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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.
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