The latter. The fall of the Berlin Wall was only touched on briefly in this particular class, as part of a general overview of the Soviet Union's satellite empire unraveling, but the 1991 coup attempt is a pretty big part of the fall of the USSR itself.

The coup attempt happened in August, a week or so before my freshman year at WPI was set to start. My father and I were coincidentally on our way home from the last of our summer road trips when we got caught a few towns east of Worcester on I-90 by Hurricane Bob. Massport closed the Interstate and we sat out the storm in the Ramada Inn in Westborough, watching the Soviet coup on CNN (amazingly, the power and cable stayed on at the Ramada the whole time).

The things you end up remembering...

>... man, you are probably in class with a number of fellow undergrads
>who literally did not exist when either of those two things happened.
>That must be so weird.

It is a bit.

>>Laura Kinney and the Maiden in the Ice, A Fire
>>to be Lighted, and A Bride Too Far, for instance, all
>>happened during long stints at my campus job, where I can't get much
>>done on regular coursework for various logistical reasons.
>
>I find this supremely ironic because the unspoken reason for much
>on-campus student employment, back in the day, was to kick back a few
>shekels into student pockets while providing them with a "job" that
>essentially consisted of them spending two hours doing actual work and
>then six hours studying at their desk during any given eight-hour
>shift.

To be fair, my work study job is in the mechanical engineering technology department, where running the tool crib in the Machine Tool Laboratory is considered (with some justification) Work In Field. It's not really reasonable to be down on that job for not providing an environment conducive to doing research papers in history.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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