The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In the interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
-- Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist philosopher (1891-1937)
The great variety of symptoms that confronted the Communists of East Germany and Czechoslovakia last week were not morbid, but they did carry the risk of metastasizing into something dangerous. As exhilarating as the rapid pace of change may be, the tight grip of party rule that seemed unshakable just weeks ago has loosened to the point of presenting both countries with the prospect of events slipping out of control. Though the revolution in East Berlin continues to outrace changes in Prague, the dynamics of tumult are much the same in both countries. Besieged party leaders grant one desperate concession ) after another, hoping each move will quiet the mounting outcry and preserve some measure of power for themselves. The opposition's success begets bolder demands -- and party leaders capitulate, further diminishing the very authority they hope to maintain.
East Germany's Communist Party granted the ultimate concession when its leader, Egon Krenz, and the other nine members of the Politburo resigned last week, along with the entire 163-member Central Committee. Three days later, Krenz stepped down as head of state, a move that left him stripped of the powers he had inherited only a month and a half earlier from his discredited predecessor, Erich Honecker. Manfred Gerlach, who heads a small party until now bound to the Communists, was named to replace Krenz in the ceremonial post of President. Honecker meanwhile was in quick succession expelled from the party, placed under house arrest and slapped with criminal charges. An additional 104 party functionaries and eight former Politburo members were also arrested.
The wholesale dissolution of the party leadership left some members with an uneasy sense that no one was in charge. But Prime Minister Hans Modrow seemed in command as he appealed on national television for calm, and the party hastily threw together a temporary 25-member working group to fill the leadership void. On Thursday the first talks between the Communist Party and the opposition yielded agreements to recommend parliamentary elections for May 6 and to rewrite the constitution. In addition, the foundering party advanced an emergency congress by a week to try to restore order and salvage shreds of credibility from the wreckage.
Meeting at East Berlin's Dynamo Football Club Gymnasium, the 2,714 delegates overwhelmingly nominated as party leader Gregor Gysi, a reformist lawyer who at 41 becomes the youngest Communist boss in Eastern Europe. Only three months ago, Gysi came under withering attack by hard-liners for representing the opposition group New Forum in its bid for legal status. Now, said Gysi after winning election, the Communists in East Germany will be merely "one party among others."