Unlike the USA, which had been defeated in the Vietnam War (1975) and elsewhere over the decades (such as in Mexico 1916, Nicaragua 1933), the Soviet Bear would not rise from the graves it had begun to dig in Afghanistan.
Within a few short months after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the entire Western half of the Warsaw Pact would begin to move en masse towards the West in order to seek a new future in Europe, especially as consumers of goods and services.
Many Muscovites would have liked to have followed me back to Germany and the West -- some would -- and some have.
Now, twenty years after the Revolutionary year of 1989, I have returned to Germany to teach again young college students--only to find in the various English and Business training classes I instruct, German students, originally from Russia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine or East Germany, and the former Yugoslavian states, like Croatia. Click here.
Over most of the past half century this has been the case but with 1989 this change began anew.
NOTE: “Immigration has been a primary force shaping demographic developments in the two Germanys in the postwar period. After the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the immigration flow, first into West Germany and later into united Germany, consisted mainly of workers from southern Europe. In addition, the immigrants included several other groups: a small but steady stream of East German immigrants (Übersiedler) during the 1980s that exploded in size in 1990 (389,000) but by 1993 had fallen by more than half (172,000) and was somewhat offset by movement from west to east (119,000); several million ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) from East European countries, especially the former Soviet Union; and several million persons seeking asylum from political oppression, most of whom were from East European countries.” Click here.
In Wiesbaden where I live currently, my tiny church has former Russians, Moldovans, Ukrainian, some from Easter Germany or Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, and even Laos—as well as former West Germans and Americans, like me. Click here.
In contrast to this reality on the ground today in 2009, at the time I lived in West Germany in the 1980s, I had been told by my ex-German girlfriend with great confidence that only blood-Germans would ever be allowed citizenship here. Click here.
Since the late 1990s, this is no longer the case.
Perhaps this change in immigration and integration practices in Western Europe has been the greatest legacy of the Revolutions of 1989. Click here.
