影響深遠的歐洲革命往事

On November 9 1989, a 35-year-old physicist in East Berlin saw the startling news on TV that the border with West Germany was opening. But she didn’t rush to the Berlin Wall. Instead — in the definitive display of her trademark patience — Angela Merkel went to the sauna, as she did every Thursday evening. Only afterwards did she walk to her local border crossing and into West Berlin. She drank beer in a stranger’s home in the west but made sure to get back to bed on time, because she had work the next morning.

1989年11月9日，東柏林一位35歲的物理學(xué)家在電視上看到一條令人震驚的新聞——東德和西德的邊界開放了。但她并沒有匆忙趕往柏林墻。相反，安格拉•默克爾(Angela Merkel)按照每個周四晚上的習(xí)慣去了桑拿房——充分顯示出其標志性的耐心。在洗完桑拿后，她才步行前往當(dāng)?shù)氐倪^境通道，進入了西柏林。她在西柏林一個陌生人家中喝了啤酒，但還是確保準時回家上床就寢，因為第二天她還要上班。

One month after the Wall fell, exultant East German protesters surrounded the KGB’s mansion in Dresden. A 37-year-old KGB lieutenant-colonel named Vladimir Putin phoned the local Soviet military to ask for reinforcements but was told that nothing could be done because, “Moscow is silent”. Putin would never forget that moment. Meanwhile in Budapest, the 26-year-old lawyer Viktor Orban shot to fame after a speech demanding that Soviet troops leave Hungary. Over in Poland, the velvet transition from communism left the Solidarity official Jaroslaw Kaczynski so disappointed that he began his long battle to complete the revolution.

柏林墻倒塌一個月以后，狂喜的東德抗議者包圍了克格勃(KGB)在德累斯頓(Dresden)的大樓。37歲的克格勃中校弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)打電話給當(dāng)?shù)氐奶K聯(lián)駐軍請求增援，但被告知軍方無能為力，因為“莫斯科沉默了”。普京永遠不會忘記那一刻。同時，在布達佩斯，26歲的律師歐爾班•維克托(Viktor Orban)發(fā)表了要求蘇軍撤出匈牙利的演講，從此聲名鵲起。在波蘭，擺脫共產(chǎn)黨統(tǒng)治的天鵝絨革命讓團結(jié)工會(Solidarity)官員雅羅斯瓦夫•卡欽斯基(Jaroslaw Kaczynski)如此失望，以至于他開始自己的長期斗爭，目標是完成未竟的革命事業(yè)。

Today, these four people lead their countries. Merkel, Putin and Orbán have done so for a combined 37 years, while Kaczynski is Poland’s unelected power behind the throne. All four were shaped by the 1989 revolutions.

今天，這四個人是他們各自國家的領(lǐng)袖。默克爾、普京和歐爾班領(lǐng)導(dǎo)他們國家的時間加起來達到37年，而卡欽斯基是波蘭未經(jīng)選舉但手握大權(quán)的幕后人物。塑造這4個人的正是1989年發(fā)生的革命。

Putin had witnessed the first successful nationalist uprising against Soviet rule. Deserted by Moscow, he had gone out into the Dresden street alone — “in spirit, bare-chested”, adds Timothy Garton Ash, author of the book We The People, on the 1989 revolutions — and told the protesters, in German, that anyone entering the mansion would be shot. The crowd duly backed off. But the East German agents Putin worked with had their lives ruined, the country he liked so much vanished, and the Putin family ended up driving back to Leningrad with little more than a 20-year-old German washing machine. The lesson he drew from the 1989 revolution was: never again. Putin concluded that if Moscow hadn’t been silent and weak, it could have crushed the mob. Garton Ash told me: “Everything Putin has been is about trying to ensure the revolution does not happen in Moscow. He is the counter-revolution.”

普京目擊了第一次成功的反抗蘇聯(lián)統(tǒng)治的民族主義起義。在被莫斯科拋棄的情況下，他獨自走出德累斯頓克格勃大樓的大門。有關(guān)1989年革命的著作《我們?nèi)嗣瘛?We The People)的作者蒂莫西•加頓-阿什(Timothy Garton Ash)補充說，這時候的普京“情緒激昂，裸露著胸膛”。他用德語告訴抗議者，任何人如果膽敢進入克格勃大樓都會被射殺。結(jié)果人群知趣地退去。但與普京共事的東德特工的生活被毀了，他情有獨鐘的國家消失了。最后，普京一家駕車回到列寧格勒，車上最貴重的財物只是一臺用了20年的德國洗衣機。他從1989年的革命汲取的教訓(xùn)是：絕不能讓這一幕重演。普京得出了一個結(jié)論：如果當(dāng)時莫斯科沒有保持沉默，表現(xiàn)出軟弱，就能夠制伏那些暴民。加頓-阿什告訴我：“自那以來普京一切的一切都是為了確保莫斯科不會爆發(fā)革命。他是革命的克星。”

In 1989, Merkel lived in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood. Today, the “Prenzlberg” is totally gentrified, but when I moved there in 1990 some of the rundown apartment buildings still had bullet holes from the second world war, telephones were rare and the air reeked of black coal. Prenzlauer Berg had attracted East Germany’s bohemians, and, in 1989, most of them dreamt of a new, better system than West German democracy. Merkel didn’t, says Garton Ash. She simply wanted to do West German centrist politics, but better. The veterans of 1989 who went on to capture power were the realists.

