the struggle between a revived Croatian national-
ism and Serbia.
Serbia sought to dominate the other republics;
Croatian nationalism not only resisted Serbian
pretensions but had its own designs on the eth-
nically mixed population of the republic of Bosnia
and Herzogovina, while the Serbs in Croatia were
protesting against the discrimination practised
against them. The Slovenes not only wanted
to rid themselves of all communist control but
also desired virtual independence. Free elec-
tions fatally weakened not only the communists,
however much they attempted to distance them-
selves from the past by renaming their party, but
also the federal union.
By comparison with their Eastern European
neighbours, the Germans living in the now
defunct German Democratic Republic appeared
to be the lucky ones. They were not simply cast
adrift, like those neighbours, cut off from the
Soviet Union, having to struggle to transform
their countries largely by their own efforts, with
relatively little Western help. The Germans in the
East were united with the most prosperous
country in Europe, their fellow Germans in the
West. Both lots of Germans had greeted with
jubilation the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on
9 November 1989.
The DDR economy was the most advanced of
all the economies in Eastern Europe. With help
and investment from the Federal Republic it was
expected it would be brought up to Western
standards after reunification. The costs of all this,
no doubt high temporarily, could be met by
increased state borrowing and then repaid from
the growth of the German economy as a whole.
Just as the Federal Republic was reaching an eco-
nomic plateau, here was the chance of another
Wirtschaftswunder, a happy combination of a
moral victory and an economic opportunity. But
it all went sour as quickly as the unexpected uni-
fication of Germany had been accomplished.
As 1989 began no one in Europe or the rest
of the world anticipated a cataclysmic change.
Erich Honecker, the DDR head of state, lauded
the ‘scarcely conceivable’ achievements of the
‘first socialist state of workers and peasants on
German soil’. The dour and dedicated commu-
nist Walter Ulbricht was forced in May 1971
to step down as party secretary, probably on
Moscow’s instructions, and was replaced by Erich
Honecker. It was Ulbricht who had ordered the
Berlin Wall to be built in August 1961 to stem
the haemorrhage of the ‘workers’ and ‘peasants’
crossing to freedom and a better life in the West.
He had also ruthlessly built up East German man-
ufacturing in heavy industry and chemicals,
regardless of the ecological cost. The attempt to
make the DDR an industrial and independent
communist showpiece fell apart under Honecker
in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the advantages
of a privileged relationship with the European
Community: trade between the two Germanies
counted as internal EEC trade, a concession to
the Federal Republic which offered automatic
West German citizenship to any DDR citizen who
wanted it and could get to the West.
It is quite possible that Honecker actually
believed all the false statistics put out by his gov-
ernment showing how well things were going.
They were certainly going well enough for him and
the communist elite, living in the lap of luxury and
owning extravagantly appointed holiday villas on
land on which ordinary mortals were not allowed
to set foot. Control over the people was exercised
by the Stasi, the 85,000-strong security police who
relied on denunciations to alert them to dissident
comrades. As in National Socialist Germany, there
was no shortage of friends and neighbours, teach-
ers and managers, who were ready to spy and to
report wrong attitudes to the state authorities. The
bulging files of the Stasi are now among the most
embarrassing legacies of the DDR.
During the spring and summer of 1989,
Honecker resisted all pressures for reform, despite
the radical changes taking place among two of the
DDR’s neighbours, Poland and Hungary. In the
Kremlin, too, Gorbachev had shown that there
was no alternative to reform, to respect for human
rights and to the removal of the corrupt and stul-
tifying party apparatchiks. The DDR Politburo
did not welcome this, but the hardline comrades
could take heart from the firmness the Czech
leadership was showing. And if demonstrations
looked like getting out of hand, the Chinese900 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY