I know things were really bad in 1989, but what made it so bad that people in so many socialist countries just rose up and overthrew their own governments?
I know things were really bad in 1989, but what made it so bad that people in so many socialist countries just rose up and overthrew their own governments?
This is total nonsense. The Baltic republics completely ignored the Soviet constitution, their declaration of independence was entirely unilateral and decided on not by referendum but solely by a parliament elected in farcical bourgeois manipulated elections that followed the disastrous perestroika reforms. And the text of the declaration was full of historical revisionist lies and promises they never intended to keep, like in the case of the Republic of Estonia for example they said they were declaring independence so they could pursue their own path to socialism, and that they would never pass laws discriminating against other ethnic groups. Yet immediately after they went on to dismantle socialism and pass laws that took away the citizenship of ethnic Russians and excluded them from being able to buy land or hold certain jobs.
I’ve heard your opinion. Still it’s a fact.
You may be mixing up the declarations of sovereignty of the union republics and their actual secession. The former happened earlier than the latter (though for Kazakhstan the latter never formally happened), that is, happened without leaving the USSR, and didn’t require any referendum.
I’ve just read that Estonia, in fact, had a referendum in accordance with the Soviet law.
So did Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. I can’t doubt its results were correct for Armenia, since Soviet troops were in fact committing ethnic cleansing in Artsakh even as that referendum was taking place (which was the main reason for Armenia leaving USSR as well). For others - likely correct, but I don’t know whether real or not.