The primary cause of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the culmination of political, social, and economic unrest in East Germany and across Eastern Europe. By the late 1980s, citizens had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the repressive communist regime, leading to widespread protests for democratic reforms. The influence of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in the Soviet Union encouraged reform movements in Eastern Bloc countries. On November 9, 1989, a botched announcement regarding travel restrictions led to masses gathering at the Wall, and overwhelmed border guards allowed people to cross, symbolizing the end of the Cold War division.