Mr. Gorbachov, Tear Down That Wall
January 2nd, 2010 Posted in General Updates
Considering our lives and our organization are entrenched in the effects of Communism and the USSR, Berlin holds unique history for missionaries working in former Soviet Europe. A history of freedom, a fight between authoritarianism and capitalism, the devastation that WW2 brought about, the struggle for power, the suppression of religion, the demand for freedom.
The past weekend spent in Berlin sent me back to the book “The Cold War”, which suddenly has new meaning after spending significant time in a city where communists and capitalists struggled for power and caused some of the biggest hardship that Europe has ever known. I may have only been 9 when the wall came down, but it doesn’t change the impact I feel when I read stories of the Berlin wall going up overnight, when I hear stories about Checkpoint Charlie and the American sector of a city surrounded by Marx-Leninists who deceived millions about a “better life”.
“You could go from socialism…to capitalism in two minutes.” “The obvious differences in living standards had caused “great dissatisfaction” within the Soviet zone”, a Kremlin leader admitted. “The presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which, unfortunately, does not always turn out in favor of Democratic East Berlin.” President Kennedy responded around the time of August 12-13, 1961, as the wall went up over night, “It’s not a very nice solution, but a wall is a he** of a lot better than a war.” The president could not resist observing, though, when he himself visted the Berlin Wall in June, 1963, that “we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.” The ugly structure Khrushchev had erected was “the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see…and on the other side of the wall, capitalism was succeeding. Stalin, Khrushchev, and Mao promised their people a better life under communism that capitalism could ever provide…[t]he prospects of socialism as a world alternative depended on its ability to compete with the world capitalist economy, as reformed after the 2nd World War,” Hobsbawm concluded. “That socialism was falling behind at an accelerating rate was patent after 1960. It was no longer competitive.” For Marxism and its successors cannot be judged on their economic performance alone. The human costs were far more horrendous. These [communist] ideologies, when put into practice, may well have brought about the premature deaths, during the 20th century, of almost 100 MILLION people. The number who survived but whose lives were stunted by these ideas and the repression they justified is beyond estimation. There can be few examples in history in which greater misery resulted from better intentions. (The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis, excerpts from pgs. 113-118)
And honestly, not a day goes by in this culture that we don’t see the effects of communism, its aesthetic ugliness, its broken systems, the stunted growth of those who quickly forget about the injustice and want to return to dictatorship, waiting in line for days for a piece of meat or a cup of milk, receiving a 10×12 room as your house with a shared kitchen and bathroom for the building, having no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech, no right to choose. Thank goodness that Ukraine has reformed too drastically to actually return to such living, but the future of this country is still gray and unknown. Join us in praying for Ukraine in these next few months. We believe that God hears the prayers of His saints, even prayers as big as change for an entire country. Presidential elections begin in the 2-3rd week of January, and the 2 primary candidates are both crooks, have both been sentenced in the past to prison for corruption, have shady ties with all the oligarchs and billionaires who unfairly took everything that was of any value in Ukraine when Communism collapsed. All they want is to increase their own pockets at whatever the cost, caring little for the future of Ukraine. And they will do ANYTHING to win. (One of these candidates is the former opponent of current pres. Yushchenko, who poisoned him in hopes for a victory.) There are other candidates who are wiser, more neutral, and there is even a 35 yr. old man who would do an amazing job of representing a new generation and a new future for Ukraine. (Go Yatsenyuk!) However, Ukrainians are easily deceived by empty promises, esp. by financial perks that are in NO way going to realize themselves, (esp. not now, since the IMF has withheld a loan installment because, “of the inability of the country’s politicians to get the budget under control.” (NYT 12/10/09) Instead, they are competing with false promises about what 20% pension increases they can give to people, during an economic crisis that is at an all-time low since Ukraine’s independence in the early 90s. It is a circus here. Pray for us, that the nonsense in the government will not harden our hearts to Ukrainians and the even greater need than ever to point the next generation to Jesus Christ. Only in Him can this country truly reform.
