POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 51
order to meet with civil rights activists, and she also corresponded with
Honecker.^21 As most of these meetings were with prominent dissidents,
however, the diff ering goals of the people’s movement in the fall of 1989
came as quite a surprise even to politicians like Kelly.
Eventually, the GDR gained recognition at a price that Honecker
thought was not too high considering the Soviet safety net. Accordingly,
the GDR became involved in the Western discourse on human rights; it
moved toward growing economic independence; and it came to terms
with the Westernization of its society as a whole. The SED leadership
was well aware of the risks associated with these moves. Consequently, it
strengthened its periodic propaganda campaigns, cemented the institu-
tions of SED rule, and grossly expanded its surveillance. It only began to
moderate its confrontational tone slightly in the 1980s over the course of
the billion-mark loans and the preparations for Honecker’s trip to Bonn.
The reports on popular opinion prepared by the Stasi and secret West-
ern investigations, however, continued to concur that the population of
the GDR leaned toward those actors and political forms that promised
more freedom and the opening of its borders. They thus enthusiastically
approved of Willy Brandt’s new Ostpolitik, but had little understanding
for the NATO Double-Track Decision and the arms race of what has been
referred to as the Second Cold War. For this reason, the majority of the
GDR population was not opposed to the offi cial international recognition
of the GDR, but they saw their interests being championed in Bonn and
not in East Berlin.^22
German-German negotiations also left their mark on the loyal party
milieu within East German society. This dialog, along with the general
opening up to the West, often met with resistance within these circles,
and collaboration with protagonists such as Franz-Josef Strauß, who en-
gineered the so-called billion-mark loan, deeply demoralized this core of
party support. As a result, a confrontation was brewing between those
opposed to such measures and the more pragmatic circles of the GDR
elite, which ultimately undermined the SED’s ability to negotiate in the
1980s.
Politicization and Solidifi cation
Scholarship has often pointed to a change in the Federal Republic in the
1970s/80s that liberalized its political culture. During this period, “au-
thoritative” values sank while trust in the political system, as well as po-
litical interest itself, grew.^23 Konrad Jarausch has described this shift as
a “recivilizing process” that took place after 1968, which he frames as a