http://www.boston.com/dailynews/223/world/40_years_after_Berlin_Wall_wen:.shtml

40 years after Berlin Wall went up, memories remain bitter

By Burt Herman, Associated Press, 8/11/2001 12:10

BERLIN (AP) Sabine Sprengel remembers waking to pounding on the door at 7:30 a.m., 40 years ago Monday. ''They're closing the border! They're closing the border!'' Neighbors shouted.

The news was unfathomable. The city was already divided among the four victorious Allied powers of World War II, but the border between East and West Berlin remained open. As a schoolgirl, Sprengel would routinely cycle from her home in Prenzlauer Berg in the Soviet sector to school in the neighboring French sector without questions or interference.

But thousands were also crossing to the freer, more prosperous West with no intention of returning, and East Germany's work force was draining away. In the summer of 1961 East Germany's communist leader Walter Ulbricht promised that ''No one has the intention to build a wall.'' Less than two months later, the communists started building the Berlin Ball that would divide Germany's largest city for 28 years.

That broken promise continues to haunt the communists' successors of today, the Party of Democratic Socialism, as it strives for greater legitimacy. Amid plans for wreath-layings and memorial services Monday, Germans are pressing for a full apology from the ex-communists.

The party says it is prepared to acknowledge that shooting wall-jumpers was ''inhuman,'' but refuses to issue a blanket apology for the past.

Twelve years after the wall came down, the numbers of victims are still in dispute. In 1999 Berlin police concluded that 421 people died trying to leave East Germany, 152 of them at the wall. But other researchers count 960 deaths, 254 of them at the wall.

Sprengel was 17 back in 1961 when she and her family got the news that the wall was up, and they rushed out to see for themselves. A few hundred yards from their apartment, they found soldiers uncoiling wide rows of barbed wire along the border. Confused people gathered on both sides, shouting to each other to arrange times to talk or promising to write.

Because Sprengel's father worked in the West, the family could have tried to leave immediately. But her mother was hesitant. ''She had already been through so much, being bombed out in the war,'' Sprengel explained. And besides, they were certain the wall wouldn't last.

So the family decided everyone would stay except their father, who moved to West Berlin to continue his job as a baker.

The decision disrupted the family. Sprengel's father could visit, but not stay. Four years later, her mother left East Germany.

Sprengel took a stroll near the border in 1962 and ended up in jail for four months, accused of trying to flee the country. She was convicted again a year later after her father was caught at the wall carrying a letter she had written to an escaped friend. This time, she got off with probation.

In 1971 she was allowed to move to West Berlin, and her family wasn't fully reunited until her sister also finally left in 1975. Millions of other Germans remained trapped behind the wall until it finally came down on a tumultuous night in November 1989.

Bernauer Strasse, the quiet tree-lined street where Sprengel once biked downhill to school, became one of the most striking symbols of Berlin's new divide. The street was on the West Berlin side, its buildings on the East. After the wall went up, people jumped from apartment windows to freedom, but eventually the windows bricked up and then the buildings were torn down.

Gradually, barbed wire and makeshift barriers evolved into an actual physical wall, 13 feet high and zigzagging 26.8 miles through the center of Berlin, lined with mine fields, anti-tank obstacles and 300 watchtowers.

Today, most traces of the wall are gone, demolished and used to build roads in eastern Germany or sent as souvenirs of repression around the world.

One of the remaining sections of wall at Bernauer Strasse is now a memorial, the only place in Berlin that attempts to recreate what the infamous ''death strip'' between the frontier looked like.

Sprengel, now 57, speaks of her 10 years behind the wall as her ''internment,'' and still wonders what it was all for.

''What did it lead to? What success did it have? Everything was only kaputt. ... A state cannot wall in an entire people.''

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

Answers

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/223/world/Mixed_report_for_economic_po li:.shtml

Mixed report for economic, political development in former Soviet republics

By Associated Press, 8/11/2001 12:09

The 14 republics that broke away from Russia and became independent countries at Soviet breakup in 1991:

CAUCASUS STATES:

ARMENIA: War, economic decline and emigration have ravaged landlocked Armenia. Christian country almost surrounded by Muslims in Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan, fought six-year war supporting ethnic Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Since 1994 truce, Armenia and Azerbaijan have failed to reach political solution. Population 3.4 million.

AZERBAIJAN: Has strategic potential as transit country for oil exports. Has own oil reserves and natural gas, and caviar-producing sturgeon, in Caspian Sea. President Geidar Aliev accused by human rights groups of rigging elections and stifling free speech. Social safety net been strained by nearly 1 million people displaced by Nagorno-Karabakh war. Population 7.9 million.

