When in 1988, Mr. Meyer was installed as Newsweek's man in Germany and central Europe, no one, least of all the man himself, imagined that he would have a front row seat to the fall of the Iron Curtain. As he points out early on in this compelling recount of 1989 and the death knell of widespread Communism, few predicted that year's political tumult, with even fewer prepared for its ramifications. With admirable dedication, Mr. Meyer makes up for his shock by leaving few political stones unturned as, resulting from a dizzying number of trips to various Communist strongholds, he captures the pivotal moments of Communism's collapse in East Germany, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, all while drawing vivid portraits of each country's prime movers. From the secretive efforts of reformists to put Hungary on a capitalist footing to the last, vicious days of Romania's despotic leader, Mr. Meyer allows us to watch the sad end to a disastrous social experiment which hindsight makes seem so fraught with folly.
There is, I believe, a consensus among reasonable human beings that fairness, in life and society, is a vital virtue worth striving for, that inequities should be minimized where possible as a means of giving everyone an opportunity to succeed. But as noble as this idea may seem, its wisdom is not matched by our arrogance which demands that we act before we fully grasp the consequences of our policies. Fairness is worth fighting for, but not when it means, as it so often has, economic ruin. When we allowed half the world to be swallowed up by Communism, it was in the name of fairness and idealism. The planned economy would bring efficiency and fairness to the population. But what resulted was economic stagnation brought about by a lack of innovation and a total ignorance of the human drive for self-preservation.
An order comes down from the leadership that 10,000 tons of corn must be harvested this year, but as the local boss you know full well that you can only produce half that amount. So, in a world where disappointment leads to being fired, if lucky, and prison, if not, would you tell the truth to power, risking your family's wellbeing, or would you lie to preserve yourself at the expense of disseminating critical, false information through the economy about the abundance of food? You'd not be alone if you chose to lie. Most would. And this is precisely how a planned economy transforms itself from something that ought to be more efficient than the chaos of the free market into something that is disastrously less efficient than the free market. This leads to the real deaths of real people while the political leadership, secure in the knowledge of an efficient system, and their own role in enforcing that system, consolidate their hold on power and, in the name of public morale and national unity, trumpet their own achievements until it becomes impossible for them to tolerate dissent.
This is the spirit of the world Mr. Meyer captures, a world in which millions upon millions of people were consigned to suffer under the weight of the bloated egos of their dictators while the rest of the world moved on. The sadness of their collective realizations of what they've lost is balanced against the joy in the freedoms they've won. Freedom, yes, but such scars they've earned in its attaining. The Year That Changed The World is an apt title for the events of 1989 which changed the fates of countless lives and Mr. Meyer was there to tell us how it all went down. Work well done. (4/5 Stars)
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