Correspondent of the Year

Does Washington Get It? People Want Democracy
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Before we slide into another costly, long-term strategic confrontation, the White House should give serious thought to the then brain-dead status of our "experts" when Soviet communism collapsed in August 1991, ending the Cold War.

As stated frankly by James H. Billington, librarian of Congress, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the following year: "We are living in the midst of a great historical drama that we did not expect, do not understand, and cannot even name."

My official liaison assignments during most of the Cold War, in both military and civilian capacities, revealed a critical but little-known vulnerability of the Soviet Union -- deeply held attitudes of ordinary Russians contrasting dissatisfaction with their regime with positive feelings toward the United States. While I was not present in Moscow in 1991, I find the following judgment to explain fully Billington's extraordinary statement: Washington, in 2009, has still not grasped the fact that the Russian people, fed up with one-party rule and harboring pro-American sentiments, had assembled in Moscow's streets and peaceably achieved a historic, popular, democratic revolution.

Lincoln Landis.
Locust Grove.