Communism’s Collapse, Democracy’s Demise?: The Cultural Context and Consequences of the East German Revolution

225 Pages·1995·11.697 MB·English

by  Laurence H. McFalls (auth.)

COMMUNISM'S COLLAPSE, DEMOCRACY'S DEMISE?

Conununislll's Collapse,
Delllocracy's Demise?
The Cultural Context and Consequences
of the East German Revolution
Laurence H. McFalls
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Universite de Montreal, Canada
M
MACMILLAN
© Laurence H. McFalls 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995 978·0·333·62817·1
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First published 1995 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-39361-9 ISBN 978-0-230-37326-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230373266
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
Contents
Preface vii
1 Who Overthrew Honecker? 1
It Can't Happen Here: From Totalitarianism
to Revolution 3
Research Methodology: The Intensive Survey 11
Overview 18
2 Behind the Wall: The East German Sonderfall 23
From the Anti-Fascist Bloc to the Anti-Fascist Wall 25
The Lebensliige of the Wall 31
Honecker and the Social Contract 35
The GDR: Best of a Bad Situation or Doomed
from Birth? 41
3 Popular Explanations of the Popular Revolution 45
Reunification and the Revolution 45
The Self-Destruction of the Party-State 53
Societal Mobilization against State Socialism 62
The Economic Untenability of Communism 66
From Structural to Individual Explanations 70
4 The Modest Germans: The Cultural Context
of Mass Mobilisation 75
Political Culture and Interpretive Method 76
The Contradictions of East German Culture 84
5 Different Strokes for Different Volks 101
Quantity vs Quality: Problems of Verification 103
Quantitative Analysis of a Qualitative Problem 108
A Model for All Respondents 113
Differentiating between Demonstrators 119
Party Members against the Party-State 121
Young and Old Demonstrators 124
Why the Religious and the Heathen Raged 127
Regional Variance in Protest Motives 129
Gender and Protest 132
Interpreting the Interpretations 134
v
VI Contents
6 The Cultural Legacy of Communism 139
The Lingering National Identity Crisis 143
The Clash of Cultures 148
Excursus: How Success Spoiled Unification 156
Cultural Continuities in Eastern Germany 160
Appendix: The Survey Questionnaire 167
Notes 195
Select Bibliography 199
Index 209
Preface
Few of us who watched the Berlin Wall crumble in 1989
would have suspected that within five years of communism's
collapse in East Germany, democracy would be in danger
in an enlarged Federal Republic of Germany. Yet, at the
time of writing, reunited Germany's economy is descending
into its worst crisis since 1933; its social order is riven with
anomie and racist violence; and its political system is facing
its greatest challenge in over forty years. Voters will be go
ing to the polls on 19 different occasions at the local, re
gional, national and European levels in 1994. Culminating
in the vote for a new Bundestag in October, these elections
will reshape Germany's political landscape for the close of
the century, and the prospects do not look good.
Although the contingencies and dynamics of an eight-month
electoral campaign and voting cycle render the prediction
of exact outcomes impossible, current trends nonetheless
suggest that the new balance of political forces will threaten
the survival of German democracy. Over the course of forty
years the western Federal Republic had developed a stable
and effective 'two-and-a-half' party system in which the small
Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalesced in alternation with
either the larger Christian Democratic Union parties (CDU
and CSU) or the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Now, with
voters increasingly abandoning - whether out of protest or
conviction - the two-and-a-half traditional parties to support
the Republikaner on the far right, the Greens on the left,
the Statt Partei (the 'instead' party) in the centre, or most
likely the so-called party of non-voters, it is unlikely that a
stable, coherent majority will emerge from the 1994 elec
tions. Instead, perhaps only a grand coalition of CDU and
SPD will be numerically capable of governing. Unfortunately,
such a government would probably lack the leadership and
the programme to pull Germany out of its post-unification
economic, social and political crisis and would thus further
polarise and fragment the electorate.
The possible demise of German democracy so close on
Vll
viii Preface
the heels of communism's collapse comes as something of
a surprise. In the triumphant mood of 1989 and 1990, some
went so far as to proclaim the world-historic victory of lib
eral capitalist democracy: the failure of the only apparent
alternative, socialist authoritarianism, left no choice. Yet today
liberal capitalist democracy is not taking root in Eastern
Europe and is in crisis not only in Germany but through
out much of the West. Of course, not everyone saw capital
ist democracy as the only alternative for the future. Well
before communism's final crisis, Vaclav Havel (1978) diag
nosed a fatal illness common to communism and capital
ism. Communism, however, would succumb first, because
its modern, rationalist hubris was greater and its capacity to
perpetuate consumerist productivism was less than that of
the capitalist West. If liberal democracy finds itself in crisis,
is it perhaps because capitalism today, like communism yes
terday, cannot find rational solutions to the problem of
economic growth that do not incur unsustainable social and
ecological costs?
Germany's current social, economic and political prob
lems are certainly not unique, but they do have some causes
particular to Germany's recent history. In fact, the peculiarities
of German history and geography mean that the country is
once again a crucible for world-historic trends. For forty
years, divided Germany was the focal point of the East-West
conflict, the two states becoming model children of the
opposing social systems that had adopted them. Thus, it is
natural that the most powerful image from the momentous
events of 1989 remains that of the German people emotionally
rediscovering their kinship atop the Berlin Wall on the night
of 9-10 November. With formal unification on 3 October
1990, Germany again became a test case: there alone one
nation, one political system faced the task of reconciling
forty years of divergent social, economic, and cultural de
velopment. If Germany did not succeed in this task of
reconciliation, the rest of Europe and of the world could
scarcely hope to mend the wounds of the Cold War.
Germany's experience with unification has not yet been a
complete failure or success. The economic, social and pol
itical costs have been high, but the standard of living has
risen in the East and remained high, though threatened, in
Preface ix
the West; the outbursts of racist violence have spurred nearly
universal indignation and constructive citizens' initiatives;
and faith in democratic institutions has kept strong even as
disapproval of particular politicians and parties has grown.
In 1994, Germany thus stands at a turning-point. Whether
the economy recovers or slips further into crisis, whether
social tensions diminish or rise, and whether Germans turn
against democracy depend largely on the outcome of the
year's elections. Germany probably cannot afford to con
tinue to muddle through its post-unification crisis without
stable and effective leadership. A Bundestag in stalemate will
win neither investors' nor voters' confidence, and liberal
capitalist democracy in Germany may thus soon find itself
on the rapid road to defuiile.
This book offen an explanation for Germany's present
political problems. Specifically, it argues that the democratic
crisis stems in large measure, though of course not exclus
ively, from conflicts within German political culture that have
their roots in communism's collapse in the German Demo
cratic Republic. While i:hi's book may not be the first or the
last to link Gerrnahy's current crisis with reunification and
the East German revolution, it presents the only empirically
grounded cultural analysis of these political events. Based
primarily on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of over
200 original survey interviews, this book shows how the
undermining of a specific, regime-stabilising East German
political culture t:ontributed to the revolutionary mobilisa
tion of 1989 nnd how the subsequent conflict between East
and West German cultural values has exacerbated the prob
lems of unification. In offering a cultural account of the
East German revolution and of post-unification politics, this
book does not pretend to substitute but rather to comple
ment the necessary but insufficient economic, social and
political structural analyses. I hope, however, that its readers
will in the end agree that without a cultural counterpart,
structural analyses have limited meaning.
Cultural interpretation is a very personal undertaking, but
it can occur only within a particular context. Hence, while
I must alone take responsibility for the quirks and foibles
of my analysis, I owe great thanks to those who made them
possible in the first place. I therefore wish first of all to