History
Maps give a reality, and hide another*
In Germany, CDU won south and west. North east, old GDR, AfD won, with half of berlin as an island of the radical left.
35 years, more than one generation after, Germany’s vote still looks like this. How come? Why are the old GDR voters, who didn’t even grow up in the GDR, become like this?
Before the 1990s, there were 3 ”systems”; liberal democracies in NATO; Communists in the Warsaw pact; then neutral countries like Sweden, Spain, Finland etc.
The soviet union was split between those countries that were directly controlled by it, and those that were not part of it, which strictly had their own structures, but with strict control.
East-Berlin was integrated into the GDR. West Berlin, an enclave of the West German republic.
We can speak of this area then on current issues regarding a rise of authoritarianism.
But at the same time, there are multiple movements that challenge authoritarian powers and which promote democracy.
Hungary: referred to on a global scale of how one can keep democracy in a formal sense with a market economy, whilst changing it into a more or less authoritarian systems by controlling the media, by priviledging certain people close to oneself and so on.
Similar developments happening in Slovakia with fico.
The illiberal democracies.
Poland: has recently had many similar characteristics to Hungary, Poland being much bigger however, where the right wing government is pro-ukraine instead of being pro-russia, which is rare.
Transformation in eastern Europe: the labour-markets are changing, many eastern european workers are leaving to earn their jobs outside of the east.
Imperative of transformation: one has to change; education; biography and political beliefs in order to fit in.
’Moral’ leadership: A lot of leaders in Eastern Europe warned about what would happen if help did not come to Ukraine already in 2014. Suddenly Eastern european opinions ”matter” in a greater sense originally than before.
eg. Tallinn pledge of 2023, a number of countries gathered to pledge strong support for Ukraine.
Nationalism plays a role in many current civil rights movements.
(To what extent are these supported from abroad?)
Foundation of Solidarnosc
Mikhail Gorbachev
Semi-free elections in Poland
Fall of the berlin wall
Velvet revolution CSSR
German unification
End of soviet union
Yugoslav wars
Trial of Milosevic
Annexation of Crimea by Russia (end to the post-89-period)
After socialism in Yugoslavia, nationalism takes the stage and so on genocide.
Milosevic’ trial was one of the first of its kind after the nuremberg trials.
Revolutions do not fall from the sky lol:
According to the broader factors, it seems economy is a key factor to the fall of the Eastern bloc – particularly how 1980s communism manifested.
In communism, things cost something, but this price is not established by the market, it is a political price.
Basically supply and demand is not thought of. So there is no incentive to produce, because you get less money than you would actually spend to make the thing in question.
If we think about the 100s of things one buys in a month’s time, this is planned ahead of time. This seems like certainly an impossible task.
It seems pretty stupid!
This in itself then is a problem, because if people plan too few things, suddenly no one is getting what they need, so people would have to stand in queues for hours and then not receive very much or anything.
This becomes problematic for legitimacy. Marxism is supposed to be scientific, and when one experiences it as evidently not superior compared to the other side of the iron curtain, and so leads to people questioning the system.
Communist leaders realised all kinds of attempts and approaches to adress these problems. One could try to reform the planning economy, the party, try to encourage people to do their job in order to increase productivity, make people engaged in the whole system.
One could also use a market economy in a certain way. Already in the 60s-70s, Hungary tried out a kind of ”Ghoulash communism”, people were allowed in a group to produce things together, for their own common benefit as a smaller group, as in a cooperative. This puts the idea of socialism into question then.
(NEP is very similar to this as well).
In the 1980s, the economic crisis is becoming more visible, as these economies were not able to compete with the West. They were mainly producing gas and oil, but not products as such.
On the other hand, one needs more and more goods, and hard cash. Which is solved in the 70s, particularly in Poland, by developing debt on Western credit. And so they would buy western consumption goods. Eventually there was a severe economic decline in hard cash which the west would accept for their loans.
In the 1980s the oil prices dipped, leading to the US becoming weaker even in one of its only exports.
Furthermore, in the 80s there were constant issues with technological development.
A tiny public sector started to take over larger and larger parts of the economy.
Furthermore, environmental mismanagement in eg. the Aral sea. Degeneration of Ukrainian forests.
There were very visible effects of pollution at least (what makes things visible?).
