Code Red For The Red Regimes - Essay Example

Red For The Red Regimes Despite its progression throughout most of the 20th Century, communism’s heyday began to come to a close in the 1980s.By 1989, Polish, Hungarian, East German, Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, and Romanian revolutions began to overthrow oppressive and seemingly insurmountable communist regimes through developments that were primarily ignited by massive demonstrations of civil resistance to usurp dictatorial one-party ruling systems, (Roberts 1999) – a trend that would ultimately sweep away communist rule in the Soviet Union, as well.

This fall of the communist bloc in Eastern Europe had a domino effect across the former U.S.S.R., and before 1991 came to a close, Russia and 14 other nations were spawned, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan – Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also evolved from the contagious dissolution of communism by 1992.

But what triggered this massive collapse, and how did the authoritarian regimes get toppled? After Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and the United State’s Ronald Reagan took power in 1979 and 1981, respectively, they effectively called for and predicted the demise of the iron grip of communism, virtually declaring war on the Soviet influence throughout Europe and Asia, (Gaddis 2005). Reagan’s increased military pressure on the Soviets in the Cold War and the emergence of a more western-embracing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev − coupled with the U.S.S.R.’s widespread economic demise (in great need of western technology) − ushered in the avalanche that ultimately dissolved the grip of communism throughout the region.

Furthermore, the ‘80s “Solidarity” movement challenged the communist grip in Poland and the Soviet Union, eventually leading to the Warsaw Pact, making Poland, followed by Hungary, the first nation to strip away from Soviet control. East Germany was soon caught in the wake, as Ronald Reagan’s famous June 17, 1987, speech at the Berlin Wall, when he exclaimed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" − symbolizing the end of the age of communist oppression − became a reality just a couple years later.

The support beams undergirding the Red – or “evil empire,” as Reagan called it – were now pulled, and what “The Gipper” predicted would become “the ash heap of history” came crashing down in the following years, as communism lost its grip to more liberated western rule from East Germany to modern-day Russia’s Siberia.ReferencesGaddis, J. L. (2005). The Cold War: a new history. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Roberts, A. (1999). Civil resistance in the East European and Soviet revolutions.

East Boston, MA: Albert Einstein Institution.