Socialist Reformers and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic

Dietrich Orlow

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137574152
• eBook ISBN: 9781137574169
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Socialist Reformers and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic explores a neglected aspect of the collapse of Communism in the former East Germany. It focuses on the East Germans' enthusiastic support for re-unification and the transfer of West Germany's political and economic institutions to the East, ignoring those in the German Democratic Republic who wanted to 'reform' socialism within, not destroy it. Their aim was to preserve an independent German Democratic Republic that would pursue an alternative 'third way' between Western capitalism and Stalinist repression. Their vision was a 'better, more beautiful' socialism instead of the 'push and shove society' that they associated with Western capitalism. In their view the 'better, more beautiful' socialism would combine the Western ideals of individual freedom with Marxist concept of collective decision-making and shared wealth. The reformers failed, of course, but their ideas and activities in the fall of 1989 are an essential part of the story that led to present-day Germany.

1

Introduction

Abstract: This chapter places the analysis that is to follow into the political and historiographic context of the late 1980s. The – failed – efforts by the East German reformers are part of a larger picture that included the efforts by Mikhail Gorbachev to change the Communist regime in the Soviet Union and to put the relations between the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe on a new footing, as well as the – successful – efforts by indigenous groups in Poland and Hungary to democratize and humanize their Communist-dominated societies.

Orlow, Dietrich. Socialist Reformers and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137574169.0002.

The course of European history was changed dramatically by a series of events that took place in just two years, 1989 and 1990. In the course of a few tumultuous months the Soviet empire collapsed, [1] Germany was reunified, and Western political and economic ideas and institutions triumphed in the countries east of what was now a torn Iron Curtain. Suddenly, the Cold War seemed over, and talk of a “common European house” was ubiquitous.

Although with the benefit of hindsight the beginning of what was to come can be dated to the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, virtually no contemporary political or academic analyst predicted the rapidity or profundity of the changes that came in 1989/90. Not surprisingly, after the dust had cleared participants and analysts alike hastened to explain why the changes had happened, and, in the case of the political leaders, to highlight their own role in bringing about the momentous events. By now these analyses fill a medium-sized library with a plethora of more or less acute accounts, triumphant memoirs, and apologetic reminiscences. [2]

Nowhere was the collapse of Communism and the triumph of the West more evident than in Germany. What had been for forty years a divided country with two antagonistic societies facing each other across a fortified if somewhat porous border, within a year between October 1989 and 1990 became a united, Westernized country as East Germany was essentially absorbed by West Germany. The West German constitution, the Basic Law, was now the law of the land for all of Germany, and the West German “social market economy” replaced the centrally planned and controlled economic system in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Somewhat overlooked in the euphoria over the introduction of West Germany’s political and economic system in the GDR (which most East Germans enthusiastically welcomed [3]) are the political activists who wanted neither German reunification nor the wholesale transfer of West German capitalism to East Germany. Instead, these self-proclaimed reformers, who were active both within the ruling Communist Party and outside it, wanted to retain an independent, sovereign East Germany with a “better, more beautiful” form of socialism. What follows is an analysis of these socialist reformers and the reasons for the ultimate failure of their vision.

There were many causes for the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and East European countries. Independent labor unions, like Solidarity in Poland, and human rights organizations (HRO) (Bürgerrechtsbewegungen, in East Germany) certainly played a role. So did self-styled reformist leaders within the Communist parties, although the fall of socialism was certainly not their intent. This was true for the Soviet Union itself, where Mikhail Gorbachev, who was elected secretary general of the Communist Party in 1985, led the reformist elements in the party. Hungary and Poland also embarked on reforms with the cooperation of the leadership of the ruling Communist parties. In contrast, in East Germany (and in Czechoslovakia and Romania) the Communist Party leaders resisted all attempts at reform until it was too late to save the regime. True, in October 1989 Egon Krenz, one of the self-styled reformers in the East German Communist Party (called the Sozialistische Einheitspartei, Socialist Unity Party, SED) replaced the hardliner Erich Honecker as the secretary general, but Krenz’ proclamation that under his leadership the East German Communists would undertake a “turn-around” (Wende) was not taken seriously by anyone, and after fifty days Krenz disappeared from the political scene. As we shall see, in contrast to what was happening in Poland and Hungary, the East German HROs were also quickly pushed into political oblivion by events they could not control.

