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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 69-7-164
TITLE:             Gorbachev's Reforms and the GDR
BY:                E. Kautsky
DATE:              1987-3-6
COUNTRY:           Soviet Union
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD Background Report/32

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RAD Background Report/32
(German Democratic Republic)
6 March 1987

GORBACHEV'S REFORMS AND THE GDR
by E. Kautsky

Summary: East Berlin's reserved response to
Mikhail Gorbachev's address to the CPSU CC
plenum in late January has fueled speculation
about possible differences between Moscow and
East Berlin.

* * *

East German Reservations. Neues Deutschland carried
only a five-column TASS summary of Gorbachev's speech at the
January plenum of the CPSU CC, and his controversial comments on
the state of Soviet society and the need for a reform of the
party were mentioned only gingerly.[1] This was followed by a
number of articles in the East German press highlighting the
achievements of the SED's own policies over the past decade, the
clear implication being that the GDR is neither interested in
nor in need of the type of "radical reforms" Gorbachev has been
demanding. A major speech by SED leader Erich Honecker in
mid-February before regional party secretaries seemed to confirm
that East Berlin is planning to continue its current policies
and that it sees little pressing need for major reforms.[2]

The East Germans have had reservations about specific
aspects of Gorbachev's policies since last spring; this was
evident both in the East German treatment of the 27th CPSU
Congress in Moscow in February and at the SED's own 11th party
congress in April, which was attended by Gorbachev. Although
there is clearly some question about exactly how radical
Gorbachev's reform proposals will turn out to be in practice,
the impression that the reform process is accelerating and
broadening in the USSR has caused more attention to be paid to
how the idea of reform is viewed in Eastern Europe.

The East German authorities are certainly not opposed to
reform as such in the USSR. The SED is well aware of the
breadth of the social, economic, and political problems facing

This material was prepared for the use of the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

[page 2]

RAD BR/32

Soviet society. A Soviet Union with a strong economy and with a
dynamic political leadership leading the socialist community is
clearly in East Berlin's interest. It is therefore wrong to
speak of East German opposition to reform in the USSR in
general.

The Applicability of Economic Reform. The real question
is not the Soviet Union's need for reform but rather the
applicability of Soviet reform concepts to its allies. A
breakdown of Gorbachev's reform proposals reveals East German
reservations about their relevance to the current problems
facing the GDR. A major impetus behind Gorbachev's proposals is
the state of the Soviet economy, or what has been termed the
need for the "acceleration of social and economic progress" in
the USSR. East Berlin can argue, with some justification, that
the Soviet need for "radical reform" is a result of Moscow's
failure to respond to emerging problems in a quick and orderly
fashion, thereby allowing them to reach a point where they
require a radical cure. The GDR, so East Berlin maintains, has
gradually been responding to the problems of technological
innovation and economic modernization for some years. As a
result, it does not need the sort of crash course in reform that
the USSR does.

The East German authorities can point to past Soviet praise
on this issue from Gorbachev himself and others as proof that
the GDR is already on the right track. The same point was made
in two East German press reports published after Gorbachev's
speech to the CC plenum in January. On January 29 Neues
Deutschland carried a two-page report on the social and
economic achievements of the Honecker era, thereby emphasizing
what Honecker described as the "exemplary" achievements of the
SED's policies over the last decade. Two days later it carried
excerpts from an article in the January issue of the Soviet
journal Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta written by a Soviet factory
manager who had recently returned from a visit to the GDR.[3]
According to the article, although the GDR faced many of the
same problems as the Soviet economy, the SED was looking for a
solution to them in its own way. The author also said that the
reform that had introduced combines into the GDR put it ahead of
the USSR in terms of industrial organization. This sort of
article is, of course, designed to emphasize that the GDR has
already taken steps in the direction that Gorbachev now wants to
go and that it is, in fact, one step ahead.

Political Innovation. A more sensitive and difficult
issue for the SED to handle is Gorbachev's political style and
his glasnost' campaign. It is interesting, for example, that
the SED has yet to come up with an official translation of the
word glasnost'. Gorbachev's appeals for greater frankness
were certainly aimed at a number of problems other than
economic, some of which, the SED maintains, do not apply to the
GDR. Most Western observers would grant, for example, that the
SED is a much better disciplined Leninist party and, more

[page 3]

RAD BR/32

important, far less corrupt than the CPSU. In short, although
the SED's linen may not be quite as pure as it often maintains,
it is also not as soiled as that of the CPSU, and East Berlin
shows no inclination to wash it in public. SED officials also
react to demands for greater openness to the West by insisting
that the GDR is the socialist country by far most exposed to
Western influence through West German television and radio and
the millions of Western visitors to East Berlin annually.

