20 years later
Dear comrades friends, tomorrow Berliners will celebrate 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - a huge event which changed so much in the world. Now, 20 years later, lots of people, especially at this side of the former Iron Curtain, are looking back and contemplating on the past two decades. Drawing the line and checking the balance. What has changed, and what has remained the same? What have we gained, and what have we lost for these twenty years of constant and rapid change? Did we manage to catch up with the rest of the world, the real world? Or have we just been striding on the same place?
The changes in my country occurred one day after Berlin, on November 10. That date is regarded as the birthday of democracy here. In a couple of days, we'll mark the 20th anniversary of the end of a whole epoch, and the beginning of another. And yet, even today, the conclusions about this event are wrapped in controversy, like they've always been. The only certain thing to say is that 20 years ago, the 45-year Communist dictatorship was ended. The Cold War was seemingly over, and people embraced each other like brothers. Each of the two sides across the Iron Curtain were surprised to realize that those who lived at the opposite side of the line, either on the eastern or western side, were living quite a different life, but nevertheless they were still all humans, with two arms and two legs, and neither of them were actually eating humans for breakfast. Regardless of the piled mistrust and ideological and cultural differences, the common things by far outnumbered them. Which was rather encouraging, and people were filled with enormous enthusiasm (and naivety).
Every person here associates communism with different things. If you ask everybody, you'll get as many opinions as the number of people who live at these latitudes. Each could list innumerable examples of things which have changed since then. From the fact that we don't have to wait until Christmas in order to be able to buy bananas in the grocery, to the fact that it was almost impossible to travel abroad, especially in the countries outside the communist bloc, unless you were someone's "person". Yes, connections were everything back then.
All the bad things which were such a pain in everyone's life are gone now. But on the other hand, some other unpleasant things are part of our life now, things which didn't exist then. For example, in those times no-one had ever predicted the rise of the "yellow press", or the omnipresence of drugs. I'm sure that one comrade Petrov (a very common name here) who probably worked as a government clerk, had never imagined that kidnappings and racketeering would become a frequent event on the street (fortunately, we've now almost overcome this period of the "Wild Wild West Capitalism" - now the real crooks are dressed in elegant suits and wear a tie, and drive Maybach - you'd be shocked to see how many luxurious cars we have per citizen). Or could we, the people of today, ever imagine that the prices in the shops could possibly be the same everywhere, in all shops across the country, and remain unchanged for years? I, personally, can hardly believe it. But I assure you it was true.
I remember that time because I was 11 in 1989. I can't say I remember everything very clearly because I wasn't an adult back then, but people around me do tend to confirm my memories - they tell me about the cemented prices - a thing which is very hard to fathom in our modern world.
Before, even if you had money and you wanted to buy something, you needed to have some connections in order to find it.
Today, you need connections to be able to start earning money in order to buy it, even though it's available everywhere.
Everyone like me, who has lived their conscious life at both sides of November 10, 1989, really knows what a time portal that innocent-looking Friday evening turned out to be. After decades of lazy standstill, everything changed really overnight, and we started living a life in fast-motion. New things started happening virtually every day, new hopes emerged, new disappointments hit us, but we always stood up, beat the dust off our clothes and went on. These 20 years have tempered us beyond anything we've seen ever before. The biggest shock for all was how everything started happening like in a fast-forwarded video, no time to poise and look back. Perhaps that's why so many mistakes were made, and perhaps that's why so many people are disillusioned now with this elusive thing called "democracy". I guess we'll never enjoy a normalized rhythm of existence, we're doomed to live fast and die young (figuratively said).
But enough with this emotional stuff. This is a political forum. I'd probably have even gone poetic, but I won't. Instead, I'll just ask the question: so what has really changed for these two decades? Well, everyone who lived here in those times could easily think of at least a thousand things. Here are just 20 of them, because this is the 20th anniversary. Here are 20 things which today are a normal part of our life, but were not available in the epoch of communism. Part of them are much coveted goods which were being imported from abroad and were an exclusive property of the party nomenclature. They were definitely not meant to be accessible to the common folk. I guess the nomenclature guys knew too well of the stunning gap between the West and the East, but they didn't want to spit it out for us, and lose their privileges by allowing the rest of us to open their eyes and see reality. And that's why most people were so unprepared for it when it hit with all its weight.
But okay. Here are 20 things which, fortunately or not, do not exist any more:
1. The Berlin Wall of course. Everyone knows the story how it went down.
2. The internment camps which were full with political prisoners (for dissent and "subversive activity").
3. Town citizenship - a vicious practice of granting a limited number of residence licenses for the bigger cities - which made these licenses one of the most coveted items, and people would sell their mother to get one, because it gave extensive privileges.
