about yugoslavia, and maybe a related question -- was there any point near the end of his presidency, where he started to question whether that flow really was headed in a better direction, as opposed to a different direction, a more volatile and dangerous in different -- did the optimism always stay with him, i guess is the question. >> there was a lot happening in africa. the knewájvfñ3ñ%w happening. he would get reports. that would be reported up. he would be somewhat frustrated if it was too much to deal with right now, and a defense department that was saying don't look to us. please do not look to us. i mean, you had big famines, disruptive governance. you had the throeing of the end of the relationship with the

solve yes union that was the lifeline for some of these governments, so there was a lot to pay attention to, and the president was predisposed to want to pay a lot of attention to it, but he had to exercise great discipline and set priority. because a jim bakker couldn't be preoccupied with some of these distractions that were not distractions for the people who were hungry, and he would have to send people over to help and make things happen. but there was an awful lot going on. president bush, because he had been as, probably the best trained president ever, he would bring with him, gosh, i would have been paying a lot of attention to this, i want to know about it, i want to get involved, i should know what's going on. and he did want to know what's going on, and he was restrained and saying somebody has to pay

attention to this and if it gets to a level, ring my bell. 9. >> and the story which one hears about the srñjpre[y;ekurj ultim decision-making is aep verqk-f' private one about somalia. i should caution this by says i have no documentary evidence for this story, but i have heard it separately and individually from so many people -- when everybody is telling the same tune, and i would love to hear your thoughts if you remember this the same or differently. obviously somalia is building, this is no surprise to anyone that the famine is going on, thç reports of trying to stabilize somalia is across the president's desk on end and ultimately, and this is obviously very late in the game, ultimately the president is upstairs watching television and, you know, there are images of starving children, and essentially the announcer says, can't somebody do something?

he says, i can do something, you know, and more importantly i have a moral imperative to do something. when he presents his idea to do something, the security says what's the exit strategy? he says the exit strategy is feeding children. i think that's when he discards the hippocratic, but that's also very, very late in the game. >> dale copeland, department of politics, university of virginia. jeff, i'm going to come at you sort of from a political science-y point of view here, because i've heard a lot of interesting descriptions, but i want to know where you fit within the causal debates about the end of the cold war. as i see it, there are sore the three or four big ones. there's the sort of

straightforward, gorbachev and the bureau realized they were way overspending on military. they had to reduce the military, or they would be a defunct great power. reagan and bush pushed them to the ground that's the causal very much in the favor of what the us got out of it. the second story is sore of the opposite. gorbachev is a liberal or new idea logically different soviet leader that has this quasi-liberal vision of how he wants the soviet union to change. even though he claims in his memoirs he's a leninist.

the third story, the soviet regime realized that they needed the trade and technology that the west could offer if they were going to revitalize the economic structure of the soviet union and make it a viable super power. military, yes, that was important so that the soviet union could indeed become an important player into the 21st century. otherwise they felt they would just economically decline and therefore politically and militarily no longer be viable. the fourth story is a more personalistic story. gorbachev versus reagan, gorbachev versus bush, and i -- i sense you're in the fourth camp, but i'm not sure of the causal story, except that descriptively think liked each other or grew to trust one another. the story that a political

sciencist like my what conditions allowed that trust to develop, especially with reagan who was very much an anti-soviet individual. what did the sterility or hanging over these leaders that allow these personalities to play such an important role at this critical time. to me a descriptive stories, talking to one another, doesn't tell me move what i really want to know, what's the causal reasons why they were able to do it and let's say kissinger and nixon, who built up a detente weren't to be do it. >> that's a great question. two initial short responses and a longer one.

the first is i've never been proud are to not be a political sciencist. >> what does that mean? >> it's a narrative approach. you may interpret it -- i'm -- i saw him take the shirt off, pull the wall down, it was all over. the seriously, you vie which i take is several of the different themes you established, and i think thinks where we see a disciplinary distinction. there is an element of chaos also that i think is significant at the end. of all the players -- this is buff tensions that george bush has his name on the title, but gorbachev is really the most important person in all of this. gorbachev is the one who recognizes, as do others in the soviet union, that the system needs to change. i'm actually impressed with not

adopting technology, but they need to open of and adopt western ways, we should never forget that gorbachev did not want the soviet union to end, he was a vowed socialist, so it was how can i save the system new york city discard the system. he wanted i think to open up the system, to integrate and ultimately what's interesting to me is his ideas actually do evolve, even during the relatively short time. it's only six year that this all occurs for him. but i don't think it's until about 1988, in fact '89, the u.n. speech is the best public indication of this when he talks about essentially his vision of a new world order. in which the soviet union is more integrated with the western europe.

this scares is the bejesus out of the americans. we don't have a wing, we're not in it, and they use that architectural metaphor to say this is the central problem that gorbachev is posing for us, but then something significant happens. gorbachev is the catalyst, and he take the cork out of the bottle, whatever metaphor you want to use, and people begin to run with it gorbachev never envisioned losing control the way he did. he was very explicit with people like east germany, we will not back you if you use force, and don't forget we have a lot of soviet troops on the eastern

german soil. so the story i would tell is a decays soviet union, gorbachev willing to make changes, and then the change speeding up and catalyzing in ways he did not predict. >> it wasn't just president bush's personality. it was the complementary personality of jim bakker. so gorbachev could deal with the president respectfully and infrequently. jim bakker had a very good relationship with ch-- i do the gorbachev was trying to reform the soviet union, not dissolve it, and i think that he ended up being a believer that he could do actually more for his people if he were to have a more open

society that would be engaged, so i think he became a believer, but i -- i just don't think it would have happened with the pun personality. and remember jack matlock, or ambassador, was a cynic. he didn't think it would work. so the president was getting lots of different views, but i think jim bakker's relationship ended up being very constructive as well iismts here's another case where the personalities in the individual moments matter, it's crucial with this relationship is confide close and that he's not a diplomat, he doesn't know anything about foreign policy. he says i don't know anything about foreign policy. and gorbachev says exactly, because we're going to do everything different, you approach this with close eyes. baker sends these wonderful

private communications to the white house for bush and scowcroft and their eyes only essentially. which -- in which baker says you would not blefz howf believe how honest this guy is being with us. they are afraid, they don't know where things are going, they're afraid if reform isn't fast enough, and they're afraid of conservatives if it doesn't m-- moves too fast. >> i think it's interesting that you might say the fundamental driving force is what many people have suggested, which is soviet decline, the decline that in some sense kicked in in the late '60s, which got them going into the first d'etente, but

realization that in the early '80s this was worse than the '60s, zero growth, et cetera, this is pushing this gorbachev st. take steps that become more and more radical, including do mistic reforms that is lead to what you're talking about that wasn't present in 19 5 and want even foreseen, of course. so what i hear -- i think it's a multicausal story that i'm hearing, but one of the causal factors that i see so forceful in both of your responses is without this fundamental relative decline and the understanding of the soviets and the bureau, not just gorbachev, that unless we do something big, we aren't going to be a super power for low, or at least the next couple decades. am i hearing you right?

