Despite Russia's worsening relations with the West, the fall of the Berlin Wall still symbolizes the optimism that came during the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.

The wall - perhaps the most prominent of Cold War symbols - came down Nov. 9, 1989, bringing an end to the division of Europe that sliced the continent in half for 40 years.

Many had long dreamed for the events of that November night 10 years ago this Tuesday.

Artyom Krylov, a junior Red Army officer who fought in Germany during World War II and was stationed in Hungary when the wall went up in August 1961, says he was against its construction.

"When the wall was being built, it felt as if I were trapped in a room," said Krylov, who now lives in Moscow. "It was as if I were being punished for a reason I didn't know."

When the wall fell, however, it did so unexpectedly, bringing in its wake a series of events that destroyed the Warsaw Pact and led to the reunification of Germany.

"It should have taken place earlier," Krylov said. "When it actually happened, I thought, 'At last - wisdom has won over stupidity.'"

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader under whose stewardship the Soviet bloc fell apart, now says the event wasn't as simple as it seems in retrospect. "A lot had to take place for the Berlin Wall to come down," he said last month while releasing his book on the wall's demise, "How It Was."

The poignant images of the wall's physical crumbling are now fixed in global history as a spontaneous triumph of collective individual will over state tyranny. But the event followed a process that had taken years and was chiefly driven by a small number of reform-minded officials.

Before the wall could collapse, much was done in Budapest, Warsaw and Moscow.

Gorbachev's accession to the Soviet leadership in March 1985 was a chief factor that paved the way for Europe's reunification, even though his rule by no means guaranteed the wall's collapse.

Gorbachev's "perestroika" reforms replaced Stalin-era foreign policy that outlined the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and saw notorious clampdowns on reform in 1956 Budapest and 1968 Prague. With Gorbachev came the notion that Soviet bloc countries should make their own decisions.

"We held elections in 1989, and after that, we couldn't refuse other Warsaw Pact countries to do the same," Gorbachev said. "After perestroika, each country had to determine its own fate."

But it was not immediately clear if and how reforms would come to Eastern Europe.

"Inside Eastern Europe itself there were three elements which pushed the region toward the drama of 1989," writes Misha Glenny, a journalist covering Eastern Europe at the time. "The tenacity of reformers inside the Hungarian Communist party; the realization on the part of Polish communists that they could not govern their country; and finally people power - the profound frustration of ordinary East Germans compelled to live in Europe's largest prison."

East Germany and Czechoslovakia spearheaded opposition to reform.

But in Poland, thanks in part to Gorbachev's policies, the beleaguered Solidarity trade union movement was able to recover from its brutal supression by the state from 1981 through 1983 and lead the way to the creation of a non-Communist government in September 1989 after the historic Round Table talks.

In Hungary - where relatively lax policies from Moscow following 1956 led to a slow process of gradual reform - the ousting of Communist leader Janos Kadar in 1988 led to a process of market reform.

It was indeed among the Hungarian Party leadership, headed by Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, that the fall of the Berlin Wall was first seriously advocated - at great risk to its members.

In the summer of 1989, streams of vacationing East Germans came to Hungary, sensing a change in the political winds, and first breached the Iron Curtain.

On Sept. 10, Hungary first opened its border with Austria to allow East Germans without visas to travel to West Germany, triggering a rush for the border, with around 25,000 departures via the route in just three weeks.

Similar scenes occurred in Czechoslovakia, where tens of thousands of East Germans lined up for visas, many of them having made their way to Prague via Poland.

The unrest spread to East Germany itself, with demonstrations organized in Leipzig every Monday from Sept. 4, increasing steadily in number each week. On Oct. 2, 20,000 people gathered at the Saint Nicholas church in a weekly "prayer for peace."

On Oct. 7, Gorbachev visited East Germany on an official visit to celebrate the state's 40th anniversary. There, he issued veiled criticisms of the state's leadership for its failure to move with the times.

The Oct. 18 replacement of hard-line party leader Erich Honecker - an architect of the Berlin Wall - by Egon Krenz did nothing to stem the tide.

On Nov. 4, a million people demonstrated in East Berlin, with hundreds of thousands more on the streets of other East German cities.

Five days later, the East German Politburo announced that East Germans were now free to travel westward. By 9:30 p.m., tens of thousands of East Germans began to head for the wall.

Ten years on, Russia's economic crises, increasing poverty and reduced status in international politics have made much of its population increasingly resentful toward the West. U.S. bombing in Iraq, followed by NATO's air attacks on Yugloslavia last spring, brought forward a wave of anti-Americanism during which angry crowds pelted the U.S. Embassy with paint and bottles.

The public's mood later lightened, but Western accusations of high-level corruption in Russia and the West's opposition to Russia's campaign in the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya are contributing to ongoing political tensions.

Former acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar - an icon of Russia's era of westernizing market reforms earlier this decade - now warns of danger in the worsening relations.

"Relations between Russia and the West went through various stages, from a period of romance to a drifting apart," Gaidar said. "The problem now is for countries not to become upset with each other."

An opinion poll published in the French magazine Courrier International on Nov. 3 showed one in five Russians felt the fall of the wall had negative results, AP reported.

But as former members of the Soviet bloc appraise the changes that have taken place since the wall's collapse, Berlin is preparing for a big bash to celebrate the momentous occasion's anniversary.

The former leaders of the Soviet Union, Germany and the United States - Gorbachev,

Helmut Kohl and George Bush, respectively - will mark the occasion by taking part in the Nov. 9 event.

The three politicians were leaders of their respective countries in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

Berlin began 10 days of celebrations on Nov. 4. But the highlight will be this Tuesday's celebration at the Brandenburg Gate, which will include a concert by the Scorpions rock band, accompanied by 165 cellists, including the renowned Mstislav Rostropovich.