02-01 The Berlin Wall
Can you imagine being dropped into the centre of a major city and not seeing any movement or hearing any sound? That is the experience my wife and I had, crossing into East Berlin during the 1979 International Symposium on Small Business held in West Berlin. No cars, very few people walking about, empty stores…
02-02 Mikhail Gorbachev
He came up through the Communist system, so he was supposed to know what he was doing. Instead, his reforms unleashed rebellion and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. His name was Mikhail Gorbachev, and he was loved in the West. He was Time Magazine's Man of the Year. One of his main…
02-03 Geopolitics
The map of Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 clearly shows the geopolitics – a much larger and stronger Europe and a much stronger western alliance led by the United States.The impact for Russia was quite dramatic. Not just because of the economic shock, but because so many Russians were now…