Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XX, Eastern Europe

121. Report Prepared in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State¹

Report No. 954

Washington, April 11, 1978

THE PROSPECTS FOR DOMESTIC STABILITY IN THE GDR

Summary

During 1977 the East German leadership moved with fair success to counter the popular unrest and intellectual dissent that made 1976 a rough year. The flood of requests to emigrate to West Germany was halted, critical intellectuals were largely silenced, and church-state relations were restored to a reasonably normal condition. The regime’s demonstrated capacity to react to challenges with a shrewd mixture of toughness and flexibility makes it unlikely that the GDR will be unable to handle domestic problems in the future.

Domestic tensions in the German Democratic Republic gradually subsided last year. The confrontations of 1976—with church authorities, critical intellectuals, the increasing number of GDR citizens submitting requests to emigrate to the West—were mitigated. The tactics used by the Honecker regime to suppress or disperse its critics at times aroused international censure (in October 1977, Amnesty International issued a report sharply critical of the GDR²). On the whole, however, the East German leadership could feel at year’s end that its international image had not suffered irremediable damage and that its relations with the West had remained on a more or less even keel.

The basic question posed by the events of the past two years is: did 1977 see merely a temporary halting of a tendency toward increasing domestic instability, or did the reduction in tensions reflect the continuation of a long-term trend toward a more stable East Germany?

While domestic instability in any of the East European Warsaw Pact states could hamper prospects for continued East-West detente, nowhere would the threat of serious international repercussions be greater than in the case of the GDR. The carefully crafted accommodations regarding Berlin and inter-German relations that made possible the Helsinki accords and have reduced international tensions in Central Europe to their lowest level since the early 1930s would be unlikely to survive a major upheaval in East Germany.

Changing Perceptions of GDR Stability

Several months after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the consensus of Western observers was that the strength of the latent anti-regime forces in East Germany was on the increase. Nevertheless, the decade that followed turned out to be one of relative economic, political, and social stability in the GDR. By 1970—the last full year of Walter Ulbricht’s rule—US observers noted, in contrast to the earlier view, that the average East German seemed to have become resigned to the system imposed on him and had developed a certain sense of pride in the economic development of East Germany.

The impression of a growing and more broadly based stability—one resting on more than an efficient security apparatus and the ultimate threat of Soviet intervention—was further strengthened following the smooth political succession from an aging and increasingly nationalistic Ulbricht to Erich Honecker. Honecker, while working within a leadership group virtually identical to that over which Ulbricht had presided, introduced some notable changes of emphasis. Honecker’s less strident, more down-to-earth, and increasingly consumer-oriented approach proved to be reassuring to both his domestic and his foreign audiences. While many of his changes were more of style than of substance, a further lowering of tensions was evident. After several years of Honecker’s leadership, US observers noted further improvement in the GDR’s domestic stability—most East Germans had come to terms with the Communist regime and accepted the reality of Communist rule. Political analysts saw the trend of recent years toward accommodation between the ruled and the rulers as having given the regime increased confidence in its legitimacy and as having strengthened the faction in the party which favored securing the cooperation of the people by tactics of persuasion and reward instead of relying on the discredited policies of coercion and arbitrary rule.

New Challenges Arise

In the mid-1970s, however, signs of new strains in the East German body politic began to accumulate. While the results of West Germany’s Ostpolitik, superpower detente, and the series of international agreements that followed in their wake permitted the GDR to achieve its long-sought goal of diplomatic recognition by the Western powers, the ferment that they caused within East Germany turned out to be substantial. The developments that appear to have had the strongest domestic impact included:

• —the GDR’s heavily publicized adherence to the Helsinki Final Act and to other international human rights covenants;
• —the vast increase in West German travel to the GDR and in the audience for FRG television broadcasts in East Germany following the conclusion of the Basic Treaty between the two German states in 1973; and
• —the ideological challenge to orthodoxy posed by the Eurocommunist parties.

By the summer of 1976 the symptoms of the unrest provoked by these events and trends were unmistakable:

• —Requests by East Germans to emigrate to the FRG, many explicitly citing the Helsinki Final Act, reached more than 100,000.
• —Critical intellectuals, such as physicist Robert Havemann and songwriter Wolf Biermann, became more outspoken and received greater attention in Western, including Eurocommunist, media.
• —Church-state relations underwent their sharpest decline since the 1950s after the suicide of an East German clergyman.

The political tensions raised by these developments did not constitute an immediate threat to the GDR’s internal stability. Even before the regime’s countermeasures (see below), there was no evidence to suggest that collective political protest—violent or otherwise—was in the offing. Summing up the situation during its most acute phase, an East German writer told a Western journalist: “There isn’t going to be an explosion here. But there is tension now and a feeling that something is going on that has not yet run its course.”

The Regime Responds

Employing a broad range of tactics, from repressive to conciliatory depending on the nature of the perceived threat, the Honecker regime, beginning in late 1976, attempted with considerable success to dampen the effects of these developments. At one extreme, the expatriation of Biermann and the placing of Havemann under house arrest gave notice of the limits of official tolerance. Dozens of members of the GDR’s cultural elite followed Biermann into exile during 1977. On the other hand, the regime’s stance vis-a-vis the church was far more conciliatory. The West German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted in late 1977 that “relations between the state apparatus and the church have calmed strikingly” and attributed the change to a desire on the part of the regime to “relax tensions.” Somewhere between those two tactics were the selective harassment and denials of applications of prospective emigres who cited the Helsinki Accords as the basis for their requests (family reunification requests continued to be processed at the same rate as in previous years).

