The year of the crowd

1989 The year of the crowd

New Statesman editor Jason Cowley introduces a special issue on the year that saw the Berlin Wall come down

Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral

The funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini was not a tragedy, writes James Buchan, but a gruesome farce: idolatrous, makeshift, deadly and utterly lacking in self-control

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Trial by firing squad

“This was revolution in the usual style, with barricades and bloodshed.” Paul Davies recalls the Christmas he spent dodging bullets as the despised Ceausescu regime collapsed. Part of a New Statesman special on the Year of the Crowd

Hillsborough

Andrew Hussey recalls the tragedy that changed football and made it seem as if an obscure curse was being visited on the people of Liverpool. Part of a New Statesman special on the Year of the Crowd

Prague

'As political drama, the Velvet Revolution could not have been better scripted, and it was all expertly directed by Václav Havel'

Tiananmen Square

Many Chinese no longer wish to remember the day when Communist tanks burst in to Tiananmen Square and thousands of democracy campaigners were killed. But, says the award-winning novelist Yiyun Li, to ignore the events of 4 June is to turn away from the truths and lessons of history

A marketplace of outrage

British Muslims took to the streets and burned copies of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Here was an expression of Islamic fury and a portent of a new kind of conflict.

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