Impact

(Moorhouse)

Illustration depicting the fall of the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Berlin Wall created significant impacts on the continent of Europe. One day before the country of Germany reunified a strip of the Berlin Wall was put under monument protection (“The Berlin Wall Memorial”). Then, almost one year after the Berlin Wall fell, East and West Germany decided to reunify on October 3, 1990, making the country of Germany whole again. A year after that, in December of 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved and split into fifteen independent republics with the Russian Federation being the largest. This paved the way for several developments of many Central and Eastern European countries. In that same year, Yugoslavia broke up into seven independent republics which would later become countries. After the demise of Yugoslavia, the European Union (EU) was established in 1992 by the Maastricht Treaty which laid the groundwork for a common currency and a common defense in the continent of Europe. Four years after the Berlin Wall fell, in 1993, Czechoslovakia would split into two republics, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in what was known as the “Velvet Divorce” (McBride).