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 HeymI 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 HeymAnd 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 HeymI disapproved of the fact that the government here refused to adopt the few reforms that Gorbachev put over in the field of media and the field of culture.
Stefan Heym