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for these courses hi I'm John Green and
this is crash course European history so
we previously discussed the crackdown on
dissent in Czechoslovakia following the
so called Prague Spring Soviet tanks
filled the streets along with some
650,000 soldiers to ensure that
Czechoslovakia and the Eastern Bloc as a
whole remained communist but in the wake
of this crackdown both Eastern and
Western Europe faced continued upheaval
and in the end the center could not hold
in Eastern Europe revolution was coming
once more
[Music]
so a lot went into this obviously for
one thing prosperity faltered when in
1973 and again in 1979 some of the
oil-producing countries in OPEC raised
prices on oil and then embargoed its
sale to Europe and the United States
which led to high unemployment and
inflation a phenomenon known as
stagflation but also both the
superpowers were facing elements of
corruption and incompetence among
leadership while colonial and proxy wars
were draining resources and Japan South
Korea and other Pacific Rim nations were
spending their money on innovation
instead of war so they began to outstrip
the Western powers in modernization and
growth and the result of all this was a
declining standard of living and
continuing civilian discontent in Europe
Margaret Thatcher became prime minister
of the UK in 1979 and addressed the
affer mentioned stagflation situation by
cutting back on welfare state benefits
including support for education so the
taxes on the wealthy could be reduced
the idea was that rich people could then
use their funds to innovate restoring
prosperity besides she added poor people
and immigrants didn't contribute much to
growth while the wealthy did this policy
was called neoliberalism that is a
return to the liberal individualistic
policies of the 19th century on which
Britain's pre welfare state prosperity
had been based US President Ronald
Reagan followed Thatcher's lead as did
Helmut Kohl of Germany although in
Cole's case without the race baiting
that Thatcher used the Soviet bloc was
also struggling with its economy and
with multifaceted resistance for example
in 1973 Alexander Solzhenitsyn published
The Gulag Archipelago based on massive
evidence from prisoners including his
own experience it's detailed description
of the degradation torture and murder in
Soviet prison camps dried up much of the
global support for Soviet Communism and
the publication came amidst ongoing
protests across Eastern Europe in 1970
for example the Polish government
introduced a wage freeze and an increase
in food prices at Christmas workers
mounted strikes in response often
violent ones and hurled anger at the
government the head of states claimed
I am a worker just like you did quiet
the situation but only temporarily
beginning in February 1971 and into the
1980s women took to the streets to
oppose government price increases when
the government asked will you help us
women textile workers famously shouted
their refusal the government borrowed
funds on the international market to
provide more food and appealed to
people's patriotism and the ostensibly
atheistic regime even appealed to
people's support for the Catholic Church
but on that front problems arose almost
immediately because in 1978 the Polish
Archbishop of Krakow
Carl voi Tula became Pope John Paul the
second and he endorsed Catholicism's
objections to and activism against
communism in 1980 the Polish government
attempted to pay its growing foreign
debt by raising prices and that led to
new strikes and to the formation of a
new workers group called solidarity led
by crane operator on a volunteer ovitch
and former employee of Gdansk lack of
Alessa Valecia became the leader of
solidarity and despite the massive
support from women that kept solidarity
alive men saw themselves as the most
important members women don't interfere
with us we are fighting for Poland they
shouted and then as women struck in
watch with signs reading hungry people
of the world unite the government
declared martial law in December 1981
and began imprisoning dissidents but the
government had not heard the last of the
Polish people
Czechoslovakian dissidents also took to
protesting in the 1970s and Beyond
issuing charter 77 that stated
objections to communist rule hungarians
protested ecologically unsound projects
and east germans held regular weekly
peace vigils mostly sponsored by
churches all right let's go to the
thought-bubble an entirely different
group was also allied with many of these
same churches punk rockers beginning in
the 1970s individual teenagers in East
Germany expressed their dissatisfaction
with government control and secret
police informants by adopting the punk
identity they'd first seen Punk youth in
magazines and heard their music on
illegal cassettes smuggled from Western
Europe The Sex Pistols a British band
showed these East German youths new ways
of dressing
new rebellious attitudes and
disrespectful behavior punks congregated
and multiplied in large cities like
Berlin and Leipzig as well as in smaller
towns eventually numbering in the
thousands their bizarre ripped clothing
and spiked and dyed hair body piercings
and habit of squatting that is living in
abandoned buildings caught the eye of
the Stasi or secret police the Stasi
beat Punk's bloody fired Punk's parents
from their jobs and threw Punk teenagers
into horrific prisons for months on end
churches took punk kids in even opening
their doors to punk rock shows where the
lyrics often articulated dissent the
East German punk band Nam and lo sang
minefields and barbed wire so nobody
risks going over walls and electric
fences they're snatching away our
freedom automatic firing devices and
minefields so we like it here in our
beautiful country in our beautiful
country Nam on Llosa's members ended up
sentenced to 18 months in prison for
their music which included aggressively
anti Stasi songs like Nazis back in East
Berlin which incidentally is a properly
good punk rock song I'll put a link in
the description thanks thought-bubble
I regret that we have to leave punk rock
music history and return to non musical
history in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became
the general secretary of the communist
party of the USSR like Thatcher
he knew his economy was in trouble
Gorbachev's parents had been poor
peasants and he had spent his youth
helping his family survive and his
supporters hoped that he would improve
and modernize the economy and the
overall quality of life in a society
where life had in many ways stagnated
one prominent problem was alcoholism
