1990 Photo Contest, People in the News, 2nd prize
Photographer

Georges Mérillon

Gamma

01 July, 1989

At the Warsaw Pact meeting of 7 and 8 July 1989 in Bucharest, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev toasts to his host, president Nicolae Ceausescu. It was to be the last meeting between the two. At the summit in Bucharest, the Soviet Union officially gave up The Brezhnev Doctrine, which had limited the sovereignty and independence of the member states of the Warsaw Pact since 1968, when a Soviet invasion made an end to the Prague Spring. Instead, the Soviet Union announced a freedom of choice for each member to follow its own political line, strategy and tactics without external intervention. Six months later, the Romanian revolution erupted and the Communist government was overthrown. Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day 1989.

About the photographer

Georges Mérillon

French photographer Georges Mérillon (France, 1957) started his photographic career in 1980 as a freelance photographer for Géo magazine and Figaro magazine. In 1981, he was one ...

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