It is not good to be a communist in the land of "existing socialism." After the exiling of Wolf Biermann and dozens of other young workers, writers, and artists who consider themselves socialists and Marxists, and the placing of Robert Havemann under house arrest, the sentencing of Rudolf Bahro to eight years in prison offers additional proof of this.
It is for "espionage" that Bahro has just been sentenced, shamefacedly and in secret. This simple fact could suffice to indicate the extreme weakness of the East German bureaucracy-moral as well as political-in face of its communist opponents. It was with good reason that Wolf Biermann pointed out, shortly after Bahro's sentencing, that the criticism by elements favoring a restoration of capitalism in East German does not frighten the high muckamucks greatly,. that the Christian opposition irritates them, but that, if push comes to shove, they can accommodate themselves to it. But in contrast to this, when a communist opposition appears, throwing Marxism back at the bureaucracy both in letter and in spirit, taking the official doctrine as a starting point for discussions, and claiming the mantle of communism, the functionaries react with a viciousness that, in the final analysis, is nothing but a symptom of panic.
Putting Dissidents Out of Circulation
Thus, their only recourse consists of lies, seamy Machiavellian maneuvers, and outright cynicism. To put a Bahro, a Biermann, or a Havemann out of circulation, they shrink from nothing. They are prepared to instigate a witch-hunt among the youth and intelligentsia of their country, to see their prestige sink even lower abroad, and to pay the price of isolating themselves still further to get these troublemakers off their backs.
They are prepared to pass off as a "spy" the author of one of the greatest Marxist theoretical works of the postwar period; to say that a veteran of Communism, of the resistance to Hitlerism, like Havemann, has sold out to the class enemy; to swear that Biermann slandered his socialist fatherland in West Germany, whereas millions of Germans in the East and West watched a television broadcast of the concert on which this charge is based. Throughout it, Biermann defended the Democratic Republic as "the best part" of Germany.
The reason why they are willing to commit all these perjuries is quite simple. It is that Biermann, Havemann, and Bahro are popular in their country. It is because for years and years, tapes of Biermann have been circulating by the hundreds among hundreds of thousands of East German youth, and because his songs, while drawing up a pitiless, stinging indictment of the bureaucracy, propose a different socialism, a different communist hope, a different communist world view than that of the high priests of the old Stalin-Allee. Because Rudolf Bahro's book The Alternative, brought out by a publishing house with ties to the West German trade unions, and banned in East Germany, is finding its way into the clandestine communist libraries, and is being read, discussed, and recopied in that coun try as no text by Brezhnev or Honecker ever will be.
In a word, the bureaucrats are green (or red) with fear of this current, because even though political activity by the East German working class is very slight, they know that it represents a genuine alternative, a hope, for thousands of young people. This is a thousand times more dangerous for the watchdogs of bureaucratic socialism than the desires of a few thousand East German citizens to cross over to the West.
That such an alternative existsalthough as yet weak and unsure, of course-is shown by the response that the invasion of Czechoslovakia evoked in East Germany ten years ago, not only the protests of intellectuals like Havemann (or his son Floria, who hung a Czechoslovakian flag from his window), but even more moving displays, such as those the Bast German writer Rainer Kunze describes in his book The Wonderful Years, such as the flowers placed by an unseen hand on the doorstep of a woman of Czechoslovakian birth. Or again, the veritable rebellion of intellectuals that followed Biermann's exiling in November 1976, the effects of which are still being felt, particularly in artistic circles.
A regime that forces into exile, or deports, not all (as some Western propaganda would have it), but the best of its artists and intellectuals—as does the East German regime-such a regime sits in judgment on itself. A writer like Sarah Kirsch, who was active in the Communist Party, who was never an outspoken oppositionist like Biermann, who strove loyally in the cultural sphere to do her part to build the new society, has had to leave, owing to the lack of guarantees of being able to work unhampered and be published. Others keep still, others have ceased to be communists and have left, like Rainer Kunze.
Crass Stupidity Crass Stupidity
With the crass stupidity of functionaries, the East German bureaucrats do not realize that times have changed since the Kravchenko affair, that all exiled opponents who flee to the West do not automatically become hostages of the CIA or of Western propaganda. Wolf Biermann lives in Hamburg, and his communist convictions have not changed; his songs are still finding their way to Berlin, Leipzig, and Jena.
More recently, the government exiled a group of young workers from Jena, the young writer Jürgen Fuchs, and two singers, Kunert and Panach, who had all presumed to spit in the cold soup of socialism Honecker-style. All were in Paris a few weeks ago, to take part in a rally of solidarity for Rudolf Bahro, where as communists they defended communist principles.
So the bureaucrats do not realize that they are not even making up in domestic tranquility what they are losing abroad in terms of prestige. Ideas know no frontiers. Driven out through the Brandenburg gate, Biermann's songs come back in through the window-by way of Western travelers, and West German radio and television.
The books of Rainer Kunze and Jürgen Fuchs are an admirable indication that a young generation exists in East Germany, whose freshness of intellect, passion for truth, irreverence, aspiration to live freely, and often, authentically Marxist political consciousness are a constant nightmare for the bureaucrats.
Another indication is the experience of those young workers from Jena, who had organized a cultural circle whose antibureaucratic spontaneity and popularity alarmed officials of the regime to such an extent that they wasted no time in dissolving it.
It is among these youth that the ideas and communist hopes of a new Bahro, Biermann, or Havemann are germinating. And that is why the bureaucrats are afraid, why they strike so savagely.
An International Campaign
In West Germany and in other Western European countries, a campaign has been launched to win Bahro's release-a campaign whose voice does not blend in with that of the right. In West Germany, dozens of rallies have been held, bringing together not only members of far-left organizations, but also representatives of the SP left and trade-union activists. In West Berlin, a protest rally drew 2,000 persons a few days after Bahro's sentencing. In London, a protest rally was held in front of the East German embassy. In France, l'Humanité condemned the sentence meted out to Bahro without beating around the bush.
Of course, the West German authorities will spare no effort to win the franchise for liberalism by offering to "exchange" Bahro for some hard cash-this same Bahro who, if he were a citizen of the Federal Republic, would undoubtedly be hit by repression.
But it seems that Bahro refused such an exchange prior to his trial. It is his unalienable right, as an East German communist oppositionist, to fight for his ideas in his country, which he defends. And for our part, we will fight unstintingly, not for his barter, but for his release, so that his right to live, work, and struggle in that country, the German Democratic Republic, may be respected.