Ten years ago, on November 9, 2009, Ukraine’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations hosted a conference at the Ukrainian Institute of America to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This year marks that historic event’s 30th anniversary.
Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., served as emcee, while Prof. emeritus Taras Hunczak moderated the panel discussion. Mr. Sergeyev compared the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Iron Curtain, as he recalled the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and Ukraine’s pro-democratic course of development since 1991.
Prof. Alexander Motyl focused on the Soviet system from the perspective of a colonial empire, which lasted only 70 years, in comparison with other empires that had lasted centuries. The Soviet collapse and its brief existence, he said, was attributed to its corrupt totalitarian leadership. Other contributing factors were flaws in the Soviet model that made it difficult to maintain control amid the shift in population centers from the rural villages to an urbanizing society.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Prof. Motyl underscored, was responsible for “letting the genie out of the bottle” with his counter-totalitarian policies of glasnost and perestroika (perebudova in Ukrainian). Vladimir Putin, Prof. Motyl added, continues an attempt at the near-impossible feat of reversing the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Other speakers – U.N. Ambassador Martin Palous of the Czech Republic; Prof. Thaddeus Gromada, professor emeritus of New Jersey City University; Ayla Bakkalli, president of the American Association of Crimean Turks/Tatars and a Crimean Tatar representative to the U.N.; U.N. Ambassador Adrian Neritani of Albania; U.N. Ambassador Andrzej Towpik of Poland; and U.N. Ambassador Gabor Brodi of Hungary – echoed Dr. Motyl’s assessments. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, many of the formerly Communist Central European countries began the “return to Europe,” with complicated multi-vector foreign policies, spurring more uncertainty than hope in those first days in 1989.
Dr. Gromada underscored the significance of the revolutions of 1989, in Poland and other countries, and pointed out that the fall of the Berlin Wall was an international event that solidified Europe’s commitment to never allow the return of “Captive Nations.”
Many of the countries represented at the commemorative event noted that NATO integration came for them before European Union integration, stressing the importance of collective security as a strong deterrent against the threat of a resurgent Russia.
Source: “Ukraine’s Mission to U.N. hosts conference on 20th anniversary of Berlin Wall’s fall,” by Matthew Dubas, The Ukrainian Weekly, November 29, 2009.