BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Giac
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 02:02 PM

Thanks, Wolfgang.

I do so appreciate your posts, especially when you give German text and a translation. It brings an emotion that might otherwise be lost.

Mary

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Teribus
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 09:16 AM

At the time Winston Churchill was right - the consequences of the "West" attempting to assist such an uprising would have been very poorly received in Moscow, with potentially dire consequences for entire world - let alone East Germany.

From another article on the anniversary:

"Most historians have accepted that the West's options were limited. Britain was worried about events inside Russia, then convulsed by the power struggle after Stalin's death. There was also fear of resurgent German nationalism only eight years after the Second World War."

I think that the content of the first two sentences quoted above had greater impact on the thinking of both Britain and the USA, than fears regarding German reunification.

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 08:05 AM

'Prost', Billy, though we pronounce it as if it was spelled 'Proost' that is with a very long sounding ooo...

Greg, many myths from both sides in the Cold War surround that event.

One of 'our' myths I have mentioned above: 40 soldiers have not been executed but we still have a memorial for them.

The main myth from the other side (besides lying about the number of executions) was that it was an imperialist backed counter-revolution. It wasn't. The West has been as much surprised as the East. A spontaneous demonstration against lower wages in which at a later time some political slogans mixed like 'free elections' and, worse, "the goatee must go" (Goatee= Ulbricht).

Some innocent persons from West-Berlin who just happened to be at that time in East Berlin went to jail for many years, for the regime needed some visible counter-revolutionaries. Anyone makes a good presentable counter-revolutionary with the appropriate amount of pressure.

The event of June 17 1953 have been used, of course, by the West, but they have not been triggered from the West.

Speaking about British people, a famous non-folkie, Winston Churchill, is said to have done all he could to prevent any Western help for the uprising. He considered a united Germany to be more against British interests at that time than some dozen dead workers in a communist state.

That was the start of an unspoken agreement: Do within your empire whatever you want and let us do in our whatever we want. We'll condemn your actions in the harshest words possible but we won't act.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 04:17 AM

And the sad thing about those events, from an British folkie viewpoint,was that a substantial proportion of our music enthusiasts were also great enthusiasts for this successful crushing of the imperialist backed counter-revolution.

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 03:43 AM

Wolfgang,

I am 'armed with a bottle', and toast those who died in Stalinallee - and every other street in the world where folk have died at their own government's hands. It hasn't improved in the past half-century.

Alas, right now there are too many similar songs waiting to be written. Ii's a hell of a world .... :(

Proost (sp?) - Sam in NZ - with very moist eyes!

Subject: RE: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 06:09 AM

A later poem by Bert Brecht to the same theme:

Die Lösung

    Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
    ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbandes
    in der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen,
    auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
    das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
    und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
    zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
    nicht einfacher, die Regierung
    löste das Volk auf
    und wählte ein anderes?"

The Solution

After the uprising of June the 17th
the secretary of the writers union
had leaflets be distributed on the Stalinalley
on which was written that the People
has forfeited the confidence of the Government
and could only regain it
by doubling the work effort. Would it not
be easier if the Government
dissolved the People
and elected another (People).

Wolfgang

Subject: BS: Stalin-Alley (50 years ago today)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 05:36 AM

Fifty Years ago today, on June 17, 1953, a spontaneous workers' demonstration triggered by a decrease in pay led to an uprising in the GDR, mainly in East Berlin. The main action in East Berlin was on the Stalinallee (Stalin Alley), later partly renamed Karl-Marx Allee.

The number of dead listed varies from 20 to 150, with 100 being a fairly good guess. Eighteeen death penalties are documented. The shooting of fourty soldiers of the Red Army for refusing to shoot on civilians, however, is a Western propagandy lie from the Cold War. True, however, is that there is still a monument for these 40 soldiers who never have been shot.

This was but the first of a series of uprisings over a couple of decades (Budapest, Prague, Peking) in which tanks of a communist army crushed, in each of these towns not only in a metaphorical sense, a rebellion from their own or allied nations' people.

For the music angle, when a part of the Stalinallee was renamed into Karl-Marx Allee, in 1961, (then) dissident-communist singer songwriter Wolf Biermann wrote the deeply sarcastic song (in the sense: Karl Marx is a too good name to pin on that awful street; Stalin is a much better fitting name)

Acht Argumente für die Beibehaltung des Namens "Stalinallee" für die Stalinallee
(Eight arguments for keeping the name "Stalinallee" for the Stalinallee)

And his third argument (verse) was:

Und als am 17. Juni
Manch Maurerbrigadier
Mit Flaschen schwer bewaffnet schrie
Da floß nicht nur das Bier
Ja, darum heißt sie auch STALINALLEE
Mensch, Junge, versteh
Und die Zeit ist passé!

(And when at the 17th of June
some builder work team leader
shouted, heavily armed with bottles,
then not only the beer did flow.
Yes, that's why it is called STALINALLEE.
My boy, understand,
and the time is gone)

Wolfgang