The Formation of the Communist Party of Germany and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republi C

Enclosure #2 THE NATIONAL COUNCI L FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEA N RESEARC H 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N .W . Washington, D.C . 20036 THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : Politics Unhinged : The Formation of the Communist Party of Germany and the Collapse of the German Democratic Republi c AUTHOR : Eric D . Weitz Associate Professo r Department of History St . Olaf Colleg e 1520 St . Olaf Avenu e Northfield, Minnesota 5505 7 CONTRACTOR : St . Olaf College PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR : Eric D . Weit z COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 806-3 1 DATE : April 12, 199 3 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East Europea n Research. The analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those of the author. i Abbreviations and Glossary AIZ Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (KPD illustrated weekly newspaper ) Alter Verband Mineworkers Union Antifas Antifascist Committee s BL Bezirksleitung (district leadership of KPD ) BLW Betriebsarchiv der Leuna-Werke BzG Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung Comintern Communist International CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Unio n DMV Deutscher Metallarbeiter Verband (German Metalworkers Union ) ECCI Executive Committee of the Communist Internationa l GDR German Democratic Republic GW Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke HIA, NSDAP Hoover Institution Archives, NSDAP Hauptarchi v HStAD Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf IGA, ZPA Institut für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Zentrales Parteiarchi v (KPD/SED Central Party Archive ) KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany ) RCP(b ) Russian Communist Party (bolshevik ) RE Ruhr-Echo (Ruhr KPD daily newspaper) RF Rote Fahne (main KPD daily newspaper) RFB Rote Frontkampferbund (Red Front Fighters Association) RGO Rote Gewerkschaftsopposition (Red Trade Union Opposition ) SBZ Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet Occupation ZOne ) SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party o f Germany) SMAD Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland (Soviet Militar y Administration in Germany) SPD Sozialdemokratischepartei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party o f Germany) StAM Staatsarchiv Magdebur g UBL Unterbezirksleitung (subdistrict leadership of KPD) Union Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter (Union of Manual and Intellectua l Workers ) USPD Unabhängige Sozialdemokratischepartei Deutschlands (Independent Socia l Democratic Party of Germany ) ZStA Zentrales Staatsarchiv Introduction The revolutions of 1989-91, dramatic everywhere, achieved their most stunning contours in the German Democratic Republic . Here, the regime seemed especially wel l entrenched, fortified by a combination of repressive political measures and economic an d social policies that had provided its citizens with a well-developed system of social securit y and, at least by eastern European and worldwide comparisons, a reasonable standard o f living. According to one widely cited estimate, by the 1980s per capita income in the GDR had surpassed that of Great Britain . To many observers, the East German regime ha d managed to create, after forty years, a distinctive national identity despite the GDR' s obviously precarious position as the remnant of a divided nation located on the front-line o f the east-west divide and faced with the constant competition and allure of West Germany' s prosperous social welfare capitalism . ' Though the breakdown of the East German regime came rapidly and unexpectedly , the origins of the collapse lay far deeper than the immense changes in the international orde r initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms . Ultimately, the collapse of the GDR stemmed from the long-standing popular hostility to the signature policies of the regime--strict centra l direction of the polity and economy and sharp demarcation from the "bourgeois" systems o f the west, notably the Federal Republic of Germany. These policies, in turn, were not merel y Soviet strains forcibly planted in German soil in the years after 1945 . Rather, they were rooted also in the political strategy and culture that had enabled the Communist Party o f Germany (KPD) to become in the 1920s the first mass-based communist party outside of th e Soviet Union . Among the major European communist parties that achieved mass status in the epoch 2 of communism, only the KPD accomplished its popular breakthrough with a "classically " Marxist-Leninist strategy . Despite intense factional conflicts and frequent leadershi p changes, the KPD through most of the Weimar period promoted a view of revolution as a singular event in which the proletariat, acting under the leadership of the vanguard party , would destroy the existing state apparatus, seize the reins of power, and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat . The KPD's strategy thereby emphasized the voluntaristi c element in the revolutionary transformation, the active and conscious participation of th e party and its supporters in surmounting existing conditions, and the critical role of centra l state power in the construction of the new social order . The strategy entailed an utter rejection of the view, common to social democrats generally and to communists in th e popular front era, that an escalating wave of reforms could lead to the creation of socialism . Instead, the KPD promoted an unrelenting opposition to all the organs of bourgeois societ y and a highly masculinized conception of political violence as the means of socia l transformation . This political strategy, so successful in building a mass movement in the Weima r Republic, is most often attributed to the ever deepening extent of Soviet and Cominter n influence on the German party in the course of the 1920s . In most accounts, the assassinations in early 1919 of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leo Jogiches almos t immediately deprived the young party of a highly capable and independent leadership . The early defeat of its own insurrectionary effort in the (misnamed) Spartacist Uprising, couple d with the general containment of the German Revolution in 1919 and 1920, pushed the part y closer to ideological and practical dependence on the Soviet Union, a move consummated in 3 the unification of the KPD and Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) on the basis of Lenin's Twenty-One Conditions. Intense factional disputes and the defeats in two subsequen t insurrectionary efforts, the March Action 1921 and the attempted October Revolution of 1923, along with the Russian party's assertion of its own preeminence within the Cominter n made the KPD increasingly subject to decisions made in Moscow . In Hermann Weber' s standard account--now being reiterated, ironically enough, by appraisals emanating from th e former GDR-- the KPD by the end of the 1920s had become a "stalinized" party . The KPD , rooted originally in the social and political life of German labor, increasingly took on th e character of its Soviet mentor . Practices developed out of Russian conditions were grafte d on to German politics and society . Not the least, the Leninist-Stalinist ideological orientation came to define the political ideas and strategy of the KPD and its successor, the Socialis t Unity Party (SED) . 2 Certainly, it would be pointless to dispute the ever increasing influence of the Sovie t Union on the KPD and the SED. But the interpretive schema described above is too simple . By locating the fount of political and historical development in Moscow, the history o f German communism--as party, movement, and state--is moved out of the course of Germa n history in the twentieth century, only to find its way back, the prodigal son returning, i n 1989/90. Yet the KPD became a mass party in the Weimar Republic, and the reconstitute d KPD/SED attracted significant popular support in the first post-World War II period . However assiduously party cadres read the works of Stalin and Lenin (let alone Marx an d Engels) and followed Comintern and Soviet directives, these still needed to be translated into political discourses and political actions that had resonance among German workers in th e Weimar Republic and the East German citizenry in the post-1949 period . Had this not 4 occurred, the KPD would have remained a sect rather than a mass movement, and the GD R would never have attained the legitimacy--however unstable and limited--it acquired for a t least a part of its history . For Hermann Weber and others who argue in his vein, the socio - political history of the Weimar Republic functions as a mere backdrop to, rather than as a constituent element of, the development of a party whose essential course was defined i n Moscow . In ideological terms, Weber and others see a party whose initial democrati c impulses, articulated most forcefully by Luxemburg, were increasingly replaced by th e authoritarianism characteristic of Lenin and Stalin . The political strategy with which the KPD/SED became a popular movement and a ruling party had both ideological and social-historical origins, and their geographical foun t lay in Germany as well as in Russia and the Soviet Union. Rosa Luxemburg provided much of the ideological orientation of the KPD through her unwavering hostility to the institution s of bourgeois society, commitment to class struggle as the means of political progress, an d rhetoric of militant confrontation . In the course of the Weimar Republic, the KPD joined- - joined, did not replace--these positions, common to Luxemburg and Lenin, with Lenin' s emphasis on a disciplined

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