THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A20 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
Five years after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the mass euphoria that attended the moment is all but unimaginable. Hundreds of millions of humankind rejoiced as ordinary men and women tore down the wall erected in 1963 to halt enterprising East Germans' flight to the West through Berlin.
The wall did stop the hemorrhage of talented and energetic East Germans for many years. The ugly barrier was reinforced by armed guards who gunned down many who tried to dash to freedom.
The fall of the wall was a sign of the terminal disintegration - invisible to most observers - inside the bankrupt Soviet empire. That the empire swiftly fell, too, surprised nearly everyone, not least of all Western intelligence services.
History teaches that no empire lasts forever. And the Soviet empire was a brutal anachronism in the post-colonial world. Even the globe-engirdling British empire was gone.
But the might of the Soviet army seemingly ensured Moscow's grip on the disparate peoples of the Soviet bloc. The reality was otherwise. Mikhail Gorbachev, who had set out to save communism by reforming it, had loosed a whirlwind of changes that had rocked the empire.
In April 1989, the Solidarity movement born of a shipyard-worker protest rolled over communist candidates in the first contested Polish elections since the end of World War II.
In September 1989, a tottering communist government opened Hungary's borders to Austria, clearing the way for East Germans to escape to the West. Weeks later, Czechoslovakia did the same. East Germany relented, permitting its citizens to travel to the West.
So, on Nov. 9, 1989, the wall came tumbling down. The Soviet empire soon was history. Freedom - sweet, ever-risky freedom - had done it in. by CNB