74 FRANK BÖSCH AND JENS GIESEKE
negative experiences associated with the last two attempts to achieve
stability through violence in Afghanistan (since 1979) and Poland (1981).
The revolution in the GDR, as well as in Eastern and Central Europe
in general, quickly adopted a Western-style political and socioeconomic
model, fi xing its gaze on West Germany in particular. Not only did the
fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November clearly signal the way the wind was
blowing, but also the fact that 75 percent of the votes in the elections
for the Volkskammer (People’s Chamber) in March 1990 went to parties
planning for a joint future with their respective counterparts in Bonn.^112
The prospect of a fusion with West Germany proved to be decisive for
the electoral victory of the Alliance for Germany, which had promised the
shortest route to unifi cation.
Thus, democratic notions prevailed in East Germany that can be pith-
ily summed up by the notion of “no experiments” while resembling the
longing for security and prosperity of the “Kanzlerdemokratie” (chan-
cellor democracy) under Adenauer.^113 Whereas Helmut Kohl was often
mocked in the West, for example, East Germans applauded him at his
fi rst appearance in Dresden as a political leader who appeared to guar-
antee this much sought-after sense of security.^114 This naturally aff ected
Kohl’s status in the West in turn: although Kohl seemed to have little
chance of winning the next election, and he had almost lost his post as
the head of the CDU in early 1989, his image in West Germany suddenly
began to improve.^115
That said, however, there were two big losers in the fall of 1989. Com-
munism, for one, had been defeated as a political ideology, even in places
where the Communist elite still held the majority of leadership positions,
such as in the former Soviet Union/Russia or Romania. Second, the
utopian idea of a “third way” leading to self-determination and “truly”
democratic socialism had been swept away. Its demise came somewhat
unexpectedly as most all of the actors who had paved the way for the
revolution favored such an alternative. Their call to arms, titled “For our
Country,” which brought them together with the revived SED leadership,
may have been signed by 1.1 million GDR citizens, but this represented
only a minority.^116
As the defeat of the utopian “third way” became manifest in the Volk-
skammer election in March, its protagonists reacted quite diff erently.
Some, like Rainer Eppelmann, had already decided to switch to the path
leading to Bonn; others, including Jens Reich, declared laconically that
the movement had devolved back into a “small group,” but one that had
“achieved a lot.”^117 Still others, such as Bärbel Bohley, turned away in dis-
appointment. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk has thus rightly asserted that “from
this perspective, 1989/90 was a revolution without a utopia”^118 —if the