If you can choose a single person that brought down communism.....

[dhinojosa]

I just saw an article where a European nation wants to put up a Reagan statue for ending communism. I think Reagan didn't have anything to do with bringing down communism, period, but that is just my opinion. So, if you can choose a single person that brought down communism, who would it be?

On Edit: removed Boris Yeltzen in exchange for John Paul II.

[Vickers]

1. Why no choice for Nena?

:shrug:

[dhinojosa]

2. You and I in a little toy shop, Nena?

I don't know. :shrug:

[htuttle]

10. I think he means "99 Luftballons" Nena

:shrug:

[dhinojosa]

14. Same thing....

The song starts off with "You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we got".....

At least I think it starts off with that lyric.

[htuttle]

19. Doh!

You're right.

I never realized the German and English lyrcs were completely different (just found this: http://www.inthe80s.com/redger3.shtml )

[Enraged_Ape]

48. The English lyrics blow

It's like they tried so hard to make the lyrics rhyme that they completely ignored the meter. I actually understood the song better when it was in German.

[Cats Against Frist]

70. Can we hijack this and turn it into a Nena thread?

:)

[Blue Belle]

56. Nice!

:-)

[GarySeven]

62. What about Captain Kirk?

"Every one a Captain Kirk"

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. I voted for the shipyard worker in GDANSK who proved workers ARE

the economy. :thumbsup:

Glad you included Lech in the survey

[candy]

4. There was no single person-it collapsed under it's own weight.

Reagan was just in the right place at the right time.

The same will happen in China.

[TheFarseer]

22. I don't believe it will

China is smart enough to incorporate capitalism. The main way they resemble communism is the totalitarianism. The only thing that will bring them down is if enough people get sick of the oppression.

[candy]

31. They are technically no longer Communist no matter what they

call themselves.

[MrSlayer]

5. How about the recently dead Pope?

I've seen JPII given a lot of credit for this.

[JAbuchan08]

6. I voted Gorbachev, then I realized that it was Lenin...

creating an authoritarian system that is anything BUT responsive to the "community" and giving it the mantle of the "United Soviet Socialist Republic" that man did more to destroy communism than anyone else.

[julianer]

50. Don't know about that

...it was Stalin who clamped down on what democracy there was in the Soviet Union in 1927/28. Up till then things had been run, at least in theory, by representatives and councils. Of course, in practice, the state was run by party officials, but this was largely because the most advanced workers, who could have run the councils, had mostly been killed in the civil war.

Lenin died in 1924 so he wasn't in any way responsible for the crimes committed later by Stalin.

[calimary]

7. You forgot Pope John Paul the Second. The fact that he was Polish

was a HUGE "up yours" to the then-Soviet Union, especially with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement gaining stature and momentum at that time.

He had a lot to do with it. Walesa himself had a lot to do with it. Reagan had a little bit to do with it, as did Thatcher. I voted for Gorby, because until he came along, bringing a "younger" generation to the Soviet leadership (after Old, Older, and Oldest - Breshnev, Chernyenko and Andropov). He was HUGELY instrumental in breaking down the barriers on his end - and becoming more open to doing business with the West via diplomacy and commerce, instead of threats and guns. All the others had a little bit to do with it, too, but it took someone like Gorbachev coming in and being willing to set a completely different tone in the Kremlin. It was also the Soviet economy (or lack thereof) which helpd the Communist system collapse pretty much of its own weight. But I'd credit Gorby for most of it.

It was like a pitcher and a catcher. There were lots of people pitching an end to the Communist system. But for such an idea to bear fruit in any real, tangible, significant sense, there had to be somebody willing to catch all the pitches that were thrown. The Pope, Walesa, the workers of Gdansk, Thatcher, Reagan, and everybody else, were all in there pitching. All they lacked was a catcher willling to play ball. When Gorbachev came along, they finally got one.

[CarolNYC]

Yep,

I think JPII should be on there also.

[DODI]

I agree -- those two at the same time really did it.

