Revolution 1989

by Victor Sebestyen

  There were 380,000 Soviet troops on East German soil. They were the force which the GDR leadership had thought would be the ultimate protection of the socialist state - and of themselves if there was ever a real danger of ‘counter-revolution’. Gorbachev wanted to make absolutely sure that Soviet soldiers would not be drawn into any potential conflict between the regime and its own citizens. Late in the evening, the Ambassador called General Boris Snetkov, commander of Soviet forces in East Germany. Snetkov was a wheezing sixty-five-year-old, a veteran of World War Two, who was coming up to retirement. He was popular with his men. He had little wish to use them fighting against demonstrators crying out ‘Gorby, save us’. He was delighted by the request the Ambassador was now making. ‘We have to think about how we’re going to react to possible unrest on the streets,’ Kochemasov said. ‘The matter is very serious and I ask you immediately to give orders for all troops to go back to barracks as soon as possible. You should stop all manoeuvres and stop all flights of military planes if possible. Do not interfere in any way with internal GDR developments. Let them take their course.’ Like a good officer, Snetkov double-checked with the Soviet General Staff and was issued the same orders from his superiors in Moscow.5

  Within an hour of Gorbachev’s departure that evening demonstrations erupted in towns and cities all over the country. The authorities reacted with the brutal force they had rarely used in the last few weeks. In the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin, thousands of people gathered to shout the day’s catchphrase, ‘Gorby, save us’. As they marched towards the ornate state council building, they were stopped in their tracks by a convoy of police trucks. Seconds later Erich Mielke, now eighty-one, appeared from his own bullet-proof car in a state of high agitation. Accompanied by his head of domestic counter-intelligence, General Günter Katsch, he screamed at the police: ‘Club those pigs into submission.’ They waded into the crowd, beat up scores of the demonstrators and arrested many more. Elsewhere in the city, the police and the militia attacked protesters with dogs and water cannon, and broke up a candle-lit march outside the Gethsemane Church, where nine young people were in their fourth day of a hunger strike. Altogether in Berlin 1,067 people were arrested that night and the next day. Many reported later that they faced a long night of abuse and beatings at the hands of Stasi interrogators.

  Around 200 demonstrators were arrested in the centre of Dresden. They were driven to the barracks of the riot police and mercilessly beaten up. Student Catrin Ulbricht was among them: ‘When we got out of the lorries, we were separated, women to the right, men to the left,’ she said. ‘There I saw some sort of garage and watched as men were placed against the wall legs apart and they were being beaten. We women were taken off to a kind of shower room, and that was pretty brutal.’6

  The main trial of strength was on the following night, 9 October, in Leipzig, where the epicentre of protest had been for the past weeks. Despite the violence of the police and Stasi over the weekend, the opposition was determined to go ahead with the regular Monday night ‘event’. As usual, the plan was to begin the march at the Nikolaikirche and head clockwise around the inner ring road. They hoped this would be the biggest rally so far, in a mass display of defiance. ‘Of course we were scared at this time,’ said Ulrike Poppe, one of the founders of the Democracy Now organisation. ‘I was not courageous. But I was angry and hard-headed . . . There were many who feared that there might be a Chinese solution - that they would use weapons. That could never be excluded as a possibility. And sometimes we thought that Soviet troops might appear. There was fear, because our army, police and State were so well armed and prepared that we had to reckon with there being a violent reaction.’ But numbers at the marches had been growing so quickly that the opposition now called the GDR ‘The German Demonstrating Republic’.7

  The regime was divided. Honecker wanted a tough response against the demonstrators. But he issued no specific instructions at any stage that the army or the Stasi should open fire on them. By now his authority was visibly draining away. ‘He would not have got an order through even if he had given it,’ one of his aides said. His wife, Margot, was fond of saying, ‘We have to defend socialism with all means. With words, deeds and, yes, with arms.’ But she had limited power in the land.8

  Mielke did issue draconian orders that gave his men the power to shoot ‘troublemakers’. Without consulting anyone else in the leadership he issued secret Directive No. 1/89 on the morning of Sunday 8 October.

