The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. It may have contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union—the world's largest Marxist–Leninist state—and the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. The events, especially the fall of the Soviet Union, drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989
First stage in Soviet forces withdrawal from Afghanistan, 20 October 1986
US President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Red Square, Moscow, 31 May 1988
The 20–21 March 1981 issue of Wieczór Wrocławia (This Evening in Wrocław) shows blank spaces remaining after the government censor pulled articles from page 1 (right, "What happened at Bydgoszcz?") and from the last page (left, "Country-wide strike alert"), leaving only their titles as the printers—Solidarity-trade-union members—decided to run the newspaper with blank spaces intact. The bottom of page 1 of this master copy bears the hand-written Solidarity confirmation of that decision.
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after Bolshevisation and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc, and the Warsaw Pact. Marxism–Leninism currently still remains the ideology of a few parties around the world. After its peak when many communist states were established, the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states, however, it is still the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent, North Korea. During most of the 20th century, before the Revolutions of 1989, around one-third of the world's population lived under communist states.
The flags of the Communist Party of Vietnam that were flown besides the Vietnamese national flags in Hanoi, Vietnam
The meeting place of the Chinese National People's Congress