The rise of democratic movements across Eastern Europe in the 1980s, the arrival in power in Moscow of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, led to the downfall of Todor Zhivkov, who resigned as Communist Party leader on November 10, 1989. was succeeded by a new generation of leaders, who turned Bulgaria toward democracy and a market economy. Opposition parties and independent media began to spring up in Sofia, and the new leaders began to re-orient Bulgaria toward Western Europe and the United States.