History of Germany (1945–90) eventually hundreds of thousands of people in several cities—particularly in Leipzig—continued to grow. On 7 October, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of East Germany and urged the East German leadership to pursue reform, without success. The movement of civil resistance against the East German regime—both the emigration and the demonstrations—continued unabated. On 18 October, Erich Honecker was forced to resign as head of the SED and as head of state and was replaced by Egon Krenz. But the exodus continued unabated, and pressure for political reform mounted. On 4 November,
Margot Honecker in Berlin, but his wife did not accompany him. Margot Honecker instead flew to Santiago to join her daughter Sonja and her family, who had been living in Chile since 1990. After 1992 Margot Honecker lived in Santiago, Chile, with her daughter Sonja Yáñez Betancourt, her daughter's Chilean husband Leo Yáñez Betancourt and their son Roberto Yáñez. In January 1993 Erich Honecker's trial back in Berlin, which some felt had by that stage already descended into farce, was cut short because, it was said, of the rapidly deteriorating health of the accused. He left Berlin for the last time on