Ten years ago, on November 9, 2009, Ukraine’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations hosted a conference at the Ukrainian Institute of America to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This year marks that historic event’s 30th anniversary.
Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., served as emcee, while Prof. emeritus Taras Hunczak moderated the panel discussion. Mr. Sergeyev compared the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Iron Curtain, as he recalled the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and Ukraine’s pro-democratic course of development since 1991.
Prof. Alexander Motyl focused on the Soviet system from the perspective of a colonial empire, which lasted only 70 years, in comparison with other empires that had lasted centuries. The Soviet collapse and its brief existence, he said, was attributed to its corrupt totalitarian leadership. Other contributing factors were flaws in the Soviet model that made it difficult to maintain control amid the shift in population centers from the rural villages to an urbanizing society.