fraid of a united Germany?
lions of people from non-European backgrounds. The socialist Europe that has to be built will be a common home not just for British, French or Germans but for all who live and work here. Notes 1. The two trade union federations in Spain are the Workers Commissions and the UGT, traditionally linked to the Com- munist and Socialist parties respectively. 2. The Barcelona Socialists who resigned declared for the Izquierda Unida (United Left) initiated by the Communist Party which won 9,5% of the vote. 3. Oskar Lafontaine was long regarded as the leading left-winger in the SPD. 4. I-G Metal is the largest union in West Germany By John Lister The uneasy "settlement' in Europe between the Soviet Union and the Western capitalist powers was ar- rived at through a combina- tion of negotiations and the new balance of forces fol- lowing the end of World War Two. It has always seen its sharpest expression in the division of Germany. In the initial period after the defeat of German imperialism, neither the allied powers nor Stalin could contemplate the prospect of a resurgent Ger- man nation: the country was divided by mutual consent into zones of occupation, leaving Berlin, the capital, 210 kilometres inside the Soviet zone, it- self divided between four occupying powers, and with no Germans in con- trol. Events did not fulfil the aspirations of either side. Illusions that the Com- munists might occupy a strong posi- tion in both east and west sectors of Germany were dashed, not least by the reemergence of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which in the east was quickly forced into an unpopular merger with the Communists. On the other hand allied hopes of persuading or pressurising Stalin into an arrange- SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
SUPPLEMENT I'Ve ASKED THE ENTIRE EAST GERMAN RULING POLITBURO TO LeAVe... EGON KRENZ Striking a pose:US President Kennedy in Berlin, 1963
Censure reconstruction of capitalism in the eastern sector and much of castern Europe also came to nothing.
In 1947 the Americans began to force the pace, announcing what amounted to a recognition that Germany was to be permanently divided: in June 1948 they secured the agreement of the British and French to the formation of a West German govemment. This move ran alongside the formation of a new anti-soviet military alliance, the Brussels Union, forerunner to NATO. Stalin correctly saw that the USA wanted its new
BUT THeY WeRe THE ONLY ONES WHO WANTED ARE TO STAY. capitalist West Germany to be integrated into this alliance as a counter to Soviet influence. The Kremlin leaders felt threatened - the more so because the Americans wanted to retain their foothold and listening post in West Berlin, in the heart of the Soviet post-war "buffer zone". They hit back by imposing a total blockade on West Berlin, cutting road, rail and water routes, and stopping food, electricity, gas and other supplies from East Ger- many, The USA and Britain responded with a huge air- lift which between June 1948 and May 1949 transported over 1.5 million tons of supplies to keep West Berlin going and symbolise wester deter- mination to stand up to communism. After 318 days, Stalin was forced into a humiliating climbdown. A few months later the first West German government was elected, with Dr Konrad Adenauer as Chancellor, and with a new capital, Bonn. The NATO alliance - based from the beginning upon a willingness of European capitalists to allow the USA to threaten nuclear war in Europe in their "defence' - had been established in the
"the Kremlin leaders hit back
by imposing a total blockade on West Berlin,
cutting road, rail and water
routes, and stopping food, electricity, gas
Tand other
supplies from East Germany"
Page 17
and the start of NATO membership "Kennedy was prepared to live with the Wall so long as the west kept its hold in Berlin. Khruschev could think of no other way of retaining vital skilled workers in the east. As a symbol of the uneasy balance of forces in Europe and the blunt, brutal methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Wall survived for 28 years" Page 18
1955: West German Chancellor Adenauer confirms the end of occupation summer of 1949. Though it has remained as a pretext for keeping large standing armies in Burope, there was never any notion that the NATO powers would seck to repel the hypothetical threat of a Soviet invasion by conventional ams: it has always been a cover for allowing US nuclear bases on European soil.
The Stalinist East German state, the German Democratic Republic, was not formed until after West Germany: and the Soviet response to NATO, the Warsaw Pact, imposed on sattelite regimes in Eastem Europe and based on a similar "license to kill" using nuclear weapons, was not set up until after West Germany became a formal member of NATO in 1955.
The Cold War continued to be fought out over the two Germanies, and with special vigour in Berlin, where the Americans funnelled a massive $600 billion by 1960, matched by an equal investment from the Bonn government, to turn the wester half of the city into the greatest manufacturing powerhouse of Germany, with an output of S2 billion a year, more than the gross national product of most member states of the United Nations. This propaganda showcase of capitalist investment stood in stark contrast with the austere conditions in East Germany which, though more industrialised than many cast Buropean states, took years to recover from Stalin's systematic post-war looting of industrial plant, and which lacked any external input of capital.
The result by the end of the 1950s was a steady stream of skilled, talented East german workers and intellectuals crossing over to West germany - some 300,000 a year, with over 3 million having deserted since 1949. Antagonised by this, and fearful of the growing rearmament of
SUPPLEMENT
West Germany, together with its likely entry into the Common Market, Soviet leader Nikita Khruscher began to raise the stakes once more on Berlin. He threatened to hand control of the Soviet zone to East Germany, a government which none of the western powers would recognise. The problem rumbled on in the background to other world events, not least the Cuban revolution of 1959. followe by the arrival in the White House of the arch cold warrior John F. Kennedy, whose administration unleashed to most rapid escalation of the arms race the world had yet seen.
Khruschev pressed for negotiations over Berlin designed to stem the exodus of East Germans, who were already restricted from crossing the border elsewhere: Kennedy refused the slightest westem propaganda continued gloat at the exodus. On August 13 1961, Khruschev ordered the Berlin Wall to be built, permanently dividing the city, closing the border, and dashing any dreams of a reunited Germany.