that in some sense that's pushing an avoweded leninist socialist to make reforms, but doing it in an instrumental way to overium this decline problem that's so pervasive? >> i believe in gorbachev peripheral vision, you also have a relationship with a polish pope calling attention to what has happened in poland, the soviet union. if you're going to say glasnost and per troika are taking roots and margaret thatcher shining spotlight that caused others to say, wait a minute, this is not a monolithic soviet union/gorbachev game. i think there's pressure from

other places. there's poems being written, and things are happening. the pope is giving permission for it to happen. uchblts for me the best way to understand this, as andy mentioned, is i think what gorbachev launched was ahn intellectual revolution, the moment you say we are going to allow not only reform and change, because everybody likes reform and change, but reform and change not centralizedoij'@ moss cows and reform and change on the factory floor, allowing people to berle gin to question. that's where things begin to cataly catalyze, but for me, i think at the heart it's the explanation you are describing. the decision to make not only structural changes, but intellectual changes as well, none of which has anything to do

with the united states. yes, i think if there's one pernicious evil lie in history which is driving u.s. foreign policy and terrible directions in the 21st century, it's the notion we spent the soviets into the ground. so anybody who's watching on c-span, we didn't. >> i think there's a fifth explanation, actually. gorbachev sent -- i have two comments and then a question centering on the vision thing and the new world order. the decline of the solve jet system i think was gorbachev's -- but if you look at his comments retrospective comments on what he thought was going on, he called the end of the soviet -- he called the soviet experiment a dead-end in

social evolution. what he realized i think was soviet ideology, as it had played out had no chance of being realized in a rapidly globalizing world, that the soviet union was isolating it and somewhere else he says that the foreign policy was setting itself up against the rest of humankind. so it's a combination of i think gorbachev's true believer face and oftentimes true believers are the greatest apostates, and on the other side it's not so much american foreign policy, though that certainly has played a role, but the emergence of this global society, which appeared to be irrear versible, and gorbachev admits that, that

led him to the decision, we can stay outside it or join it. if we join it, we have to join it on the world's terms. we have to join the world bank, the imf. we just have to become part of it. the other comments has to do with mr. card's interpretation of events in yugoslavia. which i think some of you may know has been the subject of great debate. was it in fact tribalism? i think the current intellectual of historical opinion is running in the opposite direction, no, it was not tribalism. that in fact is the politicians who screwed things up. if the politics of the local leaders, the europeans, the americans had been more adroit, that probably this sad episode could have been avoided. so lastly the vision things, there's that famous press

conference in cairo in which the president's remarks are typically attribute to do jetlag in which he's asked to define what the new world order is, and it just comes out a jumble. my question is, how systematically did the administration think about the new world order and was in fact its thinking more key herein than was on display in that press conference? >> i think the new world order, in quotation marks, and gorbachev was the first one to use the term, that i'm aware of -- >> was -- >> actually from the 1920s. >> no, no, i'm saying in this context. i don't think it was contrived. i think it's more describing the result. you know, i'm not sure that the

team at the white house was looking to create a new world order. they were trying to deal with a world that has changed that represented a new world order. so i'm not sure that this was a strategic map of creating a new order. i think if it was a creative map, i think somebody would have been very involved in it and it might have been john sununu, who loved to create new solutions for problems that didn't exist. just kidding. >> at this point we have just a few minutes left. i have to turn to david and melanie and see if you'd like to make any additional comments or press jeff on some aspects of the comments. i think for this venue he's responded very forthrightly and

cruxive to his comments, gull have an exchange if you want. >> we have a bunch of students writing their desertations, one thing that's fun and instructive is the genre problems of putting together a long piece. you hear jeff wrestling with this, is a presidential biography? what goes into the page? what doesn't go on the page? i think trying to do three things at one is also some desertators discertifica -- yous your readship to understand the world they face, which is not a singular linear world that proceeds alphabetically, and so i think it's just -- >> i think that's a great point. >> a monograph leads you to

write it a more linear fashion, but you're writing a much broader synthesis. i'm hearing you still wrestle with that genre. >> i would like to come back to my middle east question and push you on that a little more, what you understand the bush administration to have gone into the crisis in iraq expecting or, um, preparing for in term of middle east policy. >>. >> there was already good work done richard haus had a keel role in writing much of that. and his -- the argument which came out of those nse documents was essentially that the united states needs to ensure there is no singular power that's dominant in the golf. so consequently iraq 'move south

gives the fear there is actually going to be that dominant power. >> containment from the '80s? >> exactly. one of the interesting things that occurred in that nsc debate which was recently just declassified are the number of people, dick cheney in particular, argue in that meeting that it doesn't matter that is hussein has gotten that oil, he has to sell it. if he's selling it on the global market, what is the problem? it's hard to tell what's somebody's sincere thought is and what somebody's thought piece is within the meeting. even at the moment of crisis, people begin to step back and look at their assumptions, and move forward. i'll tell you one of the most interesting things we have discovered in the new documents is just what a raw deal april

gla glassby got in this. she gets called -- this is a 30-second version. she gets called into a meeting with saddam hussein -- this is a very rare thing. the ambassador never gets to talk to hussein. he essentially explains we have this long-standing grievances, and she says essentially we cannot comment on border disputes, and people have subsequently said that gave him a green light. the truth of the matter is i have 13 different cables from the white house and from the state department in the days leading up to that make sure you tell hussein we don't comment on border disputes, because we don't comment on border disputes. there are 3,000 border disputes around the world. if we commented on every one we would have to stick our nose in, and she delivered the second part of the message, which always gets forgotten. we don't comment on border disputes, but we really will be against any use of force.

diplomatic solutions are the way to go. that part always gets forgotten. there's any number of cables that say this. in fact, president bush was scheduled to speak with hussein the evening of the invasion, of course the call never occurs, and the talking points prepared for hem also include that language, we're not going to comment on border dispute. don't use force is the next part, but i think she gets a raw deal on this. it really demonstrates their primarily concern, it seems, is let's not have this be an issue. the middle east is calm enough to get the owl out, so as long as we don't have one dominant power in the middle east, that's all we care about. i don't see much else in the national security doumts with differences in the administration over the middle east. i want to thank jeff for giving us a draft manuscript that has initiated a very rich

conversation. i want to thank the panelists for taking advantage of the opportunities in that manuscript to really conduct this terrific discussion about writing presidential history and about the administration of george h.w. bush. >> i am deeply grateful. thank you. let's go back to millie? okay. let it play. ♪ ♪ what's that tune i hear ♪ ringing in my ear ♪ c'mon along ♪ c'mon along ♪ it's a wonderful idea >> chez what alexander -- i made a mistake, i'll fix it. ♪ down in dixieland ♪ he's going home while there to do his job ♪

♪ when alexander takes his ragtime band to france ♪ ♪ he'll capture every hun ♪ and take them one by one ♪ the tunes will put the germans in a trance ♪ ♪ they'll throw their guns away ♪ ♪ hip hip hooray ♪ and start right into dance ♪ they'll get so excited they'll come over the top ♪ ♪ two steps back to berlin with a skip and a hop ♪ ♪ hindenburg will know he has no chance ♪ ♪ when alexander takes his ragtime band to france ♪ now, i came in here and rehearsed, so imagine how bad it would be if i hadn't rehearsed.

that song obviously comes once we've gone into the war. let me fill in the pieces broadly, and as the songs come up, i'll place them for you. we get that berlin song called "let's all by americans now" which comes soon after a group of songs that were response to a specific incident. that is what really galvanizes american patriotism, what really galvanizes american support for the allies. you know what the event was? the sinking of the "liuscitania" it was a dastardly thing to do.

they were heartless and cruel, and we need to get back. whether the songs are shaping public opinion or responding to public pin is hard to know, because they come out over a series of months. my best guess is both were happening form but clearly with the sinks of the "lusitania" everything changes and now it's just a matter of getting to the war and the events occurred, tensions build, and in we go. the song you just listened to is one of a series of song about alexander that go back to 1911. are you with me on that one? what are we talking about? what's the important one?