GEORGIA: President Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister, has tried to forge closer ties to West and get Georgia out of Russia's shadow. He has brought some stability, but rampant corruption has stunted economy. Georgia fought 1992-93 war with separatists in Black Sea province of Abkhazia, and scattered clashes continue. Population 5 million.

BALTIC REPUBLICS:

ESTONIA: Managed to retain strong sense of national identity and relatively vibrant economy even under Soviet rule. After regaining independence, Estonia quickly implemented market reforms, and widely seen as success story of former Soviet Union. Like neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, Estonia eager to join NATO and European Union. Population 1.4 million.

LATVIA: Relatively stable, but has been rocked by recession and corruption scandals. Large ethnic Russian minority complains of discrimination under harsh laws to protect Latvian language and discourage use of Russian. Treatment of Russians also source of tension with Moscow. Population 2.4 million.

LITHUANIA: Mainly Catholic country bordering Poland, was in vanguard of Soviet republics rallying for independence. But has not enjoyed same economic progress as other Baltic states and been battered in recent recession. Ethnic divisions less sharp than in Latvia and Estonia, because Lithuania more homogenous. Population 3.6 million.

CENTRAL ASIA:

KAZAKSTAN: Politics dominated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev; human rights groups accuse government of harassing opposition and independent media. Large ethnic Russian population concentrated near border with Russia. Despite vast oil reserves, oil sector has developed less quickly than expected. Population 16.8 million.

KYRGYZSTAN: Mountainous country on China's northwest border, once praised as bastion of democracy among authoritarian neighbors. But President Askar Akayev increasingly cracked down on dissent. Army has battled Islamic separatists in south near borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Population 4.5 million.

TAJIKISTAN: Devastated by Civil war and drought. Following breakup of Soviet Union, fighting broke out between secular government and mostly Islamic opposition. 1997 truce ended war and gave rebels jobs in government and military, but some fighters have rejected deal. Heroin from Afghanistan smuggled through on way to Russia and Europe. Population 6.1 million.

TURKMENISTAN: President Saparmurad Niyazov runs Soviet-style system with virtually no opposition or independent media. His statues and portraits are everywhere, including on national currency; cities, schools and hospitals bear his name. He has resisted economic reforms, and desert country remains poor despite vast oil and natural gas reserves. Population 4.4 million.

UZBEKISTAN: Government says threat from Islamic militants justifies limiting civil liberties. Unsanctioned expressions of Islam, including wearing beards or traditional women's head coverings, punished with jail, expulsion from universities and harassment, human rights groups say. Has reserves of oil and natural gas, but government's resistance to reforms has deterred foreign investors. Population 24.1 million.

OTHERS:

BELARUS: Visitors often remark it is like traveling back in time to Soviet Union. President Alexander Lukashenko has suppressed opposition and media and has pushed to turn largely symbolic union with Russia into unified state with single currency. Most farms and factories state-owned; some prices on goods controlled. Population 10.4 million.

MOLDOVA: Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries and center for smuggling arms, gasoline and cigarettes. Ethnic Romanians make up two-thirds of population, but country has begun leaning toward Russia since communists elected to power this year. That has eased tensions in Trans-Dniester, predominantly Slav separatist region that fought brief war in 1992 over fears Moldova would reunite with Romania. Population 4.5 million.

UKRAINE: Bordering Russia and central Europe, most populous of former Soviet republics. Boasts rich black soil, mineral resources and long coastline on Black and Azov seas. But people are sharply divided between Ukrainian nationalists and those with close cultural ties to Russia. President Leonid Kuchma accused by opposition groups of incompetence, corruption and involvement in death of investigative journalist. Population 49.8 million.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/223/world/Russians_nurture_dreams_endu re:.shtml

Russians nurture dreams, endure disappointments in decade since 1991 Soviet collapse

By Deborah Seward, Associated Press, 8/11/2001 12:09

ZVENIGOROD, Russia (AP) Along a road that winds through forests and meadows, wealthy Russians speed to their country mansions in BMWs and SUVs with tinted windows, past sunburned men cutting grass with scythes and women sweeping gutters with homemade brooms.

Babushkas peddle buckets of potatoes and bundles of firewood by the road to add a few rubles to the family budget. But there are also garden centers offering Japanese maples, lawn chairs and hammocks the must-haves of today's upwardly mobile Russia.

All along the 24 miles of two-lane highway from Moscow to Zvenigorod, garish new villas in red brick clash with tumbledown wooden huts, some built before the 1917 communist revolution.

Russia in the summer of 2001, year 10 of the post-Soviet world, is a panoply of raw, thrusting consumerism and newfound wealth jostling with age-old images of ingrained poverty.

In a country where the communist system allocated housing and allowed virtually no travel abroad, billboards along the road trumpet the change: Package holidays to Greece. Japanese restaurant. Private school. Hugo Boss designer clothes. Fitness clubs.

