EXPANDING AN IDEA (And ending up with Antifa)
1980 With Eastern and Central Europe firmly under Soviet control, Soros first began giving
scholarships to the handful of dissidents who dared to challenge the system, allowing
them to travel to study in the United States. He also began funding dissident groups such
as Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity labor union in Poland, and for the Sakharovs
and their allies in the Soviet Union.
1984 By the early 1980s, with Hungary in economic trouble, the Communist government allowed
Soros to establish a foundation that would offer open scholarships, and fund cultural
events and academic exchanges. The new foundation began spending around $3 million
a year, seeking when possible to support groups and individuals who were exploring the
limits of political and cultural tolerance.
1986 The Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev launched new policies of glasnost (openness) and
perestroika (restructuring), aimed at revitalizing an increasingly moribund one-party system.
That same year, Soros was allowed to open a private foundation in Poland, followed in 1987,
as restrictions eased, by an office in Moscow.
1989 The fall of the Berlin Wall in November was the culmination of a gradual collapse of
Communist control that began with Hungary’s removal of the 149 mile-long electric fence
on its border with Austria. The freedom to travel meant the end of the controlled economies
and politics of the East Bloc.
Soros was now able to open more than 20 national foundations across the region in what
he called an “explosive period of growth,” supported financially by the enormous success of
his hedge fund, creating the core of what has become today the Open
Society Foundations.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/george-soros-and-the-fall-of-communism-in-europe