which eastern european nation was the first to reject communism
Revolutions of 1989 The events of the full-blown revolution began in Poland in 1989[9][10] and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. One feature common to most of these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to the pressure for change.[11] Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country whose people overthrew its Communist regime violently.[12] Protests in Tiananmen Square (April to June 1989) failed to stimulate major political changes in China, but influential images of courageous defiance during that protest helped to precipitate events in other parts of the globe. On 4 June 1989 the trade union Solidarity won an overwhelming victory in a partially free election in Poland, leading to the peaceful fall of Communism in that country in the summer of 1989. Hungary began (June 1989) dismantling its section of the physical Iron Curtain, leading to a exodus of East Germans through Hungary, which destabilised East Germany. This led to mass demonstrations in cities such as Leipzig and subsequently to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990.