A couple of weeks after the breach of the Berlin Wall, I wrote an article about rabbits.

The wall through Berlin was actually two parallel cement barriers with a no man’s land between, and in the in-between haven of this strip rabbits had multiplied like, well, rabbits, often fed by tourists from the observation platforms built along the wall on the West Berlin side.

After the border crossings fell open, thousands of people began chipping away at the wall itself — a tough, noisy and, in my case, painful exercise (I smashed my thumb with a hammer). Before long, gaps appeared in the wall, and out hopped the bunnies, into what they probably believed was a world paved with lettuce. Alas, it proved to be a world teeming with cats, dogs and cars. It was awful.

Now, 30 years later, the story of the rabbits may seem more prescient than it should. I intended it as no more than an allegory for the unrealistic expectations raised by the dramatic and unexpected fall of a barrier that had come to symbolize the division of Europe, and the world, into zones of freedom and captivity. At that moment, whatever problems lay ahead, the magnitude and sheer joy of what was happening pushed aside any doubt that, in time, liberated people (and rabbits) would adapt and flourish, that the world would become a better place.

The moment was all the more exhilarating because it was so totally unexpected. Yes, the promise of change had been palpable ever since a young new leader in the Kremlin named Mikhail Gorbachev had begun loosening the bonds. East Germans had been marching through the streets of Leipzig, Dresden and even East Berlin, and fleeing in swelling numbers through openings in the Iron Curtain in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Change was very much in the air.