Perhaps most unsurprisingly, the sight of various national groups in the East European Soviet Bloc being able to secure national independence from Moscow came quickly to have the same effect on the non-Russian minority republics making up the Soviet Union. The first of these to go were the recently absorbed (a result of World War Two) Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania … part of a "Singing Revolution" in which patriotic songs stirred a rising sense of nationalism – in step with the easing of Moscow's grip on things begun by Gorbachev. Finally, on 16 November 1988, Estonia declared itself to be a "sovereign nation" … though still within the Soviet Union. Then, in follow-up to the departure from the Soviet Empire of the East Europeans in late 1989, Lithuania broke fully from the Soviet Union with its declaration of full independence on 11 March 1990. Estonia, Latvia and Georgia would follow Lithuania down the fully-independent path two months later. Soon other republics, importantly Ukraine, were at that point also deliberating full independence from Moscow. Then even Russia itself, under the leadership of Moscow's Mayor Boris Yeltsin, began to consider breaking from a failing Soviet Union and setting itself up simply as a member of a new Russian Federation. Clearly, the Communist Party was losing control of the political situation in what, at this point, was a dissolving Soviet Union. The newly created Soviet Parliament – in particular its Congress of People's Deputies – had not (as Gorbachev had hoped) brought new loyalties to the Soviet Union on the part of its various national groupings. The relaxed hand of the Kremlin had produced in fact quite the opposite. Finally, Gorbachev's refusal to block these moves towards national sovereignty1 so infuriated Soviet hardliners2 that in mid-August of 1991 they attempted by way of a military coup to seize control … and remove Gorbachev from power. They thus sent agents to arrest Gorbachev at his vacation estate (his daca) on 18 August … but simply ended up detaining him there. This then led Yeltsin immediately to turn the event into an opportunity to take Russia to full independence. Huge crowds of outraged Russians gathered in Moscow, with Yeltsin addressing them as their new Russian leader … with the leaders of the attempted coup at that point self-secluded inside the Russian Parliament Building. A three-day standoff then resulted, with the coup leaders finally surrendering ... or being arrested in their attempt to flee Russia (22 August). On the same day, Gorbachev returned to Moscow. Then the purge of hardliners would begin. Two days later Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party … and the Communist Party itself was suspended in its operations five days after that (29 August). Then in early November Yeltsin simply outlawed the Party in his newly independent Russia. Thus for all practical purposes, the existence of the Soviet Union at this point was a mere fiction, with all the republics having declared their independence. In fact, in early December (1991) Yeltsin's Russia – now calling itself simply the Russian Federation – signed a treaty (the Belovezha Accords) with newly independent Ukraine and Belarus, declaring officially the end of the Soviet Union … and creating a new Commonwealth of Independent States (the CIS) – offering each other mutual economic, political, and military support. Most of the other former Soviet republics would join (though over the years many would depart). Furthermore, on 24 December, the Soviet seat on the UN's Security Council was transferred to Yeltsin's new Russian Federation. Thus officially and internationally, the Soviet Union was no more. 1In fact, he stood behind a New Union Treaty which was about to be signed – which decentralized much of the Kremlin's authority by extending new powers to the Soviet Union's constituent republics. In a referendum held on March 1991 - with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova not participating however – some 78% of the remaining Soviet citizens voted in favor of the treaty … renaming the USSR as a Union of Soviet "Sovereign" (not "Socialist") Republics. The republics Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were about to sign this treaty when the coup occurred. 2Directors of the State Committee on the State of Emergency (the GKChP) formed in January of 1991. Actually, plans for just such a coup were first undertaken by the KGB as early as September of 1990. But they had to proceed cautiously … until events in August of 1991 finally forced their hand. Tanks on Kalininsky Prospekt Demonstration in the streets of Moscow during the August 1991 coup d'etat attempt. A BTR-70 personnel carrier is surrounded by the demonstrators. Boris Yeltsin on a tank addressing fellow Moscovites Boris Yeltsin addresses the Moscow crowd YELTSIN TRIES TO PICK UP THE PIECES However, securing national independence – and knowing how to actually move forward successfully socially and economically with that independence – are two entirely different matters … something that modern man has great difficulty understanding. As we have already noted, in the late 1700s the French thought they could secure for themselves a new democracy on the same model that they had so recently observed in America when the colonies there simply declared independence from London's royal government. They failed to understand that the social habits necessary for such independence had been long established in the daily thinking and action of the American people themselves. Thus when the French attempted to create from scratch a similarly independent French democracy, they failed miserably … in fact most brutally. And in the mid-1800s Karl Marx fell into "enlightened" thinking along similar lines, believing that the newly rising class of industrial workers simply needed to revolt against their capitalist oppressors and thus establish a communal society … one in which an oppressing "State" would not even be needed. Somehow members of his new Communist society would coexist in a state of pure brotherly love.  Of course when Lenin and then Stalin attempted to put just such a Marxist society into operation, the event proved brutal in the extreme … and took the extremely oppressive hand of Stalin to bring things back into some kind of social order. Indeed, ever-tighter governmental control, not the withering away of the State, would always be needed when a people were abruptly pushed into a new social order … one which they knew very little about or how to go about making it work beautifully on a purely "natural" basis. And now Yeltsin was about to discover this same hard truth.  Clearly the Russians knew nothing about self-government.  Almost immediately Yeltsin's efforts to put in place an economic order based along quite Western lines proved most unworkable.  The productivity of what was formerly a "planned" but now "free" economy declined overnight … as voluntary employment became quite unreliable. And personal greed on the part of the economically ambitious – not economic service to the larger world – took over many Russian hearts.  