The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall The Fall of the Berlin Wall The history books, the political polemics, and economic and the geopolitical analyses of the fall of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union fill shelves with cruel crimes committed for the party and proletariat under the dreaded regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. The end of the empire, however, was humiliatingly public, glowing on millions of television screens as sledgehammers tore chunks out of the Berlin Wall. The end of the end began in 1985 with the ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev and a new generation of Soviet leaders born after Stalin and his paranoid terrors had died. Ironically, the penultimate cause of the collapse was the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan, where it fought a hopeless war for nearly a decade, which that almost crushed its economy to a halt and, like the Vietnam war, called into question national leadership and purpose. The presidency passed from a rather incompetent Jimmy Carter to Ronald Regan, who had no appetite for further appeasement with the Kremlin. Historian Paul Johnson argues that the tremendous losses in Afghanistan left the Soviet Union incapable of facing President Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative, and the new leadership in Moscow realized that their imperial ventures had caused the Soviet economy to rust (History of the American People 928-29). â€Å"For our internal progress, Gorbachev said in 1987, we need normal international relations. The Soviets had to catch up to the rising prosperity and technological advances of Europe and North America. The Soviet Union had to concentrate on domestic development and promote international peace whenever possible. However, it could only accomplish such a goal by giving up any global ambitions. Therefore, as Paul Johnson and other historians point out, Gorbachev abandoned the traditional Soviet anti-western orientation. He wanted to integrate the Soviet Union into the main currents of modern life and that meant democracy, free enterprise and a market economy. He gave the Soviet Union and the World two slogans:perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Perestroika held out the promise of reorganizing the state and society. For example, individual initiative would be revived and there would be emphasis on technology and a higher standard of living. Glasnost was the corrective held up to Stalinist excesses. Openness would permit the open discussion of the nations problems and it would rid public thinking of propaganda and lies. Soviet pseudo-history, pilloried in George Orwells dystopian novel, 1984, tapered off. New histories published archival material on the Stalinist purges and the Great Terror. In Gorbachevs way of thinking, the Russian Communist Party was to serve as the vanguard of perestroika and stimulate civic activity and responsibility. In 1990, the Supreme Soviet elected Gorbachev as the countrys president for a term of five years. At the time, Gorbachev was still the leader of the increasingly unpopular Communist Party. Economic changes accompanied these political reforms. Industrial enterprise was encouraged which in turn would foster private initiative and loosed the stranglehold of decades of central planning. By 1990, Gorbachev was cautiously promoting a market economy including the individuals right to possess private property. Religious freedoms were restored and in 1988, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated its 1000th anniversary. Meanwhile, contacts with the outside world, especially the west, began to intensify. However, all this seemingly good stuff especially from the western perspective had its downside as well. For instance, glasnost released decad es of bitterness which had accumulated over the fifty years of Stalinist repression and terror. Perestroika and glasnost also revealed the widespread ecological damage the Soviets had caused on the environment. Gorbachevs reforms also polarized opinion in ways that even Gorbachev and his stalwart supporters could never have foreseen. In an effort to preserve unity by compromise, Gorbachev entered a bitter quarrel with his more radical rival, Boris Yeltsin. The weakening of traditional Soviet authority and the release of history brought about by the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, in the end, brought disunity. Meanwhile, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians all demanded independence which in turn set off similar demands among Ukrainians, Georgians, Byelorussians, Armenians and the various peoples of central Asia. By the late 1980s, inter-ethnic violence had escalated. And in 1990, the Russian Republic, the largest republic of the Soviet Union, declared its limited independence under Yeltsin, and an Anti-Reform Russian Communist Party broke off from the reformist party faction led by Gorbachev. Meanwhile, the transition to a market economy was too complex for ready and easy solutions. The production and distribution of consumer goods collapsed. Local governments hoarded essential commodities and the black market flourished as did the Russian Mafia. As journalist David Remnick has written: the Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic Mafia the world has ever known. It guarded its monopoly on power with a sham consensus and constitution and backed it up with the force of the KGB and the Interior Ministry police. (Kreis, History Guide) In October 1990, Gorbachev remarked, unfortunately, our society is not ready for the procedures of a law-based state. Oppressed generations lose high expectations and the Communist elite, hypothetically similar to the Guardians in Platos utopia had lost perspective. Grenville twists an old maxim that explains the myopia: â€Å"Absolute power not only corrupts, it blinds† (894). Gorbachevs own hammer blow for Eastern Europe, Harold Evans observes, was â€Å"to renounce Brezhnevs imperial