The Berlin Wall - Victory that changed all of our lives
The collapse of the Berlin Wall brought Soviet communism to an end and did more to liberate humanity than any other event since the end of World War II.
Without that remarkable revolution millions would still be living half lives under the terrifying shadow of the Stasi or the Securitate, wondering which of their neighbours, workmates or relatives were security ministry snitches. Wondering when the midnight knock on the door might come, or when their already limited lives would be further curtailed.
Without the destruction of Soviet communism, China would not have become the insatiable, state-managed, capitalist whirlwind that has driven two decades of global consumption and growth.
The refusal of East Germans to continue to live third world lives also made it possible for the European Union to welcome so many new member states, thereby spreading material benefits and security to the fringes of Europe and forgotten corners of our world.
These are the life-defining, life-enriching achievements of the most recent cycle Europe’s anti-communist movement which began, almost 30 years ago in August, 1980, when Lech Walesa, an unemployed Polish electrician, set in train the events that would destroy Soviet communism.
He led a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, and announced the creation of Solidarnosc!, an independent trade union. Ultimately Solidarnosc! achieved what the Cold War could not.
It is pertinent, as so many Irishmen and women march against the bitter consequences of the failure of free market capitalism, that we should remember how very awful the alternative was.
Yes, it was much, much worse than anything we face today. It is precisely now, as we are rightly so angry with bankers and so disenchanted with tooth-and-claw speculation and frightened by the havoc recklessly misused capital can cause, that we should remember how inhuman and cruel, how grey and denying, state-controlled socialism was.
It was a moral, environmental, cultural and, very largely, a scientific disaster. It reminded us that every single political system we have used to manage our affairs has, at its very heart, the corruption caused by human weaknesses.
Let us not pretend that communism and socialism did not have golden circles too, though those golden circles were far more lethal than our out-of-control capitalists.
We celebrate the collapse of the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for a kind of social and material redemption; we celebrate it because it put possibility before repression, it valued imagination more than servitude.
All of the lessons it taught us are valuable today. It showed the irrepressible force of human energy, ambition and conscience. But most of all it showed us that it is possible, even if your back is to the wall, to overcome dire and seemingly impossible circumstances.
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