Timeline of the Long Winter (Major Events Only)


 * all specific dates given in DD/MM/YYYY

11/03/1985: Mikhail Gorbachev ascends to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, beginning almost immediately a regime of reform in order to "modernise the Soviet political machine", to the chagrin of the other party members.

1986-1989: Gorbachev's "glasnost and perestroika" is effectively forced through the party through a combination of political maneuvering and power consolidation. While initially opposed and difficult, Gorbachev's reformists prevail in the power struggle and the conservatives are forced into the back seat of government. (see event: The Silent War of 1987). After consolidating his power, Gorbachev begins using Soviet influence and appropriated elements of the "Brezhnev Doctrine" to force the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe to align with Moscow's reformist doctrine, threatening to withhold aid to those who refused. Zhivkov and Honecker refuse and Gorbachev carries out his threat. While Zhivkov folds in a matter of months, Honecker remains steadfast.

02/1988: Severe ethnic violence erupts in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Soviet Caucasus. Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the streets of Stepanakert have an ethnic riot which is put down by the police. 12 die and 35 are wounded. The Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs mobilise their local armies in preparation for outright war but are stopped when Gorbachev sends a large Soviet Army peacekeeping force which deters them but does not address the fundamental issues behind the ethnic violence. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, pogroms are carried out on a local level with police generally not interfering. In the coming weeks, Soviet military presence increases which reduces the violence but the ethnic tensions do not die down. Pressure mounts against the Kremlin to take action, which eventually results in a compromise where Nagorno-Karabakh would be an autonomous region in Azerbaijan. The compromise fails to effectively address the issues at hand but allows the tensions to simmer enough for the Soviet Army to pull out of the region, though the last central government troops do not leave until 1992. (For more info: Battle of Stepanakert)

19/08/1989: Pan-European Picnic is held near the Austrian-Hungarian border organised by Otto von Habsburg. The demonstration succeeds in riling up support for liberalisation of the Eastern Bloc but the expected chain reaction of revolutions against the communist regimes never materialises. Gorbachev accelerates his political liberalisation of the Eastern Bloc due to demonstrations sparked by the Pan-European Picnic.

1989-1990: Much of the Eastern Bloc undergo their first democratic elections since the beginning of Communist rule. Due to efforts by the Soviet Union to influence local communist governments to reform, much of them are able to maintain power except Poland, where the PUWP loses the election to Solidarity and Lech Walesa by a relatively narrow margin. As the expected collapse of the Eastern Bloc never arises, Poland deems it "against the national interest" to abandon the Warsaw Pact and remains in the Eastern Bloc, though as a non-Communist regime.

31/03/1991: Yugoslavia begins to break apart earlier in the year, with full nation on nation violence erupting as Croatia outright breaks free from the Federation. President Slobodan Milosevic appeals to the Warsaw Pact for aid, but Gorbachev refuses.

07/09/1992: The Chamber of Deputies approves a new constitution making regular public elections a constitutional right. This leads to the first "free and fair" elections to the Chamber of Deputies in December of 1992. Political parties are not on the ballot, but voting for individuals to the Chamber is allowed. The new Chamber has a large majority of Reformists and they renew Gorbachev's tenure as President of the Soviet Union (A position created as a result of the new constitution replacing the title of "General Secretary" as the highest power in the country). The party splits into two rival factions which are treated effectively as different parties.

13/11/1992: Cutting off from Soviet aid threatens to collapse the German Democratic Republic. As food shortages, power outages and mass migration out of the Eastern Bloc escalates into a crisis, General Secretary Erich Honecker resigns his post and Egon Krenz ascends to power. As the crisis gets worse, West Germany offers conditional economic aid. This results in Gorbachev summoning Krenz to a meeting in Prague where the GDR agrees to conform to the Eastern Bloc's liberalisation and Gorbachev agrees to immediately aid the GDR until they fully recover to pre-1989 levels of quality of life. Popular demonstrations against the government occur in East Berlin and the NVA is mobilised to suppress it, but NVA and Soviet Army tanks clash and Berlin backs off, though this is the start of a period of frosty relations between the two socialist states.

06/04/1992: Bosnia declares independence from Yugoslavia as the Croatian war continues to rage on. The remaining scraps of Yugoslavia fight on and Serbian forces occupy the region, as Croatian forces do the same. International outcry about the events of the war intensifies and Gorbachev offers to mediate the conflict. All belligerent parties refuse.