Nonviolent Struggle and the Revolution in East Germany

Roland Bleiker

Monograph Series Number 6

The Albert Einstein Institution

Printed in the United States of America.
Printed on Recycled Paper.

The Albert Einstein Institution 1430 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138

ISSN 1052-1054 ISBN 1-880813-07-6

Acknowledgments	. Vi
Introduction	. 1
Chapter 1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DOMINATION, OPPOSITION,
AND REVOLUTION IN EAST GERMANY	.5
Repression and Dissent before the 1980s	.6
Mass Protests and the Revolution of 1989	.7
Chapter 2
THE POWER-DEVOLVING POTENTIAL
OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE	.10
Draining the System's Energy: The Role of "Exit"	.10
Displaying the Will for Change: The Role of "Voice"	.13
Voluntary Servitude and the Power of Agency:
Some Theoretical Reflections	. 15
Chapter 3
THE MEDIATION OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE:
COMPLEX POWER RELATIONSHIPS AND
THE ENGINEERING OF HEGEMONIC CONSENT	.21
The Multiple Faces of the SED Power Base	.21
Defending Civil Society Against the Encroachment
of the State	.24
The Link between the Struggle for Hegemony
and the Power of Nonviolent Action	.27
Chapter 4
IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION: VIEWING THE POWER OF AGENCY
IN ITS STRUCTURAL CONTEXT	.32
Appendix
CHRONOLOGY OF THE EAST GERMAN REVOLUTION 1989/90	.36
Notes	.44

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Roger Powers, editor of this series, for his fine editorial assistance. I also wish to thank the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs and especially the program's director, Doug Bond, for their support during my year there as a pre-doctoral fellow.

Roland Bleiker August 1993



























































			•

INTRODUCTION

We were more afraid of the people than the people had reason to be afraid of us.

[Statement by a member of the much feared Stasi, the East German State Security Service].¹

"We are the people" was the main battle cry of the nonviolent struggle that swept away the East German Communist regime in 1989. "We are the people," echoing hundreds of thousands of times through the streets of East Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Karl-Marx-Stadt, came to symbolize the protest of the people against an alienated government and the power of these unarmed masses to overthrow their tyrannical rulers.

The East German revolution is more than a watershed event in European history. The crumbling of the authoritarian regime also contains seminal instructive value, since it can provide us with insight into the nature of power as well as the potential and limits of nonviolent struggle. This monograph examines the events in East Germany with this particular interest in mind.

The stunning impact of these two methods of nonviolent action can be understood better with the help of a parsimonious insight about the nature of power, first proposed almost half a millennium ago by Étienne de la Boétie. As a young student at the University of Orléans, he hypothesized that any form of government, no matter how despotic and violent its nature, is always dependent upon the tacit consent of the population. De la Boétie further argued that since this consent rests upon voluntary grounds, it can be withdrawn at any time, which subsequently would lead to a disintegration of the existing authoritarian societal structure.³

The events in East Germany confirm certain elements of this bold premise. The impact of "voice" and "exit" forms of protest illustrate that (1) an authoritarian regime cannot generate and maintain its own power base through coercive means alone, and that (2) because this power base is also dependent upon popular support, the population can, through active withdrawal of cooperation, undermine the sustenance of the existing repressive system.

However, an analysis of the German revolution that stops at an affirmation of the power contained in nonviolent struggle remains incomplete. The events in East Germany are too complex to be assessed entirely through a theory of power that locates social dynamics on a dualistic axis between oppressor and oppressed. The fall of the Communist regime warrants an idiosyncratic analysis of the complex power relationships and structural influences that allowed nonviolent direct action to show its might. Needless to say, this monograph cannot do justice to such a complex task. I will only draw attention to two of these crucial contextual factors, namely the evolution of internationally, intranationally, and domestically conditioned restraints on popular resistance as well as the extent to which the efficacy of a nonviolent struggle is dependent upon the interaction between the state and civil society.

This monograph is divided into three sections. The first section provides a brief chronological overview of resistance and revolution in East Germany. The second section examines the role that "exit" and "voice" forms of protest played in the collapse of the Communist regime and then derives from this analysis a few theoretical implications for the dynamics of nonviolent struggle. The third section places the East German nonviolent struggle in the societal context that allowed it to emerge in its particular form and exert the power-devolv-

Introduction 3

ing effect that de la Boétie and others credit it with. A concluding section draws on this case study to present a few tentative theoretical and methodological suggestions for the future study of nonviolent direct action.

1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF DOMINATION, OPPOSITION, AND REVOLUTION IN EAST GERMANY

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Cold are also its lies; and this one crawls out of its mouth: "I, the state, am the voice of the people" . . . But the state lies through its teeth; and whatever it says, untrue it is—and whatever it has, stolen it is.

— Friedrich Nietzsche⁴

There is no way of objectively presenting "facts." Summarizing means selecting, judging, excluding, and, consequently, presenting a subjective viewpoint. Since attempting to separate "fact" and "interpretation" is futile, I will keep this section just detailed enough to offer a broad overview of the East German revolution. Many issues will reappear in the later analytical and theoretical sections. For the interested reader the appendix provides more data and an indepth chronology of events.

The existence of East Germany as a formally independent state was rooted in the defeat of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II and in the subsequent emergence of Cold War rivalries between the victorious forces. What should have been a transitional segmentation of Germany into four occupation zones turned into a quasi-permanent bifurcation of the country into two clearly separated areas, each submitted to the protection and tutelage of one of the two superpowers. In 1949, East Germany became a formally independent state under

the name Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic or GDR).

Repression and Dissent before the 1980s

Authoritarian tendencies were present in East Germany from the very beginning. The regime did not shy away from repressive and propagandistic measures to uphold its rule. Part of the legitimizing process was the attempt to portray the GDR as a multi-party state. The Communist Party, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), held only 25.4% of the seats in the parliament (Volkskammer). Yet, the leadership role of the SED was entrenched in the constitution and was never challenged. The parliament was little more than a rubber stamp, and virtually all of its members who represented the various other parties and labor unions were at the same time members of the SED.⁵

Opposition to the East German regime and its leader, Walter Ulbricht, existed ever since the 1950s. On June 17, 1953, spontaneous strikes and mass demonstrations emerged and were immediately repressed with great brutality by Soviet troops stationed in East Germany. This form of popular protest constituted an isolated case, and until the autumn of 1989, dissident activities remained limited to opposition from within the elite.⁶

Elite resistance during the 1950s formed itself around Wolfgang Harich and other like-minded advocates of reform, such as Walter Janka, Heinz Zöger, and Gustav Just. Most of them were condemned to long-term prison sentences after a series of farce-trials that exemplified the neo-Stalinist terror of the Ulbricht regime.⁷ The only form of popular protest during this time was the continuously increasing number of East Germans who were leaving for the West. By the early 1960s, already more than two and a half million citizens had departed. In an attempt to stop this mass emigration, the government ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall in June 1961 and established an "iron curtain" along its western borders.

Eckhart Jesse suggests that dissident activities enjoyed a slightly increased radius of activity after Erich Honecker replaced Walter Ulbricht in 1971.8 The normalization treaty between the two German states (Grundlagenvertrag), signed in 1972, also opened East Germany more to contacts with the West. Yet, repression in the form of prison

sentences and forced expatriation always remained part of the SED system of domination. As in the 1950s, the main dissidents between the 1960s and the very end of the East German regime were not radical democrats but reform-oriented communists or socialists, as two of the key dissident texts of the period, Robert Havemann's Dialektik ohne Dogma? and Rudolf Bahro's Die Alternative, exemplify.9

Mass Protests and the Revolution of 1989

Grassroots protest movements, or Bürgerbewegungen, surfaced relatively late in East Germany, much later than, for example, the activities of Solidarnosc in Poland. There were reform discussions in small East German church circles during the 1980s. There were even sporadic demonstrations in 1988.¹⁰ But it was not until the boycott of and protest against the manipulated communal elections in the spring of 1989 that one could talk of popular resistance against the regime.

The emergence of widespread opposition was facilitated by radical changes in the external environment, particularly the crumbling of the Soviet-led alliance system. Although Honecker resisted with all possible means the adoption of perestroika-like reforms in East Germany, he could not avoid two dramatic changes.

First, Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power and his introduction of "new thinking" into Moscow's foreign policy constituted a de facto (and later de jure) termination of the Brezhnev doctrine. No longer could Moscow's (former) allies in central and eastern Europe count on external military support for their authoritarian regimes, as the Kremlin provided, for example, in 1953 (to East Germany), in 1956 (to Hungary), and in 1968 (to Czechoslovakia). The SED regime was now alone in facing the growing opposition in the population.

Second, in May of 1989 the reform-oriented Communist government in Budapest decided to dismantle barbed wire and other installations (e.g., fences, guard posts, and other obstructions that existed along the "iron curtain") along the Austro-Hungarian border. The resulting "hole" in the "iron curtain" did not remain undetected for long. At the occasion of the "Pan-European Picnic" in August, 661 East Germans spectacularly fled across the border. Other East Germans who wanted to leave sought refuge in the West German diplomatic missions of East Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, and Prague. On Septem-

ber 11, Hungary unilaterally terminated an agreement with the SED government and opened its borders to Austria. Within three days, 15,000 East Germans had arrived in the West.

During the celebrations of East Germany's fortieth anniversary (October 7), Erich Honecker made a last attempt to redress the balance. But his categorical refusal to acknowledge the need for change¹² only increased the pressure from below. Thousands of East Germans kept leaving the country every day and street protests became a "normal" feature of every city in the country. The Monday demonstration in Leipzig was by now an institutionalized event of nonviolent mass protest; 70,000 people participated on October 9 and 120,000 people participated a week later, on October 16.

The continuously increasing pressure triggered a power struggle between revisionist and hardline factions in the Politburo. On October 18, Erich Honecker and two of his closest and oldest allies, Günter Mittag and Joachim Hermann, were forced to resign. Yet, the new government, headed by another long-time Honecker confidant, Egon Krenz, could not calm the situation with its announced reforms. Too little, too late was the general consensus in the population.

Demonstrations again became more frequent and dramatically increased in size. Calls for more democracy, free elections, "new thinking," and mobility rights could be heard all over East Germany. "We are the people" echoed day after day, hundreds of thousands of times, through the streets of Leipzig, Dresden, East Berlin, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Potsdam, and many other cities. Leipzig alone witnessed several nonviolent demonstrations attended by more than 200,000 people. On November 4, over half a million people took to the streets in East Berlin. Meanwhile, the lack of man (and woman)-power that resulted from the exodus, which continued at a rate of about 10,000

East Germans a day, seriously interrupted the functioning of many industries and public services.

