By the summer of 1989, the Eastern Bloc was cracking open. Hungary had begun dismantling its border fence with Austria that May; by August, East Germans crossing into Hungary on tourist visas found a door swinging ajar—hundreds broke for the Austrian border in a single afternoon during what organizers called the Pan-European Picnic. In Poland that same month, the Solidarity movement that had spent most of a decade underground or banned became the government: Tadeusz Mazowiecki was sworn in as prime minister, the … Continue reading about 1989: The Collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the Fall of the Berlin Wall