APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110020-1
into the KPD.
From the beginning, the SED was largely the tool of Walter Ulbricht, and he endowed the party with his principles: rigid organization, strict discipline, doctrinal orthodoxy, and loyalty to Moscow. Any deviation from these norms was a privilege reserved for Ulbricht himself. Having faced many perils since his youthful days as a KPD functionary—including the menace of Stalin's displeasure during his Moscow years (1938-45)—he had become practiced at political survival. He set the public example as the well-informed, painstaking, and puritanical leader who worked almost ceaselessly for the new state. In private he manipulated the party machinery ruthlessly to his own advantage. Overall, he liked to be considered the father of his country, but his inability to rise above the image of a petty tyrant more often made him an object of ridicule.
Under Ulbricht, the party, by its own accounts, guided the state from one triumph to another in a quest for excellence. At its founding in 1949 the self-styled German Democratic Republic was declared to be a people's democracy at an intermediate stage, aiming to become a genuine socialist state. By 1952 the groundwork was being laid for a socialist order, and as of 1958 the groundwork had been completed. In 1968 a new constitution hailed the achievement of the socialist state and assumed its continuing perfection. Throughout, important anniversaries were—as they continue to be—celebrated by the party with overflowing self-praise for its achievements in building "the first German peace state."
Such outpourings over the years doubtless have constituted an attempt on the part of regime leaders to inspire confidence in the durability of the party and the system that it has wrought. The doctrinaire dullness of the exaggerated claims and constant sloganeering, however, has served more as a reminder of the nature of the leadership itself. It has been the burden of the party to have produced few top men of the type who inspire popular trust. What has been produced has been a coterie of grey-faced bureaucrats, solemn of mind, and joyless of mood, who operate in the old German paternalistic tradition of "papa knows best." As the chosen keepers and interpreters of Marxist truth, they exhibit an elitist mentality and a consequent distrust for popular feeling. On occasion they pose as true democrats and friends of the people, but conformity is what they demand and expect to receive from those below.
The success of political regimentation as practiced by the SED has rested to a considerable degree on a commonalty of view and a uniformity if purpose among the top members of the party. Ulbricht was for years the personification of the unity of the Socialist Unity Party. Fealty to the master was the price of political success. There were those that plotted his demise as party leader, but so firm was his grip and so favorable to the fates that even the workers' uprising of 17 June 1953 failed to dislodge him. Eventually he was eased out, but even then the changeover to Erich Honecker in 1971 was carried through smoothly. Like Ulbricht, Honecker is experienced and artful, the sort of man not likely to be taken by surprise by his foes.
As is usually the case with Communist governments, the East German regime has outfitted itself with Western-style democratic finery. One of its showier items is a multiparty system which allows four additional parties—representing Christian, Liberal, agrarian, and reformed Nazi elements—membership in parliament. These parties purport to be counterparts of similar groups in West Germany, but in reality they are largely paper organizations. Each, of course, is regime controlled and lacks any stature of its own. In similar fashion, so-called mass organizations such as the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) and the Free German Youth (FDJ) operate under direct SED guidance and serve both as listening posts for popular opinion and as conduits for regime edicts. Finally, the regime groups together the political parties and the more important mass organizations into a semisacred body known as the National Front, which claims to represent the views of the population as a whole.
In East Germany the indispensable political element is solidarity. An election is a referendum for or against the system. Candidates are hand chosen, and their speeches are carefully tailored. Subsequent discussion is so arranged as virtually to be scripted. The campaign audience is well aware that only its approval is desired. Social and psychological pressure is applied to guarantee a massive turnout since a nonvoter is considered a dissenter. Regularly, 98% to 99% of the electorate do their duty and overwhelmingly "confirm" the regime.
The sham forms of democratic practice in East Germany are complemented by empty vessels of parliamentarism. The republican institutions stipulated in the Constitution serve largely as stage props around which the SED directs the human
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110020-1
