History of the Present

by Timothy Garton Ash

  Now, the door opens, and there he stands in a tiny corner room, sandwiched between the doctor’s washbasin and a table. He is very small, his face pallid and sweaty, but he still stands bolt upright. “Bodily contact is not permitted,” says my permit. But he extends his hand—graciously, significantly—and I shake it. He is clad in khaki prison pajamas, which remind me of a Mao suit. But on his feet he still wears, incongruously, those fine, black leather slip-on shoes in which he used to tread all the red carpets, not just in Moscow and Prague but in Madrid, in Paris, and in Bonn. “Fraternal greetings, Comrade Leonid Ilyich” and a smacking kiss on each cheek. “How do you do, Mr. President.” “Guten Tag, Herr Bundeskanzler.”

  We sit down, our knees almost touching in the cramped room, and the accompanying warder wedges himself into a corner. All my notes and papers have been impounded at the gate, but fortunately the doctor has left some spare sheets of lined paper and a pencil. Fixing me with his tiny, intense eyes—always his most striking feature—Honecker concentrates on answering my questions. He talks at length about his relations with Moscow, his friendship with Brezhnev, his arguments with Chernenko and then Gorbachev. Even under Gorbachev, he says, the Soviet Union never ceased to intervene in East Germany. The Soviet embassy’s consular officials behaved, he says, like provincial governors. So much for the sovereignty of the GDR that he himself had so long trumpeted! At one point, he shows staggering (and I think genuine) economic naïveté, arguing that East Germany’s hard-currency debt, in deutsche marks, has to be set against its surplus in transferable rubles.

  His language is a little stiff, polit-bureaucratic, but very far from being just ideological gobbledygook. Through it come glimpses of a real political intelligence, a man who knows about power. Was it his conscious decision to allow many more ordinary East Germans to travel to the West in the second half of the 1980s? Yes, definitely, a conscious decision. He thought it would make people more satisfied. But did it? “Nee,” he says, “offensichtlich nicht.” “Nope, obviously not.”

  With the tiny pupils of his eyes boring into mine, he speaks with what seems like real, almost fanatical, conviction—or at least with a real will to convince. This is somehow more, not less, impressive because of the humiliating prison surroundings and because of the obvious physical effort it costs him. (He has cancer of the liver. The doctors give him only months to live.) Once he has to excuse himself to go to the lavatory, accompanied by the warder. “You noticed I was getting a little restless,” he says apologetically on his return.

  Then he resumes his defiant refrain. East Germany, he insists, was “to the end the only socialist country in which you could always go into a shop and buy bread, butter, sausage etc.” Yet people wanted more? Yes, but now they regret it. Look at the unemployment in the former GDR! Look how few apartments are being built! He gets hundreds of letters from people in the east. They say they lived more quietly in the old days: “Sie haben ruhiger gelebt.”

  And look what’s happening on the streets now: the racist attacks, the fascists. It reminds him of 1933. Really? 1933? Well, he concedes, perhaps 1923. Hitler’s first attempt was also a flop. But look what happened then. He’s warning us. We’ve been here before. At least, he’s been here before—which, indeed, he has: held as a political prisoner in this very prison in the years 1935—1937, after being caught working for the communist resistance.

  And now he is here again. West Germany’s leaders denounce him as a criminal. Yet only yesterday the same politicians were competing for the privilege of being received in audience by him. Oh, the tales he could tell! His talks with West German Social Democrats were, he says, “comradely.” Some other West German politicians were more reserved. He had great respect for Franz Josef Strauss. Helmut Schmidt was the most reliable and punctilious partner. But he also got on well with Helmut Kohl. He had often talked on the telephone to Chancellor Schmidt and to Chancellor Kohl. Why, he had even dialed the number himself.

  Then the former chairman of the Council of State of the former German Democratic Republic and former general secretary of the former Socialist Unity Party of Germany pulls out of the pocket of his prison pajamas a slightly dog-eared card on which his former secretary had typed the direct telephone number to the chancellor in Bonn. He places it before me, urges me to copy the number down. 0649 (West Germany) 228 (Bonn) 562001. (I try it later. It takes you straight through to the chancellor’s office in Bonn.)

