Nations in Eastern Europe but thats a kind of a narrative that is very western i suppose but i lived there it was i dont have that same kind of feel for it ok though having said that im very glad those communist regimes are gone and the wall go ahead john. You know well like you peter i lived through those events very directly like you i was studying Eastern European studies at oxford at that point i spent that summer in 1909 in romania and and indeed in september 89 i was in west berlin and was there when the 1st east berlin is arrived in west berlin having driven through czechoslovakia hungry austria and the whole of germany so i have a very strong memory of it as well i would make 2 points the 1st is that none of it would have happened without gorbachev decision to pull the rug on the Eastern European communist regimes that was decision he took in june and which he announced to the german chancellor helmut kohl at the time and all. The events that we remember now the jangling of keys in Wenceslas Square in prague the the torches the candlelight the songs and so on all that was nothing but operetta it was political operetta it was froth on a tidal wave of history but it was not the cause of the tidal wave of history the cause im afraid was much more basic and much more realistic it was the decision as i say of the soviet union no longer to support. Those regimes and once the support of moscow had been withdrawn they collapsed so it was not the triumph of people in the streets of prague or berlin the whatever it was instead of the jew political decision taken by moscow which had the inevitable consequences that we know about ok now you only lighted communism fell yeah ok i did as i say i just notice that harold was disagreeing with you go ahead harold in washington you know i really do think it has much deeper roots it has roots that go back into the 1950 s. And 1960 s. But for me that really transformational story was the papacy of john paul the 2nd and the mobilization you saw the demonstration of millions of poles yet. People really united against against the regime and from that moment on the regime lacked any legitimacy in addition to their systematic economic failure and its not that gorbachev is dealing with that that gorbachev has to respond to the basic sentiment is there in the streets of was or its there in the streets of prague its very very clear i think im ok i think its completely wrong i think that as well here or operator ok but harold i agree i spent a lot of time in poland n n n one thing on jan on hang on one thing is that i would tend to agree that maybe kind of split the difference with john here is that i think i know that there was a lot of people were disgruntled with the political and Economic System they had in poland many. Word that is true ok but when the papa see of john paul the 2nd United People and what they didnt like it wasnt where they wanted to go that was very unclear that there wasnt even a glimmer in anyones eye of where they should go they just didnt know what they did they didnt know what they didnt like jeff uncorked jumpin a lot well i would have been a lot of Different Things david and again. Thank you we got to we had a time delay go ahead jack i like to maybe are ok maybe yes go ahead well i agree agree to a certain extent with both john and with highroad yes i agree i agree with joe on that goal which i was a key factor in 1000 when the globe which oh if theres no theres no peoples revolution in 1009 in the senate i dont agree with you on that goal which will pull the rug from under the east coast European Congress route regimes or at least that was the intention go to chelsea intention was to save the comic book to save communities and to revitalize it and what he was trying to do was to encourage the stripping Congress Leaders to actually to do the necessary reforms on the other hand its not just about gold which of the day was a kind of a basket of Popular Uprising in various countries in Eastern Europe and that mass uprising that peoples revolution was critical in pushing events in the. Direction such like said i agree. With highroads yes i was to in fact this is to go but show fact the revolution from above is led by colwich off and its the revolution from below that comes from the street ok and you. Had. Thanks i mean obviously its difficult to discuss such big issues in the short term needed for television the reason why i said what i said is that on the 13th of june 1909 gorbachev effectively told helmut kohl that he the soviet union would not oppose german reunification that the communication of that information to coal in the gardens of the federal chancellor a says it all because once the soviet union let it be known to west germany that it would not oppose east german rain if occasion then the entire house of cards could only collapse of course they were popular discontent i would never dream of suggesting otherwise and i certainly didnt suggest otherwise what i would say though to harold james is that those previous expressions of popular discontent including in poland was suppressed by force they were suppressed by force in berlin in 1953 in prague in 1968 in budapest in 956 and in poland in 1901 we all know that the decision was taken by gorbachev to stop that policy to abandon the doctrine and once he did that the whole thing unraveled and that seems to me to be the cause of everything harold you want to respond to there go ahead. Yes i mean i do think that is right there was a moment we know now when the east german regime was considering using force and they had after all the example of german square behind them and they were explicitly prohibited from doing by the by the soviet union by gorbachev and so that is indeed important but i do think you really have to think that by that stage its really too late there is an enormous amount thats just going on on the street and actually i wanted to disagree a little bit peter with what you said before that there wasnt a plan