At the wall

Berliner Mauer East Side Gallery, its builders and visitors

Two decades after the collapse of the Berlin wall in three sections of the city, it was restored, and specially invited artists from around the world, as well as the Berliners themselves, decorated concrete blocks with their creations. One of the sites was completely preserved from the very beginning. Before you are the pictures that I took on this, the longest of them restored - between the eastern railway station and Warsaw Street. The wall turned into the exhibition is not the first year, but people still stop, take pictures, talk. Many, I hope, think.

For the period, which passed from the founding of the East German state in 1949 until 1961, 2.8 million people left the country.

Given those who escaped from the Soviet zone of occupation from 1945 to 1949, this figure was already approaching four million.

As a result of a mass flight, the country lost the most talented and energetic people. The GDR could not stand any honest comparison with the West.

Something had to be done urgently.

In early July 1961, from his Black Sea dacha, Khrushchev demanded to deliver him the best map of Berlin. It turned out that in some places the border was not even along the sidewalks, but in apartments. Khrushchev saw that “one side of the street is in one sector, and the second in the other. He just crossed the street, but it turned out that he crossed the border. ” He did not like it.

"How will control over the streets be carried out, where one side runs along the GDR, and the other - according to Germany?" - the Soviet leader asked, talking with the head of the GDR Walter Ulbricht. “We have a specific plan,” he answered. - Exits from the houses leading to West Berlin will be walled up. In other places, we will install barrage wire fences. The barbed wire has already been delivered. All this can be done very quickly. ”

What else could Ulbricht and Khrushchev come up with to save socialism? You can still shoot to defeat those who try to somehow overcome the wall. They started shooting - in the name of the possibility of each of the Berliners to live in a free and one city ...

In the competition for the most vile campaign of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall seems to be the leader by a large margin.

And with this barbed wire, by the way, there was almost a very serious problem: it needed to stock up 155 kilometers. But there was not enough wire in the social camp. Therefore, in order not to arouse suspicion, we ordered the necessary amount of goods from different manufacturers in the UK and West Germany - for private needs, of course. None of the Western business partners raised anxiety.

In the communists, no one was mistaken. Those were also not mistaken in whom: we will build a wall, and if we do it quickly, no one will do anything for us.

“Mr. Chairman,” asked the West German journalist Ulbricht at a press conference literally on the eve of the construction of the wall, “you are going to create a“ free city ”, as you call it. Does this mean that the state border will be held at the Potsdam gate? ” Ulbricht replied: “I don’t know anything about such intentions. Builders in the capital of the GDR are mainly engaged in the construction of residential buildings and work with full load. No one is going to build a wall. ”

The primary fortifications of the walls were erected unprecedented quickly: overnight. Then the wire, slowly, changed to concrete blocks. I am waiting for someone to respectfully call this construction "the most brilliant engineering and political solution of the twentieth century."

The wall stood for 28 years.

Hitler spoke well in the fall of the 39th, ridicuating the "arsonists of the war"-the British with the French. And for those who said, assenting Hitler, that it was immoral to wage war against ideology, even if you do not like it, there was also your rightness. But then they attacked themselves, and this point of view suddenly changed ...

It is easy to repeat that people have chosen who is capitalism, who is socialism ... they say what can you do: each people have the right to choose, respect it! The right of the people of Cambodia, the right of the people of Germany - both eastern and Western, the right of the people of Korea - both northern and southern? The right of subjects of Khussein, Gaddafi, Chausko, Somos, Pinochec, Castro? There are no clear and clear rules in order to reliably recognize this very “will of the people”, after all, no one came up with, but they would have come up with - would everyone fulfill them?

It is difficult to be a god - the Strugatsky said rightly.

It is impossible to be God - clarifies life ...

According to the former coordinator of the French special services, in 1961 “the world was close to nuclear conflict. Politically, de Gaulle supported the Americans and Western Germans. But actually, he understood that their policy in this matter was dangerous. They decided that if this time the events will develop according to the script of the first Berlin crisis, when the USSR established the blockade of West Berlin, they would resort to nuclear weapons. De Gaulle wanted to warn Moscow about this. He asked me to transmit this information to the KGB. But we had no contacts with the KGB. We reported this to the president. And de Gaulle invited the Soviet ambassador to Paris and informed him of the possibility of a nuclear war. “Then we will die all together,” the ambassador answered.

A brave man ... He still did not know that only we would go to heaven.

... But could they well not sell the wire for the prickly Ulbrichta?