Word: stasis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tale sounded like a John le Carre thriller, and with good reason: the main character is believed to have been the model for the novelist's Karla, the fabled communist spy master. Markus Wolf, former chief of the foreign intelligence arm of Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police, emerged in Vienna last week, where he had been secretly living since Aug. 30. He applied for political asylum in Austria -- a request that was promptly denied. The wily spy chief, who is wanted in Germany on espionage charges, is currently free on appeal...
...rare police vehicle. One reason for the lack of law enforcement is that eastern policemen are unfamiliar with the federal laws now in effect. The problem is compounded by a lack of manpower: thousands of police quit their jobs before unification or were dismissed because of party or Stasi connections...
...them former communist functionaries who, says one observer, "cannot believe they can hang up the socialist dream like a soiled coat." They remain loyal even though thousands have lost their jobs because of what Germans call Ausgrenzung, or discrimination against those linked to the communist hierarchy or the Stasi...
...military hospital near Potsdam to a similar facility outside Moscow. Honecker faces charges of manslaughter in Germany, but at 78, and reportedly suffering from cancer, he is unlikely ever to face trial. That is also true of Erich Mielke, the former Minister of State Security and boss of the Stasi. Mielke is 83 and, according to his lawyers, incompetent to stand trial by reason of senility...
Other Germans disagree. "You cannot build a new start on a lie," says Barbel Bohley, a leading civil rights activist from Eastern Germany. She warns of the possibility of a "corruptible parliament with members susceptible to blackmail" for their Stasi past. Says Karl-Dietrich Bracher, a political scientist at the University of Bonn: "If we were to have a general amnesty, there would be a general disgust with politics. Some kind of purification is necessary...