"alexander's ragtime band" which irvin berlin wrote in 1911, four years after he became a songwriter, which he stumbled into, one of the great serren dip tuesday moments in american history. he was working in a tough bar in chinatown, and ended up being told to write a song lyric. it's a whole story. but he did and realized he could make a few bucks at this. i8 38 cents in royalties. but he learned if he could do it, had el could make money. his goal was to make $25 a week so he doesn't have to sleep in allies and flophouses anymore. the song was so popular that it sold a million copies in 1911 at a time that was very unusual, and then another million in

1912. berlin basically never had to work again, but obviously did. the song was so popular that a number of other songwriters wrote about a character named alexander that fed off "alexander's ragtime band" even into world war i when there was a comic song called "when alexander takes his ragtime band to france" if you were listening or readling the words, you heard the lyric tell you that all that had to happen was for the band to play a two-step, a ragtime song that we used to dance to, a two-step was a dance, one step and two steps was the way you danced to ragtime songs. they would jump up out of the their trenches and go cakewalking back to germany if

we took alexander's ragtime band to france, the war would be over. now that's a joke, obviously. whether you find it funny or i find it funny is not the point, it was a joke in 1917. it also reflects the attitude toward that war as we left home to do what? to teach the kaiser a lesson. that is, we had never fought in a european war before. we really had a sanitized view of what trench warfare would be like. we had no idea. we knew that there was hoarding in this country. there's a song called "the demon has ball up all the coal." people were hoarding. there was songs about the

so-called butch remember in belgium by the germans. to a degree it was propaganda. their behavior was not as bad as it was said to be. we were going to go off to show the kaiser who the doughboys we are and we of course got bloodied fast. you hear that sense of ease. we'll just dance around a bill, slap kaiser bill and come home. so it's not only a comic take on war, which every war has produced. even world war ii, which had the fewest comic songs, but civil war gave us "gooper peas" and world war ii gave us "oh how i hate to get up in the morning."

more about how it reflects the history of america tonight in primetime. beginning at 8:00 eastern, the entire program as author michael lesser talks about how world war i changed american music, at 9:20, music as a catalyst for social change, musicians discuss the history of music and at 10:35 feminism and 1960s and '70s pop music, 7 all this tonight on american history tv primetime. to market the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall, a panel of historians discuss the end of the cold ward. constructed in 1961, the wall

began to fall on november 9th, 1989, after months of protests and political liberalization in pro-soviet eastern europe. this event is hosted by the society for the historians of american foreign relations. this is just under two hours. welcome, everyone. wonderful to see you all to be gathered at this plenary session, which is basically commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berton wall. i am richard imer man from temple university. it is my honor and pleasure to serve as the chair and moderator for those of us who have been coming to shaffer meetings for

four decades or even more, it's a little short of remarkable that we are marking 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. it's remarkable because on the one hand we can recall that event so differently, but sometimes on the other hand it seems like it took place a lifetime ago. it's also remarkable for those of you who pursued degrees and published our first books during the preceding decades, in some cases before the construction of the wall -- [ laughter ] -- it's collapse seemed so unimaginable. in fact, if i can indulge you for a second the year before the

collapse, i organized a conference on dallas. no one was more associated with the -- there was lots of talk about the integration of europe, the soviets' new thinks, glasnost, perestroika, but no one was talking about the reunification of germany. this was also the time that john gaddis and bill tadman has begun their series on soviet/american relations. scott armstrong had just come up with the idea of this thing called a national security archive. an end of the cold ward? not a chance. no discussion of it at all. consequently what is not remarkable, is that we are really not much closer now than

we were then to reaching a consensus on the fundamental questions regarding the events in germany tess, and then of course their aftermath. they concerned the drivers, whether they be individual, state or international. they questions concern the consequences, whether they be international, state or individual. and they questioned concerned the significance, the legacy also in terms of individual states and international. while we have not reached any consensus, there are none in our profession, or guild more qualified to -- than our three speakers tonight. none of them really need any introduction but i will

introduce them anyway. i'll do it all at once in the order in which they will speak, which i think i can sort out now. so that we can both ensure that there's a maximum time for our general conversation as well as their opening remarks. mary sarotti's newest book, the collapse, the accidental opening of the berlin wall will appear this autumn on the 25th an verse ref of the fall of the wall. her last book, the struggle to create post cold war europe was a "financial times" book of the year and won sheaffer's prize for distinguished scholar in that in german and european studies, and the a.s.ees showman prize. princeton university will

publish annium dated anniversary edition in the autumn of 2014, so she actually gets a doubleheader she serves as professor of international relations at the university of southern california, and is currently on leave as a visiting professor of government and history at harvard. she's is a former humboldt scholar, white house fellow, and member of the institute for advanced study in princeton, and is a lifetime member of the council on foreign relations. mel leaveward is at the university of virginia, and a faculty fellow of the governs america in a global era program at uva's miller center. he ''s the author of several books on the cold war, and on u.s. relations with europe, including for the soul of

mankind, which won the george lewis price from the american historical association, and a maniance of power, which won the bancroft, hoover and farrell prizes. he was the harmsworth professor at oxford and also head the kissinger chair at the library of congress. he's been a recipient of fell oships from the council on foreign relations, the institute of peace, the wood row wilson center and nor weanening nobel institute and of course served as president of sheaffer. in 2010. and mostlily he co-edited with jeff leg rho in uncertain times, american foreign policy after the cold war. he's know cow-editing a book on comparative strategy-making and writing about the foreign policy

of the george. jeff edge e engle is foundi director at the southern methodist university. he spent 'oben post dock tore fellowship and taught at the university of wisconsin, yale, the university of pennsylvania, haferford and texas a&m. at texas a&m he was the 52 professor at the bush exile and director of programming for the scowcroft institute. jeff received a silver star award for teachling and mentorship, a distinguished teaching award from a & m's association of former students, and a university system chancellor's teaching excellence award.

among the numerous articles and books he has written or edited, his cold war at 30,000 feed won the prize. he was sheaffer's 2012 lecturer and -- recent recipient of a fell oship. he's currently writing "when the world seemed new" and the surprisingly peaceful end of the cold war. mary? inch thank you. it's great that c-span is here so many more can join us in this discussion. the people here have an advantage. they wisely gave you two free drinks before you had to start

lurching to me, so i'm hoping that will blunt the edge of your skeptical and penetrating questions. so i have just a few minutes to tell you a little bit about the fall of the wall, and then my colleagues will talk more about legacy and interpretation, as richard was kind enough to manipulation, i have a book coming out on this topic in the fall. the anniversary itself will be november 9th, so you will be see a lot of media coverage certainly of the 25th anniversary. it was great that shafr has great to schedule this -- one of the things one of the things that's amazing to me is great events do not always have great causes. i decided to write this book,

because after i wrote my last book, i got a lot of unexpected questions. 1989 is actually about the foreign policy that followed the collapse of the berlin wall. in that book i summarized in a few pages the unexpected way in which the wall came down and the bulk is about the international politics afterwards. i would go out to give talks about that, and i would get up and say i'm here to talk about the foreign policy that followed the unintentional opening of the berlin wall. sometimes people would stop me x t mine? i would get questions like don't you know ha reagan opened the wall in 1987? the first time i go the that question, but by the fourth and fifth time, i was no longer shocked, and i realized that there's not a long in languages other than german about the short-term events that bring down the fall of the wall. there's a lot of excellent

