Transcripts For CSPAN3 Fall Of The Berlin Wall 20140901

Four decades or even more, its a little short of remarkable that were marking 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. Its remarkable because on the one hand we can recall that event so vividly, but on the other hand, it sometimes seems like it took place a lifetime ago. Its also remarkable because for those of us who pursued our degrees and published our first books during the preceding decades, in some cases before the construction of the wall [ laughter ] its collapse seemed so unimaginable. In fact, if i can indulge you for a second, the year before the collapse, i organized a conference on john foster dulles. No one was more associated with the cold war. Some of you were there. There was lots of talk about the integration of europe. The soviets new thinking. Glasnost. Perestroika but no one was talking about the reunification this was the time john gaddes began their conferences on soviet and american relations. First time soviet and American Scholars got together. And Scott Armstrong had just come up with the idea of this thing called a National Security archive. But an end to the cold war . Not a chance. No discussion of it at all. Consequently whats not remarkable is that were really not much closer now than we were then to reaching a consensus on the fundamental questions regarding the events in germany at the time and then, of course, their aftermath. These questions concerned the drivers whether they be individual, state or international. These questions concerned the consequences whether they be international, state or individual. And these questions concerned the significance, the legacy, also in terms of individual, states and international. And while we have not reached any consensus, there are none in our profession, in our guild more qualified to articulate the terms of the debate and move the conversation forward than our three speakers tonight. None of them really need any introduction. But ill introduce them anyway. And ill do it all at once in order, in the order in which they will speak. Which i think i can sort out now. So that we can both ensure that theres maximum time for our general conversation as well as their opening remarks. Mary elise sarotte newest book the collapse, the accidental opening of the berlin wall will appear this autumn on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Her last book which im sure were all familiar with, 1989 the struggle to create post cold war europe was a Financial Times book of the year and won shafrs prize, le dfr afr afr daad prize for german and European Studies and as, aaa s shulman prize for distinguished scholarship on communist Foreign Policy. Princeton university will publish an updated Anniversary Edition in the autumn of 2014. So she actually gets a doubleheader. Mary serves as dean professor of history of International Relations at the university of Southern California and currently on leave as a visiting professor of government and history at harvard. Shes a former humboldt scholar, white house fellow and is a member for the institute of advanced study at princeton and is a lifetime member of the council of foreign relations. Mel leffler is a professor of American History at the university of virginia and a faculty fellow of the governing america in a Global Era Program at uvas miller center. Hes the author of several books on the cold war. And on u. S. Relations with europe, including for the soul of mankind, which won the george lewis prize from the American Historical Association and preponderance of power. Which won the bancroft, hoover and farrell prizes. In 2002 and 2003 he was a professor at oxford. Hes also held the kissinger chair at the library of congress. Mel has been the recipient of fellowships from the council on foreign relations, the United States institute of peace, the Woodrow Wilson center, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute and, of course, he served as president of shafr. In 2010 mel and arnie west collaborated the history of the cold war and most recently he coedited on certain Times American Foreign Policy after the cold war. Hes now editing, coediting a book on comparative strategy making and writing about the Foreign Policy of the george w. Bush administration. Our last speaker will be Jeffrey Engel. Jeff is founding director of the center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university. Prior to accepting that appointment, he held a postdoctoral fellowship and taught at the university of wisconsin, yale, the university of pennsylvania, haverford and texas a m. At texas a m, he was the 52 professor at the bush school and the director of programming for the Scowcroft Institute for teaching and mentorship. While at texas a m he received a silver star award for teaching and mentorship, distinguished Teaching Award from a Ms Association of former students and a University System chancellors teaching excellence award. Among the numerous articles and books he has written or edited. His cold war at 30,000 feet won the birds ell prize. He was shafrs 2012 lecturer and recipient of the Norwegian Nobel Institute senior fellowship. Jeff is currently writing, when the world seemed new, george h. L. W. Busch and the surprisingly peaceful end to the cold war. Mary . Thank you very much richard. Thank to you the society for inviting me to speak. And also its great that cspan is here so many more people can join us in their discussion today from their homes. Of course the people here have an advantage. The society wisely gave you two free drinks before you had to start listening to me so im hoping that will blunt the edge of your skeptical and penetrating questions. So i have just a few minutes to tell you a little bit about the fall of the wall, and then my colleagues will talk a little bit more about legacy and interpretation. As richard was kind enough to mention i have a book coming out on this topic in the fall and it will be the anniversary itself is november 9th. So youll be seeing a lot of media coverage, i hope, of my book but certainly of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall and its great that shafr has chosen to make this Plenary Session where we talk about the significance of this event. Sorry, minor technical difficulties. One thing thats important to me a lot of great events dont have great causes. Because after i wrote my last book, 1989, i got a lot of unexpected questions. 1989 is actually about the Foreign Policy that followed the collapse of the berlin wall. So in that book i just summarized in a few pages the way the wall came down and the bulk of the book is about the International Politics afterwards. I would go out and give talks about that book and get up and say, im here to talk about the Foreign Policy that followed the unintentional opening of the berlin wall and sometimes i wouldnt even get to that sentence. People would stop me. What do you mean unintentional opening of the berlin wall. Sometimes i would get a lot more poignant questions. Dont you know reagan opened the wall in 1987. The first time i got that question i was kind of shocked. By the fourth or fifth time i was no longer shocked and i realized that theres not a lot in languages other than german about the short term events that bring down the fall of the wall. Theres a lot of excellent scholarship about the causes for the fall of the wall but the proximate causes, the short term events are not wellknown in the nongerman speaking world and so i decided for the anniversary to try to put together that story as best i could and then of course as always happens when you start researching something it becomes more complicated than you expected. It ended up being a Fascinating Research topic. So let me just gallop through some of the ideas in my book and then if we have questions we can talk more about them. I want to talk a little bit about the precursor to the night of november 9, 1989, when the wall opens. And then a tiny bit about how we think about these events, memory and legacy, themes that my colleagues will emphasize as well. So its important to say that the first unexpected event actually happened not in berlin but in moscow which is to say there were a rapid series of deaths. In 2 1 2 years there were four leaders of the soviet union, of course, after brezhnev died in 1982 and then another one in 1984 and another one in 1985. There were so many funerals, Margaret Thatcher remarked at the second funeral, the soviets they know how to do a funeral im definitely coming back next year. It turned out she wasnt wrong. So after that embarrassing sequence of events the politburo was willing to take a risk on a man in his 50s and that man would not die and that man turned out to be mikhail gorbachev. Mikhail gorbachev comes to power in march of 1985. Of course, he not only institutes glasnost and perestroika but begins a series of meetings with president Ronald Reagan. So Mikhail Gorbachevs ascension to power is unexpected and his interest in reform is unexpected and matched by a level of interest by Ronald Reagan. George h. W. Bush in contrast is much more skeptical of gorbachev. His National Security adviser always liked to point out that either gorbachev was a fraud on which the u. S. Should be on its guard, or gorbachev was for real and he may have good intentions but he could be dispatched with a single bullet and the soviet union had the ability to destroy the United States. The bush team once it took office, once george h. W. Bush became president , when im speaking of bush im speaking about george h. W. Bush was much more cautious. One of the Biggest Surprises in my research was just how much tension there was between the reagan team and bush team. Political scientists who are not interested in this topic but work on president ial transitions used the reaganbush transition as an example of a particularly vicious one. Some scholars described it as bush fired everyone. In the internal sources i was surprised to see bush documents saying mush for brains reaganites. People who had begin into the wiles of gorbachev. Phrases saying its good that the adults are back in charge. You see a little attempt to return to a more traditional cold war stance. But dramatic events made it clear 1989 wont be a traditional cold war year. There is the massive popular protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989. We just had that anniversary. That enough was observed in china with silence. Even those who commemorated it in their homes were persecuted for that. 1989 in retrospect looks different