The Editors are proud to present:
“The Berlin Wall: 20 years after”
A Symposium in The New Criterion, November 2009
with contributions from Henry A. Kissinger, Roger Kimball, Donald Kagan, Jonathan Brent, and Anthony Daniels
In our November 2009 issue, The New Criterion will mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—November 9, 1989—with a set of essays that explore the past and the present of the Cold War and the ultimate triumph of liberty over tyranny. Mr. Brent, Mr. Kagan, and Mr. Kimball will be available for radio and television interviews to comment on the historic occasion. Live links to the complete articles are available below:
A foreword by Henry A. Kissinger
“The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War, of Europe’s division, and of the Communist challenge to human freedom.” Secretary Kissinger discusses the unique situation created by the postwar Allied settlement that made Berlin so pivotal in the wider conflict between the West and the Soviet bloc.
Tyranny set in stone by Roger Kimball
Do we remember the Wall? “The passage of time tends to soften outlines, confuse oppositions, and swallow fundamental distinctions in a patois of complication. . . . Although fragments of the Berlin Wall are distributed like talismans of freedom across the globe, its awful significance seems muted, even lost in the cacophony of historical second-guessing, the distorting glaze of nostalgia.” Roger Kimball recounts the crucial events and political fortitude that led to the fall.
Weak will, high wall by Donald Kagan
“The memory of the great days when the Wall came down should not lead us to forget the grimmer days when it was erected, the policies that brought it about, or the dangerous consequences that followed its construction. . . . There is every reason to believe that Kennedy’s lack of nerve in the Berlin Wall crisis played a critical part in convincing Khrushchev to bring about the most serious risk of nuclear war the world has yet seen.”
Russia before the mirror by Jonathan Brent
“On November 9, 1989, the political fortunes of the Soviet Union were poised on a knife edge; by December 1991, they had fallen off the edge. But history does not have knife edges, and often that which appears to be a turning point can be seen as part of a much longer trajectory from the perspective of fifty or a hundred years later. From the standpoint of Russian history, the demise of the Berlin Wall was just such a phenomenon.”
The costs of abstraction by Anthony Daniels
“One of the most extraordinary episodes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century is the moral and sometimes material support given by much of the western intelligentsia to the Soviet tyranny. Men who found the slightest circumscription of their own freedom intolerable raised hosannas to the most systematic and concerted abrogation of personal liberty yet attempted; many were those who strained at gnats to swallow a camel.”
To schedule a radio or television appearance with Mr. Kimball, Mr. Kagan, or Mr. Brent, contact Callie Siskel at (212)247-6980.