Joachim Scholtyseck

"GDR Dissidents and Human Rights Issues "

While dissidents in the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were able to take advantage of the Helsinki Process, the situation for those opponents of the Soviet rule who lived in East Germany was entirely different. Until the building of the Wall in 1961 it always had been a possibility to escape to West Berlin or West Germany. This exodus had constantly destabilized the East German regime.  In the years of détente, when the Human Rights issues seemed to offer further opportunities for the ventilation of dissent, new challenges arose for the East German dictatorship. While the SED-regime never really succeeded in quelling dissent and opposition, the effects from Helsinki and its follow-up meetings were again markedly different from those which were taken place in Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest or Prague:
1. The artificial situation of two German states, the constant visiting of West Germans to East German relatives and the growing communication  between the two parts of the country as a result of the Helsinki process always had the effect of a challenge to communist domination. Breshnew `s comment in 1975 to Honecker: „Don’t forget: With the cars comes the ideology“ was a reminder how weak this domination really was. Nevertheless, dissent against violation of Human Rights in the first years after Helsinki were mainly voiced by pressure groups in West Germany, which often were formed by citizens  who had fled the East German dictatorship.
2. Many of the  political activists who were a force for destabilization and change within East Germany as aresult of Helsinki applied for visas to leave to West Germany; by grudgingly allowing the „Ausreise“ as a form of protest, the SED leadership cleverly controlled the ventilation of dissent. The GDR by this way got rid of many dissenters, while the retreatist majority in East German stayed quiescent politically. The potential of revolt and opposition, which could have used the CSCE as a challenge to communist rule, was seriously diminished.
3. Compared to other opposition movements in the eastern hemisphere the forces of resistance against the communist rule thus always were small. Only in 1988 and 1989 mass mobilization could be regarded as a serious phenomenon which significantly supported the implosion of the dictatorship. On the other hand these mass protests of autumn 1989, which were clearly influenced by the opposition in the neighbouring countries, reached a strength which led to the quick demise of the GDR – and the whole Soviet rule.