Document No. 101: Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev regarding the Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989

This extraordinary diary entry from inside the Kremlin on the day after the Wall’s collapse captures the “snapshot” reaction of one of the closest and most loyal of Gorbachev’s assistants. Chernyaev practically cheers “the end of Yalta” and the “Stalinist legacy” in Europe, and sees “the shift in the world balance of forces” towards ideas like the common European home and the Soviet Union’s integration with Europe. All of this he attributes to Gorbachev leading, not standing in the way._____...