Moscow, Russia 1994

The year 1956 witnessed several of the defining moments of the Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes; the Suez Crisis ushered in decades of superpower rivalry in the Middle East; and an anti-Communist uprising in Hungary was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks.

I was born in the United States in 1956, and was indoctrinated to believe that the Soviet Union intended to destroy my country's way of life and abolish its personal freedoms. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Soviet children were being schooled to believe that the United States sought to corrupt their souls with the selfish ideology of capitalism. The two superpowers divided the world between them and constructed immense psychological barriers to mutual understanding and reconciliation. To sustain popular support it was necessary to demonize the enemy as an implacably hostile foe. Ronald Reagan voiced this imperative by repeatedly referring to the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" during his presidency.

The Cold War ended on November 9, 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall — a consequence of the economic collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the desire of its people for greater personal freedom. As a photojournalist based in Western Europe I was able to witness the euphoria of thousands of East Germans as they walked through the open wall and into an unknown world. Families and friends, reunited for the first time in years, tearfully embraced each other amid the flowers and champagne being offered by the West Germans. Conscious that the divided world we had all known for the past 50 years was merging into one, I found it emotionally difficult to photograph these scenes.

Moscow, Russia 1994

The ensuing years brought political, economic and social chaos to the countries of the former Soviet bloc as they struggled to redefine themselves following their emancipation. Having been given a contract by TIME magazine in the early 1990s, I had an open ticket to witness and document the transformation of the so-called Evil Empire for myself.

- Anthony Suau

THE OPENING