In unified Germany, split over the past

[Jaga]

EISENHUETTENSTADT, GERMANY -- In this fading factory town, built more than a half-century ago to honor Stalin, the former East German dictatorship still generates fond memories.


As Germans prepare to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- a spontaneous burst of freedom that led to the collapse of communism in Europe -- the country remains divided in its memories of the old days.

Many residents of the former East Germany resent what they say is an unfair characterization of their country as a "criminal state" by their counterparts in the west. Instead, they say, the German Democratic Republic was a well-intentioned, if flawed, experiment in socialism that denounced the evils of the Nazis.

In a survey commissioned by the federal government to assess how Germans feel today about the events of 1989, 57 percent of those in the eastern half of the country said life under communist rule was, on balance, more positive than negative.

"What people really are saying is, 'I didn't do everything wrong, I didn't live in vain,' " said Gabriele Haubold, an architect and city planner in Eisenhuettenstadt, which was founded as a model socialist city but has suffered since 1989, losing more than one-third of its population.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110404526.html?hpid=artslot

[kaima]

Whoops, I posted this under the wrong thread originally... I hope this cut and paste works!

Wall Street Journal:

In Eastern Bloc, Wary View of Democracy

By CHARLES FORELLE

People who lived behind the Iron Curtain are substantially happier with life 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but express reservations about democracy, capitalism and their lot in the modern market economy, a new survey reports.



A new poll finds many Hungarians nostalgic for life before the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago.

Fewer than a third of Ukrainians approve of the change to multiparty democracy, according to a wide-ranging poll by the Pew Research Center. In Russia, a majority mourns the Soviet Union, and nearly half say there ought to be a Russian empire. In every former Soviet bloc country polled, fewer people now support the shift to capitalism than in 1991. Seventy-two percent of Hungarians say their economic situation was better under the Communists.

The survey comes amid a financial crisis that is straining the adolescent market economies of the old Eastern bloc, and its findings reflect mixed -- and sometimes paradoxical -- attitudes in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Overall, majorities -- albeit some slender ones -- in every country but Ukraine approve of the shift to democracy. Ethnic hostilities, while persistent, have generally declined, and majorities or pluralities in all countries except Hungary and Ukraine welcome capitalism.

But significant worries remain about corruption, judicial fairness and the privileges of the rich and well-connected. Older people are far more wary of the new systems than their younger compatriots.

In one paradox, most nations are generally more favorably disposed toward immigrants than in 1991 -- but also support tighter immigration controls.


In spring 1991, amid the early, turbulent moments of the East's emergence from communism, Pew's predecessor, the Times Mirror Center, surveyed 12,569 people in nine countries (the U.K., Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain) and three Soviet republics (Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine). This fall, the Pew center returned to those places.

In some ways, the Eastern countries have converged with Western ones. Opinions on the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are generally favorable everywhere except Hungary and the U.K., which are both sour on the EU.

In other areas, a gap remains. Roughly twice as many people in the East disapprove of ethnic and religious diversity as do their counterparts in France, Spain, Germany and the U.K. (Italy, where 84% have an unfavorable view of Gypsies, is a Western exception.)

In the former Eastern bloc, the financial crisis has amplified disparities: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, which have weathered the turbulence relatively well, are most welcoming of democracy and capitalism. However, battered Hungary, Ukraine and Lithuania are still trying to claw their way back. Hungary is a notable outlier. Support for capitalism was 80% in 1991; it is now 46%. Recession has worsened discontent with the government.

"What people think of capitalism and democracy is very strongly linked to what people think of the government," says Márk Szabó of the Perspective Institute in Budapest. His firm's polls show more than half of Hungarians don't believe the government can handle the crisis. Hungarians' dismay with the market economy has been mounting for years, Mr. Szabó says, as it becomes clearer that promised social benefits can't be sustained.

