Sick of the lie... "Reagan brought down the Soviet Union"...

Watching Bill Maher tonight, and hearing Joe Scarborough say, (as ALL Republicans say), that it was simply Reagan who single-handedly brought down the USSR...(Because Reagan has no other legacy for the sheep to hang on to).

It's insulting, to every other American president before Reagan, (and after)...Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford & Carter (and Bush Sr., as well)...ALL, increased military spending, (each year during their respective terms)...Carter for instance, increased military spending no less than 5% in each of his four years...as had all the other's increased spending...

In so much, the "Military Industrial Complex", I'm not defending here...

The Soviet Union could not keep pace with our military spending and Gorbachev knew it would be suicidal for his country to continue trying to keep up the madness & pace, with the US...

Not to mention the FACT that Reagan was long gone, out of office, when the Soviet Union actually threw in the towel in 1991, during Bush Sr. presidentcy... http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19335/art-1.html

All Reagan has to show for his presidency is union busting, environmentally he was a disaster, corporate deregulation, destruction of equal time via the FCC, huge deficits, Grenada, (to change the story, after 230 US Marines were blown up by terrorist), Iran-Contra, the mentally disable thrown out into the streets, etc. etc...And the republicans are successfully distorting the facts.

Reagan, started this fascist corporate take over of America and so many voted for this republican liar and blindly & carelessly went along with the greed and selfishness...

It irks me to no end, how democrats, liberals, refuse to recall, nor speak the truth, the way the facts really are!

and I ate his lunch with it. As I regularly do when people start mythologizing about how great Republicans are. Two weeks ago he started griping about how bad Bush is and lamenting about the greatness of the Republican party under Reagan and he went on a Reagan-John McCain lovefest. I really went ballistic on that one! I nicely deconstruct his sentences and eveything, but, boy, he hasn't tried bragging about RR or McCain on me for a few weeks now. I might have put that Reagan bullshit to rest, but McCain is his hero so that one is much tougher. Facts don't seem to matter too much on that one.

Yeah, Dems need to put all of this mythology down hard.

He hit them hard. Reagan just waited until they were starving to demand they capitulate.

Carter was a nuclear physicist and one of the highest educated presidents we ever had.

Carter put loads of pressure on the USSR. Plus, he was doing the Afghanistan thing before Reagan was, just not on the crazy type level Reagan did. If anything, Reagan missed lots of signs to end the Cold War, except he was pulling that "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" stuff when Gorby implementing glasnost, perestroika and looking to find a way out of the whole thing.

From rising infant mortality rates. Now the US is experiencing the same thing.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml

American industry has been bled dry and it's the industrial decline that above all explains the negligence of a nation confronted with a crisis situation: to manage a natural catastrophe, you don't need sophisticated financial techniques, call options that fall due on such and such a date, tax consultants, or lawyers specialized in funds extortion at a global level, but you do need materiel, engineers, and technicians, as well as a feeling of collective solidarity. A natural catastrophe on national territory confronts a country with its deepest identity, with its capacities for technical and social response. Now, if the American population can very well agree to consume together - the rate of household savings being virtually nil - in terms of material production, of long-term prevention and planning, it has proven itself to be disastrous. The storm has shown the limits of a virtual economy that identifies the world as a vast video game.

<snip>

I'm not making a moral judgment. I focus my analysis on the rot of the whole system. Après l'empire developed theses that in aggregate were quite moderate and which I am tempted to radicalize today. I predicted the collapse of the Soviet system on the basis of the increases in the rates of infant mortality during the 1970-1974 period. Now, the latest figures published on this theme by the United States - those of 2002 - demonstrated the beginning of an upturn in the rates of infant mortality for all the so-called American "races." What is to be deduced from that? First of all, that we should avoid "over-racializing" the interpretation of the Katrina catastrophe and bringing everything back to the Black problem, in particular the disintegration of local society and the problem of looting. That would constitute an ideological game of peek-a-boo. The sacking of supermarkets is only a repetition at the lower echelons of society of the predation scheme that is at the heart of the American social system today.

