the wife and I about the fall of Soviet communism and the fall of the Berlin wall and what not was the indifference of citizens of the United States. We kept expecting our nation to celebrate as a nation, to have parades and picnics and just generally make a huge fuss about the end of the FREAKING Cold War that had loomed over our heads our entire lives . . . and yet there was nothing aside from a few disinterested news blurbs.

We, as a nation, were already well into ten second sound bites and the 24 hour news cycle. It was OLD NEWS essentially by the time that it became news.

The wife and I, in our middle thirties, celebrated the entire world's good fortune on our own. The entire event was somewhat surrealistic and curiously anti-climactic.

It wasn't just the news cycle business. The collapse of the old order was very carefully downplayed by the first Bush administration, not wanting to antagonize the old guard in the USSR with too much triumphalism.

I don't doubt that Bush's enemies politically (and in the press corps) did not want him and his party to win political points for what happened as well.

Nevertheless, it was hardly a sure thing at that point. After all, if the Soviets wanted to crush it after Nov. 10, they could have sent tanks to do so. It would have been harder than quelling Hungary in 1956, but it was not impossible. I wondered whether at some point with all going on in Eastern Europe and the USSR, whether there would be a reaction. And there finally was when they kidnapped Gorbachev, but it was too little too late, though even that wasn't sure for a while.

I celebrated. I called my wife into the room and shared it with her. My kids understood somewhat too. It is easy to explain good and evil and the the Soviet was evil. When Ronald Reagan referred to them as the "Evil Empire", I was excited that someone finally had the balls to speak the truth. It was something I had waited for all my life. Like they say " peace through strength". It must of really miffed Putin to be ignored.

Well, most of "the FREAKING Cold War" was an obscenely overhyped, overpriced scam, that the National Security Establishments in the US and the Soviet Union used to acquire and retain power. The Soviets eventually had to quit the game, and the US emerged the "winner" (although $6T in debt). But the real winner was the house, which dragged every pot right up to the end.

dixieman:

I celebrated. I called my wife into the room and shared it with her. My kids understood somewhat too. It is easy to explain good and evil and the the Soviet was evil. When Ronald Reagan referred to them as the "Evil Empire", I was excited that someone finally had the balls to speak the truth. It was something I had waited for all my life. Like they say " peace through strength". It must of really miffed Putin to be ignored.

I'm glad you find it so easy to explain "good" and "evil". I'm sure the Soviets found it easy to do the same thing, the Iranians still do. That aside, I expect the reason Putin was ignored back then was because at the time he was a middle ranking nobody in the KGB.

dixieman:

I celebrated. I called my wife into the room and shared it with her. My kids understood somewhat too. It is easy to explain good and evil and the the Soviet was evil. When Ronald Reagan referred to them as the "Evil Empire", I was excited that someone finally had the balls to speak the truth. It was something I had waited for all my life. Like they say " peace through strength". It must of really miffed Putin to be ignored.

My family also celebrated and religiously followed the toppling of regimes in central & eastern Europe. It really was an exciting time and I've always associated with how I imagined things felt after VE and VJ day. I have a great deal of family in Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary; so a lot of my family's excitement was derived from theirs (I still have a stack of letters from around 1988-1992). At the time, I think most Americans knew we were witnessing an incredibly important historic event.

However, at the time it was clear our government was intentionally playing down events. I've always suspected it was done because a) we did not know how things were going to play out; b) we did not want to antagonize Russia (which was clearly collapsing); c) Tiananmen Square was still fresh in our collective minds.

I remember the Berlin Wall coming down being fairly exciting. We had a history professor who was a staunch communist, and we used to joke about bringing in a piece of the Berlin Wall and him behaving as if it were kryptonite.

Aside from that, everything was relatively gradual; since the war was "Cold," it's aftermath was lukewarm.

Gmat is right. The cold war was tremendously irresponsible. Neither side wanted a confrontation, and that was obvious. Somehow the security establishments talked themselves into bickering over trifles.

Any reading of USSR history makes it clear they just wanted to be left alone. It was a horrible paranoid regime, but that was no reason to push things to the brink of Aramgeddon.

The world pushed a lot of chips in for quite a small pot. Good thing the world won.

It is way too simplistic to chalk up the Cold War to cynical actions of the US and USSR security establishments. The Cold War started amongst unprecedented changes in world history that made it an extremely difficult relationship to manage.

