Word: berliner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Watch a video about the iconic photo of the Berlin Wall...
...time Reagan went to Berlin in 1987, he and Gorbachev had developed enough trust to gamble on change. In the weeks leading up to the speech, several Administration officials lobbied to have the "tear down this Wall" line removed, arguing that it was unrealistic, unpresidential and potentially embarrassing to Gorbachev. But Reagan and his speechwriters insisted on keeping it in. To the President, the line was an invitation as much as a challenge: calling on Gorbachev to tear down the Wall might actually inspire him to do it. "If he took down the Wall," Reagan told an aide after returning...
Reagan was right. (In 1990, Gorbachev not only won the Nobel but was named TIME's Man of the Decade.) Neither Gorbachev nor Reagan was directly responsible for the fall of the Wall; rather, it collapsed from its own weight. But Reagan's speech presciently identified Berlin as the proving ground of Gorbachev's intentions to open up the communist bloc. If Gorbachev truly sought peace and liberalization, Reagan said in Berlin, then he should let the Wall come down. In the end, Gorbachev did, and the rest of the Iron Curtain followed. Allowing democracy to spread through Eastern Europe...
Watch TIME's video "A GPS Tour of the (Former) Berlin Wall...
...years, the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the division between Eastern and Western Europe. So when East and West Berliners tore it down one night in November of 1989, it seemed as though this division would break down, too. Communist regimes throughout the region were replaced by democratically elected governments, and in 1991 even the mighty Soviet Union broke apart...