1989–1991Reputable sourceWell documented

The Fall of Communism and the 'Third Wave'

On the timeline · around 1989–1991 · Democracy for All

What happened

In 1989 the communist governments of Eastern Europe fell in a rush, the Berlin Wall came down, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Across Eastern Europe, and in a wider global 'third wave' of democratization from the 1970s on, dozens of authoritarian states adopted multiparty democracy.

Why it matters

The collapse of communism swept away the great 20th-century rival to liberal democracy and brought free elections to hundreds of millions of people. For a moment it seemed democracy had triumphed everywhere — though its global advance has since faced new challenges.

Sources

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. The Collapse of the Soviet Union · Reputable source

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