Soon, the mounting popular pressures claimed their next "victims." More of the "old guard" and key figures of the Politburo were forced to "retire," including Margot Honecker, Harry Tisch, Kurt Hager, and Erich Mielke. On November 7, the entire government under Willi Stoph resigned. The day after, the Politburo followed suit. Then, on November 9, 1989, came the beginning of the end, the coup de grâce to the SED regime: Günter Schabowski, spokesperson for the government, declared that effective immediately, all East German citizens were free to travel abroad without prior permission from state authorities. The same night, sensational pictures were seen all over the world: thousands of people climbing over and dismantling the meanwhile anachronistic Berlin Wall in front of puzzled and helpless East German guards. In the days to come, hundreds of thousands of East Germans took a glimpse at the West, a possibility that had been inconceivable to them for decades.

From then on, it took little time for what remained of the SED regime to vanish into the annals of European history. Emigration increased even more and demonstrations did not cease until all remnants of the old regime were gone. Placing Hans Modrow, a reform Communist, at the head of the government did not postpone the fall. In December, Egon Krenz resigned from all his functions. Under his successor, Gregor Gysi, the SED virtually disintegrated. On March 16, 1990, the first free parliamentary elections took place in East Germany. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a sister organization of the West German conservative ruling party, achieved a spectacular victory, winning 40.9% of the vote.

Every single demand that the people had taken to the streets in the fall of 1989 was thus met by the spring of 1990. Within half a year, utopia had turned into reality. One of the most repressive regimes of central and eastern Europe had crumbled like a house of cards under the pressure from below.

2

THE

POWER-DEVOLVING POTENTIAL OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE

But if not one thing is yielded to them [the tyrants], if, without any violence they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing, just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.

— Étienne de la Boétie¹³

The previous section has already hinted at the importance that demonstrations and mass exits played in the East German revolution. This section attempts to sustain and further develop the argument that "exit" and "voice" forms of nonviolent protest were instrumental in triggering the power-devolving dynamics that swept away the SED-led system of domination and exclusion.

Draining the System's Energy: The Role of "Exit"

From the early days of the country, mass emigration forced the SED regime into a defensive position. Year after year, hundreds of thousands of East Germans left their country in order to settle in the capitalist West. In 1961, Walter Ulbricht ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall and risked an escalation of the Cold War in order to prevent East Germany's departing citizens from becoming a threat to the authoritarian state structure.

In the mid-1980s, the "exit" menace began to rise again primarily through three channels. First, East Germany relaxed its official emigration policy. In the first half of 1989, 46,000 citizens left legally for the West, more than during the entire preceding year. Starting in August, two additional, illegal forms of emigration began to create anxiety in the Politburo. East German citizens used the extraterritorial status of diplomatic missions in the Communist bloc in order to claim refugee status. Soon, the West German missions in East Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw had to be closed because they were overcrowded with thousands of East Germans determined to leave their country. An agreement between Berlin and Bonn at the end of September allowed for a transport of these refugees by special train—via East German territory—to the West. When news of this evacuation spread throughout East Germany, the regime desperately tried to prevent its citizens from jumping on the so-called refugee trains that were leaving for Prague and other destinations. However, in a matter of days, the diplomatic representations were packed anew and special trains brought again 7,600 refugees to West Germany.

While these spectacular occupation-evacuation procedures attracted a lot of media attention and robbed the regime of what little prestige it had left, the numerically most damaging emigration occurred as a result of Budapest's gradual dismantling of the "iron curtain." After the opening of the Austro-Hungarian border on September 11, thousands of East Germans fled to the West each day. As figure 1 shows, the dramatic rise in emigration (both legal and illegal) amounted to more than ten times the average of the previous years. Illegal "exit," for which many East Germans had been shot during the preceding decades, became an uncontrollable mass movement by the fall of 1989.

表映送>tasitstamin. \$ (

Figure 1
The Evolution of Exit: Number of East Germans emigrating to the West per annum. Source: Thomas Ammer, "Stichwort: Flucht aus der DDR," Deutschland-Archiv 22 (November 1989): 1207; and Hartmut Wendt, "Die deutsch-deutschen Wanderungen," Deutschland-Archiv 24 (April 1991): 390; as cited in Albert O. Hirschmann, "Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic," World Politics 45 (January 1993): 179.

either totally collapsed or functioned with great difficulty. The employment of army units in some of the affected sectors was not sufficient to replace the lacking civilian work force. "Exit" had torn holes in the East German society to the extent that even the senile and anachronistic leadership had to stop pretending that the country was still on a straight and glorious path to Communist utopia.

In a series of highly unusual public declarations, the SED acknowledged the threat that "exit" constituted for the socialist order. On October 12, the Politburo avowed on the front page of the official SED organ that "... socialism needs everybody... we cannot remain indifferent if people break away from our East Germany." The day after, Honecker reiterated that "... nobody could remain unconcerned if citizens break away from our country." In his first appearance after replacing Honecker, Egon Krenz immediately spoke of the emigrants and admitted that the government "... perceives their departure as a great bloodletting."

Recently published personal accounts of high-ranking SED officials reveal that the pressure of "exit" on East Germany's leadership was even greater than the already spectacular public statements suggested. Two key figures of the Politburo, Egon Krenz, Honecker's protégé and successor, as well as Günter Schabowski, spokesperson for the government, leave no doubt about the power of "exit" in their recollection of this decisive period. Both acknowledge that mass emigration had a tremendous impact on them and other leading figures involved in the decision-making process. ¹⁹ Schabowski's account also makes clear that Honecker, in spite (or, rather, because) of his categorical refusal to acknowledge "trouble," was very well aware of the explosiveness that "exit" constituted for his regime. ²⁰ Krenz even admits that on the eve of Hungary's opening of its borders with Austria, the SED leadership expected the worst possible scenario. ²¹

The fear of "exit" did not disappear after Honecker's fall on October 18, but, rather, increased even more. The new government immediately discussed the problem and, according to Schabowski, came to the conclusion that the regime could under no circumstances survive extended mass emigration, that, indeed, "exit" created a situation against which the government was absolutely helpless. Consequently, discussions started about the draft of a liberal emigration law. On November 9, Schabowski detonated one of the most consequential diplomatic bombs in German history; he declared that effective immediately, all East German citizens were free to leave the country without special permission. "Exit" had made a farce out of Communism's safety belt, the "iron curtain."

Displaying the Will for Change: The Role of "Voice"

Although the power of "exit" was clearly instrumental in bringing the SED-regime to its knees, a monocausal explanation could not possibly do justice to the complex pressures that grew from "below." Claus Offe's and Jürgen Habermas' contentions that 1989 was an "exit-revolution," and not a "voice revolution," certainly deserve merit for drawing attention to the overwhelming economic and social effects of emigration waves, but their arguments are unsatisfactory if embedded in an exclusive articulation.

The force of "exit" must be seen in the context of its combination

with "voice." "Exit" and "voice" reinf

As was the case with emigration, the size and frequency of demonstrations increased sharply in a short period. With a few minor exceptions, there were no popular demonstrations against the East German regime until widespread fraud at the communal elections in May 1989 triggered a first, albeit still modest, protest wave. In September the size and frequency of demonstrations started to increase. In a matter of weeks, the number of participants in protests grew from dozens, to hundreds, to thousands, to tens of thousands, and then to

Figure 2 Increase in Size of Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, September 19 – November 6, 1989.

Source: See Appendix (Chronology of the East German Revolution)

hundreds of thousands. A perfect reflection of this evolution can be found in the increase of the highly symbolic protests that followed each Monday prayer service at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche (the Church of Saint Nicholas).

Every East German city witnessed some form of popular discontent. An overwhelming number of the demonstrations occurred nonviolently. Nonviolent discipline was so strictly maintained that burning candles, initially only a declaration of adherence to nonviolent principles, became the overall symbol for resistance against the regime.

It is indicative of the power of "voice" that the biggest and most vocal popular protests immediately preceded each key decision of the Politburo. On October 16, 120,000 people demonstrated in Leipzig and thousands more demonstrated in Dresden, Magdeburg, Halle, and East Berlin. The pressure was so intense that an official of the SED, the mayor of Dresden, met with representatives of the demonstrators. Two days later, East Germany's infamous long-time autocrat, Erich Honecker, was forced to resign from all of his positions. On October 23, Leipzig counted 300,000 demonstrators, and a week later more than 400,000 people took to the streets in numerous cities. The same week, virtually all remaining hard-liners in the Politburo were released of their functions. On November 4, East Berlin witnessed the biggest demonstration ever in East Germany, with more than half a million participants. The day after, an almost equal number of protesters gathered in Leipzig. In the following days, the government and the Politburo resigned en bloc and, on November 9, the SED leadership was forced to open unconditionally all borders to the capitalist world.

Voluntary Servitude and the Power of Agency: Some Theoretical Reflections

Structures don't protest in the streets.

[Writing on a blackboard in a room at the Sorbonne, May 1968].22

The destabilizing effect that these "exit" and "voice" oriented forms of nonviolent protest had on the oppressive political leadership structure render clear support for de la Boétie's main thesis about the nature of power, presented at the outset of this monograph. Although often neglected, de la Boétie's propositions provide the essential conceptual framework for many later and better known elaborations on the subject. All who have in one way or another written on civil disobedience, from Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Benjamin Tucker, Mohandas Gandhi, Gustav Landauer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Vaclav Havel and Aung San Suu Kyi either directly draw on de la Boétie's Discours or should at least be understood in its context. Attempts to assess systematically the strategic dimension of nonviolent action date back to at least the early part of this century, but it was not until the appearance of Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action that an indepth cross-cultural analysis of the issue emerged. Even two decades later, Sharp's framework still provides important clues about the dynamic between domination and resistance.

The dissolution of East Germany illustrates Sharp's premise that nonviolent struggle is a political technique that deserves to be studied and understood in its own right. Rejecting definitions of power that focus on impositions from above, he follows de la Boétie's Discours and locates power in the relationship between ruler and ruled. Thus, Sharp defines political power as ". . . the capacity to control, for political objectives, the behavior of others" and argues that its exercise is dependent upon the interaction of (among others) the following outside sources: the natural authority of a ruler (what Max Weber called the charismatic source of power), the sanctions at his/her disposal, the control over material and human resources, and a certain number of intangible factors that vary from situation to situation. See that the control over material and human resources.

It is from these sources, not through means of violent coercion, that power is generated. Sharp consequently portrays power relationships as dualistic interactions between command and obedience. Since no command can be carried out without the obedience of the populace, a government's survival is contingent upon the population's support and its fear of possible future governmental sanctions (rather than the sanctions themselves). The East German population showed that by pulling hard enough, it could snatch these consent- and fear-based power foundations from beneath the rulers' feet.

