Free Republic

Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes. The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone. It was the most dramatic, life-affirming...

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, but few of the news stories marking the anniversary have explained the event's full significance. The Cold War had been raging for 14 years before the wall went up on Aug. 13, 1961. How could its collapse, on Nov. 9, 1989, have heralded the Cold War's demise? Berlin was always the centerpiece of the Cold War and, more often than many remember, very nearly the front line of real combat. At the end of World War II, the city was divided into four sectors, each occupied by one of the four allied...

With Monday marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan's son Michael tells Newsmax that his father was deeply troubled by the wall from the night it was first erected. Michael Reagan also said President Barack Obama's decision not to attend the anniversary ceremonies in Berlin is "sad," but "completely consistent" with Obama. On June 12, 1987, President Reagan delivered a rousing speech near the Berlin Wall in which he challenged the leader of the Soviet Union: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Less than 2 1/2 years later, on Nov. 9, 1989, the wall...

Years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were sitting in a backyard near Stanford, where Shultz was teaching. The two men discussed what they thought was the turning point in ending the Cold War. Gorbachev said it was two leaders — he and President Ronald Reagan — sitting in a room together, talking. Shultz said it was Reagan’s decision to show military might in 1983 by sending missiles to West Germany. “The strength we put on display was never used,” Shultz said. “Strength works hand in...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

The 20th anniversary of the 1989 East European revolutions has re-opened contentious debate over who won the Cold War and what caused Soviet communism to disintegrate so rapidly in its final years. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a symbolic milestone, heralding the break-up of the Soviet Union two years later. Looking back, many people directly involved are still asking: Was Soviet communism defeated? Was it overthrown? Or did it simply collapse from within? The rapid succession of events which marked the end of the Cold War is not in dispute. Poland's historic roundtable talks between...

The Berlin Wall was the physical representation of the "Cold War." The structure across the city of Berlin was not built to protect Communist Germany from the forces of freedom, it was constructed to keep the East Germans from fleeing communism. During the 750th anniversary of the founding of the city of Berlin, President Reagan explained the reasons the wall had to come down We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make...

In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (11). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world." But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama...

For nearly three decades the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War - it divided a city and in effect the entire country. And then on November 9, 1989 it crumbled and with it Communist East Germany and the Cold War itself. On the outskirts of Berlin lies the Glienicke Bridge. It spans the Havel River and connects Berlin to the neighboring city of Potsdam. Its idyllic setting belies a darker history. During the height of the Cold War, it was known as the Bridge of Spies - where communist and western officials exchanged secret agents that had...

BERLIN (Reuters) – George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl paid their respects to the ordinary people who were behind the peaceful revolution of 1989 that brought down the Berlin Wall at an emotional ceremony in Berlin on Saturday. The three statesmen from the United States, Soviet Union and West Germany -- whose steady-handed leadership paved the way for the Wall's opening on November 9, 1989 -- recalled the heady events that led to the end of the Cold War at a ceremony attended by 1,800 people. "We Germans don't have very much in our history to be proud of,"...

Michael Barone finds it odd that Barack Obama can go to Oslo and Copenhagen for mainly personal reasons, but somehow can’t find the time to travel to Berlin to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — the climax of the Cold War and the West’s triumph. Given the key role played by the US in the collapse of Soviet Communism, people have good cause to wonder why the leader of the free world can find time to pick up an award for himself and pitch his hometown to the International Olympic Committee, but not to...

President Barack Obama declined to participate in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of fall of Communism in Europe, saying he has “mixed feelings” about the event and “too little time to spare.” “On the one hand, Communism did some brutal things,” Obama acknowledged. “On the other hand, they had some noble goals and made some important progress toward achieving them.” Among the noble goals achieved according to the President were “the provision of universal health care, free college education, and the elimination of capitalistic greed. We can only hope to do as well in our country.” The president cited...