4. Russian TV programs on Friday evening (I did like some of the animations, though).
5. The one-party system. The Communist party was everything - a mother and a father to the people.
6. The same prices of the goods and services throughout all the shops in the country, for years without change (however, the shops were almost empty).
7. The "noble socialist competition" between the collectives and the countries within the bloc, and the 5-year economic Plans; as well as the "Lenin Saturdays", where all town residents had to go out with brooms and spades, and clean around the blocks and alleys.
8. The Kolkhoz system of collective agriculture, where no-one owned land, but everyone worked on the common, state-owned land. Much of this land had been seized by the government immediately after the communist coup in 1944, in many cases after murdering or imprisoning the owners.
9. Universal conscription, 2 years. In my time (I was in the military in 2002), this had become 9 months for the secondary-school graduates, and 6 months for us high-school graduates); nowadays, the military is entirely professional.
10. Manifestations (compulsory festive processions under the vigilant eyes of the party Gods) on the main holidays; and Spartakiads (massive annual Olympic games, but only for the communist countries).
11. Absolutely free health-care and education. It was on a top-class level, I'll give you that. It's probably the only positive legacy that I'd concede about communism (that, and the sheer absence of crime - you could send your 15-year old daughter to walk alone on a dark alley in the middle of the night, and nothing would happen to her).
12. Professional assignation after university graduation. It meant everyone would immediately get a job from Day One after graduation - the downside of this being that you had no voice as to where you should work. They just told you you should go work somewhere they had decided, and you went. Of course after 2-3 years of some experience (and developing connections), you could choose to work anywhere else. The best thing is, everyone worked exactly in the sphere for which they had been educated - much unlike now, when one could see the misery and need putting highly educated medics or teachers working on the bazaar.
13. Scarcely paid and compulsory Students Brigades - for 1 month in summer, all university students were sent to do agricultural work at some Kolkhoz (called TKZS here) - youngsters tend to have a lot of fun on such occasions, and the state was able to use their labor almost for free, so everyone must've been happy about that.
14. Assigned party supervisors of each school class, party committees of the schools, political propaganda at school (there was a school subject called History of Communism), the scouts youth system and Pioneers system and Comsomol system - all designed to carve out devoted and reliable little bolts in the flawlessly working communist machine.
15. Morning gymnastics exercises at work - all employees were gathered in front of the working place, and following orders in doing exercises. Similar to the mass gymnastic extravaganzas you could see on the North Korean state television today. Or similar to what most Japanese companies do to their employees. Mind you, the level of obesity of the nation was super-low.
16. The Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia (later blown up by the Democrats in a controlled explosion, using dynamite). Similar to Lenin's mausoleum in Moscow. The huge ruby red star on top of the Party Palace is also gone (they knocked it down with a helicopter).
17. The State Circus building. The theater system was nearly perfect (a well subsidized theatrical troupe even in the smallest town), with the only tiny condition that political satire was forbidden (you could go to the Camps for that).
18. A Bachelor Tax - another strange practice, decreeing that every man over 26 who hasn't married yet, should pay a tax to the government. The obvious motivation being to encourage population growth. Maternity leave was perfectly organized btw, and compensations granted to mothers, with bonuses for a 3rd+ kid.
19. Toilet paper on sheets rather than rolls. They had characters from the Russian animation movies on them (nice sense of humor).
20. Cyclostyle (the mimeograph duplicating machine) and typesetter machines. 8-inch diskettes, 8-byte PCs, home-made. We didn't produce cars, only some trucks and buses. One had to wait a year to get a Trabant car (the symbol of communist industry), 2 years for a Wartburg, 3 for a Moskvich, 4 for a Lada, and 5 for Skoda. Some waited for 10 years. You could imagine what a huge event the arrival of a car in the family was. Volga cars were available only to the nomenclature. My family had a Trabant, later a Lada...
Now, like it or not, what we have today that we didn't have then, is:
1. Freedom to travel abroad.
2. Private business.
3. Value Added Tax.
4. Health insurance and pension funds.
5. Direct elections for President and Parliament.
6. Free trade, a real-estates market, broker companies. A thriving tourism industry (pretty much the only industry that still flourishes).
7. Highly influential representatives of the ethnic minorities in government; ethnic parties.
8. Pawnbrokers and exchange desks.
9. Religious sects.
10. Thugs, gangsters, drug-dealers, pimps, racketeers. And drug addicts (we only used to have alcohol addicts).
11. Porn magazines, yellow press, internet.
12. An underground Metro in the capital city.
13. Motivational Letter and CV.
14. Mobile phones.
15. Fitness gyms, solarium, jacuzzi, etc.
16. ATMs.
17. Laptops, DVD players.
18. Microwave ovens.
19. Packed half-baked food, international and local fast food chains, junk food; lots of obese people. We still haven't completely abandoned the traditional healthy food though; including the old habit to pack up pickled vegetables into cans and jars for the winter.
