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 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110019-3

Government and Politics

A. Introduction (U/OU)

The German Democratic Republic is a stepchild of the Second World War, evolving over the past quarter of a century from the status of a Soviet-occupied area and scorned satellite to a second German state that commands the allegiance and support of a growing number of its own citizens and has gained increased recognition and prestige abroad. The revolution imposed by the Communists has restratified the society and abolished or brought under Communist control all traditional German institutions capable of commanding a separate loyalty from East Germans or linking them with their countrymen in the West. Using the Soviet Union as their model, East Germany's Communist leaders have established a political and social order which has its primary goals the perpetuation of one-party rule by the Communists and the establishment of even closer links with the Soviet Union, the principal guarantor of the GDR's durability and stability.

The exercise of political power remains the exclusive prerogative of the Communists who exert and maintain control through the mechanism of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) which was created in 1946 by the forced marriage of once bitter adversaries - the Communists and the Social Democrats. As in the case of the Soviet Communist Party, political power is highly centralized within the top echelons of the ruling SED, while responsibility for implementing policy rests with the party apparatus and the various governmental ministries and agencies. A facade of multi-party democracy has been retained by allowing a number of non-Communist parties - usually headed by tractable officials - to remain in existence, but they provide no genuine opposition and are allowed to maintain separate organizations only because they provide a convenient channel for organizing segments of the population which would not join the SED.

At the time of its founding in 1949 the German Democratic Republic faced an uncertain future because of its public image as a creation of the Soviet Union which had plundered and ravaged large areas of East Germany. Much of this hatred and contempt was transferred to Walter Ulbricht and other German Communist leaders who were regarded as Soviet stooges lacking both legitimacy and popular support. Aware of its lack of broad support among East Germans, the regime was also uneasy about the firmness of the Soviet commitment to support the development of a separate German state. There were suspicions that Moscow might be prepared to sell out East Germany in order to advance its own interests in Europe.

The onset of the cold war, the West German decision in 1952 to join the abortive European Defense Community, and Bonn's accession to NATO in 1954 hardened the division of Germany and strengthened the Soviet commitment to the development of a separate German state under Communist control. Moscow tried to shore up the East German regime by conferring further prerogatives of statehood in order to enable the rump state to compete more effectively

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110019-3