Twenty years later, historians still can't figure out why the West won.The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Michael Meyer, New York: Scribner, 272 pages, $26The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann, New York: Viking, 416 pages, $27.95 We don’t know the exact hierarchy of motives, but it is certain that Chris Gueffroy was willing to leave his family and friends to avoid conscription into the army. Considering the associated risks, it’s likely that the 20-year-old was also strongly motivated...

[excepts] Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year. " The ubiquitous Trabant or Trabi, East Germany's legendary plastic car with its clattering two-stroke engine, was a favorite butt of jokes as well. Like this one: "A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow." The jokes gave insights into what ordinary East Germans were thinking about their regime and about current events. The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 spawned a new proverb, for example: If the farmer falls off...

The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more? On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country's militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righteous citizen dismantling of the...

As she ended a two-day visit to Russia designed to further improve the Obama administration's already warm relations with Moscow, Mrs. Clinton issued a rare rebuke of some of her colleagues in Washington, though she did not name them. "We have people in our government, and you have people in your government, who are still living in the past," she told a hall packed with hundreds of students at Moscow State University. "They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other, and we have to prove them wrong." .......

The government is very touchy about its nuclear weapons, apparently because it's only the nukes that can dissuade a foreign nation threatening invasion. The Russian armed forces can do it, as it has shrunk 80 percent since the end of the Cold War in 1991, and fallen apart as well. Lack of money means that Russian military technology has not kept up. This includes the nuclear weapons. While Russia got the new Topol M ICBM into service since 1991, this was a Cold War era project, meant to replace the older, and much less effective and reliable ICBMs. But while...

The first tank phalanx receives inspection in a parade of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Chang'an Street in central Beijing China today celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism. Tiananmen Square became a hi-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey 'Mao' suit, and the Communist Party leadership watching the...

Lot’s have been said about how divided and “angry” America is these days. But has anyone really asked: why? The answer is rather simple: years of pure political cowardice in actually governing reality. There is a truth in saying that the division that now roils the nation is the by-product of that freakish time known as the 1960s. Arguably, it was during this time that the great division between competing American visions was sewn. But it is also a convenient argument to make this snapshot of history the political and cultural scapegoat for what came after. There is no need...

Meat from Swedish stockpiles dating back to the Cold War has been sold to Poland to be served in restaurants, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper. The Swedish state phased out its stockpiles of tinned meat at the end of the 1990s. The Swedish Board of Agriculture then sold 1.5 million kilograms of the meat, which dates back up to 27 years, to a Swedish trading company. The meat was offloaded on the condition that it could only be sold as food outside of the European Union. Within the EU it could be classified only as...

In the early 1980s, according to newly released documents, Fidel Castro was suggesting a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States, until Moscow dissuaded him by patiently explaining how the radioactive cloud resulting from such a strike would also devastate Cuba. The cold war was then in one of its chilliest phases. President Ronald Reagan had begun a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert as a means of developing new arms. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war. Dozens of books warned...

Written June of 1916 We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main...

Link only, due to Wired's copyright complaints. Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday MachineI'm posting this without any text, because I think it's important. The "Doomsday" machine is apparently real, and still operational. Read the article for more details.

Written in English before November 9 1915 Dear Comrades! We are extremely glad to get your leaflet. Your appeal to the members of the Socialist Party to struggle for a new International, for clear-cut revolutionary socialism as taught by Marx and Engels, and against the opportunism, especially against those who are in favor of working class participation in a war of defence, corresponds fully with the position our party (Social-Democratic Labor Party of Russia, Central Committee) has taken from the beginning of this war and has always taken during more than ten years. We send you our sincerest greetings &...

Image: Jim MerithewAfter the end of World War Two, tension and mistrust continuously grew between the USSR and its satellite states versus a western coalition led by the USA. A game of one-upmanship, lasting almost 50 years, developed with each group inventing stronger and more deadly weapons in an attempt to hold a military advantage.Alongside this military might developed a deep-seated fear of what would happen if there ever was an enemy strike. As a result, both nations went on a massive building campaign of bomb shelters, nuclear fallout sites and bunkers. Not to mention all the missile sites and...

