concessions to Bonn.’103 Such pressure, however, had little effect; the countries of Central and Eastern Europe had become dependent on the West and there was little the Soviet Union could do to halt the trend (Table 6).
Table 5
Source: Marer 1996, 56. Fuel and nonfood raw materials. For higher estimates, see Marrese and Vanous 1983.
Table 6
Source: July 13, 1989 (GARF, F. 5446, Inv. 150, S. 73, P. 70, 71).
The reasons for the failure of Communism, however, did not lie in subjective mistakes but in the objective contradictions and problems within the Communist system itself. Let us consider the practical rather than the theoretical problems by looking at the economic difficulties that contributed to the economic slowdown, starting with inadequate incentives. The expectation that control and planning would solve the economic problems did not work in reality. A human being’s free will, which is the basic condition for innovation, cannot be incorporated into an economic plan. Communism is simply not capable of innovation and this was one of the main reasons for its failure. The second reason for failure was semi-autarky, the closeness of the Soviet system. For the Communists, the outside world was an alien, uncontrollable source of disruption and therefore it was better not to have too much contact with it. This attitude isolated the Communist countries from the rest of the world and condemned them to backwardness. The third problem in the command economy was its structural inertia. During the initial phase of development, growth in the Communist bloc was fuelled by extensive methods. For some time, the Soviet economy was able to grow without much difficulty while it was sufficient to produce no matter what and no matter how: labour was plentiful and even a waste of capital looked like growth. The system worked more or less satisfactorily as long as the world economy developed in a predictable way, but when the picture became distorted – as always happens – the command economy was not able to respond to the changes. For example, whereas the West began to reform its economies after the energy crisis, the command economies carried on along the same old path of energy-intensive development, expanding old technologies and importing production lines that were just becoming obsolete in the West because of the shift in cost structures. The fourth reason for failure was excessive military spending that was connected with the USSR’s desire to retain the worldwide empire it had created, even in the face of spiralling costs. As a result, while the US had been reducing its military spending since the mid-1950s, in the USSR, it had significantly increased, moving the USSR nearer to collapse. Theoretically it might have been possible to find a way out of this situation, but this would have required the restoration of trust between the government and its people. Under Communism, this was not possible; it was impossible to change the command economy without initiating political change.104
At the same time, the Communists themselves tried to stay optimistic and ‘sell’ Communist ideas via absolutely controlled media to as many citizens as possible. It was announced that people would be living in Communism within a few decades. In 1961, the head of the East German Communists, Walter Ulbricht, forecast the arrival of paradise in the following way:
Our table will be covered with the best nature can offer: prime meat and milk products, the best of the orchard, strawberries and tomatoes at a time when they are not yet ripening on our fields, grapes in winter and not only when in abundance in autumn […]. To imagine that future abundance in the retail outlets, mighty and ever-growing waves of food and specialities from the four corners of the earth, of clothes and shoes of marvellous new materials, of kitchen appliances and working machines, cars big and small, handicrafts and jewellery, cameras and sports equipment.
Protest in East Germany: the question is not bananas but sausage
Unfortunately, with each decade that passed, the Communist countries moved farther away from this dream that actually reflected conditions in the developed capitalist countries of the 1990s and not at all those of the Communist camp.105 The people reacted to Communist brainwashing with enormous numbers of bitter jokes such as: ‘how will the problem of queues in shops be solved when we reach full Communism? There will be nothing left to queue up for.’106
The best evidence of the failure of the Soviet system in Europe was actually created by the Communists themselves – the Berlin Wall, which made the Iron Curtain concrete in the most literal sense of the word. You can placate people for a long time with attractive promises of a better life in the future, but eventually they will realise what is really going on and start voting with their feet. In the period between the end of the Second World War and 1961, a total of 3.8 million people emigrated from East to West Germany. In late 1960 and early 1961, the number of refugees rose dramatically; a critical point had been reached. Every day, thousands of East Germans slipped into West Berlin and from there were flown on to West Germany itself. If the exodus could not be stopped, East Germany would soon cease to exist. The seriousness of the situation was understood in both Berlin and Moscow. The only solution seemed to be to cut East Germany off from the West once and for all. So, on the morning of 13 August 1961, under the protection of hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers, the building of wire obstacles dividing East and West Berlin began. Overnight, and with savage finality, families, lovers, friends and neighbourhoods were divided; subway lines, rail links, apartment buildings and phone lines were severed and sealed off. Sunday, 13 August, became known as ‘Stacheldrahtsonntag’ (Barbed Wire Sunday); for the Communists it marked the successful accomplishment of ‘Operation Rose’. Within a few weeks, improvised wire obstacles started to morph into a formidable, heavily fortified, closely guarded and booby-trapped cement barrier dividing the city and enclosing West Berlin. This was ‘the Wall’. Officially, there was little that the West could do, but several organisations were founded in West Berlin to help people from the other side of the Wall to find their way to freedom. With false documents or via secret tunnels, thousands of people reached West Berlin. The escapees proved that the Wall was not impregnable, thereby offering hope to the millions of citizens still trapped in the GDR.107 Many people were killed and even more arrested. During the second half of 1961 alone, 3,041 people were arrested as a result of failed escape attempts and altogether 18,000 individuals were sentenced for ‘political crimes’ in the GDR during that year. Throughout the duration of the Wall’s existence, at least 765 people met their death on the way to freedom, 202 of them in their attempt to get over the Berlin Wall.108 But this did not stop others. There were many innovative escape attempts; by hot-air balloon, hidden in cars, under water or by simply driving a scheduled passenger train into a barrier at full speed, as driver Harry Deterling did on 5 December 1961. Deterling had carefully recruited his 24 passengers for what he called the ‘last train to freedom’. All cowered on the floor of the wagon as the train powered through the final border defences and a hail of bullets swept over them.109
All this demonstrates again the basic failure of Communist thinking, which simply fails to understand that since a human being is created in the image of God, he has a right to make his own decisions. When people are not free to choose, they cannot be creative or innovative. Being able to make innovative decisions also means that they can make mistakes and learn from them. This is also part of being human. Absolute control robs people of the possibility of making such mistakes and this in itself is the greatest mistake of all. Because, without the right to decide, the right to try and the right to be right or wrong, human beings simply could not exist.
East and West compared
Just as the West had failed to understand what was going on in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War, it continuously ignored the realities behind the Iron Curtain in the decades thereafter. After the end of Stalinism, increasing numbers of Western scholars and politicians began to view Eastern bloc Communist countries