The Brian Lehrer Show got its start in 1989, the year that the Berlin Wall came down, Solidarity was elected to power in Poland and the essay “The End of History” about the fall of communism was published. Jan Kubik, professor and chair of political science at Rutgers University, was able to return to his native Poland for the first time in seven years that fall and he talks about how protest helped bring down the Soviet empire and how culture, politics and quality of life have actually evolved over the past 25 years.  Prof. Kubik is the author of The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland, and the co-editor of Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration .