The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History

Konrad H. Jarausch: People Power? Towards a Historical Explanation of 1989

konrad H. JarauscH People Power? Towards a Historical Explanation of 1989 The celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the overthrow of Communism have enshrined the fall of the Wall as the most important European event since the end of the Second World War. Even if there was less enthusiasm elsewhere, in Germany numerous eyewitness accounts, media specials, public exhibitions and official commemorations expressed joy over the collapse of the GDR and the return of national unity. Recalling her elation as a 35-year-old East German physicist, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel called November 9th a triumph of the “struggle against unfreedom” which she marked by walking with Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Wałęsa across the Bornholm bridge, the first border-crossing point to open.1 Many participants felt an irrepressible urge to tell their own inspiring story of flight, protest or liberation, with commentators hailing the popular mobilization as a victory of democracy over dictatorship. While commemoration efforts such as the candlelight march of 200,000 people in Leipzig recaptured some of the emotional excitement, such memory events have added little to historical understanding.2 Analyzing the significance of 1989 is complicated by a fierce clash of memory politics over who deserves credit for its success. Leading the charge have been the former dissidents who have devel1 “Angela Merkels Rückkehr in die Vergangenheit,” Die Welt (November 9, 2009). 2 Geschichtsforum, “Erzählen Sie doch Ihre eigene Geschichte von 1989!” www.tagesspiegel.de/meinjahr89; Henrik Bispinck et al., eds., Programm: Geschichtsforum 1989/2009. Europa zwischen Teilung und Aufbruch (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2009). 110 THE END AND THE BEGINNING oped a heroic narrative of resistance that portrays their own courage as decisive.3 In contrast, embarrassed communists struggle to explain why their experiment failed, and can only point to some timely concessions in yielding power reluctantly.4 With greater confidence, political apologists claim that it was the superior statesmanship of Kohl and Genscher, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze or Bush and Baker rather than of Mitterrand and Thatcher which ended the Cold War.5 Even erstwhile critics of hasty transformation or of German unification like Oskar Lafontaine can take some satisfaction from the subsequent adjustment problems.6 Missing in these discussions are, however, the voices of the majority of the population who opposed merely reforming socialism and insisted on its complete overthrow. Only when analytical perspectives free themselves from such partisanship will more convincing explanations evolve. Interpretations of this caesura are also hampered by the contradictory explanations of the many volumes, written by participants and historians, on the dramatic events of 1989. Journalists like Michael Meyer have painted dramatic pictures of the fall of the Wall and scholars like Stephen Kotkin have provided bold, but somewhat misleading interpretations.7 Due to some leaks from the British Foreign Office on Margaret Thatcher’s opposition and the disclosure of infor3 See the open air exhibition at the Berlin Alexanderplatz and Friedrich Havemann Gesellschaft, “Friedliche Revolution 1989/90,” http://www.revolution1989 .de/ 4 For instance, Egon Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen. Die friedliche Revolution. Vorgeschichte, Ablauf, Auswirkungen (Vienna: Neff, 1990); and Hans Modrow, Aufbruch und Ende (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur, 1991). 5 Werner Weidenfeld, Außenpolitik für die deutsche Einheit. Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90; Dieter Grosser, Das Wagnis der Währungs-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialunion; Wolfgang Jäger, Die Überwindung der Teilung; and Karl-Rudolf Korte, Deutschlandpolitik in Helmut Kohls Kanzlerschaft (all: Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998). 6 Oskar Lafontaine, The Heart Beats on the Left (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, “The Double Disappointment: Revolution, Unification and the German Intellectuals,” Michael Geyer, ed., The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 7 Michael Meyer, The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall (New York: Scribner, 2009); and Stephen Kotkin, Uncivil Society. 111 People Power? Towards a Historical Explanation of 1989 mation from Gorbachev’s inner circle, fresh material on high politics has also become public knowledge during the last year.8 But there has not been much detailed empirical research like the impressive microstudies of Michael Richter, which reconstruct the revolutionary process in Saxony on the level of individual towns.9 Nor have there been compelling new social science theories that might advance the academic debate. While Timothy Garton Ash conceded in the New York Review of Books that most of these publications add something to our knowledge...