Consequently, a huge inflation hit the country … as prices of products that simply were not readily available skyrocketed. As a larger consequence, in the period between 1990 and 1995, the Russian economy declined by 50% … with much of the wealth that was actually available falling into fewer and fewer "entrepreneurial" hands.  Consequently, life expectancy of the average Russian fell by 6 years in the 1991-1994 period … as diminishing real wages, stress, alcoholism and poor nutrition hit Russian society hard – at a time that the Russian health care system also deteriorated. National "freedom" had come to Yeltsin's Russia at a huge cost.  Boris Yeltsin Yeltsin tries to give the world the appearance of some kind of Russian spiritual revival Yeltsin showing his stuff. But the reality was that only a very small group of Russians were benefiting from the "New Russia" ... while the situation deteriorated deeply economically and socially for the rest of Russian society Russian Yuppies - 1994 CHINA HEADS OFF A SIMILAR CHALLENGE Deng struggles to keep reform moving ahead Certainly Deng's reforms in freeing up the government's control of the economy were helping to produce a huge boom in the Chinese economy. But inflation boomed right alongside the overall economic growth – benefiting some and hurting others – and producing much accompanying political and moral corruption … which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was having a hard time controlling. At one point (1983), Party hardliners were able to use this situation to get the CCP to resume some of its former Maoist policies of clamping down on political thought and action. But Deng worked hard to put the nation back on the road of economic reform … though he had to do so carefully to avoid new pushback from members of the older Maoist political community. Then trouble erupted in 1986 when intellectuals and students, watching developments under Gorbachev's new perestroika and glasnost programs, began to be loud in their claims that Deng's reforms were not moving fast enough. This merely served to upset the political hardliners even more. The protest movement at Tiananmen Square (1989) It was the huge movement to national freedom going on in Eastern Europe that once again stirred young Chinese to action … thousands gathering in Beijing's huge Tiananmen Square to call for similar reforms in China. Soon they were joined by others, filling the square now with hundreds of thousands of permanently camped-out youthful protesters. And the protests began to spread to other Chinese cities as well. By early June there were perhaps as many as a million protesters occupying the Square. The decision as to how to respond to this growing dynamic worked to split CCP leadership, hardliners calling for an end to the movement … by military force if necessary. On the other hand, CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang tried to hold the line for continuing reform. But even Deng began to call for action against the protesters – fearing merely worsening chaos in letting them continue. Thus it was that on the night of 3-4 June, the military was sent to clear the Square of all protesters … resulting in a very ugly confrontation in which countless numbers of students were injured and even killed. And when the world awoke the next morning, it was to a Square filled only with Chinese tanks occupying the positions formerly held by the students. Further, Zhao was removed from power and placed under house arrest (where he would remain until his death 16 years later). The Western world – that had been so supportive of the Deng reforms was appalled at the outcome.  Congress reacted by voting to cut off all further military sales to China.  But President Bush, who was at first quite critical of the Tiananmen events, soon backed off … realizing that a harsh line against China merely served to strengthen instead the Chinese hardliners in their opposition to Deng's reforms. Instead, Bush tried quietly to show continuing support for the remaining Chinese instinct for reform. Jiang Zemin But Deng was careful to have Jiang Zemin, of the reformist wing of the Party, installed as Zhao's replacement as CCP General Secretary. And indeed, Jiang was able to get the reform movement put cautiously but effectively back in place in China … even skillfully surviving a hardliner counteroffensive when the Soviet Union collapsed and hardliners became highly alarmed at the dangers this posed to the CCP. That November (1989), Deng quietly retired … and turned his huge responsibilities over to Jiang … who himself was then able to hold the party's various leadership positions all the way up to the early 2000s (2002 and 2003).  But Jiang's ability to take on all major political positions meant that the balance of power principle of dividing leading powers among several hands established by Deng found itself being put aside.  Once again, the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese State had come under the command of a single individual … leaving a legacy not of Deng's variety but of Jiang's variety when Jiang finally retired in the early 2000s.   Deng Xiaoping not only succeeded in bringing down the last of the Maoists (the "Gang of Four" led by Mao's widow, Jiang Qing) but opened up Chinese society to the world on a new international trade basis ... taking for himself only a small visible role. And the Chinese economy exploded in amazing growth (10% annual growth during most of the 1980s and 1990s)!   But a serious problem began to develop in the late spring of 1989 -- as Chinese students began to demand some of the same political-social reforms that they saw Communism undergoing in Eastern Europe  Students in Tiananmen square calling for reforms in China similar to those undertaken in Russia by Gorbachev - Spring of 1989 April 22, 1989 - thousands (200,000?) of  students at Tiananmen Square gather to honor Liberal reformer  Hu Yaobang Police and protesters meet at a line drawn up in front of the  Great Hall of the People Student demonstraters gather in ever greater numbers in Tiananmen Square, Beijing - April 27, 1989 Students in Tiananmen Square in silent protest before the Red Army - late spring 1989. A student protester seated before the Chinese military - May 1989. In mid-May a number of the students undertook a hunger-strike to protest in favor of democracy By the beginning of June hundreds of thousands (a million?) had convened on Tiananmen Square On June 4th, masses of troops are brought in to clear the Square of the protesters The clearing of the Tiananmen Square by soldiers turns violent On the night of June 3-4 the soldiers begin their move to clear the Square of protesters The aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protest Burned out personnel-carriers On June 5, a multitude of tanks show up to prevent the protesters from returning to the Square  Tanks advancing on the remaining protesters A student defying Chinese T-59 tanks in Tiananmen Square - June 5, 1989 A lone protester and Chinese T-59 tanks at Tiananmen Square - 1989 American President Bush was very upset over the Chinese handling of this protest ... but actually could do nothing about the matter.  Soon the West lost sight of the event ... as did also the Chinese themselves Go on to the next section:  Europe Moves Ahead   Miles H. Hodges