1979 was the year that changed the world

[Michael]

http://ndn1.newsweek.com/media/92/1979-FE03-wide-horizontal.jpg

What exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? Having spent much of the summer of that year in Berlin, I have long bitterly regretted that I was not there to join in the party the night the wall came down. I mean, what kind of an aspirant historian misses history being made?

But two Berlin friends recently made me feel better by confessing that, despite being in the right city on the right date, they too missed the fall of the wall. One simply slept through the tumultuous events that unfolded after an East German official casually stated that the border was open. Her brother tried to rouse her, but she assumed he was joking when he shouted through her bedroom door: "The wall's coming down!" My other friend deliberately went to bed early to be fresh for a morning yoga class. It took her a while the next morning to work out why she was the only one to show up.

Embarrassing, no? A bit like being in Petrograd in late 1917 and catnapping while the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace. Or perhaps not. For it is only with the benefit of hindsight that the Bolshevik coup proved to be a major historical turning point; at the time, the Russian press represented it as just another extremist stunt.

That set me thinking. Could it be that my friends and I didn't in fact miss an event of world-historical importance? Was the fall of the Berlin Wall not really History with a capital H, but just news with a lower-case n—a wonderful story for journalists but, 20 years on, actually not that big a deal? Could it be that what happened 10 years earlier, in the annus mirabilis 1979, was the real historical turning point?

Source (http://www.newsweek.com/id/221629)

Wow! An intelligent and thoughtful article from Newsweek? What's up with that? That's normally one of the worst trash-rags in America. :shrug:

Anyway, this is a theory that I've been speculating about recently. Several of my friends have been lecturing me about the importance and significance of 1989 but are always unable to actually point to any important or significant outcomes from the event.

I've argued that the fall of the wall in 1989 was only the end of the process that brought the wall down. As such, it was a rather anti-climatic event. Nothing really changed in 1989 because everything had essentially already changed.

Please note that I'm talking about the world scale here. Obviously, if one lived in East Germany, there is a difference between 1988 and 1990. But for non-Eastern Europeans, the fall of the wall didn't really change anything of significance. The world of 1990 was remarkably similar to the world of 1988.

Indeed, in all my studies of modern history, it is the year of 1979 that seems to be the biggest marker of change. As such, I'm inclined to agree with the thesis of the essay.

So what do you think? Was 1979 a year of bigger and more significant changes than 1989?

[Zarquon]

Read this a week ago, and agree wholeheartedly with it.

[Michael]

Read this a week ago, and agree wholeheartedly with it.

Yes, the more I think about this, I must say that I agree completely. 1989 changed virtually nothing of significance. All the huge changes/challenges in the world that we are dealing with right now all triggered in 1979 (except climate change).

The neocons, the Iranian-Islamic revolution and the growth of China. These have had huge effects on the world.

Russia is still Russia and acts pretty much the same as it did when it was USSR.

As for the fall of the wall, the elements that caused that were slow in building up and can be traced back to the mid-1970s. 1989 was merely the symbolic end of the wall and the USSR. In reality, that wall is almost still there in dividing Europe between 'east' and 'west', though it is an invisible cultural divide now instead of a concrete one.

[Zarquon]

Though I must say, I'm no fan of Niall Ferguson.

[Michael]

Though I must say, I'm no fan of Niall Ferguson.
I'm no fan of Ferguson or Newsweek.

You can be sure he's cribbed the story from someone more thoughtful. The media don't think for themselves, the repeat what other's say.

[Non Sequitur]

I think they are significant in different ways. 1989 it important because of what it symbolizes, not necessarily because of a ton of events. People like to mark history by turning point years (1517, 1776, 1914, etc...) and some of these turning point years are more important because of the symbolism that we attach to them, not necessarily because of the actual history. Arguing from just the facts, 1979 is a more significant year, but 1989 is just as significant because of what it means.