This video is a summary of the events of 1989 that lead to the collapse of European socialism. I explain the history of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, how they became socialist after world war two, how their governments generally worked, their economic situation and ultimately the events that lead to them abandoning state socialism in favor of liberal free market capitalism.
Patreon: [ Ссылка ]
Second channel: [ Ссылка ]
Subreddit: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
The song in the outro was produced by 08 (who gave me no way to credit them), you can listen to the whole remix on my second channel: [ Ссылка ]
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
The states
The economies
Revolutions of 1989
The economic consequences
Conclusion
Transcript:
Hello everybody. As you may have noticed if you know my upload schedule, I didn’t upload last Sunday. Which was the first time I didn’t upload in ages. Of course the reason was that I started studying at university last week. I am doing political science and for some cursed reason they made us sit through over 21 hours of lectures within 3 days, showing shockingly little respect for my very important upload schedule.
Either way, one of the classes was eastern Europeans studies, which yes, is pretty much the European version of African American studies. So we talked a lot about the political situation in these countries and something that came up again and again was the eastern bloc and the iron curtain. Since they kind of played a big part in the history of eastern european countries.
So I decided that for my youtube video this week I will do the eastern block, because that way I am studying for university and doing my job at the same time. I will explain the history of eastern Europe, the different states and the ways they were governed, the way their economies were run, which was very similar overall.
Then I will talk about the so called revolutions of 1989 aka the collapse of European socialism and European socialist states, the annexation of eastern Germany by west Germany, the eventual split of Czechoslovakia and the economic consequences of turning economies of over 100 million people from a centrally planned state economy to a free market economy.
Because as usual I make one video a week, and now I even have university to worry about, so this video can’t cover absolutely everything. Because of that, I will not be discussing any of the happenings outside of eastern Europe. No Tiananmen square, and no collapse of the soviet union. I have videos on both of those already if you are interested.
Likewise, I will not discuss Yugoslavia because the disillusion of Yugoslavia was such a mess that it would double the length of the video, so instead it will be a future video at some point. And because under Hoxha Albania sort of left the eastern bloc I will be ignoring it as well.
So ultimately the countries we will focus on are, from top left to bottom right, East germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. That sould make for about 30 minutes or so of video. So here it comes.
As you know in the past 120 years Germany did 4 major things to influence the history of Europe. Starting world war one, losing world war one, starting world war two and losing world war two. When they were losing to world war two they were at war with both the state socialist USSR and the capitalist UK and US.
The USSR, UK and US held multiple conferences discussing how to rebuild Europe once the fascists had been defeated, most notably the yalta conference in which they decided on temporary occupation zones.
All occupying forces were supposed to let the occupied people’s chose their own government in a democratic manner. This is why the USSR didn’t make Poland and Romania part of itself, despite already being a union of very different nations. It was because the western allies wouldn’t have that.
But of course, before these countries could hold referendums to decide on their preferred version of government or economy, the occupying power would establish a temporary government. Unsurprisingly in the west all of them became capitalist and in the east they all became state socialist.
In the west the Americans used the fact that their economy wasn’t bombed to destruction and began sending a lot of aid to all countries that would take it. This was called the Marshall plan. Giving the people free stuff to re-build their countries naturally made these countries think positive of the USA and it made seem capitalism great.
5 person discord invite. Hit the bell to catch it under the next video. And please only use it if you willbe active on the server, otherwise leave it for others: [ Ссылка ]
