People Power Brought Down the Berlin Wall

What brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago?

Some argue that it was the Cold War and the escalation of military spending that was just too costly for the Soviet empire to maintain.

If that was the case, that should be a cautionary tale for the United States as we struggle to maintain a nuclear arsenal, support over 700 military bases around the world, develop expensive new weapons systems, and, of course, fight two wars - including one in a country where the USSR, also, met its match.

But military over-spending was only part of the reason the people of East Germany were able to bring down the wall, according to an article in Forbes by Konrad H. Jarausch, professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "Ultimately it was the spread of detente, helped by his personal rapport with the U.S. president that allowed [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev to ... set the satellites free," he says.

Another factor was just as important. The wall couldn't have come down without a nonviolent people power uprising.

A recent account from the Geneva-based Ecumenical News International (ENI) tells of the church-based protests exactly a month before the Berlin Wall's opening, that followed earlier days of protests:

"After the 9 October services in Leipzig, an estimated 70,000 people poured into the city centre, connecting in a full circle on a ring road around the downtown area. 'There were too many of us that night to arrest, the prisons were already full,' Jochen Lassig, one Leipzig reporter told ENI."

According to the article, there had been warnings in the communist-run media that force would be used to suppress demonstrations. "Local doctors and nurses reported that hospitals were building up blood reserves and being put on alert to deal with bullet wounds."

"Pastor Christian Fuhrer of Leipzig's St Nicholas' Church gave this account: "More than 2,000 people leaving the church were welcomed by tens of thousands waiting outside with candles in their hands - an unforgettable moment. Two hands are necessary to carry a candle and to protect it from extinguishing so that you can not carry stones or clubs at the same time.

"In front of the Leipzig headquarters of the Stasi - the East German secret police - demonstrators gathered, laid candles on the steps, and sang songs. What few knew at the time was that inside the darkened building, most Stasi members were present and armed with live ammunition. They had orders to defend a strategic building. They had sandbags under the windows, still displayed today as it is now a museum.

"Irmtraut Hollitzer, once curator of the museum, said: 'One stone through the window would have been enough to set off a bloodbath.'"

Professor Jarausch concurs that it was people power that made the difference:

"It took a transnational grass roots movement of courageous Polish workers, Hungarian activists, German refugees and Czech dissidents braving considerable risks in order to revive civil society and regain space for public protest. ... The fall of the Wall was magical because it signaled the peaceful triumph of people's power over a regime that commanded enormous repressive force."

The combination of a leader who understood the need for change - President Gorbachev - with a popular uprising allowed change to proceed without violence, and much more quickly than anyone could have imagined.

So the question this anniversary raises for me: Can we build such a people power movement today, strong enough to overcome the power of global corporations and wise enough to collaborate across our many differences? Because that's what it will take to get on with the urgent business of stopping climate catastrophe, building sustainable economies, reorienting our societies away from violence and militarism and towards a world that works for all.

We have a forward-thinking president, but he - and we - can't get much done without powerful people's movements creating real change.

Sarah van Gelder is executive editor of YES! Magazine and YES! Online, which report on powerful ideas and practical actions for a better world.

 

Follow Sarah van Gelder on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SarahVanGelder

Comments

[Independent1969]

East Germany freed itself from communism after Poland, Hungary and possibly the Czech Republic which would make it about 3rd or 4th in line. East Germany is incorrectly given credit for ending the Cold War. That's definitely not what happened.

The Cold War was over when the Polish people, with the help of Pope John Paul and the Solidarity Party fought for more rights and free elections and got them both. Once they got their elections on June 4th 1989 they voted out the Communists from power. That was the beggining of the end for Communism in Europe. If you want to know how to make huge changes in government then study what happened in Poland during this time.

Poland's victory inspired other Communist countries to fight for their own freedom and to use Poland's strategy as a template. It worked. Within a few months of Poland's victory most of Europe was free from Communism and the Soviet Union was soon gone.

If it weren't for Poland's success it's very possible that the Soviet Union might still exist today and Central and Eastern Europe still Communist nations. Scary.

So for the sake of historical accuracy let's tell the real story and give credit where credit is due.

Solidarnosc!

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4809509,00.html?maca=en-aa-pol-863-rdf

[Fireslayer]

The commentator I.F. Stone and the sociologist C. Wright Mills both predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union early in the 1950's. It was vastly overextended and massively inefficient. One of them suggested that instead of investing in nuclear arsenals we merely had to drop millions of Sears Catalogs on them to shift their priorities.

And the internal liberalization of Russia followed by loosening up of the leadership, although slower than Hungary and Czechoslovakia and a little slower than Poland, can claim a fair share of the cudos for the fall of the iron curtain. In their own way by the 1980s, their populations and leadership came to their senses, or at least to their own conclusions about the pointlessness of the Cold War.

These factors and more are why it bothers me to hear Reagan canonizers crowing like the rooster that made the sun rise about how Republicans "won the Cold War." It was stupid from the beginning. There never was a "missile gap." Once we reached mutually assured destruction in the 1950s the whole game did not make any sense at all.

[Bartholomie]

This important question was raised: "Can we build such a people power movement today, strong enough to overcome the power of global corporations and wise enough to collaborate across our many differences?" I've been thinking about this issue all day today. It is impossible these days to overcome the reach of global corporations. The most obvious reason is that we work for these corporations. We rely on them for our income, which we use to support ourselves and our families. The other reason is that we depend on them for food, shelter and safety, entertainment and telecommunications. We use our salaries to buy their products at supermarkets, drugstores, car dealerships and borrow their money to buy our homes. Every one of us has contributed to the success of global corporations. We complain about sweatshops, but labour is exported to developing countries so that we can stop complaining about the high prices of "stuff". We are not ready to chuck all the comforts of modern life and say "no" to being controlled by global corporations. They give us the things we demand, and it is hard to walk away from a relationship like that.

[NickHP]

Yes it was people power. But it was also death of the ancient tyrants who had driven the original revolution. The acolytes are never as determined. They intellectually justify or fail to justify what the original leaders had assumed was natural and inevitable. They were neither as dogmatic, nor brutal as the original generations. The got swept aside by the masses wanting something more rational.

I was visiting relatives in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, for three weeks in October of 1989. They had 50% inflation per month, rates posted in every newspaper. Tito was several years dead. The remaining Party and state leaders were trying to work out some sort of accommodation, but everyone I talked to said the country would break apart soon. It was just a matter of how much violence would occur. All the men had been in the army - universal conscription existed, but he officers were primarily Serbian. Croatia had the benefit of a relatively good economy, and lots of tourist ties to Europe - especially Italy and Germany. And they knew they wanted to be part of the European Union, not connected to Serbia. In the end they may all be part of the EU.

Each day we saw the news about the various East European countries that were having protests and civil disobedience. Each day I marveled at how much more tolerance seemed to be played out. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to be deliverance to the world.