scholarship about the longer-term causes for the fall of the wall, but the proximate causes, the short-term events are not well known in the non-german speaking world. so i decided to try to put together that story, and when it always happens it ends up being mob complicated, so let me just gallop through some of the ideas in my book, and then if we have questions, we can talk more about them. i want to talk about the precursor to the night of november 9th, when the wall opens, a bit on that night and a tiny bit about how we think about these events. so it's important to say the first unexpected event happened in moscow, which is to say there were a rapid series of deaths in 2 1/2 years there were four leaders of the soviet unions

after brezhnev died in 1982, and chernenko died in 19 5. there were so many funerals it -- margaret thatcher famously remarked, the soviets, they really know how to do a funeral, i'm definitely coming back next year. it turned out she wasn't wrong. so after that embarrassing sequence of events, the bureau was finally willing to take a risks on a man in his 50s, and that man of course turned out to be mikhail gorbachev. he comes to power in march 1985 chernenko was ill for a while, and he institutes glasnost and perestroika, but he also begins

meeting with president reagan. his interest in reform is unexpected, matched by a somewhat unexpected level of witness by reagan. george h.w. bush is much more skeptical. brent scowcroft always liked to point out that either gorbachev was a fraud, or gorbachev was for real, and he may really have good intentions but he could be dispatched with a single bull and the soviet union still could is it destroy the -- once george h.w. bush -- was much more cautious, and one of the biggest surprises in my research was just how much tension there was between the reagan team and bush team. political scientists who word d. used the reagan/bush transition

as an example of a particularly vicious one. some have -- -- i was very surprised to see bush documents that referred to mush for brain reagan-its all kinds of phrases saying that it's good that grownups are back in charge. the practice offage summits with gorbachev comes to an end. you see an attempt too return to more of a traditional cold war stance, but dramatic events made clear that 1989 will not be a traditional protest year. there's tiananmen square. even people who try to do commemorate it in their homes we are persecute fold that. so it looks very different in china than in europe. i would ask you to bear this in mind as we talk about the wall today. we of course all know that the cold ward ended peacefully, but

the people at the time did not know this. as the events unfolded. the images on the minds of protesters were imaging tiananmen square, the lone figure standing in front of tanks. try to keep that image in mind as we talk about 1989. the fall of the berlin wall was not a foregone conclusion. catastrophe loomed around every corner and certainly bloodshed was on the mind of those on the ground. tiananmen square is still a forbidden zone in the people's republic of china. fortunately, we have the opportunity to examine what happened in europe. so the question, of course, is what would happen in eastern europe as gorbachev's reforms gradually created new opportunities? would there be a similar kind of violence as there had been in china? that was an open question in the summer of 1989 in cold war europe.

this, of course, is a map of cold war europe. so in the summer of 1989, the beginning of the end and eastern europe didn't recognize this quickly enough. the beginning of the end came when hungary decided to allow hungarians to cross into austria. in the first instance the hungarians prevented east germans from leaving, however. there was an existing treaty between hungary and east germany and the hungarians at first respected it. but as a result of financial inducements from germany, hungary decided to let east germans leave as well and they flood out in mass numbers. this is a photo from the east german secret police archives. this is a photo of abandoned vehicles. they had to go down to the

border and collect these. people waited as long as 16 years to purchase these vehicles. and so abandoning it was quite a dramatic statement and there were so many of them the secret police had to collect them at depots such as this one in czechoslovakia. this was a massive exodus. and it tested even the people who were at home. some of the people who had stayed home had to justify staying at home. indeed the phrase stay at home was a term of insult. and so sudden dee this massive exodus where east germans would go down into hungary, cross the border in austria and come back up to east german knee

threatened the existence of the east german ruling regime itself which they anticipated would not be the case. the east german ruling regime took a series of steps that ultimately culminated even though it did not wish for this to happen in the opening of the berlin wall. so in response to this massive exodus, the east german ruling regime demonstrated the theory of albert hirschman. he had formulated people living under a dictatorship have three choice. you can either find some way to exit. or you can find some way to protest and use your voice. or you can basically stay quiet and be loyal. and for much of east germany loyalty was the popular choice but then thanks to the hungarians exit became possible. however the east german regime decided unwisely to close its own borders to prevent any further exit and since exit then moves to longer an option and loyalty no longer seemed a good option voice became the dominant option and the number of protests and the size of protests was increased dramatically throughout east germany most notably in the cities of dresden. since the media was under censorship, any images had to be smuggled out.

and the east german regime realizing that it created a new monster essentially planned a tiananmen square event on the night of october 9, 1989 in the city of leipzig. there was distribution of machine guns with bullets. just the level of preparations for a bloody and violent event on october 9, 1989, in leipzig. and that event might have happened and we might talk about the two tiananmens in 1989 but for the fact that the demonstrators in leipzig behaved in two unexpected ways. their numbers were massive. their numbers were over 100,000 and they were peaceful and nonviolent and deployed troops instead of firing them began joining their ranks and i described that process based on interviews with police officers and others in the course of the book. it was a remarkable event. it has not been understood as it should be because of a key stepping stone on to the collapse of the wall. because the smugglers smuggled out video images of the failure of the regime to carry out it's

planned tiananmen and when those and it was quite a remarkable event and has not been understood as it should be because it was a key stepping stone on to the collapse of the wall. the smugglers smuggled out video images of the failure of the regime to carry out it's planned tiananmen and when those made to it western broadcasters and broadcast back to eastern

europe that fueled the confidence of east germans even more. the protest actually took place around the leipzig center city ring road. the marchers gathered here and marching around this way. this was supposed to be the location where what would essentially have been civil war in germany would have started. but the protesters overwhelmed the police and the deployed army forces and able to circle the entire ring road successfully on the night of october 9th. from there the power of this peaceful revolution kept growing and growing and the regime found itself more and more under siege. the hard line leader of east germany was ousted and replaced by his crown prince, a man named avon krince. he knew things had gone badly wrong so he thought i'll do things differently. i'll still maintain control but i'll talk a good game in public. so in public i'll say things that make it sound like i'm going institute reforms but i'll maintain the power of the state over people's lives and certainly over their ability to

travel. the state still has to give permission if anyone wants to leave on my watch. so avon krenz decided to issue minor changes to exists travel laws mainly as a stop to all of these crowds that were protesting but the announcement of this minor and basically fraudulent change was so badly botched that the journalists in the room thought it was a real change and there's quite remarkable video footage of this press conference that is arguably the worst press conference in the world where the east german spokesman goes from bad to worse and in his efforts to explain what's going on and before he even finishes speaking he starts back pedalling. before he does that reporters start rushing out to file reports saying the wall is open. so when east germans hear those reports which are not actually

accurate, it's part of this new found self-confidence inspired by gorbachev, inspired by the success of the solidarity movement in poland, what happened in leipzig they stormed the wall. and the critical point that night, the point where the berlin wall first opens is this location. this is a border crossing or was a border crossing in the north of divided berlin. it was the largest border crossing between the two halves that divided berlin. this is an aerial photo from the stasi in about 1985. in this photo, west berlin is at the top. on the other side of this bridge. east berlin is down here. this is the entrance to the checkpoint. if you were to come in a car you have to go over here to these car procession lanes before you can go up final barrier and guard post and go over to the west, and the pedestrians would be processed in these houses and it's a huge called off area. this whole area is the checkpoint.

