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The Stasi in 1972 made plans to assist the Ministry of Public Security (Vietnam) in improving its intelligence work during the Vietnam War. [77] In 1975, the Stasi recorded a conversation between senior West German CDU politicians Helmut Kohl and Kurt Biedenkopf. It was then "leaked" to Stern magazine as a transcript recorded by American ...
Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures, which outlined the use of Zersetzung in the Ministry for State Security. The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, was the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), and defined Zersetzung in its 1985 dictionary ...
The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. [9] The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population. Together with these, a much larger number of occasional informers brought up ...
It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi, which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. [30] From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' [31] called Zersetzung ("Decomposition").
The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
To prevent such defections, the Stasi secret police kept a close watch on the border guards with agents and informers. A special Stasi unit worked covertly within the Grenztruppen, posing as regular border guards, between 1968 and 1985. [6] The Stasi also maintained a pervasive network of informers within the ranks of the Grenztruppen. One in ...
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991).
Along with being televised worldwide, it was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. [4] Able Archer 83 (1983) – NATO exercise mistaken by parts of the KGB, Politburo, and Soviet Armed Forces as cover for an attack. The USSR responded by readying its forces for war.