The 1989 Revolutions, also known as The Fall of the Nations, was a revolutionary wave that swept through Central and Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989, unleashing the overthrow of Soviet-style socialist states within a few months.
Political turmoil began in Poland, and led to a wave of mostly peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Romania was the only country in the Eastern Bloc that violently overthrew its communist regime and executed its head of state.
The 1989 Revolutions greatly changed the balance of power in the world and marked (along with the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union) the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Cold War era.
In addition, the 1989 Revolutions throughout Eastern Europe that consisted of mass uprisings against communist parties in power are noteworthy.
George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta on December 3, 1989, declared the end of the Cold War.
Two years after the 1989 Revolution, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved on July 1, 1991, the Baltic countries separated from the Soviet Union in August 1991, and the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 25, 1991.
After 1992, the "sickle and hammer" and some other communist symbols are banned in some Eastern European countries, such as Hungary (since 1993), Estonia (since 2007), Lithuania (since 2008), Latvia and Poland. The reasons for these prohibitions is to consider them a symbol of the occupation and totalitarianism of the Soviet Union.