[kaima]

11/06/2009 04:53 PM
SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview with Lech Walesa
'It's Good that Gorbachev Was a Weak Politician'

The world is looking to Berlin as the city celebrates 20 years since the fall of the Wall. But in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Lech Walesa, the man who led Solidarnosc, says that the collapse of communism started in the Polish shipyards -- and that East German "deserters" endangered his ultimate success.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you looking forward to travelling to Berlin on Monday for the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Walesa: It's not important whether I'm looking forward to it or not. I am a politician who played an important role in the reunification of Germany and I was invited to take part in the celebration. It's not like a piece of candy handed out to a sweet little boy.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The guest list in Berlin is an impressive one. Chancellor Angela Merkel is expecting numerous world leaders to attend, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, among others. Surely it is an honor to be a part of it.

Walesa: The first wall to fall was pushed over in 1980 in the Polish shipyards. Later, other symbolic walls came down, and the Germans, of course, tore down the literal wall in Berlin. The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: There were, of course, a number of other attempts to revolt against Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. The Hungarians in 1956. The Czechs in 1968. Why did your Solidarnosc labor union succeed where others failed?

Walesa: The communists always beat back such attempts with their superior power. And they also staged demonstrations aimed at showing their support among the population as a way of establishing legitimacy. In 1980 in the shipyards, we tried to use the communists' strategy against them. We organized the people -- including workers outside of the shipyards -- and we received support from people from other countries. The Pope, who played the most important role, arranged a collective prayer, not just in Poland but also elsewhere. We found that there were millions of us. For the first time, the communists were not able to stage a demonstration that was larger than ours. As a result, they felt weak, and this was an important element in their ultimate defeat.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, even until late in the 1980s, it wasn't clear that communism was headed for collapse. Did you really believe that the Soviets would sit back and allow communist governments in Eastern Europe to be overthrown?

Walesa: The greatest fears I had came out of concern for what might be happening behind the scenes. We defeated communism, and the people in East Germany began to flee via the embassies of other countries. The Berlin Wall fell because of these deserters. I was worried that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev would decide to block the mass escape and thus destroy our victory. The game was a dangerous one. It is good that Gorbachev was a weak politician and that everything went well. But that's now history so we can accept the pictures from Berlin as they are. They are indeed beautiful.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Last week, former US President George H. W. Bush, ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Gorbachev were in Berlin to discuss the end of the Cold War. Certainly Western pressure was one reason that Gorbachev didn't act to block the East German exodus?

Walesa: The politicians always told us that the Cold War stand-off could only change by way of nuclear war. None of them believed that such systemic change was possible. They now express gratitude to the people for having made the changes possible, but at the same time they present themselves as the fathers of German reunification. In truth, they were only accidental fathers of the fall of the Wall -- forced into action by the masses.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why were they so taken by surprise?

Walesa: Because they are true politicians. Politicians count everything: they compare the number of tanks, missiles and guns possessed by each side. And the wiser the politician was -- the better the computer model they used -- the more impossible the fall of the Berlin Wall appeared. Even today, if you were to enter the same data into a computer, the answer would be the same: no chance. But revolutionaries think differently.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Walesa: There were great changes taking place in the Soviet Union and a number of leadership changes had taken place, with one Soviet leader after another dying. Such a situation necessarily leads to some destabilization. At the same time, we began mobilizing the masses and Gorbachev didn't know what to do. He had little choice but to accept things as they were -- just shooting at the masses would not have been enough because there were too many of us. The career politicians were unable to see that.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Many, of course, see things differently. The Americans, for example, are fond of pointing to Reagan's "Tear Down this Wall" speech as being a decisive event leading to its fall. The Russians point to perestroika.

Walesa: Normal people from Germany, Russia and the US have shown us more support. But the politicians have merely toyed with the memory of the event. That's why when I see images of Bush, Kohl and Gorbachev under the headline "Three Fathers of the Fall of the Wall," it looks more like chance to me than anything. They merely implemented the desires expressed by the people.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are those desires accurately reflected by the Poland and the Europe of today?

