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Chronicle 1981

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    • 3 August

      1981

      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. more

    • 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."

      Letter from CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to SED General Secretary Erich Honecker with the announcement of reductions in oil deliveries, 27 August 1981 (in German) Letter from SED General Secretary Honecker to CPSU General Secretary Brekhnev warning him not to undermine the mainstay of the GDR’s existence, 4 September 1981 (in German)
      In dramatic negotiations, SED head of planning Gerhard Schürer, then Honecker himself, try to change the Soviets’ mind. On 15 September, Schürer tells the chairman of Gosplan, Nikolai Baibakov, that "the oil for the GDR cannot be reduced without causing huge losses across the entire economic spectrum." But Baibakov has little room to manoeuvre. He offers Schürer to continue delivering the 2.2 million tonnes of oil that are to be reduced – but only in return for free foreign currencies to the tune of around 600 million dollars, which the Soviet Union urgently needs for grain imports.

      The negotiations that Honecker himself holds on 21 October with Konstantin Russakov, the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for International Affairs, take a no more favourable turn. Honecker warns that the intended reduction would have "catastrophic effects" and requests Russakov to ask Brezhnev "whether it is worth destabilising the GDR and shaking the confidence of our people in the party and state leaders for two million tonnes of oil." But the Soviet side demands the willingness of the GDR to help carry the consequences of the crisis in the Soviet Union; otherwise, it says, the present status of the Soviet Union in the world is at risk of being lost with unforeseeable results for the "entire socialist community". less

    • 31 August

      1981

      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
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