The Berlin Wall

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall ceased it’s hold on the divide of Berlin. Widely considered the “day that changed the world,” the accidental release of the “imprisoned” East Germans from Soviet rule on Nov. 9, 1989 was a sign of the  Soviet Union’s already weakened grasp on its reign.   To the United States, it signaled the end of an era in which the US reign for superpower of the world was threatened by another confederation of states.  As Americans, we are encouraged to think of today as a victory for capitalism, a victory for the West, a victory for the US.  But in actuality, it’s naive to view international politics with the west and it’s ideology as its center.  Behind the Cold War PR, the McCarthy trials, the “ich bin ein Berliner” speech, the wall needed to come down.

In the Yalta Conference after WW2, Stalin requested all of Germany’s industrial might. Some was transported to Moscow, but the majority was heavily concentrated in East Germany.  East Germany received some of the most radical Russian policy, with conditions and regulations harsher than in other bloc countries.  Every man and woman worked.   The stores carried one type of clothing, one type of food, and there were two television channels.  All was equal, all was muted. I could go on here, but you get the gist.

The fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t about the victory of the west over the east, of capitalism over Russian communism.  It was the liberation of a people who were forced into inhabiting a country which was not their own.  People who, with one fateful conference, were swung away from their families only miles away and oriented towards Moscow. 

After the accidental opening of the wall, many people migrated to the west, leaving family on both sides with a simple phone call;  “I’m in the west, im alright” said one German woman, who would return to her native east in a few weeks, but this time of her own will.  Suddenly East Germany had bananas, Coca Cola, and a picked wall, and almost a year later, in October of 1990, East Germany was no more. 

Today, people have gathered all over the globe to celebrate the spark which lit the fire of revolutions across eastern Europe, the capsizing of a symbol that represented the opressive reign of the late Soviet Rule in the bloc countries.  But let us remember that this is not a story of economic systems or tyrranies, but rather that of liberation and reunification.