Yet the preoccupation with single key events, the high politics of 1989, also distorts reality, by passing over the process of maturation which made them possible. This is top-down history, a mix of realpolitik and celebrity told from establishment perspectives. In reality, the revolutions were made not by regime politicians and opposition leaders, but by ordinary people who gathered in their thousands to turn ideas into real events. It was in this “people power”, the mobilisation of hearts and minds, that the Church’s contribution was made. Ignoring it distorts the truth and looks like crude revisionism.
Some church leaders have taken issue with the 1989 anniversaries. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who was based in the Communist German Democratic Republic as Bishop of Berlin, has criticised the commemorations for focusing only on the final step in his country’s reunification, without mentioning “the 999 steps taken earlier”, in which Christians provided a “biblical testimony of non-participation”.

“Throughout these years, Christians formed a living protest against this inhuman system,” the cardinal told Germany’s Catholic news agency, KNA, this October. “Yet in the many declarations, speeches, interviews and books appearing for the twentieth anniversary, the Church’s role is being evaluated and covered only very superficially. We must hope everything experienced by the mass of often nameless, lonely people will be written about and documented, people who positively influenced society with their suffering and helped bring about the changes through unspectacular resistance along the way.”

Whatever one may think of church controversies after 1989, no serious historian in Eastern Europe would question the critical role of the Catholic Church – and, to a lesser extent, of Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist communities – during the final stages of Communist rule, in helping sustain opposition and give it moral certainty.

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1. Dick Mitchell wrote: Thanks for this post.  I was born in 1945, and my parents celebrated VE and VJ Days.  But in my life, the landing on the moon and the collapse of the European Communist regimes have been the world events that I have most celebrated.  The year 1989 was a source of excitement and triumph, and my recollection is that the Christian churches played a significant role in those times.  It was striking to realize that so-called Eastern Bloc countries in fact contained more Christians than communists. December 15, 12:54 am | [comment link]

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