It's the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was a senior in high school when the Berlin Wall fell. I was in college when the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. I went to Russia shortly thereafter. I grew up a child of the Cold War. It was always the US against the Soviets and that was just how the world was going to be. Then it all fell down.
I remember sitting in my debate class and watching the special report on the news. I clearly remember Tom Brokaw talking about the wall coming down. I remember the images of people standing atop the wall with sledge hammers. I was a long way removed from the events that were happening in Berlin. But, as it turns out, not that far away. My neighbors went to Berlin when the wall was coming down. They had taken a trip to Europe and were in Berlin at a fortuitous time. When they came home, they brought me piece of the wall. I have it. It is sitting on top of my entertainment center. It's a small piece of concrete. But it's part of world history.
My sophomore year in high school, the debate topic was the United States should adopt a policy to increase political stability in Latin America. At the time, there were economists here that were predicting the downfall of the Soviet Union economically, which would lead to the fall of the Soviet government and system. At the time, I really didn't believe that would happen, but it made a good case to say that the U.S. would step in and take care of Cuba when the Soviet Union fell. No one believed it would actually happen. But it did.
And it started with a wall coming down that had separated a city for 18 years. The wall was built shortly after John Kennedy took office. He took a lot of criticism at the time for not doing anything about the East Germans/Soviets building the wall. Berlin had been a divided city since the end of World War II, when it was divided into zones. The U.S., British, French and Soviet zones. It was consolidated into West versus East. Berlin was the flash point of Cold War relations and a microcosm of the rest of the U.S. versus U.S.S.R conflict.
It's funny to have to explain to Patrick what the Cold War was. What the Berlin Wall was. What it symbolized. He was born well after the fall of the Soviet Union. His experience with the Cold War will be relegated to what he reads from my book shelves or in his history texts.
The fall of the Berlin wall is one of those defining moments of my generation. Everyone I know remembers where they were when they saw it happen. It was like Tienanmen Square. The images are burned into your psyche. I cannot believe that it has been twenty years since the Wall came down. I cannot believe that it has been almost twenty years since I graduated from high school. While I wouldn't want to live that time over, I can't believe how quickly it fades into history.
Are we better off for the Soviet Union having collapsed? Arguments can be made both ways. Are we better off that Germany is one and there is no longer a wall dividing Berlin? I think so. The transition for most Iron Curtain countries has been hard. They were left in political and economic ruin with no infrastructure to build anew. But. The issues of oligarchy and tyranny still exist, they have just taken different forms. The world is definitely not a safer place. The forces that seek to destroy us with dirty bombs and suicide attacks have an easier time planning and executing. It's a trade-off. But I have hope. I have hope that the forces of peace and democracy will spread through the world and at some point in our future, we won't have such problems. I know that's a pollyanna way of looking at the world, but I never thought the Berlin Wall would come down and that would be the beginning of the end of the Soviet system. Stranger things have happened.
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