First Published: Frontline, Vol. 7, No. 8, October 30, 1989.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The scenario at first seemed only too familiar. Economic reforms had been proceeding under socialism for years with no corresponding political openings. Mass demonstrations for democracy galvanized popular aspirations. Demonstrators invoked the name of visiting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Communist authorities used violence and arrests to break up spontaneous gatherings. Leaders made hard-line statements to denounce outsiders and hooligans for the disruptions.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was celebrating its survival against all odds for 40 years October 7 – within a week of the 40th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. A high-ranking Chinese delegation arrived in East Berlin for the GDR anniversary while the East German media gushed with praise for the Chinese government, drawing the ominous parallel.
But there the resemblance ends between recent events in the GDR and last June’s brutal repression of China’s democracy movement. History was not about to repeat itself as tragedy. In the GDR no one was killed. Leaders of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) were soon making conciliatory proposals for reforms, dialogue and openness. More marches and rallies were allowed to proceed peacefully. Almost all arrested demonstrators were quickly released. Popular demands were heeded for the resignation of SED General Secretary Erich Honecker.
Perched precariously on top of the East-West European fault line until shaken to its foundation by current upheavals, the SED has up to now resisted the kind of changes taking place in other socialist countries. But the earth under the SED finally shifted under the combined pressure of its socialist neighbors and the East German people themselves. During his official visit October 6, Gorbachev read the SED the riot act: “We must react to times; otherwise, life will punish us.”
The winds of socialist renewal roaring out of the East are growing hard to resist. National elections in the Soviet Union and Poland earlier this year led to the transfer of power to bodies that allow for freer expression and more open decision-making. This month the ruling communist party in Hungary transformed itself into a new kind of socialist party that hopes to earn its leading role in society rather than impose it. The increasingly outspoken press from those countries is snapped up immediately in the GDR, except for a few of the most controversial which have been banned. These have been a breath of fresh air in the GDR where the tightly controlled media trotted out ritual denunciations, tired platitudes and production statistics in place of addressing the range of issues being raised by the grassroots movement.
The top SED leadership found increasingly isolated after staging local elections – widely perceived as rigged – in May, just before the balloting in Poland which catapulted Solidarity toward power. The reaction of many East Germans was to take advantage of Hungary’s border opening to Austria to stay abroad when their summer vacation ended in hopes of going West. That led to embassy standoffs in Budapestm Prague and Warsaw that the official GDR media at first would not acknowledge. When they were mentioned, it was reported one-sidedly as if it were it really all just a plot by West German pied pipers who lured GDR workers against their better interests.
But East Germans weren’t fooled because they knew about the fall migration to the West from West German TV. When a train full of GDR ex-patriots rolled through Dresden, a crowd gathered to express support – and perhaps flee themselves – but police dispersed them with water cannon. Aware that Gorbachev was coming for the 40th anniversary, 12,000 spontaneously massed in Leipzig to appeal to the Soviet leader to exert his influence in favor of reform.
After Honecker pointedly repeated his hard line at the GDR anniversary event, 25,000 more rallied in six major cities in response. Police attacked them with water cannon and truncheons, arresting hundreds. This police violence polarized masses of young people into motion – but not to the West. One hundred thousand East Germans participated in a single rally in the city of Leipzig, twice the total of people who had fled West during the entire exodus, though that flight had been hyped every day for over two months in the U.S. and West German media. Just as chilling to the top party leadership was their message: “Unlike those who fled we’re staying here (and we want to put ’democratic’ back in the German Democratic Republic!)”
Top SED leaders had reason to pause because about 5% of the opposition are the younger rank and file of the party. Middle leadership of the SED, including key local and regional figures, supported thorough reforms in the voting system that the Politburo opposed. Four small parties allied with the SED have begun openly speaking out against the government. The writers/ artists union put out a declaration which called for, among other demands, a new voting system. The top opposition leadership obtained 10,000 signatures on its own declaration demanding democratic rights under socialism – not capitalism or German reunification.