  There has been an aggravation of the nature and associated dangers of the illegal mass gatherings of hostile, opposition, as well as . . . rowdy-type forces aiming to disturb the security of the state. I hereby order 1. A state of ‘full alert’ . . . for all units until further notice. Members of permanently armed forces are to carry their weapons with them constantly, according to the needs of the situation . . . Sufficient reserve forces are to be held ready, capable of intervention at short notice . . . for offensive measures for the repression and breaking-up of illegal demonstrations.9

  For the last two weeks the East German army had been put on heightened alert, although so far troops had not been used at any of the demonstrations. Unusually, the conscripted men were cut off as much as possible from the outside world. ‘It was an absurd idea, but the senior officers reckoned they could keep information like that away from the men,’ said Klaus-Peter Renneberg, a captain in an infantry regiment. His rank was a ‘political officer’ - a Party job as well as a military one, with the task of ensuring ideological orthodoxy and obedience in the ranks. ‘They were not allowed to use radios, they didn’t receive letters, they were discouraged from using the telephone to contact family or friends. The television set in the mess was removed. It was ridiculous because everybody knew what was going on in the country. The official line was that there had been some outbreaks of trouble with counter-revolutionaries who were out to destroy the State.’ Troops were given double their normal issue of ammunition - 120 rounds instead of 60 - and were each issued with an extra first aid kit. Overnight a crack paratroop regiment was dispatched to Leipzig with orders to hold a position just outside the city centre. The hospitals had been emptied of routine patients and had been sent extra supplies of blood and plasma. The local Party newspaper, Die Leipziger Volkszeitung , ran an editorial declaring: ‘We will fight these enemies of our country, if necessary with arms.’10

  When all the pieces seemed in place for a violent showdown in Leipzig later in the day, it was a musician who orchestrated a peaceful outcome. The conductor Kurt Masur was one of the most renowned celebrities in East Germany. Artistic director of the world famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he was a favoured son of the regime, which heaped awards on him. He had never been a Communist Party member, but he had kept a studied silence about politics while he became one of the most brilliant interpreters in the world of German Romantic music. He had gone along with official propaganda referring to him as one of the stars that made the GDR shine so bright. Now sixty-two, distinguished-looking with his neat white beard, he was beginning to speak out occasionally. When some street musicians in Leipzig had been arrested in the summer, he protested. He was appalled at the prospect of a bloody confrontation in Leipzig. If conflict erupted it could happen outside the delightful, neo-classical Gewandhaus concert hall on the city’s main ring road. On past Mondays the demonstrations usually marched past there at around 7.45 p.m., often while he had been conducting.

  Masur spoke to other prominent Leipzigers in an attempt to prevent bloodshed. He called the Protestant pastor Peter Zimmermann and the actor Bernd Lutz Lange, both of whom were involved with moderate opposition groups in the city. Local Party chieftains were equally desperate to avoid a bloodbath. The Leipzig Party boss, Helmut Hackenburg, was ill, but two other high-ranking officials, Wilhelm Pommert and Roland Wötzel, went to meet Masur and the opposition activists, which in itself was a revolutionary act. Policy had always been to have no dialogue with them, so they did not tell Party headquarters
in Berlin about the meeting. They hammered out the text of an appeal for peace and calm, signed jointly, which was repeated on the radio every half-hour from about 3 p.m. onwards in Kurt Masur’s voice. ‘We all need a free exchange of views on the future of socialism in our country. Therefore . . . we today promise to lend our strength and authority to ensure that this dialogue will be conducted not only in Leipzig but with our government. We urgently ask you for prudence, so that peaceful dialogue will become possible.’

