Who did more to tear down the Berlin Wall?

[Paragon]

Poll question: Who did more to tear down the Berlin Wall?

[Cascadian]

1. Gorbachev

When Gorbachev visited East Germany in 1989, He basically told the East German leadership that they are going to have to change like the Soviet Union was changing with "Perestroika". The East German leader Honeceker seemed to be total denial that the GDR had no problems and thopught did not need any reforms. In other words whatever was about to happen in East Germany, the communist government there was on it's own. Just after Gorbachev's visit, the Berlin wall fell. It was Gorbachev's policies that helped usher in the fall of communism in Europe.

John

[Paragon]

2. Yeah, but did he SING at the Wall's tearing-down?

I think not.

Hasselhoff it is.

[genius]

12. Absolutely

[Deja Q]

3. Great pic of Hasselhoff...

though the placement if the yellow binoculars is a bit suspect... :D

Reagan didn't do jack splat about anything unless it helped his corporate friends.

[AntiCoup2K4]

4. Did Hasselhoff croak too?

You know these celebs always drop three at a time.....

[izzie]

5. A 40 year cold war and the Russians

plus good old American tax money pushing it all.

[markdd]

6. Wasn't it 40 years of..

pumping American culture (including Baywatch) over the iron curtain that convinced all of them (Eastern Europe) that their leaders were lying?:party:

[Zinfandel]

7. Asshole Reagan did no more than any other president starting

back with Truman, then Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan & Pappy Bush, to bring down the Berlin Wall and force change in the USSR.

We out spent them, their economy couldn't afford to keep up.

That is fact. It wasn't just the asshole Reagan.

Each president mentioned above, increased the US military defense budgets and bought new and more technologically advanced weapons systems.

Carter for instance, increased the US military budget 5%, each of his four years in office(and just like now, the republicans tried to say he was weak on defense, same old shit and that's the tactics and lies Reagan used to win against Cater.

Actually the offical fall of the USSR occurred during Pappy Bush's administration...Asshole Reagan did nothing but fuck over the poor and middle-class and catered to the rich during his time in office...The true beginning of fascism in this country and the same racist, greedy pigs are in office and part of this lying corrupt administration today!

So the lying consevatives had nothing to show for eight years of Reagan's pigs getting rich and fucking over everyone else and they try and pin the tag that "Reagan all by himself brought down the Soviet Union...WHAT LYING COMPLETE BULLSHIT!!!!

[Nevernose]

9. I beg to differ

The conventional wisdom is that "we outspent them." Conventional wisdom is wrong. Russian documents are pretty clear that they stopped trying to outspend us, militarily, by the early 70's.

Where you're right is that it took all of those presidents enforcing a trade embargo (they got food only) to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their Stalinist economic model was poor. When their poor economic model was combined with a lack of trade with the outside world, collapse was inevitable. Reagan was just the second-to-last one in a long line of presidents.

Beatles music and blue jeans probably did as much as any of those presidents did alone, though.

We didn't do as much to cause the Russin economic collapse though as the Russians did.

[Zinfandel]

10. As I said, we out spent them...

"they stopped trying to outspend us, militarily, by the early 70's."

That is fact!!!

And kept on out spending them, and when the USSR went down...Clinton was the first president to significantly cut defense spending...Freaked out the weapons makers, the Pentagon, right-wing fascist, etc...

Had to come up with a new enemy...and quick, to get those bucks back and flowing again...

TERRORISM!!!!

"FOREVER!!!"

[LTR]

8. The Communist Block fell apart by itself

Under the weight of it's own bureacracy. Gorbachev helped it along, though.

Reagan and Bush I had little to do with it.

I voted Hasselhoff.

[Leprechan29]

11. Time tore down the wall

The Soviet Union had fallen in economic despair since the death of Stalin, and was not going to recover - Reagan just hurried along the fall if anything

[drumwolf]

13. where's the entry for "other"?

I would say a combination of "Gorbachev" and "the East German people."

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. An impossible-to-hold-together miserable political system

brought the wall down.

And, I like to think, there was a certain amount of the American freedom meme that wormed its way through the soviet bloc that stirred some poeple into action as well.

But mostly, a totally unviable political and economic system, presided over by an abusive, uncaring, shit-for-value bunch of evil assholes.

It was inevitable that it would fall.

[blurp]

15. Gorbachev himself tells us why it happened

Mikhail Gorbachev:

It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/pdf/int_mikhailgorbachev.pdf

[salin]

16. This guy?