This blog post was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

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Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

Part of UK in Ukraine

17th September 2010

Can Ukraine learn from the Stasi?

Want to see how a Berlin schoolgirl volunteered to work with the East German State Security Ministry (Stasi)?

How Dynamo Dresden striker Peter Kotte was relegated to the 7th Division in 1980 on suspicion of wanting to flee to the West? Or how a West Berlin member of parliament tricked a woman engineer from Leipzig into trying to cross the border in the boot of a car so she could be arrested red-handed? A terrific new exhibition at the Ukrainian House (Український дім) in Kyiv called “The Dissenter is the Enemy” (“Feind ist, wer anders denkt“) sets out the history of the Stasi in all its spine-chilling detail.

Introducing the exhibition the German Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic, Marian Birthler, likens erosion of freedoms to an illness. When you’re healthy for a long time, she says, you don’t notice the warning signs. That makes it important, she says, to watch out for those warning signs; and for countries which want to be free to be constantly vigilant.

On a day which, by chance, is the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of the Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze, this seems an excellent message for any country, including Ukraine. Seeing how Germany today is dealing with the legacy of the Stasi is also a reminder of how different societies balance the need for security with the need for freedom of speech, a subject on which I blogged last December (“I can burn your face“). I recommend the exhibition, which is running until 28 September.

About Leigh Turner

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of…

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of the UN and other organisations; stories here will reflect that.

About me: I arrived in Vienna in August 2016 for my second posting in this wonderful city, having first served here in the mid-1980s. My previous job was as HM Consul-General and Director-General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and South Caucasus based in Istanbul.

Further back: I grew up in Nigeria, Exeter, Lesotho, Swaziland and Manchester before attending Cambridge University 1976-79. I worked in several government departments before joining the Foreign Office in 1983.

Keen to go to Africa and South America, I’ve had postings in Vienna (twice), Moscow, Bonn, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul, plus jobs in London ranging from the EU Budget to the British Overseas Territories.

2002-6 I was lucky enough to spend four years in Berlin running the house, looking after the children (born 1992 and 1994) and doing some writing and journalism.

To return to Vienna as ambassador is a privilege and a pleasure. I hope this blog reflects that.

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