I think he even got close with the date, too -- he prophesized it for the late 1980s.

They used to call Cayce "The Sleeping Prophet". Kind of appropriate, isn't it, that the credit (incorrectly) goes to "The Sleeping President"?

--p!

1) Did YOU know DURING the Cold War that Edgar Cayce had predicted that? (It's possible I guess)

2) Did you BELIEVE that prediction back then? (Highly unlikely)

See post 38.

I'm going to assume you're not trying to evaluate my beliefs about psychic phenomena, so I'll just explain the joke.

The idea that a psychic (who died, I think, in the 1940s) could out-do President Reagan was a jocular remark. I think most of Cayce's fame was in diagnosing illnesses, but it was sixty years ago or more. I don't know enough about his "record" to say either way, but psychics tend to be pretty off-base about future news events. For instance, Cayce also said that Atlantis would rise out of the ocean in 1968 or 1969 somewhere in the Carribean. Compare this with RWR, whose prophetic reputation comes entirely from after-the-fact statements and legends to be entered into the Reagan Mythos.

I became aware of Cayce's predictions when I was around 15, about 1973 or '74. I had been reading a trashy mass-market book of predictions of the future. I noticed that Cayce was one of the few who didn't predict World War Three for the turn of the coming century. I thought it was unusual that he predicted the downfall of the USSR for the late 1980s instead. But in those days, everybody though that the USSR was populated by ten-foot-tall psychic athlete-sexgod-supergeniuses who could fry the insides of satellites simply by thinking of strings of numbers while listening to Mozart during fellatio, and ESPing the results into space.

Well, at least at the Pentagon they did. :)

By the time Reagan was in office, it was becoming clear that the USSR was trying to simultaneously liberalize itself AND extend its empire, mainly by spending as much money as could be printed. It was an unsustainable situation, especially since a dirt-poor third-world country had been able to put a big old hurtin' on the mighty Red Army. I recalled Cayce's prophecy, but thought it would still take ten to twenty years for the USSR to collapse under its own weight. So Cayce was about five years off, I was fifteen off, and Reagan never said a word until he was sure that the fix was in.

A lot of "prophecies" are no-brainers, especially when you get close to them; and those who predict correctly far in advance are usually just getting things right by chance. We all want The Answers, and as soon as possible. It may be intellecutally suspect to trust psychics to provide The Answers, but what, then, can we make of those who trust them from the Republican Party?

:evilgrin:

--p!

the fact it makes no sense to give Reagan "the" credit. All those past-war presidents, all of them, deserve some credit. Along with Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, etc. etc.

But please, please DON'T give me this "oh, they knew the USSR was going down anyway" argument. If you're old enough to remember the 80s or the 70s -- did YOU think the Soviet Union was going down??? Did virtually ANYONE on the left? Or on the right? NO!!! We all believed that the Soviet Union and the West would last forever in parallel worlds, UNTIL that moment, some day, 1 years or 100 years hence, when things got too hot or a computer malfunctioned and then the world would end in Nuclear Winter. DON'T give me this "oh, (in hindsight) we all knew" stuff.

If you want to stick by your statements, let me just ask you to commit to one little thing right now: Let's say, miracle of miracles, Iraq doesn't end like Vietnam; that it doesn't end with helicopters on the roof of an embassy flying the last Americans out. Let's imagine that somehow, against the odds, democracy takes hold in Iraq, and U.S. troops eventually leave in victory rather than defeat. And let's imagine that around about the same time, other major Arab/Muslim nations like Egypt and Syria and Saudi Arabia transition into democracy. Let me ask you to promise me one little thing: that if those unlikely events come to pass, you WON'T try to tell us that, "Well, we all KNEW democracy was about to spread to the Middle East -- Iraq was just an unnecessary side show! In fact, building democracy in Iraq just slowed it down! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

Just promise me that one little thing. Cool?

What else can they hang on to? "In three years"....Hmmmm....

Just enough, and in the nick of time, for Bozo to be gone!

