762B.00/12–1351

The Acting Director of the Eastern Element ( Hulick ) to the Secretary of State

confidential
No. 488

Ref Eastern Element’s despatches No. 686, April 4, 1951, and No. 318, November 17, 1950.1

Subject: The Socialist Unity Party (SED) membership review and purges in Eastern Germany

Summary

In an effort to insure success for their campaign for German unity, the East German Communists are currently laying great stress on ideological indoctrination of the East German masses through the SED, the mass organizations and the governmental apparatus. This is necessary to overcome Communist isolation from the population and rising general unrest. In the recent review of the SED membership, which was aimed at raising the ideological level of the party, it was [Page 2025] revealed that about 22 per cent of the membership was purged. Numerous organizational and ideological weaknesses were also brought out.

Under the guise of winning the intelligentsia through ideological indoctrination, the Communists have indicated that they have been forced to make what appear to be wide concessions to this group to overcome increasing economic difficulties.

Background

The recent purge of the SED, mass organizations and governmental apparatus has taken place against a political background of Communist isolation from the East German masses and rising popular unrest and discontentment. In their attempts to push their campaign for German unity, the Communists have faced widespread lethargy on the part of the East German population, which is saturated with Communist propaganda and looked upon the Grotewohl unity offer as another propaganda trick. This was admitted by Herman Axen, chief of the SED Propaganda Section, who told a meeting of National Front agitators on November 4, 1951, “there exists an underestimation [of the importance of the Volkskammer appeal and the political movement brought about by it]2 in many circles of the population and also in many parts of our democratic parties and organizations. We mustn’t make a superficial comparison between the present campaign for the Volkskammer appeal and previous campaigns … All German consultations is no propaganda slogan. It is an important political goal that will be achieved.”

To a lesser degree economic factors have contributed somewhat to the background of the present purges. The theory has been advanced that improved living conditions in the Soviet Zone have contributed to the general unrest because the population no longer has to devote all its time to earning a bare living and has more time for political activity, which has taken the form of opposition. In any event, labor dissatisfaction resulting from the collective agreements and temporary layoffs because of economic dislocation has contributed to general restlessness and passive resistance.

Viewed against this background of Communist isolation from the East German population, and the latter’s passive resistance, and in connection with the Grotewohl proposal for German unity, the recent purges stand out as a clear illustration of the contradictions between Soviet policies of closure vs. expansion in Germany (See Frankfurt’s Despatch No. 818, September 24, 1951, Enclosure 1, p. 11 3). Unable or unwilling to alter its policy in Germany to achieve greater success, the Kremlin is forcing the German Communists to achieve this success by pushing their previous policies with even greater effort. Thus the SED [Page 2026] is seeking to lift itself by its own bootstraps through a propaganda campaign for German unity of unprecedented intensity. The result is the relatively high expenditure of German Communist human resources forecast in Frankfurt’s reference despatch. Purge of the SED

The results of the review and purge of the SED membership, which went on from January 15 to July 31, 1951, were published in Neues Deutschland October 28, 1951. It was originally thought that the SED had set a quota of eight to ten percent to be purged through the membership review (See Frankfurt’s despatch No. 3535, May 10, 19513). However, during the first two months of the review, the review boards (Grundkommissionen) showed such leniency toward ideologically backward members that it was necessary for the SED Central Committee to devote its Fifth Session, March 15–17, 1951, to correcting this situation. As a result, almost twenty two percent of the party membership appears to have been purged.*

Evaluation of the Party Organization

Matern prefaced his report on the “Results of the Review of Party Members and Candidates” with the usual Communist formula indicating general satisfaction with its results. “The review had helped to tighten up party unity and raise its fighting force.” However, he then proceeded to detail the party leadership’s dissatisfaction with the SED’s organizational and ideological weaknesses at great length.

Matern ranked the party’s sub-organizations in order of their effectiveness, as revealed by the membership review, as follows:

  • 1. Party units in the peoples-owned factories formed “the strongest basis” for the party.
  • 2. Next in order came the party units in the government and administrative offices. However, the GDR Ministry of Finance, the Laender finance directorates, and the local finance offices were notable exceptions. They were condemned for their lack of self-criticism and study of Marxism, and were characterized as “concentration points for ex-Nazis, sergeants, and officers.” [According to the West Berlin Investigating Committee of Free Jurists almost every East German finance office contains one or more members cooperating with it].
  • 3. The party organizations in privately-owned plants had not kept pace with the rest of the party’s development, and in many instances had come under the influence of the private owners.
  • 4. Next to the party groups on the nationalized farms, the residential groups were the “weakest links in the SED organizational structure.”
  • 5. Special criticism was reserved for the mass organizations. Complaining that “the work of the party groups within the mass organization apparatus had been completely neglected,” Matern pointed out that the membership review had revealed sectarianism, social democratic influence, and concentration on trade union and cooperative problems to the exclusion of party politics among these organizations. The failure of the FDGB to conclude the collective agreements was cited as proof of this. In addition, Matern warned that the VVN (Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime) was becoming a “collecting basin for anti-party elements.”

