Why is 1989 important

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Nicolae Ceausescu : The last Communist leader of Romania, who was summarily executed, with his. Almond, Mark. NY: Praeger, London: Chapmans, Barnard, Patrick. Barnett, Thomas P. Behr, Edward. London: Hamish Hamilton, Burke, James F. Calinescu, Matei, and Vladimir Tismaneanu.

Ceausescu: The Countdown. Boulder: East European Monographs, Ceausescu, Nicolae. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: New York, Cullen, Robert. Daniels, Anthony. Danta, Darrick.

Deletant, Dennis. Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, Armonk, NY: M. Sharpe, Ermatinger, James. Frucht, Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, Eyal, Jonathan. Martin's Press, Fischer, Mary Ellen. Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, Gallagher, Tom. Gilberg, Trond. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Hetnal, Adam A. Husarska, Anna. Ionescu, Dan. Kerim, Silvia.

Parfumeria : Ceausescu's Destruction of 'Little Paris'. Bucuresti: Universalia, King, Robert R. Kirk, Roger, and Mircea Raceanu. Launay, Jacques de. London: World's Peace Movement, Linden, Ronald. Munteanu, Mircea. Pacepa, Ion Mihai. Facing a growing schism between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, the Bush administration opted to work primarily with Gorbachev because they viewed him as the more reliable partner and because he made numerous concessions that promoted U.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the United States and the Soviet leadership worked together diplomatically to repel this attack. In January , violence erupted in Lithuania and Latvia. Soviet tanks intervened to halt the democratic uprisings, a move that Bush resolutely condemned.

By , the Bush administration reconsidered policy options in light of the growing level of turmoil within the Soviet Union. Three basic options presented themselves.

The administration could continue to support Gorbachev in hopes of preventing Soviet disintegration. Alternately, the United States could shift support to Yeltsin and the leaders of the Republics and provide support for a controlled restructuring or possible breakup of the Soviet Union.

The final option consisted of lending conditional support to Gorbachev, leveraging aid and assistance in return for more rapid and radical political and economic reforms. Unsure about how much political capital Gorbachev retained, Bush combined elements of the second and third options. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was vast, as were Soviet conventional forces, and further weakening of Gorbachev could derail further arms control negotiations.

To balance U. Bush administration officials also, however, increased contact with Yeltsin. The unsuccessful August coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. Imagine for a moment what could happen if China falls into turmoil. If it happens now, it'd be far worse than the Cultural Revolution. We talked about "full-scale civil war," but actually no large-scale fighting took place, no true civil war ever happened.

Now it's different, though. If the turmoil keeps going, it could continue until Party and state authority are worn away. Then there would be civil war, one faction controlling parts of the army and another faction controlling others. If the so-called democracy fighters were in power, they'd fight among themselves.

Once civil war got started, blood would flow like a river, and where would human rights be then? On the topic of mistakes, we indeed have made them. I said two years ago that our biggest mistake was in education.

A lot of thought work has been neglected, and a lot of things have not been made clear. Some people, like [former Chinese premier who visited the protests] Zhao Ziyang, have even joined the side of the turmoil, which makes it even more our own faults that people misunderstood.

We must cast a sober and critical eye upon ourselves, review the past while looking to the future, and try to learn from experience as we examine current problems. If we do this, it's possible a bad thing could turn into a good one. We could benefit from this incident. A majority of the people will sober up, too. After we put down the turmoil, we'll have to work hard to make up all those missed lessons in education, and this won't be easy. It'll take years, not months, for the people who demonstrated and petitioned to change their minds.

We can't blame the people who joined the hunger strike, demonstrated, or petitioned. We should target only those who had bad intentions or who took the lead in breaking the law. Education should be our main approach to the student, including the students who joined the hunger strike. This principle must not change.

We should set the majority of the students free from worry. We should be forgiving toward all the students who joined marches, demonstrations, or petitions and not hold them responsible. We will mete out precise and necessary punishments only to the minority of adventurers who attempted to subvert the People's Republic of China.

We cannot tolerate turmoil. We will impose martial law again if turmoil appears again. Our purpose is to maintain stability so that we can work on construction, and our logic is simple: with so many people and so few resources, China can accomplish nothing without peace and units in politics and a stable social order. Stability must take precedence over everything.

No one can keep China's reform and opening from going forward. Why is that? It's simple: without reform and opening our development stops and our economy slides downhill. Living standards decline if we turn back. The momentum of reform cannot be stopped. We must insist on this point at all times. Some people say we allow only economic reform and not political reform, but that's not true. We do allow political reform, but one condition: that the Four Basic Principles [ of Marxist ideology and Communist Party rule ] are upheld.

We can't handle chaos while we're busy with contradiction.