and this becomes a critical point because there are a number of checkpoints but the other ones, the residences had been given over to secret police employees. they were not likely to storm the wall. and their neighbors would be more fearful of doing so. this was kind of out of the way in the north and this was where what were known as the political undesirables lived. this was a bad neighborhood. from the point of the view of the stasi. those political undesirables showed up in large numbers on the night of november 9th, 1989, and they started basically trying to get into the border crossing just saying, you should let us pass. the wall is open. the border guards were baffled. when they called their superiors, they said, business as usual, keep the gates closed. this became a dramatic development. a map of divide berlin. this thick line represents the berlin wall. similar things start happening at all the inner berlin divided

points. all kinds of reports start coming in to the center, massive crowds are showing up and all of them are convinced the wall is open. there are no orders to this effect and stasi headquarters keep saying, keep the gates closed, business as usual, keep the gates closed. but it becomes harder and harder for the border guards who are facing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people would are starting to fear for their own and this is the man who opens the wall in the practical sense. not the man who opens the wall in the sense of reagan or gorbachev. he folds and says we'll shoot these people or open up. his name is harold yager. he's a stasi officer. he was in charge of the night watch. a deputy officer. but it was on his watch that this came to a head.

this is a stasi photo. this is his personnel file photo. shows his age roughly as it would have been in 1989. and he after hours of being told business as usual, when he tells his superiors it's not business as usual there are 20,000 people here, his superiors call him a coward and he snaps and decides to open the wall. so this man is actually in sort of the most specific narrow sense, the man who opens the wall and is almost completely unknown. he thereby put himself out of a job and actually after the wall came down ended up unemployed and for a while even just driving a taxi in berlin and now lives on a small pension in the outskirts of berlin. so that is just a very brief summary and some of the dramatic unexpected events that led to the short term collapse of the wall. let me make a few very general remarks and then i'll hand over to my colleagues about reaction and memory. what's interesting to me is how this is treated now in germany. here in the united states we have a number of very, very grand memorials to the collapse of the berlin wall.

there are very big installations of pieces of the berlin wall at the george h.w. bush presidential library, at the ronald reagan library, at the capitol, in fulton, missouri but actually in west germany there is no major memorial to the fall of the wall. there are attempts to build one but very controversial and beset with delays. there's more going on here than just what museum experts call beyond the beauty problem. that's when you try to memorialize an unattractive site. seems more is going on than that and this has to go with the ongoing controversy how do we interpret this event and its legacy. there's so much disagreement we've not reached a point where we can adequately memorialize it. it speaks to our lack of a clear understanding. or you had some kind of order by the east german regime because great events must have great

causes and must have been decided and east german regime must of decided. the agency of local actors. as i was writing this book this wasn't a story of elite politics since there was no order to open the wall, i had to look elsewhere for my main character, so to speak. now it's true this was a story of revolution from below, the fact that the people wanted the wall to be opened mattered as well but that problem is a causal explanation because people wanted the wall to be opened from the moment it was built in 1961 and yet it didn't fall until 1989. it was fascinating to me as i described history from the middle, people like harold yager, mid-level east german bureaucrat, people who unintentionally contributed to these events not these great

political leaders. this is a recent photo. instead of a memorial there there's basically nothing. i took this picture because i got a tip from a friend that all of the remaining traces, including the former east german lane lines, those are the vehicle lanes i pointed out to you, were going to be ripped up so a discount grocery store could go in. i ran over and took a picture of the lane numbers and few lane numbers that were still there before they got ripped up. if you go there now to where the berlin wall opened there's now a discount grocery store. by way of compensation, some local historical societies decided there should be some informational panels but those were installed on the cheap. you can see one fell prey to

vandalism. this is supposed to be a picture of people crossing the wall on the night of the 9th but somebody put a sticker on it, peeled it off and that was the end of it. so this is the site where berlin actually opened. it just amazes me that at this event, this site, that's what marks this momentous event. so, i think that there's a lot of food for thought here. on the one hand we have a triumphant memorials for the fall of the wall where germans are hesitant to celebrate this triumphant and there are longer term consequences of this thinking which we'll discuss more that they feed into a mistaken perception that the united states was, in fact, the author, the sole author of these events, that it rapidly and at little cost brought down the wall through a dictatorship and fueled the thought the united states can repeat the performance.

we need a better understanding of what happened in this event. we need to understand the role of chance. and the agency of local actors. and we need to have a more nuanced understanding of the role of the united states and u.s. foreign policy in this event. so thank you very much for listening to me and i look forward to the discussion. [ applause ] >> so, over the years i've learned the importance of stressing my most significant point first. so i want to tell you that despite what richard implied, i did not publish my first book before the construction of the wall. [ laughter ] as we learn more and more about

the history leading up to the demise of the wall, as we learn more and more of the texture about that event from people like mary and jeff, i think we understand the technical history, the empirical history a lot better. my desire is to try to step back and to ask myself and to ask all of you to think about what actually on the 25th anniversary should we be commemorating? what is there to celebrate? what lessons are to be drawn? actually, about five years ago, approaching the 20th anniversary, jeffrey engel invite ad group of scholars down

to texas a&m to discuss the meaning of the fall of the ad g to texas a&m to discuss the meaning of the fall of thdad grn to texas a&m to discuss the meaning of the fall of thad gro down to texas a&m to discuss the meaning of the fall of the gron to texas a&m to discuss the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall. and jim sheehan was there to talk about the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall in eastern europe and my good friend came and talked about the meaning of the fall of the wall in china, bill talbin came and talked about the meaning of the fall of the wall in russia. and i talked about the meaning of the fall in the united states. at that conference, which i think jeff is going to talk a little bit more about in a few minutes, at that conference i was very much impressed by the divergent meanings attached to the fall of the wall. jeff explained the demise of the

wall signified the triumph and efficacy of european integration and multilateral institutions. in russia the fall of the wall signified the need to avoid naive leadership. in china the fall of the wall meant the need to reactivate economic reform and to avoid political liberalization. and i talked about the meaning of the fall of the berlin wall in the united states. and here i emphasize that it meant the triumph of freedom over tyranny. it confirmed the redemptive role of the united states. and the universal appeal of freedom.

the wall coming down. this view was very widespread and it was very dangerous. it encouraged the use of military power and armed force. it nurtured illusory hopes of a democratic peace. it inspired naive assumptions about benevolence of european regulated markets. this view was widely shared amongst prudent men like george h.w. bush, amongst prominent democrats like the clintons, amongst conservatives like donald rums felt and rumsfeld a

and among neo-cons like doug and paul wilfowitz. initially bush 41, as jeff and others have so well emphasized was cautious and prudent. but by the time of the 1992 presidential campaign, president bush 41 could not resist the temptation to take credit for the events of 1989 and 1990. he liked to say during the campaign, we brought about the fall of the iron curtain and the death of imperial communism. in 1992 the republican platform

actually went further. it proclaimed quote, the fall of the berlin wall marks a change in the way people live. we republicans saw clearly the dangers of collectivism, not only the military threat, but the deeper threat to the soul of people bound in dependence. end quote. indeed, the dismantling of the wall and the ensuing collapse of communism in eastern europe and the ussr discredited government and further inspired the belief in the utility and superiority of free markets. not only among republicans. here in the united states the clinton administration actually went much further than its predecessors in dismantling government regulation over

capital flows and financial markets. the depression fire wall between commercial and investment banking was repealed. robert rubin, larry summers and alan greenspan were determined not to regulate, not to regulate the expanding sectors of the financial economy like derivative trading and securitization of mortgages. they forced other governments to deregulate financial controls as a condition for free trade pacts and as a condition for securing financial assistance during the asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. after 9/11, memories of the berlin wall coming down whetted the appetites and encouraged

