Throughout the post-war era, there were plenty of events that one could see as cracks. There was an uprising in Hungary in 1956. In the 60’s Romania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, and in a speech I saw, Ceausescu was cheered for slamming the Soviets for using troops against the Czechs in 1968
This is one of the better books about history I have ever read. It’s an oral history from people who lived through it. Many of them, both young and old, wish to return to the days of communism, some even to the days of Stalin.
*There are many worthwhile books on the post-Soviet period and Putin’s ascent. . . . But the nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history Secondhand Time.”—David Remnick, The New Yorker
“Like the greatest works of fiction, Secondhand Time is a comprehensive and unflinching exploration of the human condition. . . . Alexievich’s tools are different from those of a novelist, yet in its scope and wisdom, Secondhand Time is comparable to War and Peace.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Already hailed as a masterpiece across Europe, Secondhand Time is an intimate portrait of a country yearning for meaning after the sudden lurch from Communism to capitalism in the 1990s plunged it into existential crisis. A series of monologues by people across the former Soviet empire, it is Tolstoyan in scope, driven by the idea that history is made not only by major players but also by ordinary people talking in their kitchens.”—The New York Times*
I wasn’t shocked because I was 14 and not especially aware of matters pertaining to the USSR. However, that day (or was it the after? I don’t remember what time of day the news broke) my history teacher came into the classroom looking shook. We asked him what was wrong and he said “now you’re right. I don’t have to correct you anymore when you say Russia instead of the USSR.”
I can’t clock in with the actual date, but to me it was the moment when Gorbachev, in Washington for a high level shindig with the Reagan monster, told the press (that’s what it used to be called) (possibly paraphrasing) I’m going to do something terrible to you. I’m going to take away your enemy. And he went in, and quietly and effectively, he surrendered the Cold War to Ronald Ray-guns. And Mr. Reagan, showing his true genius, declined to crow, and accepted it like a real statesman and gentleman. I can’t believe I’m talking good about that guy.
I, too.
Perhaps it was worth it.
December 1991 was my junior year of high school, so needless to say politics was pretty far down far on the priority list for me, to put it mildly. (To this day the thing that still blows my mind about the whole experience was that it started out a pit of misery and hopelessness in my freshman year, and then it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. Seriously, a few months in I was dealing with a few good-for-nothing irritating twerps, a self-important stuffed-shirt pig of a principal, and a faculty that didn’t know their rear ends from second base, and by the final month of senior year slime-dripping anarchist hyenas were running wild and making my life a living hell literally every single minute, the faculty were either zombies or Three Stooges rejects, and the principal had become a cross between Voldemort and Yosemite Sam…swear to Reimu, another two months and I think there would’ve been a terrorist bombing.)
I did, however, understand on a rudimentary level that big changes were in store. All my life I’d been taught that Communism was evil and the USSR was this enormous terrifying menace that we always had to tread lightly around lest they blow up the planet. For me, there was one institution that really drove home the evilness of this empire to a young me…the Olympics. Jumping Luigi on a pogo stick, the Olympics. Even though I was never taught pivotal events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, or the invasion of Afghanistan as a child, I was thoroughly convinced of the inescapable crushing tyranny of the Evil Empire. And just like that, seemingly overnight, it was done. No big revolution, no doomed final stand. They’d just had enough.
My initial reaction was cautious optimism. Yes, this was an opportunity to set aside old enmities and make a better world, but it was only happening if the people with the power (which I was absolutely NOT one of, a fact drilled into me pretty much continuously my whole life) wanted to make it better. And of course, we all saw how that turned out. 
Actually, my most enduring memory…again, no joke…was seeing Zangief not only still under the flag of the USSR in Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition, but remaining so all the way up to 1998’s Street Fighter Alpha 3. I knew some conservative types would have a hard time letting go, but I never thought Capcom would be one of them!
Maybe Zangief is a real Soviet patriot who harbors white-hot rage at the oligarchs who sold out and raped his rodina. I assume in street fights you get to pick your own flag.
I was pretty young then, I recall my parents geography teaching attempts in that time frame coming to nought…(Remember the map we showed you last week, yeah thats not accurate anymore, and them being pretty happy that the Soviet Union called it quits… I still remember my parents changing the channel from the cartoon I was watching to see the Red Banner beinglowered from the Kremlin for the last time..
My father says that he concluded the prognosis was terminal when the Coup failed.
I remember that time pretty well, and I “knew” that a vicious crackdown by Moscow authorities was inevitable, it was only a matter of time. Glad to have been proven wrong, but yes, I was surprised it went that quickly.
I joined the army on November 2nd. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9th.
Naturally enough, I claim partial credit.
Not surprising you can’t remember the actual date for these events. Reagan was not President when Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union broke up.
Let’s not forget that back in 1988-89, there was a general trend of apparent liberalization and opening up in the totalitarian Communist regimes of the Cold War world…
And then Tiananmen Square happened that spring, in 1989.
I thought the image of that lone, unarmed student protester, standing in front of a line of halted Red Army tanks, would be the emblematic picture of How The Cold War Ended In A Soft Revolution.
Then came the crackdown.
I was assuming that similar things would be playing out in Eastern Europe and the USSR, as Hungary had experienced in the 1950s as well - if people were given some leeway and chose to do The Wrong Things, as the PTB saw it, they would have that leeway taken away with force.
When the Berlin Wall just opened up, it was a complete jaw-dropper. Wait… WAIT JUST HAPPENED?
Some un Stalin like guy decided not to murder a bunch of people, and let them live their lives.
In Russian politics there’s a lot of ground between Stalin and Gorbachev. I, and I think a lot of other people, figured that at some point Soviet officials would decide that Gorbachev’s reforms were costing too much and were creating a risk of total collapse (which would have been an accurate assessment). Gorbachev would have been removed from power and forced into retirement (which is essentially what happened to Krushchev). He would have been replaced by somebody who was a younger equivalent of Brezhnev - somebody who would keep a lid on problems and keep the regime muddling along. No need for mass purges and millions of deaths.
That’s how easy it looked AFTER it happened, but a myriad of things could have gone wrong that night: only one border guard losing his nerves and start shooting could have started a tragedy. That everybody, the GDR border guards, customs officers, vopos and USSR troops stationed in East Germany kept their calm in a totally unpredictable situation caused by a historical accident, was a miracle. Still the most unbelievable event I witnessed in my lifetime.