Then will it be a Dem forced to raise taxes, and last only four years, cleaning up the mess, for whom...Arnold in 2012?

Total Fascism of America? (Were almost there now).

--namely that the Soviet Union was a hollow threat. Those studies were suppressed and ignored.

it was supposedly known at the upper levels of government as early as the Nixon administration. Reagan just used the Soviet Union to keep Americans in fear... Supposedly, if Reagan had gone to the Soviets in Jan. of 1981, he could have negotiated the end to the Cold War right then.

for their abandonment slavery, staying within the union, and have avoiding the whole Civil War.

Maybe if the American colonists had asked King George a few more times to grant American Independence, the whole war would have been unnecessary - then again, perhaps that didn't suit George Washington's presidential ambitions.

He also made rich not only acceptable but fashionable...

Just say no to Drugs cost America $xxxxxxxxxxxxbig bucks with no stemming the level.......in fact, drug use went up the most during their 8 years,,,,,

Allowed the use of Paraguat..weed killer...from the air....spraying thousands of acres...with drift killing neighboring crops, some fish farms, etc....

Damn those idiots

:smoke:

Brezhnev did more to hurt the Soviet Union than Reagan did by the disastrous decision to invade Afghanistan.

Reagan was in office at the right time, and had the ear of Gorbachev (another minor player who's been ridiculously lionized in the years since). He did not "end the Cold War," despite how much his demented cultists would like to believe so.

Can you make the promise I ask for there? Come on, it's such a little thing. You're hardly likely to get bitten by it 5 years or so down the road. Go on, promise!

from your post:

"Let me ask you to promise me one little thing: that if those unlikely events come to pass, you WON'T try to tell us that, 'Well, we all KNEW democracy was about to spread to the Middle East -- Iraq was just an unnecessary side show! In fact, building democracy in Iraq just slowed it down! Yeah, that's the ticket!'"

Perhaps you can entertain us all by telling us what YOU think of the US invasion of Iraq and democracy in the Middle East before you start labeling us hypocrites.

I couldn't agree with you more, LaPera! It just makes me nuts whenever I hear people wax poetically about "that wonderful man." UGH!! And when he died... OMG! I know he was our president, and he certainly commanded a certain amount of respect for that, but the hero-worshipping must end!!!!

I am so fed up with that f***ing lie too

connects two events occurring at the same time, when there may be no connection at all.

Just more typical right-wing idiocy.

she said perhaps SHE should take credit too

Snarky of her. :evilgrin:

I was watching some special on the Discovery channel one time and it was about presidents and important decisions they made. One was about FDR going into WWII, the other was about LBJ passing the Civil Rights bills, and they ruined it by claiming that Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. Lame. Gorbachev and the unsustainable system they had probably had a lot more to do with it than Reagan who was too busy taking naps and eating jelly beans.

And history will show that. Reagan was an actor playing to his base, those who could be affected by dramatics and who cared nothing about facts. The Republicans have maligned Carter with such a mean spirit.

Carter was the highest educated president in our country's history. He was a nuclear physicist. He stopped the USSR with his sanctions. He was a true Christian in his activity for building homes for the poor. He's continued a life of public service.

He knows when to speak up when a U.S. president negates Christ's Golden Rule for pre-emptive strikes.

This Reagan BS is entertaining. He could throw out some pretty words but he was as much a puppet of the far right that W is.

Many thousands of GIs put their asses on the line for decades during the Cold War to deter Soviet aggression. Many risked their lives even in "peacetime". Some died. They were there through about seven Presidents. It didn't matter which was giving the speeches when the wall finally came down.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

I have a Cold War Certificate of Recognition that says so. It's signed by Rummie.

through his sanctions. The thought that Reagan ended the Soviet Union is ridiculous. It just needs to be said. These Republicans hiding behind screens of myths needs to face the truth. The only thing Reagan was good at is acting and being damn well paid for it.

And rightfully so, the sanctions were indeed devastating, not that Jimmy will ever get his acknowledgment in our lifetime.

Perhaps, history will be kinder to Carter, peace and accountability though sanctions.

