At the beginning of August in 1989, I officially became foreign editor. I asked Mike Kaufman, who had recently been the Times’ correspondent in Warsaw, to be my deputy. I was surprised at how little news there seemed to be at that particular time, and I sent a memo out to all correspondents, telling them that we were desperate to receive copy since I could guarantee that their stories would get in the paper right away and would not be on the overheld list for weeks as is often the case with features filed when there is a lot of news.
I was soon alerted to a story that was on the wires. Some East German tourists who had crossed into Hungary, ostensibly on vacation, were staging what amounted to a “sit-in” at the West German embassy in Budapest. They were able to go to Hungary because at that time tourists were free in Eastern Europe to cross the borders of fellow Communist states. But the East Germans wanted more than a vacation in Hungary. They wanted the Hungarians to open their other border and allow them to leave freely for Austria, now a Western democracy. It sounded like a very juicy story so I asked Serge Schmemann, then our Bonn correspondent, to go to Budapest and take a look, Serge was a bit restless in Bonn, and was fascinated by the developing story in Hungary. On September 10, as the number of East Germans in Hungary had grown, the Hungarian government “announced today that it is allowing thousands of East Germans who have refused to return home to leave for West Germany. It was another chapter and a dramatic one, in a summer-long exodus through the new Hungarian gap in the Communist frontier.”
The Hungarians, in their last party meeting, had indicated a more liberal outlook, in effect mirroring the Poles, who earlier in the year had announced moves toward democracy by voting out the ruling Communists. Things were changing and we decided on the foreign desk, to go along for the ride.
We could sense a movement towards freedom stirring in East Europe. I sought out all German-speaking correspondents on our staff to send to Central Europe, That included David Binder, who was in the Washington bureau, and had been our Bonn correspondent for years. I also asked Craig Whitney to go back to Europe to help out, as well as Henry Kamm, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnamese boat people after leaving Moscow. What we all could see was that the Russians under Gorbachev had decided not to try to prevent the break-up of their empire in Eastern Europe. As Serge wrote in a week-in-review piece: “What few expected was that the gap in what was once known as the Iron Curtain would touch off an extraordinary chain of events: the flight of thousands of East Germans, Hungary’s rejection of a thirty-year pact with East Germany, and ultimately the revival of the most fateful question hanging over Europe, the reunification of Germany.”
In East Germany, Erich Honecker, the 77-year old chief, was seriously ill, while the exodus exposed the popular disdain for his rule. As Schmemann wrote: “Until recently, it had been a matter of faith that Moscow would draw the line at any challenge to the leading role of an allied Communist Party, of any hint of neutrality in the Warsaw Pact. But when Poland jettisoned the Communists and when Hungary defied the East Germans, the Soviet Union did not intervene.” I have to admit that I was stunned when the Soviet leaders did not intervene in Eastern Europe. It all happened so quickly. Clearly Gorbachev had brought a new, more kindly Soviet Union to the world stage.
On November 9, 1989, the East Germans held a press conference in East Berlin, which Schmemann attended. He left before the ending so as not to be held up going back through the Wall to his hotel in West Berlin to file his story. Westerners could always go through the Wall at “Checkpoint Charlie.”
At the Times’ regular front page meeting that day, I noted the reports of the Wall about to be opened, and Max Frankel put the story as the lead of the paper. Then, about 9 P.M. just as the deadlines for the first edition were approaching, Schmemann called me from the Kampinski Hotel in West Berlin to tell me the Wall was now open. When I asked how he knew, he told me that his East German assistant, Victor Homola, had just showed up with his wife, to tell him. Twenty years later, long after I had retired from The Times, I did a podcast with Serge for the Council on Foreign Relations web site, on those days. It is still, to my ears, a valuable document:
https://www.cfr/podcasts/momentous-day-twenty-years-ago-berlin
I was told by my superiors that the foreign desk would get all the space it needed to cover the events inEastern Europe.
Meanwhile, with so much attention on the Germans, I wondered about the other countries in East Europe. I remember asking Clyde Haberman, then our correspondent in Rome, if he could “drop in” on Sofia, Bulgaria to see what was going on. Clyde had written in August about Bulgarian Turks fleeing the country. Clyde was reluctant but agreed to go. So on November 10, 1989, not only were we writing about the Berlin Wall being opened, but on that day, Todor Zhivkov, Eastern Europe’s longest serving leader, resigned as president and Communist Party leader in Bulgaria. Recently, Clyde and I had a laugh about this, since at the time, I was regarded as a genius for predicting all this, when in reality I had no idea Zhivkov would quit.
Events were moving quickly. In Prague, where R.W. (Johnny) Apple was minding our store, but we had to use an Associated Press story on the day of the biggest anti-Communist demonstration , November 17, 1989: “The largest anti-Government rally in more than 20 years ended in violence today when riot police officers attacked demonstrators in downtown Wenceslas Square.” During the rally, protestors shouted: “Dinosaurs resign” and “we want freedom and free elections! Communists get out.” Among those who were attacked was Paula Butturini, the fiancee of John Tagliabue, our chief Eastern Europe correspondent. She was working for the Chicago Tribune in Warsaw but had gone to Prague to cover the demonstrations. She required 15 stiches to her head but was released from the hospital. The protests continued. On November 20, 1989, Tagliabue reported that “more than 200,000 marchers called today for freedom and a change in government in the largest and most vociferous public demonstration since the euphoric Prague spring of 1968 which preceded the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.”
Four days later, Steven Greenhouse reported from Prague that the Communist Party’s leadership had resigned. And on December 29, 1989, Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovak writer whose insistence on speaking the truth about repression in his country had repeatedly cost him his freedom over the past 21 years, was elected president by the parliament in an event celebrated by the strong crowds outside the chamber as the redemption of their freedom, wrote Craig Whitney who had assumed the mantle of our chief correspondent at this time.
But just as light was shining on Czechoslovakia, we were getting reports of a large-scale anti-government uprising in Timisoara in western Romania, not far from the Hungarian border. We had no correspondents in Romania because we could not get visas earlier. But chaos was on the rise there. Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian Communist leader, was in Iran on a state visit when the uprising arose. I asked several of our correspondents to try to get to Bucharest as soon as possible. Tagliabue was driving into Romania with two other correspondents. When they reached Timisoara, John was shot with a bullet going through the car and through his side. His colleagues dropped him off at an aid station and kept driving toward Bucharest. I learned about this in the early morning of December 24 when I was awakened by a phone call from the foreign editor of the Chicago Sun-Times informing me of the shooting. I immediately phoned Serge Schmemann in Bonn, where he had gone for Christmas, and he immediately set out to get to John. He flew to Belgrade and from there drove to Timisoara. He was joined there by Paula Butturini. The Bonn bureau’s office manager Adele, arranged for the German Red Cross to fly a small plane to Timisoara to evacuate Tags, Paula and Serge. They flew to Munich where John ended up in a hospital for weeks. Paula believes the Romanians let the Red Cross plane land because they feared John might die from infections since they did not have the necessary antibiotics to treat him.
Meanwhile, our small detachment of correspondents who made it to Bucharest, Celestine Bohlen, John Kifner, and Haberman all covered the downfall and execution of Ceausescu and his wife. At the Times, we were very proud of the work of all the correspondents in Eastern Europe.
