I always believed that the Berlin Wall would fall and that Germany would be reunited. In historical terms, it had been such a short time since the country had been divided, it just made sense that the division was only temporary.
When the Iron Curtain began falling in 1989, I had a giant whiteboard in my office that I used to make various announcements, recognize holidays, etc. I drew a series of dominoes, with a fallen Hungary and Czechoslovakia on the left, working my way through the still standing Poland, East Germany, Romania, Albania, etc., with the Soviet Union as the last standing domino on the far right. I wasn’t absolutely sure that the Soviet Union would fall, but I certainly considered it a possibility, and in fact, I ended up knocking those dominoes over one by one, in almost the exact order in which I had drawn them, until the Soviet Union finally fell.
My intent there wasn’t to suggest that Quebecois aren’t Canadians – I singled them out in my question because the issue was specifically about Quebec.
AFAIK, residents of U.S. states generally don’t consider themselves something other than American, because it’s been so long since there’s been anything like a secessionist movement in the U.S.
That said, as Texas was an independent country at one point, I’ve often heard that Texans do consider themselves to be a bit unique (even if they do consider themselves to be Americans). IME, some Texans are as proud of being Texans as they are in being Americans.
And Korea? The Korean division and the German division are quite similar (divided into zones of Soviet and US influences that could not conceivably function as an extant country at the beginning of the Cold War, divided as a result of a War (yes, German was divided right after WWII, and Korea before the Korean War, but the Korean War didn’t make things easier), division of a country that existed as a united one for a long period beforehand (Germany from 1871-1945, and Korea for millennia before 1948 - so Korea has an even greater period of cohesion to look fondly back on). I’m wondering if you feel the current Korean division is “temporary”?
My personal belief is yes, it is, and they will reunite sometime, but with the above quote combined with the Cold War being over, you’d think that Korea would have been reunified by now …
To answer the OP, no, I never saw it coming. I thought they might get into a war with China and kill each other.
Back in the 70s, a lot of people thought the USA would fall apart before the Russkis. At one point, I was one of them. Nobody could seem to do anything about stagflation, Iran was holding our people hostage and thumbing their noses at us, the price of oil kept going up and we didn’t have any reasonable alternatives.
Then came the 80s, and You-Know-Who became Leader of the Free World. And everything seemed to turn around and take off like a skyrocket.
Bush 41 was President when the coup to overthrow Gorbachev happened. And his first response was that coups might happen, but they didn’t always last. He was right, and he took the correct approach. I thought a lot more highly of Yeltsin at that point as well.
But the change was really remarkable - the peaceful defeat of the Evil Empire.
Fuck it, I’ll say it - Reagan was the greatest President of the post-WWII era, and one of the greatest of all time.
In the movies 2001 and 2010 the Soviet Union was still around, and that seemed plausible to me. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and after that I was never all that worried about a nuclear war, since that was scary enough.
As far as predictions go, The Third World War was a future war story, near future, in which the Soviet Union loses at least partially because the satellites abandon it. When I read this novel, before the actual breakup, I thought this was absurdly optimistic. However, Hackett et al. had it right.
Something I didn’t understand until I visited the Berlin Wall was how accidental its fall was. The immediate cause was miscommunication. See here. It would have fallen eventually, I’m sure, but not in such a satisfying way.
However, the fall of the Soviet Union is nothing as compared to the move of South Africa to majority rule without bloodshed. It was inevitable it would happen some day, but I’d have called anyone who told me how it did a naive Pollyanna.
Reagan without Gorbachev would not have resulted in the fall. Gorbachev without Reagan would. And I say this as someone who voted for Reagan twice and who damn well wishes Republicans today had the idealism and the feeling for the people Reagan had.
And I’m glad you approve of Bush the elder. There was a president who knew what the hell he was doing - internationally, at least.
I’m 50 and didn’t believe it would be gone in my lifetime.
The “defining moment” for me was the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was watching TV, my wife was downstairs doing the laundry and I went do to tell her what I had just seen on TV. The memory still raises goosebumps on my arms.
