News Release: Nine Days That Changed the World

Most people know that President Ronald Reagan put an end to the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union. But most people do not know that the spark that led to the collapse of communism ignited 12 years earlier, when Pope John Paul II paid his first visit to his native Poland after ascending to the papacy.

Now a new documentary hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich, Nine Days that Changed the World, recounts, in stirring detail, that visit and its profound effects.

Sixteen months after the Pope’s visit, Poles formed a union called Solidarity, allowing them to organize free from state control. Ultimately a chain of events unfolded that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Mikhail Gorbachev’s acquiescence to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Nine Days tells this story. The Gingriches narrate the 94-minute film, but they played a greater role, helping produce the documentary through their company, Gingrich Productions, and providing concepts, introductions, and backing.

Find out all about it in this article about Nine Days that Changed the World, the new documentary hosted by Newt and Callista Gringrich, and their take on the historic lessons from the chain of events that followed Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Poland when the country was under Soviet rule.