The politics of the opposition encompasses a wide range, but is anchored in the space between Western social democracy and the hard line of the SED leadership. Their objective seems the extension of rights under socialism rather than a drift to neutralist capitalism. Numerous tiny opposition groups have existed under the protective wing of the Protestant churches, but now many more have sprung up. One of the newest and most well-known, New Forum, is composed of left-wing intellectuals and ex-SED members.
The Western press, invited to the 40th anniversary celebration, instead cited opposition demonstrations to embarrass the GDR government. The opposition is no doubt backed by the Bush administration and the conservative government of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) for their own reasons. They would love to see the GDR embrace both Western-style democracy and capitalism because that would take away the GDR’s very reason to exist.
Last month SED head theoretician Otto Reinhold noted how the FRG was placing the GDR in an impossible predicament of having to reform in the direction of capitalism, based on the FRG scheme of “illusory calls for a united Germany.” He asked, “What legitimacy could a capitalist East Germany have next to a capitalist West Germany?” Reinhold answered the difference between the GDR and Poland or Hungary was that the GDR had no national identity to fall back on, only its role as “anti-fascist socialist alternative” to the FRG.
Up until after the Russian Revolution, Marxists had considered the German working class the necessary ingredient in making a worldwide socialist system. The GDR is the most advanced capitalist country to become socialist. It performed an economic miracle from the ashes of World War II to attain the highest standard of living in the socialist world, supplying the Soviets with much of their high tech. The problem has been that the GDR is only one-fourth of a nation, the Soviet occupation zone left over when the U.S., British and French zones were joined into the FRG.
Today the FRG is a capitalist power-house and host to a quarter million forward-based U.S. troops with nuclear arsenals. The GDR serves as front line in the defense of the socialist camp, making its ability to stabilize and defuse tensions all the more important in the framework of new thinking.
Few countries in the world can compete with the West German standard of living, and the GDR is no exception. The difference is that in the socialist East, education and training are a right won by the working class and are heavily subsidized, which means lower week-to-week wages Once young East Germans have received a free education, they can earn more money in the capitalist West, where fewer FRG residents have access to that training.
The FRG constitution calls for a united German state, and thus stands in the way of any true confederation between the two sides. That means GDR citizens are already recognized by the FRG as their own citizens. As soon as East Germans land in the West they are issued FRG passports and given preference over others for increasingly scarce jobs, housing and services. That basically constitutes a provocation to the GDR as Bonn tries to create a brain drain of the GDR and reap the propaganda bonanza.
The GDR’s response in 1961 to this provocation was the Berlin Wall. More recently, East Germans demanded and got permission to travel more abroad, particularly in the socialist countries. A Fraction – 50,000 out of several hundred allowed into Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia – of well educated yuppies used their travel rights as a stepping stone into the FRG this fall. But 37% of those emigres claimed they would have stayed behind if the GDR had made real political reforms.
The GDR government introduced measures like quality control and self-accounting in state-owned plants before the Soviet Union did. That is why Honecker boasted he had no need for economic perestroika in the GDR. But within days of Honecker’s 40th anniversary speech, opposition inside and outside the SED forced the Politburo to backpedal. The party’s head hard-liner, chief ideologist Kurt Hager, conceded October 10 that news media policy should be revamped and the GDR’s people drawn into the decision-making process. A Politburo statement a few days later admitted the need to open up discussion of economic efficiency, consumer goods, democratic cooperation, the environment, freer news media and foreign travel. On October 14 the party newspaper, Neues Deutschland (New Germany), broke 180 degrees with tradition to publish 22 outspoken letters and lengthy articles by workers blasting visiting party officials about pay scales, work conditions and travel restrictions. The mayor of Dresden has met with a citizens committee of everyone from the SED to the church to discuss local problems openly.
It is too early to tell the significance of the replacement of the ailing Honecker, who had been viewed as a reformer himself after he took over as general secretary in 1971. The new general secretary, Egon Krenz, has been chief of internal security responsible for repressing the opposition and then showing restraint. The Politburo members responsible for the economy and propaganda were also removed. As yet no public differences have emerged in the Politburo to reflect the tendencies among the SED middle ranks or base membership. But if the party does not take the lead in democratic reforms, the opposition – and history – will leave them behind.