WHAT GOES UP, MUST COME DOWN

Friday Night Flashback: Berlin Wall Falls

AS IRAN TEETERS ON THE BRINK, IT'S FITTING TO REMEMBER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL IN 1989.

The barbed wire and concrete structure went up in 1961 and was a worldwide symbol of the tyranny imposed by the U.S.S. R. on Eastern Europe.

During the next three decades, three uprisings against the Communist dictatorship -- in East Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 -- sought to topple the Soviet Union's government.

It took Mikhail Gorbachov's rise to power, aided by the internal collapse of the Soviet financial and industrial systems, to bring change in the mid-1980s. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 after mass demonstrations forced East Germany's head of state Erich Honecker to resign.

Then, according to published reports, "at 06.53 pm on November 9, 1989 a member of the new East German government was asked at a press conference when the new East German travel law comes into force. He answered: "Well, as far as I can see, ... straightaway, immediately. Thousands of East Berliners went to the border crossings. At Bornholmer Strasse the people demanded to open the border and at 10.30 pm the border was opened there."

Some idealogues conveniently credit Ronald Reagan for the wall's demise. But doing so dismisses the will of Eastern Europeans hungry for freedom at any price, and who brought the walls "come tumbling down".

Now the world watches as another wall comes down, even if it's one that exists only in the mind.