Glasnost passing East Germany by

Press, 8 December 1988, Page 42

Glasnost passing East Germany by

NZPA-Reuter East Berlin East Germany, anxious about the effect of Moscow’s glasnost on its increasingly disenchanted people, has adopted a tough line against Soviet media and any glimmers of Kremlin-style openness at home.

Diplomats and other sources from East and West believe East Germany’s ageing leadership is desperately clinging on to values which are fast losing currency in more reform-minded countries. “It’s definitely a new hard line and it shows just how jumpy they (the East German leaders) are about the discussions glasnost has prompted,” said one senior Western envoy.

Always wary about the Kremlin’s new ability to wash its laundry in public, East Berlin has now gone on the offensive against the Soviet media and even some of its own. The Post Office banned a popular Soviet press digest, “Sputnik,” saying the monthly magazine distorted history and did not serve East German-Soviet friendship. October's issue had already been barred from delivery. The Culture Ministry pulled the plug on five Russian films shown during a special Soviet cinema festival and then to be screened in ordinary cinemas.

At least one prominent journalist was reprimanded for writing too critically in October in the East Berlin Communist Party daily “Berliner Zeitung” about consumergoods shortages. Officials scrapped a new programme at East Berlin’s sell-out Distel cabaret because the political satire cut too close to the bone, with daring jokes about reforms. Censors have continued to order deletions from Protestant Church newspapers, sometimes for reporting on meetings where clergy have called for reform.

In addition, police continue to keep a close watch on Church-linked opposition groups by staging house raids and briefly detaining members for checks. And an East Berlin school expelled four pupils in late September for questioning the need for military parades. The Church complained and wants the children reinstated.

Many East Germans, including party members, have expressed outrage tinged with resignation that East Berlin under party chief Erich Honecker sees fit to decide what they can and cannot see from an allied country, even though they tune in to West German television and radio most

days. “The stars of the black market used to be ‘Stern’ and ‘Spiegel’ (West German news magazines). Now it will be ‘Sputnik’ — the forbidden fruit always tastes better,” said one young man. Others said ironically East Berlin, keen to stem the flow of applications to leave, was effectively driving people to emigrate by refusing to budge from its course.

In Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Ministry said it did not plan to take any action over the “Sputnik” ban.

Soviet sources in East Berlin said privately they deplored the East German move, but would turn the other cheek rather than get bogged down in a row with a strategic ally. “It’s absolutely stupid, but what can we do?” said one.

A Nordic diplomat said Moscow was preoccupied with internal problems and this gave East Berlin some room to manoeuvre.

“Above all, the Soviets want stability. As long as the G.D.R. (East Germany) delivers the goods Moscow is happy,” he said.

Another Western envoy said it was significant East Berlin had tightened the screw just after a visit by Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu, another hardliner who also rejects

reform by arguing his country has already introduced similar measures. “Whether it was deliberate or just bad timing, that visit and the crackdown that followed made it look like Bucharest and East Berlin had sealed an unholy alliance,” he said.

On Tuesday, the party daily “Neues Deutschland,” which reported in detail on Honecker and Ceausescu’s mutual praise last week, printed an editorial from the Romanian party daily “Scinteia,” saying relations between the two countries were exemplary.

Connoisseurs rank the two party organs among the most tedious reading in Eastern Europe now, a far cry from the open, lively reporting of most newspapers elsewhere.

The main topic of conversation across East Germany this week has been “Sputnik,” but eyes are now on the party’s Central Committee plenum next week to see whether the new hard line is carried forward in an expected speech from Honecker. Despite growing pressure for change from the lower echelons of the party, recent speeches by other Politburo members have echoed the position that East Berlin is following its own path and, at most, only needs to tinker with its system.