The communist countries were stuck in a catch22 where they couldn’t reform in order to have their nation ”succeed”, but they had to reform a little bit in order to survive.
Sollution: repression.
The eastern bloc denied the Helsinki accords of 1975.
The authorities
Zersetzung (psychological warfare)
picture of youth cultures anti-movements (like punks etc) from the Stasi. Were opposed by the Stasi through alienation and different measures to break these movements as being anti-communist in nature, or in this case, revolutionary.
If we go back to 89, there was more or less no evidence that people were saying that the USSR would fall (?). Never assume that nothing ever happens!
What did the revolution of 89 look like?
We shouldn’t actually think of the ”blocs” as completely independent blocks in that sense. The countries on the other side of the iron curtain still communicated and had trade and help with the west.
In 85 Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (opening).
The revolution cannot be understood without understanding the role of the soviet union. In the 80s, the earlier repression was getting more difficult. Gorbachev becomes secretary general. The soviet union comes to a point where they are on the brink of economic collapse, so Gorbachev gets mcdonalds to save the empire.
So Gorbachev is a facilitator for change, and he was a convinced and taugt communist, who undrerstands that he needs to change things in order to allow communism to survive.
In Gorbachev’s logic, one cannot have the one without the other, they are inextricably tied to each other. If we do not know that some things are scarce, then we need to figure it out, and the best way to figure that out is by alloing everyone to know, to open up – to encourage people to speak out and adress problems. People won’t be punished for such actions. So there is a need for a further democratisation in order to make the economy more efficient.
So when it became possible to voice any kind of criticism, it became like a current that wouldn’t stop.
So how are people appointed?
The party is in charge. Which means that there are elections. These elections however, are all elections with parties that are all the same (I mean same in the same sense as all the parties now are the same party lol).
(Was it difficult to tell who would become a leader of an eastern bloc country?)
Furthermore, the price of the arms race in order to catch up with Reagan and so on. It seems the USSR used 30% if GDP for military spending. The economy of the USSR was comparatively quite small. So when the US used 5% of their GDP for the army, this was more or less the same kind of spending.
Multiple ethnic conflicts in the USSR, like the wars in Chechnya and Dagestan, as well as the baltic chain commemorating the molotv-ribbentrop pact.
After the revolutions in the satellite states, the Gorbachev has to resign, and Boris Yeltsin takes control.
This is not the story of communism suddenly being abolished and being replaced by something else (which we don’t quite understand yet). There is a continuity between the soviet state and the current russian republic.
The revolution doesn’t start in the Soviet Union. The soviet union rather looses its ability to keep reacting.
Poland seems to have been one of the most important parts for this matter.
Socialism and communism was not very successful in Poland, too catholic and so on, with a strong agricultural class requiring private property.
There is a focus on human rights, with a bridge between the intelligentsia and workers with the KOR, Worker’s defense committee. These worked to make repression public, and so acting as a kind of resistance.
John Paul II becomes pope, which becomes a matter of national pride. The pope visits multiple times, and having many people coming and seeing him.
Poland has a very severe economic debt crisis.
But it also sees degrees of worker organisations which no other countries have in the eastern bloc. Usually there wouldn’t be unions, but in Poland there are a lot of so called Solidarnosc which aren’t oficially part of the state structure.
Saw about 10million members meaning that the state couldn’t easily crush these.
There was no reaction to weaken this movement at all, and so this should leave to the system being destroyed, or the red army coming to destroy it.
So Martial Law is introduced, making Poland a pure kind of dictator ship. One has to stay at home for most of the day, and there are a lot of crazy measures produced. Done by Wojciech Jaruzelski.
Done in order to have the red army not invade. It is clear that this seemed like a realistic option at the time.
This leads to a kind of stabilisation, but it comes at the cost of retreating into low legitimacy. They are more or less admitting to not having the support of the people.
Functions until 83 when martial law must end. This creates a period of another 6 years without any economic progress or success → implosion of the system.
So they organise semi-free elections. Half of the parliment is seated by the communist party, and half the seats go to a vote.
”Round table talks” between the opposition and the leadership. These however did not get access to do any kind of advertisement.
In 1990 Walesa elected as president. Leader of the Solidarnosc movement.
Poland precedes all the others.
Counter-public-sphere: the samizdat in many different eastern bloc countries. There was no proper forum to speak freely at.
