Thanks to my brother Will for this brief treatise, the subtitle of which is '1989 and The Implosion of the Communist Establishment'. In the author's depiction, "uncivil" is the opposite of civil and his chosen categorization of three communist regimes: E. Germany, Romania and Poland. Each state fell for similar reasons, but under decidedly different circumstances. They were not pushed. They simply lacked the inner strength to hold together without the threat of Soviet troops to sustain them. The primary reason they collapsed was the abandonment of the socialist bloc by Gorbachev, who denounced the use of force as a doctrine to hold the Warsaw Pact together. E. Germany suffered for almost its entire existence by comparison to the miracle occurring in W. Germany, which miracle was broadcast into the homes of the regime's populace on television in their own language. The Wall could not block the images of the success of capitalism. As things deteriorated in what was arguably the communist bloc's most efficient country, the leadership turned to borrowing from the West. By the end in 1989, E. Germany owed $23.5 billion. They were not only morally bankrupt, they were on the verge of default. "The GDR was a Ponzi scheme that fell in a bank run." There were a few thousand protesters in Leipzig in October and a million in the streets of Berlin on Nov. 9th. A botched announcement by a junior Politburo member sent the people to the Wall. The guards did nothing and it was over before anyone knew what had happened. It was completely unplanned and spontaneous.
Events moved so quickly in Romania that the author says it was almost a coup d'etat. Communism in the impoverished country wrought hardship that was compounded by foreign debt. Ceausescu
responded by harshly suppressing the quality of life in order to pay the banks. By the late 80's most Romanians queued for rationed bread and meat, had hot water one day per week, went without electricity for the majority of the day, and watched the party elite live high on the hog. Within a week in December, a rural protest over the eviction of a priest turned into a national uprising that overthrew the government; three days later the dictator was executed.
Only in Poland was there an opposition: the indomitable Catholic church, the well-known Solidarity movement and other national organizations. Additionally, agriculture was never collectivized in Poland, which like the rest of the communist bloc, fell behind the West and also went down the perilous road of serial borrowing. The wheels became loose first in 1979, when Polish Pope John Paul II returned home and in the words of one local "undid thirty years of communist propaganda". A year later, Walesa and Solidarity successfully struck at the Gdansk Shipyard. The end for the communists came in 1989 when they agreed to legalize Solidarity and run national elections, which they were assured they would win. They were crushed and allowed themselves to be voted out of business. In the end, the onslaught of capitalism and Gorbachev's decision to not fight to hold the communists in power ended the post-war settlement in Europe.
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