The Wall - Spare A Thought For Mikhail

[inskauldrak]

I remember when the Berlin Wall came down, just a week before my tenth birthday. It’s not just that I grew up in a house where it was normal to the family to watch the news in the evening. I come from a politically active family left-wing family so even by that age I was aware that there was a thing called the Cold War; that neither side in it

Comments

[johnnymonolith]

Hah, you're forgetting Spitting Image. Politicisation at the age of five.

[inskauldrak]

Good point, well made : )

Had to introduce a few folk to NMANSA the other week and thinking back, we probably were only about five when that came out!

My memory

[applez]

I left 3 years of depressing life behind the Iron Curtain just months before Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution." I was a little older than you, but like you I was completely surprised by the turn of events.

I just couldn't believe it was happening as it was happening. For me, that musty accretion of hardline positions was a given, an absolute monolith of certainty. The bizarre disagreement that was the Cold War my father inherited was one I would gain, and would bequeath to my grandchildren.

Then, after it started to dawn on me that this was real, that it wasn't a story propagated by wishful fantasists, I grew worried, really worried. I fully expected the Soviets to roll in and start shooting people in the streets. It's entirely what the Czechs expected, especially those with memories of '68. After all, the Communists left bullet holes in street corners as not-so-subtle reminders of what happens to dissidents. I never thought the obvious rot from within could have become so significant that everyday people would find the courage

[applez]

I'm glad that's a hypothetical we never had to find out.

With NATO already poised at the border schooled in 'accidentally, on purpose' war games ... I'd really not like to think how dangerous things might have become with a Western threat response.