Word: krenz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Egon Krenz is alive and well -- and seriously unemployed. "Living without work is my biggest problem, and I don't think I'll get a job soon," says Krenz, 53, whose hold on power as Erich Honecker's successor lasted a mere seven weeks. Since his fall, Krenz has kept busy jogging near his home in Berlin, doing the family shopping and writing When Walls Fall, a personal memoir and an account of the last days of the old regime. While he was in a West German bookstore recently, an East German walked up and slapped him in the face...
With his ruling coalition threatening to implode, Prime Minister Hans Modrow invited twelve opposition groups to join the government. They agreed on condition that Modrow suspend his Communist Party membership and the new Cabinet include no other Communists. Egon Krenz, Modrow's predecessor for only six weeks, was summarily expelled from the Communist Party he once...
...East Germany. It started with freedom marches in Leipzig. For a long moment, it looked as though there might be another Tiananmen after all. On Oct. 9 the 77-year-old party boss Erich Honecker ordered the police to use "all available force" to clear the streets, but Egon Krenz, then in charge of security, persuaded him to rescind the order. Each week the Monday demonstrations grew, to 200,000 on Oct. 23, to 480,000 on Nov. 6. The marches, always peaceful and sober, increasingly impressive, spread throughout East Germany...
...40th anniversary of the communist state, Gorbachev cautioned the leaders that they could not count on Soviet support if they used force to crack down, and advised them to launch their own perestroika: "Life itself punishes those who delay." Eleven days later, Honecker was forced out and replaced by Krenz, who immediately sought to appease the marching crowds and the demands from his party for faster reform. His tenure was brief but memorable, if only because he ordered the opening of the Berlin Wall, the ultimate symbol of the Iron Curtain...
...political scientists debate whether great forces or great men move the world. By unleashing the forces of democracy, Gorbachev gave new luster to the great-man theory. He may not be able to control those forces himself. They could even sweep him away, just as they did Egon Krenz and Karoly Grosz and Milos Jakes. But no matter what happens next in the great Eurasian land mass where 1.8 billion people live under communism -- and no matter what happens to Gorbachev himself -- he has established his place in history as the catalyst of a new European reality. "Any nation...