YOU AND I KNOW REAGAN DID IT (WITH HELP!)
I may write in more detail but I can see that the downplaying of the role Ronald Reagan played in the fall of Soviet Communism has begun in earnest.
When I was in the Ukraine in 2006, I remember talking with a group of people, one of whom was a believer who had endured communist persecution. All of the sudden, he said to our mission trip group (we were there to train pastors and start churches in villages) that the Russians, they were afraid of Reagan. I believe there can be no politics on a missions trip but I shyly pointed to the Ukrainian believer in Christ and stated that he was right. We ended up having a two hour conversation about politics and religion afterwards.
My fellow conservatives and libertarians know well that Reagan’s determination to build our defenses and confront communism while also seeking arms limitations were crucial to victory. He did have help. Lech Walesa credited Pope John Paul II (the Polish cardinal) is assisting in the fall of communism. Certainly God had a plan and a man to fulfill His plan in Karol Wojtyla. There was also Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Even President Carter, flawed as his presidency was, made it clear to Brezhnev that an invasion of Poland in 1980 was unacceptable.
Of course Mikhail Gorbachev played an important role. I admire Gorbachev very much. He wanted to radically change in a humanistic and democratic way the communist state. The fact that the Soviet hierarchy could produce such a person gives us hope for other authoritarian states. God had this man in place as well.
Let us remember those days when we looked at maps and saw the Evil Empire and all its conquests and thought nothing will ever change. But it did change. Praise God! When I spoke at the pastor’s conference on that missions trip, the first words I said (after a few words of bad Russian!) was how this was a miracle of God that I could teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in what had been part of the Soviet Union.
Yes, you and I know: Reagan did it with help.
