Word: ulbricht
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...Russian master plan for satellites, East Germany was long ago selected to be the showpiece of industrialization. Undeterred by the fact that the area had traditionally been Germany's breadbasket, the Russians installed Walter Ulbricht to make their policy fact. Last week reports smuggled out of East Germany made clear that Ulbricht's ruthless drive to make over East Germany into an industrial complex had brought the country close to bankruptcy, was the basic cause of the recent split in Communist leadership...
...last meeting of the East German Politburo, then Deputy Premier Fred Oelssner. whom Ulbricht put in charge of production and distribution of consumer goods in 1955, bluntly declared that as things were going "the country can expect a total collapse of its economy by 1960." The whole Ulbricht philosophy of export-at-any-price, and of imposing impossible production goals upon industry, had led "to an economy of permanent crisis." The country was grievously short of raw materials, can not even depend on the cheap coal that Poland now sells to the West...
While ideological thaw crept through the satellites in the wake of the 20th Party Congress, East Germany's Socialist Unity (Communist) Party remained the iceberg of the Communist world. Goat-bearded First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, 64, an old-line Stalinist, kept his party and his nation under tight control. Intellectuals or students showing signs of "liberalism" were summarily jailed...
Last week the iceberg suddenly cracked. Without warning, Ulbricht fired three of his top associates, labeled them members of "an opportunistic group trying to change the political line of the party." In short, the three had shown signs of thaw. "Others" in the party, added the announcement, were associated with the group-a sign that a good-sized purge was in progress...
Most important was grave, bespectacled Karl Schirdewan, generally considered Ulbricht's prospective heir as Communist boss of East Germany. When Ulbricht visited Moscow last year, Schirdewan sat in for him as First Secretary. Schirdewan was charged with "advocating a safety-valve policy akin to that applied in Hungary and Poland." In an indictment that was also an unconscious admission, a Politburo spokesman explained: "Had we followed [Schirdewan's] opinions, very probably we would have had to suppress a counterrevolution with use of arms...