With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tape of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate is likely to be played and replayed. ``Mr. Gorbachev,'' he declared, ``tear down this wall!''

But how significant was the speech, really? How important was its seemingly defiant tone in reuniting Berlin and ``winning'' the Cold War?

To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.

But people who say this ignore the actual history and context of the speech. In fact, Reagan's address served the purpose of shoring up public support as he moved to upgrade American relations with the Soviet Union. It was Reagan's diplomacy with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, bitterly opposed at the time by his conservative former supporters, that did the most to create the climate in which the Cold War could end.

By the time Reagan delivered his Berlin Wall speech, in June 1987, he had held two summits with Gorbachev and was moving toward two more. He was in negotiations for the arms-control treaty he signed later that year. In fact, during his second term, Reagan met five times with Gorbachev, more than any other U.S. president had met a Soviet leader during the Cold War.

When Reagan won Senate ratification of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, it was the first arms-control treaty with the Soviets to win approval in 15 years. At a 1988 summit in Moscow, Reagan backed away from his famous remark five years earlier that the Soviet Union was an ``evil empire.'' He told reporters: ``That was another time, another era.''

Reagan's conciliatory policies toward the Soviets provoked anguished and increasingly bitter denunciations from the right wing.

Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus branded Reagan ``a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.'' Conservative columnist George Will pounded away at Reagan for having changed. ``Four years ago, many people considered Reagan a keeper of the Cold War flame,'' he wrote in 1988. ``Time flies. For conservatives, Ronald Reagan's foreign policy has produced much surprise, but little delight.'' Even when Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, ran for president in 1988 he suggested that Reagan had gone too far in his diplomacy with the Soviet leader.

The Berlin Wall speech produced an intense fight within the Reagan administration. The speech was drafted by a young White House speechwriter, Peter Robinson, and was cleared by Reagan's domestic advisers. Reagan's foreign policy advisers balked at the ``Mr. Gorbachev'' line. They worried that it might undermine Gorbachev's political position in Moscow, making him the target of hard-line elements within the Soviet leadership and weakening his ability to reach out to the West.

Reagan decided to leave the line in, judging rightly that Gorbachev could handle it. The speech served as a strong reaffirmation of the value of freedom and a reminder that, even as Cold War tensions eased, the United States would not accept the continuing division of Berlin, Germany or Europe.

Many Americans now assume the key part of Reagan's speech was the idea of tearing down the wall. But that was nothing new. It was almost boilerplate for American leaders to say the Berlin Wall should come down. Reagan himself had said in Washington, D.C., a year earlier, ``I would like to see the wall come down today, and I call upon those responsible to dismantle it.''

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