Berlin 2059-2

That's one of those questions I think is still difficult to answer for those of us who remember the era, as we all still carry our own biases with us when we think of Reagan. I tend to think Reagan gets a lot more credit for the fall of the Iron Curtain than he deserves, though I do think his "Evil Empire" cajoling did have a strong effect on the downward trend of the economies connect to the Soviet Union. But I think the military adventures in Afghanistan played an almost equally significant role, and that more significant than both were the deaths of the last of those idealists who remembered the October Revolution. I think it's possible that Reagan's words might have served as encouragement for the young folk who went to the Wall that night two years later, but I don't know that for a fact, and they would have gone to the Wall anyway.