By Don Riley/Network Indiana
11/9/2009
Monday marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Dr. Miland Thakar is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Indianapolis. He says the fall of the wall triggered the demise of communism worldwide because it was the most visible destruction of a communist symbol.
Thakar says in 1989, many Soviet-bloc Europeans did not necessarily want a free market system, but preferred to have their socialist cake and eat it in freedom. He says it marked the triumph of liberal democracy and the market economy over communism and profoundly changed the world.
The fall of the Berlin Wall also officially ended the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that began at the close of World War II.
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