Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife are captured and executed in a Romanian uprising

Alexander Dubcek is Speaker of Parliament and Václav Havel is President in the new democratic government of Czechoslovakia

Boris Yeltsin, impatient with the pace of reform under Gorbachev, resigns from the Communist party

Solidarnośc leader Lech Walesa wins Poland's first free presidential election

Former Communist Boris Yeltsin is elected leader of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic

Boris Yeltsin foils a hard-line Communist coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, on holiday at the time in the Crimea

Civil war in Somalia topples the Marxist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre

Eight more Soviet Socialist republics vote to join the three founder members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the defunct USSR, handing power to Boris Yeltsin as president of the new Russian republic

Marxist guerrillas in Colombia, in partnership with drug cartels, control much of the south of the country

The European Union lifts the ban on providing arms to the rebels in Syria