Berlin Wall | Charlotte's VVeb

bbc Audiences are now be able to re-live one of the defining moments in post-war history as the BBC Archive releases its latest online collection documenting the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. The collection reveals the history of the Berlin Wall from its post-war creation to the huge popular uprising that saw it torn down in 1989 and focuses on the impact of the Iron Curtain on the lives of East and West Berliners. Broadcasts spanning the period from the Soviet Blockade in 1948 to the formal reunification of Germany in 1990, and explores how one city came to represent the political stand-off between East and West during the Cold War will now be available

Published just weeks before the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, the collection will enable the public to witness footage not seen in decades and hear first hand accounts of one of the most defining moments in history. It also explores what the consequences of this were for citizens united by family, employment and friendship but divided by a 27-mile-long fortified concrete and mesh barrier.

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I wrote this piece for the April issue of Anglomania. Unfortunately, they credited it to someone else who is called Olivia, which was rather annoying but there should be a correction and apology in the May issue.

Russia and the West: A New Cold War

This year, Germany and most of the world will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Built in 1961, the wall became a physical symbol of the very real socio-politico-economic and ideological divide between East and West during the Cold War; the West was capitalist, while in the East, political regimes, labeled as communist, held control. However, it is important to remember that the term was merely a label. In reality, what actually existed were dictatorships of a new, emerging elite rather than of the proletariat. Moreover, the struggle between East and West had little to do with ideology, particularly as time progressed. Instead, between 1945 and 1991 the Cold War proved to be no more than a period of competition between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States of America, for world domination and superiority, masked in the guise of ideological rhetoric. However, due to the closed borders and limited flow of knowledge in both directions, citizens in the USSR and the West truly believed that ideology was the basis for the struggle.