POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 59
Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund)—which was the umbrella organization of
the trade unions—or the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.
First and foremost, however, the growth in the membership fi gures for
the GDR social organizations refl ected a denial of change. It is therefore
necessary to take a look at party life as well as informally expressed views
in order to determine the degree of actual politicization among members.
These kinds of sources reveal that in the 1980s, the attitudes of comrades
hardly diff ered from those of noncomrades because a large portion of
the party basis shared the general dissatisfaction that had pervaded East
German society as a whole.^52 As of 1986, for example, the SED could no
longer maintain its usual “upward curve.” For the fi rst time, its member-
ship fi gures stagnated and a hardly detectable decline set in that proved
to be quite signifi cant in retrospect. The true status of the SED in terms of
membership became quite apparent in the mass departure from the party
that began in October 1989. Within a few months, the SED shrank to just
a tenth of its former size.^53
The same can also be said for the party press in that its political cov-
erage was important fi rst and foremost to those GDR residents whose
professions required them to represent the party line or at least bear it
in mind. Accordingly, most of the subscribers of Neues Deutschland were
SED members, and its political pages were read with most interest by
leading cadres, teachers, or party secretaries. The overwhelming major-
ity of GDR residents, however, preferred newspapers that covered local
news or topics related to culture and daily life.^54
This coagulation of party life and the media was not irrelevant for the
transformation of political life in the GDR that fed into its collapse in
- The internal commitment to the ideological core of the party’s pol-
itics had waned even among its protagonists, leading to the crystalliza-
tion of interest groups—often among party members—that increasingly
followed their own agendas. Moreover, some markers indicate that as
early as the late 1970s, top managers in the economic-technical sector
had already adopted a primarily pragmatic approach to their jobs.^55 By
the mid-1980s at the latest, some social scientists and journalists had also
reevaluated the role of their professions under the banner of glasnost.
Internally at least, they disavowed their propagandist role, promising
to provide a realistic impression of what was happening in the repub-
lic.^56 Likewise, on the fringes of the offi cial organizations, and especially
within the Kulturbund (the Cultural Association of the GDR), space was
carved out for seemingly “apolitical” activities, such as the cultivation
of heritage, which eff ectively stripped these associations of their func-
tion as “transmission belts” of the party.^57 In the Gesellschaft für Natur
und Umwelt (Society for Nature and the Environment) that was part of