Quiet year of 30-year-old historical anniversaries

It is coming to the end of 2019, and it seems to me that its close connection with the year of 1989 is more and more, when gigantic, truly tectonic shifts in world history have occurred for a very short time, which largely determined not only the further trajectory of the USSR/Russia, but also in Europe and the whole world. Among other things, they had a huge impact on the development of science in our country and in the world. The current historical and scientific events are in sight and hearing, but (especially in contrast with them) there is a very strong feeling that those events of thirty years ago are still not appreciated and not understood sufficiently. Therefore, I would like to step aside a little and remember how it was, especially because I was lucky enough to be quite close to the epicenter of many events and observe them with my own eyes.

In November 1988, I received a notice from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany that my research project was won in the competition and the representative commission of German professors awarded me a research scholarship. So in the fall of 1989 I was going to go to Mainz, to the Max Planck Society Institute, to work in the group of Karl Hincinger.

1989 was saturated with events. On February 15, the last column of Soviet troops crossed the Afghan-Soviet border, the ten-year-old Afghan war ended. In the meantime, the first more or less free election campaign in the election to the congress of people's deputies has already unfolded in the USSR. Employees of the Chernogolovsky Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences took a very active participation in this campaign. After many rallies, our candidates for the congress were A. D. Sakharov from the Academy of Sciences and Yu. N. Afanasyev - as a deputy on the Noginsk constituency, to which the Chernogolovka belonged. Their performances at the congress in May now have become the property of history.

Meanwhile, in February - April 1989, negotiations between the “round table” of the Polish government with “solidarity” were held in Poland, among which there was a significant number of scientists and the intelligentsia. The negotiations were the elections on June 4, 1989, which ended with a convincing victory of "solidarity", which laid the foundation for economic and political reforms in Poland.

Meanwhile, in April 1989, Hungary turned off the current through the thorny wire on the border with Austria, and in May she began to dismantle the border fences themselves. The opening of the border not only facilitated the Hungarians of a visit to neighboring Austria, but also opened the opportunity to the Germans from the GDR flee to Germany through Austria. The famous Berlin wall still continued to exist in the GDR, but it became less and less sense in it. Only during the border “friendship picnic” between the Hungarians and the Austrians in August 1989, more than 900 GDR citizens who were on vacation with their families in Hungary, stormed the border and went further west.

This stream of East German refugees then increased literally every day. Already in August 1989, the diplomatic missions of Germany in Berlin, Budapest and Prague forced to receive visitors due to the influx of refugees from the GDR who sought entry into the West German state. In September 1989, several residents of East Germany climbed in Prague through the fence of the German Embassy. Having learned about this in television news, thousands of eastern Germans rushed in Prague in an effort to leave their socialist homeland forever. They came with young children, with grandmothers, with many suitcases and climbed through the embassy wall as they could. But the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia itself began a little later, in November.

In 1989, the spirit of rapid historical changes was literally rushed in the air and seemed to be felt by all. It is no accident that in July 1989, Francis Fukuyama published his famous article “The End of History?”, Which was later deployed in a whole book. In September 1989, Frederick de Clerk, who began the liquidation of the apartheid system in South Africa, was elected in the South African Republic. He canceled many racist laws, after decades of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. However, in China in June 1989, peaceful student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were brutally suppressed. The global world really changed quickly, although not all changes looked promising ...

Just at the end of September 1989, I went by train to the Federal Republic of Germany to realize my Humbolds scholarship. The car from Moscow went only to East Berlin, and for a train to the Federal Republic of Germany, it was necessary to cross the border on foot. This turned out to be completely unremarkable. I did not even see the Berlin Wall itself. The transition at the Friedrichstrasse station was an underground, East German border guard threw a quick suspicious look at me, but silently put a stamp in a blue Soviet service passport. In the morning I was already on the way to Mannheim, where I had to study German in Goethe Institute for two months before starting research in Mainz.

The West German train stretched for several hours from Berlin along the territory of the GDR to the border with Germany, and the view from the window was continuous rows of barbed wire on both sides of the railway tracks. Occasionally, there were half -steams and stamps abandoned since the war, at which there were no stops, but the train took place especially slowly, and on each platform after 5-10 meters there were Gaderar border guards with Kalashnikov Naughty assault rifles. The government still tried to prevent the shoots of GDR citizens across the border on the roofs of wagons.

The anniversary celebrations in the GDR on October 7, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the republic, I observed on television in Mannhaim. M.S. Gorbachev came from Moscow to congratulate the anniversaries, made a speech there and talked with the eastern Germans, who poured thousands on the streets of East Berlin and chanted in chorus: “Gorbi, Gorbi, Hilf UNS!” Almost immediately after his departure in the GDR, his own restructuring also gradually began.

