The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Disintegration of the Soviet Union

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Communism is defined as a political and economical doctrine, the aim which is to abolish private ownership of property and for-profit enterprise and to replace these with public ownership and control of industry, agriculture, and resources (“Communism”). The product of this government is supposed to be a society free of class ranking based on wealth, property, and political power. The Soviet Union was the first country to test these governmental strategies and it did not take long for the regime to collapse. The inevitable collapse of communism led to the fall of the Berlin Wall; this started the domino effect of freedom that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On Sunday, August 13th, in 1962 the Eastern German government began construction of the Berlin Wall (“Berlin Wall”). The Berlin Wall was built to divide the post World War II communist ran East Germany with the democratic West Germany. On that day families in Berlin were awaken to military machinery, barbed wire coils, and armed guards. The families that had crossed the newly made border the night before to visit friends and/or family were greeted to a wall and closed transit systems (“Berlin Wall”). For them this meant they were no longer going to be able to go home and be with their family however long this division of the country would last. As the day went on some government officials in East Germany feared that the citizens would start an uprising. However, contrary to their fears the streets of East Berlin stayed eerily quiet. Almost thirty years after that day the wall still separated friends and family only miles away. The wall was a physical division between the two superpowers of the time: the East controlled by the communist regime in the Soviet ...

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