Download or read book 30 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Alexandr Akimov and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-08 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2019 marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. This symbolic event led to German unification and the collapse of communist party rule in countries of the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. Since then, the post-communist countries of Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe have tied their post-communist transition to deep integration into the West, including EU accession. Most of the states in Central and Eastern Europe have been able to relatively successfully transform their previous communist political and economic systems. In contrast, the non-Baltic post-Soviet states have generally been less successful in doing so. This book, with an internationally respected list of contributors, seeks to address and compare those diverse developments in communist and post-communist countries and their relationship with the West from various angles. The book has three parts. The first part addresses the progress of post-communist transition in comparative terms, including regional focus on Eastern and South Eastern Europe, CIS and Central Asia. The second focuses on Russia and its foreign relationship, and internal politics. The third explores in detail economies and societies in Central Asia. The final part of the book draws some historical comparisons of recent issues in post-communism with the past experiences.
Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.
Download or read book The Collapse written by Mary Sarotte and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.
Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Andrew Kilpatrick and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Berlin Wall tells the inside story of an international financial institution, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), created in the aftermath of communism to help the countries of central and eastern Europe transition towards open market-oriented democratic economies. The first volume of a history in two parts, After the Berlin Wall charts the EBRD’s life from a fledgling high-risk start-up investing in former socialist countries from 1991 to become an established member of the international financial community, which (as of April 2020) operates in almost 40 countries across three continents. This volume describes the multilateral negotiations that created this cosmopolitan institution with a ‘European character’ and the emergence of the EBRD’s unique business model: a focus on the private sector and a mission to deliver development impact with sustainable financial returns. The author recounts the challenges that ‘transition’ countries faced in moving from a defunct to a functioning economic system and maps the EBRD’s response to critical events, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to the safe confinement of the Chernobyl disaster site, the debt default in Russia and the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Jeffrey A. Engel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Berlin Wall sent shock waves around the world. It was, quite literally, a world-changing event. Now, more than two decades after the Wall's collapse, this book brings together leading authorities who offer a fresh look at how leaders in four vital centers of world politics--the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, and China--viewed the world in the aftermath of this momentous event. Jeffrey Engel contributes a chronological narrative of this tumultuous period, followed by substantive essays by Melvyn Leffler on the United States, Chen Jian on China, James Sheehan on Germany and Europe, and William Taubman and Svetlana Savranskaya on the Soviet Union. These historians reinterpret the meaning of 1989 in the context of global history in the late 20th and early 21st century and explore such questions as why communism failed in Europe, why China took a different route following the turmoil of Tiananmen Square, and why the peace of 1989 might well prove illusory.
Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts written about the construction and fall of the wall by people at the time *Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an 'Iron Curtain' has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow." - Winston Churchill, 1946 "This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders ... the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open." - German anchorman Hans Joachim Friedrichs Though it never got "hot," the Cold War was a tense era until the dissolution of the USSR, and nothing symbolized the split more than the Berlin Wall, which literally divided the city. Berlin had been a flashpoint even before World War II ended, and the city was occupied by the different Allies even as the close of the war turned them into adversaries. After the Soviets' blockade of West Berlin was prevented by the Berlin Airlift, the Eastern Bloc and the Western powers continued to control different sections of the city, and by the 1960s, East Germany was pushing for a solution to the problem of an enclave of freedom within its borders. West Berlin was a haven for highly-educated East Germans who wanted freedom and a better life in the West, and this "brain drain" was threatening the survival of the East German economy. In order to stop this, access to the West through West Berlin had to be cut off, so in August 1961, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev authorized East German leader Walter Ulbricht to begin construction of what would become known as the Berlin Wall. The wall, begun on Sunday August 13, would eventually surround the city, in spite of global condemnation, and the Berlin Wall itself would become the symbol for Communist repression in the Eastern Bloc. It also ended Khrushchev's attempts to conclude a peace treaty among the Four Powers (the Soviets, the Americans, the United Kingdom, and France) and the two German states. The wall would serve as a perfect photo-opportunity for two presidents (Kennedy and Reagan) to hammer the Soviet Communists and their repression, but the Berlin Wall would stand for nearly 30 years, isolating the East from the West. It is estimated about 200 people would die trying to cross the wall to defect to the West. Things came to a head in 1989. With rapid change throughout Europe, the wall faced a challenge it could not contain, the challenge of democracy's spread. On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was effectively removed from the midst of the city it so long divided. It was removed with pick axes and sledgehammers, but also removed from the hearts and minds of the people on both sides who only hours before had thought the wall's existence insurmountable. As one writer put it, "No border guard, no wall, can forever shield repressive regimes from the power of subversive ideas, from the lure of freedom." The fall of the Berlin Wall is often considered the end of the Cold War, and the following month both President Bush and Gorbachev declared the Cold War over, but the Cold War had been thawing for most of the 1980s. President Reagan is remembered for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and demanding that Gorbachev tear down the wall, but he spent the last several years of his presidency working with the Soviet leader to improve relations. The end of the Soviet Union came when Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union formally dissolved the next day.
Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Frederick Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse. This threat would vanish only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison, breached it on the historic night of 9 November 1989. Frederick Taylor's eagerly awaited new book reveals the strange and chilling story of how the initial barrier system was conceived, then systematically extended, adapted and strengthened over almost thirty years. Patrolled by vicious dogs and by guards on shoot-to-kill orders, the Wall, with its more than 300 towers, became a wired and lethally booby-trapped monument to a world torn apart by fiercely antagonistic ideologies. The Wall had tragic consequences in personal and political terms, affecting the lives of Germans and non-Germans alike in a myriad of cruel, inhuman and occasionally absurd ways. The Berlin Wall is the definitive account of a divided city and its people.
Download or read book 20 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Elisabeth Bakke and published by BWV Verlag. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HauptbeschreibungOn 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened, signalling the beginning of the end of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1990, free elections had been held in most countries in the region. Forty - in some cases fifty - years of communism had come to an end. However, the 'revolutions' of 1989 were not uniform processes: the starting points were different, the trajectories were different - and outside Central Europe even the outcomes of the transitions from communism were different. The fall of communism also caused the Soviet empire to crumble, and the Soviet Union itself fell apart in December 1991 - as did Czechoslovakia in 1993, and Yugoslavia in a gradual process that was to last from 1991 to 2008. This book originated in a conference held in Oslo 11-13 November 2009, arranged by the E.ON Ruhrgas scholarship programme for political science, and commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 'revolutions' in Central and Eastern Europe. The 16 chapters take stock of developments after 1989, with special emphasis on the causes and effects of the transitions, including the processes of state unification and separation that followed in the wake of the 'revolutions'. The book is divided into four main parts: regime transitions from communism; state unification and separation; party system continuity and change since 1989 (in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland); and on the effects of German unification on external and internal German relations. The geographical scope thus varies from chapter to chapter, but the main emphasis is on Germany and its closest Central European neighbours.Elisabeth Bakke is Associate Professor at Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. Ingo Peters is Associate Professor at Department of Political and Social Sciences, Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universitnt Berlin."
Download or read book Checkpoint Charlie written by Iain MacGregor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades. Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.
Download or read book Tunnel 29 written by Helena Merriman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.Then, he decided to tunnel back in. In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children—all willing to risk everything to escape. From the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29 is the true story of this most remarkable Cold War rescue mission. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and Stasi files, Helena Merriman brilliantly reveals the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the Stasi spy who threatened the whole enterprise, and the love story that became its surprising epilogue. Tunnel 29 was also the first made-for-TV event of its kind; it was funded by NBC, who wanted to film an escape in real time. Their documentary—which was nearly blocked from airing by the Kennedy administration, which wanted to control the media during the Cold War—revolutionized TV journalism. Ultimately, Tunnel 29 is a success story about freedom: the valiant citizens risking everything to win it back, and the larger world rooting for them to triumph.
Download or read book Stasiland written by Anna Funder and published by Odyssey Editions. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.
Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by 50 minutes and published by 50Minutes.com. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the history of the Berlin Wall in next to no time with this concise guide. 50Minutes.com provides a clear and engaging analysis of the fall of the Berlin Wall.When the Berlin Wall was built unexpectedly in 1961, it divided the city for 28 years, separating families and friends for almost three decades. The Wall was a symbol of the divisions in Germany and Europe that followed the Second World War as well as a reminder of the stringent Communist regime. The fall of the wall was, therefore, cause for huge celebration: families were reunited, East Berliners were finally free of the strict communist regime and the biggest symbol of the East-West divide had collapsed. In just 50 minutes you will: • Understand why the Berlin Wall was built and what its purpose was • Learn about the events leading up the fall of the Berlin Wall and how a miscommunication caused it to fall a day early • Analyse the impact that the wall had on Berlin, Germany and the whole of Europe and why its collapse was so significant ABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | History & Culture 50MINUTES.COM will enable you to quickly understand the main events, people, conflicts and discoveries from world history that have shaped the world we live in today. Our publications present the key information on a wide variety of topics in a quick and accessible way that is guaranteed to save you time on your journey of discovery.
Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Nigel Kelly and published by Heinemann-Raintree Library. This book was released on 2006 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigate why the Berlin Wall was built. This book focuses on the fall of the Berlin Wall, describing it, and discussing its consequences on history. Investigate the timeline to understand crucial dates surrounding the Berlin Wall. Read the debate section so you can consider the arguments and weigh the evidence about its role in history. Clear photographs, maps, contemporary views, a glossary, and tips for future research are included to help you understand the importance of this turning point in history.
Download or read book Berlin Now written by Peter Schneider and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "longtime Berliner's ... exploration of the heterogeneous allure of this vibrant city. Delving beneath the obvious answers--Berlin's club scene, bolstered by the lack of a mandatory closing time; the artistic communities that thrive due to the relatively low (for now) cost of living--Schneider takes us on an insider's tour of this rapidly metamorphosing metropolis, where high-class soirees are held at construction sites and enterprising individuals often accomplish more without public funding--assembling a makeshift club on the banks of the Spree River--than Berlin's officials do"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Confession With Blue Horses written by Sophie Hardach and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2019. Tobi and Ella's childhood in East Berlin is shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in London, their past is full of unanswered questions. Both remember their family's daring and terrifying attempt to escape. But what happened next? Where did their parents disappear to, and why? What happened to Heiko, their little brother? And was there ever a painting of three blue horses? In contemporary Germany, Aaron works for a Stasi archive, making his way through old files, reconstructing the tragic history of thousands of families. But one file in particular catches his eye; and soon unravelling the secrets at its heart becomes an obsession. When Ella finds a stash of her mother's notebooks, she and Tobi embark on a search that will take them back to Berlin. Her fate clashes with Aaron's, and they piece together the details of Ella's past... and a family torn apart. Devastating and beautifully written, funny and life-affirming, Confession with Blue Horses explores intimate family life and its strength in the most difficult of circumstances.
Download or read book A Wall of Our Own written by Paul M. Farber and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall is arguably the most prominent symbol of the Cold War era. Its construction in 1961 and its dismantling in 1989 are broadly understood as pivotal moments in the history of the last century. In A Wall of Our Own, Paul M. Farber traces the Berlin Wall as a site of pilgrimage for American artists, writers, and activists. During the Cold War and in the shadow of the Wall, figures such as Leonard Freed, Angela Davis, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Audre Lorde weighed the possibilities and limits of American democracy. All were sparked by their first encounters with the Wall, incorporated their reflections in books and artworks directed toward the geopolitics of division in the United States, and considered divided Germany as a site of intersection between art and activism over the respective courses of their careers. Departing from the well-known stories of Americans seeking post–World War II Paris for their own self-imposed exile or traveling the open road of the domestic interstate highway system, Farber reveals the divided city of Berlin as another destination for Americans seeking a critical distance. By analyzing the experiences and cultural creations of "American Berliner" artists and activists, Farber offers a new way to view not only the Wall itself but also how the Cold War still structures our thinking about freedom, repression, and artistic resistance on a global scale.
Download or read book Driving the Soviets up the Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.
