Author: Ian Anderson

On the second page of Havel’s New Year’s Address, he states:

“The previous regime – armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology –
reduced man to a force of production, and nature to a tool of production.
In this it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship.
It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own
country, to the nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and
stinking machine, whose real meaning was not clear to anyone. It could
not do more than slowly but inexorably wear out itself and all its nuts and
bolts.”

I believe that Havel’s analogy is quite brilliant and suites his point nicely. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations are criticized quite extensively through its usage, and it made me think of the downfall of the USSR opposed to these other countries. Nations like Czechoslovakia were regaining their freedoms and ability to contribute without an overarching power either preventing it or somehow taking credit itself. But how did these other stakes feel about the entire machine falling apart as the nuts and bolts became looser and looser one by one? How did its leaders contribute to its failures? What were the shortcomings of how this machine was maintained and utilized its nuts and bolts? And perhaps most importantly, did the noise of the entire machine deafen the noise some of its more important parts were making?

In view of the more conservative leadership that was prevalent during the Brezhnev era, it makes the publication of the Helsinki Accords in Soviet media publications all the more strange and amazing.  In Snyder’s book on page 55, it is stated that: 

“Likely Soviet leaders thought the act’s publication would highlight its positive security measures without instigating protests. Furthermore, as the Soviet Union, and Brezhnev specifically, had long pressed for the conference, the resulting agreement, signed at a high-level international summit, was a source of pride to Soviet leaders.”

With the dismissive nature the Soviet government had so far expressed with regard to Human Rights, especially with regard to Andrei Sakharov being unable to accept his Nobel Prize because he was attending the trial of Sergei Kovalev. The actions against Yuri Orlov and other advocates in the late 1970s, who had advocated for the adoption of more Human Rights conscious policies by the Soviet government, seem to depart from what Brezhnev claimed he wanted to pursue, especially with respect to the KGB.  On 73, Snyder says that the Soviet leadership, and Brezhnev himself, were hesitant to take actions against those who continued to press for reforms. It prompts several questions regarding Brezhnev’s personal motivations for these arrests. After all, did he just assume that after the Accords were printed that everything would be accepted as complete and there would be no more difficulties with reformers asking hard questions? It seems like an incredibly strange way to approach criticisms. Or, on a more cynical note, was this purely to make it easier to denounce such activists as troublemakers and prevent the actual implementation of their efforts?

On page 157 of Garrard’s “Punk and the State of Youth in the GDR,” the author states that:

“In 1971, Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, stated that so long as ‘one proceeds from the solid premises of socialism, there can be, in my opinion, no taboos in the realm of art and literature.’ A brief period of greater freedom for those engaged in the cultural sphere followed in the early 1970s.”

However, she continues to note that be the mid to late 1970s, regardless of what Honecker had stated, the state began to expel artists and crack down on culture. We also know that both the earlier and later East German punk movements were influenced in part by British rock bands (The Beatles being part of the earlier wave and bands like The Damned being one of the later). With these bands came topics and ideas that the East was not accustomed to. It leads me to wonder just how valid reservations by government officials were. Was the state concerned with the influence such groups had and worrying that this would lead to Western sympathies? Was Honecker ever willing to be tolerant to such cultural movements, or was his statement merely a coverup for a more conservative effort aimed at opposing any rebellious nature from the younger generations?

We know from the various music festivals that occurred in the late 80s and early 90s, when communism was on the way out, that there was finally an ability to openly expressed oneself through this type of music. Had the GDR endorsed or tolerated these movements, would it have given more power to the government in the form of the youths’ approval that might have significantly altered the Cold War? It leaves one to wonder.

As previously stated, Tchaikovsky came before Marxist-Leninist Communism rose to power in what became the Soviet Union, and as such was a piece of Russia’s bourgeois (and by extension Imperial) past, but this is very telling in and of itself. The popularity of Tchaikovsky long after his death (he died in 1893 in Saint Petersburg, the then-capital city of Tsarist Russia) in the form of such performances as his Concerto in D Major in 1968 tells us that the Soviet people were not wanting to completely forget their cultural history and start completely anew with Communism as Stalin had tried so hard to implement. This was seen earlier with the unpopularity of anti-religious policies by the early Soviet governments and this appears to be an extension of that, albeit slightly less contentious because it is seemingly one-step removed from the direct beliefs of Marx and Lenin.

However, this leads to a few questions. Tchaikovsky was an incredibly unique and influential composer, with his use of crescendos, staccato notes, and rapidly varying dynamic levels (all of which are very noticeable in the third movement) being almost unreplicable. In other words, when one hears a Tchaikovsky piece, they KNOW it is a Tchaikovsky piece based on the trademark qualities he left throughout the music. This can only be said of the big classical composers like Beethoven, Rossini, Mozart, and Grieg to name a few. Did this quality give Tchaikovsky’s music a sort of exception? Certainly his music was more widely known in the West than those of other Russian composers. One need only look at the popularity of Swan Lake and Nutcracker ballet performances to see that connection. Was this a factor in his enduring fame? To remind Westerners of the great talent that Russia has gifted the world over the years? Sure, this somewhat strays from the direct political attachment of communism to the musical composer himself, but it nonetheless was a way to score points on the international stage far as the East-West culture war was concerned. And thinking about it from the Soviet perspective, who can blame them? They are amazing musical pieces that would otherwise be going to waste. Even if the composer himself would disagree with the purposes it was being used for, it wasn’t like the man was going to rise from the dead to make an objection. They had a great weapon at their disposal in the form of his pieces and they used them as they saw fit.

