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

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

Report No. 1238

Washington, September 12, 1979

(U) EAST GERMANY’S NEW HARD LINE

(C) Introduction and Summary

The German Democratic Republic has established a set of political control mechanisms designed to halt spreading popular restiveness and to preempt the emergence of more serious discontent in the future. These controls—aimed generally at Western influences and specifically at dissidents, foreign journalists, and grumbling citizens—have had a general chilling effect on the society and heightened its sense of alienation from the regime.

The discontent is rooted most immediately in the erosion of the regime’s ability to meet consumer demands—demands that the Honecker regime itself intensified by its shift to “consumerism” in the mid-1970s. The current problems indicate that without political liberalization or growing consumer concessions, accommodation between citizens and state will remain difficult. The ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), increasingly aware of its political dilemmas, is falling back on the course that comes naturally to it—hard-line domestic controls that limit Western influences, cow the population, and no doubt win plaudits from Moscow.

The extent to which the control mechanisms will be applied remains to be seen. Their very announcement, however, is a setback for Honecker, who had been noted for a degree of political flexibility and concern for popular demands. At the same time, though, the new hard line has been sequenced in such a way as to minimize disruption in FRG–GDR ties so that the basic framework of detente does not suffer.

East Germany’s economic plight is not unique to Eastern Europe. But the SED has even less to fall back on than some of the other ruling communist parties in the region—either in foreign policy independence or in manipulation of traditional nationalism. Thus the political toll ultimately could be more severe. At the moment, the discontent is not overt and Honecker seems relatively secure. But should Honecker’s new hard line not forestall the emergence of mounting discontent within the GDR, Moscow will be forced to make hard choices on the GDR’s political leadership and Soviet underwriting of the country’s economy.

Honecker’s Political Dilemmas

(U) When Erich Honecker succeeded Walter Ulbricht in 1971, the new leader tried to reach an accommodation between the regime and the population. Honecker, while not weakening the SED’s monopoly of power, sought to modify some of Ulbricht’s more strident domestic policies. He did this by, inter alia:

• —reorienting economic policy toward a rapid improvement in the standard of living, in part by allowing citizens to have access to Western money and consumer goods;
• —tolerating a marginally more open intellectual and artistic expression, sometimes looking the other way when East Germans published critical works in the FRG; and
• —seeking, more recently, a rapprochement with the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, the one major institution outside the SED.

At the same time, Honecker made it quite clear, by maintenance of rigid security controls, that his regime was not engaged in political liberalization, that Western influences would be contained, and that travel to the West would remain restricted.

(C) Honecker’s approach was not a panacea for the population, but it was a welcome respite that allowed individuals to indulge a bit in material values. By the late 1970s, however, it had become apparent that these policy shifts were quietly generating a new set of problems.

• —Consumerism, rooted in legalized access to West German currency, had begun to create a two-class system of “haves” and “have-nots,” i.e., those with and those without Western money; this produced growing resentment among the latter because hard currency was often the only means of obtaining necessary goods and services.
• —Critical intellectuals increasingly turned to the West to publish their works or to make known their views, many of which called for fundamental changes in the GDR.
• —The Evangelical Church, immediately after receiving unprecedented concessions from the state, launched an offensive against the regime’s plans to introduce military training in the high schools.

And the SED seemed generally unable to break through a growing malaise typified by apolitical youth, apathetic workers, and petty corruption and crime.

(C) The main catalyst in this process was the intensified coverage of East Germany from within by FRG media, especially West German TV, which reaches 80 percent of the GDR. With West German reporters focusing on negative developments, grumbling citizens and outspoken intellectuals/artists soon found a public forum for their discordant views. This FRG media penetration, compounded by 10 million annual West German visitors, negated Honecker’s goal of a systematic delimitation between the two social/cultural systems—his much-vaunted policy of Abgrenzung.

