Soviet Tightens Grip on East Germany
NICOLAEVSKY, BOMS I.
German satellite is being integrated into Soviet bloc Soviet Tightens Grip on East Germany By Boris I. Nicolaevsky MOLOTOV'S last speech at Geneva definitively stated the Soviet stand on German...
...These resolutions of the plenum did not halt the shift in policy...
...Finally, East Germany at that time witnessed the concentration of large military forces which were conducting themselves so defiantly toward the West (attacks on planes, etc...
...He had been appointed to the Berlin post by Bulganin and Khrushchev immediately after the Soviet Government decided on the "new course...
...The Occupation command was able to put through its "line" only because its leader was Bulganin, who throughout the postwar period headed the Party-police apparatus of all the Soviet armed forces...
...The Soviet Occupation commander was General Grechko, a Khrushchev protege...
...This included development of heavy industry, intensification of farm collectivization, ideological re-education of the intelligentsia, a struggle against the Church, and accelerated creation of an army...
...On May 24, the central Communist organ, Neues Deutschland, published a declaration of the Party Central Committee which stressed the necessity of modifying relations with the non-Party intelligentsia...
...Responsible West German publications reported that the German Communists received the first instructions for a relaxation in policy from Moscow in mid-April 1953, but that other instructions were obviously coming from Moscow at the same time...
...In the first weeks, Soviet policy was even more aggressive, as attacks on Western planes multiplied...
...Part of the central Party apparatus, headed by Khrushchev, was with Bulganin...
...In 1953-54, when Malenkov headed the Government, the peace movement was developed with special energy...
...The second East German Party Conference, held in July 1952, decided on a policy of "laying the foundations of socialism...
...3. Observance of the decisions reached at Potsdam whereby Germany was not to enter either of the military coalitions and her frontiers were to be guaranteed by the other European states and the U.S...
...Soviet agents propagated the idea of restoring a united, powerful Germany in alliance with Russia-the old Bismarckian policy...
...After February 9, there was virtually no mention of it...
...Semyonov, just a month earlier dismissed as political adviser, was named Supreme Commissioner...
...This new policy is essentially not new at all...
...After a series of somewhat mysterious delays, 51 delegates convened from 15 European countries, including France, Italy, England, Switzerland, all the satellites, and the Soviet Union...
...What is interesting is the positive program for solving the "German problem" which the Commission adopted after hearing the opinion, as the announcement emphasized, "particularly of the Soviet delegates...
...Throughout history, the high command of an occupation army has always been a parasitical and anti-popular force...
...This program included: 1. Simultaneous withdrawal of all occupation armies from Germany, with Soviet troops to be withdrawn at the same time from Poland, where they are stationed to guard communications lines...
...As Pravda wrote on October 7: "It should be clear to everyone that the workers of the German Democratic Republic will not give up their democratic conquests and will not agree to be slaves once again of the capitalists and landowners...
...The attitude of the Soviet and Communist press toward the Warsaw decisions was of prime political significance...
...In the realm of economic relations, the "new course" was maintained, and even extended to other satellites...
...In order to break this opposition, it was necessary to "relieve" the commander-in-chief of his policy functions...
...2. "Unification of Germany through free, controlled elections, which would be carried out on the basis of an election statute guaranteeing all democratic liberties, as envisaged in the plan presented in Berlin by Sir Anthony Eden...
...Since Puzanov could not act this way except on direct instructions from the then head of the Government, Malenkov, these decisions of the Warsaw conference must be regarded as the limit to which Malenkov was prepared to go on the German question...
...Malenkov had no intention of repeating the experiment of the last months of Stalin's life...
...In East Germany, they were supported by the huge mass of the German Party apparatus, for which removal of the Occupation troops would mean disaster...
...The current significance of these events is easy to understand...
...The Soviet regime has now, openly and unreservedly, come to the defense of the unlimited despotism of the East German Communists...
...At the decisive moment, Malenkov turned against him and allied himself with Khrushchev...
...This struggle is highly instructive for the present course of Soviet policy...
...Basically, it represents a return to the old policy which Stalin conducted in the last period of his life...
...The Warsaw decisions were hushed up in the press because, with the transfer of power to Bulganin and Khrushchev, the Soviet regime had shifted to the German policy formulated by Presidium member Mikhail Suslov in Berlin on October 6 and by Molotov recently at Geneva...