which was drastically cutting live short
and promoting violence especially
domestic abuse so Gorbachev sought out
not just economic and political reforms
but also moral ones he highlighted the
need for more openness known as glass
toast in government and industrial
dealings censorship for one needed to
stop and just as important if not more
so the economy needed to be updated to
become competitive with other economies
around the world Gorbachev was an expert
in agricultural policy and he had
travelled widely and studied the West
and in response to what he saw he
established a policy of perestroika
meaning the reform of economic life so
that it was freer and more efficient now
many Soviet officials opposed the
political transformations needed to
bring about these reforms but Gorbachev
summarily dismissed them he also pulled
back from the disastrous war in
Afghanistan and the costly arms race the
USSR spent fifteen to twenty percent of
its gross domestic product on its
military compared to about half that in
the United States and these new policies
drew Western leaders like Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to embrace
Gorbachev as a potential friend rather
than as an adversary Gorbachev had a
keen understanding of Western celebrity
culture and so he traveled to Western
capitals including the United States
where he was feted along with his
stylish and cerebral wife Fraser
Gorbachev became a darling of glossy
magazines although at home she was often
scorned for her fancy dress and as one
critic put it well manicured fingers
decorated with diamonds bought with our
money
Gorbachev's policies also illuminated
many of the unpleasant facts of life in
the USSR including the behavior of its
officials the accident at the nuclear
plant at Chernobyl is probably the most
famous example it was followed by a
bureaucratic cover-up that kept people
from leaving the area soon enough and
all of that underscored for citizens the
need for glass toast and as censorship
eased complaints about official failures
grew louder one mother of two rebelled
at the cost-cutting policy of reusing
syringes at hospitals even as HIV
infections were soaring in the USSR why
should little kids have to pay for the
criminal actions of our Ministry of
Health
she asked others wrote to complain of
long lines at perpetually understocked
grocery stores liberated politicians
also began directing criticism both at
communism in general and at the reformer
Gorbachev himself in the fall of 1987
one of Gorbachev supposed allies Boris
Yeltsin quit the governing Politburo
after denouncing perestroika as a farce
in the past Yeltsin's political daring
might have consigned him to oblivion or
Siberia but instead it showed other
people
a path to opposition by the spring of
1989
not a single communist won a place in
Moscow's local elections still too many
people Gorbachev meant freedom like in
1989 after his visit to Beijing Chinese
students gathered in Tiananmen Square to
demand liberty and rights from the aging
communist leadership but their movement
was brutally crushed with still unknown
numbers killed meanwhile that spring the
Polish government had legalized the
Solidarity group and in 1989 s
parliamentary elections all Communist
Party candidates were defeated bringing
their rule to an end in Hungary hundreds
of thousands commemorated the 1956
Hungarian Uprising while the communist
holiday of May first was boycotted the
Hungarian Parliament outdid the
Communist Party while citizens destroyed
communist symbols around the country and
the fact that Gorbachev decided not to
send troops encouraged even more
dramatic scenes as 1989 progressed on
the borders of Hungary and Austria
officials let the assembled East German
masses through while in East Berlin
people sought to cross the wall into the
western part of the city on November 9th
officials in Berlin let them pass as
people chanted we are one people in
greeting West Berliners handed out
bananas a luxury few East Berliners had
enjoyed but communism fell apart
differently in different parts of the
Eastern Bloc like Czechoslovakia had a
Velvet Revolution that is one
accompanied with comparatively little
violence while in Romania people
captured and executed the dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena
both of whom were reviled not just for
their violence but also for their
arrogance and greed in Yugoslavia
politicians had long incited ethnic
hatreds in order to keep opposition's
from unifying one such politician
slobodan milosevic claimed that Serbs
were an oppressed group a claim that
helped him gain leadership of the Serb
portion of Yugoslavia but opposing Serb
domination in 1991 Slovenia and Croatia
declared their independence which led to
other states within yugoslavia following
suit during the 1990s
terrible violence followed as civilians
died by the tens of thousands in
we'll talk about in a future episode in
the USSR perestroika is failure to
rebuild the economy eventually
encouraged a group of powerful communist
officials to stage a coup in 1991 the
immediate cause was the Russian
parliament selection of Boris Yeltsin as
president of the Russian Republic
instead of a communist candidate Yeltsin
stood on a tank in front of the Russian
Republic's parliament building and
called for mass resistance and in the
end the coup failed after that the USSR
dissolved as people ripped away at
Soviet symbols and the USSR itself
ripped apart in September 1991 the
Baltic states of with Alania Latvia and
Estonia declared their independence
after the USSR made ill-considered
attempts at quashing opposition
bloodshed flowed as other republics
peeled away until the USSR itself
officially ended at midnight on December
31st 1991 although 12 of the 15 former
Soviet republics did come together in a
Commonwealth of Independent States which
participated and I believe exactly 1
Olympics will discuss the many
consequences of the Soviet collapse more
in future episodes but for now I want to
leave you with a personal memory of
history I was 12 years old when I
watched on TV as people celebrated atop
the Berlin Wall together sharing wine
and embracing each other
it seemed utterly impossible that wall
had been a metaphor for the absolute
intractability of the conflict between
Eastern and Western Europe the wall had
seemed permanent but of course nothing
is permanent in history thanks for
watching I'll see you next time
thanks so much for watching crash course
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watching and as they say in my hometown
don't forget to be awesome
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