(C) These problems did not pose an immediate threat to the political system or Honecker’s personal position. But looking a few years ahead, Honecker must have heeded the gloomy projections on the economic front and the political danger they entailed. The GDR’s bleak economic outlook—mounting balance of payments deficits with both Moscow and the West and a likely unwillingness by the Soviets to continue their heavy subsidization of the GDR—pointed to the need to cut back on imports, boost exports, and reduce consumption growth. At the same time, the regime would have to come to grips with low prices for retail goods which encourage the population to consume. Honecker realized that the position of the East German consumer, while remaining high by East European standards, inevitably would suffer.

(C) In this context, restiveness could be expected to grow, stimulated by the almost daily barrage of negative TV coverage by the FRG. Thus, the relative stability that the regime “bought” in the mid-1970s threatened to dissipate by the early 1980s. Honecker and the SED decided on a preemptive strike before matters got worse.

The Clampdown: Early Signals

(C) Honecker signaled the possibility of a tougher domestic line in June 1978 when the SED revised Walter Ulbricht’s status from that of non-person to “great proletarian revolutionary.” Ulbricht, the “father” of the GDR, was a firm Stalinist who pushed East German political institutionalization and economic modernization with fervor. His tendency, toward the end of his career, to stress the superiority of German socialism irritated Moscow. When he objected to Soviet detente overtures to Bonn and to the West in general, he was removed from office.

(C) But from the population’s vantage point, Ulbricht remained synonymous with hard-line communism. Thus, his rehabilitation was not merely an attempt to define his place in East German history. It was also intended to signal that there might be a return to Ulbricht’s policies in the face of mounting socioeconomic problems and political dissent.

(U) This signal was reinforced by the sentencing in July 1978 of Rudolf Bahro and Nico Huebner—two of the GDR’s most noted dissidents—to jail terms of 8 years and 5 years, respectively. These were harsher tactics than Honecker had used in the earlier cases of folk singer dissident Wolf Biermann—who was stripped of his citizenship while in the West—and physicist/philosopher Robert Havemann, who had been placed under house arrest following his protest of the Biermann matter.

(U) The July sentencings were more reminiscent of Ulbricht’s handling of the revisionist Marxists (centered around Wolfgang Harich), who in 1957 were given jail sentences for suggesting an ideological “third way” between East and West for the GDR. Bahro had published in West Germany a political treatise, The Alternative, calling for a purified Marxist system in the GDR. Huebner, an East Berlin draft resister, had used West German media to ventilate his view that the military draft of East Berliners was illegal because all of Berlin remained demilitarized under postwar four-power agreements. This opinion flew in the face of East German claims to sovereignty over East Berlin.

(C) These early signals, however, did not continue into the fall of 1978, probably because the regime wanted to conclude inner-German transit agreements that would net the GDR at least an additional $1 billion in much-needed hard currency over the next 10 years. A crackdown of major proportions probably would have made the FRG think twice about concluding the agreements. With their signing in November 1978, both sides expected a lull in relations while an agenda of new negotiations was being forged.

(U) The GDR was hit by disastrous winter storms in early 1979 which so disrupted the economy that economic performance for the entire year has been adversely affected. The country continued to experience seriously sluggish growth rates into the spring, and the provision of some basic consumer supplies remained disrupted. Western visitors reported that complaining by the population was the most intense in recent memory.

The Clampdown Phased In

(U) The signals of June 1978 turned into a torrent of restrictions in the spring-summer of 1979:

• —A decree, announced on April 5, required citizens holding Western currency to convert it into non-transferable coupons in order to purchase Western goods in Intershops.
• —New regulations, published on April 14, required permanently accredited foreign journalists to obtain permission for interviews and to notify the authorities on the details of all planned trips outside East Berlin.
• —In April, dissident writers, including noted novelist Stefan Heym, were denied visas for travel to the West.
• —An FRG television reporter was expelled in May for recording a statement by Heym without obtaining permission.
• —Both Heym and Havemann were tried and fined for alleged violation of GDR currency regulations in accepting royalties for Western publications that had not been cleared by the GDR.
• —Nine dissident writers, including Heym, were expelled in June from the GDR Writers Union for “anti-communist agitation.”
• —A revision of the penal code, effective on August 1, broadened the definition of political crimes (inter alia, by proscribing actions deemed “harmful to the interests of the state”) and expanded considerably penalties for conviction thereunder.

