In 1989 the future of bipolar geometry still remained unfathomable. Its conflictual value was by now weakened and its centrality was waning within the growing globalization of the market economy. The greater fluidity of the situation – clearly easier for us to read in retrospect than for those inside these processes – takes us to Germany and Berlin. During the eighties the wholeEastern Europe he had seen the gap between aspirations and material conditions widen. East Germany went through repeated balance of payments crisis from which it re-emerged in alternating phases, however binding itself to loans that came from Bonn, from West Germany, in exchange for which border clearance was granted, the release of some political prisoners and above all the gradual liberalization of movements between the two Germanys. In 1987 a nearly 30,000 citizens of East Germany was allowed to emigrate beyond the wall.
Despite this flow of capital, however, the debt spiral continued. At the same time, other types of flows also increased: especially the passage of information increased beyond the iron curtain, supported by travel and the penetration of Western television and media. This factor on the one hand provided strong support for dissent groups; on the other, it profoundly influenced the new generation. Indeed, the exposure of young people to Western mass culture eroded the channels of socialist identification and brought them closer to the culture of consumption. Nonetheless, the acknowledgment of Western material standards of living, represented by the media in an idealized way, speeded up the perception of internal criticalities.
Through the movements of ideas and capital, of material and cultural consumer products, that dissent was growing that would have led to a social and political movement from below shortly thereafter, also following the wave of a rapprochement that had already been for some time in progress and was called Ostpolitik. However, there were also other expressions of dissent. Let’s start with the best known facts. Gorbačëv, then president of theUSSR, was carrying out a peculiar break with the previous Soviet system and especially in the international context, pressing for the construction of a “Common European home” and for the self-determination of each country, which, as he explained at the congress in 1988, “had to decide for itself which economic and political system it preferred”. In March 1989, Democratic and Populist candidates won more seats than Communists in Russia; in Poland Solidarnosc he became a legal party again and won 92 out of 100 seats. Here in August the first was born
non-communist cabinet of all Eastern Europe. In the same month, Hungary opened its borders to Austria. Berlin requested an interruption of the exodus but no one was able to intervene.
October 7, 1989 Communist leaders converged in Berlin for the celebration of the anniversary of the German Democratic Republic. Two days later, one hundred thousand people took to the streets in Leipzig and in the following sevenths demonstrations spread to other cities, demanding legalization of the opposition, free elections and the right to cross borders. Negotiations with Bonn were opened in early November. The idea was indeed that of only a partial reopening of the borders, however in the chaos of a system in fibrillation, with the ministers and the whole Politburo resigned, a confused communication led the press to announce the opening of the borders. At 11:30 pm on November 9, the border guards along the wall, without orders, left the passages open: from the east and west a large crowd poured against the wall, starting to demolish it.
A few days before, however, on November 4, there had also been another mobilization of the square, which had attracted very high numbers. Between 500,000 and one million people gave life to the call of the theatrical scene of the Berlino East and they occupied the streets for a social democratic East Germany. It was the largest spontaneous and non-state gathering in the history of the Democratic Republic. The demonstration started at ten in the morning in central Berlin, and went from Prenzlauer Allee to Karl-Liebknecht-Straße and the Palace of the Republic, continued on Marx-Engels-Platz, and crossed Rathausstraße to end up on Alexanderplatz, the heart of East Berlin. It passed through the entire city center, including the headquarters of the most important state institutions (the Council of State, the Foreign Ministry, the Central Commission of the Sed, the parliament , the town hall), before the final gathering at Alexanderplatz, which lasted over three hours.
During the gathering there were many interventions by artistic and cultural personalities of the time who effectively opposed the existing power structures, as synonymous with immobility and impossibility of renewal. However, the main demands went towards the demand for structural reforms for a democratic socialism, a very different formula from that of assimilation within the Western system. The demonstrators fought for the abolition of the absolute rule of German Unified Socialist Party, for democratic elections, for the legalization of civil rights movements that had sprung up all over the country, for freedom of the press and assembly, the dissolution of the Ministry for State Security (the so-called Stasi) and the end of the surveillance of the secret services. This was combined with a radical revision of the history of the Democratic Republic, with a discussion of the country’s economic woes and environmental problems, and with an end to press censorship. The emerging idea was to reform and improve the German Democratic Republic, not to abolish it.
The dynamics of those days obscured the scope of that event, of which still, despite the television coverage, there is no video file available for purchase and there are only a few audio recordings which, however, give only a vague idea of the social significance of the event. Nonetheless, the succession of events also took the narrative completely elsewhere. No one would then have expected such an outcome, regardless of the evidence of the social ferment. Erich Honecker, general secretary of the Party of Socialist Unity (Sed) and president of the Council of State, in mid-January of that same year had declared: “The Wall will continue to exist for fifty or perhaps a hundred years, if the reason for its existence is not resolved. “.
The symbolic significance of the wall implied, with its collapse, a displacement of the narrative in a totally Manichean key, outside the historical complexity. The contrast between the two antithetical US and Soviet worldviews and the outcome of the Cold War led to a highly polarized rhetoric about “end of the story”, on the final triumph of the Western hero against the Soviet villain. The idea that the failure of real socialism guaranteed the triumph of capitalism and democracy, read as always connected elements, did not take into consideration the history and dynamics of capitalism itself and its distinction from the concept and the aspects of democracy.
There is in fact another part of the story that comes out of those years. The bourgeois revolutions, which destroyed the absolutist states by introducing the liberal state and creating the ground for the development of modern capitalism, however, did not lead to the formation of democratic states: we are talking about societies in which voting was restricted by wealth and sex. The duo democracy-capitalism was not such from the start. Among other things, it was only with the emergence of mass social movements, born in opposition to the economic dynamics of capitalism, that the liberal (and undemocratic) state was forced to widen the electoral franchise.
The contradiction between the reality of things and narration also emerges in the contemporary world: if we look atIndex of Economic Freedom, it can be noted that in 1996 Honduras, a military dictatorship, was in second place. Furthermore, the Index of human freedom does not include universal suffrage and multi-party elections among the parameters. Undoubtedly, the fall of the Berlin wall is an event that cannot be minimized since with it the perception of a world that has seen the end of “the short century” and the opening of a period full of social, economic and political changes. At the same time, however, it must be read in its complexity, considering that behind the symbolshowever, the story lies.