1989: THE YEAR OF MIRACLES

Via National Review:

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is today — and has gone oddly unremarked-upon, to my eye — the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has produced the following mini-documentary about the course of the Soviet Union and the liberating events of 1989. It's well worth a watch.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former KGB lieutenant general and the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect and be granted asylum in the West, marked the anniversary for NRO with a piece yesterday warning about Vladimir Putin's dangerous Soviet nostalgia. John Fund (who I don't believe has any KGB connections, but you really never know) has a column on the anniversary too, and told an incredible story to the Atlas Foundation recently about a East Berliner friend he made before the Wall fell.

Earlier this year, Jay Nordlinger wrote up a piece on the efforts of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, begun 20 years ago by an act of Congress, for NR.

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the end to a drama that had begun in Poland with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement early in the decade and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union a little more than two years later. Poland had freed itself from the Communist yoke earlier in 1989, followed in rapid succession by Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Both of those countries opened their borders with the West. When Hungary opened its borders with Austria, the East German people rushed to go on "holiday," never to return.

The East German government moved to stop the flow of people by severely restricting travel to Hungary. This led to massive protests in October, culminating with the resignation of East Germany's long-serving Communist dictator, Erich Honecker, on October 19.

Amidst the confusion, on the evening of November 9, an obscure bureaucrat in the East German government clumsily responded to a question at a press conference about the easing of travel restrictions. The shocking press conference set off a rapid chain of events that resulted in the high drama of the wall's destruction, as chronicled in the book The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte:

That night at 6:00, Guenter Schabowski, a member of the East German Politburo who served as its spokesman, was scheduled to hold a news conference. Shortly before it began, he received a piece of paper with an update on the regulations and a suggestion that he mention them publicly. He had not been involved in discussions about the rules and did not have time to read the document carefully before starting.

His hour-long news conference was so tedious that Tom Brokaw, who was there, remembered being "bored." But in the final minutes, an Italian journalist's question about travel spurred Schabowski's memory. He tried to summarize the new regulations but became confused, and his sentences trailed off. "Anyway, today, as far as I know, a decision has been made," he said. "It is a recommendation of the Politburo that has been taken up, that one should from the draft of a travel law, take out a passage. . ."

Among the long-winded clauses, some snippets leapt out: "exit via border crossings" and "possible for every citizen."

Suddenly, every journalist in the room had questions. "When does that go into force?" shouted one. "Immediately?" shouted another. Rattled and mumbling to himself, Schabowski flipped through his papers until he uttered the phrase: "Immediately, right away."

It felt as if "a signal had come from outer space and electrified the room," Brokaw recalled. Some wire journalists rushed out to file reports, but the questions kept coming, among them: "What will happen to the Berlin Wall now?"

Alarmed about what was unfolding, Schabowski concluded with more muddled responses: "The question of travel, of the permeability therefore of the wall from our side, does not yet answer, exclusively, the question of the meaning, of this, let me say it this way, fortified border." Furthermore, "the debate over these questions could be positively influenced if the Federal Republic [of West Germany] and if NATO would commit themselves to and carry out disarmament."

As NATO was unlikely to disarm itself by breakfast, Schabowski clearly did not expect much to happen that night. But it was too late -- by 7:03 p.m., the wires were reporting that the Berlin Wall was open.

It was all supposed to have been yet another bland, forgettable, bureaucratic blah-blah-blah set of pronouncements.  But in no time at all, Schabowski's gaffes had turned the Communist world upside down:

Across the divided city, the mayor of West Berlin, Walter Momper, seized on Schabowski's unclear statement and decided to do what he could to make it tough for the Politburo to retract it. Momper swiftly decided on a plan: to act as if the border were open, even though it was not; as he kept saying to himself during his TV appearances through the night, "Just keep acting 'as if,' and it will build pressure."

And then there was Jäger, the senior Stasi official on duty at the Bornholmer Street crossing, who could have fired on the demonstrators - but chose instead to open the wall. A loyal party official, he was no revolutionary. Yet that night, the pressures of crowds demanding to cross the border, party leaders screwing up, and his superior officers leaving him in the lurch to clean up the mess all combined and caused him to snap.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Be sure to watch the video below and follow the links above and read the articles in full.

Also read:

Gorbachev warning U.S. of new cold war

The Wall, 25 Years On