(C) It will take some time to discern how some of these restrictions—draconian in principle—are applied. For the moment, the regulations requiring conversion of hard currency into non-transferable coupons are proving cosmetic in that the coupons are effectively transferable. But it is clear that the Honecker regime now has a wider set of options in dealing with recalcitrant behavior and in rooting out Western influences. The penal code provisions are particularly chilling because the charge of treason can be lodged against individuals who convey detrimental information about the GDR—even unclassified—to “foreign organizations” (i.e., Western media).

Dissidents and Journalists Targeted

(C) Dissidents in the GDR have been particularly hard hit by the crackdown. The regime has decided to curb them as well as their de facto publicity agents—foreign journalists. Although relatively small in number and without a broad popular following, most of the critics are Marxists who damn the SED for prostituting Marxist ideals, a fact that evidently has made the regime nervous. In espousing a more “humanistic socialism” that can encompass greater pluralism and freedoms, the East German dissidents come close to the spirit of Eurocommunism and have generated some backing from that quarter. Probably pushed by such party ideologues as Hager and Naumann, Honecker may have come to fear that these arguments might win favor among youth, technocrats, and others—perhaps serving to instigate a wider political unrest that would filter down to the mass level.

(U) The initial steps to repress dissent generated an unexpected though shortlived “public debate.” The regime actions against Heym and Havemann triggered a series of protests from individuals. A group of eight dissident writers sent a letter to Honecker criticizing his cultural policies. The government counterattacked via Neues Deutschland by printing letters and speeches by pro-regime writers and officials that publicized the existence of the dissent and directly attacked some of the critics for carrying on a “hate campaign against socialism,” collaborating with the “enemy mass media,” and being “washed-up types” out of touch with “real socialism.” This foreshadowed the expulsion of Heym and others from the Writers Union for “anti-communist agitation.”

(C) The expulsions—which reportedly were not unanimously approved by the Writers Union membership—fueled the GDR’s cultural crisis. Even such pro-regime persons as Writers Union President Hermann Kant and Academy of Arts President Konrad Wolf admitted at a June meeting of the GDR Cultural League that there were serious problems with some aspects of East German cultural policy. Nevertheless, the dissidents soon fell into disarray and were generally dispirited by the turn of events. Even such a stalwart personality as Heym indicated that he had little taste for more battles with the regime, especially given the implications of the penal code revisions.

(U) Honecker couched his justification for the cultural actions in highly ideological terms:

“Artistic creation in socialism and for socialism is taking place not at some remote distance from the ideological struggle between the two big social systems of our era but right in the middle of it. In this field, as you know, the struggle has exacerbated. This was last but not least a result of the attempts of the capitalist mass media to interfere in the internal affairs of our country and to poison the atmosphere. . . . It is informative in this context, however, that in the FRG precisely those people who are doing all they can for the preservation of capitalism, eloquently defend every one who allegedly wishes to improve the real socialism of the GDR.”

(C) The GDR’s repressive moves apparently have paid off, at least for the moment. Critical intellectuals have been silenced, journalists’ contacts have tended to dry up, and in general, citizens are more cautious about contacts with Westerners. It will likely be some time before the dissidents reemerge with the same force they manifested in the spring of 1979.

(C) Youth: Another Source of Concern

Perhaps of longer term concern to the regime than the highly publicized dissidents is its failure to capture the allegiance of the vast majority of youth. Numerous observers of the East German scene have been struck in recent years by the erosion of family cohesiveness in the urban centers and the increasing manifestation of anti-social, apolitical behavior by younger people. They have been captivated, not by German “socialism,” but by the culture and lifestyles of their Western peers. Unable to travel to the West and resigned to an ersatz emulation of Western ways, younger people have increasingly sought solace in alcohol, drugs, rowdyism, and petty crimes.

