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Article: Who killed the Cold War? (peace movement across Europe)
- Article from:
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
- Article date:
- July 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There is something strange about the way the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe have been interpreted in the West. It is said there were no new ideas--that the people who gathered in the streets of East European cities simply wanted to live like their Western counterparts. The revolutions have been treated as spontaneous outbursts, as though they had no history.
But commentators who hold this point of view--people like Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey Sachs, and Ralf Dahrendorf--had little involvement in Eastern Europe before 1989. (Timothy Garton Ash is an honorable exception.) Their opinions have prevailed because the "experts" on Eastern Europe were discredited when they ...