Institute of Democracy and Cooperation

20 years after the opening of the Berlin Wall

Publication day: 19/11/2009

On 10 November 2009, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation held a double lecture to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of 9-10 November 1989.

The speakers were Professor Igor Maximychev, a former diplomat at the Soviet embassy in East Berlin at the time, now Senior Researcher at the Europe Institute in the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Victor Loupan, Editor of the Paris-based Russian-language newspaper, La pensée russe and Director of the publishing house Editions de l’Oeuvre.

Professor Maximychev divided his talk into three sections: what happened in the run-up to the opening of the Berlin Wall; what happened on the night itself; and thoughts about the way the event was celebrated 20 years on in Berlin. He emphasised that no one had predicted, or could have predicted, what would happen – not least because the events themselves unfolded in a haphazard and partly accidental manner.

It was well known that the East German regime was not interested in copying the perestroika project applied in Moscow. On the Soviet side, there was also very little understanding for the gravity of the situation as the summer unfolded in Central Europe. The 40th anniversary celebrations in East Berlin, which took place on 3 and 4 October, only caused tensions to mount between Moscow an Berlin. Gorbachev’s presence in East Berlin gave him a chance to address East Germans directly. Erich Honecker was overthrown on 18 October and replaced by Egon Krenz as party leader and head of state.

The new leadership quickly decided to simplify the procedures by which East German citizens would be granted permission to leave the country: thousands had sought asylum in the West German embassy in Prague and thousands more had driven to West Germany via Hungary since the border was opened there in August. On 9 November 1989, a member of the Central Committee, Günther Schabowski, gave the mistaken impression on television that all restrictions would be lifted immediately and this caused huge crowds to mass at the checkpoints. The border guards received no instructions about what to do (the new regulations were not officially promulgated until the next day, by which time they had been totally overtaken by events) and so they simply opened the border. Professor Maximychev said, “It is the border guards of the Berlin Wall who were the real heroes of the story.”

Professor Maximychev emphasised that Moscow played no role in this decision, even though the regime in Berlin was governed by the Four Powers (USSR, USA, France and the UK.) Had the East German regime decided to open its border with West Germany outside Berlin, it would have been perfectly within its rights but the opening of the wall in Berlin clearly concerned the Four Powers who were not, in fact, consulted. (The German capital remained under the government of the four powers even after the two German states had become sovereign.)

By the same token, the opening of the Berlin Wall need not have signified the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic. The largest demonstration ever in East Berlin, attended by more than a million people, did not call for unification with West Germany. On the contrary, the USSR supported the reform process in East Germany in the hope that it would end the Cold War and lead to a period of cooperation across the whole continent – the creation of a Common European Home. Unfortunately, the bulldozer Helmut Kohl and the United States did everything to turn matters to their advantage and to erect a new invisible line of demarcation, still against Russia, in the new Europe. The West destroyed the project of creating a common European home.

Professor Maximychev explained, in other words, how the actual events of the night of 9 November were the result of a series of blunders. The East German regime was completely overtaken by the events it had initiated and the East German leaders never regained the initiative after that.

He concluded by saying that he was very disappointed to see how, 20 years on, the West was celebrating the anniversary of the Berlin Wall as a victory over the Soviet Union. How could one speak of “winning” the Cold War when it was Moscow which had taken all the steps to end it? Perhaps some Germans regarded the reunification as a compensation for the capitulation of 1945 but Europe as a whole has lost out by excluding Russia and by failing to create a system of collective security. In fact, the disappearance of the GDR was not inevitable but largely the result of Gorbachev’s failure to support it.

Victor Loupan replied by agreeing the fall of the Berlin Wall was not the same thing as the reunification of Germany. When the cellist Msistlav Rostropovich came to play before the opened wall, he was not playing for the reunification of Germany. On the other hand, it was the fall of a whole system and the current Russophobia in Europe was the direct result of the fact that the EU has admitted the former Eastern bloc countries as members. What was astonishing was that the Soviet and Communist elites, especially in the USSR, found the Berlin Wall absurd. No one was prepared to defend either it or even Communism itself – when the Soviet Communist Party was banned in 1991, it had 18 million members and yet not one of them protested, still less took up arms, to defend Communism. The ideas of glasnost and perestroika which led to the collapse of Communism were themselves hatched within the KBG – Gorbachev had been promoted by KGB chief, Yuri Andropov, after all. It was the secret services who overthrew Communism. The KGB was more pragmatic than ideological. In any case, the Communist ideology had lost all meaning in Eastern Europe – it was far more vibrant in the West than in the East! Brecht, for instance, had an enormous influence in Western Europe and on the aesthetic of the theatre there, and aesthetics is the mother of ethics. East Germany’s influence was therefore colossal in the West, for it represented a model of European Communism.

On the other hand, the collapse of Communism also led to the collapse of several states created in the aftermath of the First World War – the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia. And although the Americans “won” the Cold War very decisively, they are already now losing their influence. China has achieved more in 20 years in Africa than the European colonial powers did when they ran the continent. The West maintains the appearance of power while in fact real power is slipping from its grasp – rather as Gorbachev himself unleashed processes which he could no longer control. So the collapse of Communism is not only the end of something but also the beginning of something else, rather as the end of the Roman Empire marked the beginning of Christianity.

Natalia Narochnitskaya agreed that aesthetics precede revolution. The theatre of Meyerhold had prepared the Bolshevik revolution. But she pointed out that the Berlin Wall was not only an ideological barrier but also a strategic line of demarcation, something the Russian leadership had learned ten years too late. The collapse of the wall also led to the collapse of the doctrine of national sovereignty as the basis of the international system, to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, and so on.

Victor Loupan agreed that it had been the profoundly nihilist atmosphere in the Soviet Union which had permitted its abrupt dissolution in 1991.

Igor Maximychev did not agree with Victor Loupan that Russia or the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War. He said that too much attention was being paid to the Berlin Wall. The opening of the wall was clearly a positive event, it was only what came later that was problematic. He insisted that no one “won” the Cold War since the USSR initiated its end. The problem lay with Gorbachev’s policies: he could have gained acceptance for Russia’s role.

Natalia Narochnitskaya concluded the debate by reminding people that many elites, including in Russia, welcomed the end of Communism without understanding its strategic consequences for the Russian state. No one believed in Communism in the USSR but its collapse was welcomed in the West because it meant the loss of territories which had been historic Russian land. The Bolsheviks had not created the Russian empire and yet the West’s project since 1989 was aimed at the destruction of the historic Russian state.