In recent days, a fresh wave of reactionary anti-communist agitation has swept through the Federal Republic of Germany. In the name of celebrating the 35th anniversary of capitalist German “unity,” representatives of the state apparatus are pushing to erase the names of Vladimir Lenin and other socialist heroes from public spaces.
At the center of this offensive stands Evelyn Zupke, the Federal Commissioner for the so-called "Victims of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) Dictatorship".
In statements to the bourgeois press, Zupke openly demands that streets bearing the names of Vladimir Lenin, Otto Grotewohl, and Wilhelm Pieck be stripped of their historical designations because — in the eyes of the German state — they are “incompatible with democratic values.” According to this narrative, commemorating leaders of the socialist movement supposedly glorifies suffering and repression rather than the actual crimes of capitalism.
Today, over a dozen “Lenin Streets” still exist in cities and towns throughout what was once the German Democratic Republic — in Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and beyond. These names are living traces of a people’s struggle to resist fascism, rebuild after the Second World War, and construct popular democracy in the face of imperialist encirclement. Instead of honoring the sacrifices of workers and communists, Zupke insists they be replaced with figures hand-picked to fit a sanitized capitalist orthodoxy.
Not surprisingly, these reactionary proposals have sparked disputes at the local level. In some municipalities, authorities have simply ignored the commissioner’s calls. In others, the fascist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has cynically oscillated between supporting renaming and mobilizing petitions to block change, revealing its own opportunism and hostility to working-class memory.
In the town of Jerichow (Saxony-Anhalt), a legal battle over the removal of Lenin and other socialist names reached the Higher Administrative Court, which — under pressure from capitalist elites — cleared the way for new, ideologically “safe” street names to be installed in January 2026.
The anti-communist campaign in Germany is not an isolated development. Across Europe (see the recent example of Poland) and beyond, bourgeois governments are tearing down monuments, rewriting history, and stripping socialist symbols from public life. They aim to bury the achievements of the working class under layers of propaganda and to convince workers that capitalism alone is “freedom” while struggles for social emancipation are “barbarism.”
Today, over a dozen “Lenin Streets” still exist in cities and towns throughout what was once the German Democratic Republic — in Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and beyond. These names are living traces of a people’s struggle to resist fascism, rebuild after the Second World War, and construct popular democracy in the face of imperialist encirclement. Instead of honoring the sacrifices of workers and communists, Zupke insists they be replaced with figures hand-picked to fit a sanitized capitalist orthodoxy.
Not surprisingly, these reactionary proposals have sparked disputes at the local level. In some municipalities, authorities have simply ignored the commissioner’s calls. In others, the fascist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has cynically oscillated between supporting renaming and mobilizing petitions to block change, revealing its own opportunism and hostility to working-class memory.
In the town of Jerichow (Saxony-Anhalt), a legal battle over the removal of Lenin and other socialist names reached the Higher Administrative Court, which — under pressure from capitalist elites — cleared the way for new, ideologically “safe” street names to be installed in January 2026.
The anti-communist campaign in Germany is not an isolated development. Across Europe (see the recent example of Poland) and beyond, bourgeois governments are tearing down monuments, rewriting history, and stripping socialist symbols from public life. They aim to bury the achievements of the working class under layers of propaganda and to convince workers that capitalism alone is “freedom” while struggles for social emancipation are “barbarism.”
