You have to be over 40 years old to have been an adult at the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 (some say 1989, others 1991, so split the difference). There are now people voting in presidential elections who were born after the Evil Empire's demise. For older folks, this is an astonishing thing, since those who grew up in the 1950s through the 1970s were constantly told, by the USSR and most of the Western media, that the Soviets would outlast the decadent West, that they had a powerful economy and that they would eventually rule the world. There were plenty of people who did not buy into this fantasy, and they are more than entitled to the last laugh here.

For those who really did the studying, and looked past the headlines into the reality of life under Communism, it was clear very early on that the USSR was an unsustainable enterprise. It was not only due to the natural weaknesses and inefficiencies of a centrally controlled economy, or the resentment building among the captive nations. The Soviet Union was a crazy quilt of so-called Socialist Republics, all conquered or subverted from within, but the huge cultural, ethnic and language differences among the constituent regions was a festering problem that was never addressed. There were many chinks in the USSR's armor as the world entered a new era with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Top tyrants of all time

Like him or not, President Reagan is credited by the formerly captive peoples of the Soviet Union for freeing them from one of the bloodiest dictatorships in history. Adolph Hitler, as vicious, vile and evil a tyrant as any who ever lived, was responsible for some 10 million deaths in concentration camps and civilian massacres. The Japanese Empire killed some 20 million Chinese and Asians, and China's Mao Tse-Tung is credited with killing approximately 40-50 million of his own people. The Soviets, under Lenin and Stalin, account for 60 million or so. The horrendously obscene numbers leave the brain spinning.

So, enter President Reagan in 1980, determined to win the Cold War and set as many people free as possible. To this end he would use many tools, from geopolitical maneuvering and statesmanship to spy networks, proxy battles from Africa to Central America and a great deal of economic pressure. President Reagan also began a small (at first) program to expand radio broadcasts, publishing and communications of all kinds with the people of the USSR. He knew in his gut that the West's intelligence agencies were overstating the Soviets' economic and military wherewithal, so President Reagan kept up his broad-based campaign in the face of harrowing media coverage, pessimistic politicians (mostly Democrats) and the huffing and puffing of the accommodationist Europeans. The President was a dumb old cowboy to the French, especially, who took America's muscular new role as a threat to planetary existence.

Reagan was right

Interestingly, the component of President Reagan's broad-based campaign that ended up being the most important was not the military expenditures, the Star Wars space platforms or the propaganda machine. It was the smuggling of fax machines, phones, newspapers, radios and other means of communication that really accelerated the Soviet decline. As more and more information got to more and more people, a groundswell of opposition metamorphosed into a national movement. It did not happen overnight, of course, but from 1980 to 1988, under President Reagan's two terms, fax machines became the central component of an unofficial, bottom-up, grassroots movement that sought to do nothing more than tell the truth.

President Reagan was right about his hunches, for the most part, and right to believe that the truth really would set people free. As more and more fax machines and other small communications tools (mimeographs, photocopiers, radios, etc.) spread throughout the huge swath of the Earth that was under the Kremlin's collective thumb, more and more information got to more and more people. Once people's hearts and minds have been illuminated, and once they have hope that things can change (and that someone, somewhere cares about what happens to them), it's the beginning of the end for tyrants.

Bottom line

Businesses know the value of fax machines. In fact, even with e-mail spreading like kudzu there are still a few hundred million fax machines in use. Why? For one thing, it is because they are simple and dependable, and you do not need broadband to use them (hard to get in Equatorial Africa). Online faxing was developed to be a bridge between fax machine users and computer users, and faxing (of all kinds) is not going anywhere, not anytime soon. Next time you pass by your fax machine, or see one somewhere, why not give it a little pat and say, "Thanks for taking down the Evil Empire, little buddy."