Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...legitimacy and the very existence of the G.D.R. that Honecker is trying to protect by rejecting reform, though the impression he generates is more akin to paralysis. The air of confusion and impotence in East Berlin has intensified since he dropped out of sight on Aug. 14. Officially, he is recuperating from a gallbladder operation, but the whispers have grown louder that he has cancer. Even if Honecker's political life is over, his successor | is not expected to deviate from the status quo course Honecker has set. The consensus among the Politburo's 26 members (average...
...public ceremonies, are at least as conservative. The rise of either of them to the top job would mean no change from the present course. "They are signaling that the old line is the right line for the future," says Fred Oldenburg, senior analyst at the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne...
...pressures. Now the Soviets have put themselves on the sidelines by vowing noninterference in the domestic affairs of Eastern Europe. In a report to the Kremlin that leaked in West Germany last week, Valentin Falin, head of the international department of the Soviet party's Central Committee, said the East German leadership had "sharply rebuffed" advice from Moscow but was "powerless" to deal with the crisis. He predicted that "hard-to-control mass demonstrations" would break out in East Germany by early next year...
Last week Mittag declared, "Nothing and no one will divert us from the course of doing everything for the well-being and happiness of the people." If East Germans are paying any attention, steadfast pledges like that can only increase the flow of emigres to the West...
...history is offering up startling new images that bear none of the hallmarks of traditional statesmanship. Last week history was made amid the flutter of colorful balloons, the sputtering of rattletrap Trabants and Wartburgs and -- pop! -- the burst of champagne corks. It was the Great Trek Westward, and as East Germans headed for new lives in West Germany, the world witnessed a unique spectacle: an East European country defying its Warsaw Pact brethren and openly collaborating with the West to aid and abet refugees in their flight to freedom...