The City of Truth

Document 9 of Briefing Book 293 of the GW National Security Archive presents a translated conversation from a visit by Egon Krenz to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev. Krenz had recently replaced Erich Honecker as party leader in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and this conversation features relatively frank discussion of the social and political developments regarding mass protests in Leipzig, as well as the economic realities facing several nations of the Warsaw Pact.

Prominent features of the conversation include the reference to the bloated debt of Poland, the myopic resistance of Honecker to reform, and the improbability of German unification due to preferences for retaining the competing alliances by both eastern and western leaders as “factors that make up a necessary equilibrium.” Even more significant than these observations, are several telling statements made by both men. Early in the dialogue Gorbachev refers to the “human standpoint” in contrast to the clearer political perspective regarding the problems facing the East German regime. This human standpoint, which he describes as “dramatic,” was foundational to the aspirations of demonstrators in Leipzig and growing numbers of other East Germans. Policy changes by Honecker, which Gorbachev suggests could have allayed the unrest, would not have changed the reality of these considerations of human dignity, and even as he fails to see that the gradual emergence of honesty in communist governance was unleashing uncontrollable forces, he does recognize that there were more than simply political and economic forces at issue.

During the discussion of the debate on German unification, Gorbachev indicates an understanding of the need for special relations between the the GDR and the German Federal Republic (FRG), but that ties between the “two German states… should be kept under control.” This persistent expectation that reform could be controlled as in the past indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of his own reform programs of “perestoika” and “glasnost.” Public acknowledgement of the need for reform emboldened dissidents in a new way. This new phenomenon, which opened the door to genuine electoral competition and eventually the demise of formal communism, was no more controllable than the political momentum that would drive the FRG to absorb the poorer and weaker GDR. In short, Gorbachev and Krenz have some idea that the ground is shifting beneath them, but they are just as blind as Honecker to the fact that they have already lost control of the course of events in East Germany, and will not be able to influence them from any standpoint, human or otherwise, much longer.

As far as evaluating the source, I can only rely on the reputation of the archive to confirm that this source is a valid one. The conversation was most likely recorded, according to my estimation, for this transcript to have been transcribed; however there is no mention of the method of its collection, and indeed no specification of the medium of conversation. I am left to assume it was a meeting in person, as the description states that Gorbachev was receiving Krenz on November 1. There is no way for me to evaluate the degree of accuracy of the translation, as there is no copy provided of the original, and the interpretation is essential for my understanding as this conversation likely took place in Russian, or less likely in German. The following citation is provided after the text of the document:

Source: Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, Fond 1. Opis 1. On file at the National Security Archive. Published in Mikhail Gorbachev i germanskii vopros: sbornik dokumentov 1986-1991. Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2006, pp. 232-245 Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

The obituary highlighted last week was not a personal account as much as a personal history. Below is a link connecting to a personal account taken as part of a project by Europeana.eu from Petr Janyska, a witness to the Velvet Revolution. The audio recording of his take on events accompanies photographs of a document calling for the general strike on November 27, 1989. Janyska describes this document, along with another from the Civic Forum which was a “public declaration of the opposition saying that the old regime is over and it was clear that the whole nation wanted something totally different.” His assertion that the declaration, which is not pictured, indicated the desire of the entire nation is not well supported. The Civic Forum formed quickly and was active in the major urban center of Prague. From The Walls Came Tumbling Down by Dr. Gale Stokes, we know that student teams carrying the message of revolution to the villages were shut out of some factories by the People’s Militia and scorned by certain peasants (p.182). This testimonial by Janyska may indicate his experience, and possibly those of Prague residents in November and December, thinking that the entire nation also favored change. However, it seems unlikely that the Civic Forum could truly speak for the whole nation, as portions of the population who either belonged to the party or could not conceive of the benefits of a new social and economic order, likely did not favor radical change.

