Browse

Government

Source

Provision for the Restatement of Names and Surnames

Images of 1989 tend to center on dramatic events in Berlin, in Beijing, in Bucharest, and in Johannesburg, just to name a few. Visions of mass demonstration and popular uprising predominate.

Source

The Soviet Union over the Next Four Years

In early 1989, shortly after President George H. W. Bush had taken office, the office of US ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock sent this message to the attention of the new National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft.

Source

A Yugoslav Ambassador reports on the current situation in Romania

As the government of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania began to collapse in a wave of strikes and riots, Moscow looked on with growing concern. Shortly before Christmas 1989, the Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs met with the Yugoslav ambassador to the Soviet Union to discuss the situation.

Source

CIA briefing on Soviet Tactical Nuclear Forces

Months after Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, it seemed that extensive nuclear disarmament between the United States and soon-to-be former Soviet Union was becoming a reality.

Source

The White House evaluates Soviet Intelligence Capabilities

In the final months of his presidency, shortly before the official dissolution of the Soviet Union, George H. W. Bush instructed the leaders of the US intelligence community to completely reevaluate their raison d'être.

Source

The Winter of the Soviet Military

By the end of December 1991, the Soviet Union was administratively dissolved. A few weeks beforehand, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency issued this report, assessing the state of the Soviet Military after its failed coup attempt in August of that year.

Source

UN Security Council on the Civil War in Yugoslavia

In 1990, the Yugoslav Communist Party divided into several separate parties, one for each of the six Yugoslav Republics. Tensions among the ethnic groups of Yugoslavia, divided among the republics, led to an outbreak of a civil war in 1991.

Source

United Nation's Evaluation of the Peacekeeping Process in Yugoslavia

In 1990, the Yugoslav Communist Party divided into several separate parties, one for each of the six Yugoslav Republics. Tensions among the ethnic groups of Yugoslavia, divided among the republics, led to an outbreak of a civil war by 1991.

Source

Announcement of a Protest in Bratislava

In the summer of 1989, Slovak dissidents decided to commemorate the anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion by publicly laying flowers at various locations in Slovakia where citizens had been killed in 1968. They announced their plans in a letter to the Slovak government dated August 4, 1989.

Source

Havel's Independence Day Address, 1990

Every political upheaval is followed by a "morning after." In 1990, the new Czechoslovak President, Vaclav Havel, gave an important speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (the end of Communism in his country).