Walesa: If someone had told me before I began the struggle that I would one day live in a Poland and Europe like that of today, I would never have believed it. But even so, when I look back and see all the chances that we missed, I am not satisfied. It is something I always say: I am for it, but I am also against it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What sort of missed chances are you talking about?

Walesa: Democracy is made up of three elements. One is whether the laws support pluralistic principles. The second is whether the people take advantage of these laws. The third element is whether the peoples' wallets are thick enough to benefit from this democracy. In Poland, we have the legal foundation for democracy. We haven't proven very adept at taking advantage of it however. And the situation of our wallets is even worse.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You haven't held a political office in Poland since your defeat in the 1995 presidential election to the ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski. Yet you have remained a voice in Polish politics and have at times been vocal in your criticism of Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski. It seems like you feel your political work is not yet done.

Walesa: There is a risk right now that we might lose the victory that we fought so hard for. The question is whether we have learned from our experiences or whether we need another whack upside the head from history. The masses learned, but after the victory the masses handed power back to the politicians. And they forget that it was we who won the victory. We might have to set the masses in motion once again.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You count yourself as one of the masses and not as a politician?

Walesa: Yes. But I belonged to that part of the masses that fought hard for victory over communism. I risked my life. And we won this victory, but the politicians ignore it. The victory over communism came thanks to the shipyards and thanks to the Holy Father. But now, nobody mentions the Holy Father. Nobody mentions Solidarnosc. The past isn't everything, but one cannot build a future on such a foundation -- and that's why I am trying to speak up today.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why wasn't Solidarnosc able to continue as a political power in Poland after it mobilized the masses to bring down communism?

Walesa: One can't just replace an old system with a new one. We won and then presented our victory to our country, to Germany and to Europe. Of course it's messy, but our task was not to replace communism, rather it was to enable the development of something else. In this regard, I acted against my own self-interest. A number of political parties sprang up after the defeat of communism and I couldn't belong to them all. I could no longer play the great Walesa. Ultimately, I weakened my own power, but it was more out of choice because I didn't want my name to be equated with that of Kim Il Sung or Lenin. Thus, I had to submit to political defeat in the name of democracy. That is my fate -- the fate of a true revolutionary.

Interview conducted by Charles Hawley in Gdansk

URL:

* www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,659752,00.html

[Nictoshek]

[pieter]

Taken over by the enemy

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a time of celebration, but also one of fear and uncertainty in the old East Germany. A country, and an ideology, collapsed. Factories closed, jobs disappeared and old values were turned upside down.
All of East German society felt the impact of those dramatic events, but perhaps none were as vulnerable as the country's foreign contract workers, or Vertragsarbeiter.

Over the years, tens of thousands of people had travelled to East Germany from fellow Socialist countries in the developing world; places like Angola, Cuba, Mozambique and Vietnam. They learnt technical skills and worked in factories.
To some extent, the scheme was driven by a sense of solidarity between friendly, ideologically-linked states.

But East Germany also used the migrant workers to overcome chronic labour shortages, and by sometimes keeping a portion of their wages, to pay-off debts owed to it by countries like Mozambique.

Isolated

In theory, migrant workers enjoyed the same rights and responsibilities as other workers in East Germany. In practice they were socially isolated, living in special barracks, and personal contacts with German co-workers were firmly discouraged.

When the wall fell in 1989, there were still some 90,000 Vetragsarbeiter in East Germany. Suddenly, the country and the ideology that had brought them to Europe had collapsed, and the majority were sent home.

This was often a traumatic experience. Returnees to Mozambique, for example, struggled to adapt to their war-ravaged homeland.

Today, many years later, they are still in an angry dispute with the Mozambican government about money owed from their time in East Germany. But a minority - perhaps as many as 20,000 Vetragsarbeiter - managed to stay in the new, unified Germany, and I wanted to find out how they have fared.

