Seminar on the Geography and Literature: Berlin's views. In this article an excerpt from the accompanying material. The dynamics of 1989.
The rapid and spectacular collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 was then (and it preserves the collective memory of Europeans) as a collection of non-violent animated by the pursuit of freedom and sovereignty of nations perceived - a survey, which blew up the walls and shook the totalitarian apparatus.
The remaining images in the mind - they were in this first evolution of television broadcast live - were a happy lot, the Berlin Wall piece by piece demolition and then, after the work was completed, Rostropovich heard that the played Ode to Joy . Or every night more numerous crowd, located on the Wenceslas Square in Prague assembled, where Vaclav Havel, the symbolic figure of the Velvet Revolution, announced that "the story had again set in motion" and that "the power back to the people had fallen" . The autumn of the peoples of 1989 seemed an echo of the "Spring of Nations" of 1848, more than one "1789b" (André Fontaine), while even the idea of an Eastern European contribution to the commemorations of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution in Paris Vision could work fascinating. The speed of propagation of the surveys and the fact that you can be inspired by the double rediscovery of democracy and the nation could strengthen this analogy. 1989 invents anew the myth created by Michelet of the people who take their destiny into their own hands.
A less historicist interpretation of 1989, which is but basically in the same direction is the liberation of the people and the emancipation of civil society alike. It stresses the strengthening of social movements in a situation when the decay of the old order, opened new spaces, which the Rapprochement between the Nachachtundsechzigerdissidenten, the heirs of the previous experiences (and failures), and the young generation of protest allowed. This consisted of students, artists and "alternative", which actually were not against the regime, but stood next to him or have had a different view. Distance, irony and ridicule, influenced her action more than the political strategies of the dissidents. The intervention of social forces and the generation change can be both at the demonstrations of the "Orange Alternative" in Poland, at the beginning of the Hungarian Fidesz (One accession was subject people under thirty years), demonstrate in a circle around the paper Mladina in Slovenia and in the Czech student movement, on 17 November 1989 triggered the Velvet Revolution in Prague, which brought Padraic Kenney to 1989 as a "carnival of revolution " present. 1989 thus seen from below, and with new forms of protest. These forms changed in proportion as the official tolerance limits blurred and the fear subsided. Civil society woke up as the main actor in the Revolution of 1989.
Such sympathetic View can not entirely convincing and should be qualified in several respects. First, those who actually experienced a brief "carnival" revolution - Berlin and Prague - to have joined the movement as the last, with the famous conductor Kurt Masur as the figurehead of the daily meetings at the Leipzig Nikolai Church in October and in Prague with Vaclav Havel, the chief dramatist of the Velvet Revolution, the stage of the Wenceslas Square and the headquarters of a theater with the fateful name Laterna Magika was. Especially in the final phase of these two revolutions, in which Intellectuals, artists and musicians were over-represented, there was a dimension of the celebration. It belongs clearly to the culture of protest and collective experience, so that these communist dictatorships - they were two of the toughest - ended without violence. But you should the happy end and the idyllic impression not to be confused with the deep dynamics, in between the representatives of established power and the democratic opposition, which had negotiated transfer of power.
If you want to highlight this internal dynamic of the revolutions of 1989, one must turn to Warsaw and Budapest. There were the foundations of the old communist order first crush, and there was an interaction between the decomposition of the institutions, the pressures of society and the retraction or the relentless pursuit of the reform wing of the party. This slow process accelerated considerably in 1989, but remained focused on a negotiated transition: He was in Warsaw in February 1989 set up round table certainly less spectacular than the crowd that gathered in November at the Brandenburg Gate but the Poles remember forever and with good reason in mind that the fall of the wall without the pre-removal fro would have been the communist power in Poland.
The acceleration of history in 1989 was being concentrated in the formulation of Timothy Garton Ash: "Poland ten years, Hungary ten months, East Germany ten weeks, Czechoslovakia ten days." One could in the same Art continue: Romania ten hours, ten minutes ... Albania speed and simultaneity, the two traits of the huge acceleration of history in 1989.
When did the beginning of the end? 1980 Solidarity, as suggested by the quoted phrase? 1968 by Prague Spring, when one sees as crucial factors for exhaustion of ideology and the influence exerted by this experience twenty years later, Gorbachev and his environment? Or have to go back to 1956 and the Hungarian Revolution, which opened the era of breakthroughs in the communist bloc? Obviously, there are several candidates for the title of "decisive turning point". They join each other and not necessarily always have the merit, to illustrate that the fall of communism is not an event in spring Began in 1989. Rather, it was a long process in which erosion, decay and reform had a cumulative effect. The following one another in a twelve-year period systemic crises make it to include the "final fall" into a perspective that goes back to 1956.
The Budapest uprising of 1956 was Péter Kende and Krzysztof Pomian "second October Revolution" and Claude Lefort, the "first anti-totalitarian revolution." In fact, the uprising had traits the later crises ahead to a "legitimation crisis" (Jürgen Habermas) inside the system itself, which in March 1956 by Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's crimes at the XX. Congress has been triggered, leading to a split in the power elite. Thereafter, the strengths and limitations of a "revisionist" Communist leadership (Imre Nagy), demonstrates the radical of a democratic movement with its workers' councils, political pluralism and the will to overcome Moscow's tutelage, was carried away. The "early of the end "?
The events in Prague in 1968 were the most thoroughly prepared and widely promoted attempt at a major reform of the system, which is a hypothetical reconciliation of the values of socialism and democracy in the context of overcoming the Cold wanted to achieve by war, the relaxation and the "bridge" between East and West. The main themes of the Prague Spring had startled the Kremlin leader, but was very popular among the reformist Moscow intellectuals. To properly assess this, one only needs read the essay, the Andrei Sakharov published in July 1968 under the title thoughts on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom . There you can find some after-effects of the Prague Spring, and themes that would emerge twenty years later, again under Gorbachev. Of course, first of all information and views freedom as a condition of free thought, which was for the development of modern and human rights-respecting societies necessary. The two major powers should refrain "export the revolution or the counter-revolution" . Every people should be allowed to determine his fate. announce the possibility of convergence of the two systems on the one hand to the market economy and by a public control of the Manager. These theses, to those of the reformers of the Prague Spring are close, were from the Moscow Communist apparatus in the name of the defense of "real existing socialism" rejected - and this term included almost the definition of conservatism and immobility: What is real , is socialist, what is socialist is a real
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