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in December 1970. It was predicted that a triumvirate, possibly consisting of Stoph, Honecker, and Guenter Mittag would be formed. Honecker has, however, established himself as primus inter pares.
Erich Honecker was born in 1912 in the Saar. At the age of 10 he was enrolled by his father in the Communist children's movement, and later transferred to the youth movement where he rose quickly to high-level positions. After spending 10 years (1935-1945) in Nazi prisons, he returned to the Soviet occupation zone where he was given the very important job of organizing the Free German Youth (FDJ). Honecker's success in building the FDJ led to candidate membership in the Politburo in 1950. He was promoted to full membership in 1958 and became the secretary responsible for security and cadre affairs.
Long before the actual transfer of power, Honecker's position as Ulbricht's heir designate had been unquestioned. His experience and connections in the FDJ, the party bureaucracy, and the security apparatus assured him the support of these key elements. Even more important, however, Honecker was acceptable to Moscow because of his unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Communist Party, his seeming immunity to nationalist tendencies, and the likelihood that he would be prepared to subordinate SED interests to those of Moscow if a situation were to arise in which a choice had to be made.
The Honecker style of leadership combined a strict adherence to ideological principles with a willingness to find pragmatic solutions to difficult social and economic problems. Though his strength lies in organizational and cadre work, he opposes a heavy-handed bureaucratic approach to solving problems. At the Eighth Party Congress, he criticized tendencies which had developed under Ulbricht including obstinacy, bureaucratism, paper-pushing, and the penchant for taking too optimistic a view of developments. Honecker is deeply devoted to the SED, but he wants it to be a party which does not rely on punitive administrative measures to command loyalty.
Several trends have become evident since Honecker took office. On the one hand there has been the attempt to strengthen political controls of the SED over East German society. This included giving increased weight to political attitudes over performance records, and assigning an increasingly important role to the cabinet-level Workers and Farmers Inspectorate (ABI) which has the responsibility to implement party resolutions affecting the economy and society. Simultaneously, the SED has also taken steps to raise the morale of the people by
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FIGURE 5. Party leaders (U/OU) (photos)16
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110019-3