The SED, A Functionaries’ Party

In his criticism and analysis of the social composition of the SED membership, Matern revealed that the party is becoming increasingly a party of functionaries. “The percentage of workers remained at the same level, while the percentage of peasants declined … Only the percentage of functionaries had risen.” This was explained by the fact that large numbers of workers had become qualified for state positions. However, they remained workers.

The trend toward functionary control of the lower echelons of the SED was hindering party contact with the masses. “Often the work of the party organization was not being carried on by the elected leadership, but by leading administrative functionaries … In the basic organizations there were cases where the secretary alone decided the policy and carried out the work … The basic rule of election of party leadership was regularly being broken through the method of co-opting, which had become the rule. This was particularly crass among the Kreis organizations.” This co-option had resulted in a fluctuation in the Kreis secretaries which had to be stopped under all circumstances if the party work was to be raised to a higher level.

Ideological Level of the Party

One of the principal functions of the SED membership review was to raise the ideological level of the party, in an effort to instill some revolutionary fervor into this functionary bureaucracy. Some of the more notable weaknesses revealed were as follows:

1. Anti-Soviet feeling: “There was still anti-Soviet feeling within the party which appeared sporadically in all circles of the party’s organization.”

2. The Oder-Neisse boundary: While most members recognized the Oder-Neisse line, their answers in many cases showed that this acceptance was only formal.

3. The question of just and unjust wars: There was considerable lack of clarity on the question of just and unjust wars. Many members had replied that defensive wars were just and aggressive wars unjust. This was brought out in connection with the Korean war and the question of the Chinese “volunteers,” and disclosed a lack of clarity about the character of the peace policy of the USSR. A pacifist tendency was also revealed, which rejected wars of liberation.

[Page 2028]

4. German unity and the National Front: “Many comrades expressed the idea that [German] unity could only be achieved through war.” Sectarian answers were also given which viewed the National Front as “only a tactical maneuver to ‘catch’ as many people as possible.”

5. Unity of action among the workers: While remnants of social democratic tendencies were found in all circles of the party, the Berlin organization came in for special criticism because this was hindering its attempts to create “unity of action” with Socialist and trade union workers … In the factories where a large percentage of West Berliners worked, the influence of Western ideology was particularly strong.”

Promotion of the Intelligentsia

A special section of Matern’s report was devoted to those workers and functionaries within the party whose “sectarian” attitude that “all those who don’t belong to the working class are reactionaries” was interfering with fulfillment of the Five Year Plan goals. He attacked those who held the opinion that “our cooperation with the intelligentsia is only temporary, born out of necessity, and that it will immediately be different as soon as we have developed a new intelligentsia.”

Subsequent SED pronouncements have indicated that the Communists feel that they are so dependent upon this group to build up the Soviet Zone economy that they are apparently prepared to make serious concessions to it.

At its meeting October 18–20, the SED Central Committee announced a resolution entitled “The Most Important Ideological Tasks of the Party” which issued party directives in this field and elaborated on this problem in detail. “The Central Committee decisively condemned the sectarian attitude of many party members, which had not yet been overcome, toward the technicians, engineers, scientists, and artists … The intelligentsia was playing a forceful role in our new democratic state. It formed the cadre of the state apparatus, the economy and culture, with whose help the working class … was carrying out its internal and foreign policies. The party’s task consisted in winning [this group] for our democratic reconstruction.”

An announcement of the SED Politbureau on December 1, 1951, went even further. To achieve “large-scale promotion of science, which could mean a decisive increase in the tempo of development of productive forces,” the trade unions, in particular, were directed to combat the tendency of many functionaries toward equalitarianism. “No pressure was to be put on [members of the intelligentsia] to force them to become members of organizations or to take courses … The material conditions for the intelligentsia must be further improved through readying housing, payment of premiums, and creating special restaurants [for them] in the plants. All members of the intelligentsia whose production was above average should get individual contracts, [Page 2029] whose fulfillment must be guaranteed by the directors and unions.” In this same connection an editorial in Taegliche Rundschau on November 17, 1951, stated that the SED Central Committee resolution had demanded that “illegal restrictions on the admittance of the children of intellectuals to universities, etc. must be overcome.”

Charles E. Hulick, Jr.
  1. Neither printed.
  2. Brackets throughout this document appear in the source text.
  3. Not printed.
  4. Not printed.
  5. According to the report by Hermann Matern, chairman of the SED Central Party Control Commission, 32.4 percent or 406, 662 of the members and 51 percent or 59,631 of the candidates undertook voluntary obligations (Selbstverp-flichtungen). This would mean that the party membership currently numbered 1,371,072. Since it was announced at the Third Party Congress in July 1950 that the party then numbered 1,750,000, this indicates a drop of 21.9 percent since that time. This has been confirmed by other sources, which report that between twenty and twenty-five percent of the membership was purged. [Footnote in source text.]