Madam, – Vincent Browne’s reprehensible defence of the construction of the Berlin Wall (Opinion, November 11th) was more suited to the Soviet propaganda newspaper Pravda than The Irish Times.
His belief that its fall did not “liberate” the people of East Germany makes a mockery of the hundreds of people who died trying to escape the tyranny of the Soviet satellite state, not to mention the thousands who suffered from the brutality of the Soviet-backed junta.
In Mr Browne’s dogmatic world, his antipathy towards the success of western liberal democracies has led him to believe a totalitarian, evil regime is somehow preferable for the people of East Germany than the freedom they have under the current form of government. This is not just an indefensible position but it is profoundly morally wrong. Your fine newspaper is lessened by it. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Vincent Browne’s Cold War apologia for the Soviet Union (“Berlin Wall celebrations mask reason it was built”, November 11th) is fanciful. To be sure the Soviet Union sustained the greatest losses of the second World War, but he seems to have forgotten the Soviet’s key role in starting that war.
Stalin’s mendacity in his 1939 pact with Hitler gave the Nazis free rein to begin their war of domination. It is often forgotten that Poland was not only invaded by Germany in 1939, but also by the Soviet Union – and to devastating effect.
He goes on to celebrate the “brilliantly conducted campaign in Eastern Europe”. That, presumably, would be the same campaign of wholesale rape of the women of those countries, as well as the sucking into the gulag of countless democrats and humanitarians such as Raoul Wallenberg (the great saviour of Jews in Hungary and elsewhere), never to be heard from again? Now that Mr Browne has treated us to the Soviet reasons for the erection of the Berlin Wall, can we now look forward to his explanations for Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968? I can’t wait. – Yours, etc,