The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948-49, a second crisis ensued from 1958-61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a "Free City." Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.

Beendigung des willkurlichen Massenterrors war. Hinzu kam eine Wirtschaftskrise, die okonomische und gesellschaftliche Reformen notwendig machte. Es galt, die Lebensmittelversorgung der Bevolkerung zu verbessern, das Los der Bauern zu erleichtern und das mit dem Aufstieg zur Weltmacht verbundene Primat der Schwer- und Rustungsindustrie zu relativieren, damit eine Verbesserung der industriellen Konsumguterproduktion uberhaupt moglich werden konnte. Die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Reformen der neuen, "kollektiven" Fuhrung in der Sowjetunion einschliesslich der Neuordnung der Aussenbeziehungen des Landes bildeten die Voraussetzungen fur die Experimente in der DDR und in Ungarn, mit denen die kollektive Fuhrung die Veranderungen der sowjetischen Politik nach aussen trug. Die komparatistisch angelegten Untersuchungen des Bandes konzentrieren sich auf die Entstehung, Implantierung und Folgen des "Neuen Kurses," mit dem die sowjetische Fuhrung nach Stalins Tod die Lage in der DDR und in Ungarn konsolidieren wollte. Der Beitrag von Manfred Wilke und Tobias Voigt zur Geschichte des "Neuen Kurses" in der DDR versucht die Komplexitat der Ereignisse darzustellen: Der Prozess von der Verordnung des "Neuen Kurses" uber die Existenzkrise bis zur Stabilisierung der SED-Herrschaft verdichtete sich in einem Zeitraum von wenigen Monaten. In Ungarn dagegen wurde der "Neue Kurs" nicht zuletzt unter dem Eindruck der Berliner Ereignisse zugig umgesetzt, fuhrte zur Konsolidierung der Lage und in der Folge zu einer Entwicklung der Widerspruche der sozialistischen Ordnung, an deren Ende die Revolution stand."

The book analyzes the role, activities and influence of the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS or Stasi) not only in connection with the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its follow-up conferences (i. e., the "CSCE Process"), but also in terms of limiting its influence upon East German society in terms of improved human rights and increased human contacts between East and West. On the one hand, the MfS supported the hard line of the East German party and state leadership in the CSCE process - also, when necessary, in opposition to the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the MfS supported Moscow's demands - also communicated by its "fraternal organ", the KGB - that the East German leadership should conduct a policy of strict "delimitation" (Abgrenzung) with regard to West Germany in order to seal Germany's division. In general, Minister of State Security Erich Mielke supported the hardest possible line toward West Germany, whether as a representative of the East German Party leadership with regard to Moscow or as a supporter of Moscow's hard line for the GDR towards West Germany within the SED regime. However, the economic weakness of the GDR and the Soviet Union, further exacerbated by the arms race with NATO and especially the U.S. in the 1980's, led to concessions by both regimes to the West both within and outside of the CSCE process that further limited the possibilities of the MfS in terms of repressing East German dissidents. More importantly, this was also the case with regard to the growing movement to emigrate from the GDR to West Germany that had developed in response to the GDR's signing of the CSCE Final Act in Helsinki in August 1975. In the end, the Stasi, which had always been a "servant of two masters" - i. e. the East German Party and the Soviet Union, represented by the KGB - could no longer keep the domestic effects arising from the CSCE process and detente under control because of the concessions of its two erstwhile "masters" to the West.