First Published: Frontline, Vol. 7, No. 9, November 13, 1989.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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“We want socialism, but a different one,” 6,000 students at East Berlin’s Humboldt University told the official Free German Youth (FDJ) university leadership at a meeting to discuss forming an independent Student Council.
Driven by a massive outpouring of such sentiments from the grassroots, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is joining the ranks of East European countries taking the path of socialist renewal. In a matter of weeks, the GDR has moved decisively along trails blazed over a longer span by the Soviet Union, Hungary and Poland. And, if the GDR takes that road, can Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria be far behind?
Although influenced by the dramatic changes taking place in other socialist countries, developments in the GDR are rooted in that country’s own realities. The GDR has a developed economy and an educated, sophisticated working class, and democratization is inevitable. The question is, who will lead the process – the array of burgeoning opposition groups, or the governing Socialist Unity Party (SED)?
Unlike the Polish and Hungarian communists, the East German party has not expressed a willingness to reconsider the constitutional provisions which make the SED’s “leading role“ a matter of law. Yet each time the SED meets one popular demand, the opposition starts raising others already incorporated in Hungary or Poland.
After the SED met the opposition demand October 18 for the resignation of General Secretary Erich Honecker and the Politburo members in charge of propaganda and the economy, the scale of mass mobilizations continued to escalate. On October 20, 50,000 attended a candlelight vigil in Dresden. The next day 30-50,000 demonstrated in Plauen. The following day 150,000 marched in Leipzig after Lutheran services.
The marches in Leipzig have become a weekly Monday night ritual serving as the barometer of the opposition’s strength. On October 30 the Leipzig march swelled to 300,000, with 80,000 out in the much smaller city of Schwerin. A rally for freedom of speech and assembly called by theater workers from all over the GDR after the SED had tried to organize it, drew up to a million into East Berlin’s square November 4.
Slogans at these rallies range from “Democracy now!” to “We are the people!” Opposition demands explicitly express support for socialism, not opposition to it, and often invoke the name of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Prominent demands include more response to the will of the masses, a freer press, eased travel restrictions, more and cheaper consumer goods, removal of unpopular officials; independent unions and recognition of the opposition.
Even before Egon Krenz replaced Honecker as SED leader, high SED officials moved to open dialogue with church figures, artists, students, scientists and workers. A series of dialogues initiated by the mayor and the SED regional leader of Dresden have drawn up to 100,000 participants. Town hall meetings between officials and huge crowds have taken place in at least 10 cities, with the East Berlin meeting lasting five hours and the one in Leipzig half again as long. The leader of the East Berlin SED met with two top leaders of the principal opposition group, New Forum, which the government has not officially recognized even though it claims to have 25,000 signatures of support.
Freedom to travel has been one of the most sought after rights for East Germans. A limited travel law was revoked after over 120,000 East Germans used vacations as stepping stones to the West this year. The mass exodus started again as the SED lifted the travel ban November 1. The Politburo has proposed a new law on travel which would allow passports and visas to any other country, with family members no longer required to stay behind. But Krenz noted that economic factors like the lack of hard currency will still limit travel in practice. He proposed a sweeping amnesty for all who have fled the country already or have been imprisoned for attempting to.
A freer press is on the way, too. A once banned Soviet publication is back on the stands. The East German press used to be one of the most stilted and predictable of any socialist country. What was once opaque has now become a looking glass with no-holds-barred debates about how to solve the GDR’s problems by improving socialism. The lens of “Current Camera” news follows the opposition demonstrations and controversial town hall meetings so thoroughly that East Germans now prefer it to West German TV. Krenz’s unrehearsed visit to a tool and die factory seething with tough questions made the TV news, warts and all. Gone is unrepentant Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler, who for nearly 30 years intoned the party line as the GDR’s most prominent TV commentator.
Krenz has promised to investigate police brutality against demonstrators last month while he was still in charge of state security police. The chief of police in East Berlin conceded that officers had used “excess and transgressions” against demonstrators which “could have been avoided.” Police commanders apologized to verifiable victims of brutality and promised to compensate 150 of them. Police have exercised restraint and have not even been present at most recent peaceful demonstrations. In the future, police are instructed not to act “unless there is violence or threat of violence.” In return, New Forum members locked arms around the lightly guarded state security building when marchers at the giant Leipzig march taunted its occupants.
The once vibrant East German economy has stalled because of all the skilled workers who have fled West to sell their skills to a higher bidder because they were cynical of real change at home. The FDJ newspaper “Youth World” estimated the GDR loses 1.2% of its produced national income for every 100,000 who leave. The government wants to stanch the flow of skilled labor out of the GDR and win back those who have left. As inducement, it has promised to import more high-quality consumer goods. GDR products are now sold in Western countries below cost while the government fails to meet domestic demand for the same products. “Youth World” and the central union newspaper “Tribune” now criticize government subsidy and price control policies, the national debt, the crippling effects of bureaucracy, and violations of the socialist principle of paying each according to their work.
Not all opposition demands are being met, however. The demand for legalization of New Forum has resulted in a standoff. The national lawyers union statement calling for multiple-candidate elections, with public control of the vote count, is a direct challenge to Krenz – he was in charge of state security during local elections last May which were widely regarded as rigged. But other forms of political pluralism are appearing.
New opposition parties have formed, and leaders of two of the SED’s small allied parties have been replaced for their lack of independence. Already, when Krenz was elected President of the People’s Chamber, the allied parties had cast the first 26 no votes on any substantial issue – along with 26 abstentions – in the history of that erstwhile rubber stamp parliament.
Krenz and the rest of his SED team still face a grave crisis of confidence. To correct this, five prominent Politburo members were ousted November 3. An SED Central Committee meeting November 9 is expected to wheel many of the oldest hard-liners offstage and leave Krenz and his allies in a clear majority. Several regional SED leaders and the mayor of Leipzig have resigned, and the entire cabinet is slated to quit November 8. Already, Margot Honecker, wife of the former leader, was shown the door as minister of education ultimately responsible for the ideological mistraining which is now backfiring against the party.
Also out is a Politburo member who headed the 8,6 million member Free German Labor Federation for the past 14 years. Union branches in East Berlin, Dresden and Erfurt “energetically” protested until a special board meeting was convened for him to resign. The official unions might be seeing some competition, too. Under the demand for rights on hiring and working conditions and a “social market economy,“ several hundred workers at an electronics factory outside the capital formed the first opposition union in the GDR.
The SED has tried to maneuver to get out ahead of the opposition where it can on broader issues. Krenz opened a conversation with the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany, which had been in a state of ideological war with the GDR for two months over the mass exodus. Krenz just paid visits to Gorbachev and the Solidarity government in Poland to, as he put it, learn from their experiences. This symbolic gesture stands in stark contrast to the previous GDR attitude toward perestroika as “revisionism.” Once home again, Krenz announced a program of revolutionary political and economic change in the constitution, administration and education system for the Central Committee meeting that would mark a historic turning point for the GDR.