Prof. Dr. Paul Betts

Paul Betts is Professor of Modern European History at Oxford University; he has published widely on Modern European and German history, including most recently Ruin and Renewal: Civilising Europe after 1945 (2020) (German Edition Ullstein) and Within Walls: Private Life in the GDR (2010). He has also co-edited 8 volumes, most recently a book (with Marcus Colla) on socialist space (2024).

Research Project

The Underside of the European Revolutions of 1989

Political scientists and historians have long identified 1989 as a novel form of revolution, one characterised not by blood and violence but rather peaceful protest and negotiated transition. But its apparent uniqueness has meant that it has been difficult to place historically. Paul Betts' project is an effort to revisit marginalised or forgotten aspects of the inheritance of 1989, especially in relation to some problems of the present. And in connection to LMU’s research project, it is worth remembering that the revolutionary annus mirabilis in East Central Europe contained aspects that were at once universal and particular, whether in relation to earlier revolutions or its export value as a potential template for other upheavals elsewhere, such as the Arab Spring. Yet the interpretative framework the universalism and particularism of 1989 has changed over time, often in reaction to subsequent political crises. What remains less analysed is how 1989 has evolved over the decades, particularly in light of efforts by commentators and politicians since the collapse of communism to isolate and protect its celebrated liberal democratic legacy from other less sanguine developments that year and shortly thereafter, such as the Turkish expulsions in Bulgaria, regicide in Romania as well as the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. While 1989 was initially treated as an instructive example of comparative regional history, this approach was eventually recast as a restricted and affirmative tale of East Central European “velvet revolutions” in the aftermath of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991, and then again after 9/11. Universalism and particularism were both inherent to the storytelling about 1989, but their meaning dramatically changed as the complex political understandings of 1989 changed over time.

Paul Betts | Walls, Doors and Bridges: A Changing Legacy of 1989 for Our Time