It was a decade ago, on Aug. 19, 1991, that Boris Yeltsin hauled his linebacker frame onto a tank, faced down a coup by communist die- hards, and gave the world a defining image of the end of an era. The following Christmas Day, the 74-year-old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disbanded, and those 15 republics spun off on independent trajectories.

The aftershocks are still felt in sputterings of civil war from Chechnya to Central Asia, and in diplomatic corridors from the White House to Beijing.

What was once a Communist monolith stretching across 11 time zones is now a jarring patchwork whose main contours are a thin layer of very rich people, a wide swath of very poor, and a vulnerable middle class. It's the opposite of the egalitarian society communism set out to build, and a very long way from the prosperous democracy Russia yearns to be.

Many look back at the early 1990s as the high point of freedom and civil peace. Already by 1993, Yeltsin had turned to force, sending in the army to bring defiant lawmakers to heel, then into Chechnya to crush a separatist rebellion.

Meanwhile, a few bankers and businessmen with government connections became fabulously wealthy. They snapped up villas on the French Riviera and stuffed money in offshore accounts.

The rich sent their kids to expensive private schools in Europe, filled their homes with crystal and silverware, hired servants and traveled with armed bodyguards. The new middle class holidayed abroad, updated their wardrobes and renovated their apartments.

But few people paid taxes, corruption ran rampant, and Western investors were turned off. The state soon ran out of money.

Nuclear submarines were shut down because the Defense Ministry couldn't pay its bills. Teachers, doctors and soldiers went unpaid. Pipes burst, factories rusted, winter killed. AIDS, tuberculosis and drug abuse spread.

In August 1998, the bubble burst. The ruble was devalued and thousands lost their money. Banks folded, businesses collapsed and Russia's credit rating sank.

Current economic development is uneven. Oil, natural gas and weapons account for most of Russia's exports. Russia doesn't manufacture much that the world needs.

The stress has taken its toll, particularly on Russian men. Their life expectancy was 59.8 years in 1999. In the United States it's 74.2. And the population is shrinking by 3 million since 1993, to 145.6 million.

The average monthly wage is 2,200 rubles, or $78. Pensions are half that.

Since succeeding Yeltsin as president in 1999, Vladimir Putin appears to have made some progress. The tax rate has been slashed to 13 percent, most workers appear to be paid on time, and Putin is resisting opposition from old-guard communists to badly needed land reform.

But Russian liberals worry about their judo-loving president. A former officer of the once-feared KGB secret police, he's accused of hounding opposition media, chided for allowing the new Russian anthem to revert to the melody of the old Soviet one. Human rights advocates say Russian tactics in Chechnya have become even more brutal under Putin.

All this seems a world away from Saidunmaro Rakhmatkhudzha as he coaxes 200 head of cattle across the road. But the white-bearded, 57- year-old cowherd is a vivid example of how painfully the Soviet breakup has affected ordinary lives.

He once worked for the water department in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. Then the Soviet republic became independent, civil war broke out, and he lost his job. So he moved north to Russia to tend cows for an agribusiness.

Rakhmatkhudzha and his fellow herdsman, a Ukrainian, are among the millions of workers who have poured into Russia from the former Soviet republics. Once they all had the same Soviet passports. Now they are illegal immigrants, underpaid and overworked, liable to be deported, tolerated only because Russia's shrinking population needs laborers.

''Things have calmed down in Tajikistan, but there is no money, so I had to come here,'' Rakhmatkhudzha said.

Zvenigorod is the oldest town in the Moscow region. It withstood assaults by Poles, Napoleon's army and the Nazis. Under Soviet rule it stagnated. It has yet to flourish in the new Russia.

The roads are good, and the gas station on the way to town is a pleasant place to stop for coffee. Its very existence is a sign of progress. Ten years ago, there were hardly any gas stations in the entire area, and people waited in line for hours to tank up.

With its wooded hills and rivers, the Zvenigorod area is called ''the Russian Switzerland,'' but the comparison arouses scorn here.

''They call our region a second Switzerland. Only the prices are higher here,'' said Slava Andreitsev, a 50-year-old construction foreman.

At the grocery on Lenin Street, where sugar, vodka and cigarettes were rationed 10 years ago, almost everything is available, though not at prices affordable on that $78 average wage: a hot dog for $1.55, frozen shrimp for $2.75, a box of cat food for $2.41.

Although he's only 15, Yevgeny Ruzin is glad he missed communism.

''When I was little, people spent the whole day in line to get bread. They came, marked their place, went home and then came back. Buying bread took all day,'' Yevgeny said.

Now ''things are good. There's freedom,'' he said.