in china than europe. I would ask you to bear this in mind as we talk about the wall today. We, of course, all know that the cold war in europe ended peacefully but the people at the time did not know this. As events unfolded the images on the minds of protesters and demonstrators were images from Tiananmen Square, the lone figure standing in front of a row of tanks. Try to keep that image in mind as we talk about 1989. The fall of the berlin wall was not a foregone conclusion. Catastrophe loomed around every corner and certainly bloodshed was on the mind of the people who were there on the ground. Tiananmen square is still a forbidden zone in the peoples republic of china. Fortunately we have the opportunity to examine what happened in europe. So the question, of course, is what would happen in Eastern Europe as gorbachevs reforms gradually created new opportunities. Would there be a similar kind of violence as there had been in china . That was an open question in the summer of 1989 in cold war europe. This is a map of cold war europe. So in summer of 1989 the beginning of the end and the eastern politburo didnt recognize this quickly enough. The beginning of the end came when hungary decided to allow hungarians to cross into austria. And started taking down border fortifications. In the first instance the hungarians prevented east germans from leaving. There was an existing treaty between hungary and east germany and the hungarians at first respected it. As a result of financial inducements from west germany, in september, hungary decided to let east germans leave as well and they flooded out in mass numbers. This is perhaps a telling photo. This is a photo from the east German Secret Police archives. This is a photo of abandoned vehicles. They had to go down to the border and collect these. East germans would abandon these when they fled to the west. People waited as long as 16 years to purchase these vehicles. And so abandoning it was quite a dramatic statement and there were so many of them the secret police had to collect them at depots such as this one in czechoslovakia. And bring them back to east germany. This was a massive exodus. And it tested even the people who were at home. Some of the people who had stayed home had to justify staying at home. Indeed the phrase stay at home was a term of insult. What youre still here, youre stay at home, why arent you going west . So suddenly this massive exodus where east germans would go down into hungary, cross the border in austria and come back up to east germany threatened the existence of the east german ruling regime itself which they anticipated would not be case. The east german ruling regime took a series of steps that ultimately culminated even though it did not wish for this to happen in the opening of the berlin wall. So in response to this massive exodus, the east german ruling regime demonstrated the theory of albert hirschman. He had formulated that People Living under a dictatorship have three choices. You can either find some way to exit. Or you can find some way to protest and use your voice. Or you can basically stay quiet and be loyal. And for much of east germany loyalty was the popular choice but then thanks to the hungarians exit became possible. However the east german regime decided unwisely to close its own borders to prevent any further exit and since exit then was no longer an option and loyalty no longer seemed a good option voice became the dominant option and the number of protests and the size of protests was increased dramatically throughout east germany most notably in the cities of dresden and leipzig. Since the media was under censorship, any images had to be smuggled out. One of the more interesting pest for this book, i interviewed former smugglers that made video cassettes and smuggled it out to the west. So images of these events could make it to western broadcasters who could then broadcast them back to Eastern Europe so Eastern Europeans could see them. And the east german regime realizing that it created a new monster essentially planned a Tiananmen Square event on the night of october 9, 1989 in the city of leipzig. This was perhaps the Biggest Surprise of my research was the extent of the deployment, the orders to shoot, the distribution of machine guns with bullets. Just the level of preparations for a bloody and violent event on october 9, 1989 in leipzig. This is in this region known as saxony and leipzig. And that event might have happened and we might talk about the two tiananmens in 1989 but for the fact that the demonstrators in leipzig behaved in two unexpected ways. Their numbers were massive. There were over 1 hundred,000 protesters which no one expected and they were peaceful and nonviolent and the deployed troops instead of firing them actually began joining their ranks, and i described that processed based on interviews with Police Officers and others in the course of the book. It was a remarkable event. It has not been understood as it should be because of a key stepping stone on to the collapse of the wall. Because the smugglers smuggled out video images of the failure of the regime to carry out its planned tiananmen and when those made to it western broadcasters and broadcast back to Eastern Europe that fueled the selfconfidence of east germans even more. The protest actually took place around the leipzig center city ring road. The marchers gathered here and marching around this way. This was supposed to be the location where what would essentially have been civil war in germany would have started. But the protesters overwhelmed the police and the deployed army forces and able to circle the entire ring road successfully on the night of october 9th. From there the power of this peaceful revolution kept growing and growing and the regime found itself more and more under siege. Since it was unable to carry out the tiananmen on october 17th, the hard line leader of east germany was ousted and replaced by his crown prince, a man named avon krence. He knew things had gone badly wrong under honiker, so he thought ill do things differently. Ill still maintain control but ill talk a good game in public. So in public ill say things that make it sound like im going institute reforms but ill maintain the power of the state over peoples lives and certainly over their ability to travel. The state still has to give permission if anyone wants to leave on my watch. So he decided to issue minor changes to existing travel laws mainly as a stop to all these crowds that were protesting but the announcement of this minor and basically fraudulent change was so badly botched that the journalists in the room thought it was a real change and theres quite remarkable video footage of this press conference that is arguably the worst press conference in the world where the east german politburo spokesman goes from bad to worse and in his efforts to explain whats going on and before he even finishes speaking he starts back pedaling as quickly as he can. Before he does that reporters start rushing out to file reports saying the wall is open. So when east germans hear those reports which are not actually accurate, its part of this new found selfconfidence inspired by gorbachev, inspired by the success of the Solidarity Movement in poland, what happened in leipzig and the sheer number of people involved and they stormed the wall. The critical point that night, the point where the berlin wall first opens is this location. This is a Border Crossing or was a Border Crossing in the north of divided berlin. It was the largest Border Crossing between the two halves that divided berlin. This is an aerial photo from about 1985. In this photo west berlin is at the top. On the other side of this bridge. East berlin is down here. This is the entrance to the checkpoint. If you were to come in a car you have to go over here to these car processing lanes before you can go up to the final barrier and guard post and go over to the west, and the pedestrians would be processed in these houses and its a huge walled off area. This whole area is the checkpoint. And this becomes a critical point because there are a number of checkpoints but the other ones, the residences had been given over to secret police employees. They were not likely to storm the wall. Their neighbors would be more fearful of doing so. This was kind of out of the way in the north and this was where what were known as the political undesirables lived. This was a bad neighborhood. Those political undesirables showed up in large numbers on the night of november 9th, 1989, and they started basically trying to get into the Border Crossing just saying, you should let us pass the wall is open. Border guards were baffled. They had no instruction. When they called their superiors, the superiors said business as usual keep the gates closed. This became a dramatic development. A map of divided berlin. This thick line represents the berlin wall. V4d n this is the critical point where its going to come to a head. Similar things start happening at all the inner berlin divided points. All kinds of reports start coming in to the center, massive crowds are showing up and all of them are convinced the wall is open. There are no orders to this effect and headquarters keep saying keep the gates closed, business as usual, keep the gates closed. It becomes harder and harder for the Border Guards who are facing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people who are starting to fear for their own safety to do so. This is the man who opens the wall in the practical sense. Not the man who opens the wall in the sense of reagan or gorbachev. He folds and says well shoot these people or open up. I say we open up. His name is harold jager. He wasnt even in charge. He was in charge of the night watch. A deputy officer. But it was on his watch that this came to a head. This is his personnel file photo. Shows his age roughly as it would have been in 1989. And he after hours of being told business as usual, when he tells his superiors its not business as usual there are 20,000 people here, his superiors call him a coward and he snaps and decides to open the wall. So this man is actually in sort of the most specific narrow sense the man who opens the wall and is almost completely unknown. He put himself out of a job and he actually after the wall came down ended up unemployed and for a while even just driving a taxi in berlin and now lives on a small pension in the outskirts of berlin. So that is just a very brief summary of some of the dramatic unexpected events that led to the