“Petr Janyska,” 89 Voices, http://89voices.eu/post/52627521283/petr-janyska (Accessed March 10, 2014)

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The topic I outlined in class centers on a contrasts of the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia with the chaos and violence of the Yugoslav case. These two countries were multinational states. My plan would be to contrast the institutional continuity and discontinuity of central governmental institutions such as the armed forces, internal security and police, and civil service. I would also attempt to compare these cases with a counter-example in the form of German unification. In Germany the goal was integration of the German Democratic Republic state with that of the Federal Republic of Germany, and this was a similarly complicated process but in reverse. This paper would involve research into the records of the states in question, which might pose a problem. I also intend to use published work on the democratic transitions, which are easier to access. The political science dimension of this project may be more involved than a strictly historical treatment, and would present another challenge. As such I am also considering a study of Václav Havel. This would examine perceptions of him in the western consciousness and within Czechoslovakia, his legacy as the last leader of Czechoslovakia and as the first President of the Czech Republic, and his development as an artist making the transition to politician, and eventually elder statesman.

The account from Tina Rosenberg, in The Haunted Land, of those living in the shadow of recently collapsed communist regimes provides a more intimate look at the effects of a half-century of totalitarian rule on culture and relationships than the previous readings. I appreciated the narrative depictions of, among others, dissidents decried as collaborators, the general (Jaruzelski) enslaved by communism as much as any of his countrymen, and ordinary men whose court proceedings put the GDR itself on trial. However, I thought the interjection of her critical judgements of Falk Zimmermann’s contrition beside compassion for the struggles of Lothar Pawliczak, or the criticism of the sensational Opfer-Täter (victims and victimizers, p. 386) mediation media phenomenon, interfered with an important documentation of recent history. Once I was reminded of the fact that hers is a journalistic perspective, I came to better appreciate her choices. In fact, some personal reflections that were impossible to get from the thorough but detached work of Dr. Gale Stokes (hopes for reflection in the second edition on his predictions in the first) were present in The Haunted Land, and they provide benchmarks for the reader to consider.

As I mentioned in class, I feel like the justice administered for crimes which occur in moral grey areas, and relies on newly written or rewritten codes, is problematic. As such, the trials in Germany of former East German border guards were important for presenting the realities of the recent past for national consumption, but the sentences ultimately imposed seemed fair despite the heinous nature of their actions. This also applies broadly to lustrace in the Czech case in my opinion.

Another critical piece of this story is evaluation of the new societies formed after communism. Rosenberg points out the many flaws of Falk Zimmermann as a dissembling penitent, and self-deluding betrayer of his friends, but of his set of environmental activists “he was the only one who knew his way around capitalism (p.373),” and perhaps that indicates some imperfections of the transition. More than once Rosenberg alludes to the problems created by a rash nature of the cleanup. Zukal, the chartist disallowed from practicing his profession by the communists or participating in the new democracy by the democrats, was a typical (p.45) figure in his evolution from idealistic communist to idealistic dissident. But in fact, the system that condemned his youthful mistakes informing for the StB also found Václav Havel to be “StB positive” with a C rating (p.102). Clearly Havel was could not be tainted by the contents of a file because of his credibility, but a selective double standard said that the guilty communists were unfit to participate, even though Dubček was once a communist politician. The ideological backlash, informed by a need to isolate some for their participation in the system without acknowledging that all were tainted by it, is itself an unfortunate legacy of communism. This notion, a desire for quick and simple answers, is captured most succinctly in the words of a Czech grammar which once read “only socialism can guarantee the development of mankind” and by the time Rosenberg was reporting it had changed to “only capitalism can guarantee the development of mankind (p.114).” Whether this is an apocryphal example, it highlights a common tendency in humanity to embrace uncomplicated solutions that absolve us of moral responsibility for wrongdoings in a complicated past.

Rosenberg, Tina. 1995. The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism. New York: Random House.

Addendum:

Here is a news article about Andrej Babiš and his legal challenge to assertions of his StB collaboration as an informer and agent. This is an example of the political implications of lustration twenty five years after 1989. The contention that the past is a tool in the struggle to control the present is a fair one, and the Czech Finance Minister appears to think this issue is important enough to take his case to a Slovak court to protect his reputation.