  A quarter century of divided Germany’s tragic, complex history is, it seems to me, concentrated in this one pathetic moment: the defiant, mortally sick old man in his prison pajamas, the dog-eared card with the direct number to Chancellor Kohl.

  The warder clears his throat and looks at his watch. Our time is up. Honecker rises, again standing almost to attention. A formal farewell. Then the bare corridors, the clashing gates, the unsmiling guards, the belongings from the locker, the fortified entrance. But now I am carrying laundry. Scribbled in pencil on a doctor’s notepad: the dirty linen of history.

  CHRONOLOGY

  1992

  DECEMBER. In a referendum, Swiss voters reject membership in a European Economic Area, seen as a stepping-stone to membership in the EU. Milan Kućan is elected president of Slovenia.

  9 DECEMBER. John Major announces that the prince and princess of Wales are to separate.

  11 DECEMBER. EC summit in Edinburgh.

  20 DECEMBER. Slobodan Milošević is reelected president of the republic of Serbia.

  1993

  1 JANUARY. The Single European Market comes into effect in the EC, now renamed the EU. Czechoslovakia splits into the Czech Republic and Slovakia: the “velvet divorce.”

  2 JANUARY. Presentation in Geneva of the “Vance-Owen plan” for Bosnia as a federal republic with ten ethnically based cantons enjoying substantial autonomy.

  3 JANUARY. US president George Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin sign the START II treaty, eliminating all multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles and reducing their stocks of strategic nuclear weapons by two thirds.

  20 JANUARY. Bill Clinton takes office as U.S. president.

  26 JANUARY. Václav Havel is elected the first president of the Czech Republic.

  JANUARY-DECEMBER. Italy is engulfed in a massive political-corruption scandal, which effectively destroys the political system that had survived throughout the cold war. In the so-called Mani Pulite (“Clean hands”) investigation, numerous senior politicians, including four former prime ministers, and many business leaders are arrested or interrogated on charges of corruption.

  1 FEBRUARY. Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Austria—all members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)—begin negotiations to join the EU.

  14 FEBRUARY. Former communist Algirdas Brazauskas is elected president of Lithuania. 22 FEBRUARY. UN agrees that there should be criminal prosecution of those responsible for war crimes in former Yugoslavia.

  5 MARCH. Michal Kováć, an independent-minded former associate of Prime Minister Vladimír Mećiar, becomes president of Slovakia.

  MARCH. UN convoys reach the besieged Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

  MARCH-APRIL. The center-right Swedish government of Carl Bildt pushes through major cuts in public expenditure, especially on welfare programs.

  20 MARCH. Russian president Boris Yeltsin attempts to impose “special rule,” effectively suspending parliament until fresh elections.

  29 MARCH. A new government of the center-right in France, under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. “Cohabitation” with socialist president François Mitterrand.

  7 APRIL. Macedonia is admitted to the UN as “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM), despite Greek opposition.

  12 APRIL. NATO begins enforcement of a no-fly zone over Bosnia.

  24 APRIL. The Dutch government under Christian Democrat Ruud Lubbers agrees on a program of radical reductions of the Netherlands’ generous welfare spending.

  APRIL. A referendum on political reforms in Italy. Pre
sident Scalfaro asks nonparty Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, governor of the Bank of Italy, to form a government, following the resignation of Giulio Amato. Veteran Christian Democrat politician Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister, is accused of complicity with the Mafia.

  1-2 MAY. Representatives of the main combatants in Bosnia sign the “Vance-Owen plan.” Thorvald Stoltenberg replaces Cyrus Vance as UN cochairman of the London Conference on the former Yugoslavia.

  5-6 MAY. The Bosnian Serb assembly in Vale rejects the “Vance-Owen flan.”

  6 MAY. UN Security Council Resolution 824 declares Sarajevo, Tuzla, Žepa, Bihač, Goražde, and Srebrenica to be “safe zones.” These are often called “safe areas” or “safe havens.”

  18 MAY. In a second referendum, Danish voters approve ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, after their government has negotiated a number of “opt-outs.”

