Last year , travelling in England I had the opportunity to see a great amount of programs regarding the 1968 anniversary , the French May or the anti Vietnam demonstrations.  In 2009  two decades have passed since  I finished college.  In this twenty years  I got to realise that the summer I was celebrating the end of my student life (that’s what I thought then) it was a key point in the lives of millions of people living in the communist countries and also to other millions living in the western ones whose life was held around the communist menace. 

1989 began with George H.W. Bush becoming the 41^st president of the EEUU, just weeks  before the last Russian soldier left Afghanistan. In march the environmental conscience rose with the Exxon Valdez spill and a month later we got the first pulse of the communist breakdown when  Hungary dismantled 250 km of barbed wire along the border with Austria. Just few  days before the Tiananmen Square protests began .  In June the fuse was ignited when Solidarity won the Polish elections. 

By November The communist government or East Germany had resigned and many  check points were opened in the Berlin Wall allowing citizens to travel freely to West Germany.  The Germans began to tear the wall down and life went on through the decades .  Why westerners don’t  appreciate enough what people living in the communist countries went through till that year and the courage they demonstrate it is something I hope future generations will repair.

 In ten year from now will we still celebrate the half century of 1968 or the three decades since the world changed for ever?