When I left the clean, modern hub
of Berlin’s hauptbahnhof, its main
railway station, in search of a cheap night’s accommodation a couple of years
ago, a small sign to one side of an ordinary length of pavement noted the demarcation
between old borders. I was crossing from what was West Berlin, part of the
Federal Republic of Germany, for East Berlin and the communist-ruled German
Democratic Republic; two cities once divided by the Berlin Wall. Bizarrely, I
felt a shot of excitement pass through me as I crossed into former Soviet-controlled
territory.
A moody Brandenberg Gate, on the border between East and West Berlin
Germany has changed a lot since
its reunification in the early 1990s, when East Germany unified with the
Federal Republic. The citizens of other countries that bear the term democratic or people’s in their official national titles aren’t so lucky. The term
people’s republic was used by several
(mostly communist) nations.
North Korea, for example, likes
to be known as the DPRK – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; the
liberal democracy of South Korea is officially the Republic of Korea. The
centrally-controlled DPRK is in no way democratic, following an ideology of Juche, a strict interpretation of
communism (though the very word communism
has been expunged from official use). Juche
roughly translates as self-reliance, though the DPRK gets plenty of help from
China, its northern neighbour. Everything is owned and controlled by the state.
As a result, thousands of its citizens attempt to flee every year – just as
thousands tried to flee East Germany. The United Nations estimates 16 million
(out of a population of 24 million) require food aid annually.
China, the People’s Republic of
China, is itself a one-party communist state, claiming to fulfill the will of
its 1.4 billion people, while keeping a tight control over them. The internet
is strictly censored; search terms including Tiananmen Square unsearchable.
The term people’s republic is now falling out of favour, as can be
demonstrated from the example of Libya. Until the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi
in 2011, a little before I began my circumnavigation of Africa, Libya was officially
called the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. While meaning ‘state of
the masses’: a direct democracy without political parties governed through
local ‘councils’ – Gaddafi claiming Libya was the only true democracy on the
planet – in reality it meant Gaddafi made every decision going. It’s therefore
little surprise then that Libya – as it is again – has struggled with the
massive power vacuum left in becoming a truer democracy.