[dhinojosa]

9. Done

Thanks. I changed from Boris Yeltzin to Pope John Paul II since Boris Yeltzen wasn't that relevant. :)

[CarolNYC]

12. cool, thanks

[Beaver Tail]

13. Rotting

Communism was rotting economically from the inside out. The Reaganites wanted to take credit for it, so did the Mujahadine (later to become Al Qaeda ) but the truth is the model was unsustainable.

[downwitbush]

8. GO POPE!

the pope really took down communism. Despite the fact that the USSR was atheist most polish were still catholic. Thus the pope really brought down communism because he was a major religious figure.

[alcuno]

54. Amen.

People don't want to give him credit because of his conservative positions, but it goes to the Holy Father, hands down. All those others were just along for the ride.

[jmaier]

11. Lech Walesa and Solidarity

When a worker's union went on prolonged strike against the worker's party, the cognitive dissonance began.

[meppie-meppie not]

17. ITA!!

[alcuno]

57. And who gave them the confidence to do it.

John Paul II.

[punpirate]

15. Stalin...

... he set the stage for the decay that set in after his death. The destruction of the Soviet Union was a long, long, long time in coming.

[welshTerrier2]

18. yup ...

that was my vote too ...

[Mass]

16. Is the way it collapsed necessarily a good thing?

I think the US should have supported Gorbatchev and helped change Eastern Europe without the collapse that happened in the USSR.

I do not question that bringing it down was a good thing (it was). I am questionning that replacing Gorbatchev by Yeltzen and an uncontrolled capitalism in a country that never had capitalism before was a good thing.

[Igel]

37. A truism that frequently is true is that the most unstable

political orders are neither those that are absolutist, nor those that are free, but those transitioning from the one to the other.

The way the USSR collapsed was the only way it could go. The Central European governments had more stable structures, with fewer economic/social pressures, and less "openness", and they collapsed quickly. The USSR rotted from within for decades, with the foundation laid by Nixon and even Carter, and with a huge dollop of help from Reagan and Afghanistan, to the point where glasnost' and khozraschet just made the rottenness too apparent for words. Walesa, Solidarnosc, and JPII were bit players outside of Central Europe.

Central European countries still had capitalism in 1946. Russia phased out controlled capitalism in the early '20s, when the NEP ended, otherwise capitalism there ended, really, in 1914, when Russia went onto a war footing. Collectivization in Russia wiped out the economic superstructure that the other countries still had traces of, and could build on.

When the war broke out, and then the 1917 revolution, Russia was transitioning quite nicely from a feudal to a capitalist system, although the most important part, to my thinking, was underdeveloped--land ownership. They had been moving from a system with a strong central control and strong censorship, to one with relatively less control and censorship when it all went to hell. Which, of course, brings us back to the truism. (Good night.)

[bowens43]

20. Ending communism?

I think you'll find that there are about 1,412,761,565 Chinese, Vietnamese and North Koreans who will be very surprised to hear this.

[dhinojosa]

55. Well the Chinese and Vietnamese can suck my balls

Those free-markets they are engaging in is not communism. By merely doing that they defeated their own system. North Korea is the only communist country left.

[bowens43]

61. Your opinion is noted.

It's not correct, but it is noted.

[Nederland]

59. Get a clue

China isn't communist.

[bowens43]

60. Get an education.

[Nederland]

72. LOL

Nice empty reply.

Try explaining to us "uneducated" people how private property is consistent with Communism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3509850.stm

[elfin]

21. George marshall

The Marshall Plan set the stage for success in Europe, making the disparity with Soviet style countries so stark as to not be ignored by increasingly restive populations. Without it, there would be no base of any of the actors listed above.

[julianer]

51. This isn't really the whole picture

The Marshall plan was more about continuing to provide US industry with government and other contracts rather than an act of pure benevolence.

But it didn't do in the Soviet economy - it grew tremendously quickly from the 1930's up to the 1960's as the country industrialised. Mostly this expansion came from Stalin's slave labour, but the Soviet economy did develop a sort of short lived dynamism along with the political thaw of the Khrushchev era. This was strangled when he was toppled and replaced by the stalinist Brezhnev.