Probably not, the republicans write the history books.

......after all, that must be what they are saying if Reagan had to proactivly do something about it to bring it down.

.....obviously they must think a lot of the Soviet government if Reagan had to do so much to bring them down.....

The Catch-22 usually makes their heads explode.

I mean, even us "American hating" libs can see Communism and super-power don't mix....why can't they?

communism and socialism??? Personally, I think socialistic communism is doomed to fail, and I'm a proud democratic capitalist. If you think it was some outsider who said some tough words to them, you must be some pinko commie or somethin'."

I'm always looking for the short, snappy answer (because you can't get a lot of conservatives to think). I'll add this one to my repertoire.

*sigh* Of course once they have it stuck in their heads facts are useless.

Like many of you, this "conventional wisdom" about Reagan has bedeviled me for a long time (especially since I'm a historian). I guess conservatives need to brag about some sort of victory to vindicate their near-deity, and talking about America's sluggish economy or huge deficit won't fit the bill. Ironically, they could point with some pride (notice the qualifier!) to Reagan's role in limiting the arms race, but that probably doesn't fit their macho stereotypes. And, truth be told, much of the initiative on arms control (as well as growing detente) came not from Mr. Evil Empire but Gorbachev himself. For the record, I don't usually hear this malarkey from well-informed liberals or Democrats. Instead, it comes from those who tend to oversimplify or misrepresent the reality of past events (often because it's self-serving).

what kind of history do you specialize in?

Any published articles or anything I can check out?

The Reagan mythology is extremely self-serving. Part I think comes from macho rhetoric, it appeals to wannabe tough guys and people who are just easy to spin as well. Also, Reagan -before The Chimperor - is the first two-term Republican President since Eisenhower and the younger generation of Repubs (younger, I should say Repubs below 50) only have Reagan to identify with. Nixon doesn't work of course because he left office in disgrace. So, they only have one real "hero" who didn't do much really, but had a great image, and they like to puff that up and deify him. But, yeah, I'd say your assessment is spot on. Especially the macho stereotype. You don't hear many 'Pukes bragging about Reagan's only good idea, the Earned Income Child Tax Credit. It's not hardcore enough for them.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Gorbachev introduced perestroika because of their economy which had been in the hopper since the 70's. That was as much due to a succession of Presidents and corruption as military spending.

have to hang on to.
Funny how the fundamentalist "Christians" claim responsibility for putting RayGun in office: Hollywood, divorced, non-church-going, former union president, etc...
It shows how political and NON-religious these people really are, particularly the way they worship him...it's called IDOLOTRY, folks...
Remember the Ten Commandments you claim to revere so much??? There's one that deals specifically with that. Check it out. Exodus 20: 1-17.

He felt the rich were the deserving. Love the rich, pour the mentally ill onto the streets. Then talk how close he and the GOP are to God. Sorry, that's not my God. In fact Bushco and his supporters sicken me as they talk about how religious they are.

But a humorous point, these people played Rex Reed like a violin.

None at all.

The degree to which he is idolized completely boggles my mind. Maybe he was a nice, sunny guy (although he never struck me that way), but he played such a huge part in getting us to where we are today. That he is ranked by some as one of the top 10 presidents or more especially "best American" sadly demonstrates our nation's blindness. I'm kind of depressed tonight.

Many Americans bought it hook, line and sinker. Ronald Reagan was a 100% puppet of the corporatists. In his legacy, he will probably be known as the great Hollywood shyster, who promoted the rich and hurt the poor.

The die has been cast and memories grow dim.The pubs will never let him be taken down.There may be scholarly books written about his ineptitude,but the majority of people who voted for him will hang onto the hype.

he was known as "little Ronny",according to one of the film actresses of the day.