The most obvious factor is nuclear weapons and ICBM's. This is the first time in history that two global superpowers squared off, each having the ability to literally wipe the other off the face of the earth in the matter of a few hours. That will tend to breed lots of paranoia.

Although the Soviets of the 70's-90's may have wanted to be left alone (and that is not a certainty), Stalin's USSR was expansionist and bent on getting value for its sacrifices during WWII. Europe and Asia were largely up for grabs. The USSR would have expanded as far as we allowed it.

Or at least expanded its ideology. Remember that a core tenant of Communist ideology in the USSR was to spread the worker's revolution to other countries around the world. The US ideology was to oppose it because such ideology meant the end of free markets and democratic government. This was a fundamental difference in ideology that was not simply cooked up by security types. It was a real ideological divide.

In many respects it is surprising how many things went right when you consider how long the Cold War lasted, and how relatively bloodless it was.

Any reading of USSR history makes it clear they just wanted to be left alone. Uh, what? Which USSR are you describing, the one in your imagination or the real one? It's amazing that the US was called imperialist, when in reality the Soviets had their hands in pretty much every corner of the globe, funding and controlling local communist parties. They funded and trained insurgents, supplied weapons to pretty much anyone who might cause trouble to the West, including terrorists, and certainly didn't shy away from overt military action. Seriously, "left alone"?

I think Beceph was being ironic. Anyway, you either buy the package or you don't. I don't. It was mostly theater. Mostly, I said. There was enough there to make it credible, just like any scam.

Which USSR are you describing, the one in your imagination or the real one?

The one which was invaded by its powerful neighbors throughout the 19th century, then in 1914, then again by its former "allies" after 1918. Then again in 1941. It created a deep set paranoia. If we had stopped with all the communism must be expunged from the earth talk, offered up Italy and Greece as a sop, and promised ongoing trade and mutual non-aggression things would have been fine.

It's amazing that the US was called imperialist, when in reality the Soviets had their hands in pretty much every corner of the globe, funding and controlling local communist parties. They funded and trained insurgents, supplied weapons to pretty much anyone who might cause trouble to the West, including terrorists, and certainly didn't shy away from overt military action. Seriously, "left alone"?

Because the US didnt have its hands in every corner of the globe as well? I must have missed that part where we were not just as internationally active? Where we didn't topple democratically elected governments and assassinate leftist leaders. As for arming other countries, we always did more of that by dollar value and total numbers. Funding and controlling local democratic or right leaning parties depnding on what suited their purposes.

All of the "aggressive actions" the USSR is accused off in the aftermath of WWII we were commiting as well.

They wanted the sizable minorities of France Italy Greece Germany etc. who wanted communist governments to get their wish. We wanted the sizable minorities of those who didn't want communst government to get their wish.

The victory of communists in China scared the shit out of the west. Out of fear of stupid projections (1/6th of the world has turned communist in 30 years, in 60 years they will have half the world AHHHHH!) Rather than stick to their guns (the superior economic system). They panicked.

If our system was supposedly so much better why not beat them in a fair contest of models. My supposition is that the people making the decisions didn't give a flying **** what was better for their countries, just what was better for the elites (which in their mind were the only constituency which mattered). Now if you are an elite that lacks the courage of your convictions the contest of models into an unacceptable risk because it becomes a fight to the death.

The USSR was a completely broken state, a mentally ill state to use an analogy. It had been bullied and bullied and bullied, and then when we had achieved something together and learned some of its true strengths we got scared and threatened it some more. We could have drawn it out instead we flirted with destroying the world. All because Wall street was worried that the auto workers in Michigan etc. might think they would get a better deal elsewhere.

You all write about this like US historians 50 years after the fact. Try to think like someone who lived on the moon while this was happening. Or someone who's history book was written in say India 500 years from now. Impartiality is important when understanding past events and the first step in becoming impartial is treat like acts similarly.

Once again I am not apologizing for all the crimes the USSR committed inside and outside its country. It was deeply dysfunctional. But as far as actual aggressive actions on the international stage, they were little different from ours.

Sorry, I shouldn't have answered for you.

As you say, Americans tend not to consider that, when the Soviets pushed all the way to the Elbe at the end of WW2, after suffering 24 million dead (compared to 418,000 for the US), they thought it wise to keep that western buffer. It eventually contributed to their downfall, because the resulting military and internal security demands were just huge, but it made sense at the time.

Yeah we were smart and removed all the natives when made our big land grab. :)