Fall Of Berlin Wall Marks End Of Cold War

November 9th marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

East Germany's Berlin WallMost analysts and historians agree that former Soviet leader MikhailGorbachev played a pivotal role in the events leading up to the fall ofthe Berlin Wall and beyond. His policies of "perestroika" -restructuring - and "glasnost," or openness, paved the way for thedissolution of communist power in Eastern Europe and ultimately led tothe collapse of the Soviet Union.

Robert Legvold from ColumbiaUniversity says a key factor was Gorbachev's decision that he would notuse force to suppress reformist aspirations in Eastern Europe.

"Increasinglyhe made it apparent to the East Europeans that the Soviet Union wouldnot do what it had done many times in the past: 1953 in Berlin, 1956 inHungary and Poland, 1968 in the Czech Republic and so on," Legvold said.

InJuly 1989, the so-called "Brezhnev Doctrine" was replaced by what oneGorbachev adviser described as the "Sinatra Doctrine," based on thesinger's song "My Way". In other words, the adviser said East Europeancountries were now able to go their own way - politically andeconomically.

In early October, Gorbachev marked the 40th anniversary of East Germany by attending celebrations in East Berlin.

SergeSchmemann, former Moscow and Bonn Correspondent for "The New YorkTimes" says Gorbachev was tough with East German leaders as tens ofthousands of people marched with candles through the streets of thecity.

"A huge march throughBerlin. And at that time, Gorbachev made it clear to Honecker,the East German leader, that he was not going to prop him up - that ifhe doesn't get with it he's going to be dumped by history. So themessage from Gorbachev was not just symbolic, it was right there- Imean they were announcing to the East Europeans that we're not going toprop you up - and that was huge," Schmemann said.Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Strasbourg, France for the Council of Europe 60th anniversary celebrations, 02 Oct 2009

A few weeks later Honecker was gone. And a month after Gorbachev's visit, the Berlin Wall came down.

RobertLegvold says the fall of the Berlin Wall accelerated the demise ofCommunist Party rule throughout Eastern Europe - a demise that startedin Poland in June with the overwhelming victory of the Solidarity TradeMovement in free elections.

"Itwas a cascade. Everything was sort of building at about the same timeand the only thing that suggests a chain is the sequence: first Poland,then East Germany, then Czechoslovakia and Hungary and ultimatelyBulgaria and Romania."

Serge Schmemann says what happened in Romania at the end of December 1989 was very violent.

"Romaniawas the only one where there was shooting and about a thousand peoplelost their lives in Timisoara and elsewhere. And of course Ceausescu and his wife were executed after a very hasty littlesomething that passed for a trial," Schmemann said.

Legvold and others say the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War.

"Theinstitutional basis for the Cold War so far as it was focused inEurope, disappeared because the Warsaw Pact, as the opposing alliance,military alliance to NATO, was scrapped. And of course that meant thatsoviet power, military power in Eastern Europe and on the border withWest Germany, in East Germany, was now going to be pulled back. So forboth institutional and conceptual reasons, it was the end of the ColdWar," Legvold said.

Serge Schmemann says the fall of the Berlin wall has had a profound impact on US-Russian relations.

"Itchanged the entire map of the world. And it changed mainly ourpsychology. We all grew up - I mean I certainly did - in a Cold Warpsychology. There were 'good guys', 'bad guys'- there was 'them' and'us' - there were two powers. If you had Zaire acting up, either theyor we would control it in the interest of the great competition. So theloss of that has created a dynamic that we have not yet sorted out," Schmemann said.

Britishhistorian Frederick Taylor says the fall of the Berlin wall has had avery negative psychological impact on Russians, especially the elite.He cites as an example former Russian president and now prime minister,Vladimir Putin.

"Putin was a KGBofficer in Dresden, East Germany when the wall came down - and waswell-known in the city. So he experienced it first hand, going frombeing a conqueror, in essence the person who walks down the street andis greeted with respect and fear in this satellite country, this puppetgovernment subjected to the USSR's control. He goes within a matter ofweeks to being somebody who has really no influence over what ishappening inside East Germany and in fact, of course, he soon ended upback in Russia. But I think a lot of people felt like him, shared thatexperience of humiliation at the loss."

Historianssay bringing back Russia to its former superpower status has been a keyelement of Putin's and current President Dmitri Medvedev's foreignpolicy.

Taylor says the fall of the wall has had another unforeseen consequence.

"Thethaw in the Cold War allowed all these strange monsters - and we'retalking about probably Islamist terrorism and various other things - toemerge out of the kind of murk as the ice melted. And I think we'restill dealing with those problems. We have a world which is much moreopen. But in a way, that frozen world controlled fairly rigidly by twopower blocs was, as long as you weren't actually directly on thefault-line, was a safer place to live in. Whereas now anything canhappen."

And says Frederick Taylor, it usually does.