The Walls Came Tumbling Down
How will future historians assess the impact of the years 1968 and 1989?
The years 1968 and 1989 stand as major turning points in the history of the West. In 1968, dubbed the "year of the barricades," a student protest movement broke out into the open in the United States, Italy, England, and France. Students took to the streets and protested the war in Vietnam, the university system and everything that stood for "It" -- the Establishment.
By the end of 1989, the unthinkable had taken place -- the Berlin Wall had fallen and with it, Soviet-style communism in the people's republics of Eastern Europe. Glasnost and perestroika became the new buzzwords as one Soviet-inspired government after another fell to ruins, along with the Soviet Union itself.
- Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement, June 15, 1962
The Port Huron Statement was the first statement of the Students for a Democratic Society and represented the aims and aspirations of the founding convention of SDS, held in Port Huron, Michigan.
- Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)
For many people, Bob Dylan captured the social and political objectives of the upheavals of the 1960s.
- The National Organization of Women, Statement of Purpose (1966)
NOW was founded by Betty Friedan and others on June 30, 1966 and is dedicated to bring women into the mainstream of American society in "truly equal partnership with men."
- Report on the Occupation of the Sorbonne (May 19, 1968)
In May 1968 student protests broke out at the Sorbonne and aided by a general strike among workers, led to the eventual demise of the De Gaulle government in France.
- The Brezhnev Doctrine, 1968
The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy statement that justified the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979, superseded by Gorbachev's "Sinatra Doctrine" in 1989.
- Declaration of Charter 77 (January 1, 1977)
Charter 77 criticized the Czech government for failing to implement human rights provisions as specified in the Czech constitution, the Helsinki Accords, and the United Nations covenants
- Mikhail Gorbachev, Report to the Plenary session of the CPSU Central Committee (January 27, 1987)
Gorbachev's lucid statement about the necessity for glasnost and perestroika in the reformation of the Soviet Union.