It is clear, however, that Gorbachev's glasnost' campaign
entails more than merely eliminating corruption or simply
opening the window to the West a notch. It involves greater
openness and criticism, reform of the party, new electoral
procedures, and a revision of the nomenklatura system. There
are no signs of any such changes taking place in the GDR and any
public discussion of party reform is still taboo, although it
may be the subject of considerable discussion behind closed
doors. It is of interest, for example, that while Honecker
emphasized in his recent speech to regional party secretaries
how well socialist democracy was working in practice, he also
conceded that the cadre had to understand the significance of
ensuring that local citizens were aware of this.

A Cultural Thaw. If the SED's view that the Soviet
economic reform proposals are not necessarily applicable to the
GDR is somewhat credible, claims that it has already introduced
many of the features of glasnost' are suspect. It is a poorly
kept secret in East Berlin that much more is happening in Soviet
cinemas and theaters than in the GDR. Although censorship has
been relaxed slightly in recent years, the country has never
recovered from the exodus of talent to the West. As a result,
official East German cultural life has become stale if not
sterile. It is precisely in this area that Gorbachev has raised
hopes of change in the GDR, and it is also here that the SED has
thus far shown little sign of opening up.

On the question of dissidents and human rights, Honecker
carefully distinguishes between "socialist democracy" and
"Western bourgeois democracy"; and he went to some lengths in
defending the GDR's performance in this area in his speech
before regional party secretaries. Nonetheless, there are
obvious differences between the CPSU and the SED. One can
hardly imagine an East German secret police officer being
publicly rebuked, and it is inconceivable that Honecker would
telephone a well-known East German dissident in exile and ask
him to return home and work for his county. One should also note
that the GDR, with less than 17,000,000 inhabitants, is believed
to have some 5,000 political prisoners, a much higher figure
than many estimates for the entire Soviet Union.

To Reform or Not To Reform. A number of objective and
subjective factors might help explain official East German
reticence about Gorbachev's reform package. First, Gorbachev
has said that the problems facing the USSR have reached the

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RAD BR/32

point where the Soviet Union is badly in need of "radical
reforms." For an SED CC Secretary sitting in East Berlin,
surveying a fairly well-functioning economy and relative
political stability, there seems to be little pressing need for
such a plunge into unknown waters.

Secondly, there is also a generational factor. The Honecker
leadership is composed of people who are a product of the
Brezhnev era, the legacy of which is now under attack in the
USSR. Equally important, they are people whose formative
political experience included witnessing the shock waves of
de-Stalinization hit Eastern Europe in the mid-1950s and who
still vividly recall the trauma of "reforms from above" getting
"out of control" in Czechoslovakia in 1968. While younger party
members may be more inclined to experiment in this or that area,
the top echelons of the SED still include members of a
generation that sets much store by security and control and for
whom Gorbachev's reforms may seem to involve more potential
risks and questions than they provide answers to East German
problems.

Thirdly, the SED also faces the difficulty of keeping
rising expectations in the GDR under control. Although the
authorities may not perceive an acute need for reform, this may
not be the case among the public. Gorbachev is undoubtedly
popular in the GDR. His reforms have raised hopes for change
among East Germans, who learn a great deal more about
Gorbachev's ideas from West German television than from Neues
Deutschland. The SED could, of course, simply say that
Gorbachev's reforms were fine for Soviet society but not
applicable to the GDR. This, however, would raise a number of
sensitive ideological issues concerning the Soviet Union's
leading role in the socialist community.

The final factor, evolving Soviet attitudes toward the
reform process, will be crucial in determining future East
German and other East European reactions to Gorbachev's reform
course. At the moment, the Soviet leadership certainly has its
hands full with a long list of domestic and foreign policy
priorities. The last thing it needs is instability in Eastern
Europe. Moreover, the success of Gorbachev's reform program is
by no means a foregone conclusion. A wait-and-see element in
East European thinking is hardly surprising. Given the GDR's
past economic and political performance, Moscow may well regard
the GDR as a small but important pillar of stability in

holding-up the socialist community in Eastern Europe while it gets its
own house in order. In the final analysis, it will all depend
upon the results of the Soviet leader's policies. The longer
Gorbachev's intended reforms last, the broader their scope,
and--most important--the more apparent their success, the
greater the challenge becomes for all East European regimes,
including that in the GDR, to introduce reform themselves.
Conversely, the failure of the Soviet reform plans might reverse
any tendency to reform that does exist in Eastern Europe.

[page 5]

RAD BR/32

* * *

1   For coverage of the CPSU CC plenum, see Neues Deutschland, 28 and 30
January 1987.

2   See Honecker's speech in Neues Deutschland, 9-10 February 1987.

3   Neues Deutschland, 31 January-1 February 1987.

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