How and why the surviving heirs of the Soviet monster are alive and well.Twenty years ago, the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe began to fall one by one -- so quickly that the coming months will be very dense with 20th anniversaries of great historic events. That was the final battle of the Cold War, where the Iron Curtain was finally broken, and the monstrous Soviet Empire ruined. Freedom triumphed in Europe at last. Or so it seemed. For the next twenty years have shown that that victory was not as final as many hoped during that momentous autumn of...

England, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- British aviation regulators say the investigation into the accidental takeoff of a vintage Cold War bomber is closed.

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification. The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a...

With due respect, I think Charles Krauthammer had it badly wrong on Van Jones when he said (see post below), "I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist." It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy...

When new information about Americans who had cooperated with the Soviet KGB began to emerge in the 1990s, no individual case generated as much controversy as that of the journalist I.F. Stone, who had long been installed in the pantheon of left-wing heroes as a symbol of rectitude and a teller of truth to power before his death in 1989. Charges about Stone’s connections with the KGB have been swirling about for more than a decade, prompting cries of outrage among his passionate followers. Until now, the evidence was equivocal and subject to different interpretations. No longer.In the early 1990s,...

Some would go farther and say that the memorandum from Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB that was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR, outlining a secret proposal made by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviets to help them "understand Reagan" in return for their help in making him president, constitutes treason. It's not a word to throw around lightly and the reason I refrain from using it is because I am unsure Kennedy's actions meet the definition. Kennedy was not in direct contact with Andropov, using his good friend John Tunney, former...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. "On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged...

Sweetness and Light is forbidden, where they have the complete text of the letter, so, here's a repost from 2006. Text of KGB Letter on Senator Ted Kennedy Special Importance Committee on State Security of the USSR 14.05.1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV Moscow Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Comrade Y.V. Andropov Comrade Y.V. Andropov On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of...

The Logan Act is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. It was passed in 1799 and last amended in 1994. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years. The text of the Act is broad and is addressed at any attempt of a US citizen to conduct foreign relations without authority. In the Early 1980's President Ronald Reagan was Isolating the Soviet Union, while rearming the US at a pace that the USSR could not keep up with. His strategy, resulted...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. "On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged...

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end. He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived. Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne. Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969...

The death of Sen. Edward M. “Teddy� Kennedy this week marks the end of an American political era colored in crayon by the media-generated notion of American royalty.  Ted Kennedy will be laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery, the last of the three Kennedy brothers who once dominated the American political landscape, and the only one of the four Kennedy brothers to live to see his fifties. As his fellow liberals attempt to shove the national takeover of health care through Congress, even suggesting renaming the bill after Kennedy in a memorial tribute, it becomes urgent to set aside the...

The death of Sen. Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy this week marks the end of an American political era colored in crayon by the media-generated notion of American royalty. As his fellow liberals attempt to shove the national takeover of health care through Congress, even suggesting renaming the bill after Kennedy in a memorial tribute, it becomes urgent to set aside the perfunctory kind words one usually says about the departed -- regardless of truth. A whitewash of Kennedy’s history cannot be used as an emotional power play to push through government-run health care in his “honor.” Documents found in Soviet...

When Russian Prime Minister Viadimir Putin crossed into Georgia without permission on August 13,2009. it was one more action to test the strength of President Barack Obama. The last time Putin did something like this was when he traveled to South Ossetia, just days after Obama spoke in Moscow.

In honor of the Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Brain Tumor completing its task, here is Herb Rommerstein's exposé of Ted Kennedy's traitorous collaboration with the Soviet KGB, originally published in Human Events in December 2003. Following Mr. Romerstein's article is the full text of the letter he references from KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov regarding Mr. Kennedy's collaboration with the KGB.Even long-time Bush watchers were surprised when former President [George H. W.] Bush presented an award to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) at a time when the far-left senator was involved in a full-scale series of attacks...

