Boston Review Magazine Nov-Dec 2014 Back Issue

Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Paul Hockenos was a student in West Berlin on that remarkable day.

As the year came to a close, he became acquainted with a group of young, anarchist East Berliners led by Silvio Meier. Seeking freedom after years of state repression, they seized the opportunity to make real their own vision of what East Germany could be--with politics that embraced neither communism nor capitalism.

That vision focused on democratic deliberation and genuinely collective ownership. They pushed to expose the socialist state's crimes, mobilized activists, ran an alternative press, and created cultural spaces out of abandoned housing so that a new society could be born.

Their story, told here for the first time in English, is a moving testament to political commitments built from the ground up and animated by a generous, humane sense of democratic possibilities.

Elsewhere in the Nov/Dec issue, Henry Farrell documents Ireland's Cold War over Catholicism. Gianpaolo Baiocchi tracks the progress of Brazil's Workers' Party as well as its recent failures. Mike Konczal explores two public spheres in the United States that have been transformed by profit motives and privatization--teaching and criminal justice. And Vivian Gornick offers provocative commentary on the decayed state of feminism.