East Germany’s New Order

By yesterday, 9.5 million of East Germany’s 16.5 million citizens had applied for and received foreign travel visas in the week since the country threw open its borders. That staggering statistic speaks volumes about the frustration and explosive claustrophobia affecting the long-penned-in populace. Not all visa holders, to be sure, plan an early test of their new travel freedom--although on Friday alone more than a million crossed into West Germany--and probably only a small number of those who do go out will choose not to return. But when 60% of the population shows that it has one eye on the exit, a powerful message is being sent.

The regime is responding to that message by shaking up both the government and the Communist Party hierarchy and by promising changes to make more credible the image of “socialism with a human face.” That phrase, which has been recurring for decades in Eastern Europe, seeks to suggest greater tolerance in social and intellectual affairs along with expanded material comforts, all under the continuing rule of the party. As far as the country’s economic future is concerned, Prime Minister Hans Modrow says he’s ready to allow more small-scale private enterprise, for example in retail trade. But he specifically rejects any major turn toward a free market. His plan is to tinker with the system, not overturn it.

East Germans will, however, see more political power-sharing than ever before, thanks to the new prominence given four small parties that heretofore had only token representation in government. Power sharing in this case, though, is not the same thing as a real sharing of power. Although the non-Communist parties have 11 seats in the new cabinet, the commanding heights of government--the ministries of defense, interior, foreign affairs, finance, economy--will continue to be firmly under Communist control.

All this is unquestionably reform even if, in the light of recent events, it is reform at the bare minimum. The chance of far greater change in the near future nonetheless exists. For one thing, the free elections that party boss Egon Krenz has promised by 1991, along with a potential resuscitation of the non-Communist parties, points to the possible emergence of a real political opposition. Also, the simple unpredictability of events could force the country’s rulers to move faster and farther than they would like. The regime’s first need, as it well knows, is to try to gain greater credibility and popular confidence. Those 9.5 million travel visas that East Germans have claimed indicate how formidable that task is.