officials to use strength. displace of u.s. power would be met with enthusiasm. memories of the jubilation of berliners of 1989 made them think that the toppling of saddam would be greeted with the same enthusiasm as the dismantling of the wall. on november 9th, 2001, bush 43 declared world freedom day. he said, quote, like the fall of the berlin wall, and the defeat of totalitarianism in central and eastern europe, freedom will triumph in this war against terrorism. and a little over a year later, observing the videos of the toppling of saddam's statue, secretary of defense rumsfeld declared quote, watching iraqis one cannot think, one cannot

help but think of the fall of the berlin wall and the collapse of the iron curtain. such notions inspired the hubris that formed the national security strategy statement of 2002. you all remember the quotation in the introduction, the great struggles wóóóóó[ñth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the fors of freedom in a single sustainable model for national success. freedom, democracy and free enterprise, end quote. now that we know the history of the wall coming down, now that

we know the contingency of the event and the agency of ordinary people, what should we be thinking about? what, in fact, should we be commemorating? what are the larger lessons that we should draw? is it the universal appeal of freedom? is it the free markets? is it the efficacy of strength, power, and containment? what lessons should we draw? this is what i think we should draw. first, we should acknowledge and affirm the appeal of fundamental human rights. we should applaud the energy and recognize the agency of the nongovernmental organizations

championing human rights in civil society. we should emphasize the significance of the helsinki agreements in re-establishing the legitimacy and universality of the rights inscribed in the 1948 declaration and let's remember what that declaration affirmed. the right life, liberty and the security of person. the right of every person to equality before the law. the right to be free from arbitrary arrests. the right to be free of arbitrary interference with privacy. the right to freedom of movement and travel. the right to own property. the right to express one's self freely. the right to enjoy social security, gainful employment, educational opportunity, and a minimum standard of living. those are the fundamental rights

that had such wide appeal to the peoples of east berlin, east germany, eastern europe and ultimately the soviet union. second, i think we should emphasize and celebrate the attractiveness of a social market economy, not a free enterprise economy. indeed, it was the principles of the social market that were incorporated. a social market meant combining free markets with regulated governor mental competition and with a commitment to social equity and a social welfare

safety net. in the ideological struggle between free enterprise and communism, the social market won the cold war. notwithstanding the reagan/thatcher assault on government regulation. not with standing the rise of neo-liberalism, we should remember that the social safety net did not erode, did not erode in the 1980s. indeed elsewhere i've shown that social spending was crucial to the ability of the west to absorb the shock of the 1970s. the social market, not the free market, so to speak, won the cold war. third, we should acknowledge the efficacy of super national institutions and european integration.

the berlin wall came down because of franco-german reconciliation and because of the coal and steel community and common market and because of hopes inspired by the prospective european union. the berlin wall came down because of the resilience of western economies and because of the appeal of the culture of mass consumption. and i think it's very important to emphasize that u.s. power were essential back drops for the success of western european economic integration. fourth, we should emphasize and commemorate new norms of international conduct, the renuniation of force and honoring of self-determination. these were the norms that gorbachev embraced. that embrace was the

pre-condition for the wall coming down. fifth, we should applaud the efficacy and the agency of wise leaders. reagan, bush, and most of all gorbachev. reagan grasped that negotiating from strength meant negotiating, meant reaching out and ultimately understanding the adversary. bush grasped that prudence and self-restraint were critical. he understood that he must not overreach, he must not provoke a clamp down. that he must do what he could to

help avoid a repeat of budapest 1956, prague '58 and recent events of tiananmen. cole grasped immediately the opportunity to reunite germany and he also realized that a united germany had to be embedded within supernational institutions. and mitteron pressed ahead with his championing of the monetary union. he under stood that it was a prerequisite to co-opting prospective german power and to reassure germany's neighbors. most of all, we should honor gorbachev. he embraced new norms of conduct.

reconceived the meaning of security for his country and in understood the priority of domestic reform even if he did not know how to bring it about. sixth and last, we should acknowledge the complex interactions between human agency, structural developments like globalization and the communications revolution and contingent events like a spokesperson misstating the conclusions of a politburo meeting. we historians need to strive for synthesis and complexity as a precondition for extrapolating accurate lessons and appropriate meanings. and as we reassess, we can also acknowledge that the leaders made mistakes.

we can acknowledge that not all the promise of the wall coming down was realized. partly because of the conservative instincts of cole and bush and partly because of the ambiguity of gorbachev's vision and mostly because competing pressures too formidable for statesmen to achieve perfection. but the dismantling of the wall, there remains much to celebrate. the end of the division of germany, the end of the division of europe, the end of the cold war, the end of a nuclear arms race, the end of a century of

depression, war, and totalrichl. and in an editorial on november 12th, 1989, i think the editors of the "new york times" put the events in proper perspective. the editors wrote, "crowds of young people danced on top of the hated berlin wall thursday night. th they danced for joy, they danced for history, they danced because the catastrophe that engulfed europe 75 years ago, a holocaust and cold war seemed to be at long last be nearing an end. we, too, can still rejoice about such matters.

thanks. [ applause ] >> you can all rejoice that we're nearly done. let me begin by first thanking the program committee for putting together this together tonight and for doing their usual sleexcellent job of creat an excellent conference. thanks to our incoming president, of course and for this opportunity and, of course, thank you to richard and my fellow panelists for giving a lot to discuss once i'm done. 25 years ago, the world changed. the impossible happened. something wholly unexpected seized global attention and fundamentally altered a people, a continent, and the entire

world system. with consequences that continue to reverberate to this day. i speak, of course, of what happened on june 4th, 1989, the day that polish voters ejected their communist government. the regime was no more. moscow's influence was no more. a home-grown polish democracy took its place. perhaps this is not the moment that you thought i was referring to from 25 years ago. perhaps, therefore, you must be thinking about december 2nd of 1989, when soviet officials met as an end to the cold war with headline writers to malta or perhaps may 2nd when hungarians opened a window to the iron curtain that was never again shut.

as we gather tonight to consider the fall of the berlin wall 25 years on, my first reminder is that berlin is not the whole story. it is important but also but one peak of the interconnected change that swept the world in 1989. any number of events, be it elections, openings or summits could stake an equal claim to historic significance, to being the moment when the cold war that gripped humanity for a half century truly came to an end. now, perhaps to further this point when you were asked what was the most significant event of 1989, you would think instead of tiananmen square. truth be told, this will get my vote. long after we in this room have gone to that great big archive in the sky, historians will still note and long remember june 4th of 1989. on the very day that polish voters stood up, china's growing

reform movement was mowed down. as china's leader declared, quote, we must deal severely with those who defy orders. we can afford to shed some blood. just try as much as possible not to kill everyone, end quote. china, of course, has not been the same since. the moment that they toppled the goddess of liberty in tiananmen square, they cut a deal with its own people, guaranteeing economic growth. the free market, if you will, without the freedom. chinese leaders, of course, live in awful fear of what might happen if they fail to hold up their end of the bargain, failing to fulfill prosperity. it must be said that asia is not your cup of tea.