This insight was not entirely unknown in East Germany. The choice to conduct the struggle against SED rule nonviolently was not

simply taken for lack of anything better. Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel convincingly argue that the decision to employ nonviolent means, repeatedly urged by virtually all the citizens' movements, was not only based on moral-ethical grounds (i.e., breaking the dialectic of violence), but was also the result of a deliberate strategic choice.³³ By employing "exit" and "voice" forms of nonviolent protest, East German citizens denied Honecker his charismatic source of power, robbed the regime's sanctions of their strength, and, most importantly, undermined the SED's vital control over human and material resources.

These forms of nonviolent struggle were most intense when, as Doug Bond convincingly hypothesized, the threat of a nonviolent action was reinforced by a display of the actionists' capacity to control resources. Weeks of mass protests exhibited the actionists' ability to command and use (human) resources while the labor shortage resulting from the mass exit seriously disturbed the functioning of the country. When this demonstration of the power to control human and material resources was supplemented by the actionists' threat of a general strike, the pressure on the leadership was at its peak, as Günter Schabowski, a key member of the Politburo, recalls. St

Violent actions could not have had the same effect, not only because the activists were greatly disadvantaged vis-à-vis the oppressive regime with respect to the means of violence, but also, and primarily, because violent methods of resistance do not tap the above mentioned sources of power upon which the existing societal structure was based.³⁶

Bond's conceptual differentiation between direct and political action can help to illuminate another key aspect of the East German revolution.³⁷ A nonviolent action is always direct because it is used when the official and legitimate channels for political action, such as elections, referenda, petitions, and lobbying either do not exist or are considered inadequate for the resolution of the conflict in question.

In East Germany, engaging in political action, such as participating in a (restricted, controlled, and manipulated) election, meant accepting the oppressive system and, to some extent, providing it with legitimacy. Since East Germany's political process was entirely controlled by the autocratic leadership, political actions never challenged the system. Their outcome was, as Bond suggests, prescribed by the parameters of existing power relations, which certainly did not pro-

vide legal means that could be a menace to the status quo.

In such a situation, a nonviolent struggle can assume the form of an ultimate popular referendum. It is, so to speak, the voice of the people against the elite-dominated legitimation process. Whether this voice always succeeds in the end, as in East Germany, and whether the will of the majority always brings more justice and equality, are of course entirely different questions. As one of the slogans at demonstrations eloquently expressed it: "... power comes from the people—but where does it end up?"³⁹

It is at this point only relevant to underline that nonviolent direct action has the potential to effect radical disintegrative change, and that this change tends to lead towards democratic political structures. The events in East Germany thus challenge deterministic structural-functionalist explanations that use the benefit of hindsight to present events as if no other evolution would have been possible. Structural analyses are useful in many ways and I will employ them in later parts of this monograph. But structures cannot provide us with all the clues about the moments during which human agency is able to shape the course of history. Indeed, structures don't take to the streets and challenge an oppressive system, or, as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno phrased it,

... the principle of immanence, the explication of each event as a repetition of history, which the enlightenment advances against the belief of mythic imagination, is a myth itself.⁴¹

Unfortunately, the East German case has shown that popular empowerment through nonviolent struggle occurs in a cyclical, and not a linear way, and that its realization is dependent upon many additional factors. Nonviolent direct action could only unfold its true power during what could be called a "window of opportunity," a short period in the fall and early winter of 1989. In these few weeks, a great variety of external and domestic circumstances came together, allowing the force of agency to tear down the old despotic structures. Yet, even before the Berlin Wall had entirely disintegrated, the "window of opportunity" was shut. Political elites retook power from the streets and brought it into the long, intertwined hallways of parliamentary bureaucracy. Although the context of reemerging elite politics was considerably more democratic than before, many citizens could not repress the feeling that the revolution had been stolen from the people.

Reminding us of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's warning that true democracy does not allow representation, the various spokespersons of the citizens' movements held numerous round table discussions about the preservation of East German identity long after most people wanted nothing but Western capitalism as soon as possible. Already at the beginning of 1990, the slogans at demonstrations had shifted from "we are the people" (wir sind das Volk) to "we are a people" (wir sind ein Volk). Unification fever had stricken the nation.⁴²

This widely desired unification process occurred, however, without direct input from below and even without any kind of popular consultation. The process, form, and timing of unification were largely determined by monetary issues, party politics, and, above all, by elite engineering from within West Germany. The fact that the constitutional arrangements that led to unity were based on Article 23 of the West Germany Grundgesetz, suggest that the term Anschluss (annexation) characterizes the events much better than Wiedervereinigung (reunification). Neither the East nor the West German population ever had the opportunity to approve or reject these conditions in a referendum. Numerous prominent commentators and many more "normal" citizens thus deplored and criticized these and other "normative deficits" (Habermas) of unification.⁴³

This cyclical and dialectical interaction between elite politics and people power suggests that a theory based on dualistic oppositions between oppressor and oppressed, as advanced by de la Boétie, can capture the essence of power relations at a decisive, yet fleeting moment. Outside of this "window of opportunity," social dynamics are much more subtle. The crumbling of East German authoritarianism is

far too complex an event to be assessed entirely by a theory about mechanisms of change or, indeed, by any metanarrative. Michel Foucault hit the nail on the head in presenting power as a stratified, interwoven, and differentiated phenomenon. He argued that "... all power stems from the people" (le pouvoir vient d'en bas)⁴⁴ and thus rendered support for the key insight advanced by de la Boétie, Thoreau, Sharp, Bond, and others. Yet, Foucault immediately added that

