Interpreting the Visual Evidence
Representing the People in Eastern Europe, 1989
The enthusiasm of the
mass demonstrations
that preceded the revolutionary
changes in
Eastern Europe in 1989
gave the events a sense of immediate
drama, and images of Eastern Europeans
massed together in protest, crossing
boundaries that had been closed to
them, and celebrating the downfall of
their repressive governments spread
quickly around the world. The symbolism
of these images was stark and resonated
with a triumphant story about the
progress of democratic ideals in an increasingly
unified and integrated Europe.
In the East, the people's desire to
join with the West, long denied, had
finally been realized.
The unity of these early days nevertheless
obscured a basic uncertainty
about the aspirations of the populations
of the newly independent nations in
Eastern Europe. Many East Germans expressed
reservations about the rapid
pace of German reunification, and people
from the West and the East continued to
talk about "the wall in the head" long
after the Berlin wall had been torn down.
The unity of Czechoslovakia's peaceful
velvet revolution in 1989 led quickly to
the "velvet divorce" that produced the
dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the
Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
Throughout the region, many commentators
continued to speak of a persistent
Ostalgia—a nostalgia for an alternative
Eastern European past that had been lost
in the abrupt transition.
We have seen in earlier chapters how
representations of the people served to
give meaning to moments of rapid social
and political change in the French Revolution
or in the unification of Germany
(see Interpreting Visual Evidence in
Chapter 18, page 566 and Chapter 21,
page 662). The images here, from media
coverage of the events of 1989, also
serve to frame the interpretations that
contemporaries gave to the unfolding
events. Image A shows a crowd in Prague
waving the Czechoslovakian flag in November
1989. Image B shows a line of
East Berliners forming in front of a West
Berlin grocery store in the days after the
fall of the Berlin Wall. Image C shows the
last of the Leipzig Monday demonstrations
on March 12, 1990—the caption reads, "Also after the last demonstration:
We are the People. We are one people."
"We are the people" was the slogan
of the weekly demonstrations in Leipzig
in 1989 that did so much to discredit the
government in the months before the
wall fell. "We are one people" became
the slogan of Helmut Kohl's government
as it pushed for rapid reunification of the
two Germanies.
Images
Questions for Analysis
| 1. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d In image A, how should one interpret
the wave of nationalist enthusiasm
that engulfed Czechoslovakia in 1989,
in light of what we know of the subsequent
failure to keep Czechoslovakia
together as a unified nation? |
|
| 2. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Photographs such as image B were extremely
common in the media in 1989,
showing East Berliners shopping in
Western stores. What do such images
suggest about how the East’s previous
isolation was interpreted in the West,
and what does it say about how both
sides may have viewed the consequences
of their newfound freedom? |
|
| 3. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d What is the difference between “We
are the people” and “We are one people”
as political slogans? |
|
Submit to Gradebook: