Socialist Unity Party of Germany
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| “ | Our party rejects secret policies. It works for the people, and only the people, so it does not need to keep secrets like the warmongers. | „ |
| ~ Walter Ulbricht |
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the governing Marxist–Leninist political party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany) from the country's foundation in October 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. The party was established in April 1946 by the merging of the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Overview edit
The GDR was a one-party state but other institutional popular front parties were permitted to exist in alliance with the SED, these parties being the Christian Democratic Union, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Farmers' Party, and the National Democratic Party. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.
In the 1980s, the SED rejected the liberalisation policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, such as perestroika and glasnost, which would lead to the GDR's isolation from the restructuring USSR and the party's downfall in the autumn of 1989.
Walter Ulbricht was the party's dominant figure and effective leader of East Germany from 1950 to 1971. In 1953, an uprising against the Party was met with violent suppression by the Stasi secret police and the Soviet Army. In 1971, Ulbricht was succeeded by Erich Honecker who presided over a stable period in the development of the GDR until he was forced to step down during the 1989 revolution. The party's last leader, Egon Krenz, was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain the SED's hold on political governance of the GDR and was imprisoned after German reunification.
The SED's long-suppressed reform wing took over the party in the autumn of 1989. In hopes of changing its image, on 16 December it renamed itself the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), abandoning Marxism–Leninism and declaring itself a democratic socialist party. It received 16.4% of the vote in the 1990 parliamentary elections. In 2007, the PDS merged with Labour and Social Justice (WASG) into The Left (Die Linke), the fifth largest party in the German parliament following the 2017 federal election.
Although it was nominally a merger of equals, from the beginning the SED was dominated by Communists. By the late 1940s, the SED began to purge most recalcitrant Social Democrats from its ranks. By the time of East Germany's formal establishment in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party—essentially the KPD under a new name. It began to develop along lines similar to other Communist parties in the Soviet bloc.
Although other parties nominally continued to exist, the Soviet occupation authorities forced them to join in the National Front of Democratic Germany, a nominal coalition of parties that was for all intents and purposes controlled by the SED. By ensuring that Communists predominated on the list of candidates put forward by the National Front, the SED effectively predetermined the composition of legislative bodies in the Soviet zone, and from 1949 in East Germany.
Over the years, the SED gained a reputation as one of the most hardline parties in the Soviet bloc. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated reforms in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the SED held to an orthodox line.
On the day of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, 7 October 1989, the old Social Democratic Party was (illegally) refounded. The rest of October saw widespread protests across the country, including in East Berlin and Leipzig. At a special Politbüro meeting on 18 October, Honecker was voted out as general secretary and replaced by Egon Krenz, the party's number-two leader. Krenz tried to portray himself as a reformer, but few believed him. He was almost as detested as Honecker himself, and most of the populace remembered that only four months earlier, he had gone to China to thank the regime there for the suppression in Tiananmen Square. Krenz made some attempts to adjust state policy. However, he could not (or would not) satisfy the growing demands of the people for increased freedom.
One of the regime's efforts to stem the tide ended up being its death knell. On 9 November the SED Politbüro drafted new travel regulations allowing anyone who wanted to visit West Germany to do so by crossing East Germany's borders with official permission. However, no one told the party's unofficial spokesman, East Berlin party boss Günter Schabowski, that the regulations were to take effect the next afternoon. When a reporter asked him when the regulations were to be in place, Schabowski assumed they were already in effect and replied, "As far as I know--effective immediately, without delay." This was widely interpreted as a decision to open the Berlin Wall. Thousands of East Berliners crowded at the Wall, demanding to be let through. Unprepared and unwilling to use force, the guards were quickly overwhelmed and let them through the gates to West Berlin.
The fall of the Wall destroyed the SED politically. On 1 December 1989, the GDR parliament (Volkskammer) rescinded the clause in the GDR Constitution which defined the country as a socialist state under the leadership of the SED, thus formally ending Communist rule in East Germany. On 3 December 1989, the entire Central Committee and Politbüro—including Krenz—resigned.