[Spotykach] Potsdam

[Karl-Heinz Thier]

Hello,

It seems that I was the only one of the Spotykach list who attended the 
Potsdam workshop "Europe in the East Bloc". A short, biassed review:

Considering the output of the workshop ("There were no concepts of 
Europe, neither in the East Bloc nor in the Balkan states; there was 
only consumerism and yearning for the USA"), the event can be explained 
by being fashionable and shelling out some money from interested 
institutions such as the EU and Volkswagen Foundation for the personal 
career of  some scholars. It can also be explained by the current 
political deadlock of the EU: "We Westerners have no idea how to get on. 
Perhaps you in the East have got some idea." According to the speakers, 
the intellectual discourse in the East was about freedom, democracy, 
human rights in the West. I reminded the audience of this being a myth, 
since e.g. Germany and the USA are no real democracies even in the eyes 
of some established scholars there. I also corrected the impression, 
there was no concept of Europe in the communist discourse, by quoting 
from a letter to the editor of a German newspaper of the day: There is 
no money for a minimum wage in Germany. "Lenin was obviously right when 
he said, the United States of Europe under capitalist conditions are 
either impossible or reactionary." My personal view is that the idea of 
a united Europe goes back to the USA (Marshall Plan):

However there were also some rays of hope. One lady said: We in East are 
not recognised by the West. They don't know much about the East. We know 
much about the West. Wladzimierz Borodziej (Warsaw): There was some 
communist discourse on Europe: "We are the true Europe." The USSR 
offered more security to Europe. Some countries of the East Bloc tried 
to develop socialism with a human touch. Stefan Troebst (Leipzig): The 
European Union is not an initial idea, it is a by-product of Western 
prosperity. Vladimir Gonec (Brno): Hubert Ripka, minister in exile, said 
in 1948, West Europian unity hampers European integration. He demanded a 
federation of central Europe, and was supported by De Gaulle. Cristina 
Petrescu (Bucharest): The very powerful Securidade is a cliché. You 
could criticise the USSR on the basis of humana rights, you could 
criticise them in the cultural sphere. Resistance through culture was 
tolerated, oriented not to central Europe, but to Europe (Paris). In the 
1980s, no dissident was jailed in Romania. The concept of Europe emerged 
after the Final Act of Helsinki. Before that, Europe was regarded as a 
US satellite.

It was also mentioned that Eastern authors contributed much to European 
culture despite the Iron Curtain. I could only see the first two stories 
of the movie "One Day in Europe" by Hannes Stöhr: entertaining and 
balanced: Once the bad guy was Russian, next he was German. According to 
the film, Europe is soccer and crime. According to me, capitalist 
entertainment is sex and crime. Poor Europe.

Regards from

Karl-Heinz