Gorbachev really wanted to resume where Khrushchev left off, but was overtaken by the collapsing reality of Brezhnev's legacy.

He also brought about the end of the stalinist dictatorships in eastern Europe by refusing to support the DDR leadership against popular protests.

He in turn was toppled by the sharks, notably Yeltzhin, who saw the way the wind was blowing and wanted first dibs at the wealth and power.

[ThomWV]

23. Everyone From Truman to Bush I

It was a continuing effort be each President from the end of the second world war until the apparent death and a period afterwards to make good and damned sure the old Union was dead. No one can be singled out any more than another with the possible exception of Eisenhower, who put a face on the cold war and began its fight in ernest.

It was always an economic fight as much and probably moreso than a military fight and Reagan surely has as little to do with its winning as Kennedy or Nixon did (one might suggest we lost ground during each of those preempted Presidencies).

[tridim]

24. Sting

There is no historical precedent
To put words in the mouth of the president
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us me and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

[Journeyman]

25. George Kennan. . .

of course.

[LuckyTheDog]

26. I chose "other"

In my view, Leonid Brezehnev, though his own inept and myopic leadership, did more harm to the communist system than anyone else.

[DeepModem Mom]

27. Ted Turner nt

[chieftain]

28. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a huge

contributor. It is beyond tragic that people show very little ability to learn from the mistakes of others.

[Jack Rabbit]

29. Other: Leonid Brezhnev

He had no clue what he was doing for eighteen years. By the time he died, the system was doomed.

[DuaneBidoux]

30. Communism brought down communism. (the choice wasn't there).

[gordianot]

32. Russian military spending and the war in Afghanistan did it.

We are walking in their footsteps.

[Redleg]

33. Did a truly communist state ever exist?

A communist state in the Marxian sense? I don't believe so.

[NoPasaran]

34. Brezhnev

His crushing of Dubcek's "Socialism with a human face" experiment in 1968 ensured that the Soviet empire would remain in stasis for so long that it was unable to embrace Gorbachev's reforms a generation later without collapsing.

[dben88]

68. Brezhnev, exactly...

i have always thought that his policies were more directly responsible for the demise of the USSR and the eastern bloc - well, that and the devastating famine. steel production was used mainly for military purposes and the soviet union did not recognize that the steel industry was losing strength and the globe was pursuing fiberoptics, etc... they did not/could not modernize.

vodka helped, too... andropov, chernenko and gorbachev had to seriously address soviet workers who were, well, drunk on vodka all the time.

[Adelante]

35. Lech Walesa nt

[WillyT]

36. Rocky And Bullwinkle !!!

Damn... you'd be amazed at how many people have pets named B & N.

(Did Google image search)

:hi:

[Crunchy Frog]

38. I think it was always going to collapse at some point

and that it was largely due to complex social forces that were outside of anyone's control. If I had to give the lions share of the credit to one person though, I would have to say Gorby. At the very least, he initiated political reforms at the top that loosened things up gradually and created structures that enabled revolutionary forces to be channeled into relatively peaceful and constructive forms.

The system was going to collapse eventually anyway, but without an enlightened leader at the top, it could have gone extremely violently, and maybe even taken the rest of us out with it. I wish that our country had been willing to work with the Soviets alot more than we did to help ease the transition, and Reagan was in fact much better about that than Poppy was, but Poppy was at the helm when things were most critical, unfortunately.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Gorbachev, because he COULD HAVE

sent in the tanks when the Eastern Europeans got feisty, and he didn't.

[leesa]

40. What on earth did Reagan have to do with ending communism. How stupid!

The USSR collapsed of the weight of the arms and space race, which is also part of the arms race. What happened to them is now happening to us.

[IndianaGreen]

41. The Soviet Union was not a communist state!

Had it been a truly communist state, or at least a socialist state, you wouldn't have the permanent bureaucracy in Moscow running the show.

