It was not only the Berlin Wall that fell in 1989; the wall dividing the Eastern Bloc from the rest of Europe went down as well. Let us recall the revolutionary year of 1989 and all that happened in various countries of the former Soviet Union in the post-revolutionary days, months and years.
The series of revolutions brought not only a wave of euphoria but also many questions as to how to set up the newly forming democratic states. The atmosphere of the time before the first democratic election in Czechoslovakia was captured by Czech documentary filmmaker Karel Vachek in A New Hyperion, or Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. While Czechoslovakia experienced its Velvet Revolution, Estonia had its Singing Revolution, with young and inexperienced prime minister Mart Laar becoming the head of state. Watch the example of Estonia to see how the countries tried to get rid of the heritage of Soviet rule.
Detailed insight into the events in the Soviet Union is provided by leading directors Vitaly Mansky, who created the profile of the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and Sergei Loznitsa, who uses archive footage to look back at the uprising which preceded the definitive collapse of the Soviet Union.
Graphic design: Bohdan Heblík.
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