short term collapse of the wall. Let me make a few very general remarks and then ill hand over to my colleagues about reaction and memory. Whats interesting to me is how this is treated now in germany. Here in the United States we have a number of very, very grand memorials to the collapse of the berlin wall. There are very big installations of pieces of the berlin wall at the george h. W. Bush president ial library, at the Ronald Reagan library, at the capitol, in fulton, missouri, but actually in west germany there is no major memorial to the fall of the wall. There are attempts to build one but very controversial and beset with delays. There are small memorials but no big one. Theres more going on here than just what Museum Experts call beyond the beauty problem. Thats when you try to memorialize an unattractive site. Such as the Border Crossing. How do you do that when its not an attractive site. Seems more is going on than that and this has to go with the ongoing controversy how do we interpret this event and its legacy. And over the causes of it. Theres so much disagreement weve not reached a point where we can adequately memorialize it. It speaks to our lack of a clear understanding. To the fact when i speak about this topic still have people asserting very confidently that president reagan opened the wall in 1987. He went to this wall and said to mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall and when reagan spoke the wall fell. Or you had some kind of order by the east german regime because great events must have great causes and must have been decided and east german regime must have decided. Its very hard for us to process the role of chance and accident in history. And the agency of local actors. That was another surprise for me. As i was writing this book this wasnt a story of elite politics since there was no order to open the wall, i had to look elsewhere for my main character, so to speak. Now its true this was a story of revolution from below, the fact that the people wanted the wall to be opened mattered as well, but that problem is a causal explanation because people wanted the wall to be opened from the moment it was built in 1961, and yet it didnt fall until 1989. It was fascinating to me as i described history from the middle, people like harald jager, midlevel east german bureaucrats, people who unintentionally contributed to these events not these great political leaders. This is a recent photo. Instead of a memorial there theres basically nothing. I took this picture because i got a tip from a friend that all of the remaining traces including the former east german lane lines, those vehicle lanes i pointed out the you were going to be ripped up so a Discount Grocery store could go in. I ran over and took a picture of the lane lines and few lane numbers that were still there before they got ripped up. If you go there now to where the berlin wall opened theres now a Discount Grocery store. By way of compensation some local historical societies decided there should be some informational panels but those were installed on the cheap. You can see one fell prey to vandalism. This is supposed to be a picture of people crossing the wall on the night of the 9th but somebody put a sticker on it, peeled it off and that was the end of it. So this is the site where berlin opened. It amazes me at this event, thats right, this site, thats what marks this event. So, i think that theres a lot of food for thought here. On the one hand we have a triumphant u. S. Memorials for the fall of the wall where germans are hesitant to celebrate this triumphant and there are longer term consequences of this thinking which well discuss more that they feed into a mistaken perception that the United States was, in fact, the author, the sole author of these events, that it rapidly and at little cost brought down the wall and overthrew a dictatorship and fueled the thought that the United States can repeat the performance. We need a better understanding of what happened in this event. We need to understand the role of chance. And the agency of local actors. And we need to have a more nuanced understanding of the role of the United States and u. S. Foreign policy in this event. Thank you very much for listening to me and i look forward to the discussion. [ applause ] so, over the years ive learned the importance of stressing my most significant point first. So i want to tell you that despite what richard implied, i did not publish my first book before the construction of the wall. [ laughter ] as we learn more and more about the history leading up to the demise of the wall, as we learn more and more of the texture about that event from people like mary and jeff, i think we understand the technical history, the empirical history a lot better. My desire is to try to step back and to ask myself and to ask all of you to think about what actually on the 25th anniversary should we be commemorating . What is there to celebrate . What lessons are to be drawn . Actually, about five years ago, approaching the 20th anniversary, Jeffrey Engel invited a group of scholars down to texas a m to discuss the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall. And jim sheehan was there to talk about the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall in Eastern Europe and my good friend came and talked about the meaning of the fall of the wall in china, bill talbin came and talked about the meaning of the fall of the wall in russia. And i talked about the meaning of the fall in the United States. At that conference, which i think jeff is going to talk a little bit more about in a few minutes, at that conference i was very much impressed by the divergent meanings attached to the fall of the wall. In brief in western europe, jim sheehan explained the demise of the wall signified the triumph and efficacy of european integration and multilateral institutions. In russia the fall of the wall signified the need to avoid naive leadership. In china the fall of the wall meant the need to reactivate economic reform and to avoid political liberalization. And i talked about the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall in the United States. And here i emphasize that it meant the triumph of freedom over tyranny. It confirmed the redemptive role of the United States. Utility of power. The correctness of containment. And the universal appeal of freedom. The wall coming down. Reaffirmed americans exceptionalist view of themselves. This view was very widespread and it was very dangerous. It encouraged the use of military power and armed force. It nurtured illusory hopes of a democratic peace. It inspired naive assumptions about the benevolence of unregulated markets. This view was widely shared amongst prudent men like george h. W. Bush, amongst prominent democrats like the clintons, amongst conservatives like Donald Rumsfield and dick cheney and among neocons. Initially bush 41, as jeff and others have so well emphasized was cautious and prudent. But by the time of the 1992 president ial campaign, president bush 41 could not resist the temptation to take credit for the events of 1989 and 1990. He liked to say during the campaign, we brought about the fall of the iron curtain and the death of imperial communism. In 1992 the republican platform actually went further. It proclaimed, quote, the fall of the berlin wall marks a change in the way people live. We republicans saw clearly the dangers of collectivism, not only the military threat, but the deeper threat to the soul of people bound in dependence. End quote. Indeed, the dismantling of the wall and the ensuing collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the ussr discredited government and further inspired the belief in the utility and superiority of free markets. Not only among republicans. Here in the United States the Clinton Administration actually went much further than its predecessors in dismantling government regulation over capital flows and financial markets. The depression era fire wall between commercial and Investment Banking was repealed. Robert rubin, Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan were determined not to regulate, not to regulate the expanding sectors of the financial economy like derivative trading and securitization of mortgages. They forced other governments to deregulate financial controls as a condition for free trade pacts and as a condition for securing Financial Assistance during the Asian Financial crisis of the late 1990s. After 9 11, memories of the berlin wall coming down whetted the appetite and tempted officials to use strength. And to use force. Displays of u. S. Power would be met with enthusiasm. Memories of the jubilation of berliners of 1989 made them think that the toppling of saddam would be greeted with the same enthusiasm as the dismantling of the wall. On november 9th, 2001, bush 43 declared World Freedom day. He said, quote, like the fall of the berlin wall, and the defeat of totalitarianism in central and Eastern Europe, freedom will triumph in this war against terrorism. And a little over a year later, observing the videos of the toppling of saddams statue, declared, quote, watching iraqis one cannot think, one cannot help but think of the fall of the berlin wall and the collapse of the iron curtain. Such notions inspired the hubris that informed the National Security strategy statement of 2002. You all remember the quotation in the introduction, the great struggles of the 20th century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the force of freedom in a single sustainable model for national success. Freedom, democracy and Free Enterprise, end quote. Now that we know the history of the wall coming down, now that we know the contingency of the event and the agency of ordinary people, what should we be thinking about . What, in fact, should we be commemorating . What are the larger lessons that we should draw . Is it the universal appeal of freedom . Is it the free markets. Is it the efficacy of strength, power and containment . What lessons should we draw . This is what i think we should draw. First, we should acknowledge and affirm the appeal of fundamental human rights. We should applaud the energy and recognize the agency of the nongovernmental organizations championing human rights in civil society. We should emphasize the significance of the helsinki agreements in reestablishing the legitimacy and universality of the rights inscribed in the 1948 universal declaration and lets remember what that declaration affirmed. The right to life, liberty and the security