Erich Mielke demonstrations politically and giving "every DDR citizen the right to travel." On 17 October 1989, Mielke and the rest of the GDR's Politburo met to follow Gorbachev's demand, voiced in August, for Erich Honecker be removed as General Secretary of the SED and State Council chairman. Suspecting that Honecker's personal bodyguards might try to arrest the members of the Central Committee when they met to vote Honecker out in favour of Egon Krenz, Mielke saw to it that Stasi agents were stationed near the meeting room. While deliberations were underway, Mielke told Honecker that "we simply cannot start shooting with
Peaceful Revolution apartment?" A further escalation of this hostility occurred in Autumn 1988 when the SED banned the Soviet monthly journal Sputnik, which had a circulation in the GDR of 190,000, on account of its supposedly distorted historical articles. This provoked a wave of protests from those in the GDR population, including even many SED members. At the turn of the year 1988/89 GDR leader Erich Honecker began speaking of "socialism in the colours of the GDR" to emphasize the countries' differences in policy. Since the start of the 1970s, Honecker had led social policies built on debt such as wage and