And yet, paradoxically, the voluminous memoir literature suggests that by the second half of the 1980s opposition to the SED’s hardline policies was growing both in the party and among the HROs. Demands for change seemed to come from all quarters. [4] (To be sure, paralleling earlier discussions about the meaning of resistance to the Nazi regime, there is also a lively and ongoing historiographic debate about the meaning of “opposition” in the GDR. [5]) The questions posed in this analysis, then, are three: Who were the reformers inside and outside the SED, what did they want, and why were they so singularly unsuccessful in realizing their aims?

At the beginning of the 1980s all seemed well with the GDR’s “real, existing socialism.” The Communists appeared to have an unchallenged hold on political power. Article 1 of a new constitution adopted in 1978 (“Honecker’s constitution”) defined the GDR as a socialist state of workers and peasants led by the SED. The party, armed with the scientific truths of Marxism–Leninism, would guide East Germany to true socialism. The country’s mounting economic problems were still hidden. Instead, “the unity of social and economic policy,” as the SED’s leaders never tired of pointing out, provided the GDR with a standard of living that was one-third higher than that of any other socialist country, including the Soviet Union. On the international scene the GDR was recognized as a sovereign nation by almost all countries in the world, including the United States. Finally, there were no significant problems in the SED’s relations with its creator and guarantor, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

But problems loomed on the horizon. The SED could not ignore the challenges to Communism’s ideological bedrock coming from Eastern Europe, specifically from Poland and the Soviet Union. In the early 1980s the founding of the independent Solidarity labor union called into question the Polish Communists’ monopoly on power. The SED quickly recognized the danger on its eastern border and attempted to contain the threat. Fearing the spread of Polish ideas in the GDR, the East German Communists closed the GDR’s border with Poland, and mounted a propaganda offensive denouncing Solidarity as a group of counter-revolutionaries who were trying to create chaos in Poland. The GDR also urged Soviet military intervention in Poland along the lines of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. [6]

The most serious challenge to the status quo in Eastern Europe came, of course, from the Soviet Union itself. Relations between the GDR and the “friends” had been excellent as long as Leonid Brezhnev headed the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, but they became increasingly strained after Mikhail Gorbachev took over as secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985. Publicly the SED continued to celebrate the bonds of friendship between the GDR and the USSR, and the East German Communists welcomed Gorbachev’s program of glasnost and perestroika, [7] but behind the scenes Erich Honecker and his close allies grew increasingly critical of Gorbachev and his reforms. As always, accusations of creeping social democratism were readily at hand; [8] Gorbachev for his part made no secret of his lack of enthusiasm for Honecker’s hard line. [9]

Finally, as if to illustrate the SED’s fears that reforms would indeed lead to the end of Communist rule, there was the case of Hungary. In the late 1980s Hungary embarked on a series of policy changes that modified the state-run economy and permitted political pluralism. The head of the East German secret police (Staatssicherheit, Stasi), Erich Mielke, denounced Hungary as a traitor to the Communist cause: The country’s political reforms led to social democratism and the economic changes to capitalism. [10] Worse was to come. As part of the reform process, Hungary in May 1989 opened its borders with Austria, enabling thousands of vacationing East Germans to cross the border into Austria and from there to resettle in West Germany. (Hungary’s decision to open its borders was undoubtedly facilitated by a 500 million DM credit from West Germany, although the GDR, which desperately needed and readily accepted credits from the Federal Republic, was hardly in a position to criticize the Hungarians’ willingness to accept Western money.) [11]

