126. Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency1
EAST GERMANY: THE CHILLY WINDS OF SPRING (U)
East Germany recently has initiated a number of repressive measures against dissident intellectuals, some consumers, and Western correspondents. The official pretext was unfair treatment by the Western press of such issues as East German hard-currency shops and the quality of everyday life in East Germany. The government’s actions were no doubt intended to address more deep-seated problems, such as its failing ability to manipulate the populace in support of its policies. And they were further intended to send a message to West Germany that, detente and ostpolitik notwithstanding, East Germany has no intention of modifying its foreign and domestic policies. The government probably felt the need to send such a message to the West because of recent speculation in the Western press, fueled in part by the statements and travels of West German Social Democratic parliamentary leader Herbert Wehner, [Page 392] that a process of German reunification may be in its infancy. [classification not declassified]
The Regime’s Measures
East Germany now requires that its citizens convert hard currency into bank certificates before these funds can be used to purchase quality goods in special shops (Intershops). The change acknowledges that the two-currency economy that has developed in East Germany, with the West German mark being the preferred currency, had to be curtailed. The dual-currency system makes special benefits available to those who can acquire foreign funds—many times through transactions outside the official economy. The persons thus rewarded by the system are, by and large, not those the regime wishes to be rewarded—workers and party and government officials. The change in the system was not as restrictive as many East Germans feared, but it will bring home to those who profit from the dual system that the privileges they enjoy are strictly at the sufferance of the regime. [classification not declassified]
The new measures are designed to reduce the growing number of informal contacts between East and West Germans. The West German media, which reaches a substantial number of East Germans through radio and television broadcasts, has long been a nuisance to the authorities because of their accurate descriptions, collected from local residents, of economic, social and political conditions in East Germany. To reduce these contacts, the regime has enacted controls requiring Western journalists to provide the authorities 24 hours notice and a detailed itinerary of travel plans outside East Berlin. Other restrictions include a ban on interviews with East German citizens without prior government approval and a requirement that, “in carrying out their journalistic work, journalists must abstain from slandering or defaming the GDR, its state organs, and its leading figures, as well as states allied with the GDR.” These restrictions are more severe than those of any other East European state, including the Soviet Union. [classification not declassified]
The restrictions on foreign travel by dissidents have prevented several regime critics, including East Germany’s most prominent author, Stefan Heym, from traveling to West Germany to attend lectures and conferences. The government also has devised a new legal scheme, apparently to be applied on a selective basis, for punishing authors who publish their work in the West. According to this newly devised legal principle, a citizen who publishes in the West and receives compensation is guilty of violating foreign currency regulations, the penalty for which is a 10 year prison term. This law probably is the basis of the recently instituted criminal proceedings against Robert Havemann, a prominent critic. The measures against dissidents will not halt their activities or the feed-back of information into the country about them, but they will have an inhibiting effect. [classification not declassified]
[Page 393]The Timing
There are probably several reasons why the regime chose to act at this time, despite the risk to its efforts to expand economic ties with the West. At the root is its determination to maintain its identity as a separate German state capable of controlling its internal affairs. The regime may have believed that this had to be emphasized at this time to the West Germans, whose ostpolitik is credited by some for the conditions the East Germans find uncomfortable. Inter-German intercourse has increased at the economic and personal level to a point where some West German quarters could speculate last month about the possibility of eventual German reunification. Such speculation is intolerable to the regime, which this year will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the creation of the East German state, because it raises the fundamental question of the permanence of that state and, thus, the obligation of its citizens to give it their allegiance. [classification not declassified]
The measures were, no doubt, cleared with the USSR, which has ruled out German reunification. The political concessions made by East Germany to the West—and West Germans, in particular—in the 1970s have, in part, been in support of the USSR’s policy of detente with the West and improved relations with West Germany. The USSR may not be loath to see speculation on the reunification question because it emphasizes to the East German leaders—and to the Poles—their ultimate reliance on the USSR for the perpetuation and integrity of their state, and, thus, their obligation to follow Soviet dictates. But the Soviets would not wish reunification to become a credible notion in East Germany, where it strikes a responsive chord with the public and, perhaps, even with some in the bureaucracy. The Soviets could even have been responsible for the timing of the East German moves. [classification not declassified]
A further impetus for instituting repressive measures now is the country’s deteriorating economic situation. Faced with a serious balance of payments problem with the West, the regime has critical resource allocation decisions to make, and the result could be a conscious reduction of economic growth, with all that would mean in terms of greater austerity for the public. This could lead to a partial abandonment of the regime’s consumer-oriented policy, which has been the basic theme of its appeals for popular support. Before such a reversal became obvious to the public, the regime would presumably wish to remind the people of the powers of the state to enforce public discipline.2 [classification not declassified]
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Support Services (DI), Job 82T00150R, Production Case Files, Box 6, East Germany: The Chilly Winds of Spring. Confidential. The memorandum was prepared in the Office of Political Analysis and coordinated within OPA and the Office of Economic Research. Copies were sent to the NSC, the Department of State’s INR and EUR Bureaus, and the Departments of the Treasury and Defense.↩
- According to a sources list, the memorandum was based on the following telegrams: telegram 2158 from East Berlin, April 20, (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790184–1205); telegram 2176 from East Berlin, April 21, (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790185–0678); telegram 7089 from Bonn, April 19, (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790180–0326); telegram 2249 from East Berlin, April 25, (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790191–1118); and telegram 2265 from East Berlin, April 25, (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790191–0838).↩