Jeremi Suri

FROM THE COLD WAR TO A COMMON EUROPEAN HOME

Published in German: Aargauer Zeitung (6 November 2009)

The leaders of nations built the Berlin Wall in Central Europe, and the citizens of those societies tore it down. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first spoke in 1946 of an “Iron Curtain” dividing the free half of the continent from its communist counterpart. Addressing an anxious American audience in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill warned his listeners that they must be prepared to reconstruct and defend the rich soil of democracy in Western Europe from the dark Eastern menace.

Churchill’s Iron Curtain became a nuclear “trip wire” in the 1950s that kept West and East apart, threatening nuclear war if either side intruded upon the other. In August 1961, as East Germans and other East European citizens sought to flee from the tyranny in their societies, the Soviet-supported government in Berlin made the metaphorical Iron Curtain into an ugly concrete wall. Eastern Europe was now a permanent prison for its populations. In response Western Europe fortified itself for war and public displays of cultural and economic superiority to the Soviet-dominated lands. Cold War politics froze European citizens in divided, militarized circumstances that they could not control. 

            Widespread dissatisfaction with this depressing state of affairs motivated efforts to improve East-West relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Citizens on both sides of the Berlin Wall wanted to improve their lives; leaders sought new sources of stability through cooperation rather than conflict. Exhausted from their international adventures and embattled in their own countries, Cold War adversaries began to see more in common. Like growling tigers in a cage, the United States and the Soviet Union learned, eventually, to live by some basic rules. They curtailed threats to one another and they collaborated to improve social conditions across Europe.

            This era of détente changed everything. It opened space for West and East European citizens to assert a powerful voice. Willy Brandt, the first Social Democratic Party Chancellor of West Germany, led this process through his “Ostpolitik.”  He accepted the political division of his country, but he pushed for new social and economic connections with East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. France, Great Britain, Italy, and eventually all the states of Western Europe followed suit. The East-West connections that they built were about more than peace and stability. They encouraged attention to human rights, economic reforms, and a discussion of atrocities committed in the wake of the Second World War. Remembering the difficult past inspired a search for creative alternatives in the present. The Vatican did perhaps the most to encourage this process of connection and reform when it chose the first Polish Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła, in 1978.  

            Through new human rights “watch groups,” memorial societies, arts clubs, and the Catholic Church, Europe gained a voice that transcended the Cold War. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev recognized this development earlier than most other political leaders. He attempted to reform the Soviet Union by making it a part of a “Common European Home.” No phrase could do more to challenge the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall.

European citizens enthusiastically embraced this vision and they deployed it en masse to destroy the Cold War hindrances to its realization. The process began with increased public activism in 1987 and 1988, and it reached a peak in 1989. The momentum for a Common European Home overwhelmed Gorbachev and his followers who sought to control reform. By 9 November 1989 citizens no longer believed they had to accept a divided European continent.

            Cold War leaders had built the Berlin Wall, but they could only watch as citizens tore it down. Politicians deserve credit on all sides for allowing this process to take shape and facilitating it once it began. Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterand adjusted wisely to an emergent Europe. Their successors have not fared as well. A Common European Home, built on the ashes of the Cold War, confronts a new set of economic, social, and political challenges that will occupy the next generation of leaders and citizens.

Comments are closed.