AP

It would be a shame to let the week pass without taking note of an anniversary of historical significance: the 29th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech.

It was June 1987 when Reagan traveled to Berlin to celebrate that city’s 750th birthday. He made a speech that no one around him – not his advisors, not his cabinet members, not his State Department staff – wanted him to deliver.

Reagan’s circle agreed that the address should be used to nurture bonds of friendship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan held firm. In the car on the way to the Brandenburg Gate, he told his chief of staff he was going to give the speech he felt he should.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

His words shook the foundations of the Berlin Wall, that symbol of oppression, and communism itself.

“When Reagan climbed the dais, just before 2 p.m., two bulletproof panes of glass stood behind him, to protect against snipers who might target him from the East,” Time magazine reported. “Earlier in the day Reagan had looked across the wall into East Berlin from a balcony of the Reichstag. He later said that his forceful tone had been influenced by his learning that East German police had forced people away from the wall to prevent them from hearing his speech over the loudspeakers.”

The speech itself was at times folksy and engaging, and at other times strident. It culminated in something that now sounds “as much like an invitation as it does a challenge,” as Time observed.

“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace,” Reagan said. “There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Today we can debate the significance and the intention of the speech. Some scholars say Reagan’s intention all along was to set conditions for negotiating the end of the Cold War (Berlin’s reunification would not be negotiable). Some see the speech as the real beginning of that end.

What we shouldn’t lose sight of, though, is that communism was a real threat in 1987. And as time softens the edges of our memory of its atrocities, we should firmly bear in mind that even at its cultural height, the Soviet system only ever survived by shooting people who tried to escape it.

Redistribution schemes are all the rage now, with French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” an unlikely New York Times bestseller. In it, he praises the “Soviet experiment.”

Piketty is dusting off ideas that should have crumbled along with the Berlin Wall.

As we remember Reagan’s speech, let’s remember the reasons for it.