Tide of Democracy Sweeping Over China, East Europe, Reagan Says

LONDON — Former President Ronald Reagan, in his first overseas speech since leaving office, said Tuesday that a tide of democracy is surging through the Communist world and bringing the collapse of totalitarianism nearer.

Reagan said that events in China and Eastern Europe have planted irrepressible “seeds of democracy.”

Speaking in the medieval Guildhall, historic heart of London’s financial district, the 78-year-old former President said the bloody suppression of popular unrest in China could not destroy the democratic yearnings of its people.

“You can’t massacre an idea. You cannot run tanks over hope. You cannot riddle a people’s yearning with bullets,” he said in the English-Speaking Union’s annual lecture in memory of British wartime leader Winston Churchill. Churchill’s two-finger “V for Victory” salute had become the symbol of defiance of Chinese students manning the Beijing barricades, Reagan said.

“Those heroic Chinese students who gave their lives have released the spirit of democracy, and it cannot be called back. That spirit is loose upon the world this spring,” he said. “This spring, the seeds of democracy have been planted. It may take years or even decades before the people of these countries can sit in the shade of democracy, but sit in the shade of democracy they some day will.”

Reagan returned time and again to a central theme: that the unstoppable march of technology, defeating censorship and state control, is the greatest force for human freedom.

“Technology will make it increasingly difficult for the state to control the information its people receive. . . . The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip,” he said.