GORBACHEV AND REFORM:

Mikhail Gorbachev is the Soviet Union's agent of change. In 1988, he announces his policies of openness and reform, and encourages East Germany to follow suit.

But the East German press agrees more with hardline communist China's bloody crackdown on protests in Tiananmenn Square than it does with Moscow's ideas about glasnost and perestroika.

The East German press is largely silent about the political changes sweeping Eastern Europe in 1989.