Former Czech dissidents on Ronald Reagan's role in bringing down communism
June 12, 1987: The President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, speaks in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin: "General-Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr Gorbachev, open this gate... Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Last Saturday, Ronald Reagan died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 93 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.
Having called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in a 1983 speech, President Reagan was probably the most hated and ridiculed of all the Western leaders by the Czechoslovak former communist regime. The communist media relentlessly condemned what they called 'Reagan's war-mongering' and the arms race.
Senator Jan Ruml, a former anti-communist dissident, was serving a prison sentence at that time and remembers who Reagan's tough stance gave him strength.
"In the 1980s we placed our hopes in Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The fact that someone out there called communism by its proper name and actually did something to promote freedom and democracy helped us a great deal. Ronald Reagan was the man instrumental in bringing down communism and we should all remember him with great respect as the man thanks to whom we are enjoying our present freedom."
Another former member of anti-communist opposition and the first post-communist Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Jiri Dienstbier, says the Reagan administration supported the Czechoslovak opposition by sending U.S. politicians, journalists and academics to Czechoslovakia to meet the dissidents. But Mr Dienstbier says it would be an exaggeration to say that it was Ronald Reagan who overthrew communism.
"Of course, Reagan would not have succeeded without Gorbachev. I think the final cooperation between Reagan and Gorbachev in changing the world was the most important. Because communism just exhausted all its resources and Mikhail Gorbachev understood it and tried to the change the whole background and the whole policy of the Soviet Union and the international relations."
"Ronald Reagan was a very controversial person even in America. He had very strong conservative rightist rhetoric but in fact he behaved very pragmatically. He spoke about the 'evil empire' but then he walked with Mikhail Gorbachev in the Red Square because he understood that a lot of things had changed in Russia and America should support it."
