Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...paradox is that East Germany's 40th birthday party should have been a glorious moment for the 77-year-old Honecker. Largely because of his grimly orthodox leadership, "Honi" could boast of giving the German Democratic Republic the strongest economy, the finest industry and one of the best-fed, best-housed and best-educated populations in the East bloc. It was the world's most successful -- or least unsuccessful -- example of Marxist government...
...refugees' flight seemed not only a dramatic act of rejection by his own people but also a challenge to the legitimacy -- and perhaps the very existence -- of Honecker's country. Beneath the flags and banners, East Germans are increasingly questioning who and what they are -- and not liking the answers. Those who have made their way to the West since the beginning of the year have done so not out of material desperation or fear of persecution but in blunt renunciation of the East German system. "It is a suffocating place, and we didn't see any chance...
Many who stay behind share the same anger and frustration. "People are leaving East Germany because they have lost all hope of change, because the Communists are closed to Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika," said Reinhard Schult, one of the founders of the biggest new opposition movement, New Forum. "We can no longer tolerate the kindergarten atmosphere or being constantly led by the nose on all fronts...
...under terms dictated by the Honecker regime, the special refugee trains were required to travel back through East German territory before depositing their human cargo in Bavaria. The face-saving yet ultimately self-defeating scheme was designed to permit authorities to engage in the fiction that they were "expelling" disloyal citizens. In the end, this petty legalism only encouraged more to flee. As the freedom trains slowed along hills and at curves, daring East Germans hopped aboard and joined the flight to the West...
That solution proved astonishingly short-lived. Within a few hours of the first transfer, new arrivals began showing up at the Prague embassy, many of them drawn by news of the safe passage of the first group. East Germany, believing that its agreement was for a once-only exodus, reacted angrily to Bonn's decision to allow more refugees into the compound...