and westerners alike have been surveyed often and at length about their views of one another and their assessments of the quality of life since unification. Substantial as differences of opinion on specific issues have been, one general trend has been clear since the union of the two German states in 1990: very few Germans in either half of the country would want to see a return to the status quo ante. This trend was confirmed in a recent survey of the group within German society most likely to have doubts about unification: voters who regularly cast their ballots for the Party of Democratic Socialism. The successor - the reformed and much changed successor - to the German Democratic Republic's communist party, the PDS has had a measure of success in positioning itself as a champion of eastern interests. It now consistently wins about 20 percent of the vote in Berlin and the five eastern states (it has yet to come anywhere close to clearing the five-percent hurdle in the western states). In the summer of 1998, with a national election on the horizon, the news weekly Der Spiegel commissioned a survey of PDS voters. Given the option of listing several reasons to explain their support for the party, half of the respondents cited its eastern roots and its position on social policy. About a third said their PDS votes were intended as a statement of protest against either the Kohl government or western German influence in setting policy for the east. Only five percent described their support for the PDS as a protest against unification. Even if the great majority of eastern Germans have no interest in turning back the clock, there has been much talk of the rise of Ostalgie ("eastern nostalgia") and the development of a distinct eastern identity rooted in the experience of life in the GDR. Attachment to various customs and fixtures of everyday life of ...
