Word: ulbricht
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...Wall can keep East Germans from moving West, but it cannot prevent them from looking in that direction. Last week Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht felt obliged to order a turnabout during the party's Central Committee meeting in East Berlin...
...Communists know, East Germany is a "Democratic Republic," and with regularity Communist Party Boss Walter Ulbricht hauls 99.8% of his faithful electorate off to the polls to vote the official state slate. Last week's provincial and local elections, however, were to have been different. The people, decreed Democrat Ulbricht, would actually be given a choice: there would be 246,000 candidates for 204,000 jobs...
Voters in the decadent bourgeois states might not consider that much of a choice, but the privilege of crossing out two names on a twelve-man ballot held obvious appeal for the average East German. Perhaps too obvious, decided Ulbricht at the last minute. Fearing that the voters might go wild with their pencils and cross out some party stalwarts, he welshed on the deal. The only patriotic way to vote, East Germans were told, was not to cross out any names...
Though a moral outrage and a physical eyesore, it has stanched the drain of manpower that until 1961 was the worst economic problem in Walter Ulbricht's grim satellite. By thus stabilizing the labor force and preventing much-needed technicians from escaping to the West, the Wall has contributed substantially to a rise in East German production...
...Each [national] party has the exclusive right to independently elaborate its political line," he announced. He called for the abolition of all military blocs and, in a reference ostensibly to Viet Nam but which surely raised eyebrows among such members of his audience as East Germany's Walter Ulbricht and the Hungarian delegation, insisted that "foreign military bases and troops stationed on the territory of other states exert a negative influence on international relations...