perhaps you prefer your history of 1989 more colonial. let me talk about gorbechov. the system that he loved through a revolution of ideas. he wound up, of course, ushering the soviet union into its grave. 1989 was the year that you fully articulated his common european home, a bridge of east and west human possibility. it was the single most profound articulation of a new world order since woodrow wilson, further cementing its author position as the world's most popular man, at least outside of russia. as the new york times famously editor yellized, imagine that a

space station said tpz pak me to your leader. who would that be? gorbachev. gorbachev was the world's leader. no wonder, therefore, that george bush feared him as the war began. not this odd communism, even as he overturned it. the common european way to still cold war victory. now, i'll return to bush momentarily. but first, let me say the striking thing about his

speeches. the most important words were uttered behind closed doors. 1989, is often recalled as the year in which so much happened. i contend, however, that is not what happened. the leaders chose and consciously chose not to act that made all the difference and they have blissfully forgotten how dangerous the demise of the soviet union was and a dangerous free will of nuclear environment. bob gates at that time was deputy national security adviser repeatedly to any and all who would listen and whether they wanted to listen or not would warn anybody there that never before in human history had a major empire collapsed without a great power war ensuing. never before in human history

had chaos not filled a power vacuum. and with crowds surging around the world in 1989, it had all the makings of a chaotic year. indeed, this is a year that is most often retold by historians as a story of crowds, crowds marched, regimes fell. and this version has a nice, warm feel to it. it gives the crowd agency. it makes us feel good thinking that democracy and people have real power. will hitchcock nicely summed up this way of thinking saying that gorbachev did not give europeans their freedom in 1989. they took it. now, this is a nice, warm version of events but i think it's also incomplete. don't get me wrong. crowds matter. but their success or failure ultimately rested in 1989 in the hands of the leaders who stroef to keep chaos at bay and crowds at a minimum, fed up by decades

of repression, they marched but in doing so they actually returned power over events back into the hands of the very leaders they despised. the leaders who, therefore, when viewing those marchers had one more fateful decision to make. to fire or to topple. to douse the flames as ping had done. of course, they didn't know if the buckets they held contained water or gasoline. thankfully, of course, the leaders chose a more peaceful path. or as mary tells us in her book, in leipzig or in berlin as well. looking back at 1989 and asking what it all means, it seems to be clear that gorbachev's best moment was not a speech but instead when he told eastern europe that moscow would no lon der support their use of

violence against their own people, this would not be 1953. this would not be 1968. this would not be 1956. gorbachev, you see, had said no. he be a who ared violence. becoming, in fact, physically ill in april of 1989, months before the wall fell, before tiananmen when soviet police dispersed a crowd of protesters. 20 of that crowd died and the moment terrified him. why? because he had not ordered the crackdown. he had not ordered the violence. he, the most powerful man in the soviet union had less power when crowds and police clashed than the lowlyist soldier scared and armed with a gun or a subdued protester weilding a rock.

we must never forget, as mary wisely pointed out, that all that occurred in the fall of 1989 in europe happened after tiananmen square and leaders on both sides of the crumbling iron curtain drew a direct line between the two. at the moment when the rest of the world shunned chinese visitors following tiananmen, eric connick customer of east germany invited officials to teach the stasi about crowd control. honniker used tiananmen of a blunt warning. for bush it was a recurring nightmare. bush wrote, if we mishandle this and get out in front looking like an american project, you would invite crackdown and negative reaction that could result in bloodshed. bush, therefore, responded by

doing and saying as little as possible. hardliners or urged the crowd to violence, practicing what i call hypocratic diplomacy, the determination first to do no harm, even if it meant doing nothing in the public eye. why? and this is important. because he believed action carried more risks than potential gain and because he fundamentally believed that history flowed in washington's direction. and that the stream of history would continue to flow in that direction, washingtons, so long as he did nothing to change its course. democracy was on the rise. markets were in voig and freedom on the march. as bush said, quote, critics say we're not doing enough on eastern europe but it's all moving fast and moving our way, end quote. 25 years ago we were all lucky.

lucky that soldiers did not fire on their own swarming crowds. but it was not all luck. it was also the work of leaders bent on keeping chaos at bay. communist regimes looked into the abyss of 1989 and they blinked. east germany was gone. absolutely gone within a year. so to the soviet union whose own ha hardliners launched a coup, it, too, was gone. gone by year's end. china's communist regime, of course, remains to this day offering, i think, the trouble lesson that those who accept reform saw their states topple. the regime that sent in the tanks survived. what, then, is the ultimate lesson of 1989? now, of course, we all know the fallacy of trying to draw

ironclad lessons of history but if there's one story to take of 1989 beyond my initial starting point that it's not just a story of europe or eastern europe or berlin but instead was a global affair. and the lesson, i think, is this. that there were, in fact, as professor lasser mentioned, multiple lessons. when one thinks of 1989 and why it matters, it seems to me, largely depends on one's national point of view. for the americans, as elaborated, the lesson was that they had won. ronald reagan single handedly sent the soviets into the ground and tore the berlin wall down brick by brick. i'd like to think he took off his shirt like putin before he did it because he believed in putin -- excuse me. because he believed in freedom and also because he believed in strength. he also did believe in putin. this version of history offer as

blueprint for future american success. the world wants to be like us. deep in their hearts, everyone wants to be free american-style, americans would add, all suppressed people need is a little push with american military force and we shall be greeted as liberators. of course, we saw how that turned out in 2003. so did others take lesson from 1989. repression works as long as leaders are tough enough to crack down and crack down hard and so long as the people in turn who survive can be made to remain fat and satisfied. europe, too, has its lesson from 1989. the crowds that formed on the far side of the iron kucurtain d not want to be american. they, instead, really want to be european. and desired to join the collective spirit embodied in the nation of the european

union. their lesson, therefore, that cooperation works, integration works. so long as europeans stick together, peace and prosperity will reign. so long as they stick together. six years removed from a financial crisis which has seen european integration and relations strained while reinvigorating national forces throughout the continent. and -- i'm sorry. the russians -- that was intentional. their lesson is the clearest of all. 1989 was the moment that gorbachev gave in. he trusted the west, expecting aid, support, and nato to haul to germany's border. russia, instead, received chaos, economic collapse and nato expansion. vladimir putin has called the soviet demise the single most tragedy of russia's history.

his take away from 1989, the thing that drives his policies today, is the realization that russians should never, ever trust the west again. while there is much to celebrate from 1989, the lessons that we might take from it are not wholly optimistic. it is that true change occurs when leaders are willing to let the stream of history run its course. but, sadly, leaders strong enough to resist the urge to speed history along are, sadly, rare. especially those who are intoxicated by the power at their command. another lesson is that collecti collectivism is undermined by ethnicity and violence, indeed, can keep chaos at bay, for a while at least. and finally, it's how one stands on the issues of 1989 depends on

large measure upon where one sits. as ping told his inner circle, quote, we are not afraid to shed a little blood. you carry these things out, you see, and the westerners forget, end quote. i think ultimately he was only partly right. the world does not forget. it simply remembers what it wants. thank you. [ applause ] >> okay. now for those who probably defected from the beginning have

defected, we can have an opportunity -- i'm sure many of you have questions or comments. if you will raise your hand and please identify yourself it will be easier for us and it will certainly be facilitate to filming. >> there's a microphone. >> please go to the microphone. >> hi. oops. sorry. >> easy, boy. >> from the university of florida, i've written extensively on american policy towards poland in this period and i wanted to just thank you all for your insightful comments. i never want to follow m mel lefler after he spoke. i'm also very happy that dr.

