[...] The couple owned a lake house in Berlin-Friedrichshagen, as well as a sailboat and even a surfboard; they owed their prosperity to a private glassworks. The two had waited years to be allowed to emigrate, and had finally arrived in West Berlin just before November 9. [...] it was all for nothing--the years of waiting, the arguments for and against, the crucial decision to leave and the pain of abandoning their house. Only one thing was certain: the man--now working as a window-washer in the West--would never even begin to approach his former standard of living. [...]

[...] And in Upper Silesia? Are revanchist elements still active there? At this, the pastor shakes his head and prefers not to commit himself. "In a new Europe," he says cautiously, letting his gaze rise to met the distant future, "we will have to do away with the existing borders through economic and cultural exchange, and not draw new ones."

West German leftists spared themselves the shock that French intellectuals felt on reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago; instead, they put their energies into an angry critique of French shortsightedness. They themselves, however, never really abandoned the discretion they had long practiced in describing Stalin's camps as a "mistake." When the word "crime" was finally uttered, they avoided the debate and sought refuge in equivocations: "Yes, but on the other hand ..." Ther referred to "the by no means insignificant crimes of Stalinism," or "the model Cuban revolution, despite its persecution of homosexuals," or "the by no means easy fate of dissidents." They managed to dodge every challenge to their worldview by pointing out that the Soviet Union was under siege, and by quoting Brecht: "The escape from capitalist barbarism may entail some barbarism of its own."

I've already admitted the validity of such an argument: the failure of an experiment doesn't necessarily disprove its premises. You don't have to doubt Mozart because Igor Oistrakh plays him badly. But when every virtuoso makes the same piece sound bad, you have every right to suspect the composer. The flat assertion that present-day socialism in no way detracts from the theory ultimately amounts to intellectual shirking. It may be reassuring, but it only avoids the problem of deciding which components of the theory will sink with the wreck of socialism and which might still be salvaged.

[...] what if the catastrophic economic failure of socialism today were due not only to a lack of democracy but also the suppression of private ownership? That would certainly challenge a central piece of the doctrine. Doesn't it look as though events have proven our worst enemies correct? Doesn't it seem these days that history itself has judged the duel between socialism and capitalism, and declared capitalism the winner? And isn't this winner now commanding from the mount: Thou shalt have no other social system besides me!?

Heroes prefer self-quotation to self-doubt. Their self-righteousness displaces productive curiosity about how and why they once thought differently, maybe even incorrectly. [...]

Civic courage is not a valid means of evaluating literature: was Kafka the citizen a brave man? Was Goethe, Benn, or Brecht? When has a man like Schirrmacher ever shown any courage? Anyone who invokes this trait must expect to be challenged in turn. [...]

1. We probably cannot ascribe the failure of this massive seventy-year experiment in socialism exclusively to Stalinism and the lack of democracy. What has happened appears to refute the utopian notion that masses of people in the industrial age can work creatively over long periods of time for a loftier purpose than self-interest.

2. Even after 300,000 years, it's still difficult to generalize about human nature. Evidently we must reject the idea that socially undesirable tendencies like egoism, greed for private property, exploitation, aggression, racial hatred, and nationalism can be attributed to the relations of production under capitalism and can therefore be eliminated by changing those relations. Such "flaws" are clearly as human as the sense of justice, the notion of solidarity, and the willingness to help others--though both "good" and "bad" qualities may be weakened or strengthened through socialization. Only a dictatorship could "prove" the thesis that socially undesirable qualities are not part of human nature, but the result of sabotage and infiltration by enemies and traitors.

3. The doctrine of socialism is not scientific but utopian. "Scientific socialism" distinguishes itself from other doctrines of salvation by claiming to describe objective laws of history. It asserts that "scientific insight" alone--not faith--is needed to enter into the earthly paradise of communism. Yet it requires terror and dictatorship to support its so-called laws of history, to show how humankind has inexorably moved toward a socialist utopia.

4. The socialist utopia is, without a doubt, a product of the contradictions of capitalism. The outrages of capitalism have not been resolved since Marx and Engels; in fact, they have worsened dramatically and on a global scale. Little is likely to remain of the "scientific" system called socialism, but of the anger and the criticism, the social and humanistic ideals that inspired Marx's revolutionary teachings, almost all.

[...] In 1980, East Germany had signed an accord with the People's Republic of Vietnam which allowed skilled Vietnamese laborers entry and limited residence for purposes of labor. Under the terms of this agreement, thousands of Vietnamese came every year; by 1989, about 60,000 were employed in East German enterprises. That made the Vietnamese by far the largest single contingent of foreigners in a country not exactly overrun with outsiders--they accounted for well over a third of the 160,000 resident aliens. The accords prescribed a four-to-five-year commitment; after two years, the guests were entitled to a three-month home leave. Other than wages, the Vietnamese profited little by their residence in East Germany, for they were denied even the most basic civil rights. Their embassy took away their passports as soon as they arrived. They were housed in buildings resembing barracks where groups of seven were obliged to share "three-room apartments," completely isolated from the native population. [...]

In addition to rent and taxes, another reduction--"for the reconstruction of Vietnam"--automatically cut the salary of every Vietnamese worker by 12 percent. Rumor had it, though, that this money really went to pay off the Vietnamese Republic's debt to East Germany. Phrases like "loan worker" and "slave laborer" were on everyone's lips.

As far as public trials are concerned, all parties are in complete agreement: don't hold them. No one is qualified, they say to pass judgment on the East Germans, for no one knows with absolute certainty how he himself might have behaved under similar circumstances.

[...]

Apart from the public rehabilitation of the victims, the effort to bring East German administrative criminals to justice would serve no practical purpose: it would simply announce the intent of a society to protect, under any and all circumstances, certain basic rules of communal human existence.

One cannot quibble with the fact that the East German government managed to completely recast the old apparatus, often at great cost, since many of those dismissed were far more skilled than their replacements. What is problematic, however, is that from the outset, this housecleaning was performed to the accompaniment of ideological music. By 1949, the task of Vergangenheitsbewältigung--overcoming the past--had already been completed, according to article 6, paragraph 1 of the East German constitution, which declares: "The German Democratic Republic has ... rooted out and destroyed German militarism and Nazism." Such instant success could be achieved only by bureaucratic fiat: anyone who joined the ruling Communist party was automatically clean. Carrying a party card became a substitute for the more laborious work of self-examination, remorse, and mourning. "The decisive factor is present political stance, not prior organizational affiliation," went the party line. As the economic disparity between the two Germanys grew, the antifascist refrain became the prime raison d'être of the Eastern state, and evolved in time into a full-blown historical lie that claimed antifascist resistance was strong in East Germany even before 1945. The Nazi monster had, miraculously, stopped at the Elbe. Although it was never stated quite so bluntly, many East German citizens--particularly young ones--believed this fiction, thanks to the government's subtle deception.