for what to do in the middle of the 1980 s. And 185 Solidarity Office in brussels the summit in brussels. I wrote to the International Monetary fund but they wanted to plan for the reconstruction of poland along the lines proposed by lesser parts are over its so the discussion of the reform theres been well documented after 1900 it was already being discussed well ok well where only very important given harold with all due respect i mean solidarity wasnt a monolithic thing even in the 1980 s. There were a lot of different solidarity is for sure ok absolutely ok absolutely of course i mean any Political Party any Political Movement is a coalition of Different Things and you know there was a catholic element to it of a very very strong powerful absolutely liberal element to it ok you know what thats kind of an easily dovetail so my question for jeff uncork i mean if given. The childs mindset in 1909 i think all of us probably at the time thought there would be some kind of reform communism because thats what got to chop was talking about for the soviet union itself and i think thats what really caught all of us every single one of us off guard because you cant have a little bit of this of a little bit of bad its either one or the other jeff. That was very much that was the intention was Reform Congress and also it was the intention that a lot of the activists who were leading these mr must demonstrations in the. Uk and other places thats the way they saw the future as well and its where a lot of outside observers saw the future now we know what happened that day was no real incomes and commies and collapsed but you know because that happened to me to say that was inevitable at the time there were lots of all kinds of different possible political futures and so on and i dont accept that you know once you once resolve the same motion once called the job to get it the only outcome was the outcome of that happened which is a complete collapse and the introduction of this new look. I dont believe thats a look at the rule kinds of possibilities that. What happened was amount of political choices lots of different political choices including choices to make but gorbachev by western leaders but you know the people on the ground in europe as well ok well johnny but then again the actual existing socialism im going back to graduate school here i mean it was very totalistic its either one thing or another its not like how do we you know its like the further perfecting of communism a mile that kind of. Language which has it really make any sense ok and i i didnt believe in thinking it through a reformed reforming actual existing socialism was possible if you cant you cant reform it it has to go down. Yes i think thats right i think you can be any more half communist than you can be half pregnant and the subsequent history of the soviet union itself of course showed this because as we know the forces which gorbachev unleashed ended up destroying the soviet the communist party of the soviet union in the soviet union itself so i agree with that i also think that today just as in a comment about russia in the today common to present day russia western commentators focus only on the liberal opposition they never focus on the nationalist opposition or of the communist opposition so they have a totally liberal interpretation of the coming down of the berlin wall the coming down of the berlin wall was of course the physical barrier which divided the german capital and therefore the german nation and so it did have an Important National content and the same applied to some extent for the other countries of Eastern Europe although of course as we know the iron curtain itself came again in june john really john crash. Holiness hold that thought were going to go to a short break and after that short break well continue our discussion on the fall of the berlin wall stay with our. If. There are good and bad news the bad news in the United States is. The good. War in syria the cia and the us military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. Where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up the right way military funding an army was theres no any more because theres always a small. One really good. Little. Place. Me. So. Thank you. And very well might continue watching on since last. Thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the countrys military and the decision. Every song came to a complete. You know told to shut up theyd kill me and i see how destroyed my life many screamed at me and he made me come in the gram my arm and he write me with this bird thinking if you take into account that women dont report because of the extreme retaliation its probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing tapping but ive never seen trauma like. Women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victim punished than the offender and almost 10 year career which i was very invested in and i gave a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an hour in violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether thats a man or woman. Welcome back to crossfire were all things are considered im Peter Lavelle to remind you were discussing the fall of the berlin wall 30 years ago. Ok john i had to go to a hard break there are you would you like to finish your point go ahead so what i was saying was that the fall of the berlin wall obviously physically symbolized the reunification of germany and the liberation of the nations of Central Europe but what it really was if you like even more so than the collapse of a physical barrier was the collapse of communism itself as a governing ideology and as i said earlier we know that the collapse of that ideology ended up the gulf in the soviet union itself what this collapse allowed western liberals to do. Its to do what trotsky originally did back in the in 1920 s. Which was to prevent soviet communism as purely an expression of russian imperialism and nothing else and to