The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money trade people and ideas also fell.

After every major conflict - World War I World War II Korea Vietnam the fall of the Soviet Union - what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage there's no betrayal of trust.

Then I was lucky I met with my future husband and I started new life with my husband and I was happy again. He was a musician. I start to travel with him through Europe also and around the former Soviet Union.

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid loans technology and the hard currency of our tourists.

A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive - especially now when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages.

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

I decided to create a sports club during the Soviet times. It was my dream.

What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention saved the myth.

Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.