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Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev is confronting a political crisis as the reforms he inspired in Eastern Europe begin to haunt him at home. With Gorbachev's tacit blessing, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have joined Hungary and Poland in abolishing the Communist Party's constitutional monopoly on power. Nonetheless, the Soviet leader has always insisted that the party must retain its pre-eminence in his country if perestroika is to succeed. Last week the Lithuanian legislature defied Gorbachev's wishes and legalized rival political parties, setting the stage for other Soviet republics to do the same. This week radical delegates are expected to propose a debate in the Congress of People's Deputies on whether to delete Article 6 of the national constitution, which enshrines the party's "leading role" in Soviet society.
In East Germany it remained uncertain whether the Communist Party's last- ditch effort to fashion a new identity could save it from extinction. With the party's upper echelon disgraced, the taut discipline snapped down below. A half million of the 2.3 million cardholders have deserted the party in recent weeks, and last week middle-ranking members joined the opposition groups in crying for the departure of the power brokers who for 41 years imposed their rule. Citizens worked with the regular People's Police to prevent the shredding and theft of incriminating documents. Airline flights to Rumania were suspended to block the removal of key documents. Police sealed the offices of party leaders and searched other party members as they exited their workplaces.
Some citizens seemed determined to take matters into their own hands. In one incident, about 100 people halted a man who was leaving an East Berlin office of the dreaded Stasi (secret police) with two suitcases in tow. When the man was handed over to the police, they discovered currency worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that was believed to be intended for party officials. Two days later the man was found hanged in his jail cell. The 25,000-man Stasi, meanwhile, was partly defanged by the dismissal of its directorate and the reassignment of some 7,000 agents to customs detail.
At one point, the government seemed intent on depicting a mood of impending breakdown, as if trying to ensure its survival by convincing people that only the present leaders could keep blood from flowing in the streets. In a statement issued through the state-run ADN news agency last Wednesday, the government reported "growing indications of stormings of facilities and installations of the National People's Army." But no mention was made of where the assaults took place. In a separate appeal, from the army, generals warned that they would not permit disturbances at military installations and called on soldiers to fulfull their duty "thoughtfully and reliably in these fateful hours." That same day the Defense Council resigned, leaving command of the 172,000-member armed forces in the hands of the government and the new head of state.
While army discipline never flagged, Modrow was plainly worried about the Fighting Groups, the bands of factory workers that function as the party's private army. Though the government had announced that the groups would be disarmed, it remained unclear how successful efforts were to get the group leaders to surrender the keys to their armories.