For me, this confirmed what I had been trying in vain to explain to foreign journalists who visited me in the ’70s and ’80s: that when they encounter a totalitarian society, they must not be fooled by its surface. It looks like everyone is loyal and the regime will be here for centuries, that nothing will ever change, and it’s easy to believe that. I remember how various foreign visitors were saying that we’re just a group of fools, people who are beating our heads against the wall, and that we aren’t supported by the public. And I was telling them that a totalitarian society functions differently, that the written word or one individual, like Solzhenitsyn in Russia, can change the course of history.
All of this was confirmed when I saw how social dissatisfaction was accumulating in people–how it was mounting, simmering–and how little was needed for the facade to suddenly break and that general dissatisfaction to burst through. Without anybody organizing a demonstration, the passersby had turned into demonstrators who filled the main square in Prague.
Shipyard electrician Lech Walesa founded Poland’s Solidarity movement and later served as its freely elected president: Communism would have collapsed anyway, but much later and with bloodshed, because you don’t give up power just like that. The pope significantly accelerated the end of communism and at the same time he prevented bloodshed. The Holy Father caused our [Solidarity] membership to swell to 10 million. He made people aware of certain truths, made them feel their power. During those meetings with the Holy Father, we realized the strength in our numbers, we gained self-confidence and that produced the results that we saw.
Someone else played an important role–the journalists, especially the Western ones, and the solidarity they showed us. I didn’t have to tell them anything. They knew what to say and how to say it. Without them, there wouldn’t have been me and there wouldn’t have been the victory. No one has ever thanked them. But if they hadn’t publicized our struggle all over the world we wouldn’t have had a chance.
[Former U.S. president Ronald] Reagan understood us the way the journalists did. He understood that the end [of communism] was imminent. He talked about the evil empire, about its end. He played a great role as the head of the greatest power. He saw what was in his interest, and he collaborated [with us]. It was a wonderful coincidence that we understood each other.
Joachim Gauck, a dissident Lutheran pastor in East Germany, is now in charge of the massive files of the Stasi, the former secret police: The most important wall that fell was not even visible–it was the wall of fear inside people. It’s very difficult to describe the role fear plays in a totalitarian state to citizens of free societies, to explain what it means to live like an underling. The miracle of 1989 was that these obedient [East] Germans, who lived from 1933 to 1989 with this underling mentality, could come up with a sentence like, “We are the people.” The fall of the wall is a symbol of national unity. But before the feeling “we are one people” developed, there was the feeling “we are the people.” The Easterners had two teachers–first the Nazis who told us, “Kneel down and feel fear, conform and then you can be successful”; and then, with a completely different ideology, the communists told us the same thing.
We always had a dissident minority–mainly the people in the Protestant churches, and a smaller number of artists and intellectuals. But then they turned into a mass movement. There were big demonstrations for freedom and democracy in Leipzig and other cities. The government realized that it might not be able to control its own people. The [Erich] Honecker team would have liked to take care of everything by resorting to violence. But they were dependent on the help of the Russians. And it was a lucky coincidence of history that for the first time there was a Russian leader, [Mikhail] Gorbachev, who was not willing to see socialism as a matter of tanks. We, the members of the citizens’ movement, counted on Gorbachev. We thought that this time it’d be different than East Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968 [when previous revolts were crushed by force]. When our fear turned to hope, that was the key moment.
The [East German] government was worried that without Russian help, with only their own military and secret police to fall back on, they might not be able to win. That’s why they became timid. One percent of the population were [secret police] informers, about 170,000 people. They created a kind of stability, but it wasn’t real stability–it was a neurotic stability. The amazing thing is that the East Germans, after such a long time of submission and obedience, returned to the great European and North American project of democracy.
Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading dissident intellectual during the communist era, is now editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, the country’s largest daily newspaper: For me, the first breach in the wall came in August 1980 when a great wave of strikes broke out all across Poland, the most important of which were in Gdansk. This was the crucial first step in delegitimizing communism. This prompted the society to organize itself in opposition to the communist authorities.
The wall really fell in Poland on June 4, 1989. On that day, Poles rejected communism in democratic elections, and it became clear that this system was finished. Everything that happened afterwards was a result of what happened in Poland. I know this is a Polish-centric view, but without a bit of this Polish-centrism, it’s impossible to understand the history of the last 50 years of this part of the world. Poland was the largest country in the Soviet bloc, which mounted the strongest resistance to dictatorship. It’s clear that Poland was responsible for what happened. Since I’m usually critical of my countrymen, I feel I have the right to say that.
George Weigel wrote “Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II”: You have to take into serious account the revolution of consciousness that John Paul II ignited in Eastern Europe in June of 1979, during his epic first pilgrimage to Poland. He arrives in Warsaw on June 2 and celebrates mass in Victory Square. There are a million people there. They are hearing things they’ve not been allowed to hear for 35 years, and saying things they’re not allowed to say. This rhythmic chant begins: “We want God, We want God.” Really high drama. Ask anybody when the Solidarity movement started, and they’ll say June 1979. That was a spiritual, moral, political earthquake.
