In Times of Crisis: Act!

It has been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are ‘celebrating’ this anniversary at a time when global capitalism and liberal democracy, the so-called winners of the Cold War struggle between East and West, find themselves in one of the deepest economic and political crises since the Wall Street crash in 1929 and the global turmoil that followed. Perhaps more significantly, however, this is the first crisis that Eastern Europeans are experiencing since their so-called ‘transition’ from a state socialist to a capitalist ideology. What should we make of this transition since 1989? Rather than engaging in a traditional analysis of the winners and losers of this transition, I am interested in what today’s capitalist crisis has perhaps in common with the crisis of state socialism in 1989. I will explore this question by engaging with the German film Good Bye Lenin! .