1989 Twenty Years On: The End of Communism and the Fate of Eastern Europe

Joseph Stalin, Secretary-general of the Communist party of the USSR (1922-1953), 1943

Source: Public Domain-U.S. Government

The Berlin Wall, 1986

Source: GNU license (user Theirry Noir)

U.S. President John F. Kennedy (fourth from right) visits the Berlin Wall in 1963

Source: Open Source-from the U.S. Government

A crane removes part of the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, 1989

Source: Public Domain-U.S. Government

A Statue of Stalin's Boots in Memento Park, Budapest, 2007

Source: GNU license (wikipedia.org)

A Romanian Flag with the Soviet Symbol, the Hammer and Sickle, cut out of the center during a protest in 1989

Source: Creative Commons License 2 (Poland)

Lech Walesa, Founder of Solidarity (an indepedent trade union in Poland), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and first President of Poland, 1990-1995

Source: Creative Commons License

Worker's Strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, 1980

Source: Public Domain (wikipedia.org)

Pope John Paul II's (Karol Józef Wojtyla) first trip to his native Poland as Pope, 1979

Source: Public Domain

A nearly empty meat store in Poland in the 1980s

Source: Public Domain

Polish Military Leader (1969-1985) Wojciech Jaruzelski declaring Marshall Law in Poland in 1981

Source: Public Domain

The 1989 Round Table Talks in Poland, where leaders of Solidarity and the Communist Party worked out a more shared system of government for Poland

Source: Public Domain

Nicolae Ceausescu, President of Romania from 1965-1989

Source: Creative Commons License

Stalin's toppled statue in Budapest during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Source: Fair Use, no other image available.

political poster produced by Hungarian Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats) in 1990. The poster suggests "Tessék választani" ("Let's choose") between kissing Communist leaders (USSR's Brezhnev and East Germany's Honecker) and kissing lovers

Source: Public Domain (wikipedia.org)

Alexander Dubcek, President of Czechoslovakia during 1968, the "Prague Spring"

Source: Fair Use, no other image available for public figure.

Vaclav Havel, First President of Czech Republic

Source: Public Domain (wikipedia.org)

An organized mass demonstration at Wenceslas Square in Prague during the Velvet Revolution, November 1989

Source: GNU license

Todor Zhivkov, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, 1954-1989

Source: Romanian National Archive

Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary of the Communist Party, 1953-1964 (1963)

Source: wikipedia.org

Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, 1964-1982

Source: Creative Commons 3.0 (wikipedia)

Remnants of the Berlin Wall in Potsdamer Platz, 2009. The white paint in the upper corner reads "At this place, the first hole in the Berlin Wall was created."

Source: Creative Commons (user Jorge Lascar)