The Fall of Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

On a day like today, I have a hard time lamenting what we've lost from the fall of the Soviet Union and its grip on Eastern Europe.

 

The original post about it beat yours by 20 years. I think it's in the Unsorted forum now.

Still, it's pretty cool, except I'll have to hear people give all the credit to Ronald Reagan again. (Oh no! What have I done?! )

 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(song)

 

I was young but I remembered the overwhelming optimism people felt when the cold war ended.

What the heck happened?

 

somewhere i have a pic of me urinating on Die Mauer.

 

I have some Russian friends. Most of them are depressed about Russia's future. If you ask them the significance of what happened 20 years ago in their country, they will probably tell you it only made the country worse. So short-term wise, the significance of dissolution of USSR may be just a strategic win to the Western powers. It is hard to see at this point into the future how Russia will take off thanking to this fundamental change.

 

I have recently met some russian friends during my worldwide travel and it seems like their biggest fear is to become "westernized". I think many of them are upset about the fall of the Soviet Union. I get the feeling that they miss it. They are such a completely nationalistic group of people. They love their country and their people. They like the idea of keeping Russia pure.

I'm still learning, but this is the most interesting group of people I've ever ran across.

 

I think there are some things that have transpired in Russia since the dissolution that are worse (like leaning back toward authoritarianism with Putin). I don't think that was inevitable after the collapse of the USSR, and there was reason to hope for something better than they got. Still, I think they'd be wrong to think still living in the USSR would be better than what they've got now, even if it is corrupt and inequitable. The conditions in the USSR were worse, their trajectory was worse, and they weren't sustainable anyway. And to make the transition without blood was fabulous.

 

Well Nuclear war was averted which we were teetering on the brink of for years and years.

How was this ending and the US gaining its place as the global superpower not a good thing. You guys suck.

We showed that Capitalism wins and Communism/Extreme Socialism fails.

We won. Take some pride in our victory this close to Veterans day!

 

Russians could not relive the history course that was not chosen. Maybe it is true their complaints about today is a testament to their disappointment in today, not a praise of the past.
However we, outsiders, cannot argue with people who have lived in both eras, and tell them they are wrong in concluding which era is better. By what standard can we tell them that? We cannot say what happened in the West will inevitably happen in Russia. The current affair clearly shows that Russian by and large are worse-off than there were in the Soviet era.

 

It's a subject close to my heart because I was once a history major studying the Soviet Union. I spent a year writing my thesis on the economic liberalization under Gorbachev and its impact on the collapse of the Soviet Union. I'm not Russian, but I can't help having an opinion on it.

When I do meet Russians, I can't help but ask them about how they feel about the collapse of the USSR, and answers vary widely. They have the benefit of first-hand experience, but (as a result) I don't think they have the perspective. There is a lot of emotion caught up in it. Some romanticize their old superpower status or lost culture, others fixate on the Soviet malaise (no one working hard), or poverty, or their own religious persecution. I also face an anecdote bias -- I talk to Russians who have ended up living or visiting the US.

In any case, the collapse wasn't something they chose - it happened to them. Something was going to have to happen to the USSR; they couldn't continue as they were. And, this is what ended up happening. They may wish it didn't happen, like NOLA might wish Katrina never hit them. They need to make the most of it now, whether it was good or bad for them.

 

Thanks for sharing this experience. I too would like to see Russia prosper under a democratic process.

It saddens me, however, whenever I hear and read stories about personal experiences in Russia such as how people lost their property because mafia forge property deeds, how school teacher end up being beggars on the street. I can't stop asking myself all these changes were for what? It brought me to tear and anger when I read Gorbachev wrote that he himself regretted choosing this course for Russia.

You mentioned perspective. But it's hard to ask any single Russian to evaluate the change beyond its personal perspective. And is there a perspective that can trump all personal perspectives?

 

Why is it that the Soviet Union couldn't have continued as they were? What would have eventually happened in your opinion if they had remained?

 

Are their any Russians or FSU members on CF.net? If so I'd love to hear from them about this topic....

 

I saw where Prime Minister Merkel praised Gorbachev and the crowd chanted: "Gorby", "Gorby". He deserved it.

I just wish Obama would have the courage to take such a dramtic step and bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan instead of what looks like chickening out and splitting the difference between sending the full amount of troops that the war mongers want and what I think he knows in his heart should be done

 

I never thought Germany would be allowed to reunite. I particularly didn't think the Russians would ever even consider it.

It's interesting how things can change in such a short amount of time.

 

Essentially because communism doesn't work. Which I don't say as a capitalist idealogue, because I started college as a sympathizer and I do see some merits in the system even still. But, the system the Soviets had created a horrendously inefficient economy.

They had a joke: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us!" There was little consideration given to whether the work individuals did was worthwhile or not. So, a lot of people were spinning their wheels (or drinking vodka and pretending to spin their wheels) doing work that didn't need to be done and not generating enough real wealth to keep the economic engine running. One reform that Gorbachev had intiated was measuring whether farms were profitable or not, remediating unprofitable farms, and closing farms if they could not become profitable. But, they didn't start that until 1985! (And, that program was problematic even then.) Before that, whether a farm was profitable or not didn't matter to anyone. The private gardens allowed to farmers (from which they could sell produce in a somewhat free but small-scale market) were 10 times as productive as the cooperatives they worked on for their day jobs. That's just a taste. The accountability just wasn't there.

The impact is that the wealth wasn't there, and the development was lagging too. The wealth gap between east and west was growing by a lot. If they kept on like that, the poverty vis a vis the West would have caused unrest (imagine what the internet would have done) and brought the thing down anyway -- in fact, I'd say that's what did happen, to an extent.

As for perspective, it's history so no one is right. I disagree with some Russians about the meaning of their own history. We're all wrong somewhere, but that shouldn't keep us from trying to understand it -- and keep from repeating it.