Czechia differs in that it was a revolution done by intellectuals, such as Vaclav Havel with Charta 77, ie. The Velvet revolution in 89, there was a long time during it during which it was not clear if the soviet regime would use force against the velvet revolution.
In Hungary, reform was the biggest factor in capitalisation. For Hungary, 89 is not a very important year.
In Romania and Bulgaria it was so-called palace revolutions, ending communism.
How should we look at the Jaruzelski, Kadar (Hungary) and Gorbachev. According to Enzenerger: ”Heroes of disempowerment”. They knew that they could win, but still tried to steer things that could be done without violence. They avoided the sort of tragic means used by earlier Soviet leadership.
So are they tragic figures in that they focused on trying to preserve peace despite knowing they could win if they didn’t?
Many polish would argue that this is not the case because it led to the revolution not being able to punish the communist leaders, and none of them paid the price.
In Gorbachev’s case, the Russians would call it the greatest catastrophe of the 20:th century. And so on one has to undo the failures of this ”stepback” in history.
GDR:
Extremely dependent on the soviet union. If you take away communism, there would no longer be a GDR. In east germany it becomes much harder to start reform, because people would then argue ”So why don’t we become part of West Germany?”. West Germany tried to support East Germany.
The west has a strong interest in keeping things stable. They do not want east germany to get out of control at all. So on, the economic situation is much better in the east, also having a strong industrial base. After then, there is much opposition based in the churches based on environmental issues. These reform movements don’t challenge the GDR itself, but they want to get rid of the Stasi, and also to open the border between east and west.
Every east german who was able to cross the border had to get west german citizenship. Though the same was true on the opposite.
In 89, people started leaving the country through Hungary, which in turn led to mass manifestations.
These manifestations ended up being of such a scale that it was impossible to suppress them.
Border gets pushed down by too many people for the border police to stop it. Was this a conscious or coindcidental decision?
89 was not just the fall of the Berlin wall, but the wall becomes a very potent symbol of the wall, with Kennedy holding a speech and so on.
Biggest concert Bruce Springsteen every gave was in 1988 Berlin.
Ther:
refers to the economy and its effect on the political sphere (dual transformation). They cannot at all be seperated.
The fact that communism falls becomes ”boring for the west” lol.
And so the case is made by liberals that there is no alternative. LIFE MUST SUCK.
The east is crucial in how the west develops, and seperating them without any semblance of cotransformation.
There is a spill over from and to the West regarding the East.
Political and economic transformations.
Shock therapy: in the matter of a couple of days, we get rid of the sort of things that were communistic in practice, and privatise things at mach-speeds.
The reformed socialist parties then still seemed very attractive after the revolutions. Many of them still existing and continuing.
Die Linke is more or less the party that inherited the SED (Socialistische EinheitsParti).
EU-membership however limits the impact of many radical parties, functioning as a sedative force against any kind of economical radicalism (eg. Greece, Spain, and so on).
Ukraine’s economy seems to have not changed much at all since communist times, whilst Poland’s economy is almost as effective as the British economy at this point (though about 10% of its work-force sometimes works abroad).
Who did things get better for?
Generally, men were less successful, and women had more opportunities in the service industry.
The young have language skills and can adapt by working with foreign companies and so on. It is a story of migration.
In East Germany it became the case that many villages became more or less left empty from young people. The Experience of the east germans became meaningless, everything is done according to west german standards, and all rules came from the west.
So in east germany therer is a huge frustration about this feeling of meaningless: leading to so-called ”Ostalgie” and ”Besserwissies” (west german know-it-alls)
The East German identity then became furthermore became ossified (eastified). People define themselves in first place as east-german, rather than German generally or from Brandenburg and so on.
Angela Merkel was east-german and studied physics, but still wanted to portray herself as coming from the poor sad ossified parts of eastgermany. Not something she did during her career, but something in her own biography.
Past staasi members poison the general discourse, as anyone can be claimed to have formerly served as a staasi member.
In Poland Lustracja: making former perpetrators accountable and making information on repression accessible.
Katyn Massacre in 1940.
Offiical addmittance by USSR in 1990.
Does Eastern Europe Exist?
An alternative path into modernity in Eastern Europe?
East Central Europe as a social and economic laboratory?