Those of us of a certain age grew up in a bipolar world....

25 years since the Berlin Wall was torn down

By John Steele Gordon

A quarter-century ago, people from both West and East Berlin gathered at the Berlin Wall and the guards, lacking orders, stood by. It had been the conventional wisdom that the Cold War would continue indefinitely, with neither side able to achieve a decisive advantage. But by the end of 1989, the Soviet empire in eastern Europe was gone and so was the infamous wall that had so powerfully symbolized it.

Those of us of a certain age grew up in a bipolar world. There was the West, led by the vibrant, democratic, capitalist United States. And there was the Soviet Union and its satellites, tyrannical, Communist, and culturally stagnant. Both sides were armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons that, if used, would destroy civilization. Both sides sought allies in the so-called third world, mostly recently independent former colonies of the old European powers.

The rivalry between the two sides was intense, but, perhaps for fear of setting off Armageddon, the Cold War was fought by proxies, in places like Korea and Vietnam.

It was the conventional wisdom that the bipolar world would continue indefinitely, with neither side able to achieve a decisive advantage. It was just the way the world was and it would have to be managed, as it couldn’t be fundamentally changed.

Then, on November 9, 1989, 25 years ago this weekend, that world vanished. It took a while for matters to play out, but that world was gone and, more important, everyone knew it was gone.

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that revolution is usually “the kicking in of a rotten door.” And behind the bluster, aggression, and constant reiteration of the claim to be the future, the Soviet Union was slowly rotting within during the last 20 years of its existence. On that November 9, the door was kicked in.

Marxism is based on a false premise, that human nature is only an artifact of the society in which people live. Change society, argued Marx, and you change human nature. Perfect society and you perfect humankind. Therefore, the interests of society as a whole — as determined by the elite of the Communist Party — were what was important. Individuals were expected to willingly subordinate their own interests to those of society.

But while the interests of society as a whole are an important part of the self-interest of individuals — human beings, after all, are among the most social of all animals — they are not the only interests. And the pursuit of those other self-interests, such as one’s own interests and those of the immediate family and, especially, one’s children, cannot be suppressed voluntarily. They can only be suppressed by force or the credible threat of it.

So the Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe was never accepted by the people of those countries, which erupted periodically in revolt. Uprisings in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were all brutally suppressed by Soviet tanks.

East Germany was a particular problem. Because of the post-war division of Germany, the city of Berlin, deep within the eastern zone of occupation, was itself divided into four zones. The American, British, and French zones soon became West Berlin. Dissatisfied citizens of East Germany, and most of them were dissatisfied, could quite literally hop on a subway and soon be in West Germany, where the standard of living was far higher and where the rights of individuals were respected instead of suppressed.

East Germany increasingly faced severe population loss as people voted with their feet, especially the more talented and well educated. By 1961, the state felt it had no choice but to act. With a population of about 18 million, the so-called German Democratic Republic, had seen 3.5 million people — almost 20 percent of the population — escape to the west before the wall went up.

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