“The Emotions of 1989”, by Hélène Miard-Delacroix: 1989, the year of promises

Three decades were enough for a book on the revolutions that made the year 1989. in Europe, one of the pivots of the XX^e ending century gives a feeling of unreality, as the time it explores seems distant, and as the reverse of ours. This is all the interest of the approach followed by the historian Hélène Miard-Delacroix in 1989 emotions : make history less of events. even if it restores them with precision, than the affects they have aroused – in this case, in Germany “the emotions 1989”, hélène miard-delacroix: and in France – to bring to light a bundle of beliefs, representations, projections to the future which we are paint today to remember.

1989, however, these are three essential milestones in world history. In the spring. the Chinese people rise up against the regime, in mass demonstrations which seem to have the Communist Party waxed, before the massacres of June 3 and 4 on the Place Tiananmen and elsewhere – up to 10,000 dead according to certain sources. During the summer. the Eastern Germans revolt in their turn, fleeing en masse the GDR, which sinks more and more into economic dereliction and authoritarianism. On November 9, the Berlin Wall, emblem of the division of the country and all of Europe, was put down. Less than a year later, in October 1990, the GDR ceased to exist. Meanwhile. at the end of 1989, the Nicolae Ceausescu regime was “the emotions 1989”, hélène miard-delacroix: swept away by a revolution that at least had this concrete effect: to rid the Romania of its tyrant, executed with his wife on December 25, even if many executives of the Communist regime will remain in place.

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