make an obstruction if you like of the whole communist ideology the whole marxist ideology which they the todays liberals the intellectuals who in the in the cold war in western europe in the United States had supported lets never forget that marxism was extremely alive and well in western universities throughout the entire period of the cold war still with a sort of revisionist leisure demo its now presented it still is its now print the berlin wall of the collapse of the berlin wall is now presented as nothing but the collapse of a russian empire when in fact it was the collapse of a marxist ideological empire and that to me is the is the most important thing that we must remember i think the critical years later errol do our reflect upon that thats very interesting. Id like to say i mean i dont have i agree. John. I agree that it was the collapse of the communist idea and thats absolutely right i remember these discussions in east berlin in 199991 people discuss the 3rd way and whether the world of of there were formal tentative and then there was a very powerful mind that the 3rd way is just a way into the 3rd world its a way to backwardness and you had a model of yugoslavia which was obviously not soviet style communism and in some ways it was held up as an example of how you can do to reform yugoslavia favor dismissed really is the soviet experiment failed but then it also was i think you have to think of that also historically that this is the result of 945 and. If you think of what happens in poland what happens in hungary what happens in czechoslovakia its the result of soviet power and the story of communism in in poland or hungary is not simply a nature of movement this is taken over. Because of the military presence of the soviet union jeff we have a time delay im sorry for that let me lets go to jeff now we go to jeff. You know. Peter im a bit surprised the extent to which you buy into the western liberal triumphalist narrative is im not im a plot play im not installed it is no no no no that is actually existing social well let me finish my but thats actually existing socialism its either one thing or the other then you actually cant explain what happened in 1909 because the reform the impetus which i each kind from weaving coalminers miss south. From from from some from google and you know you talk about you know the end of the communist idea well people said that in relation to china i mean what they were society in 1990 was that china will be next chinese communism willful thats not the case we still have a communist regime in china dont we and we have a situation where the people are talking about china becoming the most powerful actor in the little so how does that fit in with this kind of like triumphalist you know to try out the place where they listen and how to write a letter your comment i think ok i would i would love i would love to add to that i have to tell you how many i hang out here id love to answer that but i want to hear my guests 1st because i have a bone to pick with you jeff but im going to go to harold 1st go ahead. So i mean i think if you think of what to what happened in china of course its its a communist party in china but whats happened is a completely different kind of evolution than the evolution of the soviet union and an adoption since the early 1980 s. Of market principles. And so the really the creation of a tremendous dynamism that comes from the. Liberation of people in the economic sphere so theres a lot of Economic Freedom obviously on the political side theres a one party state but in it in terms of economic dynamism thats where it comes from it doesnt come from old style Central Planning and in the soviet model ok well let me go to john here and i kind of want to address what jeff had to say here because if they take it you could just get very quick just get here very quickly can i just get it very quickly peter one quick point one quick point yes what im trying to get away from here is just kind of what i can essentially kind of feel of history what happened was a matter of contingency more than me so all kinds of different outcomes are possible and we can see that not because of the time everyones saying of trying to the west trying to liberalism democracy would we say thats the case now we have you not i am not i say me and i just i am not i didnt put democrat you know what he was i saying history into the year ok let me go to john here and i think it will answer jeffs concerns with my questions now with look at 30 years later in Eastern Europe and you have a lot of people in these former communist countries that are not very happy with neo liberalism you can look in poland you can look at hungry you can look elsewhere all through the former eastern bloc im directing this question to jaf but i want john dancer it. Jeff i think youre slightly tilting at windmills because in other peter ryan also the herald defenders of western liberalism or western liberal fairytales know what i was trying to say earlier is that the collapse of the berlin wall is of course a physical event but what it and what it showed was the liberation of east 1st east berlin as east germans Eastern Europeans are but it was also the liberation of russians and of soviet citizens from the same communist dictatorship which had by then collapsed or was in the process of collapsing and the revisionism that i was referring to in my earlier answer is the revisionism to say that the communist regime in Eastern Europe which is how james of course rightly says was imposed through soviet force that that regime was somehow the domination of russians over czechs and germans and poles and so on it was not that it was an ideology minister ideology over all those people equally and so the liberty if it came came just as much to the russians as it did to the east germans and everyone else liberty which like all the beauty comes with a price and risk thats what liberty is and of course yes not least because of the abuses of wes