It's too Soon to Say That Reagan Brought Down the Soviet Union

Bill O'Brien, an attorney in Oklahoma City, in the McAlester News-Capital (July 13, 2004): When the Chinese Premier Chou en Lai was asked what were the long term effects of the French Revolution of 1789, he replied that"it is to soon to tell." A similar caution may be in order when one considers efforts to determine what was responsible for the American victory in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a conflict that ended less than two decades ago.

Those commentators who have recently proclaimed that Ronald Reagan's presidency was what sent communism into the dustbin of history seem to be over estimating the role that individuals play in history, and are also ignoring the role played by all American presidents from Harry Truman on who successfully contained the expansionist policies of the Soviet government.

One of the more intriguing theories has been put forth by students who assert that the Soviet system's fall was assured when the Czechoslovakian experiment with a more humane and tolerant form of Marxism was crushed by a Soviet military invasion.

In the Spring of 1968 the Government of Alexander Dubcek proclaimed that it wished to have what it described as"Socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia, and began to tolerate greater freedom of expression and even limited forms of political dissent. While Czech society reveled in its new found freedom and Dubcek became immensely popular, the other communist governments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union became alarmed at the prospect of their citizenry demanding similar rights Dubcek, who was a dedicated communist, asserted that his reforms would serve to strengthen the communist system by making it more open, and believed that he could persuade the Soviet leadership to tolerate his policies as a result. But he was mistaken, and the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and installed a hard lime communist government that was more to its liking.

If Dubcek's experiment had been permitted to continue it is possible that Czechoslovakia would have evolved, some historians believe, into a pluralist communist state that could have served as a model for the Soviet Union's own evolution towards political pluralism. When Mr. Gorbachev sought to reform Soviet society in a manner that was consistent with what Dubcek had attempted in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet system could not be saved by piece meal reforms at that time, and soon began to implode.

And it may be that the reasons for America's victory over the Soviet Union was rooted in the natures of their respective societies. Soviet society penalized individual initiative and restricted its citizens freedom in a variety of ways, while America was on the whole a tolerant society that permitted individual expression....