Meeting between party and state leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and SED General Secretary Erich Honecker in the Crimea. After a run of several bad harvests and the resulting necessity to import large amounts of grain and meat from the West, the Soviet Union is in deep water, economically speaking.
Brezhnev tells Honecker tersely that the GDR cannot bank on receiving any Soviet loans in the coming four years to balance out bilateral trade, and that it was doubtful whether the Soviet Union could deliver the agreed amount of oil – the most important raw material for the GDR for its exports to the West. Then comes the usual philippic: the Western debt of the GDR is providing the West with a "lever for exerting all kinds of pressure", he says, and could, as the Polish example showed "in dramatic fashion", lead to the "most serious consequences". Dissociation from West Germany in particular, Brezhnev says, remains the most urgent priority for the GDR.less
9 August
1981
US President Ronald Reagan announces the decision to construct a neutron bomb.
13 August
1981
The GDR leadership celebrates the 20th anniversary of the construction of the Wall with a big military parade.
RIAS survey of West Berliners on their attitude to the Berlin Wall, 13 August 1981 (in German) (Source: Archiv Deutschlandradio, Broadcast: Rundschau am Mittag, Moderatorin/Reporter: Christine Rackuff, Georg Gafron)
27 August
1981
The Soviet party and state leader Leonid I. Brezhnev tells SED General Secretary Erich Honecker that he wants to reduce Soviet oil deliveries to the GDR from 1982. On 4 September, Honecker answers that the loss of even a part of the Soviet deliveries would have "an extremely negative impact on the economy of the GDR." "To be frank, " Honecker’s letter says, "the mainstay of the German Democratic Republic’s existence [would be] undermined."more
In a letter to West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker says that he is in principle still interested in a constructive dialogue between the two German states, despite the tense international situation.more
