There's one myth I've gotten sick of hearing this week.
Ronald Reagan did not bring down the Soviet empire.
He helped. His rhetoric obviously inspired a lot of people on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But so did his predecessors. So did Western European leaders. Maybe not to the same degree, but Reagan didn't do anything by himself.
But most of all, saying Reagan won the Cold War is ultimately a gross insult to the Eastern European peoples. THEY were the ones who really brought down the Soviet empire.
Reagan didn't personally stare down any tanks. Reagan wasn't thrown in jail. Reagan wasn't tortured by any regime. Reagan wasn't harassed by the secret police.
The people of Eastern Europe brought down the Soviet empire. At most, the Gipper gave them moral support.
3 comments:
This isn't the whole story: Reagan's contribution was more than just moral support, though that certainly helped. Dissidents by themselves cannot bring down regimes, what did for the Soviet union in the end was the inherent failure of communist central planning. The arrival of the crunch point for this was hastened by a ruinously expensive arms race against Reagan's USA.
Maybe Frank, but the point remains that Reagan didn't do anything by himself, as his canonizers have been implying.
Oh, avoid newstands for the next couple of days, or at least avoid The Economist. The cover photo is of the Gipper with the headline "The Man Who Beat Communism." I'm just giving you fair warning so that you don't go postal inside a 7-11 or anything.
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