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.

Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.

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.

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.

In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war.

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.

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.