(The body of Emperor Shōwa is carried to its tomb)
The State Funeral of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) was held on the 24th February 1989. It put an end to a monumental period in Japanese history – the Shōwa Era – which was marked by both Japan’s ascent and decline as a world power. At the beginning of his reign, Shōwa presided over a militaristic and authoritarian Japanese Empire, emboldened by its conquest of Russian and German colonies in Asia. A decade after his accession Japan would invade China, using the staged Mukden Incident as justification for its actions, an act that Shōwa sponsored personally. The Japanese government, and subsequently Emperor Shōwa himself, made every effort to portray the invasion of China as an ‘Incident’ rather than an invasion as to not have international laws regulate Japan’s military conduct. Shōwa personally issued orders to utilise chemical weapons multiple times during the conflict and also issued a decree authorising the expansion of the infamous Unit 731, whose brutality is often compared to, or even claimed to exceed, the German SS units. In the aftermath of the Second World War and Japan’s defeat, Emperor Shōwa was forced by US occupation forces to publicly declare his humanity, denouncing his own divinity, the basis of Imperial rule in Japan since 660 BC, that the Imperial house was descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, and that the Emperor was her incarnation. In the post-war period, Emperor Shōwa was reduced to little more than a figurehead. He often made appearances at public events and performed in the roles of a constitutional monarch; however, he held no real power.
At 9:35 AM a black hearse carrying the body of Emperor Shōwa left the Imperial Palace, accompanied by a sixty car procession, for the two-mile drive to Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, where all Japanese Emperors had been interned since Emperor Taishō. Over 800,000 spectators lined the route of the procession, and 32,000 special police officers were mobilised for the event. Upon arrival to Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, the Emperor was interned in his coffin, and the funeral rites were conducted. After the rites were complete, the state funeral began. A minute of silence was held across Japan, after which a eulogy was delivered, and foreign delegations were allowed to pay their respects at the altar. Both
US President George H.W Bush and
Soviet General Secretary Romanov attended the state funeral of Emperor Shōwa. The attendance of General Secretary Romanov was a shock to the Western world, the USSR and Japan, while growing closer over the past decade, were still greatly at odds with each other, especially over the disputed Kuril Islands. General Secretary Romanov was the only head of state from a socialist nation to attend the funeral and many nations of the Eastern Bloc, such as Romania, refused outright to send delegates. Japanese-Soviet relations warmed considerably after the event; however, the Japanese government maintained their position that no official cooperation with the USSR could take place until the issue of the Kuril Islands was firmly resolved.
The Eurovision Song Contest 1989 was held on the 6th May 1989 in the Palais de Beaulieu, Lausanne, Switzerland. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR). The winner of the contest was Yugoslavia, with their hit song “Rock Me” composed by Yugoslavian songwriter Rajko Dujmić, written by Stevo Cvikić and performed by Yugoslavian band Riva. This was Yugoslavia’s first contest victory in their twenty-five years competing in the competition, and it brought international attention to Yugoslav artists and the developing rock music scene in the country. “Rock Me” was also popularised by the contest victory, and it quickly became a hit in the Eastern Bloc. The popularity of the music as well as a rapidly developing interest in western music within the USSR led to renewed interest within the USSR in Eurovision, as well as the now defunct Intervision, a communist alternative held sporadically in the Eastern Bloc.
The Letter of the Six was an open letter addressed to Nicolae Ceaușescu signed by six former high-ranking members of the Romanian Communist Party in March 1989. These six were: Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Silviu Brucan, Corneliu Mănescu, Constantin Pîrvulescu and Grigore Răceanu. The six politicians had met in early 1988 in a Bucharest park to discuss a united initiative against Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. They continued to meet in secret, in parks and public places to avoid surveillance by the Romanian secret police – the Securitate. In his memoirs, Silviu Brucan claimed that he had come up with the initiative, and alongside Apostol began conspiring against Ceaușescu. Their plan was to write an open letter to Ceaușescu, denouncing his leadership and calling for his resignation. Despite this initial plan, it became quickly apparent to the six that they would not be able to gather enough signatures to threaten Ceaușescu, and Bârlădeanu later claimed that Brucan acted alone, that the other five signatories had pulled out their support months before, and that they did not want Brucan to gather support from western nations. Regardless, Brucan visited the embassy of the United States, and secured permission from the Romanian government to visit the USA in June 1988. The US Department of State was enthusiastic about the idea and advised him to publish it after returning to Romania. After receiving support from the US government, Brucan then travelled to the United Kingdom, giving talks at Oxford and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, as well as having meetings at the British Foreign Office to discuss British support for his plan. Finally, Brucan travelled to Moscow to meet
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Gorbachev, in an hour-long meeting, where Brucan received assurances that should Brucan and his co-conspirators succeed in rallying the Romanian Communist Party against Ceaușescu, the USSR would not intervene. Upon his return from Moscow, Brucan was arrested by the Securitate at the border, however he was let go. The Letter of the Six was broadcasted on Radio Free Europe, BBC Radio, and the Voice of America. Addressed to Ceaușescu, it was a left-wing critique of his policies and his government and compared Romania’s economic situation to Africa. Immediately after it’s publication, all six of the letter’s signatories were arrested by the Securitate and were denounced as foreign agents.
