Chipping away at oppression

As it turned out, the Berlin Wall didn’t just collapse under the weight of history — it exploded outward, flung to the four winds as if all the collective explosive power of the Soviet empire had been detonated beneath it.

Since Nov. 9, 1989, when the East German government announced that it would unseal its border with the West, pieces of the infamous barrier have been scattered across the globe.

Even Lynchburg.

“I took a tour group of students, faculty and parents to Europe back in May,” said Bruce Bell, dean of Liberty University’s School of Business, “and we went to Berlin, and saw what’s left of the wall. They have left about a three-block portion standing as a monument, and workmen were sprucing it up for the 20th anniversary when we were there. They actually invited us to chip away some pieces for ourselves, and we did.”

The real prize, however, was a fist-sized wall fragment that was given to the Liberty group by its tour guide.

“He told me, ‘You’ve got to have this,’” Bell said.

There on the stone, which had been purchased in a Berlin souvenir shop, a single word had been written in pen or magic marker: “Liberty.”

“It was so amazing to find that,” said Bell. “We brought it back, and we had it displayed in a four-sided wooden stand.”

The stand also includes a photograph of Ronald Reagan during his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” speech, and another of Reagan and the Rev. Jerry Falwell together, and yet another of the tour group posing in front of the wall.

This Wednesday, on Veteran’s Day, Bell plans to exhibit the school’s piece of wall in the lobby on the second floor of the DeMoss Center.

“It just seemed appropriate,” he said, “and we’re especially inviting veterans to come and look at it.”

Of course, selling chunks of the wall was perhaps one of the first capitalist ventures in the former East Germany. Given that the barrier once stretched for 96 miles, there was a lot of historic rubble to go around.

“You can buy pieces anywhere in Germany,” Bell said, “complete with a certificate of authentication.”

I remember thinking how fast it all happened, how something everyone had assumed was implacable and unchanging had come apart almost overnight, like a Kansas barn in a tornado. It left me with the same feeling I had after Barack Obama’s election, that anything is now possible.

Looking back, though, the Berlin Wall probably did more to undermine Communism than to preserve it. It was a 96-mile rebuke to the system Marx and Lenin dreamed up — or, at least, what it had become. To any true believers who espoused the virtues of the Soviet system as it was replicated in eastern Europe, the obvious question was: “If it’s so great, then how come the people in East Germany aren’t allowed to leave?”

And to me, the 20th anniversary of this momentous event should remind us in the U.S. of something else — the power of oppressed people to eventually extricate themselves from oppression.

True, we helped to facilitate the unraveling of the Soviet bloc by baiting the Communist warlords into an arms race that eventually broke their economy. But the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and other countries was accomplished from within, not with the 82nd Airborne.

Our culture is an impatient one, and we want results yesterday. One of the lessons of Nov. 9, 1989 is that given enough time, most people will muster the courage to follow their instincts toward freedom.

That piece of rubble on the second floor of the DeMoss Center says it all with one word.