Me in Moscow December 1989.
Posted on 12/28/2009 7:26:03 AM PST by Ed Hudgins
The December of 1989 marked the end of one of the most extraordinary six months of the century. Over that short period of time all of the communist-run dictatorships in Eastern Europe collapsed as the people of those countries sought freedom. The execution of the Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceauşescu on Christmas Day of that year brought the revolutions to an end with a bang.
An ideologically and economically exhausted Soviet Union stood by and did not do what it had done so many times in the past: send in tanks to crush these rebellions. That country’s Communist Party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, was trying to stave off the collapse of his own regime through policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic and political reform). In the end, communism in Russia and its empire would fall as well.
Delegation for freedom
In December 1989 a delegation from the Heritage Foundation, of which I was a part, was able to hold the first conference on free market reforms behind the then-crumbling Iron Curtain. We were invited to hold the event in Estonia. That country had been conquered by and incorporated into the Soviet Union in World War II but, encouraged by the events in Eastern Europe, it was now seeking its own independence.
On the way to the Estonian capital of Tallinn, a colleague and I stopped in Moscow to meet with academics and others who were promoting reform. They told us that they had heard the words of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who didn’t worry about offending Soviet leaders but, rather, described the communist regimes as evil and offered hope to the peoples under Red repression that one day they might be free. Ironically, dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov died while we were in Moscow, awakening in those who favored freedom…
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Although there is some good truth here, I would be careful regarding the objectivist philosophy per se.
Maybe it can happen here too.
Me in Moscow December 1989.
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