As Alan Woods pointed out in an essay about Bolivia:

Lenin pointed out many times the four basic rules of the Paris Commune, which served as a basis for the Soviet power in Russia:

1. Free and democratic elections with right of recall of all functionaries.
2. No official to receive a higher wage than a worker.
3. No standing army but the armed people.
4. Gradually all the tasks of running society should be performed by everybody in turn (“when everybody is a bureaucrat in turn, nobody is a bureaucrat”)

http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/bolivia-revolutionary-assemblies090605.htm

[usregimechange]

42. Stalin didn't do it any favors but really the system did not protect

against political corruption and power.

[Alacon]

43. A Series of People

Some mentioned here. The thing that accelerated its demise was the Reagan Administration. Prior to him, most cabinets relied on Sovietologists in relation to the Soviet economy. They were using faulty data to come up with their predictions on how stable the Soviet economy was. To his credit, Reagan listened to some others who stated that their economy was in peril, and that we should simply escalate their need to spend monies with small uprisings they would have to waylay and the Star Wars program.

Gorbachev was also not one of those men who typically came to power in the Soviet Union. He himself credits Reagan for not blinking when he tried to offer him a deal in Iceland. He said when Reagan did not take it, he knew the Soviet Empire was over. However, I think it took a man like Gorbachev to also accelerate its demise.

I also agree with the poster who said George Kennan. It was a philosophy that was rejected by Nixon and Carter, but when brought back again with Reagan, gave the nail in the coffin to Communism.

[Old_Fart]

44. Raygun stepped up and took all of the credit

"Time" brought down communism not Raygun.

[Alacon]

45. Uh No.

The reversal of Detente' by the Reagan administration and the forcing of the Soviets to spend more money than their economy could bear did. Don't take my word for it, ask Gorby.

You do not have to like Reagan to give him his due in this. He did a ton of bad things. But on this, he was right.

[Old_Fart]

47. Raygun was a crazy senile POS

Your right I don't have to like him and I can't think of one thing good that he has done for this country.

[Bridget Burke]

52. Did he really reverse Detente?

Surprisingly, by the end of Reagan's second term, almost all of his initial foreign policy objectives had been substantially altered if not reversed. For example, rather than eliminating détente, Reagan held five summit meetings with Soviet leaders, resulting in the most far-reaching arms reduction agreement of the Cold War era. Most importantly, Reagan changed his view of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev. By 1989, Reagan considered Gorbachev a personal friend, and flatly stated that the Soviet Union had changed.

www.historywise.com/KoTrain/Courses/RR/RR_Foreign_Affairs.htm

This site seems fairly even-handed. The bad points of Reagan's foreign policy are listed. Of course, when asked about the Contra affair, he simply said he couldn't remember.

My vote went to Gorbachev--with a tip of the hat to Lech Walesa & JPII.

[dhinojosa]

53. Great Find you got there. nt

[drdtroit]

58. Uh no

That's just the usual GOP spin, he did more to bring down the middle class of America.

[ieoeja]

67. So Alacon is saying that Communism works?

Those who claim the Soviet Union was destroyed by a competing military buildup are saying the Soviet Union was destroyed by the biggest expansion of government in history. Those of us who claim the Soviet Union was destroyed by competition in markets and ideas are saying that Communism was defeated by Liberalism (including Capitalism, a subset of Liberalism).

The RWers who keep on pushing Reagan as the conqueror of the Soviet Union are ironically making the claim that Communism may work. Their claim has nothing do with an inherent flaw in Communism.

Communists on this site should push the "Reagan as conqueror" meme as it works to their advantage.

See post #66 for more on this.

[Alacon]

74. I am not saying Communism works.

The Soviet Union wasn't even really communist. Kennan set forth the Containment Policy that president's used when the '48 papers were published. The Soviets, on their part, weren't really "expanding" as the west saw it, but providing barrier states as they had been so ravaged by wars in their on homeland. If subsequent battles occurred, it would be in one of these barrier states. We saw it as the march of communism.

When Nixon and Carter were in office, they stopped operating on the policy of containment and moved to detente'. This did somewhat embolden the Soviets to continue their expansion, which also helped with their poor economy. As long as they kept expanding, the empire would survive.

