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stella41b -> The wind of change (2/10/2010 6:05:35 PM)
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'The world is closing in, and did you ever think
That we could be so close like brothers?
The future's in the air, can feel it everywhere
And blowing with the wind of change...'
Scorpions, 'Wind of Change'
Can you remember what you were doing November 9 1989? Or remember what happened on that day?
This was the date that the Berlin Wall fell. 'Mister Gorbachev, tear this wall down.' These were the words of Ronald Reagan spoken during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate which took place on June 12 1987 to commemorate the 750th anniversary of Berlin. This was a challenge to tear down the wall as a symbol of increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc.
Yes. Freedom. Democracy. We like to think that we, here in the West, enjoy freedom and democracy, but is this really true?
We have elections in which we are free to vote. But vote for who, exactly? It would appear that we have a choice of left or right. However our choices of left or right are influenced by the media and this is a process which lasts for several months coming up to a year every five years. This is when we, the people, suddenly become important, when our politicians throw their job security out to us in the name of democracy.
How does this compare with Belarus, for example, which also holds elections? Every five years when he can fit it in between his games of ice hockey and running the country Vladimir Lukashenko will announce an election, grant certain freedom to some political stooges who take on the role of the 'opposition' which after a ninety nine point something turn out will justify Lukashenko remaining President and ruler for the next five years or so.
The only difference I see is the number of parties involved. Then after the election we are expected to get back to work (if we have it) and be obedient, productive workers and happy little shoppers for the sake of the economy. We the people just like they the politicians are simply here to serve those who not only run the country and shape policies but also influence and shape our lives - the banks, the media, the corporate businessmen. Slightly more freedom and democracy is enjoyed by the shareholders but the power is still held, and the decisions are still made, in the confines of the corporate boardroom.
The power of your taxes and vote is really only a myth perpetuated by the media designed to keep you in your place. This in reality is not any much different from the proletariat in the former Eastern Bloc who were also required to go to work and spend their hard earned rubles (or zloty, or forints, whatever) on whatever was in the shops, on vodka, on milk bars, and on entertainment, culture and subsidized holidays. They served the Party Faithful, the academics just as in the same way we serve the bank managers, journalists and businessmen.
I write this openly, and proudly, as a socialist, which I have been since my teens. However I have not kept the exact same political beliefs for I like to think of myself as an openminded socialist, and for this I cannot accept the dogmatic and steadfast adherence to utopian Marxist ideals which have never been put into practice and tried out over any period in the West.
Indeed my political beliefs have been influenced heavily by the dozen or so years I spent living in Poland, between 1993 and 2005, when I didn't just live in Poland but I also learned the language, culture, history and society of people who embraced me and my work and accepted me throughout much of that time as one of their cultural icons. I speak and write in Polish just as fluently as I do in English, I know what a Frania is, I know who Boleslaw Bierut is, and the tremendous social significance and importance of the Gdansk shipyards and of Edward Gierek and Lech Walesa.
I cannot remember his name, but I know of the case of a Warsaw butcher who, under Bierut in the 1950's was caught for selling meat not in accordance with the strict Stalinist controls at the time, sentenced to death and hanged. I see beyond the label of Polish 'communism' and can differentiate between the period of Stalinist communism up to the mysterious death of Bierut in 1956 and the more relaxed state capitalism of the time of Gomulka and Gierek.
I know the significance of New Year's Day 1984 when without warning and announcement martial law in Poland ended. I also know of the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko by communist agents later that year and how he inspired - together with Pope John Paul II - Lech Walesa to form the Polish Solidarity movement. I can relate accounts of secret service agents interrogating subversives and opponents of communism in secret locations.
But I also stand for freedom of personal expression, self-sufficiency and democracy and I know that our freedom here in the West is relative. True we do not live in fear that an agent from the Stasi, NKWD or Urzad Bezpieczenstwo (Polish Security Department) will come knocking on our doors ready to drag us away for interrogation, and worse, but I am aware of the brainwashing and social conditioning which railroads us into thinking politically in terms of 'left' and 'right'.
I am also openminded enough to know that when the economy is going down the tubes, when people are losing their jobs and homes, and when many others are struggling just to keep body and soul together that it's best for political ideals to be ditched in favour of whatever works - whether it be socialism, capitalism, or even Rastafarianism. I'm human, I hate to see people suffering, I hate to see people being deprived, I hate to see people sleeping on the streets or elderly people dying because they cannot heat their homes.
Every year we commemorate anniversaries such as the ending of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz. We are horrified at the scale of the genocide, the cruelty and inhumanity of what prisoners at Treblinka and Auschwitz were put through, and yet every day we witness in the news people being persecuted and killed as a result of religious dogma or political extremism.
It would appear that we remember, we commemorate, but we have yet to learn.
Why did the Second World War start in the first place? Wasn't it a division between left and right, and fear and suspicion of the other side? Wasn't that also what kept the Cold War alive right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall?
But I would contend that it wasn't the Berlin Wall which changed things, but Lech Walesa and the Polish Solidarity movement. When the people came together in support of striking Gdansk shipyard workers in 1970 the PZPR Polish communist party was forced to negotiate where politicians such as Gomulka resigned to be replaced by Gierek who successfully negotiated a peaceful settlement with the Poles. Again in 1989 the people got together behind Lech Walesa for the Round Table talks with the PZPR Party which brought about the end of communism, not just in Poland, but elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc.
History isn't made from gestures and speeches but from action and change, when we come together to do what is necessary to bring about those changes, and when we learn as a result. Lech Walesa stands as a symbol, and rightly so, because he identified the one thing that people need to be free and to achieve changes which protect those freedoms - solidarity. He brought people together, from both left and right, working together to achieve freedom and changes and this can be seen time after time throughout history.
And this is a lesson I feel we need to learn here in the West. More so now today than ever before.
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