During a visit to China, SED Politburo member Günter Schabowski signs a partnership treaty between Beijing and East Berlin.
5 May
1988
Chancellery minister Wolfgang Schäuble and SED foreign-currency procurer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski hold talks on the review of the lump-sum transit fee and regulations regarding the Elbe border.more
In the SED Politburo, a controversy breaks out over future economic policy. While Honecker continues to extol the GDR as a bastion of economic stability to the outside world, the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard Schürer, is so concerned by the high Western debt of the GDR and its imminent insolvency that he proposes a drastic change of course in economic policy.more
The Soviet Union starts withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
22 May
1988
In Hungary, Prime Minister Károly Grósz, an advocate of political and economic reform, is chosen to succeed János Kádár as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party.more
26 May
1988
Joint statement by the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR (BEK) and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) for the 50th anniversary of the 1938 November pogroms.
29 May - 2 June
1988
Summit between US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet party and state leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow.more