On the whole, people tend to be quite shrewd judges of character. I suspect that by his second term, at least, the myth and bullshit about him was swallowed by the sheeple with much greater difficulty.

that people eventually tired of his bunk at the time,but the mythology around him these days seems to be rising like a phoenix.The so called "Reagan legacy"is making a comeback among the right.It's very fuzzy and has nothing to do with real policies or successes that he had.I think it has more to do with their unspoken sense of failure.Lets face it,they control everything,this was their big chance to prove that if the country would just follow the principles they have been preaching,we would all be better for it.Instead they got a dismal failure on any platform you care to name,and I think they know that.I see it as a good sign that the pubs have to reach back to a Reagan that never really existed to feel any sense of pride.(edited for spelling)

in Poland, the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets all across the USSR, the economic problems inherrent in the Soviet System, among many other issues affecting that region. I'm not trying to claim he had nothing to do with it, but I do not in any way believe he had everything to do with it either.

down the USSR.

the soviet union was imploding and it just happened to occur on reagan's watch. i also totally object to his designation as a great president. hell, for the last couple of years of his presidency he had alzheimers!

ellen fl

And now we have the same thugs who were running our government then, as today...Cheney, Rumsfeld, Abrams and the other's who were "pardoned".

And here we are!

They didn't think they should criticize an older President, then it was they shouldn't criticize a "sick" president, then it was they shouldn't criticize a "dead" president. Ronald Reagan was the same elitist all the way through. He loved the rich and held contempt for the poor. In his last years, as he was babied and pampered when he had Alzheimer's, I couldn't help but think of the thousands of Americans he eliminated from the safety net of caring. The old republican story, they got theirs and tough ----on anyone else. I hold nothing but contempt for Reagan. He's been held in a false esteem far too long. Let history record him for what he actually was. A puppet of the far right with acting abilities.

being de jure, too. Correct me if I'm wrong.

in much the same whay that Chimpy is. What I mean is that I think that there were other people behind the scenes who were largely coming up with the agendas and pulling the strings and formulating the policies of both of these presidents. I don't think that either one of them had or has the intellectual sophistication to come up with real policies.

I don't believe that Reagan was malevolent in the same way that Bush is, but I think the two are similar in other respects.

He screwed up big time tonight. I couldn't believe how out of control (reality based) he really is. Geez......

peace.

I think Pope John Paul II had more influence than Reagan or Carter. When he built that cathedral in Kracow it was a stake in the heart of the USSR.

The unions and the Church brought down the USSR.

As others have said here, Reagan was told by CIA that the USSR was finished. NO threat to us. (Sound familiar?)

So Bill "What, no profiteerring and masturbatory macho posturing?" Casey created a "slam dunk" case, using non-CIA "intelligence," for a looming "Evil Empire" threat to the American People. (Sound familiar?)

The result was that an already imploding Soviet political and economic situation was propped up by some military spending (though never to "keep up"). It was one of the few segments of their economy that was still somewhat functional.

And yes, the rest of his "legacy" was a disaster as well.

• The criminal Iran/Contra enterprise (Reagan: "They can impeach me if they want, visiting hours are on Wednesdays." Weinberger: "You won't be alone.")
  
  
• The unecessary massacre of Marines in Lebanon. (To show how tough we were.)
  
  
• The maxing-out of our national credit card.

All this after treasonously aiding/abetting the hostage takers in Iran, just to get into the White House illegitimately. (Sound familiar?)

He did however handle that whole Grenada thing without too much friendly fire damage.

Heckuva job, Ronnie!

-----

www.january6th.org

He was a rich man and a government employee. He was taken care of in luxury. Due to his actions against the poor, others had no care or coverage. He will be judged by that.

I'm all right.

with regard to Reagan. It is the way these GOP jackasses want to slap his name and even his image on everything they can think of. They continue to propagate the lie that his was such a 'wonderful Presidency" when most intelligent people know it was anything but that.

There was the beginnings of this same crap with the Bush people. They were talking of ways they wanted folks to remember the pResident idiot. Not so sure that will happen now, but I do think he has left so much death and destruction in his wake people won't soon forget this bastard.

It's sad that some want to worship them, but that is their problem.

He had more people in his administration indicted & convicted than all other administrations in the 20th century combined!!! That's quite a record when you realize that Watergate & Teapot Dome were in the 20th century.

