Roundup: Talking About History

WSJ Editorial: From Truman to Reagan, the benefits of moral clarity

In the debate over who deserves credit for causing the Berlin Wall to collapse on the night of November 9, 1989, many names come to mind, both great and small. There was Günter Schabowski, the muddled East German politburo spokesman, who in a live press conference that evening accidentally announced that the country's travel restrictions were to be lifted "immediately." There was Mikhail Gorbachev, who made it clear that the Soviet Union would not violently suppress people

Frank Gannon : Nixon's November 3 speech

[Frank Gannon won a White House Fellowship and served in the Nixon White House 1971-4. He accompanied RN to San Clemente aboard Air Force One on August 9th and organized the researching and writing of the President’s memoirs, RN.] Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon wrote and delivered a speech that both changed the course of American foreign policy and altered the course of American politics. As he later wrote, “Very few speeches actually influence the course of history. The Nov

Timothy Garton Ash: 1989 changed the world. But where now for Europe?

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist] Nineteen eighty-nine was the biggest year in world history since 1945. In international politics, 1989 changed everything. It led to the end of communism in Europe, of the Soviet Union, the cold war and the short 20th century. It opened the door to German unification, a historically unprecedented European Union stretching from Lisbon to Tallinn, the enlargement of Nato, two decades of American supremacy, gl

James A. Baker III: Why the Wall Fell

[Baker was the 61st U.S. secretary of state.] The Berlin wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, marking the end of one era and the beginning of another. I'll never forget East and West Germans striking their blows for freedom, taking sledgehammers to the barrier that divided them for almost three decades. The 20th anniversary of this moment provides an opportunity to reflect on an extraordinary event—and to draw lessons that might guide us today. It may seem now like the fall of th

Peter Beaumont: Mikhail Gorbachev – the forgotten hero of history

[Peter Beaumont is foreign affairs editor at the Observer.] At the Brandenburg Gate tomorrow evening in Berlin, one of the defining figures of the last century's history will sit down to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in which he played a key role. In the audience will be Lech Walesa and Hillary Clinton, invited to listen to Daniel Barenboim conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin.But the star guest will be Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet premier under w

Yuki Tanaka and Richard Falk: The Atomic Bombing, The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the Shimoda Case: Lessons for Anti-Nuclear Legal Movements

Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, and author a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is the author most recently of Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History. He wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.   Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, is th

Masha Gessen: Russia's Conquering Zeros

[Masha Gessen's latest book is "Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century," a story of Grigory Perelman and the Poincaré Conjecture. She lives in Moscow and is the author of three previous books.] It may be no accident that, while some of the best American mathematical minds worked to solve one of the century's hardest problems—the Poincaré Conjecture—it was a Russian mathematician working in Russia who, early in this decade, finally triumphe

Allen Barra: The First Down, Ever

[Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Journal.] On a bright Nov. 6 morning 140 years ago, a "jerky little train," as someone later described it, left Princeton, N.J., at 9 bound for New Brunswick, about 20 miles to the north. The "foot ball" players of the College of New Jersey or Nassau Hall—some just called it Princeton, but that official designation was 27 years away—stepped off the train and greeted their Rutgers hosts. After a midday stroll aro

Steve Klingaman: Hated Roosevelt, Hate Obama: Paleoconservative Persuasions

[Steve Klingaman is a nonprofit development consultant and nonfiction writer living in Minneapolis. His music reviews can be found at minor7th.com] In the crusade against Obama administration efforts on behalf of economic recovery and health care reform, we encounter lies, damn lies, and Republican talking points. Touchstones like: “government takeover,” “government-run,” “profligate spending,” “usurpation of power”—where did they all come from? Well, in a word, they all came f

MRC Editorial Report: Whitewashing the Communist Record on Human Rights

In her 2003 book Useful Idiots, conservative writer Mona Charen described the communist state as a “comprehensive tyranny. The Soviet Union was not so much a state as a vast criminal conspiracy. Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky, Natan Sharansky, and others are the great chroniclers of the grotesque inhumanity of the Gulag and Communist rule....[The record shows] mass murders, deportations, political persecutions, abuse of psychiatry, and other depredations committed by the Communists.”

