Ronald Reagan vs. "The Experts"

1980 - Reagan - "The Soviets can't compete with us. I'll get the Soviets to the negotiating table." (June 1980)

1981 - Reagan - "The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and for the spread of civilization. The West won't contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." (Ronald Reagan, Commencement Address at University of Notre Dame, May 1981)

1981 - Expert - "It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." (Paul Samuelson, Professor of Economics, MIT, Nobel Laureate, Economics, 1981)

1982 - Expert - "The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systematic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability that suffice to endure the deepest difficulties." (Seweryn Bialer, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 1982/3)

1982 - Expert - "I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street ... those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1982)

NOTE: This is an example of liberal rationality going out the window as a result of its fascination with the mechanistic Communist economy. If Schlesinger had stopped to consider the pattern of propaganda eminating from the Communist regime (a fact continually pointed out by conservatives), he would have realized that he was merely observing a scripted show to propagandize the West. And this gullible liberal/soviet-romantic (an alleged enlightened intellectual) fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

1982 - Reagan - "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis - a crisis where the demands of the economic order are colliding directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens. A march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history." (Ronald Reagan, Address to the British Parliament, June 1982)

1983 - Expert - "All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and detonate for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia ... a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." (Stephen Cohen, Princeton University Sovietologist, 1983)

1983 - Reagan - "Let us pray for the salvation of all those who live in the totalitarian darkness - pray that they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they [Soviet rulers] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... I urge you to beware the temptation ... to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of any evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil." - (Ronald Reagan, Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983)

1984 - Expert - "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene...One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets...and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops... Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower." (John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1984)

1984 - Expert - "On the economic front, for the first time in its history the Soviet leadership was able to pursue successfully a policy of guns and butter as well as growth ... The Soviet citizen-worker, peasant, and professional - has become accustomed in the Brezhnev period to an uninterrupted upward trend in his well-being ..." (John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, New Yorker Magaine, 1984)

1985 - Expert - "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth." (Paul Samuelson, MIT, Nobel laureate in economics, 1985)

1985 - Expert - "It's clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism and capitalism are all in trouble." (James Reston, New York Times, 1985)

1987 - Reagan - "In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards... Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself. The inescapable conclusion is that freedom is the victor. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" (Ronald Reagan, Speech at the Brandenburg Gate, 1987)

1989 - Expert - "Can economic command significantly compress and accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. In 1920 Russia was but a minor figure in the economic councils of the world. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States." (Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, MIT, The Economic Problem, 1989)

1989 - The Berlin Wall came tumbling down just as Reagan said.

1991 - The Soviet Union and Communism collapsed and were placed on the ash heap of history just as Reagan predicted.

1991 - "We are very happy that the coup failed because we have now really destroyed the communist empire, the Soviet state, and of course, as Ronald Reagan said, it was indeed an evil empire and we are glad that it is gone from the earth." —Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin Foreign Minister

Post-1991 - "Ladies and gentlemen, if it had not been for the Reagan defense buildup, if the United States had not demonstrated that it is willing not only to stand up for freedom but to devote considerable sums of money to defending it, we probably would not be sitting here today having a free discussion between Russians and Americans." —Boris Pinsker, Soviet Economist.

Post-1991 - "Reagan was the main author of the victory of the Free World over the Evil Empire." - Radek Sikorski, Poland's deputy foreign minister, head of Solidarity during the Cold War, member of committee to rechristen one of Warsaw's central squares "Reagan Square."

Post-1991 - "American policy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union." —Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general

Post-1991 - "[Reagan administration policies] were a major factor in the demise of the Soviet system." —Yevgenny Novikov, former senior staff member of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee

Post-1991 - "Ronald Reagan's appeal ['Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!', Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, June 12th 1987], laughed at in the East as reverie and dismissed in the West as being a utopian dream, was to become reality a good two years later with the collapse of East Germany. After the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989, Brandenburg Gate was officially opened on December 22nd of that year." —Germany's Berliner-Morgenpost International, From Fantasy to Wonderful Reality, 1997