Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dramatic change in Europe continued uninterrupted during the day, as the Soviet Union and the four other Warsaw Pact nations condemned their own invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In Leipzig, East Germany, about 200,000 demonstrators broke into wild rounds of applause as speakers called for German reunification...
Similarly, at a meeting of the opposition group New Forum in Potsdam's Erloser Church, an overflow crowd of 5,000 booed, whistled and stamped their feet when party theoretician Otto Reinhold, until recently one of the East German guardians of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, proclaimed his conversion to reform by saying that the constitutionally enshrined leading role of the Socialist Unity Party (S.E.D.) was a thing of the past. From the audience a voice shouted, "Wendehals!" (turncoat), unleashing an uproar in the audience...
Wendehals literally means turn neck, the name of a rare bird that can twist its head 180 degrees; the word has been adopted by East Germans to refer to the thousands of Communist Party officials, from Egon Krenz, the current party leader, down to district secretaries, who overnight began to sound as if they had joined the pro-democracy movement. A favorite target is Gunter Mittag, the recently sacked Politburo member in charge of the economy. Described by the newly outspoken East German press as arrogant and autocratic, Mittag is being held responsible for wrecking the economy and cooking...
...fact, each concession by Krenz seems to have created a fresh threat to his political survival. The opening of the borders to the West, for example, permitted a torrential outflow of East German marks, carried out by citizens who at last could use them, even at absurdly low rates, to buy something -- in the West. Fretted Prime Minister Modrow: "East Germany must not become a nation of speculators." The government's bewilderment underlined the problems encountered by a Communist leadership, albeit a reform-minded one, in coming face to face with the complexities of capitalism. Within a matter of days...
...modern spy literature is the death of Alec Leamas, shot by G.D.R. Grenzpolizisten at the Wall in the last scene of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. John le Carre's bleak and entirely believable novel was published in 1963, only two years after the East German regime built the Wall. Since then, Le Carre's surviving operatives and those of Len Deighton, another notable English spymaster, have made dodgy livings evading Vopos at the Wall, armed with little but false passports and the turned-up collars of their raincoats...