th

To what extent and in what ways did
Communism transform the GDR?

• Parliament Volkskammer, representative of the people
• Upper House, Landerkammer, represented the five regions of East Germany or Lander
• President Wihelm Pieck: head of state
• Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl: head of government

Democratic Politics in the GDR?
• SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht.
• The Lander were abolished in 1952 and replaced by smaller and more numerous units the Bezirke
• Upper House abolished 1958

Changes in the GDR...
Life on the Land
• 1952: Collectivisation ‘land production cooperatives’
• LPGs: a collective farm often made up of several previously independent farms now joined together
• LPGs unpopular, many farmers fled to the
West
• Problems with food supply: contributed to uprising 1953

th
• Causes: tightening of borders, collectivisation, emphasis on enhanced productivity
• USSR was not happy with the developments in the GDR
• June 1953 key SED leaders summoned to
Moscow and asked to make changes: condition of workers would become worse, they were to produce 10% more, but wages the same

th
• Confusion: Different messages came out in the
Communist Party newspaper and Trade Union newspaper.
• Construction on the building work in Berlin halted 16 th June, workers marched to House of
Ministries
• One worker got to a loudspeaker and announced a general strike for the following day. News spread throughout the GDR

• Ulbricht got help from the USSR and the uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks
• West Germany under Konrad Adenauer didn’t intervene
• East Germans felt abandoned
• Workers won concessions
• Inadequacy of secret security service in noticing signs of unrest
• Ulbricht criticised by party
• SED paranoid about views of the people and determined to crush any signs of unrest

• Ambitious building program: 101,800 new apartment houses were to be built between
1948 and 1950. In the end, however, only 39% built in 1950.

• Agriculture did become more efficient
• Farmers well trained, becoming specialists in crop or livestock production
• Collective farms treated as industrial factories, a place of work rather than an inherited property.

• Relationship with USSR page 147
• What was the Warsaw Pact?
• What was the Comecon?