worry about censors or the secret police reading his letter) Jurgen opened up about the stultification of life in East Germany, and their fears and anxieties before they risked that fateful car ride to the West - which was of course a crime from the East German perspective, even if Hungarian authorities had decided on their own to open their border to the West.
It's hard to comprehend, even now. 1989 was a hell of a year.
Somewhere else I shared this memory already, but I am going to do it now again. It somehow reflects how people outside perceived these changes, and how we did - inside and outside. My husband - then my boyfriend spent a year in England in 1993/94, and we made friends with a very nice old couple. (Now they are in their early eighties). We invited them to our wedding in 1995, but they were afraid to come because of the fears they still had of going behind the "Iron Curtain". Finally they visited us in Hungary in 2003, and their first were at the airport was:"Judit, we made it!"
I think, it would be ever so interesting to publish a book of personal recollections of that year - an alternative history book. How and what do memories speak of that year in different countries?
This music video contains a collection of footage of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre from April to June, 1989. At 0:12 we see Li Peng meeting with a student leader. Li pushed Deng Xiao Ping to declare martial law and crackdown against the protests. From 1:00 to 1:15 you can see the barricades the protesters had hastily erected, as well as victims running from the gunfire. At 1:38 you can see a woman whose leg, it appears, has been crushed by a tank with her foot dangling. She has a blue tourniquet on her leg. These events are covered by the Tiananmen Square track, and the event cards Li Peng, Tank Man and The Chinese Solution.
Professor Bradley Abrams on the causes of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
He asks the question, "when did the fall of the Soviet empire begin?" and offers a number of dates, but he doesn't list the one I would pick. I'll give 10 GG to whoever gives the "right" answer.
