Socialist Unity Party of Germany

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Image:SED-Logo.png The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) was the governing party of East Germany from its formation in 1949 until the elections of 1990. The SED was created in 1946 from a Soviet-influenced merger between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) members and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) members who lived in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany and the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin. After 1990, the party reformed itself as the Party of Democratic Socialism (later in 2005, the Left Party.PDS), and continues to be a notable force in German government on the state and local levels in former East German territory.

1 Early history
2 The Cold War Era
3 The Final Days
4 General Secretaries of the Central Committee of the SED
5 See also
6 External links

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Early history

Template:Politics of Germany Official East German and Soviet histories portray the merger between the SPD and KPD in the Soviet sector as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties. However, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed.

The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (Russian initials: SVAG) directly governed the eastern areas of Germany following World War II, and their intelligence operations carefully monitored all political activities. An early intelligence report from SVAG Propaganda Administration director Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Ivanovich Tiulpanov (see External Links, below) indicates that the former KPD and SPD members created different factions within the SED and remained rather mutually antagonistic for some time after the formation of the new party. Also reported was a great deal of difficulty in convincing the masses that the SED was a German political party, and not merely a tool of the Soviet occupation force.

According to Tiulpanov, many former members of the KPD expressed the sentiment that they had "forfeited [their] revolutionary positions, that [the KPD] alone would have succeeded much better had there been no SED, and that the Social Democrats are not to be trusted" (Tiulpanov, 1946). Also, Tiulpanov indicated that there was a marked "political passivity" among former SPD members, who felt they were being treated unfairly and as second-class party members by the new SED administration. As a result, the early SED party apparatus frequnelty became effectively immobilised as former KPD members began discussing any proposal, however small, at great length with the former SPD members, so as to achieve consensus and avoid offending them. Soviet intelligence claimed to have a list of names of a SPD group within the SED which was covertly forging links with the SPD in the West and even with the Western Allied military governments.

A problem the Soviets identified with the early SED was its potential to develop into a nationalist party. At large party meetings, members applauded speakers who talked of nationalism much more than when they spoke of solving social problems and gender equality. Some even proposed the idea of establishing an independent German socialist state free of both Soviet and Western influence, and of soon regaining the formerly German land that the Yalta Conference, and ultimately the Potsdam Conference, had (re)allocated to Poland.

Soviet negotiators reported that SED politicians frequently pushed past the boundaries of the political statements which had been approved by the Soviet monitors, and there was some initial difficulty making provincial SED parties realize that they should think carefuly before opposing the political positions decided upon by the Central Committee in Berlin.

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The Cold War Era

Initially the SED had a branch in West Berlin, but in 1962 the West Berlin branch was separated from the SED proper and became a "separate" party called the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins - SEW).

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The Final Days

Image:Party Card 750px.jpg

Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the election in March 1990, the old Social Democratic Party was re-established as a separate party, while the rump of the SED that remained after a massive plunge in membership was renamed as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) at a special party congress in December 1989. In this form, the party survived the reunification and eventually started growing again, managing to get representatives elected to the Bundestag. As of 2003, the PDS remains influential in eastern Germany, especially at local levels. In 2005, the PDS was renamed to "Die Linkspartei" (the left party) and subsequently reached more than 8% in the September 2005 Bundestag election in a coalition with WASG (Labour and Social Justice Party), a leftist break-away group (from the SPD) led by Oskar Lafontaine.

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