In Europe

when he encountered the financial shambles of the DDR. According to a report from the central planning agency, the country subsisted almost entirely on loans from the West. Stopping them would mean ‘the immediate lowering of the standard of living by twenty-five to thirty per cent, and would make the DDR ungovernable’.
    In his public appearances, Krenz used an entirely new jargon, peppered with terms such as ‘openness’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘change’. But the popular movement could no longer be stopped. Citizens’ forums were being set up all over the country. The demonstrations grew with each passing week, from 120,000 demonstrators in Leipzig on 16 October to half a million Berliners on 4 November. ‘Gorby!’ they shouted, and ‘
Wir sind das Volk!’
and sometimes even ‘
Deutschland, einig Vaterland!
’ The demonstration in Berlin was broadcast live on East German television. The writer Stefan Heym said: ‘It is as though a window has been thrown open!’
    On 7 November, the East German government was trying desperately to contact Moscow: the pressure at the borders had become too great, the relaxation of travel restrictions to West Germany could no longer be avoided. But the Soviet leaders were unreachable; they were too busy with the festivities surrounding the anniversary of the October Revolution. That day the East German council of ministers stepped down, followed the next day by the Politburo of the SED.
    On Thursday evening, 9 November, the DDR regime decided to expand the possibilities for its citizens to go abroad, although border documents were still required and travellers had to meet certain criteria. Afterwards, the general secretary of the central committee of the SED, Günter Schabowski, held a chaotic press conference that was broadcast live. Without having thoroughly read the minutes of the meeting, he announced that East German citizens were now allowed to travel abroad without prior permission.‘Starting when?’ a journalist asked. Schabowski:‘Starting immediately, I think.’ It took a moment to register, but then everyone realised what this meant: the wall had fallen.
    East Berlin clergyman and opposition leader Werner Krätschell, along with his twenty-year-old daughter Konstanze and her girlfriend Astrid, were among the first to drive across the border at Bornholmer Strasse. The notes he made that day read: ‘Dream and reality become confused. The border guards let us through. The girls cry. They huddle together on the back seat, as though expecting an air raid. We drive across the strip which, for the last twenty-eight years, has been a death zone. And suddenly we see West Berliners. They wave, cheer, shout. I drive down Osloer Strasse to my old school, where I received my diploma in 1960. Out of the blue, Astrid asks me to stop the car at the next junction. All she wants is to put her foot down on the street. To touch the ground. Armstrong stepping onto the moon. She had never been in the West before.’
    The dramatic images of that night were seen around the world. But the next day, if only for a moment, the Kremlin seriously considered restoring the old situation by force. Four of Gorbachev's closest advisers urged him to have the Soviet army intervene. In their eyes, an open borderposed an unallowable risk. But Gorbachev understood that any attempt to turn back the hands of time would lead only to a head-on conflict with the United States and West Germany. That was a conflict he dearly wished to avoid. He was still optimistic about the inner resiliency of the system: the transition to greater freedom and openness, he believed, would strengthen communism rather than weaken it.
    And the communist regimes fell like dominoes. The dissident movement in Prague grew each day; in late November Václav Havel and Alexander Dubžcek stood before a cheering crowd of a quarter of a million people. Stasi offices all over East Germany were attacked and rifled. In Sofia, 50,000 Bulgarians demonstrated against the Communist Party's hegemony. In Bucharest, Ceauşsescu and his wife Elena were booed by the crowd, riots broke out, and the Rumanian Army stopped following orders.
    Meanwhile, an unknown KGB agent in Dresden, Vladimir Putin, had tried to pile so many documents into a burning stove that the thing exploded.

Chapter FIFTY-NINE
Niesky
    IN THE FAR EASTERN CORNER OF THE FORMER DDR, CLOSE TO THE Polish border, lies the town of Niesky. Everything here looks brand new: the houses