of person. The right of every person to equality before the law. The right to be free from arbitrary arrests. The right to be free of arbitrary interference with privacy. The right to freedom of movement and travel. The right to own property. The right to express ones self freely. The right to enjoy social security, gainful employment, educational opportunity, and a minimum standard of living. Those are the fundamental rights that had such wide appeal to the peoples of east berlin, east germany, Eastern Europe and ultimately the soviet union. Second, i think we should emphasize and celebrate the attractiveness of a social market economy, not a Free Enterprise economy. Indeed, it was the print principleses of the social market that were incorporated into the law of the social market that were incorporated into the law ciplef the social market that were incorporated into the law establishing the monetary union. A social market meant combining free markets with regulated governmental competition and with a commitment to social equity and a social welfare safety net. In the ideological struggle between Free Enterprise and communism, the social market won the cold war. Notwithstanding the Reagan Thatcher assault on government regulation. Notwithstanding the rise of neoliberalism, we should remember that the social safety net did not erode, did not erode in the 1980s. Indeed, elsewhere ive shown that social spending was crucial to the ability of the west to absorb the shock of the 1970s. The social market, not the free market, so to speak, won the cold war. Third, we should acknowledge the efficacy of Super National institutions and European Economic integration did. The berlin wall came down because of francogerman. The berlin wall came down because of francogerman reconciliation and because of the success of the European Union coal and Steel Community and Common Market and because of the hopes inspired by the prospective European Union. The berlin wall came down because of the resilience of western economies and because of the appeal of the culture of mass consumption. And i think its very important to emphasize that u. S. Power were essential back drops for the success of western European Economic integration. Fourth, we should emphasize and commemorate new norms of international conduct, the renunciation of force and honoring of selfdetermination. These were the norms that gorbachev embraced. That embrace was the precondition for the wall coming down. Fifth, we should applaud the efficacy and the agency of wise leaders. Reagan, bush, and most of all gorbachev. Reagan grasped that negotiating from strength meant negotiating, meant reaching out and ultimately meant nurturing and understanding of the adversary. Bush grasped that prudence and selfrestraint were critical. He understood that he must not overreach, he must not provoke a clamp down. That he must do what he could to help avoid a repeat of budapest 1956, prague 58 and recent events of tiananmen. Cole grasped the opportunity to reunite germany and realized a united germany had to be embedded within Super National institutions. And mitteron pressed ahead with his championing of the monetary union. He understood that it was a prerequisite to coopting prospective german power and to reassuring germanys neighbors. Most of all, we should honor gorbachev. He embraced new norms of conduct. Reconceived the meaning of security for his country and understood the priority of domestic reform even if he did not know how to bring it about. Sixth and last, we should acknowledge the complex interactions between human agency, structural developments like globalization and the Communications Revolution and contingent events like a spokesperson misstating the conclusions of a politburo meeting. We need to strive for synthesis and complexity as a precondition for accurate lessons and appropriate meanings. As we reassess we can also acknowledge that the leaders made mistakes. We can acknowledge that not all the promise of the wall coming down was realized. Partly because of the conservative instincts of cole and bush and partly because of the incoherence and ambiguity of gorbechevs mission. Mostly because in International Affairs challenges are too complex and competing pressures too formidable for statesmen to achieve perfection. I still think on the 25th anniversary of the dismantling of the wall, there remains much to celebrate. The end of the division of germany and europe. The end of the cold war. The end of a nuclear arms race. The end of a bad century of war, depression, and totalitarianism. In an editorial on november 12, 1989, i think the editors of the New York Times of young people danced on top of the hated berlin wall thursday night. They danced for joy. They danced for history. They danced because the tragic convulsed europe, exbracing two world wars, a holocaust and a cold war seemed at long last to be nearing an end. We, too, can still rejoice about such matters. Thanks. [ applause ] you can all rejoice that were nearly done. Let me begin by first thanking the Program Committee in doing their excellent job of creating a fascinating conference. Thanks to ann ji Angie Preston and sarah snyder, the cochairs. Also to our president for helping organize this and our incoming president , of course, tim borselman for this opportunity and thank you to my fellow panelists for giving a lot to discuss once im done. 25 years ago the world changed. The impossible happened. Something wholly unexpected seized global attention and fundamentally altered a people, a continent and the entire world system with consequences that continue to reverberate to this day. I speak, of course, of what happened on june 4th, 1989, the day that polish voters rejected their communist government. The regime was no more. Moscows influence was no more. A homegrown polish democracy took its place. Perhaps this is not the moment that you thought i was referring to from 25 years ago. You must be thinking of december 2nd, 1989, when soviet and american officials met at a summit for the end of the cold war or perhaps may 2nd when hungarians dismantled their border. My first point is that berlin is not the whole story. It is important but also one peak on the interconnected waves of 1989. To be the moment when the cold war that gripped humanity for half a century truly came to an end. To further this point when you were asked to consider what was the most significant event of 199 you would instead think of Tiananmen Square. This would get my vote. Long after we in this room have all gone to that great big archive in the sky, historians will still note and long remember june 4th of 1989, on the very day polish voters stood up. Chinas growing Reform Movement was mowed down. As xiaoping declared to his colleagues at that point, quote, we can afford to shed some blood. Just try as much as possible not to kill everyone, end quote. China, of course, has not been the same since. The moment that dengs tanks toppled the goddess of liberty, Chinas Communist Party effectively cut a deal with its own people, guaranteeing Economic Growth in exchange for stifled political liberalization. The free market, if you will, without the freedom. Chinese leaders live in fear in they may fail to uphold their end of the bargain. Failing to fulfill prosperity. 1989, maybe asia is not your cup of tea. Perhaps you prefer your history of 1989 more shall we say colonial. More eurocentric. Let me offer gorbachev in his quest to save the socialist he loved through a revolution of ideas. He wound up ushering the soviet union to the grave. 1989 was the year he articulated his home, a bridging of evident and west built on foundations of pace, prosperity and human possibility. It was the single most profound articulation of a new world order since Woodrow Wilson, further cementing the authors position as the worlds most popular man, at least outside of russia. As the New York Times said, quote, imagine an alien space ship approached earth and sent the message take me to your leader, who would that be, without doubt gorbachev, edd quote. Stop and consider that quote for a moment. Gorbachev, 1989. The worlds leader. Gorbachev, whose country was in decline, the economy was in shambles, infant mortality rates and alcoholism rose. He was the worlds leader. No wonder george bush feared him as 1989 began. As president of the United States, bush was supposed to be the worlds most powerful leader, not this odd soviet intellectual who refused to disavow communism, even as he overturned it. Perestroika was a dangerous ruse thought bush upon taking office. Now i will return to bush momentarily, but first let me say the striking thing about mikhail gorbachev. For all of his visionary speeches, his most important words were uttered behind closed doors. 1989 is often recalled as the year in which so much happened. I contend, however, it is what did not happen. The decisions not made or rather the moments when leaders chose and consciously chose not to act that made all the difference. After a quarter century most of our fellow citizens have forgotten just how the demise of the soviet empire truly was so dangerous. Obb gates who was at that time deputy security advisor who would warn anybody there that never before in Human History had a major empire collapsed without a great power war ensuing. Never before in Human History had chaos not filled a power vacuum. And with crowds surging around the world in 1989, it had all the makings of a chaotic year. Indeed, this is a year that is most often retold by historians as a story of crowds, crowds marched, regimes fell. And this version has a nice, warm feel to it. It gives the crowd agency. It makes us feel good thinking that democracy and people have real power. Will hitchcock nicely summed up this strain of thinking when he wrote, mr. Gorbachev did not give europeans their freedom in 1989. They took it. Now, this is a nice, warm version of events but i think its also incomplete. Dont get me wrong. Crowds matter. But their success or failure ultimately rested in 1989 in the hands of the leaders who strove to keep chaos at bay, crowds under control, and violent repression at a minimum. Fed up by decades of repression, Eastern Europes crowds marched, but in doing so, they actually returned power over events back into the hands of the very leaders that despise. The leaders who, therefore, when viewing those marchers had one more fateful decision to make. To fire or to topple. To douse the flames as Deng Xiaoping had done. Or to let them burn. Of course, those leaders did not know if the buckets they held contained water or gasoline. Thankfully, of course, the Eastern Europes leaders chose the more peaceful path. Tiananmen did not happen in warsaw, budapest, or as mary tells us in her new book, in leipzig or berlin as well. Looking back at 1989 and asking what it all means, it seems to be clear that gorbachevs greatest moment was not a stirring speech but instead when he told Eastern Europe that moscow would no longer support their use of violence against their own people. This would not be 1953. This would not be 1968. This would not be 1956. Gorbachev, you see, had said no. He abhorred violence. Becoming, in fact, physically ill in april of 1989, months before the wall fell, before tiananmen when soviet police violently dispersed a crowd of georgian protesters. 