The next section will attempt to touch upon some of these multiple power relations and present a few of the idiosyncratic circumstances that allowed nonviolent direct action to emerge and unfold its potency in East Germany. # 3 # THE MEDIATION OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE: COMPLEX POWER RELATIONSHIPS AND THE ENGINEERING OF HEGEMONIC CONSENT Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau\* If the East German people always possessed the power to overthrow their tyrannical rulers, why did they wait more than four decades to do so? This section certainly does not pretend to deliver all the answers to this enigmatic question about the engineering and imposition of consent. I will only try to identify two subject areas within which possible explanations could be found: 1) the complexity of domestically, intranationally, and internationally conditioned power relationships, and 2) the struggle for consensual hegemony in the interaction between civil society and the state. #### The Multiple Faces of the SED Power Base They publicly preached water and privately drank wine. — Heinrich Heine⁴⁷ There is no doubt that the challenges to the SED regime were directly linked to the overall crisis of authoritarian Marxism-Leninism in Eu- rope. Many analysts consider changes in Moscow's foreign policy as an important, if not the key factor in the German revolution of 1989. Even Honecker himself, exiled in Chile, put all the blame for the collapse of East German Communism on Gorbachev's revisionist policies. 49 A look back at the history of domination and resistance illuminates the link between the survival of East German authoritarianism and the country's incorporation into the Soviet-led alliance system. Without the intervention of Soviet troops, the uprising of June 1953 might well have toppled the SED regime. The same can be said of revolts against neighboring authoritarian governments, such as the ones in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. East Germany's geopolitical and symbolic importance for the Communist bloc had a crucial influence on domestic power relations. This remained so as long as the global system was dominated by ideological schism and a bipolar power structure. Mikhail Gorbachev's introduction of "new thinking," particularly the explicit recognition that each nation has the right to determine its own policies, 50 meant that the SED regime could no longer count on Moscow's (military) support for the suppression of popular resistance. The end of the Brezhnev doctrine, the gradual decay of the Soviet Union, and the resulting dissolution of the Cold War system fundamentally altered power relationships within East Germany in at least two ways. First, it permitted social dynamics to take a course that was free of restraints imposed by Soviet geopolitical and ideological interests. Second, it rendered the "iron curtain" porous and thus provided the prerequisite for the unfolding of the transformational capacity of "exit." The division of the German nation constituted another strong external influence on power relationships within East Germany. The ethnic bond and the fierce ideological competition between the two politically distinct "Germanys" intrinsically and interactively linked their political and social dynamics. Many aspects of resistance in East Germany must be understood in the context of such intra-German dynamics. For example, the power of "exit" would not have been able to emerge without West Germany's economic attraction and its constitutionally entrenched policy of granting citizenship to East German refugees. Ulrich Beck appropriately captures this intranational influence by pointing out that ". . . Poland minus Communism is still Poland. But East Germany minus Communism is the Federal Republic of Germany."⁵¹ In addition to stimulating "exit," intranational aspects were highly relevant with regard to the mutual penetration of informational and propagandistic sources between the two German states. This phenomenon, to be analyzed in the following sub-section, was crucial in undermining the SED's attempt to legitimize and sustain its authoritarian rule. The domestic scene displays the most complex picture of power relationships. An account of the power struggle in the Politburo and its implication for the fall of the SED regime could alone fill volumes. For instance, the SED command structure of the 1980s could be considered tripartite, consisting of Erich Honecker, Günter Mittag, and Erich Mielke. Yet, Honecker had occupied the key role for such a long time that the system's functioning was to a considerable extent dependent upon his personality. The Politburo was thus completely paralyzed when he fell seriously ill and was absent as popular pressure for change increased dramatically. Domestic power relationships were also conditioned by the system of privileges in which East Germany's authoritarian command structure was embedded. Privileges were not only available to the members of the Politburo, who had access to a great array of Western consumer goods and lived in well-equipped and secluded "fortresses," first in Pankow and, from 1960 on, in Wandlitz, north of Berlin. The reward principle reached a much greater circle of citizens. It was primarily though the *Stasi*, the (Ministry of) State Security Service, that people were coopted and drawn into the machinery of the oppressive state system. Alongside the *Stasi's* 86,000 full-time employees, it was estimated that approximately ten percent of the population worked in one way or another for the agency that kept under surveillance "subversive" East Germans.⁵² Although the still ongoing evaluation of hitherto secret documents suggests that the *Stasi's* ears and eyes were not quite as omnipresent as initially suspected,⁵³ the organization's effect was still far-reaching. A substantial part of the population had reasons to support the status quo because they either profited personally from the oppressive system or were in one way or another dependent upon it. Stasi informants were paid according to the usefulness of the material that they provided. If an informant had financial or other problems, the Stasi would help immediately and generously, thus providing a sort of security net. These informants, combined with the *nomenclatura*, the police, the army, the firefighters, the justices, the post-office employees, and all their families and friends and many more, comprised a substantial web of people who profited from the existing authoritarian rule. Noncooperation with the authorities could, by contrast, easily result in highly consequential disadvantages for the individual and his/her family. This system of reward and punishment existed at all societal levels and in all geographical areas of East Germany. It created various sub-systems and sub-sub-systems of power relationships that helped to sustain a tyrannical societal structure. Arthur Meier, drawing upon Max Weber's notion of the *Ständegesellschaft*, portrays the collapse of East German Communism as the obsolescence of this system of positive and negative privileges.⁵⁴ A look at the concept of civil society can help to illuminate how nonviolent struggle was able to deliver the final blow to this anachronistic and exploitative societal structure. #### Defending Civil Society Against the Encroachment of the State The emergence and success of nonviolent resistance in East Germany is directly linked to at least two things, the capacity of civil society to defend itself against the encroachment of the state and the struggle for hegemony within civil society. The dichotomy between civil society and the state is here understood in the sense of Antonio Gramsci's theoretical framework. The state, being the sphere of coercion, contains such elements as the police, the army, and the bureaucracy. Civil society is the sphere of consent, where contrasting opinions compete against each other for hegemonic status; in short, the non-economic aspects of a society that escape the direct control of the state. The boundaries between the state and civil society are always in flux. Depending upon the level of direct state control, such institutions as trade unions, the media, religious organizations, schools, and universities may either belong to the state's propaganda and repression apparatus or be part of the pluralistic struggle for hegemony within civil society. Many analysts present the battle against repression in East Germany as a struggle between civil society and the state. Helmut Dubiel refers to a rebellion against the appropriation of the public sphere by what he aptly calls a caste of "ideocrates." Ralf Dahrendorf talks of the defeat of all (state-dominated) systems that are against the Popperian concept of the "open society." Already years before the East German revolution, Andrew Arato drew attention to the importance of civil society in the struggle against authoritarian Communist regimes in Eastern Europe; an approach about which updated essays can be found, for example, in Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel's analysis. See the struggle against authoritarian communistic regimes in Eastern Europe; an approach about which updated essays can be found, for example, in Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel's analysis. There is no element in the power-devolving dynamics of nonviolent direct action that would per se suggest that its functioning is dependent upon the prior existence of a strong and independent civil society. Yet, a certain breathing space from the encroachment of the state is necessary for the emergence of regime-critical opinions and their organized expression in the form of large-scale popular dissent. In the limited space available here, I can, at best, give a broad overview of this crucial issue and provide the interested reader with references to theoretical and empirical literature that underline the centrality of the Gramscian concept for the analysis of nonviolent struggle. The East German state did not leave a stone unturned in imposing its dogmatic and distorted vision of what was somewhat paradoxically called *Realsozialismus* (real-existing socialism). Coercive methods were widely used to ensure the survival of the SED regime. Among the tactics employed were controls and intimidation of the population through societal infiltration by the *Stasi* and other repressive elements of the state. School curricula and media coverage were entirely geared toward the political "education" of the masses, serving as instruments for disseminating the ideology used by the ruling class to justify its dominance. Virtually all domestic sources of information (newspapers, journals, radio, television, etc.) were under direct and harshly censored control of the state apparatus. Despite this strong imposition and expansion of the sphere of coercion, the SED was unable to eliminate the sphere of consent. At least two factors undermined the state's attempt to annihilate civil society: (1) the porous borders to the West, whose impact on the development of a counterculture will receive attention a bit later in this monograph, and (2) the existence of institutionalized structures that provided a forum within which organized dissent could emerge, spread, and prepare itself for the battle against the oppressive state. The Protestant church, being the only East German mass organization that was not directly subordinated to the state, provided such a forum for organized dissident activities. Its newspapers were not as harshly censored as the "normal" media, its photocopying machines were available for reproducing leaflets critical of the regime, and its ministers and representatives were always among the most outspoken crites of the system. When the state attempted to undermine this limited amount of autonomy, the church was usually determined to defend it, the most dramatic example being the protest-oriented public self-immolation of Pfarrer (minister) Oskar Brüsewitz in 1976. It was thus not surprising that most grassroots protest movements emerged out of church circles. Church facilities also served as sanctuaries, such as in Dresden on October 5, 1989, when persecuted demonstrators fled to the *Annekirche*, the *Kreuzkirche*, and the cathedral.⁶⁰ One of the church's most influential activities was that of providing a platform for the regular discussion and expression of popular dissent. For example, ever since 1983, every Monday evening at five o'clock, young Christians met for a peace prayer in Leipzig's Nikolaikirche. Initially, this gathering was intended to draw attention to the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Then it turned into a forum where frustrations about lacking mobility rights (i.e., West migration) were articulated. Starting in the spring of 1989, the Monday prayers were regularly followed by public protests against the SED regime. The number of participating citizens continuously grew and by the fall the Monday demonstration in Leipzig was, as analyzed in the preceding section, one of the most symbolic and influential events of organized mass dissent in East Germany.