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Three decades ago, the world received a wonderful Christmas gift when the USSR officially collapsed on December 25, 1991, with the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev.
The red flag with the hammer and sickle was taken down from the Kremlin and replaced with the red, white, and blue flag of the Russian federation.
On Christmas night, 1991, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and relinquished his powers, including the nuclear codes, to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The flag of the USSR that flew over the Kremlin was lowered, never to be raised again.
The next day, the Soviet legislature formally dissolved the Soviet Union, bringing a final end to the Cold War.
In a Christmas address from the Oval Office, then-President George H.W. Bush called the Communist regime’s collapse “one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century” and “a victory for democracy and freedom.”
Source: The Week via Yahoo News
Here is Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation address:
The dawn of December 26, 1991, was a new day in a new world without the constant threat of nuclear war that had been hanging over the Americans, Russians, and the entire world for decades.
Here is ABC News ending their program with a video of the hammer and sickle flag being removed from the Kremlin and the new tri-color flag replacing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njXaEZi9gDo
After 70 years, Russian Communism was suddenly no more — and it ended without a massive, bloody war.
It was an event that has very few parallels in all of human history.
30 years ago today, the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold War ended. Few people under 40 will appreciate what a cataclysmic event this was. The Cold War (and threat of nuclear war) had dominated our politics for 45 years, and the Soviets just giving up was inconceivable.
— Brian Riedl ? (@Brian_Riedl) December 26, 2021
Here is President George H.W. Bush’s address to the nation after Gorbachev’s resignation.
Gorbachev, the former Communist Party General Secretary, was succeeded by democratically-elected President Boris Yeltsin as leader of the newly-formed Russian state.
The greatest legacy of President Reagan was that the Cold War ended without ever becoming a “hot” war. Prominent leaders like the UK’s “Iron Lady”, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, joined Reagan as voices for the people who were trapped under the boot of communism.
Reagan’s “peace through strength” commitment, the work of his allies speaking of freedom, as well as the bloody, tyrannical, and heavy-handed iron-grip of the Iron Curtain all worked together to bring about the inevitable collapse of the Communist experiment in Russia.
And while we here in the West call this a win for “freedom” and “liberty”, it’s not viewed precisely that way in Russia. Gorbachev, 90, wrote in his memoirs, “I still regret that I failed to bring the ship under my command to calm waters, failed to complete reforming the country.”
And now, we’re seeing that the Russian Federation is preparing to take action (again) against the former member of the USSR, Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin once called the dissolution of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” It therefore comes as no surprise that Putin now seems to be on the verge of re-invading Ukraine, a former Soviet state continually punished for its Western aspirations by the threat of Russian partition. Putin clearly seeks to maintain Russian influence and control within the former Soviet orbit.
This much is clear: while the Cold War may have ended, the fight for freedom—in Europe, in the former Soviet Union, even here in the United States—is never over. It is a battle for hearts and minds that must be waged year after year, generation after generation. Eternal vigilance is required.
Source: The Federalist
The USSR may have fallen, and the Cold War ended, but the ideas that brought those two things about are still alive, well, and thriving, and not just in Moscow, either.
The “long march through the institutions” that began in the late 1960s has been quite successful, and there are still advocates of Marxism here in America today that insist that this time, implementing Marxism won’t end with the senseless deaths of thousands, millions, or tens of millions as it has every other time it’s been tried.
For the past two years, we’ve seen governments all over the world encroach on individual liberties in the name of the “greater good.”
The wannabe oligarchs that are part of the World Economic Forum insist that we need to “rethink” capitalism as we “Build Back Better” to implement the “Great Reset” in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Davos crowd insists that “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”
This sentiment is shared with many of those on the “progressive” left who have seats in governments around the world, in the U.S. Congress, and are some of the ones whispering into Biden’s ear pushing him to implement a Bernie Sanders-style agenda.
Somehow, with Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, “Democratic” Socialism, universities, “social justice” movements like Black Lives Matter, and a shapely novice Congresswoman from New York with her signature red lipstick, Marxism has become fashionable again.
How could this happen when just 30 years ago we saw and celebrated the collapse of a totalitarian state that tyrannized its own people in order to achieve “equality” crediting the writings of Karl Marx?
This is a time to stop and reflect on why the dissolution of the USSR was such a momentous event in all of human history — and the effect of Marxism on freedom.
The late, great, President Ronald Reagan said that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” That statement is just as true today as it was when he said it in 1961.
Our Founding Fathers, here in this country, brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers. But only here did that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since, evolve the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny. But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.
Our children need to be reminded, and so will our children’s children. So take some time out during this holiday season and tell them about the great gift that the world was given on December 25, 1991 — the peaceful end to Russian Communism and the end of the constant, imminent threat of nuclear war.
It truly was a Christmas miracle.
