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We certainly hoped perestroika would win out and that there would be changes. We knew all along that socialism could flourish only with a certain amount of freedom and democracy.

Stefan Heym

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Stefan Heym
Age: 88 †
Born: 1913
Born: April 10
Died: 2001
Died: December 16
Journalist
Novelist
Politician
Writer
Karl-Marx-Stadt
Helmut Flieg
Melchior Douglas
Gregor Holm
Would
Certainly
Along
Amount
Democracy
Perestroika
Knew
Flourish
Winning
Hoped
Freedom
Socialism
Certain
Changes

More quotes by Stefan Heym

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The idea of a socialism with a human face was something that I absolutely could support, because it was my idea from the very first.
Stefan Heym
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A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany.
Stefan Heym
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People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.
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You must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.
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If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way.
Stefan Heym
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You had censorship. If you brought a manuscript to the publisher, you knew he would suggest changes. If you wanted to write and speak what you thought had to be written and spoken, you had to act against all these suppressive rules.
Stefan Heym
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And of course, in West Germany, they made every effort that people who came from the East would get jobs and would get a comfortable existence. That was part of the Cold War - and part of the winning side of the Cold War.
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I certainly hoped that in the Eastern part of Germany, what was just beginning to be called the German Democratic Republic, you would develop a system of socialism with freedom and democracy.
Stefan Heym
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And also, of course, I knew that the German people, they're one, and would tend to consider themselves as one and therefore they would consider the Wall as an enforced imprisonment. And I was right in thinking that way.
Stefan Heym
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And one of the worst effects was that by suppressing critical thought, it also suppressed critical thought in the field of economics and hampered the development of economics - and the country would fall back further and further in the economic competition with the West.
Stefan Heym
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A Western writer came up to me and said, how come nobody at this demonstration spoke of German unity? I told him, because it isn't on the agenda. People were interested in having another, better GDR, another, better socialism.
Stefan Heym
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Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.
Stefan Heym
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In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war.
Stefan Heym
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These were the things that the government supplied you with - in turn, of course, demanding obedience. But you must not imagine that it was a constant feeling of outrage that was in the minds of people and the hearts of people.
Stefan Heym