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 had seen the Warsaw Pact invade Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell the Prague Spring liberal reforms was replaced by the so-called Sinatra Doctrine; this policy announcement was in fact retrospective as the Soviet Union had already failed to militarily intervene – despite urging from the GDR leader Erich Honecker – during the Polish crisis of 1980–81. Gorbachev's decision largely stemmed from the lack of economic development within the Eastern Bloc in comparison to the western industrial nations due to the persistence of increasingly incompatible production structures and the failure to create service-orientated, micro-electronic or globalized industries. The Soviet Union therefore