doctrine by which the Soviet Union had claimed the right to intervene in defense of its ideology in any Communist country† (American Century 655). Outside the Soviet Union, perestroika and glasnost spread among people who were resentful of Soviet domination and worried about economic collapse. In 1989 and 1990, these people showed their dislike of communist leadership and demanded democratic reforms. Poland took the lead. Here the population was traditionally anti-Russian. The Poles had long protested their countrys economic decline. Soviet assurance to assist and massive loans from western Europe brought no relief. The slightest relaxation of Soviet control only encouraged Polish nationalism, which had always been expressed with the support of the Roman Catholic Church. With the selection of Pope John Paul II in 1978, Polish nationalism surged ahead. In 1980, workers under the leadership of a electrician, Lech Walesa, succeeded in forming an independent labor union called Solidarity. Pressured by a series of strikes, the Polish government recognized Solidarity, despite threats of Soviet intervention. J.A.S. Grenville hits the truth squarely: â€Å"Masses lost their fear of the state† (894) Significantly, the Christian Cross opposed the Soviet hammer and sickle. As nearly all observers assumed, Walesa enjoyed the hefty support of the Roman Catholic Church and from Polish Catholics in the United States that warrants amplification. Scholars and historians will debate for years to come the precise causes and historical forces that produced the sudden collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s. One matter not in dispute, however, will be the earth-shattering role played in the process by Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope. Jack Kemp stresses the spiritual strength and personal prestige the Pope put behind the Solidarity, or freedom movement. From the day of Cardinal Karol Wojtylas election to the papacy in October 1978, Kemp observes, the Pope â€Å"began to shake the very foundations of communism† (Human Events). With a Polish Pope in Rome, the Polish church increased its resistance against communism. Pope John Paul II encouraged his fellow countryman, Lech Walesa, as Kemp reports, and Walesa eventually became president of Poland post-communism (Human Events). After the crumbing of totalitarian communism, Pope John Paul II released a papal encyclical titled Centesimus Annus (1991), which explained within a Christian framework why communism had failed and from that failure drew lessons about social, political and economic organization. The papal encyclical urged people not to establish an ideological heaven on Earth but to maintain human dignity and social conditions conducive to each individuals opportunity to achieve salvation of his soul. In short, the Pontiff placed individual freedom deeply within the core of Christian theology. In January 1989, Solidarity was legalized and the Communist Party retired. In May 1989, Hungary abolished the communist bureaucracy. By years end there were more than fifty political parties. In East Germany, the upheaval in 1989 was even more momentous. East Germany had always been indispensable to Soviet Russia. Its industry was nationalized, its agriculture collectivized and its people regimented by the Communist Party. In June 1953, the workers of East Berlin staged an uprising. What followed as a steady exodus of skilled workers into West Germany. Three million people escaped before the East German government erected the infamous Berlin Wall in August 1961. The East Germans braved their lives to escape: they â€Å"voted with their feet.† Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary soon followed suit and East and West Germany united in 1990. In the long and bitter Cold War, capitalism and freedom triumphed over communism and tyranny. Gorbachev and Yeltsin came along at the right time and faced the hidden facts of a long ruined system. American military and economic power made the Cold War too costly for the Soviet Union to press without smashing up. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Walesa, and the Pope helped cause the fall of communism, but none compared with the late President Ronald Regan and his â€Å"innocent audacity† (Evans 656) who called the Soviet Union an empire of Evil and threatened to bankrupt it with a â€Å"star wars† defense. The national and international causes of the fall of communism were rooted in economic, military, political, trade balances, and imperial illusions, but few can deny that the United States, for decade after decade, carried the brunt of containing a predatory system. Future historians may revive tentative conclusions, but one that seems to do justice to the fall comes from Harold Evans at the end of his The American Century: History will go on unraveling the knot of circumstance, stratagem, chance, and personality. In the end, it is unlikely that no single brow will be able to claim the wreath of victory over a dangerous and depressing totalitarianism. But there can be no doubt that it was the American example, in its spiritual as well as its material beneficence, that in the long dark years was the torch of freedom all the world could see. (656) Works Cited Boyer, Paul S., ed. The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Evans, Harold. The American Century. New York: Knopf, 1998. â€Å"Fall of Communism.† U.S Department of State. December 8, 2005. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dr/17672.htm Grenville, J.A. S. A History of the World in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994. Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: Harper, 1997. Kemp, Jack. â€Å"How the Pope Helped Bring about the Fall of Communism.† Human Events. Posted Apr 5, 2005. http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7064 Kreis, Steven. The History Guide. 1989: â€Å"The Walls Came Tumbling Down.† http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture16.html Accessed Dec. 8, 2005.

