A Quote by Alistair Horne
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.
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Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.
Liberals in the US don't have great passions about Margaret Thatcher. Conservatives do. For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the US, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here. When I moved to Britain, the utilities were state-run. By the time I left, most of that was privatized. Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.
Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, dramatically cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did more to liberate people by defeating the Soviet Union and freeing eastern Europe than the Obamas, the Clintons, and Kerrys of this world ever have. They were all on the wrong side of that debate.
National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.
An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Mikhail Gorbachev and says, In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, 'I don't like the way you are running the country.' Gorbachev replied, You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country.'
It was designed to have an impact on the stalemate over Mutually Assured Destruction with the Soviet Union. Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.
There used to be the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There used to be Soviet troops in the GDR. And we must honestly admit that they were occupation troops, which remained in Germany after WWII under the guise of allied troops. Now these occupation troops are gone, the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the Warsaw Pact is no more. There is no Soviet threat, but NATO and U.S. troops are still in Europe. What for?
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought the last Soviet generation was going to be the great hope for democracy. When that failed, their hopes shifted to the first post-Soviet generation, and then the second one.
The Democrat Party of the 1980s chose the Soviet Union over Ronald Reagan, in Nicaragua, and in Moscow as well. Now, all of a sudden, they don't like Russia and they don't like the Soviet Union?
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.
Millions of Millennials and Gen Zers were never exposed to the threats of the Soviet Union; they did not live through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev; they do not remember the Mariel boatlift or the SALT treaties or the Cuban missile crisis.
The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood.
On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.
This much I would say: Socialism has failed all over the world. In the eighties, I would hear every day that there is no inflation in the Soviet Union, there is no poverty in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. And now we find that, due to Socialism, there is no Soviet Union!
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