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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SBHX who wrote (149997)	10/31/2004 11:21:49 AM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You forgot the Prauge Spring of 1968 and Hungary in 1956. I do not forget. My relatives were in Plzen (Pilsen -- Plzensky Prazdroj -- a most excellent beer) and Praha (Prague) in 1968. One was in the military and escaped with others once the country fell. You can still see fire in his eyes when we talk about the Soviets. In the end my relatives were fairly lucky, despite losing homes and businesses those that wanted to flee the country, managed to. Most of the older generation stayed behind, subject in at least one case to interrogation at the point of a gun. Another wing of my family are Poles and they do not forget. Those that have settled in North America (from the tobbaco belt in Canada through Detroit and throughout the east coast in the US) critically question their home country's support of the US in Iraq. Those in my family that come from military roots know the support is in part historical - the Poles, all modern jokes aside, had an extremely strong and proud military streak running through them. The problem is that the historical context for this is that in every other similar attempts to say "You can have our lives but nor our obedience", Russian tanks have quickly showed up and reeducated or taken the lives of those who are not obedient and no amount of grouphug has helped. This statement is utter nonsense and could only be made by someone who has never lived there, someone who reads the "western" side of history from newspaper headlines. Dissent - mostly "peaceful" but certainly not "safe" given the occupiers - continued within these lands for decades yet you completely overlook the risks and danger Czechs and Poles took to keep ideas and movements alive. It was brave people in these lands who put their families and selves at mortal risk who ultimately changed things, from within, without a ringle American-made RPG, not a single bullet, not a single tank. It wasn't just Havel or Walesa who made a difference, it was them and all who went before them over the decades of repression. It only worked when the soviet system and will has weakened enough to allow more intelligent men such as Gorbachev to chart the proper course for his people. It wasn't just the Soviet system itself which was its undoing, nor was it just the financial pressure which the US exerted (while employing an arms industry at the same time I might add) - the rise of media and communication throughout the second half of the 20th century made a huge impact. The most dangerous weapon in the world after all is the mass produced printed page. While its true that some policy decisions - some of which may have, under other circumstances, triggered nuclear war (just read how many false nuclear attack alerts have been triggered over the years, including within the last decade) - kept the pressure up on the Soviet system to invest money they did not have, the real credit must be given to those which pushed at the Soviet system from within. Gorbachev, not Reagan, needed to make the decision that "ideas from within" were pulling the system apart. Decades of oppression did not dim the desire of those peoples to be free. They did not hear Presidents beat their chests in support of freedom while denouncing the Soviet repression -- and they did not need to. The spark of freedom was lit from within. These cultures have been in place for many centuries - freedom and repression have real meaning, they are not abstract concepts for them. The Soviets may have isolated and spent themselves to the point where the cold war against America could not continue, but they certainly could have held the repressive regime together longer. Just look at China of that era for an example. Any account of the fall of the Soviet Union which does not take into full measure the sacrifices and risks of ordinary citizens who pushed for change, is disingenuous and fundamentally flawed.