1989年，默克爾住在東柏林的普倫茨勞貝格區(qū)(Prenzlauer Berg)。今天，這里已經(jīng)完全被改造為高檔地段，但在1990年我遷居到這里的時候，我依然能在一些破舊的公寓樓看到二戰(zhàn)時期留下的子彈孔，電話非常少見，空氣中彌漫著煤炭的味道。當(dāng)年普倫茨勞貝格吸引了東德一些放蕩不羈的人，在1989年，其中大多數(shù)人夢想著一種比西德民主更好的新型體制。加頓-阿什說，默克爾并不這么想。她只想投入西德的中間派政治，但希望自己做得更好。經(jīng)歷了1989年革命、后來掌握了權(quán)力的老將都是現(xiàn)實主義者。

For Merkel, the end of East Germany was unambiguously positive. She emerged from the sauna and was free. No longer would she have to run communist “agitation and propaganda” at her workplace, East Berlin’s Institute for Physical Chemistry. She also appreciated the DM100 in “welcome money” that West Germany handed out to East Germans. Later, she instinctively wanted to pass on this experience of welcome to future freedom-seekers. Last year’s opening of German borders to one million refugees has “a very strong ’89 connection,” says Garton Ash.

對默克爾來說，東德的終結(jié)無疑是件好事。那天晚上從桑拿房出來后，她就已經(jīng)是一個自由人。她再也不用在工作單位——東柏林物理化學(xué)研究所——進行共產(chǎn)主義“宣傳和動員”。西德發(fā)放給每個東德人的100德國馬克的“歡迎費”也讓她感激。后來，她本能地想把這種受到歡迎的體驗傳遞給未來那些尋求自由的人。加頓-阿什表示，去年默克爾決定向100萬難民開放德國邊境“與89年有非常強的聯(lián)系”。

Today, as Merkel sits in the chancellery, 5km from her old flat, she remains marked in another way by 1989. She feels that just as East Germany collapsed in a night, so could the European Union and all that goes with it. Stopping that from happening is her unspectacular political mission.

今天，默克爾身處離她的舊公寓5公里遠的總理官邸，1989年還以另一種方式給她留下了印記。她認為，就像東德可以在一夜間崩塌一樣，歐盟(EU)及其帶來的一切也是如此。阻止這一事態(tài)的發(fā)生是她的不引人注目的政治使命。

Poland had no single revolutionary night in 1989. Rather, Solidarity and the ruling communists negotiated a transition. It had to be that way, as there were still Soviet troops in Poland then, but Kaczynski, the editor of Solidarity’s weekly magazine, was left frustrated. His father, a veteran of Warsaw’s 1944 uprising against the Nazis, had raised his twin sons on tales of heroic resistance to foreign rule. In 1989, the Kaczynski twins “felt marginalised, left out by people in Warsaw”, says Garton Ash.

波蘭在1989年并未經(jīng)歷標志性的革命之夜。相反，團結(jié)工會和執(zhí)政的共產(chǎn)黨談判達成了過渡事宜。當(dāng)時只能如此，因為波蘭境內(nèi)仍駐扎著蘇聯(lián)軍隊，但團結(jié)工會的周刊編輯卡欽斯基對此很失望。他的父親曾參與1944年華沙反抗納粹起義，這名老兵用英勇抵抗外國統(tǒng)治的故事來教導(dǎo)雙胞胎兒子。加頓-阿什表示，卡欽斯基兩兄弟在1989年“感到被排擠，被華沙人民拋在一邊”。

Today, Kaczynski aims to finish 1989’s unfinished revolution. That means rooting out the “communists”, whom he sees in every ministry, company and media outlet, and freeing Poland from foreign oppression — which, to him, now means Merkel’s Germany, Putin’s Russia, the EU, gay marriage and refugees. With hindsight, the 1989 revolutions were probably more nationalist than liberal.

如今，卡欽斯基的目標是完成1989年未竟的革命。這意味著鏟除“共黨分子”(在他眼里，每個政府部門、每家公司和媒體都顯然存在這些人)，并將波蘭從外國壓迫中解放出來;在他眼里，外國壓迫現(xiàn)在意味著默克爾主政的德國、普京主政的俄羅斯、歐盟、同性戀婚姻和難民。事后來看，1989年的革命很可能在更大程度上是民族主義，而不是自由主義的。

Since 1989, Orbán has morphed from a liberal into an authoritarian but has always remained a nationalist. He seems to have figured out that in Hungary nationalist votes outnumber liberal ones. He may also feel that as a hero of his country’s revolution, he has a right to rule — a sentiment once common among Africa’s liberators-turned-dictators. For central and eastern European leaders, 1989 was only yesterday.

自1989年以后，歐爾班從一個自由派人士演變成了威權(quán)者，但一直是一名民族主義者。他似乎已經(jīng)想明白，在匈牙利，民族主義者的票數(shù)超過自由派人士。他可能還覺得，身為本國革命的一個英雄，他有權(quán)去統(tǒng)治——這種觀點在非洲的“解放者轉(zhuǎn)獨裁者”當(dāng)中一度十分常見。對于中、東歐領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人來說，1989年就在昨天。