Media :
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Sun, 8 Nov 2009, 09:05 on BBC World Service.
Synopsis
THE FORUM - A World Of Ideas - presented by BRIDGET KENDALL.
"All we knew was we were against something, none of us ever thought about the future and what we were for"...1989 The Berlin Wall falls and many have a night to remember. By the end of the year the Soviet communist empire in Eastern Europe disappears.
But as no-one foresees 1989’s swift and largely bloodless revolutions, so no-one has a plan for what to do next.
Meanwhile, even as the Cold War draws to a close the world is changing in ways few recognise. The outcome for all our futures and freedoms is far from inevitable and we may not be heading in the right direction.
THIS WEEK'S ILLUSTRATION
The Berlin Wall destroyed from above or below. And what next? By Emily Kasriel
MARY ELISE SAROTTE
Political historian Mary Elise Sarotte charts the chaotic and exuberant events of the evening of November 9th 1989 in Berlin and the reunification of East and West Germany which followed.
JAN URBAN
Jan Urban, a leading Czech dissident during the Velvet Revolution, recalls events from the inside, drinking champagne and the lessons about the extent and limits of people power which go unlearned.
SASKIA SASSEN
While globalisation expert Saskia Sassen maps some of the deep transformational changes that occur in the twenty years after 1989 and doesn’t much like what she sees. Nor, she suggests, should we.
RECORDING THE FORUM
IN NEXT WEEK'S PROGRAMME
What bees see and the limits of perception; there is virtue in forgetting; and Anthony Gormley on the unexpected power of the human body.
Broadcast
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Sun 8 Nov 200909:05
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