engel reminded us of the two things that happened on june 4th. there are two options. there is the polish option and then the tiananmen option. and i think in washington they thought about tiananmen. but i like to think that the polish experience opened the door for the other crowds to take power. as a sort of comment on what you said, dr. engel, not all easter european leaders were -- there were nires and reformers ahead of gorbachev in a way in eastern europe and i think that should be remembered. he died six weeks ago or four weeks ago and he embraced this change. there was never the fear in poland was never that he called for shots or that he be removed as gorbachev had been.

my question is to mary, you talked about unintentional actions of the middle. and also at the same time the agency of local actors. and so my question is, what did you discover about why on october 9th those guards didn't shoot those stasi members did not shoot. it's a choice. it's an action. it's embracing a path that rejects what you're told to do. as well as why ycager did the same thing. the motivation of these middle leaders is important and something that i don't quite understand. i'd ask you to respond to that and explain why they took the step not to act, not to shoot when given the order that night on the 11th -- i'm sorry. the 9th or on -- october or november. yeah. thank you. >> jeff, did you want to say

anything? >> i like your work. >> yes. i would like to recommend to all of you greg's fourth coming book, "empowering revolution." i'm very much looking forward to seeing the book as well. and thank you for your question. this gives me an opportunity to talk just a little bit more about the book and, as i mentioned at the end of the talk, when i set out to write the book, i needed to figure out the locust of the agency. and as i said, it was not among the elite political leaders on whom i had previously worked since there had not been an elite decision by anyone to tear down the wall. so it was not a top/down story. the crowd seceding the narrative as jeff narrated. i realized while that was true and necessary, it was not sufficient. it was not enough to say that

people wanted the wall to come down because people wanted the wall down from 1961 onward and yet it didn't come down until 1989. so i ended up, unexpectedly, focusing on this middle tier. this gets between unintentional action and agency. i found that the agency of local actors was extremely significant but that agency was, at times unintended. the spokesman at the press conference did not intend to botch the announcement. so i ended up looking, on the one hand, not only as smugglers, those punished by the stasi but loyalists and those who thought they were going to save the regime and those were mid-level bureaucrats and it turned out to be unwise, the deputy passport officer. so what was amazing to me is there were many loyalists involved who were trying

ineffectively to save their regime and what they did ended up making it worse. i ended up, for this book, doing a huge number of interviews which i had not expected to do. for instance, i interviewed that m man, harold ycager and i did interviews in leipzig. the causes were many and they all came together at that moment. in leipzig, there were a combination of events, the overwhelming number of protesters, the fact that they were handing out huge numbers of leaflets which they created for three nights in a row saying no violence, it won over the army guards who were told to expect a mob and the guards felt

betrayed. also, the senior leaders in leipzig had trouble getting berlin on the phone at the moment that shoot berlin on the phone, so they were left in the lurch. so they had received orders during the day to crack down at a certain point. all important decisions from the center. they were having trouble doing so because they realize their elite party leaders wanted to know nothing about the bloodshed so they could disavow it. local leaders at that point began to feel themselves being left in the lurch and were not willing to go forward with it. so there's a whole bunch of factor that's come together. similarly with harold yager who's an amazing figure. he had been working at that border crossing for 25 years and nothing unusual had ever happened. you have to imagine -- let me go back to his picture. you have to imagine you've been sitting there for 25 years.

you're a deputy control officer on the night watch. you've given 25 years of service. you've had multiple awards from the staci. you're an exemplary servant of the regime. even though you know your state is crumbling you're ready to show up for a 24 hour night shift and goes through the night and into the next day. when he called his superiors and they called him a coward. that moment that got his back-up and that combined with his personal fear that tens of thousands of people chanting open the wall. the protesters were peaceful. he and his men didn't know that. they felt he might be lynched. random factors, undergone recently, suspected of having cancer. he had undergone tests for cancer and was set to get the results the next day. it turned out he didn't have cancer but he didn't know that.

all these factors come together, global, changes in the world, gorbachev, and i may be dying and they call me a coward. at that moment he was fed up, he turns to his people and says should we shoot all of these people or should we open up so they open up. these are trivialities, not involved in the historical study but factors, the phenomenon about the wall itself opening let alone factors we've raised about memory and legacy. >> it's a great question. one of the things i think is really fascinating about mary's story in particular which she tells really remarkably which i

-- which she tells remarkably in her next book, which i have an advanced copy of and i'll be glad to sell to the highest bidder. the difference between what happened there and tiananmen. the world remembers that event as occurring on the night of june fourth when the tanks and armor personnel carriers rolled in and machine guns opened up. there had been a series of attempts over the previous week by the chinese regime to take back the square by force without the use of deadly force. at each stage they had been repulsed by the chinese people of regime, who had physically repelled anyone who entered tiananmen.

so the soldiers had been beaten up by a week at this point. so it's not first moment of violence. it was a choice that occurred after continued violence and escalated. so one could only think what would have happened if the soldiers who were staring down the crowd, if the crowd had gotten within 30 yards of their position, if the crowd had been hurling rocks and hurling rocks for a week at that point what would their reaction had -- would have been. i think it would have been far different i think. >> jeff and john. >> you get creeky after a while. it's nice to be back in chafer after all of these years. >> you're one of the people who published about the the construction of the berlin wall, correct? >> it was very enjoyable and thought provoking set of presentations.

a couple of points, i think this is directed at mel, maybe i'm stretching my point but maybe it was a good thing we had the soviet union around for americans to have a friendly face, a smile, a positive approach to the working man and unions. that's gone. is there a connection? i don't know. and a general question when will we see the end of the america trying to see the world in its own image in terms of interpreting complex events that happened. i'm thinking of right now and listening to your political leaders, yours not mine, it seems the rhetoric goes around and around and stops with how great we are and how everyone

should, in fact, be embracing our values and what we have to do to change and save the world. those are two questions. >> jeff, i'm not exactly sure what you meant by was it a good idea for the united states. >> exemplary idea that the soviet union and the united states were involved for a long time. there was an enemy and corporate capitalism, international capitalism, global capitalism, whatever you want to call it. working men in america, and women, too, were happier than their enslaved counterparts in the world. >> well, i think it's important simply to realize the initial context of the cold war rather

than american officials being happy that there was a clear model that the united states or western capitalism was superior. the real context of the origins of the cold war was the widespread apprehension that existed after the depression in world war ii about the viability and vitality of communism. one of the main reasons the cold war starts is because of the fears of american officials about the appeal of communism. so i think that american officials prefer to have the situation that existed after 1990 than what had existed before.

no, i don't think they liked have soviet union around as a framework. i really don't. as for the receipt or cal lessons, i think, yes, american officials and american journalists and american media and quite a few historians and scholars have disseminated an exceptionalist view of triumphalism. so i've taken issue with that exceptionalist view. many people in this room have taken issue with it. our views i don't think have prevailed in the large context of american public thinking about the end of the cold war. what i think is important, though, is for us to carry on. that is to continue to try to

communicate our views. i think a very good example of this has happened in the last few weeks. some of you who read "the new york times" and the new republic know bob kagan has written and incredibly influential essay about the -- what we should learn from the experience of the 20th century from world war i to world war ii about american leadership. the bottom line he argues, what's necessary to have a peaceful, stable, democratic world order is for the united states, as it has done in the past, to assert power and leadership.

allegedly president obama called bob kagan to the white house to discuss this early. that's what i read. i know for a fact hillary clinton had dinner with bob kagan to discuss this article. i would wager the majority of people in this room do not quite agree with that story. not that it'spxaxu totally wr my opinion but has pretty significant problems. i would suggest everything that agrees with it should read it and try to publish something about it. make an impact. communicate your views. affect public perception and the memory we have on these events.