There are some important reports found in Soviet archives, after the collapse of the Communist dictatorship, that provide an interesting insight into the character of the senior senator from Massachusetts. One of the documents, a KGB report to bosses in the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, revealed that "In 1978, American Sen. Edward Kennedy requested the assistance of the KGB to establish a relationship" between the Soviet apparatus and a firm owned by former Sen. John Tunney (D.-Calif.). KGB recommended that they be permitted to do this because Tunney's firm was already connected with a KGB agent in France named...

I would like to ask if any Freeper lives in a home with a Cold War era bomb shelter? If so, what is it used for now? Still an emergency shelter or just for storage? The reason I ask is I live in Queens, NY and growing up in the 80s and 90s I still saw what I assume were Cold War era early warning sirens - painted Green and buildings with the fall out shelter radiation sign. I visited some of these areas recently and the apartment building that had that used to have that fall out shelter sign...

To everyone who knew him, Ronald Struve was not the kind of man who would one day be arrested by federal agents and, at age 67, be sent off to prison for four years on weapons charges. .... But during the decades of the Cold War, Struve also sincerely believed that it was only a matter of time before the Soviets or the Red Chinese came storming onto American soil to conquer our way of life. So quietly, Struve collected an arsenal and stuck it away in rented storage lockers in Bellevue and Spokane: grenade launchers, dozens of grenades and...

Participants in a very eventful picnic gather for its 20th anniversary at the Austro-Hungarian border. Twenty years ago Wednesday, Hungarian Border Guard Arpad Bella was standing in front of that gate in his summer uniform, pistol at his side, awaiting the arrival of a special delegation of Austrian visitors. Bella’s men had been told to be on the lookout. Meanwhile, reformers within Hungary’s Communist Party had given local democracy activists permission to organize a symbolic event on the border — a “pan-European picnic” in which they would share food, wine and declarations of cooperation with their Austrian neighbors. With foreign...

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Moscow accused the United States of hysteria today after reports that Russian nuclear submarines were patrolling off the East Coast of America. Russian officials responded vehemently to accusations that they were dabbling in Cold War-style cat-and-mouse manoeuvring but did not deny that two vessels had entered international waters just 200 miles of the US coast. “Activities of Russian submarines in the world’s oceans outside their own waters do not violate international maritime law and are within normal practice,” a military-diplomatic source told the Russian state media. US defence and intelligence officials told the New York Times that two Akula class...

Defense officials say two nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines have been patrolling in international waters off the East Coast for several days. The officials tell The Associated Press that while they haven't seen such unusual activity since the Cold War, the military is not overly concerned. They say the Russians have a right to conduct naval exercises and are operating according to international law. U.S. Northern Command would not comment on any details of the Russian submarines movement.

Obama Regresses to Cold War Mythology … and Switches Sides Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.     The world needs post-Cold War thinking. But Obama is stuck in a world of parochial clichés. (This is Part 1 of a series.) http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-regresses-to-cold-war-mythology-and-switches-sides/ Why is this president always doing the opposite of what needs to be done?Instead of supporting Iranian protesters, he snubs them. Instead of snubbing the ousted Honduran would-be dictator, he invites him to...

This is what appears to anger today's Russian historical establishment: accounts of Red Army crimes on the march to Berlin; assertions by the Baltic countries and others in Eastern Europe that Soviet forces came as occupiers as much as liberators; any suggestion that Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were anything but complete opposites and bitter enemies.

The 20 Century stunk for the most part, in my estimation. Two world wars in the first half, the holocaust as an extension of the latter, followed by a cold war. from 1900 to 1914, 1922 to 1939 and 1989 to present are fine periods. The rest as conflict or fear of global annihilation. To be fare, I am only 22 years old. My experience growing up was the 90's, which were nice other than a president getting a BJ and lying about it. I am looking forward to this century. Hopefully post-ideological and post-nuclear. My opinion of Obama is...