From the decline of the GDR to German unity : Germany

The German Democratic Republic, which had been founded on 7October 1949, was a product of the Soviet Union. It was from the outset a communist dictatorship built on the foundations of the rule of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). The command economy, secret police, the all-powerful SED and strict censorship increasingly alienated the people and the regime. However, very inexpensive housing, health care and social services - made possible by government price-fixing and subsidies - gave this self-contained system a certain amount of flexibility which enabled the people to eke out an existence in many different ways. The GDR’s great success in international sports was a sort of compensation, just as the “workers” gained satisfaction from the fact that they soon had the highest rate of industrial production and the highest standard of living in the Eastern bloc, despite having to make huge reparations to the Soviet Union. The people’s reaction to state control and tutelage was to withdraw into their private sphere.

In spite of all the propaganda about annual production targets having been more than achieved, and behind the facade of an anti-imperialist indoctrination in schools, factories and the armed forces, it became increasingly clear that GDR’s original intention of overtaking the Federal Republic economically would remain a dream. Depleted resources and industry’s vicious destruction of the environment, coupled with loss of productivity as a consequence of central planning, forced the SED regime to go easy on its promises. It had to raise increasingly large loans in the West. Improvisation became the order of the day with regard to consumer goods. The quality of life and infrastructure (housing, transport, environmental protection) thus deteriorated. A Big-Brother spy network kept watch on everyone, and the system’s incessant propaganda and mendacious appeals for solidarity made the c’aim about the leadership role of “the working class and their Marxist-Leninist party” (Article 1 of the GDR constitution) sound like hollow rhetoric, especially to tne young generation.