Why the Wall Came Tumbling Down
(NPR Commentary)
By Dinesh D'Souza

Ten years ago, in what may prove to be the most spectacular event of our lifetimes, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, liberating millions of people and launching a new era of peace and prosperity.

But why did the wall collapse? Why did Soviet communism implode, making the United States the world’s only superpower? The conventional answer, recently offered by historian Alan Brinkley, is that the Soviet Union suffered from what he calls “grave internal weaknesses.” As a result of these, he argues, Soviet communism collapsed of its own weight—it was a kind of inevitability.

I don’t think this view makes much sense. Brinkley and other historians routinely speak of a Soviet economic crisis that forced the Soviet leaders to give up the old unworkable system. But what economic crisis are they talking about? The Soviets suffered from no economic problems in the 1980s that weren’t present in the 1970s, or the 1960s, or the 1950s, or (come to think of it) in any decade since the Bolsheviks came to power. The Soviet economy has been a basket case, the subject of grim jokes, since 1917.

And what if there was an economic slowdown in the eighties: why should that force a ruling elite to give up its authority? Can you recall any mass demonstrations on the streets of Moscow that put irresistible pressure on the Soviet party leaders to abandon the system that allowed them to retain power and live extremely well? There weren’t any.

Never in history has a great empire simply called it quits due to so-called “grave internal weaknesses.” The Roman empire and the Ottoman empire endured far more serious internal problems, yet they persisted for centuries until they were forcibly overthrown.

No, our friends in the historical community are simply wrong. There was nothing inevitable about the collapse of Soviet communism. Indeed very few important historical events occur solely as a result of impersonal forces. Without Washington, Jefferson and Madison, would there have been a successful American revolution? It’s possible, but I doubt it. Without Abraham Lincoln, would there have been a civil war? Would American slavery have ended when it did? Probably not.

Similarly it was the involvement of a handful of people that brought the cold war to an end. One was Mikhail Gorbachev, who let the Soviet empire dissolve peacefully. Another was Margaret Thatcher, who first saw that Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader. And Ronald Reagan, who challenged the “evil empire” and yet worked cooperatively with Gorbachev to negotiate historic nuclear weapons reductions. And Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and Pope John Paul II, who sustained hope in Poland and Eastern Europe throughout the 1980s.

Without these men and women the Soviet empire would probably be intact today. So as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s demise, let’s remember the heroes of the 1980s who made our world a better place. What they teach us is that individuals, not impersonal forces, are the ones that make history.

(See also: Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became and Extraordinary Leader)