Word: krenz
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...dropped from power last week. Both East Germany's Cabinet and the Communist Party Politburo resigned en masse, to be replaced by bodies in which reformers mingled with hard-liners. And that, supposedly, was only the start. On the same day that East Germany threw open its borders, Egon Krenz, 52, President and party leader, promised "free, general, democratic and secret elections," though there was no official word as to when. Could the Socialist Unity Party, as the Communists call themselves in East Germany, lose in such balloting? "Theoretically," replied Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin party boss and a Politburo...
...East Germany the situation came close to spinning out of control. Considered a hard-liner, Krenz succeeded the dour Erich Honecker as party chief only three weeks ago, and eleven days after a state visit by Mikhail Gorbachev. Ever since, Krenz has had to scramble to find concessions that might quiet public turmoil and enable him to hang on to at least a remnant of power. He has been spurred by a series of mass protests -- one demonstration in Leipzig drew some 500,000 East Germans -- demanding democracy and freedoms small and large, and by a fresh wave of flight...
...Wall, of course, was built in August 1961 for the very purpose of stanching an earlier exodus of historic dimensions, and for more than a generation it performed the task with brutal efficiency. Opening it up would have seemed the least likely way to stem the current outflow. But Krenz and his aides were apparently gambling that if East Germans lost the feeling of being walled in, and could get out once in a while to visit friends and relatives in the West or simply look around, they would feel less pressure to flee the first chance they got. Beyond...
Later in the day, two young workers from an East Berlin electronics factory who drove through Checkpoint Charlie in a battered blue 1967 Skoda provided a hint that Krenz may in fact have scored a masterstroke by relieving some of the pressure to emigrate. Uwe Grebasch, 28, the driver, said he and his companion, Frank Vogel, 28, had considered leaving East Germany for good but decided against it. "We can take it over there as long as we can leave once in a while," said Grebasch. "Our work is O.K., but they must now let us travel where we want...
Gorbachev in fact may have done more than merely support the East German opening. It was no coincidence that Honecker resigned shortly after the Soviet President visited East Berlin, and that the pace of reform picked up sharply after Krenz returned from conferring with Gorbachev in Moscow two weeks ago. In pursuing perestroika -- in his eyes not to be limited to the U.S.S.R. -- and preaching reform, Gorbachev has made it clear that Moscow will tolerate almost any political or economic system among its allies, so long as they remain in the Warsaw Pact and do nothing detrimental to Soviet security...