(Protesters gather on Rustaveli Avenue, demanding the restoration of the Georgian Democratic Republic)
The April 9th Tragedy, or the April 9th Massacre, refers to the police handling of a protest-turned-riot in Tbilisi, Georgia, 1989. In the previous years, the various independence and nationalist groups found across the USSR had emerged from the shadows and became an established political force, thanks to the political reforms of
General Secretary Romanov. 1988 especially saw a surge in anti-Soviet political activity, as new reforms allowed for the creation of recognised political organisations outside of the CPSU, as well as formalised processes for them to organise demonstrations. One of the major Georgian nationalist organisations – the
Georgian Unity League (GUL) took advantage of new demonstration reforms to organise a protest in the early days of April, however they could not come to an agreement with local authorities on the duration of the protest, as local authorities refused to allow them to protest for more than a week, nor to protest along central streets, fearing disruption to city infrastructure. Regardless, the GUL went ahead with its plans to protest. On the morning of April 4th, thousands of Georgians gathered on Rustaveli Avenue, the man thoroughfare of Tbilisi, to protest against “Soviet occupation”. Despite the demonstration’s illegal nature, authorities did not disperse the protesters, fearing igniting a riot. By April 9th, the protests had grown to seven-thousand strong and were becoming more tense by the hour, despite the best efforts of the authorities to contain the demonstration without using force the situation had become untenable. On the morning of April 9th, at 3:45AM, local militsiya accompanied by contingents of the Soviet Armed Forces, established a cordon around the area of demonstration with orders to disperse the protesters by any means necessary. It would later be claimed that protesters had attacked first with rocks and metal chains, however accounts vary. The government forces, allegedly in response to this aggression, attacked the protesters with batons and in the case of the military, spades. One of the victims, a sixteen year old girl, tried to run away from the advancing police and military, but was chased down and beaten to death. Her body was dragged from the scene from her mother, who was also seriously wounded. The attack was recorded on video by locals from the balcony of a nearby building and was widely spread in the aftermath of the incident. CS gas was also used against fleeing protesters, which in severe causes caused permanent paralysis or even death from respiratory problems. The stampede of escaping protesters following the attack killed a further nineteen people, autopsies conducted later concluded that, with the exception of one, all had died by suffocation compounded by the use of CS gas. The sheer brutality of the protest’s suppression, as well as the cruelty and malice displayed by members of the Soviet Armed Forces in pursuing protesters shocked the world.
The United Front of Burmese Peoples (UFBP) was a political alliance founded between the Burmese Communist Party and the National Democratic Front on May 4th 1989. The National Democratic Front (NDF) was a splinter group from the socialist National Democratic United Front (NDUF), a merger of the communist BCP and the ethnic interest Karen National Union (KNU). The KNU and the BCP were originally enemies, as the BCP regarded the KNU as ethnic reactionaries aimed at destabilising Burma for bourgeois interests, however, overtime the KNU slowly shifted towards Maoist ideology, isolating it from it’s former allies. In 1959 a military alliance was formed between the two in the form of the NDUF, which later came to include other parties as well as the KNU and BCP, such as the New Mon State Party (NMSP). The NDUF lasted until 1976, when KNU broke away from the BCP to form the aforementioned National Democratic Front (NDF). The NDUF had been plagued with infighting from its conception, especially on the issue of ethnic autonomies for Burma’s various peoples, with the BCP wishing to establish a unitary Burmese state, and the KNU wishing to implement federalism. In the wake of the 8888 uprising, with Soviet support secured, the BCP again reached out to its former comrades in the NDF to form a united front against the ruling military council. The establishment of the UFBP also included the formation of a common armed wing, as the forces of the NDF and other ethnic resistance groups were folded into the communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Shipments of weapons from the USSR have already arrived in UFBP forward bases in India, and it seems a new armed campaign will begin in the near future.