In Europe

role in dismantling communism in Central and Eastern Europe.
    Elections were held in Hungary in March, with non-communists candidates permitted to stand for the first time in forty years. The regime received a solid trouncing. In May, Czechoslovakian dissidents demanded free elections as well. Václav Havel was released from prison. On 27 June, in a symbolic ceremony at Sopron, the new Hungarian foreign ministerand his Austrian counterpart jointly cut the cords of the Iron Curtain. The guard towers and barricades blocking the border were swiftly taken down.
    In the same month, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl signed an agreement in Bonn, ratifying the right of all European states to determine ‘their own political system’. It came as no surprise to the leaders of the communist countries: as far back as November 1986, Gorbachev had stressed at a closed meeting of the Comecon that the Soviet Union could no longer fend for them. In the years to come they would have to learn to stand on their own feet. And in summer 1988 he repeated that message in Moscow: as far as he was concerned, the era of Soviet interventions was past.
    In August, a chain of two million people joined hands to link together the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; a little later, hundreds of demonstrators broke through the Austro-Hungarian border at Sopronpuszta. Before long, at least 120,000 East Germans had crossed Hungary to the West. A few thousand more refugees escaped via the West German embassy in Prague: they were finally allowed to travel in sealed trains to the West by way of Dresden.
    Meanwhile, Rumanian leader Nicolae Ceauşsescu was feverishly calling his communist colleagues: wasn't it about time the Warsaw Pact intervened in Poland? Erich Honecker in particular liked the idea, but Gorbachev vetoed the plan right away. In September a non-communist government was installed in Poland, the first in Eastern Europe since 1945. A moderate manifesto, calling for open dialogue on political reforms and signed by thirty church leaders and intellectuals, was published in the DDR by a group calling itself the New Forum. Later in September, the Slovenian parliament decided to change the constitution to allow for the country's secession: that was the start of the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation.
    On 7 October, the fortieth anniversary of the creation of East Germany was celebrated solemnly in Berlin. For the last time, the army goose-stepped past the ailing, seventy-year-old Honecker. That evening a huge torchlight parade moved down Unter den Linden. The honorary guest, Gorbachev, described the scene in his memoirs: ‘Bands played, drums rattled, searchlights. When the torches were lit one saw – probably themost impressive thing of all – thousands and thousands of young faces. The participants in the march, I heard later, had been carefully selected.’ That latter fact made it all the more amazing when, from within the ranks of this party youth marching past the leaders in time-honoured fashion with portraits and red flags, slogans and chants were suddenly heard:‘Perestroika! Gorbachev! Help us!’ Polish party secretary Mieczyslaw Rakowski turned to Gorbachev in excitement: ‘Mikhail Sergeyevich, do you hear what they are shouting? “Gorbachev, save us!” And these are the activists of the party itself! This is the end!’ The same thing happened later at the Soviet memorial in Treptower Park, where thousands of young people had gathered to see the Soviet leader: ‘Gorbachev, help us!’ When the demonstrations were over, he warned his DDR colleagues that their rigid stance could prove fatal: ‘In politics, he who arrives too late will be punished by life itself.’
    In the same week, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party voted to disband itself: the new leaders had no desire to be associated with the ‘crimes, mistakes and incorrect ideas and messages’ of the last forty years. The party organ
Népszabadság
(People's Freedom) appeared for the first time without the slogan ‘Workers of the world, unite’. Meanwhile, Poland opened its borders to East German refugees in transit. In Moscow a government spokesman told foreign journalists that the Brezhnev doctrine of military interventions had been replaced by ‘the Sinatra doctrine: “My Way”.’
    Honecker stepped down on 18 October, eleven days after the celebration of East Germany's fortieth anniversary. His successor, Egon Krenz, was horrified