20 of that crowd died and the moment terrified him. Why . Because he had not ordered the crackdown. He had not ordered the violence. He, the most powerful man in the soviet union had less power when crowds and Police Clashed than the lowliest soldier scared and armed with a gun or least subdued protester wielding a rock. Either could spark a melee that could quickly spin out of control. Either could start the chaos that might ultimately consume the world. We must never forget, as mary wisely pointed out, that all that occurred in the fall of 1989 in europe happened after Tiananmen Square and that leaders on both sides of the crumbling iron curtain drew a direct line between the two. At the moment that the rest of the world shunned chinese visitors following tiananmen, Erich Honecker of east germany publicly invited chinese officials to teach the stasi what they could about what he called crowd control. Honecker used tiananmen as a blunt warning. For bush it was a recurring nightmare. As bush wrote in his diary, if we mishandle this and get out in front of looking like an american project, you would invite crackdown and negative reaction that would result in bloodshed. Bush, therefore, responded by doing and saying as little as possible. Hardliners or urged the crowd to violence, practicing what i call hypocratic diplomacy, the determination to first do no harm even if it meant doing nothing in the public eye. Why . And this is important. Because he believed action carried more risk than potential gain, and because we fundamentally believed that history flowed in washingtons direction. And that the stream of history would continue to flow in that direction, washingtons, so long as he did nothing to change its course. Democracy was on the rise. Markets were in vogue and freedom was on the march. As bush further explained to his diary, critics say were not doing enough on Eastern Europe, but its all moving fast and moving our way. 25 years ago we were all lucky. Lucky that soldiers did not fire on their own swarming crowds. But it was not all luck. It was also the work of leaders bent on keeping chaos at bay. Communist regimes looked into the abyss of 1989 and they blinked. East germany was gone. Absolutely gone within a year. So to the soviet union whose own hardliners launched a coup in 1991 but ultimately did not have the stomach to fire on their own crowds, in protest. It, too, was gone, gone by years end. Chinas communist regime, of course, remains to this day offering, i think, the troubling lesson that those who accept reform saw their states topple. The regime that sent in the tanks survived. What, then, is the ultimate lesson of 1989 . Now, of course, we all know the fallacy of trying to draw ironclad lessons of history but i think if theres one lesson to take from the story of 1989, beyond my initial starting point that its not just a story of europe or Eastern Europe or berlin, but it was instead an intertwined global affair. And the lesson, i think, is this. That there were, in fact, as professor leffler mentioned, multiple lessons. When one thinks of 1989 and why it matters, it seems to me, largely depends on ones National Point of view. For the americans, as was already elaborated, the lesson was that they had won. Ronald reagan single handedly sent the soviets into the ground and tore the berlin wall down brick by brick. Id like to think he took off his shirt like putin before he did it because he believed in putin excuse me. Because he believed in freedom and because he also believed in strength. He also did believe in putin. This version of history offers a blueprint for future american success. The world wants to be like us. Deep in their hearts, Everyone Wants to be free americanstyle, americans would add. All suppressed peoples need was just a little pushed with American Military force and we shall be greeted as liberators. Of course, we saw how that turned out in 2003. So, too, did others take different lessons from 1989. Chinas, i already mentioned. Repression works as long as leaders are tough enough to crack down and crack down hard and so long as the people in turn who survive can be made to remain fat and satisfied. Europe, too, has its lesson from 1989. The crowds that formed on the far side of the iron curtain did not want to be american. Leaders in brussels, paris, concluded they, instead, really want to be european. And desired to join the collectivist spirit embodied in the nation of the European Union. Their lesson, therefore, that cooperation works, integration works. So long as europeans stick together, peace and prosperity will reign. So long as they stuck together. Thats a troubling lesson, it seems to me, six years removed from a financial crisis thats seen european integration and relations strained while reinvigorating nationalist forces throughout the continent. What are the soviets i mean the russians. That was intentional. Their lesson is the clearest of all. 1989 was the moment that gorbachev gave in. He trusted the west, expecting aid, support, and nato to haul to germanys border. Russia, instead, received chaos, economic collapse, and nato expansion. Vladimir putin has repeatedly called the soviet unions demise the single most tragedy of russias history. His takeaway from 1989, the thing that drives his policies today, is the realization that russians should never, ever trust the west again. While there is much to celebrate from 1989, the lessons that we might take from it are not wholly optimistic. It is that true change occurs when leaders are willing to let the stream of history run its course. But, sadly, leaders Strong Enough to resist the urge to speed history along are, sadly, rare. Especially those who are intoxicated by the power at their command. Another lesson is that collectivism is easily undermined by jealousy, nationalism, and ethnicity, and that violence can, indeed, keep chaos at bay for a while, at least. And finally, its how one stands on the issues of 1989 depends on large measure upon where one sits. As Deng Xiaoping told his inner circle before ordering the crackdown, we are not afraid to shed a little blood. You carry these things out, you see, and the westerners forget. I think ultimately deng was only partly right. The world does not forget. It simply remembers what it wants. Thank you. [ applause ] okay. Now for those who probably intended to defect from the beginning have defected, we can have these are staybehinders. We can have an opportunity im sure many of you have questions or comments. If you will raise your hand and please identify yourself, it will be easier for us and it will certainly be facilitate to filming. Theres a microphone. Please go to the microphone. Hi. Oops. Sorry. Easy, boy. From the university of florida. Ive written extensively on american policy toward poland in thank you all for your insightful comments. I never want to follow mel leffler after he talks. Never. It was wonderful. Im also very happy that dr. Engel reminded us of the two things that happened on june 4th. Right . There are two options. There is the polish option and successful elections, and then theres the tiananmen option. And i think in washington they thought about tiananmen. But i like to think that the polish experience opened the door for the other crowds to take power. As a sort of comment on what you said, dr. Engel, not all Eastern Europe leaders were troglodytes. There were reformers ahead of gorbachev in a way in Eastern Europe, and i think that should be remembered. He died six weeks ago or four weeks ago and he embraced this change. There was never the fear in poland was never that jaruzelski would call for shots but he would be removed like gorbachev had been. I think its important to remember that he had partners as well. My question is to mary, you talked about unintentional actions of the middle. And also at the same time the agency of local actors. And so my question is, what did you discover about why on october 9th those guards didnt shoot those stasi members did not shoot . Its a choice. Its an action. Its embracing a path that rejects what youre told to do. As well as why yaeger did the same thing. Right . The motivations of these middle leaders i think is really important, and something that i dont quite understand. Id ask you to respond to that and explain why they took the step not to act, not to shoot when given the order that night on the 11th im sorry. The 9th or on october or november. Yeah. Thank you. Jeff, did you want to say anything . I like your work. [ inaudible ] yes. I would like to recommend to all of you gregs forthcoming book, empowering revolution. I have learned so much from you about what happened in poland. Im very much looking forward to seeing the book as well. And thank you for your question. This gives me an opportunity to talk just a little bit more about the book, and as i mentioned at the end of the talk, when i set out to write the book, i needed to figure out the locus of the agency. And as i said, it was not among the elite political leaders on whom i had previously worked since there had not been an elite decision by anyone to tear down the wall. So it was not a topdown story. I tried to look at it as a bottomup story. The crowd seceding the narrative jeff narrated right now. I realized while that was true and necessary, it was not sufficient. It was not enough to say that people wanted the wall to come down because people wanted the wall down from 1961 onward and yet it didnt come down until 1989. So i ended up, unexpectedly, focusing on this middle tier. And this gets to your question about the difference between unintentional action and agency. I found that the agency of local actors was extremely significant but that agency was, at times unintended. The polit Bureau Spokesman at the press conference did