socialmedian: Winners and losers of 1989

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Winners and losers of 1989 | Joschka Fischer

Source: The Guardian

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

Twenty years on Europe and the US have squandered their victory, Russia is mired in depression and China has new power

Those who witnessed that night 20 years ago in Berlin, or elsewhere in Germany, will never forget what happened – the night the Berlin wall came down.

History in the making is all too often tragic. Only rarely is it capable of irony. But 9 November 1989 was one of those rare moments when irony reigned, because East Germany's bureaucratic socialism died as it had lived – with a bureaucratic snafu.

The speaker of the Politburo, Günter Schabowski, had simply misunderstood that body's decision and, by releasing to the public incorrect information about the lifting of travel restrictions, triggered the fall of the wall. Groucho Marx could not have bettered Schabowski that night. It was Germany's happiest hour.

Twenty years later, many revolutionary consequences of that night lie behind us. The Soviet Union and its empire quietly disappeared, and with them the cold war international order. Germany was reunited; eastern Europe and the states on the Sovi

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