ABSTRACT
The Social Democratic-Free Democratic left of centre coalition collapsed in 1982 and was replaced by the right of centre Christian Democratic-Free Democratic coalition led by Helmut Kohl. Relations with Bonn continued to improve for the GDR between 1981-86 despite certain occasional minor setbacks. Honecker met Kohl at the funeral of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in February 1984 but despite much speculation about a visit to Bonn in that year it did not come off. Honecker was under pressure from his own people to make the visit which he knew would be very popular but he also knew that he needed the green light from Moscow. He had to wait for that to come from Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. His aim is to introduce as many computers as soon as possible into schools and colleges but, up to 1988, the gdr was still suffering from an almost total lack of computers and word processors in private use.
