Hungary Was First Rip in Iron Curtain

The breaching of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month has become the symbol of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, the triumph of democracy. But sometimes I wonder if we actually know yet what we were witnessing.

I didn't see the wall come down, but I was in Hungary eight months earlier for what was in retrospect the beginning of the end of the Soviet system. At the time, we didn't know what we were seeing, but on March 15, 1989, I was part of a team from the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" on PBS, filming a crowd of demonstrators estimated at 100,000 who had flooded into the square that housed Magyar Televizio, Hungarian state television in Budapest. The people were carrying Hungarian flags and were there to deliver a petition demanding democratic rights.