Question

Thanks to this opening, all that East Germans had to do to flee their poverty and regimented existence was to walk into Berlin’s American or British sector, and take a train or a flight to the booming West Germany.

Which they did, in such growing numbers that East Germany was rapidly losing its professionals – engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers. The GDR’s “brain drain” was so heavy that in 1958 Yuri Andropov, another high-ranking Soviet official, wrote an urgent letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party complaining about a 50 percent increase in the number of East German intelligentsia fleeing to West Germany.

He added that while the East German leadership claimed that they were leaving for economic reasons, the refugees testified that the reasons were “more political than material.” Andropov warned, “the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase.”

By 1961 – ten years after its foundation – GDR had lost to the West 3.5 million East Germans, or approximately 20% of its population, and its leaders acknowledged that the flight of its young, well-educated citizens was so serious it threatened the regime’s existence.

The conditions in East Berlin caused...

a flourishing economy and culture under communist rule.

a political conflict with the rest of East Germany.

a departure of educated and talented people from East Germany.

a rise in the quality of life within East Germany's borders.

Answer 1

a departure of educated and talented people from East Germany.

(The passage describes a “brain drain” of engineers, physicians, teachers, etc., and the loss of 3.5 million people by 1961.)