Trip to Eastern Europe Is a Lesson on Freedom

It used to irritate me to no end--still does--when New York writers would come to Southern California, spend a week, then go home and write the definitive piece on what it’s really like in lotus land.

Well, I’m about to do the same thing about Eastern Europe. On the basis of a two-week look, through a tourist’s eyes, at East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, I’m going to offer up some fairly outrageous generalizations--based more on feelings than breadth of research--for which I do not apologize. Read them at your peril.

I think what surprised me most were the vast differences between the places in which the newly emancipated Eastern countries that my wife and I visited find themselves today.

East Germany is skittish, confused, wary and a little belligerent. Given a chance to convert their depressed money even-up for deutschemarks, the East Germans didn’t go on a spending spree as expected. They know that hard times are ahead and that state-run jobs--badly paid and administered as they were--may be replaced by no jobs at all, and they aren’t prepared to be very patient about this. Within a few days of the merging of the currencies, there were a rash of strikes in East Germany and a great deal of resentment at dramatically increased prices and the taking over of private ownership by many of the same people who previously ran businesses for the state.

The Berlin Wall was broken down, finally, by people who refused to be caged any longer. Now, reality is setting in. The best thing the East Germans have going for them is the prosperity of West Germany and the willingness of its government to pump a great deal of that prosperity into shoring up the East. But not all West Germans are enthused at this prospect. As one cab driver told us dourly, about all the destruction of the Wall means to him is “a lot more traffic.” And he isn’t alone.

So color East Germany yellow--poised between stop and go.

Poland is flat-out angry and depressed. It has to be colored a deep, dark gray--both in appearance and outlook. Poland suffered more from Hitler’s wrath than any other country--about 85% of Warsaw was destroyed--and it seems still to be suffering. It was the first country to break away from the Communist yoke and did it tentatively and gradually rather than by popular uprising, as happened in the other Eastern countries.

Now, there are fractures within the Solidarity movement that took over the Polish government, and a kind of paralysis has set in that is causing increasing dissatisfaction. One educated Polish woman told us: “There is much tension here today--and things are not getting better.”

Czechoslovakia offers a remarkable contrast to both Poland and East Germany, and in trying to pinpoint the difference, the best I could come up with is “community of feeling.” Prague--besides being one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen--is almost universally effervescent with enthusiasm and energy. I didn’t hear a discordant note the whole time we were there.

But this euphoria isn’t spacey; it seems to be anchored to reality. As one young man--who was in the first group of marchers that finally grew into the avalanche that overturned a government last November--told us: “We are 70% behind (President Vaclav) Havel. We know it will be hard to undo the mess they have created, but we will give him the time and support he needs.”

That feeling may change if it takes too long or asks too much, but the scent and sound in the air in Prague today is that of a people who know where they want to go and are aware of the price they may have to pay to get there. The fresh flowers placed daily in Wenceslas Square in memory of Czechs who died there demonstrating for freedom offer constant reminders of the price already paid--and more than superficial assurance that the Czechs, having won their freedom, are prepared to go the route.

So color Czechoslovakia a luminescent green.

The unification of Germany was at the top of the international news throughout our trip, and virtually everything we saw added to the misgivings I already felt about a country that has started two world wars in this century. And if I were a Pole or a Jew, I would find it very difficult to be complacent about unification--a conviction that was doubled and redoubled after we visited Auschwitz.

Yet, it was very clear during our time in Berlin that the Wall was an artificial separation of a people who need to be--and will be--whole.

I didn’t find as vast a contrast between East and West Berlin as I expected. When I suggested this to a tour guide, pointing to the crowds and the color on Unter den Linden, a main street in East Berlin, she said: “This hasn’t happened overnight or since the Wall came down. Buying goods in the West isn’t what drove these people. It was freedom, being able to go where you want and do what you want.”

So German reunification is now a given, and there is more than a little reassurance in knowing that none of the economic conditions that spawned Hitler exist there now. And we can hope--as seemed evident in our brief explorations--that the German psyche is no longer as susceptible to the drives that brought on the death and destruction whose remnants are still very much in evidence five decades later.

Finally, two observations that unsettled this American a little: Twice--in traveling from East to West Berlin, and from Prague to Vienna--we experienced a dramatically fast transition from the failure of communism to the success of capitalism as economic systems.

But success can also breed excess--and it did in both West Berlin and Vienna. Prices in Vienna, especially, were outrageous, and we were ripped off several times in ways that angered me. These violent contrasts made it seem especially important to me that we ensure the continued ascendance of capitalism by avoiding the excesses that could finally result in the have and have-not classes that spawned communism in the first place.

Last of all, I was acutely aware of how much the people of Eastern Europe value freedom and rejoice in it and express gratitude for it because it had been denied them for so many years and because they finally had to fight to attain it--just as Americans did more than 200 years ago.

And this awareness made me realize how little Americans--and especially our young people--rejoice in our own freedoms. Or are even conscious of them. I would hope that subjugation by a hostile power or system isn’t a prerequisite for an appreciation of freedom. But we need, somehow, to dramatize this blessing to our own people. Freedom can be eroded in many ways, and only a vigilance born of recognition and determination can prevent that from happening.

The East Germans and the Poles and especially the Czechs taught me that lesson to bring home, and I won’t forget it soon. For that, I thank them. It was well worth a lot of stressful train rides and difficult travel arrangements and sleepless nights.