But this is getting ahead of the story. Until the last years of the decade the GDR’s Communist leaders seemed to be in firm control of the country and the party, but underneath the surface there was increasing ferment. The self-styled SED reformers recalled later that by the second half of the 1980s, a foreboding of change (Umbruchstimmung) prevailed in the GDR. They listed the ingredients of this sense of unease as the loss of belief in the future Communist utopia, the questioning of the certainties of the past (this referred to the discussion of Stalin’s crimes and the Nazi–Soviet Pact in the Soviet media), and general dissatisfaction with conditions in the GDR. [12] The leader of the SED’s successor party, Gregor Gysi, remembered that in the beginning of 1985 there was a widespread conviction that the SED’s leadership simply could not indefinitely ignore the demands for reform. [13] Even within the SED’s functionary corps, which was used to absolute obedience to dictates from the top, there were stirrings of criticism about the lack of initiatives coming from the Politburo. [14] Perhaps most tellingly, the Stasi reported that its ubiquitous informants found little difference in the critical attitudes of the SED’s rank-and-file members and the population at large. [15]

Notes

[1]Among the many treatments of the collapse of the Soviet empire see Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1997); Gerhard and Nadja Simon, Verfall und Untergang des sowjetischen Imperiums (Munich, 1993); and Ivo Banac, ed., Eastern Europe in Revolution (New York, 1992).

[2]Two examples of West German triumphalism are, Wolfgang Schäuble, Der Vertrag: Wie ich über die deutsche Einheit verhandelte (Stuttgart, 1991); and Helmut Kohl, Vom Mauerfall zur Wiedervereinigung: Meine Erinnerungen (Munich, 2009).

[3]Hubertus Knabe, ed., Aufbruch in eine andere DDR: Reformer und Oppositionelle zur Zukunft ihres Landes (Hamburg, 1989); and Birgit Lahann, Geliebte Zone: Geschichte aus dem neuen Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1997).

[4]A small sample: Günter Schabowski, Der Absturz (Berlin, 1991); Egon Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen (Vienna, 1990); Manfred Uschner, Die Zweite Etage: Funktionsweise eines Machtapparates (Berlin, 1993); Fritz Klein, Drinnen und Draussen: Erinnerungen eines Historikers in der DDR (Frankfurt a.M., 2000); Gerhard Schürer, Gewagt und Verloren: Eine deutsche Biographie, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt a.O., 1996); Hans Modrow, Ich wollte ein neues Deutschland (Berlin, 1998); Eberhard Jesse, ed., Eine Revolution und ihre Folgen: 14 Bürgerrechtler ziehen Bilanz (Berlin, 2000); and Knabe, ed., Aufbruch.

[5]For a brief introduction to the historiographic debate see Hubertus Knabe, “Was war die ‘DDR-Opposition’? Zur Typologisierung des politischen Widerspruchsin Ost-Deutschland,” Deutschland-Archiv, 29 (no. 2, 1996), 184–98.

[6]“[Telefon] Gespräch ... Schmidt ... Honecker,” 12 Janaury 1982, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (hereafter: BAB-SAPMO), Bestand Büro Erich Honecker (hereafter: Best. Büro Honecker), DY 30/2409, Fiche 1; Ludwig Mehlhorn, “Berlin-Warschau,” in: Knabe, ed., Aufbruch, p. 175; Monika Tantzscher, “ ‘Was in Polen geschieht, ist für die DDR eine Lebensfrage!’ Das MfS und die polnische Krise 1980/81,” in: Enquête-Kommission des Deutschen Bundestags, ed., Materialien der Enquête-Kommission: Überwindung der Folgen der SED-Diktatur im Prozess der deutschen Einheit (Baden-Baden, 1999), V/3:2649; Michael Kubina and Manfred Wilke, eds, “Hart und kompromisslos durchgreifen”: Geheimakten der SED-Führung über die Unterdrückung...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The SED Reformers
• 3  The HRO Reformers
• 4  The Illusions of the Hardliners
• 5  The First Group of SED Reformers Takes Charge
• 6  A New Group of SED Reformers Tries Its Luck
• 7  The Round Table: The HRO Reformers Fifteen Minutes of Fame
• 8  Conclusion
• Index