I never knew that. How many were convicted and indicted?

One never had to step around, or over, people sleeping in the streets in large numbers prior to his administration.

that "America" brought down the Soviet Union. A combined effort beyond political parties.

the 70s and early 80s. We had small children and I worried about whether the Soviet Union might invade. One day I bought a packet of Russian clothespins. They were huge, and when I tried to use them, the metal in their springs just crumbled as if they were made out of dried chewing gum or hardened putty. At that moment, I realized that the Soviet menace was a joke. A country that cannot make a decent clothespin for export, mind you as an item to sell overseas for foreign exchange, can't be that much of a threat.

We had relatives in the east to whom we were close. They had kids the ages of our children, and they told us that things were falling apart. We knew very early on. Also, the Polish from Poland visiting the country we were in expressed such animosity toward the Russians that it was obvious they were about to bust out. Reagan had nothing to do with it.

The middle classes in the east wanted to be heard and to be free of the ridiculous conformity of Communism. It had nothing to do with Reagan. It was internal and only partially due to economic factors. Young people were better educated than their parents, had not suffered through the war, were not as anti-NAZI as their parents. Lots of things played a part -- rock music and western youth culture and just common sense included.

Austria entered into treaties with Hungary that allowed for free trade and also allowed Hungarians and Austrians to travel relatively freely to each other's countries. I'm not sure of the date, but it was early in the '80s if not late '70s when the treaties were agreed to. That had nothing to do with the U.S. and it was the key. Those agreements allowed Hungarians to come over to Austria and buy all sorts of western goods, take them back to Hungary and sell them. Hungary allowed small businesses to start. The Polish unions revolted and went to the picket lines with Walesza. The wall broke at the Austro-Hungarian border when a huge surge of people from Eastern Europe crossed over through the border that free trade had made easy to cross. That ended it. And, yes, Carter's strategy in boycotting the Olympics and other things made a difference. The changes were well underway before Reagan took office. Our intelligence just, as usual, was way behind in taking notice of the changes.

This morning, while scraping the frost off of my windshield, I heard something on the radio news about how Bush should take responsibility for scandals in his administration, like Reagan did after Iran Contra. I just about fell over.

I'm admittedly fuzzy on the events of that time, but I'm pretty sure I remember Reagan saying over and over again that he didn't know and he didn't recall.

It's not you being "fuzzy."

March 3, 1987 (from a televised address in which he admitted to the findings of the Tower Commission)

"A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not."

Uh... come again?!?

Of course, the DC/Euphemedia Analstocracy accepted this flummery without batting an eye.

But the Reagan quote that needs to be forced into the public consciousness is the one I included in my earlier post. Here it is put into context.

Many articles also overstated Walsh's verdict on President Reagan's legal innocence. The Times's lead story, for example, incorrectly asserted in the subhead that he did not break the law. In fact, the report makes it clear that Reagan displayed a "disregard for civil laws." When told by Weinberger that the sales were illegal, Reagan is quoted as saying: can impeach me if they want; visiting days are Wednesday." Weinberger responded, "You will not be alone."

Spread it far and wide.

----
www.january6th.org

Way to take responsibility. If I had said to my dad (who, incidentally, if he was still alive, would be repeating all this B.S. about Reagan), "I told you I did not {insert offense here}. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not," I'd have gotten extra punishment for being a weasel on top of whatever I did.

"I can't recall" was his most oft-repeated phrase. He didn't know. He couldn't recall. Not me, not me, not me!

Take responsibility? Right. That old man never took responsibility.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebeatles/story/0,11212,607888,00.html

"But now it emerges that Soviet paranoia took a fascinating turn in the 1960s. According to Dr Yury Pelyoshonok, a Canadian doctor of Soviet studies who grew up in the Soviet Union, the Soviet authorities thought that the Beatles were a secret weapon of the cold war because "the kids lost their interest in all Soviet unshakable dogmas and ideals and stopped thinking of English-speaking persons as the enemy". All of this is contained in a two-hour film on the fab four coming out in the US, during which film director Milos Forman says: "I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of communism."