  31 MAY. Serbian writer Dobrica Čosić is compelled to resign as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

  6 JUNE. Spanish elections return the Socialists under Prime Minister Felipe González to power, though dependent on Catalan and Basque votes for a majority.

  21 JUNE. The Copenhagen summit of the EU sets out basic criteria for postcommunist countries to become members of the European Union.

  14 JULY. The Belgian parliament votes to complete federalization of the country, with far-reaching devolution to largely Flemish-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia, and the mixed city of Brussels.

  1 AUGUST. After intensive speculation against the French franc, remaining currencies in the Exchange Rate Mechanism are allowed to fluctuate within margins of 15 percent above or below the central rate. Only the deutsche mark and the Dutch guilder remain within a narrower band.

  2 AUGUST. Britain ratifies the Maastricht Treaty.

  LATE SEPTEMBER-EARLY OCTOBER. President Yeltsin suspends the intransigent parliament and calls for fresh elections. Following resistance by parliament and some armed forces, forces loyal to President Yeltsin bombard and storm the parliament building, Russia’s “White House.”

  3-15 OCTOBER. Germany. I spend the evening of the third anniversary of German unification in the beer tents of the Oktoberfest in Munich. The editor of a women’s magazine tells me how they live on images of Princess Diana. Every time they put her on the front cover, sales go up by at least 20 percent. On television, I see Chancellor Kohl toasting German unity in Saarbrücken. “Here’s to Gorbi,” says someone from the crowd. “Yes, here’s to Gorbi,” says Kohl. Forgotten or abhorred in Russia, Gorbachev is still a hero here. But Kohl has a new friend: Boris Yeltsin.

  In Bonn, the Social Democrat leader Rudolf Scharping hastens to tell me about his early contacts with dissidents in Poland. I ask him what he replies to German voters who ask, “Why do we need Europe now?” “I have only fragments of an answer,” he says. An associate of Helmut Kohl tells me that the chancellor is adamant that other EU states must agree to the European Monetary Institute, and hence the European Central Bank, being located in Frankfurt—“Otherwise,” Kohl apparently said, “I’ll enter the election campaign in short trousers.”

  In an east German city, I share a platform with a new dean at the local university, a west German. He’s an example of the kind of second-rater who would never have got such a senior position in the west but now lords it over the east Germans like a British district commissioner in nineteenth-century India. He hardly lets the east Germans in our audience get a word in edgeways. Germany has another political first: colonialism in one country.

  12 OCTOBER. The German Constitutional Court rules that Germany can ratify the Maastricht Treaty.

  26 OCTOBER. Following a decisive victory in Polish elections held in September under a new electoral law, a coalition government of postcommunists and the Polish Peasant Party is formed under Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak.

  29 OCTOBER. EU leaders agree that the European Central Bank will be in Frankfurt and that monetary union should happen at the latest by 1999.

  1 NOVEMBER. The Maastricht Treaty comes into force in all member states of the EU.

  1-4 NOVEMBER. Amsterdam and Antwerp. A tour for the Dutch edition of my book about German Ostpolitik. For these purposes, Flanders is treated as a part of Holland. It’s as if Belgium does not exist.

  The Dutch, in both Holland and Belgium, are better informed about Germany than the Germans themselves are. But they are also astonishingly suspicious and fearful of Germany and the Germans. Several times, I am told the story of the banner, held up to greet German visitors at some large public event, saying, “Give us back our bicycles!” (During the wartime occupation, bicycles were confiscated.) And when young German tourists ask the good people of Rotterdam, “Excuse me, where’s the old town?” they receive the acid reply, “Ask your grandfather.” (The old town of Rotterdam was destroyed by the Germans during the war.)

  This suspicion and fear is mitigated but also strengthened by the present relationship with their mighty neighbor. For the Dutch accept, almost fatalistically, that their economy, and therefore their fate, is inextricably bound up with that of Germany; that their interest rates automatically follow the Bundesbank’s; that the Dutch guilder will merge with the deutsche mark in monetary union. One Dutch journalist confides, “You know, in the end, we’re left saying, ‘We hope they’ll be nice to us!’” The national purpose is to preserve nothing so grand as sovereignty—just their language and a distinctive way of life. From “Give us back our bicycles!” to “Please let us keep our bicycles.”

