Curated playlist
Former socialist republics
- East GermanyA picnic near the Hungarian town of Sopron helped bring down East Germany. The border opened there in August 1989.
- North VietnamNorth Vietnam was proclaimed by Hồ Chí Minh on the 2nd of September 1945. It ended by absorbing its rival.
- Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaYugoslavia was a Communist state where people could buy Italian clothes and watch American films.
- Socialist Republic of RomaniaRomania's Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed after a trial that lasted an hour and a half. Days before, a crowd booed him.
- Republic of MahabadThe Republic of Mahabad, a Kurdish state in Iran, lasted exactly 327 days. Iranian forces ended it in December 1946.
- Hungarian People's RepublicHungary's communists won just 17% of the vote in 1945. Four years later, the country was under one-party rule.
- Azerbaijan People's GovernmentA militia took over Iran's Azerbaijan province in three days in 1945. Stalin's backed state lasted barely a year.
- Ba'athist IraqIraq's Ba'athists seized power in 1968 without a single death. The ousted president was flown to London.
- Kazakh Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Kazakh Soviet republic was the last to leave the Soviet Union.
- Czechoslovak Socialist RepublicIn February 1948, a president handed his country to the Communists. Edvard Beneš feared civil war.
- Polish People's RepublicIn June 1989, Poland's first competitive elections in decades ended in a Solidarity sweep.
- Ukrainian Soviet Socialist RepublicOn the 1st of December 1991, 92.3 percent of Ukrainian voters chose independence.
- Republics of the Soviet UnionThe 15 Soviet republics could legally leave the union, yet Moscow's Politburo decided almost everything.
- Russian Soviet Federative Socialist RepublicThe Russian SFSR, largest Soviet republic, had no presidency until 1990. It had no anthem of its own until then.
- Byelorussian Soviet Socialist RepublicMonths after losing over two million people, Byelorussia won a seat at the United Nations.
- Mongolian People's RepublicIn December 1989, young people flooded Ulaanbaatar's streets to demand political freedom.
- People's Republic of BulgariaCommunist guerrillas launched a coup in Bulgaria on the night of the 9th of September 1944.
- People's Socialist Republic of AlbaniaAlbania gave Yugoslav advisers just 48 hours to leave in 1948. It then blamed Yugoslavia for its own purge.
- Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet RepublicThe Transcaucasian republic was born from a Soviet invasion and helped found the USSR.
- Soviet UnionOn December 26, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev officially recognized the Soviet Union's dissolution.
- MyanmarMyanmar has two names, and choosing between them is a political statement. The military renamed Burma in 1989.