not intend to botch the announcement. So i ended up looking, on the one hand, not only dissident leaders, smugglers, those punished by the stasi, but loyalists and those who thought they were going to save the regime, and those were midlevel bureaucrats who provided the wording of the decision that turned out to be very unwise. The deputy passport officer. So what was amazing to me is there were many loyalists involved who were trying ineffectively to save their regime and what they did ended up making it worse. I ended up, for this book, doing a huge number of interviews which i had not expected to do. For example, i interviewed that man, Harold Yeager, who opened the wall and asked him about his motivations. The causes were many but they all came together at that moment. I as a historian have rarely seen monocausality. The causes were many and they all came together at that moment. In leipzig, there were a combination of events, the overwhelming number of protesters, the fact that they were handing out huge numbers of leaflets which they created for three nights in a row saying no violence, it won over the armed guards who were told to expect a mob, and the guards felt betrayed. Also, the Senior Leaders in leipzig had trouble getting berlin on the phone as the moment to shoot approached, and felt left in the lurch. They received orders earlier in the day to crack down at a certain point, but in a centralized system like that, all important decisions are from the center, so Party Leaders are trying to confirm their orders and mysteriously were having trouble doing so because they realized their elite Party Leaders wanted to know nothing about the bloodshed so the next day they could disavow it. Leinzig local leaders at that point felt themselves being left in the lurch and were not as willing to two forward with it. Theres a whole bunch of factors that come together. Similarly with Harold Yeager, Harold Yeager is an amazing figure. Hed been working at that Border Crossing for 25 years and nothing unusual had ever happened. Right . You have to imagine, go back to his picture, you have to youve been sitting there for 25 years, a deputy passport patrol officer, stasi officer on the night watch. Multiple awards from the stasi. Passport officers reported to the stasi. You only have one minor demerit on the your record. Youre an exemplary servant of the regime. Youre willing to put on your uniform for a 24 hour night shift that goes through the next day. A that moment, that got his backup and combined with his personal fear that tens of thousands of people chanting, open the wall, the protesters were peaceful, but he and his men didnt know that and they felt that they might be lynched. He was suspected of having cancer and undergone tests for cancer and he was due to get the results that day. It turned out he didnt have cancer, but that night he didnt know that. All these factors come together. The global, changes in the world, gorbachev, right down to the personal, i may be dying and theyre calling me a coward. He said, should we shoot all these people or should we open up . He decide, open up. Theres multiple levels of causality. I think thats whats an amazing phenomenon worthy of study about the wall, itself, opening, yet alone the very fascinating questions we raised about the bigger questions of memory and of legacy. Theres a great question, and one of the things i think is really fascinating about marys there we go about marys story in leipzig in particular which she tells remarkably in her new book which i have an advanced copy of, im happy to sell to the highest bidder, is the difference between what happened there and what happened in tiananmen. One of the things we should recall about Tiananmen Square is the world generally remembers that event as occurring on the night of june 4th when the tanks and the armored personnel carriers rolled in and the machine guns opened up. Of course, there had been a series of attempts over the previous week by the chinese regime to take down the square by force without the use of deadly force. And at each stage, they had been repulsed by the Chinese People of beijing, less students than we recall, in fact, more regular workers and residents, who had physically repelled and pummeled the soldiers who tried to enter tiananmen. The soldiers firing on june 4th had basically been beaten up by the people for a week at this point deadly force was not the first choice. It was a choice that occurred after continued pressing and continued violence escalated. So one could only think what would have happened in leipzig if the soldiers who were staring down the crowd, the crowd had gotten within 30 yards of their position, while they had machine gun, if the crowd had been hurling rocks and for a week at that point, what their reaction might have been. It would have been far different, i think. Jeff . And john. You get creeky after a while. Its nice to be back at schaffer after all these years. You one of the people who published the fore of the construction of the berlin wall, correct . [ laughter ] it was very enjoyable and a thoughtprovoking set of presentations. Couple of points, one, and i think this is directed at mel, and maybe im stretching my point, but maybe it was a good thing we had the soviet union around for american capitalism to have a friendly face, a smile, and a positive approach to the working man and unions. Thats gone. Is there a connection . I dont know. And a general question, when, please, when will we see the end of the america, right, america trying to see the world in its own image in terms of interpreting complex events that happened . Im thinking of right now and, once again, listening to our political leaders your political leaders, not mine. It just seems to me that the rhetoric goes round and round and round and stops with how great we are and how everyone should, in fact, be embracing our values. And what we have to do to change and save the world. Those are two questions. Jeff, im not exactly sure what you meant. Was it a good idea for the United States very simply, my idea, that the soviet union and the United States were involved in a big dance for a long time. There was an enemy and corporate capitalism, international capitalism, global capitalism, whatever you want to call it. Had to have known that working men in america and women, too, were happier and better off than their enslaved counterparts in the world. Well, i think its important simply to realize the initial context of the cold war where rather than american officials being happy that there was a clear model that the soviet that the United States or western capitalism was superior. The real context of the origins of the cold war was the widespread apprehension that existed after the depression in world war ii about the viability and vitality of communism. One of the main reasons the cold war starts is because of the fears of american officials about the appeal of communism. So i think that american officials preferred to have the situation that existed after 1990 than what had existed before. So, no, i dont think they liked having the soviet union around as a framework. I really dont. As for the rhetorical lessons, i think, yes, american officials and american journalists and the American Media and quite a few historians and scholars have disseminated an exceptionalist view of triumphalism. So ive taken issue with that exceptionalist view. Many people in this room have taken issue of it with it. Our views i dont think have prevailed in the larger context of American Public thinking about the end of the cold war. What i think is important, though, is for us to carry on. That is, to continue to try to communicate our views. I think a very good example of this has happened in the last two weeks. So some of you who read the New York Times and the new republic know that bob kagan has written an incredibly influential essay about the what we should learn from the experience of the 20th century from world war i, from world war ii, about american leadership. The bottom line, bob kagan argues, is that whats necessary to have a peaceful, stable, and democratic world order is for the United States, as it has done in the past, to assert its power and assume leadership. Allegedly, president obama house to discuss this article. Thats what i read in the New York Times. I know for a fact that Hillary Clinton had dinner with bob kagan to discuss this article. So i would wager that probably the majority of people in this room do not quite agree with that story. Not that its totally wrong, in my opinion, but that it has pretty significant problems. So i would suggest that everyone who disagrees with it should read it and try to publish something about it. And make an impact. Communicate your views. Affect Public Perception and the memory that we have on these events. You know, we have a chance to do that. Kagans article appeared in the new republic. Yes, hes a wellknown public intellectual. Maybe thats why he got it in the new republic, but other people can write and try to, you know, communicate a counterview, and thats if were unhappy with the exceptionalist view of triumphalism, thats what we historians should be trying to do, without getting caught in our own ideological biases, i would suggest. Jonathan . Jonathan winkler, wright state university. Im going to make half the panel feel old. I was in high school, i was a freshman when the wall fell. Sorry. At least you werent there when the wall went up. I dont know. [ laughter ] i dont know where my parents were. All right. Let me play the role of splitter a little. Jeff, you suggested that there was almost a contrast, you could say, on the one hand those who tried to stand against the crowds with violence, then sort of succeeded, but those who kind of a aseeded to the crowds. Their regimes went away. Where do we put romania in that . I think the romanians like to be different. I think we actually have to put romania in a third category because we should recall that nicolae ceausescu did not have opportunity to act at tiananmen as he wanted. He was forced to flee before it. And given the opportunity i think would have fallen squarely in the troglodyte camp. I mean, it was him and honecker, to the first questions point, telling the rest of the soviet bloc that gorbachev had gone too far, that this was crazy, we must hold fast to our socialist roots and hold fast against the crowd, and they were increasingly outnumbered. And romania i think is the first place where we can see, more importantly, less an interaction between the crowd and