激盪時代：二十世紀歐洲百年史

• 云之山

  2020-04-26
  The shift towards authoritarianism bothered Moscow intellectuals but not the masses in distant provinces. After the collapse under Gorbachev and the national weakness under Yeltsin’s unstable governance, the great majority of Russians supported Putin’s restoration of strong state authority. For some he was little less than a national saviour. That Russia’s economy was able to recover strongly by exploiting high market prices for oil and gas helped the sense of a new start, even if the underlying serious economic problems and relative poverty of large sections of the population were far from overcome. Corruption remained endemic, but most Russians took it on board as long as their standard of living was improving. The facade of a democratic system was retained. But presidential power was re...
• 云之山

  2020-04-26
  The courageous individuals who had spearheaded the protest movements of differing kinds in the autumn of 1989 now felt ignored by the established parties and organizations of West German capitalist liberal democracy. ‘Socialism has not delivered what it promised’ was the lapidary verdict of one worker who doubtless spoke for multitudes as they looked back, often resentfully, at a regime that they felt had betrayed their hopes for four decades. He and millions of others thought they saw the future – and it was not the failed system of Marxist-Leninist socialism they had lived under in East Germany. Prosperous West Germany, with its liberal freedoms but above all its successful economy, was the magnet.
• 云之山

  2020-04-26
  Kennedy was only informed in mid-morning – late afternoon in Berlin. He and his leading advisers decided that, despicable as the barrier was, it was preferable to war. ‘It’s not a very nice solution,’ Kennedy stated, ‘but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.’ Privately the US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, admitted that the closure of the border ‘would make a Berlin settlement easier’.