No three cheers

National Review, Feb 17, 1992 by Alistair Horne

One man put high on his list, "More flowers in the windowboxes!" but, curiously enough, none of them gave a high place to any of the traditional Four Freedoms. What was the point of freedom of speech, or of the press, they said, when a major change in the GDR regime could only have been effected through a nuclear war - which was unacceptable? It had been better to "go along," trying to motivate small reforms from the inside.

Privately I reflected that maybe this was how many good Germans had also reacted to Nazi rule.

In terms of standard of living, they pointed out (correctly) that the old GDR had been much better off than its Eastern Bloc neighbors. More choice now in the shops and competition in the restaurants rated some support; but the downer was, of course, the spiraling costs in a freed economy.

On the debit side, there was also near unanimity on Point One: anxiety about the future. Would there be a job next month? How would they pay the rent? Next cam discrimination: when it came to advertising for jobs, the "Wessis" always won out. Then came the crime wave, and extremism, which had accompanied Western values. My presenter, a Stuttgarter who had gone east in search of opportunity, had had six stars stolen off the front of his Mercedes in as many months; there was a huge trade - organized by the Polish "Mafia," he alleged - in stolen cars, which were run across the frontier and then sold in Russia. All deplored equally the rise of the new racist "skinheads" and the conservative reaction of "shoot the bastards."

The following day, a university engineer working on alternative energy (and an unashamed former member of the SED) accompanied me around Dresden and contributed his own debit. His department had been taken over by administrators from Essen; in itself, that was not a bad thing - "Without them we would not begin to know how to fill in West German forms." But he declared, to my great surprise: "Now we have ten times as much bureaucracy as before." The same applied to the National Health Service, which (having served in England on the staff of the GDR embassy) he rated on a par with the British. In the university, he added, there was much less freedom to decide on appointments and courses. (I thought to myself that, if it was a question of rooting out what was "politically correct" under the old regime, this might not altogether be a bad thing.)

We passed a demonstration, a candle-lit vigil, of young students protesting the closing down (by the new authorities) of a long-standing radio program designed especially for students; that morning the papers had carried protests by schoolchildren - "We want our teacher back."

The professor admitted that he thought he could live more easily in Britain than West Germany. I queried whether he was just saying this to please me, as a Brit, or because he found us as lazy and inefficient as the "Ossis" were alleged to be. he protested sharply: no, it was "because the quality of life is better." Having traveled extensively both in frenetic West Germany and in the leisurely East - which amid all the pollution, still retains many traditionalist charms - I had to concede his point.