September 11, 2001 undoubtedly was a historical day for the world and the US in particular. What happened that day and its aftermath effects were tragic and mostly negative, you may say. That same date, in a different year, however, registered another history breaking event that carried quite a different tone for the world. The following is abridged from an LA Times article I read a couple weeks ago (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-meyer13-2009sep13,0,6751343.story):
Twenty years ago, on Sept. 11, 1989, the plug was pulled on the bathtub of Soviet empire.
At the stroke of midnight, tiny communist Hungary threw open the gates to freedom and the West. Tens of thousands of people surged across the suddenly unguarded border. It was the straw that broke the Soviet camel’s back, that started a chain of events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and eventually the end of the Cold War.
How did all this get started?
The date was Aug. 19. The place: Sopron, a sleepy provincial town in western Hungary. In Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev was at work, shaking up the old Soviet sphere. In Poland, the famous trade union known as Solidarity faced off against its communist masters.
In Hungary, a new generation of reform-minded communists had taken charge. Almost overnight, they wrote a US-style constitution and began speaking openly of a free press, free markets and free elections. Emboldened, a small group of local Sopron activists decided to celebrate the new spirit. Their modest aim: put up some tents, hire a brass band and let the beer and good vibes flow. One of the organizers came up with an especially inspired idea -- to briefly open a gate through the barbed-wire frontier to Austria, allowing people to casually stroll back and forth across the border for the first time in four decades. They called it the Pan-European Picnic.
Because anything involving the border was a matter of extreme sensitivity, their request for a permit came to the attention of Hungary's young prime minister, Miklos Nemeth, the man behind so many of the Gorbachev-like changes taking place. Immediately, a light bulb went off in his head.
Every summer, tourists from East Germany descended on Hungary, where the mixture of Marxist industrial planning with a measure of free enterprise provided things such as nice restaurants, ample food, good wine for the East German vacationers to enjoy. A mutual treaty obliged the Hungarians to ensure that East Germans did not escape to the West, though.
Earlier in 1989, however, before the seasonal onslaught of East German tourists, Nemeth had very publicly ordered the electricity in the barbed-wire border with the West turned off. Border guards began ceremoniously cutting down large swathes of the barrier -- filmed by Western TV crews summoned for the occasion. Nemeth intended this as a clear message to Hungary's East German guests: Look folks, he declared in effect, a hole in the Iron Curtain. There's nothing to prevent you from "escaping" through it to freedom.
Nemeth hoped to unleash a flood. He believed that a mass escape of East Germans from Hungary would pose an existential threat to the regime of Erich Honecker, the dictatorial boss of East Germany. He also believed that if Honecker fell, it would bring down the Berlin Wall -- and with it the entire communist bloc. Amid the chaos, he could realize his true goal. Hungary too would gain its freedom.
The problem was, Hungary's East Germans didn't seem to be getting the message. Despite Nemeth's televised border-snipping, only a handful had mustered up the courage to cross the border. And so he seized on the Pan-European Picnic.
As the day of the picnic approached, Nemeth and his team put their secret plan into action -- in cooperation with the West German intelligence service. Fliers began appearing in camps where East Germans were staying, emblazoned with the iconic image of a dove soaring in flight across the barbed-wire frontier. Come one, come all, they read. Eat, drink and be merry. Snip a piece of the Iron Curtain as a souvenir. But be careful not to stray. The border is unguarded. Why, you might just stumble into Austria and no one would notice!
Behind the scenes, buses were arranged to transport would-be escapees. Hungarian border guards were ordered to withdraw. As this new D-day dawned, the official organizers expected a few hundred people. Imagine their shock when the same scene played and replayed throughout the afternoon. Buses would arrive. East German tourists would get off, blink in confusion at the bizarre spectacle -- then dash toward the open border gate to Austria.
Fewer than 700 East Germans left that day, but it was enough. In the days after the Pan-European Picnic, what had been a fearful trickle quickly became a flood. As for Nemeth, he was proved a prophet. Within weeks, Honecker was ousted in a Politburo putsch. Within three months, the Berlin Wall fell. East Germany collapsed, revolution swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet empire was no more.