...Similarly, even before Malenkov's removal, the Ulbricht group in Germany had launched a policy of tightening its grip on the intelligentsia, which had "disintegrated" as a result of the "liberal course" of May 1953...
...The fate of the conference decisions is very significant...
...The Soviet regime did not adopt this policy all at once...
...The Commission did not meet until last February 6 in Warsaw...
...Grechko did indeed play this role...
...The removal of Malenkov meant that the Soviet regime was no longer favorably inclined toward these decisions...
...Stalin's last year was one of an intensified "socialist offensive" in the satellites...
...This act was undoubtedly connected with Winston Churchill's May 11 speech calling for a Big Four conference...
...The report by East German Communist boss Walter Ulbricht at the December 1954 conference of chairmen of peasant producers' cooperatives already made it clear that the collectivization drive had been revived and that its intensive development was planned for the future...
...In the latter's place was created the post of Supreme Commissioner, independent of the military command and acting on direct instructions from the Government...
...The regular plenum of the Central Committee of the East German Communist party (May 13-14, 1953), whose resolutions proclaimed a continuation of the "policy of the socialist offensive," was held under the political leadership of Yudin...
...The official announcement was published in Prawo Ludu, central organ of the Polish Communist party, on February 9, side by side with a report of the Supreme Soviet session in Moscow, at which it was announced that Malenkov was relinquishing the post of Premier...
...Permitting elections on the basis of the Eden plan would mean letting all of Germany fall into non-Communist hands...
...German satellite is being integrated into Soviet bloc Soviet Tightens Grip on East Germany By Boris I. Nicolaevsky MOLOTOV'S last speech at Geneva definitively stated the Soviet stand on German unification: The positions held by Moscow's henchmen in East Germany must be retained at all costs...
...Study of the post-Stalinist period in Russia shows that the German problem was one of the most important issues in the struggle among Stalin's heirs...
...Extensive support was given to all sorts of organizations of former officers and right-wing nationalist groups...
...at the same time, since December conversations had begun on promoting closer German political and economic solidarity with the other Soviet-bloc countries...
...He undoubtedly already knew the decision taken in Moscow...
...that Brigadier Frederic Dewhurst, then chief of the British military mission in Potsdam, felt that Stalin was preparing for early war...
...This is indicated by chronology: The "Initiative Commission for Convening a World Peace Congress" issued its first appeal in August 1948, about a month after Malenkov replaced Zhdanov as Party Secretary, with jurisdiction over foreign policy...
...Beria, then tremendously powerful, unquestionably favored the change in policy...
...In a matter of days, the "socialist offensive" was dropped, property rights were restored to all "dekulakized" peasants and craftsmen, all extraordinary measures against the non-Communist intelligentsia were revoked, and negotiations were begun with representatives of the Church and of those social groups which shortly before had been under brutal pressure...
...The Soviet delegation was headed by Puzanov, Premier of the Russian Soviet Republic...
...In the decisive months of the summer of 1953, the Tdgliche Rundschau, newspaper of the Occupation armies, was the chief organ directing the fight against Beria's German adherents...
...Significantly, the first article in Neues Deutschland which decisively spoke of the need for a change in policy was also published by Herrnstadt on May 24...
...the center of opposition to his policy was the Defense Ministry, from which Bulganin directed the policy of the Occupation army command...
...The chief opponents of this new policy were above all the Party-police apparatus of the Occupation armies...
...Then the reversal began...
...This "peace movement" was Malenkov's pet and was undoubtedly created on his initiative...
...The refugees included professors, journalists and Government employes, as well as peasants from the collective farms and young men who were being forcibly recruited into the People's Police...
...This was a result of the struggle raging both in Moscow and in Pankow...
...That is not important...
...In the course of this struggle, a small episode occurred which was characteristic of the entire campaign...
...What followed was a logical outcome of the open advent to power of the Bulganin-Khrushchev group...
...Yudin vanished from the German scene...
...Instead, Soviet agitational work aimed at German nationalist feelings was intensified throughout the country...
...However, those elements of Beria's policy which represented preparations for serious changes in the East German regime were finished: All steps toward broadening the social base of the regime were halted...
