Walter Ulbricht and the SED: the specifics of the party leadership in the GDR in 1961-1973
Paying due regard to the internal and external context, this paper aims to define what role the SED Central Committee's General Secretary Walter Ulbricht played in the evolution of the party and what impact the changes in the party had on the Ulbricht's status among party leaders. The construction of the Berlin Wall marked a turning point. It, for one thing, made the East Germany leadership decide on a new political agenda. For another, it required East Germans to adapt to the new conditions “behind the wall”. This led to a significant increase in party membership through the recruitment of new, younger members in place of the “older” communists. Holding the highest position in the state and the party, Ulbricht presented himself as the “father of the nation” willing to surpass West Germany. He launched the New Economic System of Planning and Management that innovated the ways the party functioned. Ulbricht relied on young officeholders with an academic degree, who had joined the ranks of the Central Committee and competed with the senior members. For this reason, rather mild attempts to introduce new executives and party leadership style encountered opposition of the influential members of Politburo. A group of officeholders led by Erich Honecker was gradually strengthening its hand drawing from the growing discontent among key party officials, as Ulbricht was losing control of both the Central Committee and the Ministry for State Security. However, it took several years before Ulbricht had no more influence left, because the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev had repeatedly refused to carry out Honecker's wish and dismiss Ulbricht. It should be noted that the Ulbricht's dismissal (1971) was conceived to appear as an expressly routine act, so no one would liken it to the removal of Nikita Khrushchev or to the resignation of Alexander Dubcek and Wladyslaw Gomulka during the political crises between 1960s and 1970s. The author concludes that although Walter Ulbricht attempted to pursue a more down-to-earth policy, his innovations were perceived in the SED and CPSU as unrealistic, and they ran contrary to the demand for stability, expressed by the party and the society. To meet this demand Ulbricht was replaced by Honecker. From this perspective, therefore, Ulbricht, who did not and could not put the key role of the SED in East Germany in question, himself became an obstacle to the “normalization” of East German society.
Keywords
ГДР,
СЕПГ,
постсталинизм,
Вальтер Ульбрихт,
Эрих Хонеккер,
the GDR,
the SED,
post-Stalinism,
Walter Ulbricht,
Erich HoneckerAuthors
| Betmakaev Alexei M. | Altai State University | btmkv@yandex.ru |
Всего: 1
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