Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...literal destruction of the Wall would, in many respects, be redundant. Honecker's successor, Egon Krenz, has promised that most East German travel restrictions will be lifted, making it possible for citizens to travel freely to the West. The thousands who jammed the West German embassy in Prague last week seeking asylum testify to the futility of mere stones to bar the exodus. Johannes Chemnitzer, a member of the East German Communist Party's Central Committee, admitted last week that with the borders open, the Wall's "meaning becomes limited and illusory...
Even if the Wall is stripped of political significance, it still serves a purpose by applying a brake to refugee traffic. An East German official predicts that once free travel wipes out border barriers, about 1.5 million of the country's 16.6 million citizens might head West. Without the Wall, West Berlin will bear the brunt of that great rush. But West Berlin's workers already resent the city's shortages of jobs and housing and the heavy concentration of alien guest workers from Turkey and ethnic Germans from the East bloc. Ironically, unless the burden of a new influx...
...fast as a Sunbelt mecca. In the past year, Washington has gained 100,000 people, most in the twelve-county Puget Sound Basin. A survey by Seattle demographer Laurie McCutcheon for the Puget Power Co. showed that in 1988 the fastest-growing area, suburban King County to the east of Seattle, received 12,700 new households from out of state, 22% of them from California...
...minute the ban was lifted, they were on the move again. At midnight last Tuesday East Germans regained the right to travel to Czechoslovakia that had been taken from them a month ago. Within days more than 8,000 had crossed the border, and by the weekend Czechoslovakia flung open its Western border to let the growing flood pass unhindered into West Germany. Those who stayed behind stepped up the mass demonstrations for reform that have dogged President Egon Krenz from the moment he took office three weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands marched through East Berlin on Saturday calling...
...true, that is a heady promise for a country that barely a month ago still cowered under one of the most monolithic and authoritarian of Communist regimes. The transformation east of the Wall has already been dramatic, indeed incredible: Who could have imagined East Berlin's Communist Party boss, mayor and police chief standing on the steps of city hall for five hours, listening patiently to criticisms that would once have been considered virtually treasonable...