Older Languishites: When did you realise the USSR/Eastern Bloc was over?

[Sheilbh]

Slightly prompted by talk in the China thread but also been reading a fair bit about the end of history moment - and what's striking is how sudden the end of the USSR is and how unexpected it was for most people including participants in East and West.

So I was wondering for the older Languishites who remember it, when did you realise it was all over and the USSR/Eastern Bloc was collapsing irreversibly? And before then did you even realy think it was likely that it would end?

[mongers]

7.15 am, Thursday, 7th September, 1989.


edit:
More seriously, I think it's best to look at them as two separate but linked events.

Once it was clear Gorbachev wasn't going to back Eastern Bloc countries in putting down their civilian uprisings, then the writing was on the wall for those client regimes. So late summer for me.

I don't think the collapse of the USSR or at least it not transforming into some form of working federation was inevitable, certainly the nationalist tensions in places like Georgia, Armenia/Azerbaijan indicated a likely route to disintegration, but a different Yeltsin-Gorbachev dynamic, for instance might has seen the USSR develop into a federation.

[Syt]

When the Berlin Wall fell. Sure, there had been the exodus of East Germans via Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but I was 13 at the time not paying full attention to politics, and only when the Wall opened did it sink in.

And not until it was dissolved did I expect the USSR to collapse.

[Zanza]

I was still a child without comprehension of the politics in 1989. But I lived in a city that had a direct border to the GDR. When the Wall fell, the East Germans in their Trabants came over and visited. I can vividly remember everybody being in high spirits about it. We visited the next village across the border as well and I remember how drab and grey everything looked.

[Admiral Yi]

When Czechoslovakia announced it would open its border to East Germans transiting to the West.

[Duque de Bragança]

I remember learning belatedly of the '91 putsch since I was on holidays and not paying much attention to TV.

OTOH, since the study of the USSR was part of the geography curriculum, teachers made clear that what we learned would probably become irrelevant very quickly: USSR, under serious reservations.

[The Minsky Moment]

1980 Winter Olympics.  If they couldn't win against the US in hockey they had no chance at anything.

[Razgovory]

I was in 4th grade I think.  The teacher had set up a radio so she could hear the news.  I had no clue what was going on.

[DGuller]

I realized it when Ukraine became an independent nation.

[The Brain]

Don't remember exactly when in 1989 I realized that the Eastern Bloc was done. At the very latest when the wall came down of course. Now the Soviet Union was a different matter, it wasn't as obvious that the USSR was necessarily done (even if it was considered a very likely development). As late as 1991 Gorbachev was killing civilians in the Baltic states to keep the Soviet Union afloat (while the world's eyes were on Kuwait), and then there was the (fairly lame) coup attempt. After the coup failed the Soviet Union could finally be written off.

Edit: earlier during the 80s it wasn't considered likely to happen anytime soon as I remember it.

[celedhring]

The 1991 coup. I was kinda young when the Wall fell to really grasp what it meant, besides the fact I would no longer mix up both Germanies in geography exams (yay!).

[grumbler]

It was the coup for me as well.  The massive outpouring of popular support for Yeltsin and the pathetic performance by Gorbachev and the hardliners  sort of woke me up to the fact that the citizens of the USSR had never been fooled by the Soviet propaganda, they just hadn't had an opportunity to make their disgust with the Soviet regime known before that.

The fall of the Berlin Wall made it clear that eastern Europe had moved out of the Soviet sphere, but I still didn't believe that the USSR would itself fall apart.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

basically when the coup on Gorbatsjev happened and with Yeltsin standing on that tank, ending with the humilitiation of Gorbatsjev later that year.
But it's a very vague something as I wasn't even in highschool then. And a weird period altogether what with the (2nd :p) Gulf War earlier that year.

Memories of the wall coming down are even vaguer, but Tsjernobyl going up with a bang, Challenger exploding, Halley passing (all 86) or the Herald of Free Enterprise capsizing just out of the port of Zeebrugge (87) I remember well.

the stuff one remembers seeing on tv...

[Valmy]

I consider the Berlin Wall coming down the biggest event in my lifetime. It was shocking when it happened and it changed everything. However, it only dawned on me the whole damn thing was going to come down when Lithuania was able to break free a few months later, that was something else. I mean sure the satellites are starting to break away but suddenly a part of the USSR is going? It seemed clear the whole USSR was done.

But the facts remain: before Bush wall, with Bush no wall! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgbQkoPsCIE

I was 12 when all that happened. The Cold War seemed like something that would just go on forever. I am very bitter that the US blew such a great chance to declare victory and go home. Now here we are 32 years later still getting involved in what happens in Syria.

[viper37]

So I was wondering for the older Languishites who remember it, when did you realise it was all over and the USSR/Eastern Bloc was collapsing irreversibly?

When the Berlin wall fell and the USSR did nothing, I knew it was over.

Not before.  International news arrived from local newspaper and regular channel information, I did not have access to english newspapers or magazines like today, and I wasn't even out of high school yet, so my focus was elsewhere at the time.

And before then did you even realy think it was likely that it would end?

I knew it was a possibility.  I knew the USSR had failed miserably in Afghanistan and I knew of Gorbatchev's perestroïka, but to say I knew with a certainty it would soon end, no, I did not.