Racism

I met Joao Fortuna in the small town of Coswig, near Dresden. Joao arrived in East Germany back in 1980, one of the very first groups of Mozambicans to be sent.

"We were selected because of how well we'd done at school," he recalls.

Joao Fortuna says he has encountered more racism in post-reunification Germany
He showed me around the ruins of the old barracks on the edge of Coswick where he had once lived with 60 other young Mozambicans. Today, he is the only one left in the town.

He was allowed to stay after reunification because he was engaged to a German girl, something that would have been forbidden before the fall of the wall. The company where he worked closed down in the early 1990's, but with the right qualifications, Joao was able to get another job in a machine factory.

He is proud of what he has achieved; he has a comfortable apartment and can send money back to his relatives in Mozambique. But it is also clear that his life has not always been easy. He says in some ways, things were better under Communism.

"It was safer before," he explained. "In the old days we'd go out, play football with the locals; we didn't feel racism like we do now. Now there's fear, and at night you have to be careful."

He blames economic changes for this; the insecurity and unemployment that have come with Capitalism. Joao is now estranged from his German wife and is adamant that he is "100 per cent Mozambican".

He says he will go back home Mozambique to retire, "to sit on the beach, and feel the warm sun".

Unhappy story

Almuth Berger was a peace activist and pastor in East Germany. After the wall fell, she was appointed by the government to look at ways of helping the contract workers. "Some individuals and countries benefited from this scheme at a certain time, but overall, this is not a happy story," she says.

"Especially for the Mozambicans, I would say they were the clear losers when the wall came down." But the largest community of all the contract workers were from Communist Vietnam.

Nguyen Loan came to work in Karl-Marx Stadt (which has now reverted to its historical name of Chemnitz) in 1982. She worked in a factory that made metal screws, and she says life was tough. She and her friends were not prepared for the cold winters and when the 1989 revolution happened, the Vietnamese contract workers were "in shock". "We'd been taught to be Socialists, but now it looked like we were being taken over by the enemy," she remembers.

Most of Loan's friends returned to Vietnam soon afterwards. She stayed and does not regret it. After Communism, there were new opportunities. Now, she laughs when I ask if she feels more Vietnamese or German. "Fifty-fifty," she says, "I think like a Vietnamese person but my heart is more and more German."

[justjohn]

BBC NEWS

How a blunder finished off the Wall

When the Berlin Wall opened on 9 November 1989 Brian Hanrahan was the BBC News reporter on the ground. This year he's been back to talk to some of those whose decisions made this key moment in 20th Century history possible.

From the safe distance of 20 years, the opening of the Berlin Wall can be seen as inevitable - the natural consequence of changes that were reshaping Europe. But for most of 1989 it was unthinkable.

And the decision itself was an accident - intended neither to happen the way it did nor to spark off the tumultuous changes that followed.

I heard the inside story of what started this extraordinary rush of events from one of those who made the decision in the East German Politburo - the communist party's ruling body.

“ With hindsight, it's the border guards we must thank ”
Politburo reformer Hans Modrow

Hans Modrow was a communist reformer in the Gorbachev mould. He had only just been given a place on the Politburo as East Germany's leaders tried to head off the demands for change that were sweeping the country. But as a new boy his opinions counted for little.

He remembers an agitated discussion about the travel restrictions - the laws which banned most East Germans from leaving the country and which had sparked off the popular discontent.

At the end of it the party leader, Egon Krenz, suddenly produced a new set of regulations. From now on it would be much easier for East Germans to travel.

What annoyed Mr Modrow was the autocratic way in which the Communist Party still did business. "We couldn't change anything, he says, We sat there like stupid little boys. We just had to do what we were told."

'Blurted out'

But now came a blunder that would bring down the Berlin Wall and the East German state with it.