But there are many who long for the simple certainties of the Soviet era, when living conditions for all but the Communist elite were about the same.

A poll earlier this year by the Public Opinion Foundation said 79 percent of Russians now regret the demise of the Soviet Union, up from 69 percent in 1992.

But though they may sometimes look back fondly to the past, and grow cynical about the ability of politicians to solve their problems, and wonder why bother to vote, turnout in last year's presidential election was 65 percent.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/223/world/Three_days_that_changed_the_ So:.shtml

Three days that changed the Soviet Union began on a warm summer's night

By Associated Press, 8/11/2001 12:08

MOSCOW (AP) It was a sleepy Sunday night, and Moscow had emptied out for the summer. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was away, too, summering on the Black Sea.

He was due back in Moscow next morning to sign a treaty aimed at giving the Soviet republics more say in their political life and heading off their drive for full independence.

Gorbachev never returned that Monday, and the next three days would send the Soviet Union into a free-fall from which it did not recover.

Silently, throughout the summer, a group of senior Communist Party officials had plotted to seize power in a last-gasp attempt to roll back Gorbachev's reforms and save the Soviet Union from collapse.

Backed by senior military, KGB and Interior Ministry officials, they put Gorbachev under house arrest at his Black Sea summer house. Just before dawn on Aug. 19, the radio reported sinister news: A coup.

Tanks streamed into Moscow, and by midmorning had taken up key positions: near the Kremlin, the mayor's office, the White House where the Russian parliament meets.

Boris Yeltsin, the popular Russian Federation president, got the news at his dacha west of Moscow. He quickly drafted an appeal to the Russian people to resist. According to his memoirs, an arrest squad was waiting for him in the woods, but he was able nonetheless to drive into the capital and reach the parliament building.

There, he clambered up on one of the tanks and read his appeal aloud.

By nightfall tens of thousands of people had answered his call. They started building barricades around the parliament. Tension built throughout Tuesday, another hot day, and late that night three young people were killed when soldiers fired on angry crowds surrounding their vehicles.

The coup plotters' supporters started backing away. As international condemnation spread, the soldiers appeared increasingly uncertain and the crowds continued to grow.

On Wednesday the tanks withdrew. Some of the coup plotters fled, but all ultimately were arrested. It was over.

Gorbachev flew back to Moscow and that Thursday he and Yeltsin addressed the crowds together at the White House as virtual equals, even though the Soviet president outranked the Russian one.

Gorbachev never recovered his political authority. The age of Yeltsin was at hand. Four months later, on Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev resigned, and the 74-year-old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disbanded.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/223/world/Key_events_in_Russia_in_past _d:.shtml

Key events in Russia in past decade

By Associated Press, 8/11/2001 12:07

Events that shaped Russia's history over past 10 years:

Aug. 19-21, 1991: Hard-liners announce they are replacing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and declare state of emergency. Boris Yeltsin, president of Russian Federation, rallies resistance; coup collapses. Gorbachev returns, politically weakened; Yeltsin emerges as country's most popular politician.

Dec. 8, 1991: Yeltsin and leaders of Ukraine and Belarus declare formation of new commonwealth, declare Gorbachev's government dead.

Dec. 25, 1991: Gorbachev resigns. Soviet Union ceases to exist. Russian flag raised over Kremlin.

January 1992: Price controls lifted on most goods. Prices soar. State bank tightens money supply. Cash shortage develops. Inflation rages.

Sept. 21-Oct. 4, 1993: Yeltsin orders disbanding of parliament. Lawmakers vote to impeach Yeltsin, who sends in tanks. About 140 people die in two days of fighting.

Dec, 11, 1994: Russia sends troops into Chechnya to crush republic's independence bid. War brings heavy casualties.

July 3, 1996: Yeltsin re-elected for second term after campaigning hard on promises to prevent Communist comeback.

Aug. 31, 1996: Russia signs pact with Chechen rebels, postponing decisions on republic's political status. War declared over.

Aug. 18, 1998: Russia hit by worst economic crisis since Soviet collapse. Ruble plummets, stock prices collapse, banks freeze private accounts.

September 1999: Russia again sends troops into Chechnya.

Dec. 31, 1999: Yeltsin resigns, six months before second presidential term expires. Names Prime Minister Vladimir Putin his successor.

March 26, 2000: Putin, former KGB agent, wins presidential election by landslide, popularity driven by aggressive handling of war in Chechnya.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

It has always bothered me that we use the term Communism to describe that era in Russian politics. It's not communism, and never has been. What it is, rather, is exactly what it's now called, Socialism. The problem is that we have a lot of socialism right here in the good old US so I suppose our own "planners" didn't want to use the same term to describe their manufactured enemy. Ain't politics grand?

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001