Tell em "piss off".

"Back In the USSR" that brought the Soviet Union down?

who were convinced that the Beatles were a Soviet plot to destroy the United States. Just goes to show that paranoid authoritarians tend to see things the same way.

that they are so pathetically obsessed with and devoted to Reagan that they probably yell "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" when they reach orgasm.

the statement that BillGatesRonaldReaganBushSr were responsible for the 90's boom and not Clinton.

Amazing, rather than analyze how policy effects change over the long haul - just make shit up.

Part of the mind game - turning democracy & politics into the never ending, winner-take-all campaign at all levels of government.

:evilgrin:

The Soviet Union got stuck fighting a war in Afghanistan which bankrupted the country (sound familiar?)

like to think they had a small part to play in it too!

Only fools and Republicans think Reagan had anything to do with this. Plus...we must remember Communism wasn't brought down. It is still alive.

Reagan just happened to be president when it finally happened. Purely coincidental.

Remember glasnost? Remember perestroika? Gorbachev tried to relax the iron grip that the Communist Party had over free speech and free elections in his country, and once he did, it tore itself apart from the inside. Here's a quote from his Wikipedia entry that summarizes things:

from MSM. Forget them. Those of us who read widely know history. While they reinvent history, I am only interested in watching people across teh globe tear down this anti-people New World Order pushed by Reagan and Thatcher, Bush I and these neo-cons.

I'm nearly positive that there was talk among those close to him of removing him from power. They opted for the bumpersticker instead.

They simply would've gone the way of China and discovered that the second that they dump Communism, they can exploit the United States in its race to the bottom.

He could have negotiated the end to the Soviet Union right there.

Or, if Carter had won re-election, he could have done it as well.

What do you mean end the Soviet Union - they would just surrender to the United States?

Here's a question: did the right side win the Cold War? Are we sure a world where all countries could be part of a global Soviet Union would not have been better than what we have now?

The Cold War was completely pointless.

But, the end of the Soviet communist dictatorship... an earlier move to Perestroika, the Iron Curtain being torn down a decade sooner.

And, in response to your 2nd question, I don't think Soviet style communism is workable in the long run.

do you think he could have gotten the Axis to end the war and retreat to their old borders?

but, hindsight is 20-20 in both my case & yours. Supposedly, top German generals knew they couldn't win by late '42 or '43. If one of them had been able to knock Hitler out of power, who knows what could have happened?

You must be thinking of the July 20, 1944 attempted assassination of Hitler. I think military officials tried to kill him a few times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20_Plot

evil misogynist

.. the folk in control were lying hypocritical f#@kwads. KATRINA could have a similar effect ...

for decades from within Russia and the Eastern Bloc to undermine the Communist regime, many of them at the risk of their own lives.

;)

for the collapse of the Soviet Union. IMO, it collapsed largely due to internal factors that had to do with the inherent unworkability of the system itself. The arms race did help to financially bankrupt the system, but they were far from a passive victim of that, and they kept it fuelled at least as much as we did. It was a part of the militarism and xenophobia that were hallmarks of the system. The system was kept in place largely by a whipped up fear of external enemies, much like what Dumbya has tried to do in this country.

The system was clearly sclerotic and rotting from within, well before Reagan was elected, and would have collapsed one way or another whoever was in charge here.

I myself have always felt that Gorbachev deserves the most credit, simply for being willing to open up his society and to allow honest discussion which broke down the myths that were propping up the system. I also give credit to the ordinary people of the Soviet empire. I think we do them a great disservice when we pretend that they are simply an amorphous mass who are acted on by external forces, and are not acknowledged as players in their own societies and histories.

I haven't read any of the responses on this thread. I'm just posting this off the top of my head in response to the original post.

even ours:scared:

Eventually the greed at the top grabs that "bit too much", and things start to unravel.

They imploded because of their sheer "weight"..too much money going to military, not enough services for the people...unhappy people eventually get brave and do desperate things..

