If you want to see a fascinating map sequence describing the fall of communism in Europe, go here for the BBC article!
Thank the Lord first but I also want to recognize several heroes of the fall of communism:
Pope John Paul II
Margaret Thatcher
Lech Walesa
Ronald Reagan
To some extent: Mikhail Gorbachev because he tried to bring about a moral form of communism but he ultimately failed in his goals and his goalds was to try to hold the USSR together, even though it was a prison house of nations.
Here is from Wikipedia (a probably not exhaustive) of foreign honors for Reagan:
Outside of the United States
- Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Marshall Islands, a United States missile range
- Ronald Reagan Street, in Prague, Czech Republic
- Ronald Reagan bronze statue, in [Freedom Square, Budapest, Hungary.[27]
- Ronald Reagan Park, in Gdańsk, Poland
- Ronald Reagan Square, formerly Central Square, in Kraków, Poland
- The Ronald Reagan Statue, in Warsaw, Poland[28]
- Ronald Reagan Roundabout, in Wrocław, Poland
- Ronald Reagan Monument, in Wrocław, Poland[29]
- Grenada Salutes Ronald Reagan, Leader of Freedom Commemorative Stamp Collection (proceeds to Ronald Reagan Scholarship Fund)
- The Ronald Reagan Scholarship Fund, Grenada
- Ronald Reagan bronze statue in the Rike Park, Tbilisi, Georgia[30]
Elwood "Sandy" Sanders is a Hanover attorney who is an Appellate Procedure Consultant for Lantagne Legal Printing and has written seven scholarly legal articles and was an adjunct at T. C. Williams School of Law. (None of these titles imply any endorsement of Sanders’ views)
Probably other contributors to he fall. Boris Yeltsin, George H. W. Bush and Helmut Kohl probably deserve a significant deal of credit as well.
I forgot the impact of Yeltsin but he only rose again in politics because Gorbachev allowed him to be a minister in the Soviet government after he was sacked as CP leader in Moscow.
George H W Bush did very little for the fall of communism. He is and was a decent person and President but he spent a year doing a policy review of relations with the USSR when he came into office and was reluctant to recognize the Baltics until after several other nations did so.
Helmut Kohl did reunite Germany in NATO but otherwise was not a critical player in the fall of communism.
Thanks for coming back by Anonymous!
Sandy