⁶¹ The fact that this crucial breathing space from the encroachment of the state was provided by the church has nothing to do with its religious or political aspirations, but is solely a result of the unusual autonomy that the church enjoyed in an otherwise suffocating totalitarian state. The church—and a few other, less prominent forums—thus created what is often called an *Ersatzöffentlichkeit*, a replacement for the suppressed public sphere or, in other words, a quasi-substitute for an independent civil society. Within this arduously carved out sphere of consent, contrasting opinions were competing against each other without being confined by the dogmatism of the prevalent state ideology. The result of this struggle for consensual hegemony consti- tuted one of the most significant preconditions for the emergence and successful employment of nonviolent resistance against SED rule. # The Link between the Struggle for Hegemony and the Power of Nonviolent Action A government cannot survive on repression alone. Ever Honecker strove to be popular. — Günter Schabowski⁶³ rint, rictor of spring profesting to the spring profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profesting profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profession profess The state, with its means of coercion and indoctrination, plays an important role in the creation of hegemony. Gramsci employed the concept of hegemony to facilitate understanding the way ruling groups can engineer popular support by disseminating a particular weltanschauung which favors their own interests. Yet, it is within civil society that hegemony ultimately emerges out of conflicting and competing ideas. Thus, Gramsci also attempted to comprehend the conditions under which regime-hostile segments of a society could successfully and nonviolently promote social change. A resistance movement can only be victorious and establish a new and stable order if the classes or social groups that conduct the revolutionary struggle enjoy widespread popular support and dominate the institutions of civil society before attempting to seize state power. Without having first won this so called "war of position" and achieved hegemonic leadership, the repressive state apparatus will most likely be able to silence the dissident voices from below. This aspect of Gramsci's thought is of utmost importance for estimating a nonviolent struggle's likelihood of success. Esteeming the concept of hegemony suggests that social change through nonviolent struggle becomes a realistic possibility only from the moment at which regime-hostile societal segments have achieved a substantial degree of hegemonic consent within civil society. That is, when their ideological alternative to the established order has infiltrated most societal levels and is considered moral and legitimate by a substantial part of the population. The East German Communist regime enjoyed various degrees of popular support during its existence. Yet, it certainly never achieved hegemonic leadership. Besides being delegitimized by repressive practices and the disastrous results of statist economic policies, a number of more subtle factors undermined the ruling group's attempt to impose its ideology through domination and indoctrination. The most noteworthy of these factors is the SED's "failure" to keep "subversive" ideological influences from reaching its population. East Germany's porous borders to the West assured the constant mental presence of an ideology, an economic system, and a way of living that was fundamentally opposed to the official ideological discourse employed by the ruling group to justify its dominance. Ever since Ostpolitik replaced the West German Hallstein doctrine, mail exchange between East Germany and the outside world was permit- ![](_page_35_Figure_5.jpeg) Figure 3 Intersubjectively judged exposure to external information sources. Source: R. Bleiker, D. Bond, and M.S. Lee, "German Unity and its Implications for Korean Unification," Working paper no. 4/1992, CFIA, Harvard University, p. 33. ted and "capitalist" newspapers and magazines were relatively easy to obtain. With the establishment of the *Grundlagenvertrag* between the two German states in 1972, cross-border visits became commonplace. From 1970 to the early 1980s, between 1.1 and 1.6 million East Germans visited the West each year, while the number of East Germans traveling in the opposite direction ranged between 1.2 and 3.1 million ⁶⁵ The most consequential external influence on the formation of hegemony in East Germany's civil society must be ascribed to the constant presence of outside audio and visual media sources. Western long-, medium- and short-wave radio broadcasts had always been available throughout East Germany and since the 1970s about 90% of the population was able to regularly tune in to West German television programs (the area around Dresden and Greifswald being the only exception).66 The image that these media programs projected alerted the East German population to the enormous economic gap that separated them from their West European neighbors. Given the long-term deprivation of consumer items, the incentives that an awareness of the West German materialistic society provided for East German citizens could only lead toward a strong dissatisfaction with the present regime. The "fact" that mass communication, as noted by Jean Baudrillard, never projects reality, but only a distortion (*le vertige*) of reality, delegitimized the SED's vision of a socialist utopia even further. Rather than exposing the weaknesses of liberal capitalism, commercial advertisements and other features of Western television programs evoked an overly optimistic illusion of a consumer paradise that must have appeared irresistible to the average East German citizen. East Germany's legendary "counter-propaganda" television series Der Schwarze Kanal: One who thinks that it would not be of any harm to listen to antidemocratic television and radio programs or to read Western newspapers, opens his/her ears to the deadly enemy.⁶⁸ Even the infiltration of seemingly apolitical ideas and practices influenced the struggle for hegemony. Among these rapidly spreading features of West European culture, all of them officially denounced by the SED as expressions of capitalist decadence and ideological weapons of the bourgeoisie, were phenomena such as rock, beat, and punk music; Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust novels; or, even "worse," literary traditions of an existentialist, avantgardist, or poststructuralist nature. These postmodern cultural expressions questioned some of the most fundamental tenets of the modern East German political discourse, especially the (Marxist) historicist belief in linear evolution and the confidence in liberation through rational, scientific, and bureaucratic planning. As a result of the infiltration and dissemination of "subversive" values and the regime's inability to counter them, a capitalist weltanschauung, antithetical to the prevalent Communist discourse, became hegemonic (i.e., was accepted as legitimate and moral by most people). Thus, the discrepancy between ruler and ruled continuously grew and when externally imposed geopolitical restraints vanished, the SED's power base was so weak that it crumbled under the pressure from below.⁷⁰ Even during the final period of resistance against Communist rule, the presence of Western media sources strongly influenced the effectiveness of the nonviolent struggle. Through Western media, East German citizens learned of the radical transformations that were going on in the Soviet Union and witnessed day by day how in their own country the increase of street protests and mass migration further undermined the system's legitimacy. Jürgen Habermas points out that the physical presence of demonstrating East Germans had a different (and more potent) revolutionary effect than similar protests in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, because in 1989 the medium of television offered the potential to transform a demonstration into a ubiquitous event.⁷¹ Outside information sources also provided direct incentives for East Germans to take the risk of participating in the "exit" wave. East Germans watched on West German television how barbed-wire installations were removed from the Austro-Hungarian border and how their compatriots who had sought refuge in diplomatic missions were being brought by special trains to West Germany. The Deutschlandfunk, a West German radio station, even broadcasted the stops and departure times of the "refugee-trains" leaving Dresden for Prague. Such factors accelerated the formation of a reform-oriented hegemony and served as important motivating and organizing forces for the nonviolent struggle which toppled the SED regime. Gramsci's concept of hegemony is, of course, not the only framework to analyze the competition between conflicting discourses. The various functional, neo-functional, and transactionalist versions of integration theory are all concerned with integrative processes that create closer bonds and unifying habits among people—as was the case between East and West Germany. Like Gramscian analysis, integration theory primarily operates on an ontological level insofar as it examines the behavior, perception, and thought processes of individuals or aggregates of individuals. Even more striking parallels can be found between Gramsci and cultural analyses. Archie Brown and Jack Gray examined Communist societies by employing the concept of double culture.⁷³ Providing almost a mirror-image of Gramsci's opposition between the state and civil society, they drew attention to the division between the official political culture (the one determined by the state) and the dominant political culture (the one that is prevailing in the heads of the people). Christiane Lemke convincingly employed this concept of political socialization to the developments in East Germany. In her opinion, the crumbling of the SED system was above all a result of the continuously increasing gap between dominant and official political culture in the 1980s.⁷⁴ But Lemke's examination, as so many other persuasive structural approaches, does not imbue the power of agency with the attention that it deserves. # 4 # IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION: VIEWING THE POWER OF AGENCY IN ITS STRUCTURAL CONTEXT This mountain over here! That cloud over there! What is really "real" about them? You realists, deduct for once your phantasms and all the human ingredients! Ah, if you only could do this! If you could negate your origin, your past, your upbring—your entire human and animal nature! There is no "reality"—not even for you, you realists. — Friedrich Nietzsche⁷⁵ Nonviolent struggle undoubtedly played a crucial role in precipitating the fall of the East German Communist regime. The combined effect of large-scale street protests and massive emigration increased in intensity until, in the winter of 1989, the authoritarian system crumbled under the pressure from below. The present interpretation of these events confirms the two main premises advanced by students of the strategic approach to nonviolent direct action: that the ultimate source of power is not force but popular consent and that the active withdrawal of this consent can lead to the disintegration of an authoritarian regime. Yet, a sole affirmation of the power contained in nonviolent action cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of the East German revolution. If it were so easy to dissolve power structures through social noncooperation, then the SED regime and many other authoritarian systems would have collapsed long ago. The dynamics between domination and resistance are too complex to be assessed entirely through a theory that locates the creation and sustenance of power on a dualistic axis between oppressor and oppressed. Such a situation is at best present during what could be called a "window of opportunity." Before this window could be opened for the empowerment of the East German masses, two preconditions had to be fulfilled. First, complex power relationships, particularly the ones related to East Germany's incorporation into the Soviet-led alliance system, had to evolve such that they interfered only minimally with the confrontation between the SED autocrats and the protesting population. Second, at least some aspects of civil society had to be defended successfully against the encroachment of the state. Then, regime-hostile discourses had to assume hegemony within civil society before nonviolent actionists could have a realistic chance of emerging victorious out of a struggle against the coercive state apparatus. The East German case strongly suggests that an ahistorical and global model of nonviolent direct action, no matter how convincing its theoretical premises, cannot do justice to the complexity of "reality." Each case of domination and resistance takes place in a particular spatiotemporal context. A theory of nonviolent action that seeks explanatory power beyond establishing promising hypotheses must be adjusted and expanded so that it can account for the unique mediating features of the environment in which the struggle takes place. For this purpose, the theoretical approach must be embedded in a wider analytical framework that provides the flexibility to assess systematically a great variety of idiosyncratic struggles. Without claiming to have found definitive answers, but more with the purpose of opening a constructive discussion, I suggest that the study of nonviolent action could greatly profit from a rapprochement with structural explanations and an inclusion into existing research projects of new philosophical and critical-theorist discourses. tural reductionism."76 Yet, this affirmation of agency's power to shape structures was only the starting point for de la Boétie. One could even argue that he was less concerned with the people's ability to overthrow their oppressive rulers, and more concerned with the resulting puzzle of explaining why they don't do it more often. Thus, the two remaining (and more neglected) parts of the *Discours* try to understand, in de la Boétie's own words, "... how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him." " While speculating why people most of the time subject themselves to voluntary servitude, de la Boétie pointed towards two aspects which contain strong parallels to Gramsci's and Foucault's concepts that I applied earlier in this monograph. First, the force of habit and custom as well as propagandistic efforts of the ruling group (what Gramsci called hegemony) can lead the masses to accept voluntary servitude. If people have spent their entire lives in a repressive society, their (natural) longing for liberty may be suppressed to the point that it does not exist any more, because ... men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.