„Daß die SED-Diktatur auch einer Gesellschaft im Aufbruch zum Opfer fiel und nicht lediglich dem Versagen ihrer Repressionsorgane, ist nur die Kehrseite der von ihr durchgesetzten jahrzehntelangen Alleinherrschaft des Politischen. Die sorgsam arrangierte Verinselung des Gesellschaftlichen an der lebensweltlichen Basis, diese Bestandsgrundlage staatssozialistischer Herrschaftspraxis, beginnt in den letzten Jahren der DDR zu schwinden. Die mittlerweile unfreiwillig anti-sowjetische Repressionswelle ab Mitte 1988 trägt schon alle Anzeichen einer verspäteten Abwehr. Zugleich bauen sich dem SED-Herrschaftsanspruch zuwiderlaufende soziale ‚Handlungslinien‘ auf. Zunächst existieren sie getrennt voneinander, aber es reicht eine vergleichsweise kurze Zeit ihrer kausalen ‚Verkettung‘, um die SED-Herrschaft zum Einsturz zu bringen.“ (Lindenberger 1999, S. 42f.)

„The 1989 revolutions did not happen because of a broad freedom drive […] The cave-in was unintended, precipitated by Gorbachev’s unilateral removal of the Soviet backstop […] Instead of galvanizing socialist reformers in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev’s stunning repeal of the Brezhnev doctrine caught out the bloc’s uncivil societies, exposing how they had long engaged in breathtaking mismanagement. Above all, they had clung to anticapitalism in the face of an ever-flourishing capitalist Western Europe – from which the uncivil societies had borrowed to avoid making hard choices, running up self-destructive debts in hard currency, as we shall see. Then they borrowed some more. What Gorbachev did was to lay bare how socialism in the bloc had been crushed by competition with capitalism and by loans that could be repaid only by ever-new loans …” (Kotkin 2010, S. xvii)

„This story of 1989’s revolution is quite different from what others have written. Rather than beginning in Moscow […] and cascading outward, it moves back and forth across borders, searching for parallels and influences. There are no miraculous events here, but many years of concerted action. The actors are not the famous dissident intellectuals and the ruthless communists, but hundreds of lesser-known individuals, most of whom, as I write, have yet to reach their forty-fifth birthday. Not, finally, is this a pessimistic story of desperately poor societies demanding a better standard of living […] Instead this is a story of people who began by trying to change what they could (or believed they could). As they succeeded, their ‚concrete‘ efforts contributed to a revolution.” (Kenney 2002, S. 15f.)