This article from The Atlantic reminded me of the GDP statistics listed among our primary sources. It seems notable that the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia have different results from the rest of the areas in the area of our concern. Also, East Germany is now part of the “rich” Germany, however East Germany shows results of “poor” (consistent with the pattern) followed by “so racist” in a separate search. Would these search results have been the same in the late 1990’s and up to the crisis of 2008?

UPDATE: The recession of the 1980’s does seem to have had caused disruption to the fragile Eastern European economies. The persistently lower GDP threshold must have also played a role in intensifying the discontent during such a recession. However, there is some variation within the Eastern Bloc; according to these GDP figures, the Czechoslovak and Hungarian economies did not take such a hard hit as Yugoslavia, and recovered more quickly than Poland. Perhaps the Polish case provides a reason for the acceleration of the collapse of the regime in Poland, which preceded the revolutions in Berlin, Prague and Sofia, the bloody coup in Bucharest, as well as the somewhat less dramatic transition in Hungary.

German Troops Marching in Wenceslas Square

Two sets of personal accounts found among the exercises in the World History Sources page at the Center for History and New Media focus on American reactions to German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. A letter from Mark Kistler, a vacationer traveling in Central Europe treats the invasion of Prague as once incident, though an important one, among several in his excursion. Before reading the commentary on certain selections, my first impression of his letter was that his restraint in characterizing the invasion may have been out of caution in a letter, sent from Nazi Dresden, which may very well have been intercepted by Nazi authorities. After reading the comments, I agree that perhaps his recounting of the events in Prague may have derived from a lack of awareness. The chatty tone of the letter may indeed make it seem silly, however this is a letter which seems to be from one young cousin to another, and relaying the details of his whereabouts may have been more of a priority than giving an account of the German occupation. He was aware enough  of the growing political tensions to know that his American passport provided some protection.

If one estimates his age at about 20 years, based on his listed activities and the tone of the note, his impression of the coming war is somewhat understandable for somebody who would have no personal memories of the previous world war. Furthermore, considering that public isolationism in America was still strong enough to affect the decision making of national leaders, Kistler should be forgiven for his naïve assumptions that Americans will not be immediately at risk in Europe. The historical record conveys that some believed the Munich Agreement might have precluded an outbreak of war, so the further provocation made by the occupation may not have struck him as a drastic development. The telegraphs which follow, including the tepid rebuke by the US government, makes clear that the United States still maintained diplomatic relations with Germany. Perhaps some travelers assumed a conflict was unlikely to occur, and if it did they could get in a last bit of fun in Italy or Switzerland before the war. Moreover, even if Kistler was aware of the danger in Central Europe, openly revealing his concerns in a letter, at a time when Germany was still attempting to uphold the fiction of their peaceful intentions may have made his next stop at a German border much more problematic.

In the second account, telegraphs indicate that Acting Secretary of State Welles and Minister Carr in Prague had reason to believe that their communication was secure. In an age when diplomatic cables were not subject to interception by hacktivists, these two clearly had some expectation of privacy. Carr feels he can be frank about the state of censorship and the danger posed by the Gestapo, even if he cannot be blunt with his superior, and has to make his hopes to return from his post in coded language about “instructions in regard to [his] future course.”

Solidarity Logo from the BBC

Two primary sources from the 1989 website give an indication of the tone of the opposition in Poland at the time of the collapse of the communist totalitarian system. Both convey something about the confidence felt by those battling the ruling party. The anarchist pamphlet has many images, symbols, and Polish text, the translation of which is beyond my ability. However, two things are evident to me that seem significant. The first is the recognizable Solidarity logo, and the second are the list of names found at the top of one side of the page. If these names are those of the producers of the flier, that would indicate a confident defiant stance against the authorities just as the Chartists in Czechoslovakia provided their names and address in 1977 to convey their lack of fear of state reprisals, which were still a potential danger . The Solidarity logo is also found on the election poster portraying Gary Cooper as he carries a ballot. That logo appears to be a powerful brand, as Solidarity was a broad opposition movement, and from my reading of Stokes, the branding that included the logo and the name change of the Interfactory Strike Committee to Solidarity was an important precursor to making the trade union movement so broad, and eventually overtly political.