Yes, but also no. The GDR and the Soviet Union who supported it and supplied it were both almost bankrupt and economically broken. Infrastructure was falling apart because the state couldn't afford to fix it.

The potests sure helped, but the government of the GDR was also in a state where it would accept the demands as a way out. The protests probably did accelerate the downfall a bit, but it would have happened either way.

Similar protests years before were leading nowhere.

Target practice. Did you see the video where they shot the teenager standing still on a hill doing nothing? The shot him in the head with a rubber bullet, causing concussion and permanent damage. The officer high fives another officer right after.

The kid was literally just standing there doing nothing. A fucking child was used as target practice by adult civil servants.

Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.

~ M. Gandhi

A protest has to have teeth. If the teeth are economic, then that's ok. If the teeth is violence, then that can be ok. Martin Luther King was successful in part because the threat of violence of Malcom X.

Protests do nothing if they can be ignored. If they can be ignored, they WILL be ignored.

So you’re saying that Gandhi accomplished nothing

Gandhi achieved a socio-economic mass mobilization. Boycotts, work stoppages, supply chain failures caused by mass mobilization. It wasn't just people parading through the streets. They inflicted real economic damage on the British Imperial State.

when millions followed him, they couldn’t just arrest them all

Thousands were killed by British-aligned police. Millions more were impoverished in retaliatory trade sanctions, embargoes, and other economic retaliations. The Indian state was set back decades by the English response to independence - not unlike how Cuba and Haiti have been deliberately impoverished in retaliation for bucking the American and French former overlords.

They could arrest Gandhi and Congress leaders all they wanted to, but the movement they inspired couldn’t be stopped.

The current Modi government is a stark reversal of policy from the Gandhian Indian socialist state. They've embraced a very western-oriented capitalist-friendly militant hierarchy that has fully rebutted the movement Gandhi lead. That is, in large part, through continuously aggravating tensions between caste cohorts and between Hindu and Muslim regional populations.

When millions follow you, and refuse to cooperate, the ruling class will suffer

Mobilizing and orienting millions of people requires a large, cohesive popular media campaign. Gandhi was able to tap into a huge underground of anti-British opposition. But even that wasn't able to overcome the base anti-Muslim sentiment that the Brits had fostered for centuries. Gandhi himself was the victim of this unfettered hatred, when he was assassinated at age 78 by an anti-Muslim fanatic during an interfaith prayer meeting in 1948.

Assassination of leading civil rights activists and organizers by hyper-partisan radicals has consistently worked dismantle national movements. From the slaying of US civil rights leaders in the 1960s to the bombings and assassinations of Latin American, African, and Pacific Island socialist organizers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, we've seen the ruling class triumph through a persistent campaign of organized violence and stochastic terrorism.