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
Economic System of Socialism those who opposed ESS for political reasons and those who opposed it for the disruptions it caused to the economy. His main opponents were Erich Honecker, Willi Stoph and Alfred Neumann. In May 1970 Ulbricht was removed from his power and left with a purely ceremonial role as the Chairman of the State Council of GDR until his death on 1973. In 1971 Honecker put forward a new program that called for the “unity of economic and social policy” by building a socialist working class state where the economy is put to the service of political goals. The goal of