Meanwhile, in mid -October, the Humboldt Foundation invited all newly arrived scholarships to an introductory meeting in Bohum. The fund arranges such meetings three times a year to help new scholarships to get used to Germany and familiarize them with the rules and capabilities of the fund. There I found that among about one and a half hundred new scholarships there are more than a dozen compatriots. Naturally, we quickly met. They immediately made sure that, without saying a word, the majority decided to come to Germany with his family. It was a very non -trivial solution. Previously, even senior businessmen from the USSR were not allowed to travel abroad with the whole family. This needed a special very special resolution. The wife could only visit her husband on a scientific business trip for a couple of weeks, if it lasted more than six months. In 1989, this restriction was removed, and we were one of the first to take advantage of the new opportunity.

In the break of meetings, the excited general secretary of the Humboldt Hinrich Pfaifer Foundation approached us and enthusiastically said: “Imagine, you are now 17 people from the Soviet Union! In the previous decades, only 3-4-5 people a year came from the USSR, and now there are already 17 people in just four months! ” Six months later, at another similar meeting, we found out that we were already about 50, and another six months later - more than 100. The Humboldt Foundation was already not only enthusiastic, but also with some fright observed a powerful stream of strong scientific applications from the USSR, which he was not able to satisfy. Then the annual number of scholarships was specially increased from 500 to 600 to satisfy this very qualified demand for research scholarships from the USSR, justified by serious scientific projects.

And at the end of October 1989, I learned German in Mannheim, I decided to go in advance to my future place of work in Mainz, the benefit of getting there on the train was only about an hour and you can turn out half a day after classes. We agreed with Karl Hincinger that I would come on November 9 after dinner. Of the Germans, only a secretary and two graduate students from Bavaria worked in his group. The rest were visitor-standers from different countries of Eastern Europe: Eva Havlitsk from Lodz, Gabar Nagi from Budapest, Zdenek Slanin from Prague. In connection with the already beginning liberalization of the scientific contacts of the East - the West just at that time two professors from Leipzig, Reinhold Haberelandt and Siegfried Fritsse arrived for several days. Actually, I asked Karl in the group, because I had long known that the Hungarians often work there, and it was clear from publications that they were allowed to count in Germany on the most powerful Cray supercomputer in the world, which was under the harsh western embargo for the USSR. In the hope of working on this legendary car, I went to Mainz.

But that evening we almost did not discuss science. Very quickly, for coffee and beer, the conversation turned into what is happening in our countries. The changes were so rapid and comprehensive that no one dared to predict even the near future. But at the same time, everyone was sure that it would be better than the present, and it was complete confidence that everyone could participate and contribute to these changes personally. I proudly showed a portrait of Yu. N. Afanasyev in the fresh room of Spiegel and told how he campaigned all day for his deputy on the eve of the election in the city market in the dank Snezhnoy Martovsky Noginsk. Siegfried told how every Monday in the evening from the beginning of September all Leipzig goes to demonstrations with the requirements of reform and democratic freedoms. Gabor rejoiced at how good and calmly important changes in Hungary were taking place, and only complained that in neighboring Romania they were very poorly treated with the Hungarian national minority, predicting that Chauska would end poorly ...

The flow of East German refugees through Austria by that time intensified even more, thousands of people crossed the bauria border daily, on foot, with families, with bags and suitcases, along the already snowy November mountain roads. For their placement near the border, school gyms and barracks of the Bundeswehr were urgently liberated, and the Government of Germany, in complete confusion, was already thinking about the introduction of emergency measures.

I returned home in Mannhaim only after midnight, turned on the TV, and then I only found out that the Berlin wall was finally ajar, and thousands of eastern Berliners instantly rushed to check the reality of this event, often right in pajamas and night shirts ...

By the end of November, the German course ended, and I moved to work in Mainz. Two weeks later, a wife with two daughters flew to me. Our joint journey through countries and continents has begun, which has not stopped since then.

I got to the Berlin wall itself only after almost a year, when, as part of a research trip on Germany, which the Humboldt Foundation organizes for all its scholarships, we were in Berlin just three weeks before the formal unification of Germany. This was the first year when, as part of such a trip, it was possible to freely call not only in the western, but also to the eastern lands. I still use several pieces of the Berlin Wall, which I then broke down as a training manual for students.

Recently, I was lucky to get acquainted with the famous East German molecular biologist and civilian activist Jens Reich, who played an extremely important role in the public events of 1989-1990 in the GDR, and during the previous twenty years he also made a significant contribution to the intellectual training of historical changes that occurred in 1989. Our conversation with him about the role of the wall in the life of scientists and the role of scientists in the fate of the wall, see the link below.

Andrey Kalinichev,
Professor of the Higher School of Mining and Telecommunications in Nante (France), member