20. Milk and juices in cardboard boxes rather than jars or nylon bags. All kinds of fruit (without having to wait for Christmas).
And finally, where without the symbol of the old epoch:
Funny, isn't it?
The changes in my country occurred one day after Berlin, on November 10. That date is regarded as the birthday of democracy here. In a couple of days, we'll mark the 20th anniversary of the end of a whole epoch, and the beginning of another. And yet, even today, the conclusions about this event are wrapped in controversy, like they've always been. The only certain thing to say is that 20 years ago, the 45-year Communist dictatorship was ended. The Cold War was seemingly over, and people embraced each other like brothers. Each of the two sides across the Iron Curtain were surprised to realize that those who lived at the opposite side of the line, either on the eastern or western side, were living quite a different life, but nevertheless they were still all humans, with two arms and two legs, and neither of them were actually eating humans for breakfast. Regardless of the piled mistrust and ideological and cultural differences, the common things by far outnumbered them. Which was rather encouraging, and people were filled with enormous enthusiasm (and naivety).
Every person here associates communism with different things. If you ask everybody, you'll get as many opinions as the number of people who live at these latitudes. Each could list innumerable examples of things which have changed since then. From the fact that we don't have to wait until Christmas in order to be able to buy bananas in the grocery, to the fact that it was almost impossible to travel abroad, especially in the countries outside the communist bloc, unless you were someone's "person". Yes, connections were everything back then.
All the bad things which were such a pain in everyone's life are gone now. But on the other hand, some other unpleasant things are part of our life now, things which didn't exist then. For example, in those times no-one had ever predicted the rise of the "yellow press", or the omnipresence of drugs. I'm sure that one comrade Petrov (a very common name here) who probably worked as a government clerk, had never imagined that kidnappings and racketeering would become a frequent event on the street (fortunately, we've now almost overcome this period of the "Wild Wild West Capitalism" - now the real crooks are dressed in elegant suits and wear a tie, and drive Maybach - you'd be shocked to see how many luxurious cars we have per citizen). Or could we, the people of today, ever imagine that the prices in the shops could possibly be the same everywhere, in all shops across the country, and remain unchanged for years? I, personally, can hardly believe it. But I assure you it was true.
I remember that time because I was 11 in 1989. I can't say I remember everything very clearly because I wasn't an adult back then, but people around me do tend to confirm my memories - they tell me about the cemented prices - a thing which is very hard to fathom in our modern world.
Before, even if you had money and you wanted to buy something, you needed to have some connections in order to find it.
Today, you need connections to be able to start earning money in order to buy it, even though it's available everywhere.
Everyone like me, who has lived their conscious life at both sides of November 10, 1989, really knows what a time portal that innocent-looking Friday evening turned out to be. After decades of lazy standstill, everything changed really overnight, and we started living a life in fast-motion. New things started happening virtually every day, new hopes emerged, new disappointments hit us, but we always stood up, beat the dust off our clothes and went on. These 20 years have tempered us beyond anything we've seen ever before. The biggest shock for all was how everything started happening like in a fast-forwarded video, no time to poise and look back. Perhaps that's why so many mistakes were made, and perhaps that's why so many people are disillusioned now with this elusive thing called "democracy". I guess we'll never enjoy a normalized rhythm of existence, we're doomed to live fast and die young (figuratively said).
But enough with this emotional stuff. This is a political forum. I'd probably have even gone poetic, but I won't. Instead, I'll just ask the question: so what has really changed for these two decades? Well, everyone who lived here in those times could easily think of at least a thousand things. Here are just 20 of them, because this is the 20th anniversary. Here are 20 things which today are a normal part of our life, but were not available in the epoch of communism. Part of them are much coveted goods which were being imported from abroad and were an exclusive property of the party nomenclature. They were definitely not meant to be accessible to the common folk. I guess the nomenclature guys knew too well of the stunning gap between the West and the East, but they didn't want to spit it out for us, and lose their privileges by allowing the rest of us to open their eyes and see reality. And that's why most people were so unprepared for it when it hit with all its weight.
But okay. Here are 20 things which, fortunately or not, do not exist any more:
1. The Berlin Wall of course. Everyone knows the story how it went down.
2. The internment camps which were full with political prisoners (for dissent and "subversive activity").
3. Town citizenship - a vicious practice of granting a limited number of residence licenses for the bigger cities - which made these licenses one of the most coveted items, and people would sell their mother to get one, because it gave extensive privileges.
4. Russian TV programs on Friday evening (I did like some of the animations, though).
5. The one-party system. The Communist party was everything - a mother and a father to the people.
6. The same prices of the goods and services throughout all the shops in the country, for years without change (however, the shops were almost empty).
