During the mid-1980s the winds of Perestroika blowing from, of all places, Moscow, allowed people to hope that a more democratic socialist future, with a less monolithic and oppressive political structure might become an option for East Germany. Developments in Moscow certainly undermined the confidence of the leadership in East Berlin, but from the perspective of citizens such as Braband the government response was one of increasing repression. This increasingly served to encourage street protests, however, as the realisation dawned on protesters and party leadership alike that the Soviet troops occupying the country might no longer be poised ready to intervene against civilian protesters as they had in 1953 and, more recently in Prague, in 1968. During 1989 what the authorities perceived as a dangerous and apparently unstoppable growth in street protests was seen by Jutta Braband (and many others), as a desperate response to government repression, above all on the part of young people. "In one sense, the middle of 1989 saw a mood of irrational grief and helplessness which slowly but steadily grew into an unstoppable rage". On 3 October 1989 Braband's own young teenage daughter was one of approximately 6,000 protesters who invaded the grounds of the Czechoslovak embassy in a desperate attempt to obtain permissions necessary escape from East Germany via Czechoslovakia, just as Communist victims of Nazi persecution had done more than half a century earlier. The real breakthrough this time came in November 1989, however, when the Berlin Wall was broken open and then crossed by street protestors. At that point it became screamingly obvious that the Soviet forces standing by had received no orders to intervene and rescue the Honecker government.