Even back in the 1960's when Ronald Reagan made his 'A Time for Choosing' speech, he understood that it was the ultimate destiny of the West to defeat the "Evil Empire." In the aftermath of his presidency it has become clear to the rest of us that it was his ultimate destiny as our leader to be the man responsible for that victory. Well, okay, not all of us. Some of the friendly folks on the left, the ones who spewed (and continue to spew) venomous hatred for Ronald Reagan, have, for quite sometime now, loudly claimed that it was Mikhail Gorbachev who did this and that Reagan had nothing to do with the downfall of the Soviet Union.
This is an unusually common occurrence in college history courses, as leftist professors (such as mine) frequently have full-scale 'Gorbasms' when attempting to 'teach' the Cold War. The lecture goes something like this: 'The Soviet Union was falling apart, and was going to end at any moment, Gorbachev came along and tried to implement perestroika and make the USSR a Democracy, because he understood the dire situation and wanted to promote the well being of Russian citizens.' Well, at least, that's the jist of a typical liberal Gorbasm. But, as usual, these leftists are simply wrong.
First off, lets just go along with the whole rant and say that Gorbachev did want to end communism. That begs the question of 'how did he rise to power?' The answer is, in two words, Ronald Reagan. Immediately after he became President, Reagan took a new approach to foreign policy; he abandoned Detente and declared that he would be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of the U.S.S.R. The new rhetoric and new direction that American foreign policy took were well noted within the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviets realized that they would need a new type of leader, someone from outside the old Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev mold. The Party elite in Russia needed someone who could stand up to this 'Reagan' fellow on the International Stage, the man they choose, in 1984, was Mikhail Gorbachev. So you see, the only reason Gorbachev had the power to affect any change within the USSR was Ronald Reagan - without his election the Soviets would have chosen someone else to lead.
Of course, Gorbachev's intention was never to dismantle or 'Democratize' the Soviet Union, he was as much a believer in Communist dogma as Vladimir Lenin. Gorbachev had hoped his reforms would offer temporary relief and enable him to strengthen and re-build the communist regime, he never intended for the reforms to be permanent. Gorbachev never wanted communism to end. The only problem was he didn't realize what would happen when he implemented economic reform. Although someone did. Reagan knew the Soviets couldn't compete, so he forced them to do it. The military build-up of the 1980's, forced Gorbachev to enact changes and new economic policies; policies that Reagan realized would topple the Soviet system.
However, the fact that the Soviet system was weak and in abominable shape brings us to another question: 'Was the downfall of the Soviet Union inevitable?' The answer: yes. It may have been two or three hundred years later, but eventually it would have fallen. The Soviet system was weak, and near collapse, but it had always been that way. The Soviets had a terrible economy in the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, the 1970's and, yes, the 1980's. The thing is, when you have an oppressive dictatorship running the country, you don't need economic success to continue on as a world superpower. All you need is a few nukes, the KGB and a couple of gulags. The point is, when liberals claim that the Soviet system would have collapsed in 1991 with or without Reagan's military build-up, they're lying; the Soviet Union had lived on the brink of collapse for over 60 years. In order for the Soviet system to collapse its economic equation needed to be catalyzed, and Ronald Reagan provided the catalyst.
Ultimately, the reason the left tries so hard to deny Reagan's importance in the destruction of the Soviet Union is because, as always, it puts them on the wrong side of history. When Reagan first said the Soviet Union was "evil" the left derided him, called him the dumbest man alive, said he was a dreamer, said he didn't understand the nature of foreign policy, and concluded that he had lost all perception of reality. Yet they were wrong - and Reagan was right. Within 10 years of the 'Evil Empire' speech, the Soviet Union was gone, just as Reagan said it would be. Exactly as Gorbachev said it wouldn't be. It hurts the left to give Reagan credit, because on the question of the Cold War, on the most important question of the 1980's, he proved them utterly wrong, and in the process, won his greatest victory.
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