7. The "noble socialist competition" between the collectives and the countries within the bloc, and the 5-year economic Plans; as well as the "Lenin Saturdays", where all town residents had to go out with brooms and spades, and clean around the blocks and alleys.
8. The Kolkhoz system of collective agriculture, where no-one owned land, but everyone worked on the common, state-owned land. Much of this land had been seized by the government immediately after the communist coup in 1944, in many cases after murdering or imprisoning the owners.
9. Universal conscription, 2 years. In my time (I was in the military in 2002), this had become 9 months for the secondary-school graduates, and 6 months for us high-school graduates); nowadays, the military is entirely professional.
10. Manifestations (compulsory festive processions under the vigilant eyes of the party Gods) on the main holidays; and Spartakiads (massive annual Olympic games, but only for the communist countries).
11. Absolutely free health-care and education. It was on a top-class level, I'll give you that. It's probably the only positive legacy that I'd concede about communism (that, and the sheer absence of crime - you could send your 15-year old daughter to walk alone on a dark alley in the middle of the night, and nothing would happen to her).
12. Professional assignation after university graduation. It meant everyone would immediately get a job from Day One after graduation - the downside of this being that you had no voice as to where you should work. They just told you you should go work somewhere they had decided, and you went. Of course after 2-3 years of some experience (and developing connections), you could choose to work anywhere else. The best thing is, everyone worked exactly in the sphere for which they had been educated - much unlike now, when one could see the misery and need putting highly educated medics or teachers working on the bazaar.
13. Scarcely paid and compulsory Students Brigades - for 1 month in summer, all university students were sent to do agricultural work at some Kolkhoz (called TKZS here) - youngsters tend to have a lot of fun on such occasions, and the state was able to use their labor almost for free, so everyone must've been happy about that.
14. Assigned party supervisors of each school class, party committees of the schools, political propaganda at school (there was a school subject called History of Communism), the scouts youth system and Pioneers system and Comsomol system - all designed to carve out devoted and reliable little bolts in the flawlessly working communist machine.
15. Morning gymnastics exercises at work - all employees were gathered in front of the working place, and following orders in doing exercises. Similar to the mass gymnastic extravaganzas you could see on the North Korean state television today. Or similar to what most Japanese companies do to their employees. Mind you, the level of obesity of the nation was super-low.
16. The Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia (later blown up by the Democrats in a controlled explosion, using dynamite). Similar to Lenin's mausoleum in Moscow. The huge ruby red star on top of the Party Palace is also gone (they knocked it down with a helicopter).
17. The State Circus building. The theater system was nearly perfect (a well subsidized theatrical troupe even in the smallest town), with the only tiny condition that political satire was forbidden (you could go to the Camps for that).
18. A Bachelor Tax - another strange practice, decreeing that every man over 26 who hasn't married yet, should pay a tax to the government. The obvious motivation being to encourage population growth. Maternity leave was perfectly organized btw, and compensations granted to mothers, with bonuses for a 3rd+ kid.
19. Toilet paper on sheets rather than rolls. They had characters from the Russian animation movies on them (nice sense of humor).
20. Cyclostyle (the mimeograph duplicating machine) and typesetter machines. 8-inch diskettes, 8-byte PCs, home-made. We didn't produce cars, only some trucks and buses. One had to wait a year to get a Trabant car (the symbol of communist industry), 2 years for a Wartburg, 3 for a Moskvich, 4 for a Lada, and 5 for Skoda. Some waited for 10 years. You could imagine what a huge event the arrival of a car in the family was. Volga cars were available only to the nomenclature. My family had a Trabant, later a Lada...
Now, like it or not, what we have today that we didn't have then, is:
1. Freedom to travel abroad.
2. Private business.
3. Value Added Tax.
4. Health insurance and pension funds.
5. Direct elections for President and Parliament.
6. Free trade, a real-estates market, broker companies. A thriving tourism industry (pretty much the only industry that still flourishes).
7. Highly influential representatives of the ethnic minorities in government; ethnic parties.
8. Pawnbrokers and exchange desks.
9. Religious sects.
10. Thugs, gangsters, drug-dealers, pimps, racketeers. And drug addicts (we only used to have alcohol addicts).
11. Porn magazines, yellow press, internet.
12. An underground Metro in the capital city.
13. Motivational Letter and CV.
14. Mobile phones.
15. Fitness gyms, solarium, jacuzzi, etc.
16. ATMs.
17. Laptops, DVD players.
18. Microwave ovens.
19. Packed half-baked food, international and local fast food chains, junk food; lots of obese people. We still haven't completely abandoned the traditional healthy food though; including the old habit to pack up pickled vegetables into cans and jars for the winter.
20. Milk and juices in cardboard boxes rather than jars or nylon bags. All kinds of fruit (without having to wait for Christmas).
And finally, where without the symbol of the old epoch:
Funny, isn't it?