anniversaries
the fall of the wall

Under the
Berlin Sky
This month we remember the stream of people, the pickaxes, and the champagne when, twenty years ago, a regime–that not even its supporters believed in anymore–finally fell. The Slavist SERENA VITALE explains, “the dissident they were battling was within themselves.”

by Fabrizio Rossi

“The Wall? Everyone knew it would fall.” In what sense? “It was already rotten, like the system it represented. Nobody believed in it anymore, not even the big figures of the Party. Do you know what I saw once in Moscow?” No, what? “A functionary of the Writer’s Union, drunk, who confided to his overcoat, ‘I know languages and I know many things in the Party. What do you think about that! Just think how much they would give me abroad…’ A society of schizoids who served the Party and at the same time cursed it because they couldn’t even find toilet paper.” Serena Vitale, Professor of Russian Language and Literature at the Catholic University of Milan, does not hesitate to define November 9, 1989, when that empty system fell as “the most beautiful day of my life.”
Those images traveled the world: the stream of people crossing Checkpoint Charlie, the pickaxes, the VOPOS (the infamous “people’s police”) watching impotently, the flags, people playing guitars on top of the Wall, the waves of applause, the showers of champagne at the Brandenburg Gates. “I popped some corks too, in tears, glued to the TV watching the news with some friends,” recalls Vitale. Having traveled far and wide in the countries behind the Iron Curtain–her studies brought her to Moscow, Prague, Dresden, and Berlin–she knows what she’s talking about. East Berlin was terrifying.  “If you were from the West, you were watched with fear and envy, and nobody spoke to you. Few people on the streets, dark faces, a fearsome silence… You had the impression that everybody was spying on you from behind their windows.” It was an impression accentuated by the fact that everything could change as soon as you turned the corner–“You didn’t have time to prepare: a metro stop, passport, and you ended up in horror. From one world to another.” Not a thousand miles away, as in Siberia; in Berlin, a wall separated father from daughter, when both lived in the same city and could look at the same sky.
“The expectation that something had to happen any day now was in the air. The people couldn’t take it anymore, and they publicly criticized the authorities, which had even prohibited alcoholic beverages.” There were many small cracks in the monolith: publications appeared that previously had been clandestine (such as some chapters of The Gulag Archipelago, the masterpiece by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which came out in the summer of ’89 in a prestigious Russian magazine), and some people even held street demonstrations. “As happened in 1988 in Leningrad…. I thought I was seeing a miracle: about thirty people, at dusk, in a protest not organized by those on high. But the discontent was also expressed in more down to earth ways.” Such as? “Take the jokes that were widespread among the people: they were becoming increasingly cruel.” For example? “In Moscow there’s an endless line to buy vodka and the people blame the regime. At a certain point, a young man decides, ‘That’s enough! I’m going to the Kremlin to kill Gorbachev!’ He returns a bit later and they ask, ‘So, did you do it?’ ‘No, the line there was even longer.’” In the face of this situation, those in power tried to salvage what was possible, changing the top figures of the Party and the government, or easing the restrictions on travel abroad. Because of these openings, Gorbachev would be hailed in the West as a “liberator,” while the Russians would criticize him for having failed to avoid chaos. “He was the first to lift the lid on the pressure cooker, but not in order to end Communism. He was a man of power who sought to save the USSR.” But that pressure cooker exploded in his hands.

A stronger rock. It’s significant that the collapse of the regime started in Berlin, where the Wall itself symbolized the true nature of the regime, like a self-incrimination: given that this society is not the promised heaven on earth, let’s build a barrier with barbed wire and snipers so the people can’t escape. This symbol had also been opposed for years by another: “The election of John Paul II was fundamental for the collapse of the Communist regimes: precisely from a country that boasted having annihilated God, came the man who became Pope.” It was not by chance that the rock of Peter would prove stronger than the Wall.
It was the power of the truth, an objectivity that even the most loyalist functionary was forced to face. “A system upheld by lies and ideology was destined to collapse. Maybe Stalin and Lenin never thought of escaping, but all those I met saw very well that things weren’t working this way. At the desk, they were faithful to the cause, but then they asked you to accompany them in secret to buy a fur coat for their wives. The dissident they were battling was within themselves.” It’s the heart. So what of the ideology, then? “By then, it often gave way to a bureaucratic function. After all, even the KGB (secret police) were poor clerks: once they stopped me for five hours in the airport, and do you know why? To copy by hand my calendar and engagement book and to do a drawing of my hairdryer. Certainly not high-tech methods, but these fellows, too, expected nothing more than to punch the time clock.
At the end of the 1980s, it seemed that dissent had been defeated. The repressions had eliminated the uncomfortable elements.  Others, like Solzhenitsyn, had emigrated.
The scholar Andrej Sakharov would die soon, and new recruits were lacking. But precisely then came the end of the regime. Isn’t it paradoxical? “The dissidents had brought a light, contributing to changed consciences. And, even though in that moment there was no longer a moral force opposing the regime, their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I saw it with my own eyes at Sakharov’s funeral. It certainly wasn’t attended by a handful. All of Moscow was there.”

Side effects. Freedom had crumbled the Wall, but let’s be clear: Westernization didn’t bring positive models alone. The first thing many did as soon as they entered West Berlin was to run to buy some jeans. “But what else should they have done, if they’d been contaminated by the myth of the West? Have we offered them anything better? Vulgarity is a risk, for us as for them.” With the end of the empire, thorny questions have emerged: the search for an identity in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, the return of dangers such as nationalism and xenophobia, the distrust of European institutions, the relations with Islam, and freedom of expression. “Since Russia has become a democracy, scores of journalists have been killed. For years, there has been controversy about what should be taught in school–some manuals put Stalin’s crimes in the background, re-evaluating him as a great statesman. At the same time, The Gulag Archipelago is part of the high school program of study. Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction to you?” And there’s no lack of those who think “things were better when they were worse,” who criticize the “side effects” of the fall of the Wall. “It was natural that the questions put on ice by Communism should explode. But there’s a gain that exceeds any problem.” What? “Freedom. In these countries, the sky has opened again, and this is everything.”