The intention was to announce the changes overnight and phase in the new rules the next morning. Instead one of the Politburo members, Guenter Schabowski, blurted out the plans during a televised press conference - and compounded his error by adding the new rules would come into force "immediately".

Live press conferences were a novelty in communist days, and Mr Schabowski was becoming something of a celebrity through his appearances. Mr Modrow is still scathing about Mr Schabowski's preening in front of the media.

"The order wasn't to be published until 0400 in the morning. But Mr Schabowski didn't notice. He went into an international press conference. And he was so arrogant and full of himself. We had no idea this was happening."

Mr Schabowski's announcement was complicated and bureaucratic, and like many others that evening I puzzled over it before concluding that it signalled free travel. If this was true it would mean the end of the Berlin Wall because the whole fearsome structure with its watchtowers, barbed wire and guard dogs had become redundant.

East Berliners were rather quicker off the mark. Tens of thousands of them started turning up at the border demanding to be let across.

But the guards hadn't been told anything - their standing orders were to stop anyone crossing. Until recently they'd been instructed to shoot to kill anyone who tried.

This night they tried to turn people back - but after a generation being pushed about Berliners turned belligerent and refused to go.

Stunned guards

The standoff between the armed guards and the angry crowds soon grew tense and dangerous.

The guards asked their headquarters for orders but the government ministries in charge of security told them nothing. Mr Modrow and the other Politburo members had gone home unaware of what was going on.

With radio and TV reports bringing more people on to the streets, Mr Modrow says it was the border guards themselves who decided what to do.

"With hindsight it's the border guards we must thank, not any of us in the Politburo. The guards on the ground - at the time - made the critical decision. They ignored their standing orders. They said, 'Open the border.'"

I arrived at the main border post just in time to see the barriers swing open as the guards gave up any attempt to regulate the crossing. They looked stunned at the mass of people streaming past them. Their whole world was collapsing about them.

But if East Germany's leaders were ignorant of what was happening, the rest of the world was already watching on television.

In Washington, James Baker was at lunch with the President of the Philippines, Cory Aquino, when he was told the news. A short while later, hearing that people were taking sledgehammers to the wall, he abandoned the table and hastened over to the White House.

Changed world

There he and President Bush were taken aback at what they saw. They'd had no warning. "It was happening before our eyes. Maybe the Soviet leadership saw it coming but I don't think anyone in allied capitals anticipated it happening with that speed."

And Mr Baker admitted candidly that he was daunted by the scale of the task ahead in reshaping world alliances. As the West's chief diplomat he would have to do most of it. "The world as I had known it all my adult life changed that day, and it changed fundamentally. I had grown up with the Cold War. Everyone in my generation had."

In the Kremlin the man most responsible for the change slept through it. The Soviet leader had been tipped off a few days earlier about the way the East Germans were thinking.

Mr Gorbachev chuckled as he remembered the rush to tell him what had happened. "They reported to me quite early in the morning. They were in a hurry to let me know. We had been expecting it to happen. It could have happened at any time."

And he was matter-of-fact about the consequences. "I took note of the report. It moved us on to a new phase. Not that I was enthusiastic about it, but I accepted it as something that had to happen. We understood that the time was coming for the German problem to be addressed."

In London Douglas Hurd had been foreign secretary for just 15 days. He noted the news from Berlin in his diary. "The regime and now the wall are crumbling fast," he wrote. But he was already wondering how he could persuade the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to consider the idea of a united Germany.

Berliners were only just opening the bottles of sparkling Sekt at the beginning of a street party that would last for days. Many were still uncertain what exactly was happening.

But in a few short hours they had changed the contours of world politics and there could be no going back. The inevitable, unthinkable accident had happened.
Story from BBC NEWS:
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8347753.stm

Published: 2009/11/08 05:53:26 GMT

[justjohn]

The former head of the West German Military Intelligence has issued a book revealing secret details of a 1949 US-German treaty, alleging America and its allies have been deliberately suppressing the nations sovereignty.