  It was not clear that the appeal would be heeded. The army was still preparing to move on to the streets. Hans Illing was an NCO with an infantry regiment based at the main army barracks on the edge of Leipzig. By early afternoon the men knew that they had been ordered to take up positions by Leipzig railway station, directly on the route of the demonstration. It was his job to hand out weapons from the armoury. ‘I issued rubber truncheons and shields and helmets, then gave the officers their handguns - 9mm Makarov pistols, with live ammunition. Each officer got at least two magazines . . . Then the company commander came and gave the order to hand out Kalash nikovs which were loaded on to the lorries . . . There were pretty bad scenes, with young men lying on their beds and crying because they knew their wives and parents would be on the demonstration. So feelings were not good.’ He knew his mother and stepfather would probably be on the march. ‘I rang my parents to warn them that they shouldn’t go out that day . . . because it was so dangerous, there’d be live rounds fired.’11

  More than seventy thousand demonstrators had gathered outside the Nikolaikirche by around five p.m. ‘and the atmosphere was extraordinarily tense’, said one of them, Aram Radomski. ‘None of us knew what was going to happen, whether the shooting would begin. We just knew that if we were not there, it would be a sign that we had given up, which we could not do.’12

  In Leipzig Party headquarters, they were still waiting for instructions from Berlin. ‘We rang repeatedly. We told them of our appeal and we tried to persuade the bosses but they gave no immediate answer,’ said the Leipzig Party’s second Secretary, Roland Wötzel. ‘We got hold of Egon Krenz personally. He said he would call back. So we waited. But things were getting absolutely critical. The march was reaching the railway station, where most of the army forces were concentrated, and still we had no instructions. Finally Hackenburg gave the order to pull the troops back and let the demonstrators past peacefully. It was touch and go.’ At the same time General Gerhard Stassenburg, the Leipzig police chief, told his men to let the march go ahead without interference and only to shoot in self-defence.13

  Egon Krenz continually maintained later that he was the saviour of the day and it was his decision to let the demonstration proceed. He spoke to the Soviet Ambassador, Kochemasov, who advised him to let the march go ahead. But he did not call the Leipzig Party officials back until about half an hour after they had already made the decision not to intervene. He hesitated briefly when he spoke to Hackenburg, but then said he had made absolutely the correct decision and the Party approved. This was the turning point, when the people knew that the regime lacked the will or the strength to maintain its power.

  Erich Honecker survived in place for another week. Plotters had been sharpening a stiletto, but it was the demonstrators in Leipzig who sealed his fate. There had been no public criticism of him for eighteen years. Now there was a tide of complaints within the ruling Party that came from all directions. The officially approved Writers’ Union called for ‘revolutionary changes’, insisting that what must be feared ‘is not reform, but fear of reform’. Its President, Hermann Kant, one of the foremost East German Communists, wrote an open letter calling on the leadership to show ‘self-criticism’. The Communist Youth paper, Junge Welt, took a giant step by printing it. He urged Honecker to talk to the opposition and ‘grasp the nettle, even if we do not like the individuals involved, or, as Communists, feel ill at ease with some of their ideas’. The mayors of Dresden and Leipzig called for dialogue. Honecker was unmoved. ‘Everything will collapse if we give an inch,’ he said.

  Why did it take so long for Honecker’s colleagues to turn against him? There had been moves to oust him the previous February, but the plot fell apart. Planning chief Gerhard Schürer, one of the most powerful of the oligarchs in the regime, discussed removing Honecker with Krenz, who seemed like the only obvious successor acceptable to a majority of the old guard. ‘I’ll make you a suggestion,’ Schürer had said. ‘I’m an old man and in any case close to retirement. I’ll leave some time soon. I shall demand that Honecker . . . be removed. Of course you can’t intervene and say “I want to be General Secretary”. But I can propose you. I’m prepared to do this because otherwise the GDR will go kaputt.’ The two men discussed it for three hours at Schürer’s country retreat in Thuringia, Dierhagen. But finally Krenz said he was not prepared to unseat ‘my foster father and political teacher. I can’t do it. There’ll have to be a biological solution to this problem.’14

  Krenz could have made a move while Honecker was ill, but he felt constrained. He decided to wait until after the fortieth anniversary celebrations ‘which were so desperately important to him’ were over. This was not because Krenz was a sensitive and caring soul. He was deeply ambitious. His caution was because he was unsure of his own strength. Now he realised there could be no delay. He could not afford to wait for the ‘biological solution’ offered by Honecker’s death, which could take many years. He had to act now. ‘There were too many things that can happen by accident,’ Schabowski said. ‘At a demonstration someone throws a stone, it hits a soldier, another soldier gets scared or trigger-happy and then the shooting starts. If that happens I thought we could all say goodbye - they’d come at us Party men and we’ll all be hanging from trees.’15

