Fall of the Berlin Wall: Seeking Paradise, Finding Europe

The following article originally appeared in the Fall 2009 Open Society News.

Croatian author and journalist Slavenka Drakulic reflects on how communism's collapse has brought more choices for toothpaste as well as a slower, more difficult change in consciousness.

When I take a look at my own bathroom, although Croatia is not yet a member of the EU, I feel that we belong to Europe. That is, we are almost there as I can see from the detergent boxes of Ariel and Omo, of Persil and Woolite. And just as Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk feels about his bathroom, I too am very hopeful, because I am addressed in my local language on their boxes. I marvel at the fact that Croatia and my language are recognized on the global market, at least in instructions for use of a detergent. After all, does the market not come before politics? Some even say that it decides politics.

Actually, I enjoy the look of my bathroom today because I am old enough to remember the bathroom in my parent's apartment in the early 1950s, when there was only "Plavi radion" washing powder. Or even an earlier bathroom with no washing powder whatsoever, only a bar of "Jelen" soap. There was so little of cosmetics or even hygienic products in my childhood that the brand name of the only existing toothpaste, which came in two flavors, strawberry and mint, was simply-toothpaste. That is, the product itself was the brand, something unimaginable today. Since I am a woman, my bathroom stores more than detergent; it contains all sorts of creams and shower gels, oils and hair products that I waited a long time to be able to buy in shops in Zagreb, instead of in Graz or Trieste or some other Western city.

However, what I am nowadays especially glad to have is my stack of fine toilet paper. Rolls and rolls of it, I still squirrel them away as if they are going to disappear from the supermarket shelf at any moment, as they used to do before. Old habits die hard! Does anybody in Eastern Europe today remember that toilet paper was a luxury not so long ago? I guess my generation is the last one to remember, and when we are gone it will be entirely forgotten. People born after, say 1985, will ask in bewilderment: There was no toilet paper? But that is simply impossible! How could you live without it?

Well, indeed, how could we?

The role of toilet paper in the downfall of communism is quite a particular one. I do not mean fine toilet paper like the kind I now have in my bathroom, what I mean is just any toilet paper, any at all. The lack of this product became for me a symbol for the changes that our communist society went through during the last two decades-a clear indication that communism, as a political and economic system, did not function. A system that could not recognize and fulfill the basic needs of people, ranging from toilet paper all the way to human rights, was bound to collapse. And though, in retrospect, that was obvious, nobody dared to expect it would happen so soon.

If a bathroom is a metaphor, then we can safely assume our dream was to have one like Nicolai Ceausescu's daughter Zoe had in Bucharest, not necessarily with golden taps or pink toilet seats, but just with an abundance of warm water and toilet paper. Because in former times, even a normal bathroom was a luxury, reserved only for the members of the nomenklatura.

But who is this "we," which-every time I use it-sounds like some mythical entity, some nonexistent collective body, a ghost? Indeed, this pronoun indicating the plural, a collective, is a key to understanding many things connected with former communist countries and people's behavior there, as well as our dreams and expectations.

No, it is not a ghost. To me, growing up in Yugoslavia, a so-called communist (or socialist) country, one which was not as miserable as the countries in the Soviet bloc (but which became much more miserable later on when Yugoslavia was falling apart in a bloody war while all the others were escaping communism), this "we" is neither a mere figure of speech nor an abstraction. It is a key word. It is the summary of my experience during my former life. I am using it on purpose, just like comrade Tito, comrade Ceausescu, or any other important comrade did, when addressing the people-although for a completely different reason. To me it reveals the collective spirit we grew up in, when citizens were treated like one single body. At school and at work, in public life and in politics, people did not exist in any other grammatical form. Every exposure of an "I" was punished because, it goes without saying, individualism starts with opposing collectivism.

Therefore, I am using this pronoun to indicate our common denominator, the very similar experience people had in the past, while living under communism. The consequences of the political use of this form of grammar were devastating, and still are. We still see ourselves as a group, as a nation, sometimes even as a tribe. Not yet as individuals. It is hard to start to act as "I" because with our background it is hard to believe that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. To hide behind "we" is still safer. Besides, to be an individual being means to be individually responsible and that also requires learning. That is, time.

It is not only our communist past that still keeps us prisoners of a collective pronoun, but also our dream to get out of that prison. We nurtured a collective dream of escaping from our everyday living. We were dreaming about a different normality, about different bathrooms.

But the problem is that we expected nothing less than paradise. Compared with what we had, West Europeans had such an abundance that it seemed to us like one.

And so, the big confusion occurred: the West European normality that seemed so beautiful, but so impossible to get, was mistaken for paradise itself, even if we called it simply Europe. Our belief in a consumer's paradise easily replaced the official communist faith.

The question is, of course, what did we get instead of the normality that we confused with paradise?

The normality we got after the collapse of communism was something rather different than what we had expected. The change from a totalitarian political system into a democratic one, from a planned economy into (wild) capitalism, did not automatically create a better life for all.

But what hurts the most is the enormous gap between a few rich and the majority poor. It is easy to forget that egalitarianism was perhaps the most appealing part of the communist religion.

Soon, not only our old dreams collapsed, but most of the new promises failed us as well. With the old system, the old social welfare net, as feeble as it was, disappeared, too. There were no workers' unions to protect our rights, no welfare state, no good and decent laws that are respected, no social network that would help-and no clear awareness about the need for it all, or not yet.

Confronted with such immense changes, deceived and disappointed in their new circumstances, many started to feel like victims. Some political leaders quickly identified their anxiety and fear as a "crisis of national identity." Fear usually means closing up, defending what you have, or think you have, what you have not yet lost.

Frustrated and bitter, lonely and afraid, people took refuge in the lap of the Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim or any other religious haven. And they went for the populist rhetoric of nationalist leaders who did not have much to offer, but at least offered someone or something to blame: globalization, hedonism, decadence, capitalism, corruption, democracy, old communists, new oligarchs, the financial collapse of the West, neighbors, Gypsies . . . it didn't really matter who or what.

Was normality, as we imagined and desired it, simply a mistake? Yes and no. We are learning the hard way that this normality-that is, comfortable life-doesn't come automatically and, above all, it doesn't come cheap.

Now we are experiencing that normality has another dimension, a tedious, small-scale struggle for each of us. Far from golden taps and pink toilet seats, the color of normality is gray. This is bad news. And there is no end to the struggle, be it for Zoe's bathroom, for justice, for more freedom-or against corruption, manipulation, or fear. The good news, however, is that each of us individually can do it, can struggle and change. Or, at least, one must try. None of us should blame anybody else any longer.