Erinnerung

[matrixmann]

Originally posted by matrixmann at Erinnerung

Berlin, 17. Juni 1953: Traue nicht deinem Geschichtsbuch.

Berlin, June 17th 1953: Don't trust your history book.

https://matrixmann.dreamwidth.org/48598.html

Comments

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is interesting! Still it sounds more like a counter-revolution move? Considering the fact that the western media helped to promote the protests to such a scale. On the other hand it is hard to build a non-consumer orientated society when there is consumerism next door. External enemies and the strong remaining power of individualism when it is still important for folks-- or so they think-- to have possessions and they consider it a part of happiness. And it was hard to provide immediately at that time.

[matrixmann]

The version of it being a sole counter-revolution move is what has been told in GDR history books (once got to see that myself, that's how I know).

Even though... the version that is painted these days also is not the truth.

From my point of view now, years after I've written something about this topic, I think the truth lies in between that.
It was a protest in the GDR against a couple wrongs of the time - wrongs which had to be addressed (e. g. the failed Bodenreform where they only redistributed the land, but nobody had machines or tools to maintain the fields on them, and so it lead to food shortages).

In between this GDR-only issue, the West tried to plant its own seeds to abuse this issue to make things turn into a direction favorable for West Germany.
(This also becomes recognizable in the fact that, until the reunification, the West German state celebrated June 17th as "Tag der Deutschen Einheit".)

That is how people who saw things themselves or heard them from their pearents which suited the frame of a counter-revolution can be around today still strengthening this interpretation of the events - while there also indicators can be found which speak for it being not in the first place.

That Russian tanks intervented becomes logical, I think, if you regard it under that star that Stalin died a couple of months before that series of events - and that being not the first time that chaos and shady actions happened in Berlin during those years.