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 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.

Welcome to my research blog hosted at onMason for HIST 300: 1989 in Eastern Europe. This blog will follow the course of this research methods class, and hopefully generate some insight into the collapse of communist regimes that inspired much of the world a quarter century ago.