In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, reforms to liberalise socialist planned economy.
Frictions between him and Honecker had grown over these policies and numerous additional issues from 1985 onward.
East Germany refused to implement similar reforms, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: "We have done our perestroika; we have nothing to restructure".
Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping him in with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a "Gang of Four": a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make reforms.

According to White House experts Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Gorbachev looked to Communist leaders in Eastern Europe to follow his example of perestroika and glasnost.
They argue:
Gorbachev himself had no particular sympathy for Erich Honecker, chairman of the East German Communist Party, and his hard-line comrades and the government.
As early as 1985... [Gorbachev] had told East German party officials that kindergarten was over; no one would lead them by the hand.
They were responsible for their own people.
The relations between Gorbachev and Honecker went downhill from there.

Western analysts, according to Zelikow and Rice, believed in 1989 that Communism was still secure in East Germany:
Bolstered by relatively greater affluence than his country's Eastern European neighbors enjoyed in a fantastically elaborate system of internal controls, East Germany's longtime leader Eric Honecker seemed secure in his position.
His government had long dealt with dissent through a mixture of brutal repression, forced emigration, and the vent of allowing occasional, limited travel to the West for a substantial part of the population.

Honecker felt betrayed by Gorbachev in his German policy and ensured that official texts of the Soviet Union, especially those concerning perestroika, could no longer be published or sold in East Germany.

At the Warsaw Pact summit on 7–8 July 1989 in Bucharest, the Soviet Union reaffirmed its shift from the Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of its member states, and announced "freedom of choice".
The Bucharest statement prescribed that its nations henceforth developed their "own political line, strategy and tactics without external intervention".
This called into question the Soviet guarantee of existence for the Communist states in Europe.
Already in May 1989 Hungary had begun dismantling its border with Austria, creating the first gap in the so-called Iron Curtain, through which several thousand East Germans quickly fled in hopes of reaching West Germany by way of Austria.
But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behaviour of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union opened the floodgates.
Thus the united front of the Eastern Bloc was broken.
The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the Daily Mirror of August 19, 1989 was too late and showed the current loss of power: “Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic.
When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West.”
Now tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms.
A 1969 treaty required the Hungarian government to send the East Germans back home; however, starting on 11 September 1989, the Hungarians let them pass into Austria, telling their outraged East German counterparts that they were refugees and that international treaties on refugees took precedence.

At the time Honecker was sidelined through illness, leaving his colleagues unable to act decisively.
He had been taken ill with biliary colic during the Warsaw Pact summit.
He was shortly afterwards flown home to East Berlin.
After an initial stabilisation in his health, he u
In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, reforms to liberalise socialist planned economy. Frictions between him and Honecker had grown over these policies and numerous additional issues from 1985 onward. East Germany refused to implement similar reforms, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: "We have done our perestroika; we have nothing to restructure". Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping him in with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a "Gang of Four": a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make reforms.
According to White House experts Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Gorbachev looked to Communist leaders in Eastern Europe to follow his example of perestroika and glasnost. They argue:
Gorbachev himself had no particular sympathy for Erich Honecker, chairman of the East German Communist Party, and his hard-line comrades and the government. As early as 1985... [Gorbachev] had told East German party officials that kindergarten was over; no one would lead them by the hand. They were responsible for their own people. The relations between Gorbachev and Honecker went downhill from there.
Western analysts, according to Zelikow and Rice, believed in 1989 that Communism was still secure in East Germany:
Bolstered by relatively greater affluence than his country's Eastern European neighbors enjoyed in a fantastically elaborate system of internal controls, East Germany's longtime leader Eric Honecker seemed secure in his position. His government had long dealt with dissent through a mixture of brutal repression, forced emigration, and the vent of allowing occasional, limited travel to the West for a substantial part of the population.
Honecker felt betrayed by Gorbachev in his German policy and ensured that official texts of the Soviet Union, especially those concerning perestroika, could no longer be published or sold in East Germany.
At the Warsaw Pact summit on 7–8 July 1989 in Bucharest, the Soviet Union reaffirmed its shift from the Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of its member states, and announced "freedom of choice". The Bucharest statement prescribed that its nations henceforth developed their "own political line, strategy and tactics without external intervention". This called into question the Soviet guarantee of existence for the Communist states in Europe. Already in May 1989 Hungary had begun dismantling its border with Austria, creating the first gap in the so-called Iron Curtain, through which several thousand East Germans quickly fled in hopes of reaching West Germany by way of Austria. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behaviour of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union opened the floodgates. Thus the united front of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the Daily Mirror of August 19, 1989 was too late and showed the current loss of power: “Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West.” Now tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. A 1969 treaty required the Hungarian government to send the East Germans back home; however, starting on 11 September 1989, the Hungarians let them pass into Austria, telling their outraged East German counterparts that they were refugees and that international treaties on refugees took precedence.
At the time Honecker was sidelined through illness, leaving his colleagues unable to act decisively. He had been taken ill with biliary colic during the Warsaw Pact summit. He was shortly afterwards flown home to East Berlin. After an initial stabilisation in his health, he u
Erich Honecker