page_title: Emigration from the Eastern Bloc
section_title: Later restrictions and agreements
hierarchical_section_title: Emigration from the Eastern Bloc / History / Later restrictions and agreements
context_page_description: Emigration from the Eastern Bloc was a point of controversy during the Cold War. After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.
  Eastern Bloc governments argued that strict limits to emigration were necessary to prevent a brain drain. The United States and Western European governments argued that they represented a violation of human rights. Despite the restrictions, defections to the West occurred.
  After East Germany tightened its zonal occupation border with West Germany, the city sector border between East Berlin and West Berlin became a loophole through which defection could occur. This was closed with the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Thereafter, emigration from the Eastern Bloc was effectively limited to illegal defections, ethnic emigration under bilateral agreements, and a small number of other cases.
context_section_description: Thereafter, only 5,000 crossed the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. Consequently, after the erection of the Wall, the total net emigration from Central and Eastern Europe fell even further to 1.9 million between 1960 and 1969 and 1.1 million between 1970 and 1979. This increased somewhat to 2.3 million between 1980 and 1989 with increased ethnic emigration after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.  More than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration", and religious minorities, such as those from Bulgaria (ethnic Turks and other Muslims), Poland (ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, and ethnic Jews), Romania (ethnic Germans, ethnic Jews), and Yugoslavia (ethnic Turks and other Muslims). Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to immigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations.  About 10% of emigrants were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of 1951.  Emigration from Eastern Bloc countries was as follows:
  Albania's tight security allowed almost no emigration, while almost all of East Germany's emigration took place before the erection of the Berlin Wall.  Because of East Germany's cultural affinity with West Germany and the viewing of West German television depicting western life throughout most of East Germany, East Germany was more prone to population loss.
  Providing further emigration pressure was the growing gap in living standards between western Europe and the Eastern Bloc after the 1960s.  Everyday complaints over consumer goods, supplies or wages could all too readily lead to comparisons with Western conditions.  The quality of goods displayed by "aunts" and Intershops, where visitors would buy premium goods with foreign currency (see also Beryozka, Pewex, Tuzex and Corecom), heightened Easterners' sense of their second-class status and this, in turn, affected their perception of economic arrangements in their own country.  Walter Freidrich, director of the Leipzig Institute, complained that "shortcomings and weaknesses in our own country (e.g., problems with supply of consumer goods and spare parts; media policy; rose tinted perspectives; real democratic participation, etc) are coming increasingly into focus and subjected to sharper criticisms.  To a growing extent, doubt is cast on the superiority of socialism."  Stasi reports complained about individuals who had been given privileged access to travel to the West for work with "stories of the 'overwhelming range of commodities available . . . or with reports of East German goods on sale there at knock-down prices."
  Defection attempts from the Soviet Union were governed by two laws: (i) illegal traveling abroad without a passport was a crime punishable by one to three years in prison, even in cases where the destination was another Eastern Bloc country; and (ii) illegal defection to a non-Eastern Bloc state and refusal to return home was considered treason against the state.  To remove the temptation for such treason, the Soviets invested heavily in border controls, with lengthy criminal rules regarding approaching a border region.  Almost no emigration occurred from the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, except for ethnic Armenians returning to Armenia. In 1973, the United States Congress made liberalizing the Soviet emigration policy a prerequisite for lifting trade barriers, resulting in the emigration of 370,000 Soviet citizens, mostly ethnic Jews.  A second wave of emigration started in 1986–87, after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, with most emigrants being ethnic Jews, ethnic Germans, Armenians, Greeks or Pentecostals.
  Because of various international accords, non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries did not explicitly ban emigration.  Instead, they introduced a long series of approvals an applicant must obtain beyond the passport office—including local police, employers and the state housing commission—with no time limit set for ac
caption: A ration card for milk from 1983 from the People's Republic of Poland
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