Reading the New Soviet Woman article I found a piece of text that puzzled me. The AKSZh, which was the parent organization to the various magazines and efforts to spread socialist and communist ideals, originally began in the 1930s as opposition to the Nazis by reaching out to anti-fascist women in various Western countries. Specifically, the text states on page 625 (5 in the pdf doc) that:

“Inspiration for Soviet Woman emerged from interactions between AKSZh and the USSR’s
Western allies during World War II. AKSZh reached out to women in Europe and North
America during the 1930s as part of the popular front against fascism. Its activities declined when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, but after Germany invaded the USSR, AKSZh became one of several anti-fascist committees in the Soviet Information Bureau created to strengthen solidarity among the Allies.”

Given this…let’s call it an “intermission”…in the ASKZh’s anti-Nazi activity when it became politically rocky after Stalin made a deal with Hitler for peace in exchange for carving up Poland between the two of them, does this take away from the organization’s credibility permanently, or at least its later efforts going into the 1950s? To what extent was the Soviet leadership directing the organization? Surely it had guidelines and goals set in place by them, but were there ever any direct actions/orders? I ask this because depending on just how close those government officials were to the organization from the point of its inception onwards affected how, #1, it would be received by foreign governments whose citizens would read its literature, and #2, citizens in said countries would view that literature based on their feelings about the Soviet leadership at the time (Stalin viewed relatively positively in the US as “Uncle Joe” under the FDR’s Administration but rapidly became a villain during Truman’s tenure after Potsdam and the Berlin Airlift). As I mentioned in Blake’s discussion post, this also ties in with Stalin’s peacetime policies as opposed to wartime. In the latter, things were more desperate and urgent necessitating great unity for a strong opposition to the Axis, meaning more equality in accordance with what was perceived by women to be a key communist ideal. However, once things died down, it seems that things somewhat reverted to the pre-war conservative policies by Stalin. In this case though, I suppose the propaganda efforts of the AKSZh did not revert or cease to maintain the illusion of consistency? It is an interesting parallel between the two instances.

In Chapter 7 of Sheffer’s book, we read how the ever increasing border measures, security protocols, and crackdowns on crossings inspired even more border activity out of fear. We also learned that in some cases, those who handled matters a bit to harshly could also frighten some individuals into crossing. However, by page 167 in Chapter 8, she highlights how East Germans who grew up after WWII, with the border seemingly always there, tended to be more tolerant of the repressive conditions seen in the East. Specifically, it is stated,

“A second generation of borderland residents, one that had been socialized and educated in divergent German states, increasingly saw life on the boundary as normal. So despite widespread dissent on the eastern side, daily activities buttressed the border regime, from patrolling to reporting transgressors. Despite widespread opprobrium on the western side, daily complacency and estrangement reinforced the divide, from border images and tourism to cross-border travel.”

This likely saw increased cooperation amongst this generation later during the Cold War, as they did not know what Germany, and by extension, Europe as well, was like prior to the conclusion of WWII and the fall of the Third Reich (as far as freedom of travel is concerned). This generation would comprise a large part of the overall human resource employed by the GDR and other Warsaw Pact nations later on in the Cold War. Those born between 1944 and 1961 would be somewhere between the ages of 28 and 45 at the time the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, making them the key age demographic for both low level informants and officials and intermediate level administrative officials in the decades leading up to the end of the Cold War. Their childhoods had a large effect on making them different from those who came before who were more willing, and in many cases incredibly eager, to leave the East far behind. The question is how much of this was due to the propaganda, educational structure, and government policies of the GDR and how much of it was simply the fact that the division was there and many wanted to make the bet of it for themselves and their families? It is an interesting look into the role the East-West division had but in two very different ways.

In his post, John made the point that there was “a strong sentiment of ‘hate’ for the ‘Russian occupation'” and highlights the subject of the interview’s point that the “rebellion was spontaneous.” This is interesting for several reasons. It reveals the conditions that lead to failed attempts at revolution – a want for it but a lack of widespread support via organization. Now, the finger can be pointed at the US for not intervening in support of such revolutions under Soviet-occupied territories…but then the question arises as to what the result of that could have been as far as conflicts are considered and if such revolutions even had any real chance to begin with.

On page 8 of the interview in document 0110 with an 18 year old, you get the sense that things escalated rather quickly. Chanting and shouting encouraged the Soviet flag to be removed from the stage nearby and the crowd of demonstrators seemed to become more emotional as these events unfolded. Such events are most of the time hard to organize support of on a broad international scale before they are crushed and come to an end. It also means that there is not a great depth of logistical or strategic planning as to how they are going to achieve these goals. Sure, there might be an initial plan, but as the movement gets carrier away it appears that there either aren’t any secondary plans or emotions prevail so much that plans are more or less disregarded. There is a great similarity here to the June Rebellion in France in 1832 (the subject of Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables), where barricades were constructed in Paris to oppose the military called in to suppress the movement, but once they are breached the movement essentially disintegrates as protesters flee for fear of their lives.

Therefore, were such revolutions as this worth the US potentially wasting resources and international political difficulty if they are almost doomed to fail? And, by extension, by the US not doing so, does that immediately make it guilty of neglecting these protesters, or merely smart for not interfering when the time was not yet perceived to be ripe?