ABSTRACT
For some observers, both the period of Soviet occupation and of the German Democratic Republic are examples of police states, even of totalitarian regimes, in which the human rights of citizens were violated in a variety of ways, ranging from the simple withholding of basic rights, to torture and even death. For others, serious human rights abuses were but an early, transient and relatively limited feature of GDR political development which was, it was suggested, moving inexorably towards what might be termed 'Scandinavianisation' or greater freedom. The events of 1989, they contend, indicate not the repressiveness of German Communism, but its capacity to provide civic education for its subjects, and its potential for change. To them, the peaceful transition to real democracy, achieved without bloodshed, thus represents an essential truth about the GDR.
