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Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, key players in the extraordinary events of 1989 that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union speak out.

In typical gruff manner, Lech Walesa said: “We thought that one day we’d kick them out.”

Sitting in his Gdansk office, we spoke about that day in February 1989 when the leaders of the still banned Solidarity trade union agreed to sit down with Poland’s communist rulers for the unprecedented Round Table talks.

“When I sat down,” Walesa recalled, “I felt weak, so I knew some sort of compromise was needed. But we thought that maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, we would go further.”

Walesa had an unlikely, and unsuspecting, ally. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had already launched his policies of perestroika and glasnost, saw the Round Table talks as a model to the rest of the communist bloc of how to reform communism.

Jerzy Urban was Polish government spokesman 20 years ago. He said: “We realised that we’d lost the competition with the West – in economic, political and military terms – and this political system was in a state of crisis and decline.”

With prices rising by 1,000%, the need for change was undeniable but it went further and faster than many had ever thought possible. On 4 June, just hours after Tiananmen Square, Poles overwhelmingly voted for Solidarity in partially free elections, paving the way for the first non-communist government in Eastern Europe.

Tides of change

In a desperate attempt to turn the tide, Romania’s long-time leader Nicolae Ceausescu called on other Warsaw Pact leaders to crack down on what he called the “anti-communist” events in Poland.

But Moscow was no longer willing to send in the tanks, as it had in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Significantly, the last Soviet soldier pulled out of Afghanistan in February 1989, just as the Round Table talks got underway.

It was the end of a decade-long war that had humiliated the Soviet Union and brought it to the verge of bankruptcy. And Gorbachev introduced the Sinatra doctrine – each satellite state was now able to ‘do it their way’.

And so they did.

Hungary allowed hundreds of East German holiday-makers to escape to Austria. The East German government announced easier travel rules and the Berlin Wall border guards opened the checkpoints.

Bulgaria’s veteran communist leader Todor Zhivkov was forced to resign. Ceausescu was executed, while in Czechoslovakia, the Velvet Revolution triumphed. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991.

No turning back

All of Moscow’s former satellites in Central and Eastern Europe have joined the EU and Nato.

Their democracies may not be perfect, but millions of people can now travel freely across a continent that was recently bitterly divided.

Some of those who fought for freedom have become victims of the free market.

But not even the former communists seriously think there’s a way to turn back.

Gorbachev has featured in ads for Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton, while Jerzy Urban is now one of Poland’s wealthiest entrepreneurs.

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