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

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Thursday 19

th

May am 1 hour

To what extent and in what ways did

Communism transform the GDR?

Constitution 1949

• 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

Uprising 17

th

June 1953

• 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

Uprising 17

th

June 1953

• 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

Aftermath of the Uprising

• 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

Land Reform

• 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.

Success?

• 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?

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