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East Germany Tenth Party Congress
The Tenth Party Congress, which took place in April 1981,
focused on improving the economy, stabilizing the socialist
system, achieving success in foreign policy, and strengthening
relations with West Germany. Presenting the SED as the leading
power in all areas of East German society, General Secretary (the
title changed from first secretary in 1976) Honecker emphasized
the importance of educating loyal cadres in order to secure the
party's position. He announced that more than one-third of all
party members and candidates and nearly two-third of the party
secretaries had completed a course of study at a university,
technical college, or trade school and that four-fifths of the
party secretaries had received training in a party school for
more than a year. Stating that a relaxation of "democratic
centralism" was unacceptable, Honecker emphasized rigid
centralism within the party. Outlining the SED's general course,
the congress confirmed the unity of East Germany's economic and
social policy on the domestic front and its absolute commitment
to the Soviet Union in foreign policy. In keeping with the latter
pronouncement, the SED approved the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan. The East German stance differed from that taken by
the Yugoslav, Romanian, and Italian communists, who criticized
the Soviet action.
The SED's Central Committee, which during the 1960s had been
an advisory body, was reduced to the function of an acclamation
body during the Tenth Party Congress. The Politburo and the
Secretariat remained for the most part unchanged. In addition to
policy issues, the congress focused on the new Five-Year Plan
(1981-85), calling for higher productivity, more efficient use of
material resources, and better quality products. Although the
previous five-year plan had not been fulfilled, the congress
again set very high goals. Because it barely went beyond the
repetition of previous aims and the continuation of domestic and
foreign policies, the Tenth Party Congress has been termed the
party congress of continuity.
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The reader may enjoy Carola Stern's Ulbricht: A Political
Biography and Heinz Lippmann's Honecker and the New
Politics of Europe. Jonathan Steel's Inside East Germany:
The State That Came in from the Cold provides a journalist's
account. Hartmut Zimmermann's essay "The GDR in the 1970s," in
Problems of Communism, March-April 1978, serves as an
excellent introduction to the contemporary situation.
For background, Geoffrey Barraclough's The Origins of
Modern Germany is a classic study of the late-medieval German
past. Germany: 1866-1945, by Gordon A. Craig, represents a
recent synthesis of the history of the German nation-state. Fritz
Fischer's controversial Germany's Aims in the First World
War warrants brief perusal: the author collects a wealth of
documentation revealing the political and social context of World
War I. The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and
Effects of National Socialism by Karl Dietrich Bracher offers
an excellent analysis of Hitler's road to power and the Third
Reich. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of July 1987
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