Sovietologists were also working on bad data, that they continued using formulas on in order to "guess" at the state of the Soviet's economy. When Reagan took office, he was offered up a different perception of their economy and realized it was weak and could be used to the USA benefit. He embarked on subsidizing revolts such as Poland and Afghanistan, along with escalating the Arms race. Gorby knew the Soviets could not outlast in a game of chicken as one poster call it. He took one last chance in Iceland, saying Star Wars would have to be off the table in order to achieve an agreement. Reagan knew why he was doing it and said No. If you read on him, he will tell you he knew that this is when he knew it was the end for the soviet form of government, and he credits Reagan.

There is a lot of credit to be had all around. I would just say Reagan had the most credit in that he exploiting the conditions that were there to be exploited for a few presidential terms, but were not.

[GettysbergII]

46. 'Little Joe' Stalin

[Steely_Dan]

49. The Beatles

...think about it.

[izzybeans]

63. Stalin did what was most crucial: He killed Trotsky and solidified

a fascist state capitalist system. Communisim died when it was retarded by a fascist dictator who then purged the orthodox marxists trying to return power to the poeple. DOA as they say.

[MAlibdem]

64. Probably Lenin

Also, shame on him for corrupting a decent idea in a fashion that never allowed it to be tested honestly.

I don't know if Marxist Communism would work, but Lenin-Stalinism certainly did not.

[DrGonzoLives]

65. ROCKY BALBOA!!

But, seriously, who the hell is voting for Reagan?

[ieoeja]

66. Russell Baker

Co-founder of Baker & McKenzie, the world's largest law firm, argued with every American president before Nixon that the West was doing the one thing that would most benefit the Soviet Union. By going along with Churchill's plan to establish the Iron Curtain, the West isolated the Soviet Union from the rest of the world. And communism works best in isolation where it does not have to compete outside the commune.

This is the same thought behind Vice President Nixon's "Kitchen Debate". How would the Soviet Union keep its people happy when those people saw how much more prosperous the capitalist West was? Nixon could be credited as the man who deserves more credit than anyone else for defeating communism. As president he launched Detente which began opening the Soviet Union to the outside.

In the 80s PepsiCo convinced the Soviet Union to let them do business in Moscow. The Reagan administration, rejecting competition for isolation, initiated legal actions to prevent this. PepsiCo defeated the Reagan administration in court, and the opening of a Pizza Hut on Red Square was widely acclaimed as "marking the end of communism" in the Soviet Union.

The law firm that represented PepsiCo in this court case was Baker & McKenzie.

[dajoki]

69. don't know, but...

many, many, many american lives were lost during the cold war and two very hot ones. i believe they deserve more recognition than any one person, especially raygun.

[texastoast]

71. According to the Russians, it was four guys

John
Paul
George
Ringo

Prohibit the music and the message WILL get through.

That is something this nation needs to remember.

[MsTryska]

73. My Votes for Lech....he lit a match to the whole thing.

altho, really and truly it was the workers who made it happen.

[rhett o rick]

75. Osama bin Laden (and the CIA) n/t

[Leafy Geneva]

76. Jimmy Carter .......

He was much more responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union than Ronald Reagan. He insisted on the enforcement of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords inside the Soviet Union and he (plus Zbigniew Brzezinski) devised the strategy of supporting the national opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also revolutionized US foreign policy with his emphasis on human rights.

Ronald Reagan was not responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was however, very responsible for the fact that the collapse was so economically devastating to the average Russian that they have now turned to a new dictator who is currently smothering their infant democracy.

Exactly when he should have been cooperating with Gorbachev he was pushing the insane idea of a winnable nuclear war. He was a fool.

[Bucky]

77. The correct answer is "George Kennan"

The state department bureaucrat and FDR & Truman's main man in Moscow in the mid 40s. He designed the whole "containment" policy--altho his plan was far less militaristic than what Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon implemented. His argument was that the Soviet Union would fall of its own weight once the Stalinist era passed.

Some people argue about whether Reagan or Gorbachev deserves more credit for ending the Cold War. But the real heroes of anti communism were Mickey Mouse, Levi Strauss, and George Kennan.

[slor]

78. I am more concerned with...

who will bring down Fascism in the United States.