International solidarity of Soviet Block has been air-brushed from history.

I came across the article below in the CPI magazine Socialist Voice, which can be downloaded from the party’s web site.*  As well as being a blast from the past, it centers on an award given by the Nicaraguan government to Eric Honecker’s widow, Margot Honecker, a former Minister for Education of the GDR. It reminded me of the support that Cuba, the GDR and other Warsaw pack nations gave to many of the worlds Liberation Movement’s (LM's). Something that is often over looked these days having been air-brushed from history; and without which it is doubtful whether organizations like SWAPO, ANC, Sandinista’s and many other national liberation movements would ever have liberated their countries from neo colonial tyranny.

The support the GDR gave to the LM's was not only material and educational, as important as these were when it came to training a cadre of professionals and military personnel who could slot into senior positions once power was attained. There support also gave an immense boost to moral, as the LM’s cadres new that their struggle had the support of important nations like the USSR and GDR. 

Of course there was a downside, the Warsaw pact countries were top down and Stalinist to the core, some of which undoubtedly rubbed off on members of the LM leadership cadres who were sent there for training, never the less as far as the baulk of the membership of these organizations were concerned, it demonstrated real solidarity of the type they were denied by the USA and UK.

MH.

The third weekend in July was the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. On 19 July 1979 the hated dictator and US hireling Somoza was overthrown. As part of this year’s festivities, the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, honoured the leader of one of the few European countries to stand side by side with the Sandinista Revolution during the 1980s. This was the late Erich Honecker; the country, the German Democratic Republic.

To the fury of the right-wing press in Germany, Honecker’s widow, Margot Honecker, a former Minister for Education of the GDR, travelled from Chile, where she now lives, to receive the Rubén Darío award.

This event was not unique. In 2005, at the celebrations for the fifteenth anniversary of Namibian independence, Margot Honecker sat in the front row of honoured guests.

The GDR was instrumental in building the Carlos Marx Hospital in Managua in the 1980s and was deeply involved in assisting the revolutionary government in Nicaragua in its literacy campaign.

During SWAPO’s war of independence in Namibia, wounded guerillas were cared for in the GDR, as were hundreds of Namibian children.

While the powers that be in the “West” detest the GDR and all it stood for, liberation movements in the south held and still hold a deep affection for that country and for the way in which it performed huge acts of solidarity with those fighting imperialism.

It is no coincidence that Margot Honecker now lives in Chile. After Pinochet’s fascist coup, the GDR welcomed thousands of Chilean refugees as well as giving support to the underground movement.

After the abolition of the GDR, Margot and Erich Honecker were welcomed to Chile, where their daughter now lives with her Chilean husband, himself a former refugee in the GDR.

What remains a curiosity is that so many of the left in Ireland fail to see the positive role played by such countries as the GDR. Indeed, if you offer any kind of appreciation of the GDR you will be foolishly slandered as a “Stalinist”—and, ironically, in the most dogmatic fashion.

* http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/