...Malenkov's removal merely formalized this return to the Stalinist policy...
...After some hesitation, Moscow decided to accept this proposal (as is apparent from the article in Pravda on May 24...
...The old refrain interrupted and even drowned them out...
...Beria could carry out this policy only because in some measure he had the support of Malenkov...
...The position taken in all these questions by the Tdgliche Rundschau shows that Ulbricht, who played the leading role in this new switch to the old policy, acted in all respects with the concurrence of Marshal Grechko, whose ties with Bulganin and Khrushchev in Moscow had been strengthened...
...He was allied with Khrushchev, who in March 1953 became head of the entire Party apparatus...
...The outward expression of these other instructions was the appointment as political adviser to the Soviet Control Commission in Berlin of Pavel F. Yudin, now Soviet Ambassador to China, in place of Vladimir Semyonov...
...Stalin's death changed the situation-though not at once...
...The entire Soviet press was completely silent about it, too...
...The policy of the next year and a half in Germany was Malenkov's policy, and from it we can see in which way he was at odds with Beria...
...In Warsaw, a solemn reception was arranged, led by Professor Jan Dombrowski, President of the Polish Parliament...
...Suslov's October 6 speech in Berlin, the October 7 article in Pravda, and Molotov's speech at Geneva were merely a justification of this policy...
...The real shift came after Moscow's decision (1) to "relieve" the commander-in-chief of the Occupation armies of the function of supervising the German civil authorities, and (2) to abolish the Control Commission...
...Malenkov was so anxious to prevent West Germany's entry into NATO that he was prepared to give up East Germany...
...On just one day, March 6, 6,000 refugees fled to West Berlin alone...
...These were all merely various elements in a major policy shift toward intensifying the Sovietization of East Germany...
...This bid to German nationalism was aimed at fighting West Germany's entry into NATO and curiously intermeshed with the "peace movement" through which the Soviet regime exploited the revulsion of the masses against the possibility of another war...
...Later, the Communist press declared that the "platform" of the leaders of the "new course" included a "change in the Party leadership" and the Party's transformation from a Communist party to a broad national front...
...At the height of the battle over Western European Union, the leaders of the peace movement set up in Paris a "European Commission for the Peaceful Solution of the German Problem...
...A struggle was raging in Moscow within the "collective leadership...
...In East Germany, this offensive was especially energetic...
...In mid-April, new notes were sounded, but they were not yet dominant...
...Grechko was equal to the tasks given him, and rewards were not slow in coining: He arrived in Berlin not yet a full general, with a service record that contained no special war achievements: less than two years later, Bulganin made him a Marshal of the Soviet Union...
...Results were not slow in coming: The winter was marked not only by a severe industrial crisis and the complete disappearance of goods from the market, but by a mass flight of the population from East to West Germany...
...The reversal in Germany played a tremendous role in the fall of Beria...
...Weighing these data and analyzing other materials, there is little doubt that the "new course" was a preparation for the withdrawal of the Soviet Occupation armies from Germany and the transformation of East Germany into a country whose government in some measure took into account the feelings of the population...
...Malenkov did not return to the Stalinist "socialist offensive...
...In the official release published by the Commission, the main targets were, of course, NATO and West German rearmament...
...Thus, at this meeting an official Soviet delegation, led by so important a Government representative as Puzanov, voted for the unification of Germany on the basis of the plan proposed by Eden at the January 1954 conference in Berlin (at that time decisively rejected by Molotov...
...That was the meaning of the Soviet-East German agreement signed in Moscow on September 20...
...In his New Year's article, Ulbricht emphatically mentioned the need to strengthen heavy industry...
...In his person, the Army's Party-police apparatus had sent to Berlin its own "eye" and its own "arm...
...In preceding issues of Prawo Ludu, information about the Commission had been printed on page 1 with big display...
...Having decided to enter into negotiations, Moscow launched a "new course" in Germany to prepare the best possible setting...
...His policy in Germany was carried out by all those who in the war years worked under his direction in creating the "Free Germany Committee," i.e., above all by Wilhelm Zaisser, whom Beria made East German Minister of State Security, and Rudolf Herrnstadt, who, from editor of a Soviet sheet for war prisoners, became editor of Neues Deutschland...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 48
