In the hope of a better country

In the hope of a better country. Sebastian Gerhardt and Erhard Weinholz talking about the initiative for a United Left (VL) * [This article published in July 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozonline.de/2020/07/in-der-hoffnung-auf-ein-besseres-land/.] 1. the target Erhard Weinholz: In the following we want to talk about something that is closely connected with our own lives, about the work of the VL. In other words, a citizens' movement from the autumn of 1989, a group that almost no one knows today and which in many respects had a different orientation than earlier socialist organizations in this country. A new approach, therefore, which - I don't want to overestimate it - has also had a certain impact on others. But we are not doing this here to posthumously award the Great Revolutionary Merit Medal to the VL. The question is whether and how the observation of this VL story can become productive for others, and we want to offer material for this. Sebastian Gerhardt: And we would like to refer to the current context: Some of our comrades-in-arms from back then have spoken up over the past year, also with new positions: Thomas Klein in telegraph no. 135/136, Bernd Gehrke in SoZ no. 1/2020. Perhaps this increased interest is no coincidence... Erhard: ...because now important protagonists can just give information. First we want to give you some ideas about the character of this VL, then we'll look at how the VL behaved in two important phases in 1989/90, in order to make the difficult and problematic aspects of its work clear, and finally we'll summarize it. The basic aim of this TL was to achieve a liberal, democratic, grassroots socialism, and that here in the GDR. And this is exactly what we wanted, but even with such an attitude it was not so easy to discover this TL. How did that go for you? Sebastian: At that time I was in the army in Dabel near Sternberg in Mecklenburg, Unterfeldwebel, reconnaissance group leader. In the summer of '89 I was a candidate for the SED. That was not a matter of course in my family. At that time I said: If you can no longer join the party in this country that refers to Marx, then it's over anyway. In Sternberg I knew the pastor and then in October I went to church meetings - in uniform where the new groups were introduced. There was talk of socialism, at the Democratic Awakening, for example, and of grassroots democracy. But the fact that socialism means that it is also quite clearly against capitalism was not so clear. Such an "enemy image" was considered by many as SED propaganda. That a capitalist restoration was possible was something only the VL talked about, although you could already see in Hungary in the summer: The danger was real. About the VL I had heard something on DT 64 (youth program of the GDR-Radio, E.W.).