  9 NOVEMBER. The old bridge in Mostar is destroyed in fighting between Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats.

  11 NOVEMBER. The UN Tribunal on War Crimes informer Yugoslavia is inaugurated in The Hague.

  12 DECEMBER. The first free multi-party parliamentary elections in Russia since 1917. Strong vote for communists under Gennady Zhuganov and for the far-right nationalist “Liberal Democratic Party” of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. A new constitution is approved, giving more powers to the president.

  15 DECEMBER. British prime minister John Major and Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds issue the “Downing Street Declaration” on the way forward in Northern Ireland.

  19 DECEMBER. Miloševič’s Socialist Party wins parliamentary elections in Serbia.

  21 DECEMBER. Former interior minister and moderate nationalist Peter Boross becomes Hungarian prime minister following the death of József Antall.

  1994

  1 JANUARY. The “second stage” of economic and monetary union comes into effect with the establishment of a European Monetary Institute as a precursor to a European Central Bank.

  10-11 JANUARY. At a Brussels summit, NATO leaders launch the Partnership for Peace with former members of the Warsaw Pact.

  14 JANUARY. The U.S., Russian, and Ukrainian presidents sign an accord detailing arrangements for the transfer of Ukrainian nuclear warheads to Russia.

  5 FEBRUARY. A mortar attack on the marketplace in Sarajevo, with heavy loss of life. UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali asks NATO to prepare for possible air strikes against Serb artillery positions around Sarajevo.

  16 FEBRUARY. Greece imposes a trade embargo on Macedonia. The EU declares this to be in violation of European law.

  23 FEBRUARY. The Russian parliament votes an amnesty for those involved in the October 1993 revolt by the Russian parliament.

  9-10 MARCH. The EU’s Committee of the Regions, established under the Maastricht Treaty, holds its first session.

  14 MARCH. Vladimir Mečiar resigns as prime minister of Slovakia after losing a confidence vote.

  18 MARCH. The Washington Agreement creates the Federation of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats.

  26-27 MARCH. The new “Forza Italia” party of business magnate Silvio Berlusconi wins Italian parliamentary elections as part of a “Freedom Alliance.”

  27 MARCH. A referendum called by the pro-Russian president of the Ukrainian republic of Crimea results in a vote for greater autonomy for the Crimea.

&nb
sp; SEVEN CITIES

  Vienna

  DIVING INTO TOWN FROM THE AIRPORT, I PASS A CAFÉ CALLED the Espresso Ilidza. On the radio, a reporter discusses the arrangements in Austrian schools for teaching in Croatian. Then comes the weather forecast: for Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and northern Italy. I read the diminutive Neue Kronen Zeitung, clipped to its Zeitungshalter (newspaper stick) like a little flag. In a fighting interview, Frau Klestil, the jilted wife of Kurt Waldheim’s successor as president, tells us she is determined to remain Austria’s first lady. The operetta continues. I am back in Central Europe.

  Later, at the editorial meeting of a more elevated journal, a German feminist exclaims, “Eastern men are such pashas.” Yes, a colleague agrees, they could do with some “reeducation.” I glimpse a new Central Europe, where Polish men are to be “reeducated” by German feminists.

  Then to the fellows’ meeting of the Institute for Human Sciences, a meeting place to rival even the Café Landtmann. Bronisław Geremek lectures on “The Collapse of Communism and European Security.” He makes a politician’s speech, mustering every argument for Poland to be admitted to NATO. Eloquent, as always, but some in the audience are disconcerted. Somehow, they had expected him to speak as an intellectual to intellectuals. But times and roles have changed, and Geremek, unlike many from the anticommunist oppositions of the 1970s and 1980s, has made a clear choice: While he is a politician, he will be a politician. I’m sure he’s right. All we’ve seen in Central European politics since 1989 confirms an old truth. You may, in the course of your life, be both intellectual and politician. Try to be both at once, and you’ll be neither.