While East German youth are basically apolitical, some of them are intrigued by West German coverage of East German dissidents, and the more educated are aware of the dissidents’ ideas. It is conceivable that some could one day be converted to an anti-regime “cause” cloaked in Marxist revisionism. But, more immediately, East German youth are more likely to be concerned about Honecker’s new efforts to limit Western influences; they no doubt worry about the consequences of maintaining their Western contacts and encounters.

The regime fears a recurrence of youth riots—such as broke out spontaneously at a rock concert at Alexanderplatz on October 7, 1977. The Alexanderplatz riot manifested anti-police and anti-state attitudes and demonstrated that frustrations among East German youth can give rise to violence and conflict. Thus, it is not surprising that the Honecker regime has stepped up its socialization efforts in the schools, most recently by introducing military training in high schools.

(C) International Considerations and Ramifications

There is no evidence that East Germany’s new hard line was instigated directly by the USSR. But Moscow no doubt encouraged and perhaps even guided the sequencing of the SED’s moves so that the broader dimensions of detente were not seriously disrupted. The Soviets reportedly have been wary of GDR–FRG relations creating a momentum that could not be easily controlled. At the same time, Moscow has been concerned that Honecker’s emulation of West German consumer standards had led to a corrosive ideological influence. This could be tolerated when it promoted GDR stability but became more disturbing when it threatened future unrest by setting goals that could not be achieved.

The Soviets probably blessed the new restrictions on the grounds that FRG–GDR–USSR detente relationships were sufficiently institutionalized that Ostpolitik would not be derailed. Thus, the GDR–FRG relationship would be momentarily cooled, Western penetration would be cut back, but Soviet Westpolitik would go on.

That calculated gamble, thus far, has been correct. There does not appear to have been a serious rupture in inner-German relations—in fact, FRG–GDR talks have just resumed—nor have the events jolted the West German citizenry. Generally, West Germany has tended to interpret the East German events as a not-so-unusual political “spasm” which everyone hopes will prove more restrictive in theory than in practice. While the FRG’s CDU/CSU² opposition may seek to turn all this into a political issue in the 1980 campaign, even the conservatives have made only perfunctory statements of condemnation. The return to active political life after the summer lull may, however, spark opposition protests.

(C) Prospects

The irony of the GDR’s political situation, on the eve of its 30th anniversary (October 7), is that—more than most other East European states—it is still a regime with few options in creating a legitimizing formula. With 400,000 Soviet troops, the GDR can hardly move far from Soviet control. Moreover, the political use of German nationalism would raise the specter of reunification and run against the regime’s efforts to create a separate socialist national identity. Recurrent, somewhat halfhearted, attempts to portray the GDR as the repository of all “progressive” aspects of the German past have yet to win out with the population over the allure of pan-German nationalism. With “consumerism” on the decline, there is nothing left to fill the vacuum.

For the time being, coercion appears to be an effective compensation for the social maladies and political liabilities. The Honecker regime, while weakened in comparison with a few years ago, remains in control; there are no signs that the Soviet are ready to dispense with Ulbricht’s successor. A continuing economic deterioration, however, could heighten frustrations that might lead to sporadic strikes by workers and other demonstrations by students and disillusioned consumers. Also, it could very well be that a blowup elsewhere in Eastern Europe might have a “domino” effect in the GDR, acting as a catalyst to latent discontent. In such a context, Moscow would be forced to make some hard choices on whether to retain Honecker and whether to provide new subsidies to a sagging East German economy. All in all, it will not be a particularly festive 30th anniversary in the GDR.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for the Commonwealth and Eastern Europe, Office Subject Files, 1967–1985, Lot 92D404, Box 7, East German Political Dilemmas 1979–1980. Confidential. Drafted by Farlow; approved by Norbury.
2. Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union. [Footnote is in the original.]