As a result of the regime’s counter-campaign, the ferment that characterized 1976 was reduced in scope and intensity. A Western journalist noted that the tensions that had gripped East Germany in 1976 “appeared spent” by late 1977, leaving behind an impression of “lethargy and gloom.” There was such continued evidence of unrest as antisocial behavior by youth; a serious clash between youth and police during GDR national day celebrations in East Berlin was the most striking exception to the generally quiet domestic scene in 1977. There was also an apparent deterioration of labor discipline; some workers reportedly demanded a portion of their salaries in hard currency. But the dominant mood of the populace at the beginning of 1978 was one of political apathy and of seeking refuge in material compensation and private family interests.

The “Manifesto” Episode

Although its direct relationship to GDR domestic stability is moot, the purported opposition “Manifesto” recently published in West Germany sheds some light on the two external factors that most impinge on the GDR’s internal stability—the Soviet Union and West Germany.

The document was published in two installments by Der Spiegel in its first two issues of 1978. The magazine reported that the “Manifesto” had been compiled by members of a “League of Democratic German Communists,” supposedly consisting of “middle and senior level” party members. The existence of such a group, either inside or outside the party, was termed “extremely doubtful” by the West German Foreign Office, a view shared by the vast majority of Western observers.

While the impact of the “Manifesto” within East Germany appears to have been minimal, the controversy following its publication and the retaliatory closure of Der Spiegel’s office in East Berlin threatened, for a time, to disrupt FRG–GDR relations. Both sides, however, tried to head off that outcome and to underline their determination to continue a policy of cooperation. Thus, when Chancellor Schmidt offered to send a personal emissary, State Secretary Hans Jurgen Wischnewski, to East Berlin in late January for talks with top GDR officials, Honecker promptly accepted. While the details of Wischnewski’s discussions are not known,³ he appears to have succeeded in restoring inter-German relations to their status quo ante.

Conclusions and Prospects

During the decade after the Berlin Wall, Western observers initially tended to overstate the dangers to the GDR regime of popular opposition. Gradually, they began to minimize the continuing vulnerability of the regime to internal unrest. The events of the past two years suggest that neither approach is necessarily a guide to estimating the prospects for the continuing stability of the GDR in the 1980s.

The GDR has special vulnerabilities but also certain advantages in dealing with them.

East Germany’s vulnerabilities are well known:

• —The absence of a firm national identity makes the goal of regime legitimacy more difficult to achieve in the GDR than elsewhere in East Europe.
• —The constant contrast with West Germany is damaging to the regime’s image and to popular morale.
• —The GDR is the most exposed of the East European states to Western media influence because most East German citizens regularly watch FRG television.
• —The highly visible Soviet military and political presence constantly nourishes strong anti-Russian popular sentiments dating from World War II and before.

Tending to offset these vulnerabilities are the advantages that the GDR derives, in many cases, from the same set of circumstances:

• —The lack of national legitimacy forces the regime to compensate by closely monitoring popular attitudes and by seeking—when it is not constrained by ideological or domestic security considerations—to be responsive to popular grievances.
• —The competition with the FRG has induced the regime to cater to the consumer (the country already has the highest standard of living in Eastern Europe) and to emphasize economic incentives and productivity.
• —East Germans recognize that their access to millions of West German visitors and to Western television are benefits that are not enjoyed by other East Europeans and that could be cut off if the regime felt greatly threatened by internal unrest. Thus, they have a considerable stake in not “rocking the boat.”
• —The Soviet presence is a reminder both of Moscow’s ability to intervene in the event of serious internal disruption in East Germany and of the threat that instability in the GDR would pose to the balance of power and peace in Europe.

These two sets of factors, combined with the GDR leaders’ demonstrated capacity to react to challenges with a shrewd mixture of toughness and flexibility suggest that the regime will continue to be able to handle domestic problems.

Political control, however, will not narrow the psychological chasm which separates the leadership from the populace. Only a major reduction in restrictions on travel to the West or a dramatic loosening of ideological controls—neither of which the leadership feels secure enough to undertake—could reduce the mistrust with which regime and citizenry view each other. Popular disaffection will probably continue to surface from time to time in the form of youth disturbances or sporadic worker unrest.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for the Commonwealth and Eastern Europe, Lot 92D468, Office Subject Files, 1958–1978, Box 5, Ceausescu and Kadar: A Contrast in Personalities and Policies 1978. Secret; Noforn. Prepared by Robert Rackmales; approved by Paul K. Cook.
2. In its 1977 report (accessed online), Amnesty International alleged that there were several thousand political prisoners in East Germany in the 1976–1977 period covered by the report, many of whom were being released to West Germany in exchange for goods.
3. A report of Wischnewski’s conversations in East Berlin is in Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1978, 1 Januar bis 30 Juni, Document 37, pp. 210–218.