the regime than really the first steps of a civil war. We remember that violence in romania that occurs in the two weeks particularly around christmas and after really winds up being villager against villager in many ways and village against village. Many driven by a longterm ethnic tension and conflict. I would say romania is the best case example of a precursor of yugoslavia. The regimes had done a really effective job of clamping down historic tensions which, of course, would bubble up in the aftermath to great tragedy. My name is david mayors. I teach at boston university. When we try to sort out the erosion of soviet power in Eastern Europe and then its collapse, how important is our understanding of faithbased dissent . In particular the Catholic Church, john paul ii, poland, which in some sense is a rehearsal for what took place later on, and then leipzig, it was the dissenting protestants who played quite an active role. If you could just comment on that bundle of questions. Yes. That was another category of middle actors that i discovered were local church leaders, parishioners, peace prayer groups at churches, certainly in poland, the role of the Catholic Church can hardly be overstated. Greg knows much more about that than i do. The case of the role of the church in leipzig was significant but more complex than i originally thought. The kind of superficial narrative is that the church sheltered dissidents and there are even a number of books with titles such as the revolution that came from the church and the church has brought down the wall and so forth. When i went and actually interviewed former churchbased dissidents, they had very mixed feelings. Because on the one hand they said the stasi, the secret police tolerated the churches giving us shelter because it made surveillance easier. It was basically onestop shopping for the stasi. So if you had the churches as a primary site of dissident activity and all kinds of internal stasi reports make it clear that churches were the main site of this inactivity, then you could just observe the churches. The stasi also turned a number of ministers and church staff who actually then worked as stasi agents and that then was uncovered in the years after this is also happening in other Eastern European countries, too. When i interviewed the disdents they had mixed feelings because they said i found out afterwards that minister was a stasi agent, this minister was a stasi agent. On the other hand, we had shelter, we had a space to meet, a space to organize. The church was very important to us. Some of the ministers really cared, some of the ministers really supported us, some of the parishioners really supported us. On the whole, the church was a really vital place. The actual picture is much more ambivalent in the details than you might imagine. The church was a crucial space to shelter dissidents. But the irony is the stasi permitted that space to exist as long as the activity within it did not become too energetic. In 1989 when a whole host of factors come together, gorbachev, the example of solidarity, the mistakes the regime is making, when suddenly that activity explodes exponentially, the stasi is unprepared for it. The role of the church is critical but ambivalent. Another factor that came into play when i interviewed dissidents from churchbased group, some would say to me im christian, some would say, im not religious at all. I walked into a church and it was the only place in my country where people said what they thought. Even though i didnt become religious, i valued that space and dialogue, so i participated wholeheartedly in these groups even though im personally not a person of faith. So, as is so often the case with historical events, when under the circumstances into the nittygritty details, the picture is more complicated. There were people involved in faithbased organizations but their actions were not based on their own faith. So, the picture is a complex one, but if you had to summarize it in a nutshell, the churches were important and managed to be more valuable than the stasi surveillance that accompanied them. I want to pick up and second on this point because i think its really quite crucial. It helps the broader point were making, all three of us, all four of us you say a lot, too on this panel of the different nature of national perceptions and historiographical perceptions. Here is a good case where the prototypical american has a different view of what it means to say the church played an influential role in influencing events than would somebody in Eastern Europe at this time or even western europe at this time. As mary points out, the church is really a social institution as well as anything else and the american evangelicals and missionaries supporting Church Movements clandestinely most often during the 80s in particular, they are driven by a sense of faith, that the regimes greatest outrage is its prohibition against religious freedom. The people who are using the church most often not always but most often as a vehicle for organizing in social dissent though not being animated by a great desire for religious freedom, themselves. So its an important lesson here, especially as you recall, with the exception of vatican city, the vatican city, the United States is about the most religious country in the world. Consequently it makes us more prone to think people around the world, who are more organized by religion, are acting at the same level of passionate faith that so Many Americans are. Hi, im Michael Donahue from marquette university. The strongest visual impression i got of that night was an enormous amount of inordinate drinking that went on that night. You can see all the west germans and east germans celebrating by the wall they tore down, they were passing around champagne and schnapps and beer, whatever was available. Some of that occurred in the United States where people went out on their lawns in my neighborhood. Lived in a catholic neighborhood, we didnt have champagne but a lot of budweiser. A lot of people did go out. That was kind of a celebratory night. A doctor told me once, the worst effect of a hangover kicks in 11 hours after you stop drinking. Seems like the hangover occurred 11 years after it on 09 11 2001. A lot of distinguished historians like our panel that shortly after the event, this was the end of the short century, the end of the 75yearold 20th century that started in 1914 and ended in 1989. But that, again, quickly was eclipsed shortly 11 years later with this idea that actually 9 11 is the start of the new 21st century. I was just wondering if theres any commentary from the panel of is this the end of the 20th century, do you think . Is it that formidable and important event that it supersedes what happens 11 years later . Thanks. Im sure my colleagues here have a lot to say on this issue. I mean, simply stated, yes, i think it is the end of a short century. I think that is a good framework to see it. To see the events of 1989, symbolizing the end of many things. I would say the next decade is a decade of transition. And yes, youre right, after 9 11 we Start Talking about a new century and new war on terrorism. Whatever that might mean. So, yes, i mean, in many important ways, i think its the end of the century, but as so many of us have been writing during the last 10, 15, or 20 years, you know, there are other important developments that transcend the cold war that are happening parallel to the cold war that intersect at times with the cold war, that effect the cold war and that are very influential after the cold war. So, you know, issues of demography, issues of globalization and so forth. So part of the answer to your question is, revolves around what do you think in terms of International History are the most essential issues of the 20th century . If you think its demographic growth, or disease, or globalization, then youre going to have a different view of the events of 1989 90, if you think it is two world wars, the rise of totalitarianism, et cetera, then you probably see 1989 and 1990 and 91 as the, you know, as an appropriate bookend. Let me put a somewhat different spin on that, if i could, in part agreement, but to put a different context. I think it is true that its very easy to look at 1989 as the end of the 20th century and im comfortable with that personally because i think there are broader trends going on as alluded to, trends such as globalization, but most importantly, trends of the proliferation of Information Technologies which i think are crucial to the United States and its allies being able to see a future beyond the cold war in many ways which the soviets could not. And this is significant because i think it helps us not so much look back at what 1989 meant as an ending point, but look what it means Going Forward because i think that tells us, frankly, that 9 11 and i have to be careful how i say this since i live 400 yards from the george w. Bush library but 9 11 was not that important because the trends that spawned 9 11 still continue, and in fact, were globalization, integration of ideas and that 9 11 actually was in many ways an expected manifestation of very expect the an expected manifestation of trends of information flowing and media flowing which 1989 allowed to flow through a dramatically larger part of the world. In essence, 1989 opens the flood gates and were still seeing what comes later. Just to follow a little bit on what jeff has said, and i was surprised researching this book and also my previous book, 1989, at a disconnect that i saw. There were all these dramatic events from the ground up. You have solidarity in poland. You have the peaceful revolution in east germany. All these dramatic changes. Dramatic changes of the lives of east berliners, europeans, dramatically more life choices all of a sudden. From the ground up i saw this picture of change. But when i looked from the the top down, i didnt. The predominate cold war Security Organization in the cold war was nato. And now in europe, predominant Security Organization is still nato. The European Community existed before. It renamed itself European Union but basically existed afterwards. What surprised me was this mismatch between the dramatic change from the ground up and the perpetuation of cold war institutions into the postcold war era. Indeed, perhaps the Biggest Surprise for me, i realize we saw, of course, in cold war europe this clear dividing line between eastern and western europe. This was obviously the warsaw pact over here. The fact russia got left on the