I give the credit mostly to what Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement started in Poland. He truly earned the Nobel Peace Prize presented to him in '83.
And, to whom did Walesa give credit?
"When Pope John Paul II stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s, he said, “Be not afraid,” and in closing prayed, “Let the Spirit descend. Let the Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.” While this prayer and exhortation were said to the world, the Polish people, especially, knew he was addressing them. Lech Walesa said that these words energized the Solidarity movement in Poland."
What was Pope John Paul II's role in the fall of the Soviet Union? - Catholic Straight Answers
And, even worse for communism, Marxism was defeated by religion.
In December of 1989, Gorbachev visited the Vatican and tacitly admitted that atheism had been defeated by religious belief. "He made this quite explicit when he introduced his wife to he pope, saying, 'Raisa Maximova, I have the honor to introduce the highest moral authority on earth." O'Sullivan, "
The President, the Pope, And the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World,"
by
John O'Sullivan
p. 308
Can you imagine that???
This from Karl Marx's emissary!
Lenin was implacably opposed to all religious sentiment, as was Marx. 'Any religious idea,' he wrote to Maxim Gorky in 1913, ...is the most dangerous foulness, the most shameful "infection."
Overy, 'The Dictators', p. 270.
Ronald Reagan shared with the Founders a belief in something that the Evil Empire could not conquer.
May it ever be so.
