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Chronicle 1988

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    • 3 August

      1988

      The West German amateur pilot Matthias Rust is pardoned by the Supreme Soviet and deported from the Soviet Union. In 1987, Rust landed on the Red Square in Moscow in a Cessna and was sentenced to four years in a labour camp.
    • 12 August

      1988

      An officer from the GDR border troops flees to West Germany. In an interview with RIAS, he confirms that an order to shoot and kill would-be escapees exists for the GDR border troops; the order had been suspended during Honecker’s visit to West Germany in 1987.
    • 15 August

      1988

      Diplomatic relations are commenced between the EG Commission and the GDR.
    • 21 August

      1988

      Four GDR citizens escape through the Spree River near the Berlin Reichstag, watched by numerous West Berliners. The crew of the patrol boat that pursues them do not make use of their firearms; all the escapees reach the Western part of the city uninjured.
    • 26 August

      1988

      The head of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard Schürer, writes in an internal document ("The Economic Situation of the GDR") that "under these concrete conditions, particularly the high burdens of foreign trade, the GDR consumes more than it produces in the long term and faces the necessity of introducing comprehensive measures to reverse this development." more
    • 28 August

      1988

      Dramatic accident in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate: at an air show at a US airbase in Rammstein, three planes from an Italian aerobatics squadron crash into the crowd of spectators. more
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