To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is today — and has gone oddly unremarked-upon, to my eye — the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has produced the following mini-documentary about the course of the Soviet Union and the liberating events of 1989. It’s well worth a watch.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former KGB lieutenant general and the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect and be granted asylum in the West, marked the anniversary for NRO with a piece yesterday warning about Vladimir Putin’s dangerous Soviet nostalgia. John Fund (who I don’t believe has any KGB connections, but you really never know) has a column on the anniversary too, and told an incredible story to the Atlas Foundation recently about a East Berliner friend he made before the Wall fell.
Earlier this year, Jay Nordlinger wrote up a piece on the efforts of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, begun 20 years ago by an act of Congress, for NR.