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Let me begin with what I deem a certainty: the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 ranks as one of the most significant events in European and even world history in the last two centuries. To support such a claim, one must look at more than the immediate effect of the collapse, which first led to freedom of circulation between the two halves of Berlin, and then, a few months later, the reunification of Germany. But the wall coming down is also and otherwise meaningful because it was the first irreversible sign of the collapse of Communism. The dislocation of the Soviet Union which took place two years later simply raised the earlier event onto the global scale. Communism, on the other hand, is no marginal phenomenon; it is the great secular religion of modern times and it shaped the course of history for nearly a hundred and fifty years.
One might well object that Communism did not die on that day in 1989: there are still today communist governments in places like China, North Korea and Cuba; and communist parties of different stripes (Maoist, Trotskyite, Castroist) exist in several countries. But one might just as easily agree that the idea of Communism no longer exerts the same fascination it once did; neither does it spread like a religion, however secular. In China too, moreover, the year 1989 was decisive because of the protests in Tiananmen Square. Brutally put down, they nonetheless revealed to the more lucid members in the Chinese leadership that there needed to be a breach in the totalitarian system into which the energy of the protesters could be redirected. The economic liberalization that came about a few years later was an indirect consequence of the events of 1989. The deep dent that it put into the exclusive hegemony of the communist faith is well expressed by the slogan that "the color of the cat doesn't matter as long as it catches the mouse."
Just like traditional religions, Communism promised salvation to its faithful. But as a secular belief, it announced its coming on earth instead of heaven, and in this life not the next. It responded in this way to the expectations of millions of people , mired in...