My father was on an oil refinery construction job way back in 1929, in the town of Batumi, Russia. From his stories of what it was like there I felt that it was a miracle that the Soviet Union survived as long as they did.
This is what I was going to say. It was between my sophomore and junior years in high school when the Hungarians opened their borders, which got a really interesting reaction out of my Dad, when the Russians failed to crush it.
Then sometime during my junior year, the Berlin Wall fell. That was pretty much the sign to me that the Cold War was pretty much over. I didn’t really expect the Soviet Union to crater quite so fast, but it was fairly obvious at that point that for whatever reason, there had been a sea change in how the Russians treated their satellite states and by extension, the relationship between themselves and the West.
Not coincidentally, that’s the point when I finally decided a military career wasn’t for me. I was having images of 1920s and 1930s style military cutbacks, without nearly the level of conflict that we’ve seen. Had I known, I’d probably have gone forward with it.
I spent the fall semester of 1989 studying Russian language/area studies in Leningrad (I was 21 then and had just graduated college in the spring). Before then, even as a Russian minor in college, I had never really given much thought to how long the USSR would last - my interests then were really more linguistic than historical. But by the time I came home in December, I was boggled that it had lasted as long as it did.
Even as a kid, I never really thought that Soviets were some kind of alien species that was out to destroy America. My interest in the USSR and the Russian language had been sparked partly by family roots in that general neck of the woods (not Russia proper: Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia), and partly by having gone to a JCC summer camp as a kid in the late 70s/early 80s with recent immigrants, and always having the feeling that we were being fed Jewish Federation propaganda to a certain extent (the JCC was much more observant than my own family was, and I sensed that we might not see eye-to-eye on everything).
So I just refrained from judgment, and although there were certainly issues with Soviet antisemitism, I don’t know that I was that surprised to discover later on that there were others in the Soviet Union who had it much worse than the vast majority of Jews who were emigrating to the U.S. under an eased burden of proof for refugee status that was created by the Lautenberg Amendment. I have thought ever since that it’s just generally shitty to allow a group or groups favored treatment in the refugee application process, but that’s a rant for another day.
I was in 8th grade when the Berlin Wall fell, and I saw that as the beginning of the end. After years of history lessons and movies concerning the wall, seeing the throngs of people pulling it down and walking on top without fear I knew that the USSR was essentially gone.
Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought the only way for the Soviet Union to fall was after a nuclear war. After the initial exchange, the resulting damage and conventional war would give the other “republics” an excuse to revolt. I fulfill didn’t expect to see any of this as I grew up near what was considered a primary target. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought the Soviet Union would eventually collapse in a domino effect.
You are simply wrong. Canadians, and not just Quebecois, view themselves are belonging to a province then as Canadians. My friend from Toronto always introduces himself as an Ontarian. But I was startled when, one day, he introduced me as a Pennsylvanian! I would not have noticed had ne introduced me as an American, nor indeed as a Philadelphian, but a Pennsylvanian? Once I was in Pittsburgh with a student from Quebec who asked me if I felt anything special being in my state. In Pittsburgh?
Now to answer the question raised, well, the next election in Quebec is virtually certain to be won by the separatist party. For one thing, they are ahead in the polls, way ahead and for another, the electoral map is heavily biased in their favor. They are virtually certain to hold another separatist referendum and they could win. My friend from Toronto was having some work done right before the 1995 referendum and got into a conversation with the workman. He was a freelancer and said that separation would be an economic disaster for him. So my friend then opined that he would vote against it. “Oh no”, he said, “I couldn’r vote against it.” There is a lot of sentiment of that sort. So yes, there is a significant chance Quebec will separate. And I will move, probably to Vancouver area. And they will be happy to see me go.
Getting back to the OP, I was 8 in 1945 and so lived through the entire cold war. No, I never expected to see the SU dissolve. But they I never expected to see someone like Gorby rise to the top. Or be succeeded by Yeltsin. Drunken old man he was, he had courage and resisted the counter-revolution. However, with Putin, a lot of the old regime is back in power.
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