Re:How the Berlin Wall Really Fell
by hga on Saturday November 08, 2014 @09:22AM
(#8576921)
It was clearly more directed at the USSR and specifically Gorbachev. Khrushchev and Ulbricht had unwisely created the concrete, so to speak, symbol of the evil empire, a very visible wall dividing a historic, major city. Where families trying to cross it were shot at, often successfully.
It had to have been terribly embarrassing to Gorbachev to be called out like that, and it strongly cut against many of his and the USSR's themes, e.g. if it's so great, why do you need that wall keeping people inside of your socialist worker's paradise?
Getting back to the 1989 fall, something stayed the hands of the USSR, unlike Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I believe it's impossible to make an honest case that Reagan had nothing to do with that.
It had to have been terribly embarrassing to Gorbachev to be called out like that, and it strongly cut against many of his and the USSR's themes, e.g. if it's so great, why do you need that wall keeping people inside of your socialist worker's paradise?
Getting back to the 1989 fall, something stayed the hands of the USSR, unlike Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I believe it's impossible to make an honest case that Reagan had nothing to do with that.