The Berlin Wall was breached on November 9, 1989. It was built in 1961 to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin. This became a major symbol of communist tyranny. Communism had originally been greeted by many as a promise of liberation. Communist regimes had transformed their societies and provided a major political/ideological threat to the Western world. I went to Berlin in 2006 so I was able to actually see where the wall was. So reading about it is interesting to me because I have witnessed the location.
The cold war started in 1946 and ended in 1991. There was a scramble for influence in the third world between the United States and the USSR. There was a massive nuclear arms race and then it collapsed. Communism had its roots in nineteenth-century socialism, inspired by Karl Marx. Most European socialists came to believe that they could achieve their goals through the democratic process. Those who defined themselves as “communists” in the twentieth century advocated revolution. “Communism” in Marxist theory is the final stage of historical development, with full development of social equality and collective living. At communism’s height in the 1970s, almost one-third of the world’s population was governed by communist regimes. The most important communist societies by far were the USSR and China. I didn't find this surprising because the USSR and China had a lot of power and control. Communism also came to Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Afghanistan. None of these countries had the industrial capitalism that Marx thought necessary for a socialist revolution. Therefore, communist parties took root in many other areas.
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