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,
Erich Honecker Gorbachev knew that, in reality, it faced bankruptcy; East Germany had already accepted billions of dollars in loans from West Germany during the decade as it sought to stabilise its economy. Attempting to make Honecker accept a need for reforms, Gorbachev warned Honecker that "He who is too late is punished by life", yet Honecker maintained that "we will solve our problems ourselves with socialist means". Protests outside the reception at the Palace of the Republic led to hundreds of arrests in which many were brutally beaten. As the reform movement spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe, mass demonstrations against