  The other plotters were Siegfried Lorenz, Party boss in Karl-Marx-Stadt and a crucial, though unexpected supporter, the Stasi chief Erich Mielke, who was looking out for his own position. The head of the East German trade unions, Harry Tisch, a powerful man in the state, was behind the coup. So was the Prime Minister, Willi Stoph. Tisch visited Moscow and tipped off Gorbachev’s entourage that the move was imminent. Gorbachev’s immediate reaction was extraordinary for a Soviet leader. He told Shevardnadze, but no other Communist magnates in Moscow. Nor did he consult any other leading figures in the ‘socialist commonwealth’. According to his chief adviser on Germany, his first thought was to discuss it with Kohl and Bush.16

  On Monday 16 October, most of the country’s top Communists were in a meeting room at the Party headquarters watching live footage on West German TV from Leipzig, where this time a vast crowd of at least 120,000 people, no longer scared that violence would be used against them, demonstrated. This was one of a dozen protests in other towns and cities throughout the GDR that evening. They were chanting ‘Gorby, Gorby’, ‘Wir sind das Volk’ and - for the first time that Honecker was aware - ‘Down with the Wall’. Honecker repeatedly said, ‘Now, surely something has to be done.’ The army Chief of Staff, Colonel-General Fritz Streletz, refused point-blank to bring out his men against peaceful demonstrators. ‘We can’t do anything. We will let the whole thing take its course peacefully.’17

  The leadership was due to meet at the Party headquarters the next morning, Tuesday 17 October. At dawn, Mielke rang the Stasi officer in charge of security in the building and ordered him to make sure that the main meeting room was surrounded by reliable men. He did not want Honecker to summon his own personal bodyguards at the time his political assassination was taking place. The plotters had planned everything to the last detail. At ten, while the meeting was coming to order, Stoph began. ‘Please, General Secretary, Erich, I suggest a new first item be placed on the agenda. It is the release of Erich Honecker from his duties as General Secretary, and the election of Egon Krenz in his place.’

  Honecker expected none of this. He thought he still had time left. But he did not allow his face to change expression. As if nothing had happened, he simply ignored the Prime Minister’s comme
nt and said ‘Let’s get on with the agenda.’ Several voices protested. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘All right then, let everyone have their say.’ First he called the old guard, people he expected would support him. But one by one they all turned against him. They had done his bidding for years, obediently. Now, not a single voice spoke up for him. When the vote came it was unanimous. In the time-honoured way of Communist Parties, he performed his final duty and put his hand up to vote against himself. The industry chief Mittag and propaganda chief Hermann were ousted at the same time and Krenz was unanimously elected General Secretary.

  Without saying a word Honecker left the room and returned to his office to make two phone calls. The first was to the Soviet Ambassador: ‘Hello, Comrade Honecker here,’ he said. ‘I want to tell you straight away . . . that it has been decided to relieve me of my duties. The decision was unanimous.’ A few minutes later he called his wife. ‘Well, it has happened.’ He collected some personal items and then asked his driver to take him to his villa in Wandlitz. He never entered the building again.18

  FORTY-FOUR

  PEOPLE POWER

  East Berlin, Tuesday 31 October 1989

  THE PLOTTERS WHO REMOVED Erich Honecker from power believed they would earn the people’s gratitude and respect. They were badly mistaken. The new Party boss, Egon Krenz, had for many years been the second most hated man in the country. In the forty-six days he was to survive in office, he achieved the distinction of reaching top spot. The first big demonstration calling for his resignation took place on the evening that he replaced Honecker. Though he now attempted to present himself as a reformer, a man who had always wanted liberal changes in the GDR, nobody believed him. They remembered that he had been crown prince in the GDR for many years, and behaved like one. They remembered that he was the man who just a few months ago had praised the clearly fraudulent election results as an example of democracy in action. Many East Germans still had a mental picture of him in Beijing, which he visited soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre, shaking hands with Deng Xiaoping and praising China’s firm action to quell unrest.