Financial Planning Essay

1.How can using personal financial planning tools help you improve your financial situation? Describe changes you can make in at least three areas. Personal financial planning helps you create a stable future and improve helps create a stable future and improve your financial status by creating a plan that lets you save and invest your money so that it can start working for you. A comprehensive financial plan can enhance the quality of your life and increase satisfaction by reducing uncertainly about your future needs and resources. The advantages of personal financial planning can 1. Increase effectiveness in obtaining, using, and protecting your financial resources throughout your lifetime. Secondly, increase control of your financial affairs by avoiding excessive debt, bankruptcy and dependence on others for economic security. Lastly, improve personal relationships resulting from well planes and effectively communicated financial decisions. A sense of freedom from financial worrie s obtained by looking to the future, anticipating expenses, and achieving your personal economic goals. 2.Explain the life cycle of financial plans and their role in achieving your financial goals. Financial and personal satisfaction is the result of an organized process that is commonly referred to as personal money management or personal financial planning. Personal financial planning is the process of managing your money to achieve personal satisfaction. Every person, family or household has a unique financial position, and any financial activity therefore must also be carefully planned to meet specific needs and goals. To achieve these and other goals, people need to identify and set priorities. 3.Discuss the reasons for the changes in your goals and how you’ll need to adapt your financial plans as a result. For many families, one of the biggest sources of disagreements and aggravation is the subject of family financial planning. Before I became a mom I planned on just having fun, shopping all the time and taking road trips but the reason for the changes in my goal is because I have a daughter now I have to think about her and not just myself. Having control of my finances means a lot more than just getting control of money. It means getting a handle on my habits both thinking and spending as well as my short and long term goals. I need to  adapt my financial plans by building new habits, reducing stress, controlling my spending and aligning priorities. 4.How should you use this information to make personal financial and career planning decision? After reading the current and projected trends with regard to the GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation. I plan to finance wisely and not spend money all crazy without a care in the world. I have a family now and I don’t want my daughter to struggle like I have too. As for my career I plan to have short and long term goals. I don’t expect to stay in one field, I always had the mindset to where I want to expand and explore different career path. I know things happen and the economy can be pretty messed up and I don’t want to end up jobless and have to stress about finding a new job so I plan to go beyond the dream I am chasing. However, just in case I was to end jobless smartly financial planning is a good thing to do because I can have money already in the bank and be able to pay my bills without going into debt. No one likes to struggle because all it does is cause s tress and problems, so I plan to stay on the right track and that is continuing going to school and providing a stable life for my family.

Advantages and disadvantages of the literal rule Essay

The advantages of the literal rule is that it respects the sovereignty of parliament and prevents unelected judges from making law. Viscount Simmonds argued that it was not open to judges to fill in gaps, as Lord Denning wanted, or otherwise alter statutes. If a gap was enclosed then ‘theremedy lies in an Amending Act’ The literal rule also encourages certainty and because there is less room for interpretation, there is likely to be less litigiation. People know where they stand because the wording will not change. This also makes the law predictable. And lawyers are able to advise their clients on the likely outcome. Another advantage is that its leads to quicker decisions because the answer/outcome can be found just by using a dictionary this means it takes less time to find out the outcome of a case. A disadvantage of the literal rul would be it can lead to absurd decisions that clearly was not wanted by parliament when the Act was made an example would be Berriman v London railway co – when the wife of a railway maintence worker couldn’t claim for compensation for his death, who died because he didn’t have a lookout when he should have, this was because her husband was only maintaining and not ‘replacing’ or ‘relaying’ the tracks. Parliament would have intend for the wife to claim. But due to the literal rule she could not. Its not always possible to word or pharse an Act to cover every situations e.g. its against the law to steal but the literal rule means it didn’t cover stealing your own property. Therefore some circumstances that parilment intended wont be covered. Another disadvantage would be that the literal rule assumes that the parilmenty draftsmen would always do their jobs perfectly every single time, ovbiously this isnt possible as in human nature mistakes are made. For example the law commission in the 1969 report said â€Å"you cannot put emphasis on the literal meaning of words, is to assume an unattainable perfection in draftsmanship†

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