Whoever was president here when it happened would claim the credit... It just happened to be reagan, and he was as surprised as the rest of us when it happened:)

The thing that bothers me is that we wasted a perfect opportunity to actually help them. We gave them lip service, and we sent them greedy corporate toadies, but the ordinary people are actually worse off now, and I fear that they will be ruled by a dictator again because only a dictator can MAKE things happen . Presidents can steer things one way or the other, but outside forces are always at work. Only a dictator who can control the borders and the media can force things to happen.

the people at the bottom and up to the midpoint want what they thought 'freedom' would bring them.... a better life than they had in the USSR. Russia has only given them joblessness, apartments they once got for free, and now cannot afford to pay for, little or no health services, no money. They have freedom to leave now, but without money, where can they GO?


Russia has a long way to go, and even though they are not banging shoes on desks and threatening us, they are still dangerous, to US and to themselves.:(

...is about the same as someone taking credit for finally opening the ketchup bottle after everyone else at the dinner table has had a try at it.

Reagan just got lucky...His presidency happened to coincide with Gorbachev's. If another Brezhnev or old timer communist got the top spot, then the Soviet Union would have likely lived on for another 5-10 years past Reagan....

Makes just as much sense.

Numerous causes led to it. The biggest was probably the rise of Solidarity and the election of John Paul II to the Papacy, Poland was always the Soviet Empire's Achilles Heel...they were never able to eradicate the Catholic influence, and probably couldn't have without using the same tactics in Poland that Hitler did, and this was a price they were unwilling to pay--not even Stalin was willing to do that. As a result, the clerical nature of the Polish people was always very close to the surface, like a mild fever never gotten rid of--and it broke out into a massive infection in the 80s...
There were other factors. Probably the most important was the 1973 publication of *The Gulag Archipelago*, arguably the most influential book of the 20th century. After Solzhenitsyn, it simply wasn't possible for anyone anywhere to seriously defend the Soviet system, and it struck at the confidence of the Soviet leaders themselves. Add to this the effects of the invasion of Czechoslovokia in 1968, and especially Afghanistan in 1979, and its effect on the Russians themselves. Add to this the economic stagnation, and the effect of endless lies--people just got tired of it all...as Martin Amis said, by the Brezhnev era, Communism had become ridiculous.
Still--it might have shambled on, a husk with all conviction gone, rather like the Chinese "Communist" regime, if not for the coming to power of a "reforming Czar"--ie, Gorbachev--in 1985. He decided to liberalize politically before doing so economically, unlike Chine...and that quickly led to the final collapse of the regime's legitimacy. When he signalled in 1989 that he wouldn't send in troops to prop up the puppet regimes in East Europe, that was really that...
Now. Did Reagan have *any* effect on this? Maybe some minor influence. He supported Solidarity stronger than a Dem might have...maybe. Maybe the strain on their military budgets had a minor role in the final collapse of the USSR. He became a symbolic figure in the late Cold War, whatever we thought of him. All this had its effect, though it was marginal. (Someone who was in the military-industrial complex, by the way, told me once that the Cold War ended when Gorbachev's military people told him that the USA could take out the USSR's nuclear missiles in a *conventional* first strike. I've always wondered if this was true...)

brought down the wall!

Communism as practiced in the Soviet Union was destined for failure the day they opened doors for business. It was a corrupt system and by definition could and would not last.

It cracks me up to see people try to determine exactly what weapons treaty, arms program, chest beating speech led to their downfall. That's all a lot of mental masturbation. What led to their downfall was I Love Lucy reruns, MTV, McDonald's, East Germans looking over the wall and seeing their counter parts tooling around in Benzos and Beemers, etc. while their government peddled BS about being superior culturally, economically, and militarily.

It would be like being in a bicycle race with a person with square wheels then attribute your winning to superior physical form and training.

Tell 'em, "Bin Laden and the mujahedeen defeated the Soviet Union! They tied them there damn commies up in Af-gany-stan for so long that the U.S.S.R went broke and folded."

THAT should explode a few heads...

MojoXN