periphery i now mean russia not the soviet union with nato expanding into Eastern Europe means theres basically a dividing line, it just got moved eastward. I came to see 1989 not as an end to the 20th century because so many of the organizations and divisions that dominated the 20th century were persisted in the postcold war world. This creates all kinds of issues because when you get to 9 11, youre trying to respond to 9 11 with cold war institutions. If you look at the 9 11 report one of the reasons the United States was unprepared to deal with 9 11 was because security institutions were still those formulated to fight the cold war. Well, thats true, but that was also a strategic decision in 1989 1990 to perpetuate these decisions. So i actually came to see 1989 not so much as an ending because there is so much into the 21st century. We are living today with that awkward juxtaposition into cold war institutions primarily formulated to defend western europe and the challenges of the 21st century. Whats been kind of amazing with the crisis in ukraine and putin is that all of a sudden such institutions seem newly relevant, this new rethinking of the cold war. I dont actually see 1989 as the end of the short 20th century when we get into a great new world. Let me say one more thing, if i could. Theres one other view of this, i think, is george bushs. H. W. Or w. . H. W. That 1989, in essence, is 1946 but in a good way. 1989 in his vision of a new world order is were finally going to get rid of this albatross around our neck which is the cold war, which kept fulfilling u. N. Mandate in world war ii of states working together cooperatively and respecting sovereignty. Consequently for him theres a sense 1989 is a chance to sort of finally do what we were supposed to do and do it right. Now, one criticism i think of that view that one could make is it doesnt take into account some of these broader Global Trends because nowhere in bushs vision of a new world order articulated as a manifestation of 1945 and the u. N. , no one in there is a sense of non state actors. He can only conceive of the world in terms of states, which i think is one of the reasons why Something Like nato continues to persist because when one considers how to defend ones self, of course one thinks about other states. States are still the most powerful force in the world to this day, i think, with the exception of, perhaps, google, but day are simply more powerful than other non state actors which bush was not ready to integrate into his global view because that wasnt the view of 1945. One thing in terms of if i can just comment. I taught a course at the Army War College this last spring and it had a Large International demographic in my class. In the course of the conversation we were talking about 1989 and talking about 2011, talked about the trends of the 20th century. And to fast forward, a consensus developed among the students that 25 years ago from now, excuse me, 25 years from now were not going to be talking about 1989 so much. Were going to be talking about 1979 much more than 1989. I was actually interested in the conversation. Jeff, you mentioned that 1989 was when the world changed. It was a global affair. There was a big chunk of the globe that has not been discussed at all tonight. I mean, we basically went from europe to china. From europe to china. Okay. So, as i said, im just sort of what you said just raising this, and its made me think about this periodization a lot. Particularly in terms of what began and what ended at different times. I dont in any way challenge the views that 1889 constitutes an end of an era of the 20st century. But it seems to me that something had begun before the the end that isnt just the trends that go on, that there were political events that triggered Something Different and that in a quarter century from now, if im in the Intelligence Community and im writing sort of Global Trends 2060, i may be thinking about 1989 very differently. Okay. So when i think of 1979, i presume youre referring to events in the middle east. Afghanistan. Afghanistan is pretty close. Theres a common denominator there which i think is most likely prevalent in the Career Trajectories of most of your students at the Army War College in that they had spent the vast majority of the last decade concerned with radical islam. So if you ask them, what is the most important thing of their lives and Going Forward, theyre naturally going to presume thats something they have to deal with on a daily basis. Absolutely correct. My suggestion, i guess, is we should make sure the next ten years are a conflict against someplace really innocuous like iceland and well be able to see iceland as a really important place 60 years from now, which it may be. Yes . Is anybody here from iceland . Iceland is broke now. It was very popular once. Im from the university of warwick, uk. And thanks for your comments, everyone. Sometimes when i think about these complex, historical events like the end of the cold war, it reminds me of a quote said about the danish prussian war of 1864 which was famous for its complexity. He said only a few people know whats actually happened, ones dead, one is mad, and ive forgotten everything i ever knew. Id like to thank your three panelists for providing the figures identified. The question is very simple. Its about the historiography. Professor immerman maybe touched upon it as well. If theres one thing about the historiography of this important event, which you have thought very long and hard about, that you could change, what would it be . So if there is one thing about the historiography surrounding this event and the end of the cold war, 1989, that you could change, what would it be . Thanks. Well, im still trying to figure out which one of us is mad, which one of us is dead and which one of us is forgotten. So ill let you go first. Im not sure i can address that, but i think when we try to periodize things, jeff richard, youre quite right. There are always continuities and discontinuities. So things that started in the 1970s and 80s are going to be important after 1989. But it seems to me if you think about some of the basic issues such as the nature of the configuration of power in the International System. The configuration of power in the International System was absolutely transformed in between 1989 and 1992. I would say that that change is far more significant than the fact that nato continued in a new form. Far more significant than the the fact that the soviet union and the warsaw pact disappeared and american strength was predominant was extraordinarily important. The other thing is that for, you know, depending on how you want to define it, 50 years or 70 years, there were competing ways. Competing models of political economy. Whats really important about 1989, 1990, 91, as symbolic years was that that those years demonstrated to all humankind that the communist model was no longer a viable alternative way of life. Yes, so thats, in part, related to then the rise of islamism as a possible alternative framework. But the destruction of communism as a framework for ordering the political economies of societies is really important everywhere. Now, its not just the events in berlin, but its also, obviously, the trajectory and the reconfiguration of the political economy of china during these years. These things intersect. But on the whole, you have two huge transformations. The transformation in the structure of power in the International System, transformation in the perception of the viability of certain political economies. Those are huge, huge changes that i think help to define the 20th century. Can i just say one thing real quick . Sure. So just briefly, i think you asked if i understood your question you asked what about the historiography would i like to change . What id like to change is that theres a lot of writing about the cold war and end of the cold war that talks about europe without talking about the europeans. Theres writing on the berlin wall coming down that doesnt involve berliners. Theres writing on the end of German Division that doesnt involve germans. Im trying to really bring in these local actors and show the significance of their agency. I think in the United States our Foreign Policy does go badly awry when we forget the agency and local actors. Ill give a quotation from a former activist i interviewed. This is a woman who was a very active protester in east germany for years before the wall came down, and she said, it still amazes me when i read history books about the history that i lived through, the history i made. I read these history books, and they say the wall fell and it gave us our freedom. She said, we fought for our freedom, and then the wall fell. And shes right. And so id like to bring that understanding that there was this peaceful revolution and that it mattered and that it was causal into the historiography. That there were people on the Ground Fighting for their freedom and then the wall fell. So, before i bring this session to a close, which im sure that well all continue the discussion, i should mention that i was negligent at the beginning. I meant to mention that many of you noticed that james wilson was supposed to be on this session. James has just published a terrific book on the end of the cold war, the triumph of improvisation. James also works for the state department, the historical office. And hes actually a leader of a team working on the ukrainian russian crisis. So he did not feel comfortable leaving that to come up. We should feel comfortable that hes at work solving International Crises while we figure out whats missing from the historiography. But in any event, we all missed having james here. With that, let me thank our panelists who are wonderful. I really want to thank them, because i had insisted that they speak for 10 to 12 minutes each. Fortunately, as is my life, they ignored me completely, and i think we all benefited from it tremendously. So thanks very much. Youre watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on merp history every weekend on cspan 3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule, upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. Each week american art facts takes you to museums. Up next, a visit to the theater roosevelt birthplace National Historic site. His legacy still impacts us today, whether it be in a realm of conservation or federal regulation, trust busting or Foreign Policy which we dont debate whether its good or bad here at the birthplace, to be honest. But the panama