Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1Andrei SakharovAndrei SakharovBorn 21 May 1921Released from internal exile in 1986, the physicist was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 and used its televised sessions to demand an end to the Communist Party's guaranteed monopoly. His draft constitution for a voluntary union was unfinished when he died that December; the…0i
  2. 2Mikhail GorbachevMikhail GorbachevBorn 2 Mar 1931Gorbachev's glasnost and the competitive 1989 elections opened Soviet politics, and his refusal to use force in Eastern Europe let the 1989 revolutions happen. Soviet troops did kill protesters in Vilnius and Riga in January 1991 on his watch, and many Russians blame him for the economic collapse…0i
  3. 3Lech WałęsaLech WałęsaBorn 29 Sept 1943The Gdańsk electrician led Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, from 1980 and sat at the 1989 Round Table. As Poland's first popularly elected president from 1990 he backed fast economic reform but clashed with parliaments, and the 1992 "Small Constitution" was partly a…0i
  4. 4Leszek BalcerowiczLeszek BalcerowiczBorn 19 Jan 1947Poland's finance minister launched the Balcerowicz Plan on 1 January 1990, freeing prices, ending subsidies and making the złoty convertible almost overnight. Hyperinflation fell and Poland became the region's growth leader, but unemployment soared, and the plan remains the reference case in…0i
  5. 5Aleksander KwaśniewskiAleksander KwaśniewskiBorn 15 Nov 1954A former communist minister who defeated Wałęsa in 1995, Kwaśniewski signed Poland's 1997 constitution, approved by referendum, and took the country into NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004. His career shows a reformed successor party accepting the new rules rather than overturning them.0i
  6. 6József AntallJózsef AntallBorn 8 Apr 1932Hungary's first freely elected prime minister, from 1990, chose gradual reform and negotiated a pact with the main opposition party that introduced a constructive vote of no confidence and kept a list of "cardinal" laws needing two-thirds majorities. Those supermajority rules later let a single…0i
  7. 7Joachim GauckJoachim GauckBorn 24 Jan 1940A Rostock pastor, Gauck became the first federal commissioner for the Stasi records in 1990, running the agency that opened secret-police files to the people they described. The German model of open files contrasts with Poland's "thick line" and became a reference for other countries; he later…0i
  8. 8Václav KlausVáclav KlausBorn 19 Jun 1941As Czechoslovak finance minister and then Czech prime minister, Klaus ran voucher privatisation, giving citizens coupons to buy shares in state firms. It spread ownership quickly but enabled "tunnelling" by fund managers and weak banking; he also negotiated the 1993 split with Slovakia without a…0i
  9. 9Vytautas LandsbergisVytautas LandsbergisBorn 18 Oct 1932A musicologist who led the Sąjūdis movement, Landsbergis chaired Lithuania's Supreme Council when it declared independence on 11 March 1990, the first Soviet republic to do so. He held firm through the Soviet economic blockade and the January 1991 assault on Vilnius television tower.0i
  10. 10Mart LaarMart LaarBorn 22 Apr 1960Estonia's 32-year-old prime minister from 1992 introduced a flat income tax, open trade and rapid privatisation alongside the new currency board, reforms widely credited with fast growth. The citizenship rules of the period, which his governments kept, left many Russian-speaking residents stateless…0i