The miracle of Leipzig
Why was a peaceful revolution possible in East Germany?
On October 9 Germany is marking an anniversary of peaceful protests in Leipzig. Twenty four years ago that day there was a peaceful procession of 70,000 people who marched down the streets of Leipzig, chanting “We are the people!” This action paralyzed the city authorities and worked the Leipzig miracle – the might of people broke the vicious circle of state-sponsored violence, which signaled the beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic. It is generally acknowledged that Germany would not have reunited and the Warsaw Pact would not have broken up, had it not been for the October 9, 1989, events. On this occasion, the Heinrich Boell Foundation office in Ukraine and the German Embassy in Ukraine have organized a public show of the documentary film The Miracle of Leipzig and a panel debate, “Peaceful Revolution in the GDR: Why Was this Possible in 1989?”
The organizers used this occasion to discuss the 1989 events as part of a podium debate between German and Ukrainian experts, reproduce the historical context, and analyze present-day protest movements. The cinema hall was packed to capacity, and the audience included the German Ambassador to Ukraine, Christof Weil; the First Burgomaster of Leipzig, Andreas Mueller; and a number of German and Ukrainian experts.
A GRASSROOTS INITIATIVE AND THE “SINATRA DOCTRINE”
The 90-minute-long documentary The Miracle of Leipzig, directed by Sebastian Dehnhardt and Matthias Schmidt, relates the dramatic events of October 1989. Eyewitnesses from both sides of the face-off and ordinary Leipzig residents are telling about the “Monday demonstrations” that have left an imprint in the German people’s memory as culmination of a series of protests and embody the success of the whole democratic movement in Germany.
“This film gives quite a truthful account of the autumn 1989 events,” says Andreas MUELLER, First Burgomaster of Leipzig, who knew some of the film’s characters in person, “the ordinary people, who wanted the system to be changed and managed to organize themselves, were the true agents of changes. There was some information about the way the army might behave, but they were not afraid and broke through in a peaceful way – by means of leaflets and nonviolent actions. It is not violence that worked this miracle. For they rightly chanted: ‘We are the people!’”
What made it possible for a peaceful revolution to succeed? “I was born and raised in Berlin. Whenever I was on the TV tower and looked down at West Berlin, I thought I would never get there,” said political scientist Andreas UMLAND, an expert on post-Soviet transformational process. “It was indeed risky to take part in the movement. I was not in the first ranks because I was a Leipzig University student at the time. For the people born behind the Iron Curtain, all those events were rather unexpected.” The miracle is that the October 9 events in Leipzig were unfolding successfully, whereas the previous protests – the uprising in East Germany on June 17, 1953, the Hungarian people’s uprising in 1956 in Budapest, and the Prague Spring of 1968 – ended in a tragedy. Umland explains this by the fact that Gorbachev made it clear that society was undergoing political changes. “The so-called Sinatra Doctrine meant loosening the grip on the East European countries. In the beginning, Poland and Hungary were allowed to have their own way. But all this really happened in a matter of weeks – the Communist regime seemed very stable in the summer of 1989, but it ceased to exist just eight weeks later. The wall tumbled down,” he says.
“REVOLUTION AND BACKGROUND PROTESTS ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS”
On the one hand, there are some parallels between the 1989 events in Germany and the events in Ukraine over the past few years, when the initiative has been coming from the grassroots. However, according to Volodymyr Ishchenko, a researcher of protest movements in Ukraine, the situations are different. “With due account of the problems Ukraine is facing, the total number of protests is on the rise. But the protest mobilization in Europe can also reach the 1989 level. It is, first of all, about France, Greece, and Spain, where tough austerity is in force,” Volodymyr ISHCHENKO says. “Ukraine saw the peak of protests last year. This year about 60 percent of the protesters address such essential problems as wages, the environment, health care, illegal construction, and communal infrastructure. Last year a mere 19 percent of protest actions were about civil rights, while socioeconomic issues account for a relative majority of protests. The Germans struggled for the freedom of speech and democracy. We have a somewhat different situation,” the expert concludes.
Journalist Yehor SOBOLIEV added that Ukraine has a much better situation. “We do not have a powerful regime, and the police are unable to resist the people, only formally being ‘on the other side.’ Our enemy is Facebook. We are in fact free. We may not like what is going on in the country, but most of the people can escape from reality one way or another. We are not told where to work, what to say, and how to look… However, freedoms are being stolen ‘little by little,’ not in an authoritarian way.”
Political scientist Volodymyr FESENKO emphasized that this kind of “background protests” continuously occur in democracies. “Revolution is a miracle indeed. Let us not mix up such things as protests and revolutions. A revolution is a public movement aimed at changing the political system. The 1989 events in Germany can only be compared with the year 2004 in Ukraine. What made the German events possible? Above all, it was the Soviet perestroika, which stopped tanks, and a split inside the ruling elite. A revolution does not finish on the street. It is supposed to go on, and the energy of the masses on the street should turn into the energy of socioeconomic changes. Only then there will be a true success. Germany managed to do so,” he said.
Demonstrations in Leipzig were of an absolutely peaceful nature. The protesters chanted “We are the people!” stressing that human rights and freedoms should be above instructions “from the top.”
Every successful demonstration gave way to the next one, and more and more people joined the ranks of freedom fighters with every passing week. While 20,000 people gathered on Monday, October 2, in protest against the Communist regime in East Germany, there were 70,000 on October 9, 150,000 on October 16, and 300,000 on October 23. Leipzig was the birthplace of positive changes in the GDR. A wholehearted aspiration for freedom turned out to be stronger than the Communist authorities.
