28 years up, 28 years down

From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall divided a city and the world. February 5, 2018 marks the date on which the Wall will have been down for as long as it once stood: 28 years, 2 months and 27 days, to be exact.

When the Berlin Wall came down, it symbolised the end of the division of Europe into Western and Russian spheres of influence. Russia had lost the Cold War and its rulers under Gorbachev had decided they would no longer prop up the puppet regimes Russia had set up in Eastern Europe in accordance with the carve-up that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had agreed when they had met in Yalta in February 1945.

Socialism, it was said, had been tried and failed and was now out-dated and irrelevant. We denied this and asserted that socialism was still relevant. What had failed in Russia and Eastern Europe was not socialism, but a form of capitalism where it was the state that had presided over the exploitation of the wage-working class and the accumulation of capital out of profits. It was this state-capitalist system that had failed, not socialism.

When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with 'communism'. About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about Capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

As the Berlin Wall fell and the Kremlin's Empire collapsed in Eastern Europe, Western leaders spoke about a “peace dividend” and how money previously spent on arms would be re-channelled into social programmes; redirected towards the fight against poverty, inequality and ignorance.  The fall of the Wall did not bring peace and prosperity. Capitalism has continued to produce wars and diplomatic crises. Around the globe, new walls and razor-wired fences are being constructed.

Margaret Thatcher, wary of a united Germany, was reported to have pleaded with President Gorbachev ‘not to let the Berlin Wall fall’, and to ‘do what he could to prevent it happening’. The French President, François Mitterand warned Mrs Thatcher that a unification of Germany could lead to them making ‘more ground than Adolf Hitler had’, and ‘that Europe would have to bear the consequences’