Kennedy was prepared to live with the Wall so long as the west kept its hold in Berlin. Khruschev could think of no other way of retaining vital skilled workers in the east. As a symbol of the uneasy balance of forces in Europe and the blunt, brutal methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Wall survived for 28 years. Now as workers stream through in both directions to catch up on a generation of missed visits and lost friendships, it symbolises not only the ambiguity of the Gorbachev leadership in the USSR and the new regimes in eastern Europe which he has helped create, but also a glaring contradiction in the imperialist stance.
For the USA, Britain and France, the spectre of a reunified Germany -80 million strong, and potentially the world's third largest military power -is possibly more daunting than it is for the Soviet bureaucracy who cherish bitter memories of 20 million dead repulsing Hitler's armies. Were the new united Germany to be a
capitalist power, it would dwarf the other countries in the European Community, challenge US economic and political domination in the western world, and further marginalise British capitalism.
For the Soviet bureaucracy the military alignment of a united Germany would give the greatest concem. Gorbachev might well settle for a united neutral Germany, if this offered the compensatory advantage of breaking up NATO and allowing the USSR to dissolve the obviously fractured and ineffective Warsaw Pact (in which so many signatories are clearly unreliable allies in almost any Soviet military effort).
The imperialist powers plainly regard this as a real problem, not least because even before the latest developments the West German goverment had for some time shown itself to be responsive to the prospect of exploiting profitable trade and technology deals with the USSR and Eastern Europe even where this runs counter to US policy. Any break from the imperialist military alliance could, they fear, see even a capitalist Germany drawn closer politically and economically to the cast.
Hence the note of caution among the anti-communist propaganda ballyhoo over the East German events. Thatcher has hurriedly written to Gorbachev to reassure him the Britain has no intention of separating East Germany from the Warsaw Pact. It would be more accurate to say that she has no desire to lose West Germany from the NATO alliance, and
short-term expectation capitalism can be restored in East
All the running in the cold War has been made by the imperialists seeking to force the pace and create openings to reconquer - economically or politically, if not militarily - the lost markets and labour force in Easter Europe. Now glasnost and the mass mobilisations in the cast have demolished the basis of much wester anti-communist demonology. and undermined the bedrock of the arguments for NATO's existence.
In doing so, the workers of East Germany are not only liberating themselves from Stalinist repression, but giving a lead for workers in the west, who must now follow through with an offensive against the imperialist alliances and reactionary policies of their lown capitalist rulers. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
How Eastern Europe fell
East Berlin workers battle against Soviet tanks, June 1953 Events in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and now, dramatically, Czechoslovakia, show that the stranglehold of Stalinism on eastem Europe is beginning to weaken in the same uneven, pragmatic way it first took its grip after World War Two.
Just as in the post-war period, the decisive factor that has triggered developments is the attitude of the Kremlin. But while Stalin's influence consisted in containing and suppressing every independent movement of the working class in castem Europe, Gorbachev's policies of glasnost have served to undercut the monolithic character and dictatorial powers of ruling Stalinist parties throughout the eastern bloc, opening up the pos sibility of swift and militant radicalisation by the working class.
This has been further com pounded by Gorbachev's insistence -most dramatically in the sensitive case of East Germany - that there could be no question of Soviet troops being sent in to prop up bureaucratic leaders beseiged by their own working class (and his warning against any European re-run of the bloodshed of Tienanmen Square. This about-face on intervention has most obviously SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
SUPPLEMENT to Stalinism pulled the rug on East German leader Erich Honecker, but may yet (as we go to press) serve to destabilise the regime in Czechoslovakia.
How was it, then that such a ring of Stalinist states came to be erected around the wester flank of the Soviet Union after the War? The process through which the reaction ary - sometimes almost feudal -regimes were overturned, capitalist property nationalised and deformed caricatures of "workers" states created was from the start uneven in scale and tempo.
The last thing on Josef Stalin's mind as the Red Amy fought its way westwards towards Berlin after routing Hitler's armies at Stalingrad, and confronting unaided the vast bulk of the Nazis" military strength, was a revolutionary extension of socialism.
He was first and foremost concemed to ensure that never again would the Soviet Union be brought to the edge of defeat by another in vasion: he wanted to safeguard Soviet borders against any renewed imperialist offensive.
He was also concerned to rebuild the devastated Soviet economy and industrial base through extracting massive reparations and where neces sary wholesale looting of plant and equipment from the conquered Axis
powers. But Stalin also hoped to secure substantial economic assistance in reconstruction from his imperialist 'allies': and to this end he was quite prepared to strike deals on the division of the world into rigid'spheres of influence in which capitalist spheres would remain undisturbed by Communist Parties.
Lastly, but by no means least, Stalin was concerned to stamp out any revolutionary fires that had been ignited among the working classes of eastern Europe by the military defeat of their repressive bourgeois rulers, and fanned by the arrival of the con quering Red Army with its historic Link to the October Revolution.
This is one key reason why as the Red Army moved into eastern Europe they simultaneously acted to disband and disarm the spontancous committees formed by anti-fascist workers (often old CP members) which greeted their approach by raising red flags, seizing control of their factories, arresting and even executing local fascists and Nazi collaborators.
Stalin's fear of such revolutionary movements on the borders of the USSR was reinforced by his interest in seeking a deal with the allied imperialists: the result was a policy of establishing new bourgeois coalition governments throughout castern
"the last thing on Josef Stalin's mind as the Red Army fought its way westwards towards Berlin after routing Hitler's armies at Stalingrad, and confronting unaided the vast bulk of the Nazis' military strength, was a revolutionary extension of socialism" "as the Red Army moved into eastern E