Page "Erich Honecker" Paragraph 12

In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, reforms to liberalise communism.

Honecker and the East German government refused to implement similar reforms in the GDR, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: " We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure ".

Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping Honecker, along with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a " Gang of Four "— a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make necessary reforms.