Yesterday came and went with almost no mention that that day was the 28th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a shame. November 9th should be a National holiday. Or better yet, it should
be a worldwide holiday. It should rival a combination of New Years’ Eve
and the 4th of July. There should be concerts, dancing in the street,
Champagne toast, ringing of church bells, and fire works.
On
November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the world changed forever. As
the world watched, we did not know if Russia would send in troops to
put down the rebellion or not. We did not know if East German guards
would fire on their fellow citizens. In 1958 an uprising in Hungary was
crushed. In 1968 the Czech rebellion was likewise suppressed. As we
watched in 1989 it was hard to believe that the East German rebellion
would end differently, but there was reason to hope.
There
was reason to believe that there were few true believers in Communism
left behind the Iron curtain. Gorbachev, to save Communism, had launched
Perestroika and Glasnost, which had not saved Communism but sealed its
fate. The Soviets had been forced to realize that they could not
outspend the west in the arms race. The Solidarity union movement had
sprung up in Poland and not been crushed and Catholicism had a Polish
pope who was encouraging the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain to keep
the faith, and America had a president who said his goal was not to
co-exist with Communism but to defeat it. The West was more confident
and the East seemed exhausted.
With modern
communications and contact between the captive peoples of the East and
the free people of the West, Communist governments could no longer
convince their people that Communism was a superior way to organize
society. And, for the first time, attempts to spread Communism had
failed. From the tiny island of Granada, to Nicaragua, to Afghanistan,
attempts at expansion had met with failure. When the demonstrators in
East Germany began chipping away at the wall, the guards did not fire,
the Soviets did not send in tanks and the walls came tumbling down.
It
would still be a couple more years before the other Communist dominoes
fell, but one by one they did, except for the two dysfunctional
teetering states of North Korea and Cuba. China did not fall, but
morphed into a state that Marx or Mao would not recognize. It is only nominally communist. China became a mixed economy with an repressive authoritarian
one-party government that daily continues to change.
From
the time of the establishment of the first Communist state in Russia in
1917, Communism had steadily grown taking country by county until by
the time of the fall of the Berlin wall 34% of the worlds populations
lived under Communist domination. And by peaceful means, Communism was
gaining ground in much of the west with “Euro-communism” gaining
acceptance and becoming parties in coalition governments. For more than
seventy years, freedom had been on the defensive and Communism had been
ascending.
During that time, approximately 100 million people were killed with a brutal efficiency. Approximately
65 million were killed in China under Mao Zedong, 25 million in
Leninist and Stalinist Russia, 2 million in Cambodia, and millions more
in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. This was accomplished by
mass murders, planned famines, working people to death in labor camps,
and other ruthless methods. From the thousands of Cossacks slaughtered
on the orders of Lenin to the victims of Mao’s “land reform” the totals
mounted. In addition to the millions of deaths, many more millions spend
part of their lives in prison in the Gulag of Russia and the
reeducation camps of Vietnam and China. Those who never spend part of
their life in real prisons, lived in societies with secret police,
enforced conformity, thought control, fear, scarcity, and everyone
spying on everyone else.
While the world looked with
horror on the approximate 11 million victims of Hitler’s Europe, for
some reason less attentions was paid to the 100 million victims of
Communist tyranny. While the Nazi era lasted for only 11 years, the
Communist terror began in 1917 and continues to this day. The story
would be complete if the last Communist regime fell, but the fall of the
Berlin Wall is a landmark event. By the fall of the wall, it was clear
that Communism was not the wave of the future and that freedom would
survive in the world.
Not only would freedom survive in
the world, but the world itself would survive. It is easy to forget
what a dangerous place the world was on the eve of the fall of the
Berlin Wall. The world's nuclear stockpiles had grown to 70,000
warheads, with an average destructive power about 20 times that of the
weapons that were dropped on Japan. One deranged colonel, one failure of
a radar system, or one misreading of intentions could have led to
events that destroyed the world. We were one blink away from destruction
of life on earth. If there is any event in the history of world worthy
of celebrating, it should be the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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