Libby Nelson: A Campus Activist-Turned-Administrator Remembers 1969

[Libby Nelson is a 2009 graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, currently the government and politics reporting intern for The Chronicle of Higher Education.]During homecoming this year, the University of Pittsburgh marked the 40th anniversary of a campus protest in 1969, when black student activists occupied the computer center and called on the university to increase the enrollment and hiring of African-Americans, provide support for black student

Max Holland: Richard Nixon's Own Deep Throat

[Mr. Holland, author of The Kennedy Assassination Tapes (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), is completing a history of the Warren Commission for Knopf.] When W. Mark Felt unmasked himself as Deep Throat, in May 2005, the ballyhoo was dampened by a distinct feeling of anticlimax. As the FBI's number two man in 1972, Felt was the first real suspect: speculations that he had been Washington Post reporter Bob Woo

Avi Shlaim: Israel's "new history" and the Palestinians

[Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Among his books are The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (WW Norton, 1999) and (as co-editor) The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His most recent book is Lion of Jordan: the Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (Penguin, 2007).] 1948 was a year of triumph and tragedy - triumph for the Jews and tragedy for the Arabs of Palestine. Israelis ref

Brahma Chellaney: Europe Got Freedom, Asia Got Rich

[Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of “Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.”] NEW DELHI — On its 20th anniversary, the fall of the Berlin Wall stands out as the most momentous event in post-World War II history. The end of the Cold War transformed geopolitics, thereby changing the world. But no continent benefited more than Asia, as has been epitomized by its dramatic economic rise, the s

William McGurn: Harvard's Medals of Honor

[William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.] Most Americans would not be surprised to learn that Harvard is our nation's oldest institution of higher learning, that it boasts the largest endowment, and that it has produced more U.S. presidents than any other university. Most Americans, however, might be hard-pressed to guess another Harvard di

Roger Cohen: The Hinge of History

[Roger Cohen is a columnist of The New York Times.] Ever since June 15 in Tehran I’ve been asking the most alluring and treacherous of historical questions: “What if?” What if the vast protesting crowd of perhaps three million people had turned from Azadi (Freedom) Square toward the presidential complex? What if Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, had stood before the throng and said, “Here I stand with you and here I will fall?” What, in short, if Azadi had be

Masha Lipman: Russia's search for a post-Stalin identity

[Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal, writes a monthly column for The Post.] On Friday, as Russia recognized its annual commemoration of political prisoners, President Dmitry Medvedev published a videoblog in which he condemned Joseph Stalin's crimes and called on the nation not to forget about past political repression or its victims. Medvedev called Stalin's repression "one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history" and expressed

Michael Meyer: The Gipper or the Guard?

[Michael Meyer, communications director for the U.N. secretary general, is the author of “The Year that Changed the World.”] Ask an average American how the Cold War ended and often as not he or she has a ready answer. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” said Ronald Reagan. And lo, as if word were deed, it was so. Everyone remembers that immortal line. A generation of speechwriters wish they had crafted it. A generation of statesmen wish they had uttered it. And for a

Humberto Fontova: When They Killed Che

[Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara.] Forty two years ago this week, Ernesto “Che” Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall, and shot. Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. If the saying “what goes around comes around” ever fit, it’s here. Consider the kind of man Che was. “When you saw the beaming look on Che’s face as the vict

Alistair Horne: Shades of Abu Ghraib and the French-Algerian War

[Alistair Horne’s Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year is published by Simon & Schuster. His A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–62, was reissued by New York Review of Books Classics in 2006, with a new preface updating it to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.] The grisly subject of torture is back with us again, with fresh allegations of CIA misconduct. It is a subject which first came to occupy my thoughts when I was writing a book on the Algerian War, A Savage War of Peace, back in