⁷⁹ Second, the establishment of a hierarchy of subordinate allies creates a situation in which a great number of citizens profit from an authoritarian system—and thus have an interest in defending the status quo. Here is, radically shortened, how de la Boétie portrayed what he considered to be the secret of domination, a concept which in many ways is comparable with Foucault's stratified power theory and the system of positive and negative privileges practiced by the SED regime: ... there are only four or five who maintain the dictator ... five or six have always had access to his ear ... the six have six hundred who profit under them ... the six hundred maintain under them six thousand ... not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.⁸⁰ The two neglected structural parts of de la Boétie's *Discours* contain only rudimentary and highly incomplete hypotheses. But they deserve the same thorough attention and analytical elaboration as the *Discours*' agency-oriented first part has received by so many competent theorists and researchers. In this monograph I have tried to make a modest contribution towards correcting this shortcoming by placing the dynamics of nonviolent action in East Germany into a Foucaultian and Gramscian analytical framework. However, many different ways of recognizing the dialectical link between agents and structures remain to be explored. Other fields of study can serve here as crucial guiding lights. Western philosophy and critical theory are prime examples. Since Nietzsche advanced his seminal insight about the subjectivity and the social construction of "reality," countless treatises have emerged on the subject. On a less philosophical level, one of the most sophisticated recent elaborations on the agent-structure issue is Anthony Giddens' "structuration theory." Critical-theoretical approaches to international relations theory have also made substantial contributions by debating the implications of the fact that the structure of the global state system is both a subjective product of human interaction as well as a crucial variable that determines state behavior. Paying greater attention to the methodological and philosophical insight advanced by these various approaches could greatly improve understanding of the factors that influence a nonviolent struggle's likelihood of success in fighting repressive societal systems and establishing more democratic alternatives. #### **APPENDIX** ### CHRONOLOGY OF THE EAST GERMAN REVOLUTION 1989/1990⁸³ #### 1989 - May 2 Loophole in the "iron curtain": Hungary starts to dismantle barbed wire and other installations along its border with Austria. - May 7 More than 100 protesters, objecting to the manipulation of recent communal elections, are arrested in Leipzig. - Aug. 8 The West German representation in East Berlin has to be closed because it is overcrowded with East German citizens wanting to leave the country. - Aug. 14 The West German embassy in Budapest closes for the same reasons. Erich Honecker categorically denies the need for reforms: "Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf hält weder Ochs noch Esel auf" (neither oxen nor donkeys can stop the progress of socialism). - Aug. 19 On the occasion of the "Pan-European Picnic" at the Austro-Hungarian border, 661 East German citizens succeed in a spectacular border-crossing to the West. - Aug. 23 The West German embassy in Prague closes because it is overcrowded with East German citizens. - Sept. 11 Hungary opens borders to Austria for DDR citizens. Within three days 15,000 East Germans leave the country. Neues Forum (New Forum), Demokratic Jetzt (Democracy Now), and other citizen movements emerge and are immediately declared illegal by the Ministry of Interior Affairs. - Sept. 18 Arrest of more than 100 people after the Monday prayer service/demonstration in Leipzig's Nikolaikirche. - Sept. 25 Monday demonstration in Leipzig: 6,000 people demand mobility rights and freedom of expression. - Sept. 30 Agreement between Berlin and Bonn: East German refugees in West German embassies (5,500 in Prague and 800 in Warsaw) are taken by special train through the territory of East Germany to the West. - Oct. 2 First big Monday demonstration in Leipzig: 25,000 people demand immediate reforms and are dispersed violently by the police. - Oct. 3 West German embassy in Prague is packed with 7,000 East German refugees again; they too are taken to the West. - Oct. 4 Unrest in Dresden because trains leaving for Prague do not stop at the station. Police use violence to keep 3,000 people from mounting the refugee trains. - Oct. 7 Celebrations of the 40th anniversary of East Germany's existence as a state. In the presence of President Gorbachev and other honorary guests, Honecker delivers a "business as usual" speech. Demonstrations in East Berlin, Leipzig, Potsdam, Dresden, Magedburg, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Plauen, Ilmenau, and Arnstadt. Police use violence and arrest a great number of demonstrators. - Oct. 9 After the traditional Monday prayer in the churches of Leipzig, first mass demonstration. 70,000 people demand reforms, screaming "we are the people." Nonviolent discipline is strictly maintained by the protesters. No interference from the police despite widespread fears of a Tiananmen-Square-like crackdown. - Oct. 12 After a public demand by the New Forum, all except eleven imprisoned demonstrators are released. - Oct. 15 Concert against violence in the Erlöserkirche (church) in Berlin. Prominent singers and writers demand reforms, appeal to people to act nonviolently, and announce a mass demonstration for November 4. Demonstrations in Halle and Plauen. - Oct. 16 More than 120,000 people demonstrate in Leipzig, 10,000 in Dresden and Magdeburg, 5,000 in Halle, and 3,000 in Berlin. The mayor of Dresden meets with the "Group of 20," representatives of the citizens' movements. - Oct. 18 Politburo forces Erich Honecker to resign. Several of his closest allies and key secretaries of the Central Committee are removed, including Günter Mittag (economy) and Joachim Herrmann (agitation and propaganda). Egon Krenz, old-time Politburo member and confidant of Honecker, becomes new SED chief. - Oct. 19 Krenz states his intention to seek a dialogue with the people and announces a "Wende" (turning-point). - Oct. 20 50,000 demonstrators in Dresden demand free elections. - Oct. 21 Demonstrations in Dresden, Potsdam, Berlin, and Karl-Marx-Stadt. In Plauen, an industrial city of 80,000 people, 35,000 demonstrate in the streets. - Oct. 23 Mass demonstrations in East Berlin, Dresden, Potsdam, Plauen, and Karl-Marx-Stadt. In Leipzig alone, 300,000 people demand reforms and free elections. For the first time, the official East German television broadcasts reports of the demonstrations. - Oct. 24 Parliament (Volkskammer) elects Krenz as head of state. 12,000 people immediately demonstrate in Berlin. - Oct. 25 Demonstrations in Neubrandenburg (20,000), Halberstadt (10,000), Berlin, and Greifswald. - Oct. 26 First official meeting between the SED, led by its Berlin chief, Günter Schabowski, and representatives of the New Forum, including prominent dissidents Bärbel Bohley and Jens Reich. "Open dialogue" in Dresden with Mayor Berghofer and Regional SED Chief Hans Modrow (100,000 people attend). Demonstrations in Rostock (25,000), Erfurt (15,000) and Gera (5,000). - Oct. 27 The government (Staatsrat) grants amnesty to all demonstrators and illegal emigrants. Protests in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden, Güstrow, Lauchhammer, Saafeld, and Grossräschen. - Oct. 28 Protests in Plauen (30,000), Leipzig, Erfurt, Jena, Rostock, Greiz, and Senftenberg. - Oct. 29 Six-hour "open dialogue" (20,000 people attend) with SED representatives, including Schabowski, in front of the Rathaus in Berlin. Smaller but similar forums in Karl-Marx-Stadt and Leipzig. Demonstrations in Ueckermünde, Rostock, and Bad Salzungen. - Oct. 30 Over 400,000 people demonstrate in various cities for reforms, free elections, and mobility rights: 200,000 in Leipzig, 50,000 in Halle, 40,000 in Schwerin, 20,000 in Cottbus and Karl-Marx-Stadt, 5,000 in Pössneck. Last broadcast (number 1519) of K.E. von Schnitzler's "Schwarzem Kanal" (a famous counterpropaganda television series). - Oct. 31 15,000 demonstrate in Wittenberg. 10 Appendix Nov. 1 Meeting between Krenz and Gorbachev in Moscow. Demonstrations in Neubrandenburg, Frankfurt/Oder, Freital, and Ilmenau. - Nov. 2 Prominent SED members resign, among them Margot Honecker, minister of education, and Harry Tisch, head of the SED-controlled union (FDGB). Demonstrations in Gera (10,000), Erfurt (30,000), Halle (10,000), and Guben (15,000). - Nov. 3 Elimination of more of the "old guards" from the Politburo, including Kurt Hager, Erich Mielke, Hermann Axen, Alfred Neumann, and Erich Mückenberger. 5,000 East Germans in the West German embassy in Prague can leave for the West. Soon the embassy is filled again with refugees. - Nov. 4 The country's biggest demonstration ever. In East Berlin an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people demand reforms. Smaller demonstrations in Magdeburg, Rostock, Altenburg, Potsdam, Lauscha, Suhl, Plauen, Schwerin, Dresden, and Arnstadt. The official East German television broadcasts live from the Berlin demonstration. - Nov. 6 More mass demonstrations: in Leipzig (500,000), Karl-Marx-Stadt (50,000), Schwerin, Halle (60,000), and Cottbus. In Dresden, dissident party members Hans Modrow, regional SED chief, and Wolfgang Berghofer, mayor, lead 70,000 people in a protest march through the streets. - Nov. 7 The entire SED government under Willi Stoph resigns. - Nov. 8 The entire Politburo resigns. Newly elected members include Hans Modrow. Reelection of Krenz as general secretary. About 10,000 East Germans are still leaving the country every day. Demonstrations in Neubrandenburg, Frankfurt/Oder, and Limbach-Oberfrohna. - Nov. 9 Demonstrations in Erfurt (80,000) and Gera (10,000). Günter Schabowski, member of the Politburo, announces that as of now, all East German citizens can travel abroad without special permission. The wall is crumbling. The same night, thousands of East Berliners flood into the western part of the city. - Nov. 10 Euphoria in West German cities as thousands of East Germans take a first glimpse of life across the "iron curtain." East Germans "invade" West Berlin's "Kurfürstendamm." - Nov. 11 In the last three days, more than four million tourist exit visas were issued to East German citizens. Suicide of several SED officials. - Nov. 12 Replacement of several SED regional secretaries (Bezirkssekretäre), including the ones in Erfurt, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Halle, Magdeburg, and Rostock (the ones of Perleburg, Köthen, and Bautzen have already committed suicide). - Nov. 13 Hans Modrow becomes new head of the government. Free elections and continuous mobility rights are demanded at mass demonstrations in Leipzig (300,000), Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Cottbus, Magdeburg, Neubrandenburg, and Schwerin. - Nov. 14 Forty-eight universities request the abolishment of Marxism-Leninism as a mandatory course. - Nov. 16 Replacement of the remaining regional secretaries. East German newspapers publish West German television programs for the first time. The Academy of Science rehabilitates Ernst Block and Robert Havenmann. Since November 9,7.7 million visas have been issued to East Germans. - Nov. 19 First officially approved demonstration of the New Forum in Leipzig. Demonstrations also in Dresden, Plauen, Suhl, Berlin, and Eberswalde-Finow. #### NOTES - 1. As quoted in Rolf Schneider, Frühling im Herbst: Notizen zum Untergang der DDR (Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 1991), p. 48: "Wir hatten mehr Angst vor dem Volk, als das Volk vor uns haben musste." Translations of quotations are, unless otherwise indicated, my own. In order to preempt charges of misinterpretation and to retain a statement's unique, language-related meaning, a footnote provides the text of the quotation in the original form. - 2. Gene Sharp, The Methods of Nonviolent Action, vol. 2 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), pp. 117-72, 199-217. Sharp refers to these two forms of resistance as "nonviolent protest" and "protest migration." This monograph will instead employ the more parsimonious terms "voice" and "exit," which were first rendered popular by Albert O. Hirschmann's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). I will employ the expressions "nonviolent struggle" and "nonviolent direct action" interchangeably, ignoring the slight conceptual difference that is sometimes made between the two concepts. - 3. Étienne de la Boétie, Le Discours de la Servitude Volontaire (Paris: Payot, 1978/1553), chap. 1. An English version is available under the title *The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude*, translated by H. Kurz (New York: Free Life Editions, 1975). - 4. