History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.
By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.
In the Cold War, a lot of Soviet actions could be explained as extensions of Czarist imperial ambitions, but that didn't stop us from studying Marxism in theory and Communism in practice to better understand that adversary.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.
It didn't take long to recognise the shortcomings of the Soviet regime and to see the values of the free world.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.
If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay!
With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then.
Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.