The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of tyranny

Kolkata: On June 13, 1990, East German troops started demolishing the Berlin Wall and by December of that year the process was completed. This signalled the end of tyranny for millions of East Europeans, subjugated by the Soviet Union with greater venom than even Nazi Germany.

To understand the extent of Soviet oppression, a visit to the erstwhile Warsaw Pact countries can be useful and I have been blessed to set foot in Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Hungary. Followers of this genre will be familiar with the Imre Nagy-led Hungarian uprising of 1956, the quest for freedom brutally squashed by Kruschev’s tanks. Cut to 1968 and the enigmatic Prague Spring, Alexander Dubcek the leitmotif, crushed with comparable venom. The Communist Torture museums in Budapest and Prague are arguably similar to the obscenity of Buchenwald and Auschwitz - ‘ Arbeit Macht Frei’ simply substituted by guns without roses. I speak from aghast observational evidence, not a video blog from YouTube.

The other frame of reference for this period is Berlin and even after three decades of unification, the difference between Kurfurstendamm and Alexanderplatz is rather stark, the former West and the latter East. As is indeed the Trabant exposition, the Hindustan Ambassador-like vehicle of East Germany, hilariously diminished compared to the stunning development of BMW and Mercedes. Conversations with old timers will reveal the atrocities of the Staasi, the Secret Service of East Berlin, mentored with much affection by the Lavrenty Beria legacy of the NKVD and KGB. They were experts in peer-to-peer engagements, just that they terrorised common citizens to spy on their neighbours, as routine self-serving citizenry.

The post-World War II footprint had many such characters, including the sadistic Enver Hoxha of Albania and Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, accumulators of illicit capitalistic gains. Across the sphere of influence, prolific murderers reigned supreme, blessed by the Politburo and supported by the KGB. The quirky exception being Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, who managed the stature of sustainable disruption with aplomb, perfectly negotiating the nuanced equilibrium between the Kremlin and the Non-Aligned Movement. Perhaps he was a double agent or a red herring, but that is not the agenda of this piece.

To accumulate evidence for my preferred hypothesis about Communism in action, I will now invite Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and their peers from the Cambridge Spy Ring. The most chilling book to have crossed my visual radar is ‘ My Secret War’ by Harold Adrian Russel Philby, where he narrates and justifies the reasons for defecting in spirit and form to the Soviet Union. In England, the class system was defective and destructive and that led to a committed affection for Marxism, a unique demonstration of thoughtful passion. But queering the pitch would be Philby’s multiple interactions with Western media post defection to Moscow, where he would endure a dreary and lengthy autumn, bereft of desirable company or appreciation by the master he selflessly chose over the Queen that was rightfully his.

But let me not digress as that is the fallacy of those in a quandary, which I am not. It is clearly inexplicable why the torchbearers of such an equitable revolution quickly transformed into desperate potentates and voracious swindlers, obsessive about power and its ensuing perks and giving a sincere damn about the rights of the common man, the source engine of this philosophy. If Vladimir Lenin had lived beyond 1924, perhaps the culture would have shaped up differently but his successor Josef Stalin was nothing short of Hitler in homicidal intent, mass murders and purges being the charming norm. Including of course the assassination of his chief rival Leon Trotsky in Mexico, executed with Sergei Bubka precision by NKVD agents. Stalin was clearly the spiritual inspiration for the East Bloc leadership, each outdoing the other in the inglorious quest to demolish humanity.

Now I must cut to 2018, a professional visit to Bucharest in Romania and the necessity to visit public healthcare facilities. Quite simply, the levels were comparable to what I had experienced in India till the 1990s at most, and this was like a ride on a regressive time machine. The doctors were abysmally paid and even doctorates in Pharma were queuing up for jobs in Healthcare Marketing, with pharmacy staff emanating from the Post Graduate cadres.

Quite clearly, the Communist regimes designed by the people for the people were too busy accumulating their dachas, caviar and diamonds to care about the common subjects. It is extremely intriguing to assess why the events panned out like this but my primary accused, as already suggested, would be Josef Stalin and his megalomaniac ways, setting a benchmark that was alarmingly replicated or even surpassed. Including Chairman Mao of China, whose Cultural Revolution effectively led to thirty million deaths and that is a conservative assessment.

It is plainly clear that in spite of achievements in gender equality and religious tolerance, the European Communist regimes were distressing torture chambers, causing miserable harm to their own citizens. Many normal taxpayers I spoke to were happy to forgive Nazi Germany, as maniac outsiders, but unwilling to even grant token pardons to the fake liberators, the Soviets who destroyed their will and their autonomy.  Putin’s actions in Ukraine prove that he is indeed a worthy accomplice of Stalinist values, separated by decades but not by scheming intent.

Communism, as a political force, has strangely worked successfully in democratic environments, where it has had to compete with multiple influences, as opposed to being given an absolute totalitarian mandate. The Pink Wave in Latin America is proof of the pudding as is indeed the Indian scenario, in Bengal and Kerala. Therefore, I do believe that it is most effective as a player whose position in the equation is not guaranteed, as that has resulted in avoidable horrors, damaging the acumen of generations. The Berlin Wall, both as creation and demolition, is sufficient evidence that Communism has unfortunately been an evil force in much of the world where it was unquestionably solicited. I will talk of Fidel Castro another day, but the Havana story is possibly an aberration like Tito, in a profoundly positive tenor.

During my visit to Berlin, I did pick up a tourist nugget of the Wall, whether fake or real I will never know. But the tyranny of Stalinist Soviet Communism is certainly not fiction and the evidence is out in the abundant open. It is a human tragedy no less formidable than the holocaust and given its expansive shelf life, it is actually a lot more.

But Communism, in its pristine form, must rise above these deadly aberrations, operating as a genuine provocation of change and India can be a test case. Perhaps the starting point is being pitched as a personal value system, therefore a valid foundation for sensible escalation. If the future works, it will be plainly apparent.