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (Stuttgard: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1969/1884), p. 51: "Staat heisst das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch; und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk'... Aber der Staat lügt in allen Zungen des Guten und Bösen; und was er auch redet, er lügt—und was er auch hat, gestohlen hat er's." - 5. Eckehard Jesse, "Wir sind das Volk! Neues Selbstbewußtsein, Vielfältigkeit und Gefährdungen der Opposition," in DDR—Von der Friedlichen Revolution zur deutschen Vereinigung, edited by G. Wewer (Opladen: Leske und Budrich), p. 50. For a brief account of the SED's central role in the command structure, see Margret Peulen-Hartung, "Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer recht: Die SED—eine Partei nach stalinistischem Muster," in Deutsche Einheit—Deutsche Linke: Reflexionen der politischen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung, edited by M. Gorholt and N. Kunz (Köln: Bund-Verlag, 1991). - 6. For detailed studies of dissident activities in East Germany, see Uwe Backes, "Opposition, Protest, und Widerstand' in beiden deutschen Staaten," in Politische Bildung 22, no. 3 (1989): 32-54; Eckehard Jesse, "Wir sind das Volk!"; Hubertus Knabe, "Politische Opposition in der DDR," in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vols. 1-2 (1990); and Ferdinand Kroh, "Havemanns Erben—1953 bis 1988," in "Freiheit ist immer Freiheit . . . ": Die Andersdenkenden in der DDR, edited by F. Kroh (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein Sachbuch, 1988). German language material on the East German revolution in general has appeared in inflated quantities since 1989. The following interpretative writings are among the more useful: Bernward Baule, "Wir sind das Volk! Politische Bedingungsfelder der Freiheitsrevolution in der DDR," in Ursachen und Verlauf der deutschen Revolution von 1989, edited by K. Löw (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991); Ralf Dahrendorf, Betrachtungen über die Revolution in Europa in einem Brief, der an einen Herrn in Warschau gerichtet ist (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1990); Rainer Deppe, Helmut Dubiel, and Ulrich Rödel, eds., Demokratischer Umbruchin Osteuropa (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991); Gert-Joachim Glaessner, Der schwierige Weg zur Demokratie: Vom Ende der DDR zur Deutschen Einheit (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991); Jürgen Habermas, Die nachholende Revolution (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990); Christiane Lemke, Die Ursachen des Umbruchs 1989: Politische Sozialisation in der ehemaligen DDR (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991). Detailed bibliographies can be found in Revolution und Reformen in der DDR: Auswahlbibliographie 1989–1990 (Bonn: Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages, 1990) and Von der Revolution in der DDR zur deutschen Einheit: Auswahlbibliographie 1989–1990 (Bonn: Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages, 1991). Good analyses in English or translations of German sources are not as abundant but can be found, for example, in Timothy Garton Ash, We the People: The Revolution of 1989 (London: Granta/Penguin, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, "The Rectifying Revolution and the Need for New Thinking on the Left," in New Left Review, no. 183 (Sept/Oct 1990); Fred Halliday, "The Ends of Cold War," in New Left Review, no. 180 (March/April 1990); Albert O. Hirschmann, "Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic," in World Politics 45 (January 1993). Krishan Kumar, "The Revolution of 1989: Socialism, Capitalism, and Democracy," in Theory and Society, no. 21 (1992). - 7. Cf. Gustav Just, Zeuge in eigener Sache: Die fünfziger Jahre in der DDR (Frankfurt a.M.: Luchterhand, 1990); Walter Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1990). - 8. Jesse, "Wir sind das Volk," p. 54. - 9. Robert Havemann, Dialektit Ohne Dogma? (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1990/1964) and Rudolf Bahro, Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus (Köln: Bund-Verlag, 1977). - 10. Kroh, "Havemanns Erben," pp. 52-56. - 11. For details, including founding declarations, leitmotifs, and statutes of these citizens' movements, see Gerhard Rein, ed., Die Opposition in der DDR: Entwürfe für einen anderen Sozialismus (Berlin: Wichern-Verlag, 1989). - 12. Erich Honecker, "Ansprache auf der Festveranstaltung zum 40. Jahrestag der Gründung der DDR in Ost-Berlin am 6. Oktober 1989," in Das Ende der Teilung: Der Wandel in Deutschland und Osteuropa, edited by J. Thies and W. Wagner (Bonn: Verlag für Internationale Politik, 1990), pp. 177-85. - 13. de la Boétie, Le Discours de la Servitude Volontaire as translated by Harry Kurz in The Politics of Obedience, p. 51. Original quote: "Et si on ne leur [les tyrans] baille rien, si on ne leur obéit point, sans combattre, sans frapper, ils demeurent nus et défaits, et ne sont plus rien: sinon que comme la racine, n'ayant plus d'humeur et aliment, devient une branche sèche et morte." All subsequent references to and quotes of de la Boétie refer to Kurz's translation. - 14. Volker Ronge, "Loyalty, Voice, or Exit? Die Fluchtbewegung als Anstoß und Problem der Erneuerung in der DDR," in DDR—Von der Friedlichen Revolution zur deutschen Vereinigung, edited by G. Wewer (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1990), p. 38. - 15. Hannes Bahrmann and Christoph Links, Wir sind das Volk: Die DDR zwischen 7. Oktober und 17. Dezember 1989 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1990), p. 36. - 16. Neues Deutschland, 12 October 1989, p. 1 - 17. Honecker quoted in Ronge, "Loyalty, Voice, or Exit?", p. 41. - 18. Krenz quoted in Bahrman and Links, Wir sind das Volk, p. 36 - 19. Egon Krenz, Wenn Mauern Fallen: Die Friedliche Revolution, Vorgeschichte—Ablauf—Auswirkungen (Wien: Paul Neff Verlag, 1990), pp. 13, 29, 61, 161; Günter Schabowski, Das Politbüro: Ende eines Mythos, edited by F. Sieren and L. Koehne (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1990), pp. 62, 90; and Schabowski, Der Absturz (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1991), pp. 118, 256. - 20. Schabowski, Das Politbüro, p. 68 and Der Absturz, pp. 234-35. - 21. Krenz, Wenn Mauern Fallen, p. 166. - 22. Schabowksi, Das Politbüro, p. 62 and Der Absturz, p. 305. - 23. Cf. Schabowski, Das Politbüro, pp. 134-40. - 24. Jürgen Habermas, "Die Normativen Defizite der Vereinigung," in Vergangenheit als Zukunft (Zürich: Pendo Verlag, 1990), pp. 54-58. - 25. Hirschmann, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, p. 43, and Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the GDR, pp. 173-202. - 26. Habermas, "The Rectifying Revolution," p. 7. - 27. As quoted in Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), p. 223: "Les stuctures ne descendent pas dans la rue." - 28. Clarence Marsh Case, Nonviolent Coercion: A Study in Methods of Social Pressure (New York: The Century Co., 1923) and Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (New York: Fellowship Publications, 1935). - Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 3 vols. (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973). - 30. Gene Sharp, The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle (Cambridge, Mass.: Albert Einstein Institution, 1990), p. 1. - 31. Sharp, Power and Struggle, vol. 1 of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, p. 7. - 32. Ibid., pp. 10-16 - 33. Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel, Demokratischer Umbruch, p. 9. The New Forum and various other citizens' movements emphasized the importance of strictly maintaining nonviolent discipline. Cf. Bahrmann and Links, Wir sind das Volk, p. 12, and Rein, Die Opposition in der DDR, pp. 170-71. - 34. Doug Bond, "Introduction," in *Transforming Struggle in Comparative Perspective*, edited by D. Bond (New York: Praeger, forthcoming 1994). Given the unavailability of the definite issue, all subsequent references to this article lack specific page numbers. - 35. Schabowski, Das Politbüro, p. 141. - 36. The interaction between violent and nonviolent forms of struggle is a complex issue. Since the East German resistance was carried out in an over- whelmingly nonviolent form, I will refrain from pursuing this subject. Further analyses can be found, for example, in Adam Roberts, Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions (Cambridge: The Albert Einstein Institution, 1991) and William Vogele, "Learning and Nonviolent Struggle in the Intifadah," Peace & Change 17, no. 3 (1992). - 37. Bond, "Introduction." - 38. Bond, "Introduction." - 39. Edwald Lang, ed., Wendehals und Stasi-Laus: Demo-Sprüche aus der DDR (München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1990), p. 20. - 40. Bond, "Introduction," - 41. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag, 1969), p. 18: "... das Prinzip der Immanenz, der Erklärung jedes Geschehens als Wiederholung, das die Aufklärung wider die mythische Einbildungskraft vertritt, ist das des Mythos selber." - 42. Glaessner, Der schwierige Weg zur Demokratie, pp. 89-94; Hubertus Knabe, "Die deutsche Oktoberrevolution," in Aufbruch in eine andere DDR. Reformer und Oppositionelle zur Zukunft ihres Landes, edited by H. Knabe (Reineck: Rowohlt, 1989); and Uwe Thaysen, Der Runde Tisch. Oder: wo bleibt das Volk? (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990). - 43. Wolfgang Engler, "Stellungen, Stellungnahmen, Legenden: Ein ostdeutscher Erinnerungsversuch," Depe et al., Demokratischer Umbruch in Osteuropa; Günter Grass, Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR: Letzte Reden vorm Glockengeläut, (Frankfurt a.M.: Luchterhand, 1990); Antonia Grunenberg, "Ich finde mich überhaupt nicht mehr zurecht...," in DDR—Ein Staat vergeht, edited by T. Blanke and R. Erd (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1990); Habermas, "Die Normativen Defizite der Vereinigung"; Jens Motschmann, "Evangelische Kirche und Wiedervereinigung," in Ursachen und Verlauf der deutschen Revolution von 1989, edited by K. Köw (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991); and Claus Offe, "Die deutsche Vereinigung als 'natürliches Experiment'," in Experiment Vereinigung: Ein sozialer Grossversuch, edited by B. Giesen and C. Leggewie (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1991). - 44. Michel Foucault, La Volonté de Savoir, vol. 1 of L'Histoire de la Sexualité (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1976), p. 124. - 45. Foucault, La Voloné de Savoir, p. 124: "... il n'y a pas, au principe des relations de pouvoir, et, comme matrice général, une opposition binaire, et globale entre les dominateurs et les dominés, cette dualité se répercutant de haut en bas, et sur des groupes de plus en plus restreints jusque dans les profondeurs du corps social. Il faut plutot supposer que les rapports de force multiples qui so forment et jouent dans les appareils de productition, les familles, les groupes restraints, les institutions, servent de supports à de larges effets de clivage qui parcourent l'ensenmble du corps social." The most indepth exposition of this stratified power concept is contained in Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison (Paris: Editions Galimard, 1975). A conceptual summary in English can be found in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972–1977, edited by C. Gordon, Notes Notes translated by C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). - 46. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social (Flammarion: Paris, 1966/1762): "L'homme est né libre, mais partout il est dans les fers." - 47. "Sie predigten öffentlich Wasser und tranken heimlich Wein." - 48. Dahrendorf, Betrachtungen über die Revolution, p. 17; Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel, Demokratischer Umbruch, p. 10; Glaessner, Der schwierige Weg zur Demokratie, p. 25; Jesse, "Wir sind das Volk," p. 55; and Kumar, "The Revolution of 1989," p. 322. - 49. Statement reported on Germany's first television station, ARD, 17 January 1993, 20.00 hours. - 50. Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: Die zweite russische Revolution, translated by Gruppe U. Mihr (München: Droemer Knaur, 1987), pp. 230-33. - 51. Ulrich Beck, "Opposition in Deutschland," in Experiment Vereinigung: Ein sozialer Grossversuch, edited by B. Giesen and C. Leggewie (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1991), p. 24-25. - 52. Ursula Jaekel, "40 Jahre Staatssicherheit—Ziele, Tätigkeit, Auswirkungen," Ursachen und Verlauf der deutschen Revolution von 1989, edited by K. Löw, pp. 140, 145; and Tilmann Moser, Besuche bei Brüdern und Schwestern (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), p. 56. Revelations about and analyses of the Stasi are among the most sensationalized and widely available type of literature on East Germany. See, for example, Rainer Eppelmann, Wendewege (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1992); Ericht Loest, Die Stasi war mein Eckermann oder: mein Leben mit der Wanze (Göttingen: Steidel Verlag, 1991); and Hans Joachim Schädlich, ed., Aktenkundig (Berlin: Rowohlt Verlag, 1992). - 53. Tages Anzeiger, 27 January 1993, p. 3. - 54. Artur Meier, "Die Revolution entläßt ihre Theoretiker," in Experiment Vereinigung: Ein sozialer Grossversuch, pp. 29-31; and Artur Meier, "Abschied von der sozialistischen Ständegesellschaft," in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. B16-17 (April 1990): 3-14. - 55. The majority of Gramsci's ideas are contained in notebooks and letters that he wrote between his confinement (1928) and death (1937) in prisons of Fascist Italy. For translated and commented extracts of these Quaderini del Caracere see Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971). Among the numerous analyses of his ideas, one of the most concise and accessible ones is Robert Bocock, Hegemony (Sussex: Ellis Horwood, 1986). There are inconsistencies in Gramsci's concepts of hegemony, civil society, and the state, partly because censorship policies forced him to employ camouflaged terminology. See P. Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," in New Left Review, no. 100 (1976/77). In full awareness that it represents an oversimplification of the complex interaction between the spheres of coercion and consent, I will limit my analysis to one of the models presented by Gramsci: the opposition between the "state" and "civil society" (therefore excluding the third component, "economics"). - 56. Helmut Dubiel, "öffentlichkeit als konstitutives Element der Demokratie," in Fernseh-Kritik: Revolutionäre öffentlichkeit: Das Fernsehen und die Demokratisierung im Osten, edited by P.C. Hall (Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1990). - 57. Dahrendorf, Betrachtungen über die Revolution. - 58. Andrew Arato, "Civil Society Against the State," in Telos, no. 47 (1981): 23-47; Deppe, Dubiel, and Rödel, Demokratischer Umbruch. Cf. also John Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988). The actual term "civil society" (but not the concept) is relatively new to the German literature. It is sometimes literally translated as bürgerliche Gesellschaft or Zivilgesellschaft, but often the English expression is used. The actual meaning of the concept is probably best contained in the expression öffentlichkeit, public sphere. See Jürgen Habermas' classical treatise on the subject, Strukturwandel der öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991/1962). - 59. Decades ago, Rudy Dutschke already noted appropriately that in East Germany's Realsozialismus ". . . everything was real with the exception of socialism," as quoted in Gert Weisskirchen, "Aufbruch in die Differenz: Zur Rolle der Kultur in der europäischen Revolution unserer Tage," in Deutsche Einheit—Deutsche Linke: Reflexionen der politischen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung, edited by M. Gorholt and N. Kunz (Köln: Bund-Verlag, 1991), p. 34. - 60. Herbert Wagner, "Die Novemberrevolution 1989 in Dresden: Ein Erlebnisbericht," in *Ursachen und Verlauf der deutschen Revolution von 1989*, edited by K. Löw, p. 21. - 61. For detailed analyses of the role that the Protestant church played in the German revolution, see, for example, Matthias Hartmann, "Bedeutungsverlust oder Bedeutungsgewinn? Die Rolle der Kirche unter veränderten Umständen," in DDR—Von der Friedlichen Revolution zur deutschen Vereinigung, edited by G. Wewer (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1990); Motschmann, "Evangelische Kirche und Wiedervereinigung"; Detlef Pollack, ed., Die Legitimität der Freiheit: Politisch alternative Gruppen in der DDR unter dem Dach der Kirche (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1990); Jörg Swoboda, Die Revolution der Kerzen: Christen in der Umwältzung der DDR (Wuppertal/Kassel: Onkenverlag, 1990); and Martin Zagatta, "Kirche als Ersatzöffentlichkeit," in Politische Kultur in der DDR, edited by H.g. Wehling (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1989). Egon Krenz also acknowledges the central importance of the church in the organization of opposition against his regime. Cf. Krenz, Wenn Mauern Fallen, p. 89. - 62. Cf. Glaessner, Der schwierige Weg zur Demokratie, pp. 44ff; Knabe, "Die deutsche Oktoberrevolution," p. 11. Albrecht Schönherr and Propst Bäumer, the bishops of East Berlin and Magdeburg, two leading figures of the East German Protestant church, have in different epochs underlined this pragmatic stance. Both emphasized that the church never saw itself as in opposition against the state. Cf. Hartmann, "Bedeutungsverlust oder Bedeutungsgewinn?", pp. 90-91; and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 22 March 1993, p. 5. - 63. Schabowksi, Das Politbüro, p. 173: "Nur mit Repressivität is der Staat nicht zu machen. Selbst Honecker war bestrebt, populär zu sein." - Michel Foucault, L'Archéologie du Savoir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1969) and L'Ordre du Discours (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1971). - 65. Eckehard Jesse, "Die innerdeutschen Beziehungen under der christlichliberalen Regierung," in Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Deutsche Demokratische Republik, edited by E. Jesse (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1985), pp. 435-36; and David Childs, "The Ostpolitik and Domestic Politics in East Germany," in The Ostpolitik and Political Change in Germany, edited by R. Tilford (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975), pp. 63-64. Details of the Grundlagenvertrag and later agreements which provided the legal and political prerequisite for various kinds of exchange within the divided nation can be found in Dokumentation zu den Innerdeutschen Beziehungen: Abmachungen und Erklärungen (Bonn: Presseund Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1990). For further analyses of information flow and the control over civil society see Manfred Ackermann, "Der begrentzte Blick," in Die DDR in der Aera Honecker; Politik, Kultur, Gesellschaft, edited by G.J. Glaessner (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988), pp. 20ff; Lothar Bisky, "Mass Media and the Socialization of Young People in th GDR," in Studies in GDR Culture and Society, vol. 7, edited by M. Gerber et al., (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987); David Childs, The GDR: Moscow's German Ally (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 229-44; Gert-Joachim Glaessner, Die andere Deutsche Republik: Gesellschaft und Politik in der DDR (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), pp. 221ff; Jesse, "Die innerdeutschen Beziehungen," pp. 431-34; Manfred Rexin, "Koexistenz auf deutsch: Aspekte der deutsch-deutschen Beziehungen 1970–1987," Die DDR in der Aera Honecker: Politik, Kultur, Gesellschaft, pp. 50-55; Hans-Joachim Veen and Peter R. Weilemann, ed., Die Westpolitik der DDR (Melle: Verlag Ernst Knoth, 1989). - 66. Gunter Holzweissig, Massenmedien in der DDR (Berlin: Verlag Gebrüder Holzapfel, 1989), pp. 69-71. Already in 1973, Erich Honecker personally admitted to the SED Central Committee that virtually every household in the country listens to West German radio (ibid., p. 63). Egon Krenz confirmed in retrospect that in the situation of closed GDR borders, the availability of Western media sources decisively influenced East German citizens. Cf. Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen, p. 90. - 67. Jean Baudrillard, La Société de Consommation: Ses Mythes ses Structures (Paris: Editions Denoël, 1970), p. 32. - 68. As quoted in Holzweissig, Massesnmedien in der DDR, p. 62: "Wer der Meinung ist, daß es nicht schaden könne, antidemokratische Fernseh- und Rundfunksender zu hören oder Westzeitungen zu lesen, öffnet sein Ohr dem Todfeind." - 69. Susanne Binas and Peter Zocher, "Eigentlich habe ich Hunger, eigentlich hab ich's satt ...," in DDR—Ein Staat vergeht, edited by T. Blanke and R. Erd (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Tagebuch Verlag, 1990), pp. 52-60; Günter Erbe, "Moderne, Avantgarde und Postmoderne: Zur neueren Rezeption in der Literaturwissenschaft der DDR," in Studies in GDR Culture and Society, vol. 6, edited by M. Gerber (Lanham, M.D.: University Press of America, 1986), pp. 157-72; and Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR (Köln: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1982), p. 118. 70. In a comparative study I examined the penetration of "subversive" discourses into East Germany in light of a similar yet contrasting example, North Korea. I argued that because Kim Il Sung's authoritarian regime "... virtually annihilated the sphere of consent—civil society—and sealed off its population from outside information for an extended period of time, it was able to impose popular support for its egocentric, class-related interests and, consequently, could minimize the forces that would otherwise have led towards regime change." Cf. Roland Bleiker, "Global Systemic Change, Spatial Mediation, and Unification Dynamics in Korea and Germany," in Asian Perspective 16, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1992):74. 71. Habermas, new preface (1990) to Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit, p. 49 72. Wagner, "Die Novemberrevolution 1989 in Dresden," p. 10. For detailed analysis on the role that Western media played during the 1989 revolution, see Klaus Bressner "Das Fernsehen als Medium und Faktor der revolutionären Prozesse in Osteuropa und der DDR," in Fernseh-Kritik: Revolutionäre öffentlichkeit: Das Fernsehen und die Demokratisierung im Osten, edited by P.C. Hall (Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler, 1990); Helmut Dubiel, "Oeffentlichkeit als konstitutives Element der Demokratie" in Fernseh-Kritik; Kurt Hesse, Westmedien in der DDR: Nutzung, Image und Auswirkungen bundesrepublikanischen Hörfunks und Fernsehen (Köln: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1988); and Honzweissig, Massenmedien in der DDR. For a detailed chronology of East German official media coverage during the revolution, see Joachim Nölte, "Chronik medienpolitischer Ereignisse in der DDR," in Meiden-Wende, Wende-Medien? Dokumentation des Wandels im DDR-Journalismus, edited by W. Claus (Berlin: Vistas, 1991), pp. 17-116. 73. Archie Brown and Jack Gray, eds., Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (London: The Macmillan Press, 1984). 74. Lemke, Die Ursachen des Umbruchs 1989. Sigrid Meuschel comes to a similar conclusion when examining the changing levels of legitimacy that the SED regime enjoyed. Cf. Sigrid Meuschel, "Wandel durch Auflehnung: Thesen zum Verfall bürokratischer Herrschaft in der DDR," in R. Deppe et al., eds., Demokratischer Umbruch in Osteuropa, pp. 26-47. Various authors also draw attention to custom-oriented features of the German political culture that, allegedly, facilitated authoritarian rule. Among these elements are tendencies towards paternalism and uncritical deference of authority to the state. Cf. Irma Hanke, Alltag und Politik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986); Kurt Sontheimer, Deutschlands Politische Kultur (München: Piper, 1990), esp. pp. 64-65; Dietrich Staritz, "Untertänigkeit: Erbe und Tradition," in Studies in GDR Culture and Society, vol. 6, pp. 37-48; Hans-Georg Wehling, ed., Politische Kultur in der DDR (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1989). My own analysis portrays the German political culture as relatively individualistic and non-hierarchical when compared to the Korean cultural heritage. Cf. Bleiker, "Global Systemic Change," pp. 53-61. 75. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Taschenbuch, 1982/1882), p. 83, §57: "Da jener Berg! Da jene Wolke! Was ist denn daran 'wirklich'? Zieht einmal das Phantasma und die ganze menschliche Zutat davon ab, ihr Nüchternen! Ja, wenn ihr das könntet! Wenn ihr eure Herkunft, Vergangenheit, Vorschule vergessen könntet—eure gesamte Menschheit und Tierheit! Es gibt für uns keine 'Wirklichkeit'—und auch für euch nicht, ihr Nüchternen." 76. Jeffrey Berejikian provides a good overview of these two hostile approaches to the study of revolutionary social change: "Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem," in *American Political Science Review* 86, no. 3 (September 1992). 77. de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience, pp. 45-53. 78. Ibid., p. 46 79. Ibid., p. 60. See pp. 59-75 for de la Boétie's general comments on custom and voluntary servitude. 80. Ibid., pp. 77-78. See pp. 77-86 for de la Boétie's overall analysis of hierarchies of subordinate allies. Murray N. Rothbard's introduction to the cited English translation of the *Discours* provides a good exposition of a structural interpretation of dela Boétie. Through his concept of "loci of power," Gene Sharp also appreciates structural influences, but gives them relatively little weight in comparison to his elaborations on agents' ability to fight repression. Cf. Sharp, *The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle*, pp. 7-8. 81. Cf. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1984) and David Held and John B. Thompson, eds., Social Theory of Modern Societies: Anthony Giddens and his Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). - 82. Cf., for example, R.K. Ashley and R.B.J. Walker, eds., "Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies," International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990); Robert W. Cox, "Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory," Millennium 10, no. 2 (1981); Robert W. Cox, "Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay In Method," Millennium 12, no. 2 (Summer 1983); R.B.J. Walker, "History and Structure in the Theory of International Relations," Millennium 18, no. 2 (1989); and Alexander Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory," International Organization 41 (Summer 1987). Already during what Karl Japers called the Axial period, Taoist and Confucian philosophers established similar dialectical links between agents and structures. See my "The Cultural Dimension of International Theory: Neorealist Claims in Light of Ancient Chinese Philosophy," Millennium, forthcoming special issue on Culture and International Relations. - 83. I selected and judged the importance of the entries according to the overall study of the subject. Specific chronologies can be found as follows: Bahrmann and Links, Wir sind das Volk; Bärbel Bohley et al., 40 Jahre DDR...und die Bürger melden sich zu Wort (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1989), pp. 12-20; Hartwig Bögeholz, "Der Umbruch: Zur Chronologie der Ereignissein der DDR," in Aufbruchineineandere DDR: Reformer und Oppositionelle zur Zukunft ihres Landes, edited by H. Knabe (Reineck: Rowohlt, 1989), pp. 300-19; Glaessner, Der schwierige Weg zur Demokratie, pp. 227-30; Marlies Menge, "Ohne uns läuft nichts mehr": Die Revolution in der DDR (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1990), pp. 246-56; Spiegel Spezial (Einhundertzweiundsechzig Tage Deutsche Geschichte: Das halbe Jahr der gewaltlosen Revolution), no. 2 (1990): 145-46; Göttrik Wewer, "Aufrechter Gang und neue Ängste—Zur deutsch-deutschen Lage und zu diesem Heft," DDR—Von der Friedlichen Revolution zur deutschen Vereinigung, edited by G. Wewer (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1990), pp. 9-14. For a chronology of media coverage within East Germany between October 1989 and 1990, see Nölte, "Chronik medienpolitischer Ereignisse in der DDR," pp. 17-116.

Nonviolent Struggle and the Revolution in East Germany

Nonviolent Struggle and the Revolution in East Germany

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DOMINATION, OPPOSITION, AND REVOLUTION IN EAST GERMANY

Repression and Dissent before the 1980s

Mass Protests and the Revolution of 1989

2

THE

POWER-DEVOLVING POTENTIAL OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE

Draining the System's Energy: The Role of "Exit"

Displaying the Will for Change: The Role of "Voice"

Voluntary Servitude and the Power of Agency: Some Theoretical Reflections